Tweet
<span style="font-weight: bold">It is in response to a letter by a certain Eileen B. She claims Africa's problems are all due to 'corrupt, greedy officials'.</span>
<span style="font-style: italic"> I’m a little dismayed but not surprised by Eileen B’s myopic and uniformed view of Africa’s economic problems.
Too many times we hear Africa’s poverty is due to ‘greedy, corrupt officials’. Does only Africa have greedy, corrupt officials? How about the bigger picture, Eileen B?
In the Congo more than 30 companies, all G8-based, dominate the exploitation of this poor yet minerals-rich country.
Cote d'Ivoire: three G8 firms control around 95% of the processing and export of cocoa, the country’s main resource. The profits of one British company are a third larger than Mozambique's GDP, while one US firm controls more than 50% of South Africa's maize seed, that country's staple. I could go on.
It is estimated that for every $1 of ‘aid’ to Africa, $3 are taken out by western banks, institutions and governments - and that does not include the repatriated profits of multinational corporations.
And what about the IMF and World Banksters, who conspire to lend money to impoverished nations at exorbitant interest - and when those countries cannot pay, the IMF’s corporate friends turn up and take ownership of the country’s resources - which was the initial objective - forcing them to ‘restructure’: close schools and hospitals and grow cash crops to sell in the West to ‘pay off’ the interest on their debt, rendering them hardly able to feed their own.
The Brazil-Russia-India-China bloc objects to so much power being in IMF hands – an institution dominated by the US and Britain, while Chinese economic measures are more or less the opposite of bankers' bailouts.
Eileen BS, I think you should get out more.
Derek
</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">I just want a couple of opinions off here before I click 'Send'.</span>
<span style="font-style: italic"> I’m a little dismayed but not surprised by Eileen B’s myopic and uniformed view of Africa’s economic problems.
Too many times we hear Africa’s poverty is due to ‘greedy, corrupt officials’. Does only Africa have greedy, corrupt officials? How about the bigger picture, Eileen B?
In the Congo more than 30 companies, all G8-based, dominate the exploitation of this poor yet minerals-rich country.
Cote d'Ivoire: three G8 firms control around 95% of the processing and export of cocoa, the country’s main resource. The profits of one British company are a third larger than Mozambique's GDP, while one US firm controls more than 50% of South Africa's maize seed, that country's staple. I could go on.
It is estimated that for every $1 of ‘aid’ to Africa, $3 are taken out by western banks, institutions and governments - and that does not include the repatriated profits of multinational corporations.
And what about the IMF and World Banksters, who conspire to lend money to impoverished nations at exorbitant interest - and when those countries cannot pay, the IMF’s corporate friends turn up and take ownership of the country’s resources - which was the initial objective - forcing them to ‘restructure’: close schools and hospitals and grow cash crops to sell in the West to ‘pay off’ the interest on their debt, rendering them hardly able to feed their own.
The Brazil-Russia-India-China bloc objects to so much power being in IMF hands – an institution dominated by the US and Britain, while Chinese economic measures are more or less the opposite of bankers' bailouts.
Eileen BS, I think you should get out more.
Derek
</span>
<span style="font-weight: bold">I just want a couple of opinions off here before I click 'Send'.</span>
Comment