African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
Politics
Home›African Arguments›Politics›John Weeks Reviews: Africa’s Odious Debts (African Arguments) – By Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce

John Weeks Reviews: Africa’s Odious Debts (African Arguments) – By Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce

By Uncategorised
October 5, 2011
4211
12

Léonce Ndikumana and James K. Boyce, Africa’s Odious Debts: How foreign loans and capital flight bled a continent (London: Zed Books, 2011)

Among the public and the media in developed countries, and not absent from the work of professional economists, is the perception that the countries of sub-Saharan Africa received large amounts of development assistance over the last three decades.  This perception has been journalistically fostered by Dambisa Moyo (Dead Aid) and with more superficial respectability by former World Bank economist William Easterly (The White Man’s Burden).  The message of these polemics is that “trillions” in aid dollars have been “squandered” in African” to no benefit, with the lack of benefit typically attributed to corruption in “African” governments.

This mini-industry of anti-aid polemics represents such a gross distortion of the truth that calling it propaganda is an extreme understatement.  More appropriate would be “˜gross and willful distortions of the truth’.  While many, including this reviewer, have attacked these attempts to misrepresent the reality of financial flows in and out of sub-Saharan Africa, none have done so with the analytical clarity and empirical thoroughness of Ndikumana and Boyce in their outstanding work, Africa’s Odious Debts.  The reality that the authors demonstrate is simply stated and appalling in its implications:  sub-Saharan Africa, location of the poorest countries in the world, has generated net capital outflows for decades.  One could with small exaggeration say that for a generation Africa has provided aid to the United States and Western Europe.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the United Nations Department of Social and Economic Affairs have indicated the likelihood that net financial flows from the sub-Saharan region have been consistently negative. The Ndikumana and Boyce work goes well beyond this, carefully calculating the size of the annual resource loss, identifying the channels that facilitate them, and providing concrete policy measures to stop these impoverishing mechanisms.

The authors give an indication of the size of the flows and the broad consequences of the debilitating capital flight in a recent article in this journal,

…[S]ub-Saharan Africa experienced an exodus of more than $700 billion in capital flight since 1970. Some of this money wound up in accounts at the same banks that made loans to African governments. Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world in the sense that its foreign assets exceed its foreign liabilities. But there is a key difference between the two: the assets are in the hands of private Africans, while the liabilities are public, owed by the African people at large through their governments. (Ndikumana and Boyce 2011, African Arguments)

The authors are both technically sound in their analysis and measurement and admirably clear in their language.  These net outflows are theft, the robbing of populations by both foreign financial interests and their own elites.  Most of the robbery is of official development assistance to governments, the majority of which would have gone to social services, especially health and education.

Ndikumana and Boyce point out that this loss of funding for social services implies more illness and death than would otherwise occur.  The losses are all the more bitter because the economic side-effects of the outflows, balance of payments pressure and budget deficits, prompt the grant and load providers to demand restrictive monetary and fiscal policies that further starve the public sector and social services.

The authors explain in detail measures that could be taken by governments in the sub-Saharan region and in developed countries to reduce the debilitating outflows.  In the context of these necessary changes it is important to stress that the “˜Washington Consensus’ policies, portrayed as “˜reforms’ have been central in facilitating capital outflow.  The two most important elements of these “˜reform packages’ affecting financial flows are the elimination of public sector controls over the exchange rate and the capital account of the balance of payments, and reduction of public sector restrictions on commercial banks.  The combination of a requirement that all official development inflows go directly into commercial banks, the elimination of capital controls and demanding a non-interventionist foreign exchange market results in the de facto issuing of licenses for capital flight.

To put it simply, the Bretton Woods institutions decriminalized theft of development assistance.  The extent and mechanisms of this theft are documented beyond any doubt, in all their appalling manifestations, by Ndikumana and Boyce.

John Weeks is Professor Emeritus of Development Economics and Associate, Centre for Development Policy and Research, School of Oriental & African Studies

Previous Article

Taylor Trial outcome: Liberian democracy still hampered ...

Next Article

Mozambique – Can Frelimo remain the predominant ...

