The Voice Of America’s latest Africa News reports the following: the recently released International Monetary Fund (IMF) Regional Economic Outlook suggests that, unless African governments cut spending, they could put their economic growth in jeopardy. According to Antoinette Sayeh, the head of the IMF’s Africa department, although “smart fiscal planning, combined with government spending, helped sub-Saharan countries survive the global financial crisis, the debt levels in some countries are growing too fast.” That is exactly the problem that African nations are being conned into thinking they can grow their economies if they can just be a little bit prudent and diligent when it comes to public spending. It doesn’t take an economist to figure it out that it seems the IMF’s focus is on debt payment and economic restructuring than on how African countries can tackle poverty? Spending and investing in health, education and development of their citizens sounds like prudent economic choice African nations can make!
But most importantly, it dawns on me that when it comes to African nations the IMF seems always to opt for the easy way out- which is to advice on cutting spending. But haven’t African nations been there and done that? This advice to me is not different from the 1980s and 1990s World Bank and International Monetary programs/policies which are partly to blame for Africa’s poverty.
Yes the continent may have weathered the economic crisis, but what this IMF economic outlook report fails to do is to analyze the impact of what the sub-Saharan countries have done to weather the global economic crisis! The truth is much simpler: the reality that African nations have weathered the global financial crisis is not due to some diligent and prudent budgeting, but simply because these governments have been cutting spending on services, such as education and health, vital to the poor.