Uncategorised

12 comments

  1. Sunday Reading « zunguzungu 9 October, 2011 at 17:45

    […] John Weeks Reviews: Africa’s Odious Debts (African Arguments) – By Léonce Ndikumana and James K… Among the public and the media in developed countries, and not absent from the work of professional economists, is the perception that the countries of sub-Saharan Africa received large amounts of development assistance over the last three decades.  This perception has been journalistically fostered by Dambisa Moyo (Dead Aid) and with more superficial respectability by former World Bank economist William Easterly (The White Man’s Burden).  The message of these polemics is that “trillions” in aid dollars have been “squandered” in African” to no benefit, with the lack of benefit typically attributed to corruption in “African” governments. […]

  2. pharmaceutical online ordering 10 August, 2021 at 21:36

    Accustomed Information Far this offshoot
    https://canadianexpresspharm.com canadian express pharmacy

  3. stromectol ivermectin tablets for humans 10 August, 2021 at 22:00

    General Dope Fro this product
    https://ivermectstromect.com ivermectin tablets

  4. pharmacy without dr prescriptions 12 August, 2021 at 04:39

    General Message Here this offshoot
    https://canadianexpresspharm.com pharmaceutical online ordering

  5. ivermectin for sale 12 August, 2021 at 04:46

    Non-specific Information Far this product
    https://ivermectstromect.com stromectol for sale

  6. online drugtore 20 August, 2021 at 14:52

    Non-specific Low-down Here this offshoot
    https://canadaexpresspharm.com online drugtore

  7. canada pharmaceutical online ordering 21 August, 2021 at 09:19

    Non-specific Message Here this product
    https://canadaexpresspharm.com worldwide pharmacy online

  8. ivermectin tablets for sale 27 August, 2021 at 14:16

    Non-specific Dope Far this outcome
    https://stromectolivermect.com ivermectin for sale walmart

  9. ivermectin 12 mg tablets for sale 28 August, 2021 at 00:26

    General Low-down Fro this by-product
    https://ivermectinsts.com ivermectin for sale in mexico

  10. ivermectin tablets for sale walmart 28 August, 2021 at 13:16

    General Message Fro this by-product
    https://ivermectinsts.com ivermectin tablets us

  11. how to get ivermectin 29 August, 2021 at 00:08

    Non-specific Dope About this product
    https://ivermectinstrom.com human ivermectin

  12. stromectol tablets for sale 31 August, 2021 at 14:11

    General Dope Fro this offshoot
    https://ivermectinst.com ivermectin drug

Leave a reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Whether it meant to or not, the IPCC is on a collision course with the capitalist class.
    ClimateEconomyEditor's Picks

    The loud part the IPCC said quietly

  • Zambia 2021: President Edgar Lungu (centre). Credit: GCIS.
    PoliticsZambia

    Step by inevitable step: Lungu’s strategic march to 2021 and beyond

  • Tanzania. Credit: Andrew Moore
    PoliticsTanzania

    Tanzania search for missing millions raises questions over $1 billion

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • Afrobeats: The birth of Afro-Adura
  • Sudan: How the generals disappeared the people on the way to the economy
  • Is a Peaceful Somalia Possible? Alternatives to Total War on Al-Shabaab
  • “Economic bondage”: E Africa farmers worry over what GMOs might mean
  • The unexpected success of Somalia’s new fight against Al Shabaab

Editor’s Picks

Editor's PicksNigeriaSociety

Nigeria’s official language is English. Why do its citizens have to prove it? 

The UK  requires Nigerians to take an English test to study or immigrate there. Critics say it must be cancelled or at least reformed.  Growing up in Nigeria, Anita Eboigbe* ...
  • Bobi Wine and supporters at a rally this September don the red beret . Credit: Bobi Wine.

    To beat or not to beat: Museveni’s big Bobi Wine problem

    By Michael Mutyaba
    October 31, 2019
  • Eritreans Biniam Girmay wins the Gent-Wevelgem men's elite race in March 2022, becoming the race's first African winner.

    Why are there no Black riders in the Tour de France?

    By Georgia Cole & Temesgen Futsumbrhan Gebrehiwet
    July 13, 2022
  • Nigeria LGBTQ. Uzor. Credit: Ikenna Ogbenta.

    Duped through dating apps: Queer love in the time of homophobia

    By Caleb Okereke
    March 26, 2019
  • Justice for Noura.

    We Muslim girls know how it feels to be Noura. Now we must fight for her.

    By Aisha Ali Haji
    May 24, 2018

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies.