BILL CLINTON: Because of the empowerment zone, because of what the people are doing here, because they’ve made me feel so welcome here today, and because this is what my presidency was about, and it’s a lot of what I want to do in my post-presidential years, bringing economic opportunity to people in places who don’t have it here at home and around the world, and bringing people of different races and religions and backgrounds together. This is what this means to me. I feel wonderful about it, and I’m very, very grateful.

AMY GOODMAN: President Clinton, speaking just a few days ago about his choice to move to Harlem, his office there, as he talked about devoting his life to empowering people here and around the world, though many have characterized his presidency differently when it comes to other countries.

And today we are going to talk about international monetary institutions, like the IMF and the World Bank, and their approach specifically to Africa. World Bank president James Wolfensohn and IMF managing director Horst Köhler are currently touring Africa. Starting today and continuing through Saturday, they’re meeting with numerous African heads of state in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Earlier this week, the IMF and bank heads, officials met with 12 heads of state in Mali. The tour is a follow-up to the IMF and World Bank commitment to the Prague 2000 annual meetings to put Africa at the center of their institutions’ activities.

According to an IMF press release, the trip will focus on the need to reduce poverty through sustained economic growth, to combat AIDS, strengthen governance, improve the investment climate and resolve conflicts. The public relations statement went on to say that “The heads of the IMF and the World Bank … are anxious to listen to how African leaders plan to address these issues and to discuss how the institutions can best support them in their efforts.” But critics charge that the World Bank and IMF came to Africa not to listen, but to instruct, not to support indigenous efforts to ameliorate socioeconomic distress, but to promote interests of the industrialized nations that set the agenda at the world’s top financial institutions.

We’re joined right now by a number of people to talk about the World Bank-IMF initiative right now in Africa. And we’re going to begin with the archbishop of South Africa. We’re joined by Archbishop Njongonkulu Ndungane, archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, successor to Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Welcome to Democracy Now!

ARCHBISHOP NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE: Good morning, and welcome.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. You now are in Atlanta, Georgia. Why has — what does South Africa want from the IMF or the World Bank, or does it want anything to do with it at all?

ARCHBISHOP NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE: I think that we need to look at this in this broad context, I think. South Africa is part of the continent of Africa, which is a big continent. And part of the most debilitating programs have actually affected the rest of the continent in terms of the developing world. And we, from Jubilee 2000, are saying that the World Bank and the IMF have actually strangled development in Africa through its structural development programs, which insist, among other things, that the first call of a nation’s budget should be the repayment of debts.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re also joined on the phone by a representative of the World Bank, the World Bank, again, right now leading a second summit, after the earlier summit in Mali, now in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Pamela Cox is with us, director of the Africa region for the World Bank. What is the point of this tour of the IMF and World Bank heads?

PAMELA COX: Well, thank you for inviting us to join in this conversation, and I’m sorry you couldn’t reach Mr. Wolfensohn directly in Africa. The point of these meetings, which is an historic visit because it’s both the fund and the bank together, is really to listen to African leaders, to listen what African leaders want from the bank and the fund, and to incorporate that into our programs. And I think, as you noted in your introduction, we’ve had, on several other occasions, had meetings with heads of state, in Kampala and Dakar and Libreville, and very much the information and the discussions coming out of these meetings led to such things as the support for the HIPC Initiative, support for capacity building, support for a sharper focus on poverty reduction.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined also on the phone by Njoki Njehu, director of the 50 Years Is Enough Network, which has led the move to critique the bank. She is in London right now following closely what’s going on with the World Bank-IMF tour. Your major concern right now? And the protests have been going on now for a number of years against World Bank-IMF-led development. What is your — the major point of your critique?

NJOKI NJEHU: I think that our major point and, really, where we come at this is looking at what civil society that was in Bamako, Mali, mostly outside the meetings protesting, are saying about the role of the World Bank and the IMF in Africa, a very strong statement from Tanzania Gender Networking Program. And as a U.S. network, our position has always been to amplify the positions that are coming from our colleagues in the South. And in Mali, they talked about the role of the World Bank and the IMF in exacerbating rather than in reducing poverty in Africa. And we would agree with them that structural adjustment programs, including things in other programs, including things like the HIPC Initiative, that they’ve not really been for the benefit of Africans in the continent, African people in African countries, but maintaining an economic system that uses and employs African peoples and resources and does not, for the most part, benefit them. When we look at the statement from the Tanzania Gender Networking Program, we share their outrage and concern that the heads of the World Bank and the IMF are meeting with Tanzanian civil society for a one-hour session on the very last day of their visit in Dar es Salaam.

So, I feel like a broken record. You know, there’s nothing new here. This is, for the most part, a public relations tour that is intended to smooth the way for development in Africa, World Bank-IMF style. There have been many African initiatives, including the OAU-led African Alternative to Structural Adjustment Programs, that is now going on to be six, eight years old, that was never implemented. It’s not like there haven’t been initiatives and ideas from Africa. I don’t know — I am a lot more skeptical about this tour across Africa. There are new gestures, in fact, many new things like meeting — these regional summits, but I am not convinced that they’re going to be doing anything different. The bank is, in fact, beginning to expand their structural adjustment lending, continuing, whereas the call has been for them to stop structural adjustment — imposing structural adjustment programs. And they’re looking to expand their structural adjustment lending. So, I’m a lot more — I’m a lot more cynical and a lot more critical than perhaps the World Bank and the IMF expect people to be in looking at this tour of the heads of the institutions.

AMY GOODMAN: Pamela Cox, your response to Njoki Njehu? Pamela Cox, director of Africa region for the World Bank.

PAMELA COX: We very much appreciate the views of civil society, both at the local level in our programs and then globally, in discussing these very important issues. We believe that there are many initiatives on the table that are directly benefiting Africa right now. HIPC is for the benefit of Africa. Twenty-five billion dollars of assistance is coming through HIPC this year, which we think is a major improvement. In addition, there are many issues in the global economy now that we’re talking about how do we start looking at the global architecture. For example, trade access. If Africa had maintained a share in world trade, it would be earning an extra $66 billion a year. This is an issue that we’ve heard from African leaders that they would like the World Bank to be an advocate of in various fora. And I think we want to move ahead on that, as well.

In terms of looking at our programs, in response to discussions with civil society and, of course, with our shareholders in annual meetings, we’re focusing now on the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, which are initiatives led by governments focusing very clearly on their plans for reducing poverty in their own countries. And we at the World Bank would then come in and design our programs to support these initiatives, which are designed by countries and led by countries. We’re moving away, actually, from structural adjustment lending to supporting these Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. And again, I want to emphasize, we very much support development led by Africans, led by the African countries. One of the things that Mr. Wolfensohn and Mr. Köhler will be talking about with Presidents Mbeki and Bouteflika and Obasanjo is this new Millennium Action Plan, this so-called Marshall Plan for Africa. And they sat down with these three presidents in Bamako and said, “What can the bank and the fund do to help? What can we do to support you?” So I think very much we’re working to support what Africans themselves want for development.

ARCHBISHOP NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE: Could I come in here?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes.

ARCHBISHOP NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE: Could I come in here?

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, Archbishop Ndungane.

ARCHBISHOP NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE: This is the archbishop. I think that one of the fundamental things that the World Bank and the IMF should do, rather than going up and down Africa, is to cancel the debts, period, because this whole issue — I mean, Jeffrey Sachs says the World Bank and the IMF are masters of deceit. If you look at the case of Mozambique, for instance, even after Cologne, little more debt was relieved. Mozambique spends more on debt servicing than on health and education, even after the massive floods that hit Mozambique, that we all know about. The World Bank and the IMF refused to cancel any further debt, but instead simply offered new loans and extended the terms of repayment. In other words, it’s not working towards improving the condition of the people; it’s extending the imprisonment or slavery of people in terms of debt. One thing that they should do is to cancel the debt. And with respect, I think that the World Bank should engage with organs of civil society who are making these proposals for a better life for the people in the developing world.

NJOKI NJEHU: Amy, I would also like to add that the representative —

AMY GOODMAN: Njoki Njehu of 50 Years Is Enough.

NJOKI NJEHU: — from the World Bank talked about the HIPC Initiative. It was actually someone from the World Bank about 10 days ago, just in London, talked about that, basically, the HIPC Initiative has been about releasing 60 cents to the dollar for the multilateral institutions, for the World Bank and the IMF and creditors, and only 40 cents go to the countries. So, I mean, the HIPC Initiative is flawed, and it’s a deeply flawed system that divides some countries from countries between those that deserve, quote-unquote, “debt relief” and those that don’t deserve. And even within the HIPC classification, it doesn’t include countries that are heavily indebted, such as Haiti. If Haiti is not a heavily indebted poor country, or a country like Nigeria, I don’t know what we are talking about.

And the PRSP, I mean, again, our colleagues in Tanzania — and I know that the other people on the phone who can talk about this are having been involved in it, sort of in the first line — that it is a process, again, coming from the World Bank and the IMF, designed from outside and imposed on Africa and the Global South, and that the poverty reduction strategy process, that it includes — it gives the World Bank and the IMF virtual veto power. Yes, people sit around across Africa, in Kenya, in Tanzania, in Uganda and other places, talking about the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers, but the World Bank and the IMF have veto power.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Njoki Njehu, I want to ask Pamela Cox of the World Bank about that issue raised by the archbishop of South Africa of why not just cancel the debt. But we have to break for stations to identify themselves, then that question goes to the World Bank. You are listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!, as we have this discussion at the time where the presidents of the World Bank and the IMF are touring through Africa, starting today in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, just came from a meeting of heads of state in Mali. We’ll be back in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! The Exception to the Rulers. I’m Amy Goodman. We are talking about the World Bank and IMF, their relationship to Africa, as World Bank president James Wolfensohn, IMF managing director Horst Köhler are currently in Africa, now in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, just came from a meeting with 12 heads of state in Mali. And we’re on the telephone with the archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, Archbishop Ndungane. We’re also joined by Njoki Njehu of the 50 Years Is Enough campaign. She is originally from Kenya, speaking to us from London right now. And Pamela Cox is on the line with us, director of Africa region for the World Bank. Pamela Cox, what about the archbishop’s call for simply a cancellation of the debt?

PAMELA COX: Well, first of all, we have to talk about who holds the debt. When we started the HIPC Initiative, the debt that was outstanding to the World Bank was less than 10% of all the debt for the heavily indebted countries. So, first of all, we have to emphasize that the debt problem is not simply a problem of debt to the World Bank.

AMY GOODMAN: And when you say ”HIPC,” that stands for?

PAMELA COX: For the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative. This is the initiative sponsored by the World Bank and the IMF to reduce the debt for the highly indebted poor countries. And those would be countries whose debt repayments would exceed 175% of their GDP.

But when we look — when we started with the HIPC Initiative, only 10% of the debt was due to the bank. In fact, a large amount of this debt was due to bilateral creditors, which may either have been commercial debt or it may have been debt, especially in Africa, to official or government lending agencies. So, in the HIPC Initiative, we work to reduce all this debt. And we’re very glad to see that our bilateral partners have, in many instances, cut this debt. In the case of the bank, it’s not so simple, because in the case of IDA, which is our soft loan window, this is simply a fund that the bilateral countries pay into. We have no reserves to pay off the debt. And, in fact, after the year 2005, we’re relying on the other governments to actually help IDA pay off this debt.

In the case of IBRD, our loss reserves have already been used to underpin the risk of the loans on our books. For the IBRD, which is the World Bank, the borrowing side, we actually go out to world markets and borrow the money we lend, like most banks do. So we need to have these reserve ratios, in fact, to borrow money. And I’d like to also emphasize that it’s not possible just to take IBRD’s reserves. This would have a huge impact on the countries who take IBRD loans, who in fact are home to 80% of the world’s poorest people.

AMY GOODMAN: Archbishop —

ARCHBISHOP NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — Ndungane, does this satisfy you, this response of the World Bank?

ARCHBISHOP NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE: No, it doesn’t. To some extent, Pamela is right. But, you see, with terrible multilateral and bilateral debts — but the fundamental, principal position of Jubilee 2000 is that these debts have been paid twice or thrice over. And the second thing is that they are unpayable debt. And an unpayable debt is an unpayable debt, period. And in national domestic law, we have got bankruptcy laws. In international law, we don’t.

I think that what the World Bank should be doing, instead of going to talk to the leaders in Africa, they should be talking to their bosses, the creditors of the North, and say that, “Look, if we want to improve the condition of the people in the developing world, if we’re serious about addressing the conditions of abject poverty, as it has been said that, by 2015, we want to cancel half the people — we want to cancel half the debt that’s been owed abject poverty by 2015.” I think the first step is the cancellation of the debt. They should be organizing that. They should be following on the pledges that have already been made by countries that have talked about 100% debt cancellation.

In other words, these debts are unpayable, and it’s useless trying to be cajoling leaders who feel entrapped and enslaved by the whole international economic system and to buy into this thing. So, our proposal is that the World Bank and the IMF should, instead of talking to leaders in the developing world, they should addressing the G8 countries and making them follow up their pledges of 100% debt relief, canceling the multilateral and bilateral debts.

AMY GOODMAN: Pamela Cox of World Bank?

PAMELA COX: I’d like to assure the archbishop that indeed we are doing this. We bring this up in fora. Our president brings this up every time he meets a head of state. And, in fact, we’re very grateful to Jubilee 2000, because we also feel that they’ve put this issue on the map, particularly for parliaments and congresses, who need to vote this money for debt relief. So, in fact, we agree entirely with the bishop. We are doing this. We’re organizing. We’re following up. But I do want to emphasize that the World Bank can’t do this by itself, that we need the other governments to agree to vote this money in their congress, to write off these debts. So, we appreciate very much what civil society is doing to bring this issue to the forefront.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Algresia Akwi into the discussion, who is the deputy country director of ActionAid in Uganda. Can you talk about IMF/World Bank-led development and its effect on women in Uganda?

ALGRESIA AKWI: Thank you very much for bringing me into this. I’ve been listening, and I would like to agree with the archbishop and the others that the impact of this is tremendous, especially on women. And in the context of Uganda, the health and education sectors have been the most hit in that we have a huge number of people, for example, who are living with AIDS, HIV/AIDS, and the access to drugs and other services in this area have been tremendously difficult with introduction of user fees, also for common ailments like malaria. And you find now that malaria itself is beginning to be a killer disease. So, in terms of impact on the poor, I think the situation is worse than it was.

And we are beginning to see the whole process of the PRSPs probably as another form of conditionality. It should offer some hope, but it’s not giving us this hope. One, the process of developing the PRSPs itself, the timing does not really allow for that kind of participation of the poor in the process, because there appear to be some hurry in getting these PRSPs done. And then the process of approval, it’s of some concern to us that PRSPs, which should be the plan of a country, have to be endorsed by the IFIs, World Bank and IMF, before we can even benefit from the relief, or the debt relief, that is supposed to be due to us.

And this raises a question of transparency in negotiations. We get a feeling that there’s some lack of transparency from the World Bank, that, in one hand, the PRSP process is supposed to create some way of participation of the poor in the process. But we also feel that the real key issues and the procedures and the whole capacity of governments and people to engage with the World Bank is not there. And therefore, there’s still lack of transparency in all this process.

AMY GOODMAN: What about this charge of secrecy, Pamela Cox of the World Bank?

PAMELA COX: I’d like to emphasize that the World Bank does want to work very closely with people at the ground level. We do want to emphasize that the PSRP is not —

AMY GOODMAN: And PSRP, again, stands for?

PAMELA COX: The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, which is a government-led initiative. Various governments do it in very different ways. And, in fact, we try to help governments to expand the participation and the voices of the poor in this process.

AMY GOODMAN: But what about the issue of secrecy that Algresia Akwi was talking about, the concerns about board of executive directors of the bank meetings being kept secret, the lack of working — people at the grassroots level understanding what is going on because of the lack of transparency?

PAMELA COX: Well, yeah, I think there’s two issues here. One is, is what sorts of documents and transparency and so on that we have. And these documents are all available, both in the countries, where we have offices that provide them, and, of course, over the internet, for those who have that ability.

ARCHBISHOP NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE: That is not [inaudible].

PAMELA COX: I think the second point is, is that the bank has —

AMY GOODMAN: Let me just get a response to that, because I know this is a major concern of grassroots groups all over. Archbishop of Cape Town?

ARCHBISHOP NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE: Well, if my information is right about this poverty reduction strategy, it is linked to user fees. That is poor people having to pay for fees, for health and for water. And the statistics are that, in Kenya, for instance, where this was introduced, there was a 52% reduction in outpatient visits in Kenya’s health centers once these fees were applied. And in Malawi, there was an increase of primary school enrollment from 1,9 million to 2,9 million once school fees and uniform requirements were abandoned. And I am told that even in my country, in South Africa, this user fee introduction has resulted in taps being closed in KwaZulu-Natal because poor people couldn’t pay for water, and hence the cholera that ensued, and were having to pay billions and billions of rands to deal with that. So, even that kind of program has its flaws.

PAMELA COX: I’d like to emphasize here that the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers do not advocate user fees, nor does the bank insist and promote user fees.

NJOKI NJEHU: Can I respond?

PAMELA COX: In the case of Kenya, for example, there is no Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper that’s been done to date, so I think it’s very difficult to link these sorts of issues to PSRPs. We would like to point out that this is — these issues of user fees are very, very complex. We do not promote user fees in the World Bank; however, we understand, in many countries, that — where there are not the resources, there’s not the taxing ability, countries do ask for user fees, as in the case of South Africa. And we work with governments to make sure that the poor are not adversely affected by these sorts of things. In fact —

AMY GOODMAN: Njoki?

NJOKI NJEHU: Yeah, I would like to respond, because I think that there are a couple issues here. The issue of transparency, there are lots of documents that are not available to civil society. And the PRSP in Tanzania, Ms. Cox, I would like you to take a look at it. Look at the policy matrix. Look at the interim PRSP document. It did include — they are not called user fees. They are called community financing. They’re called different things — cost sharing — but they are included in there.

And let me say that when you say that a lot of documents are available on the website, I think the producer of Democracy Now! can attest to the difficulty of even just getting through on the phone. Many countries’ electricity is being rationed. You know, before it happened in California, it was happening all over the Global South. Getting to the web is not a viable option for the majority of people in the Global South. And even if they were to be able to get that, those documents are in English. They are not available. Accessibility is not just being on the web. They are not available for people to understand if they’re in a foreign language.

And in terms of documents that are available to the people — forget the ones that are on the web — documents such as the Community Action Programs, CAPS, which is a new initiative under which structural adjustment lending is to continue, the Public Expenditure Reform Credit, these are new initiatives, quote-unquote, “new initiatives” by the World Bank, but they are really structural adjustment lending that are supposed — and I’m quoting here — “enhance participation and decentralization,” tie their programs to communities and local governments. And the Public Expenditure Reform Credit is about a reform of legal and judicial reform, anti-corruption efforts and editing. But the documents that are associated to those two initiatives are not publicly disclosed.

So, it’s like you get your eye — you get a blindfold on your face, and then you’re told, “Go out there and do what you need to do,” when you don’t have the ideas, you don’t have the information that drives this initiative. It is, you know, unfortunately, really irresponsible of the World Bank to be moving in this direction. I feel like the World Bank —

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s get a comment from Pamela Cox of the World Bank.

NJOKI NJEHU: Right. Let me just say one last thing, that I feel like the World Bank treats Africans as children, African civil society like children. You know, things like HIV/AIDS and poverty reduction, yeah, we can get information on this, but the underlying, the fundamental framework that drives some of the issues that are tied to trade liberalization, that are tied to privatization and debt, we should not have any knowledge about that, we should not have any input. You can’t have it both ways.

AMY GOODMAN: Pamela Cox?

PAMELA COX: Well, I’m unclear exactly of the criticism here. First of all, there aren’t a great deal of documents, in general, on public sector reform credits. This is something that’s very new, is being talked about, is being discussed. Uganda is one of the first ones we’re looking at. I know the team has met with a wide variety of people. So, the question of — the idea that there are documents circulating around that aren’t accessible is simply not true.

In the case of the CAPS, or the Community Assistance Programs, we’re also already doing many of these programs. These are essentially social funds and getting funds down to the community level for local groups to use. And it’s difficult for me to understand how these are being linked to structural adjustment, because they’re essentially social funds.

I do want to emphasize we very much want to continue to work with civil society and to discuss and debate these issues. It is very difficult for us, as it is for any organization, to get every document that anybody wants translated into every language. We certainly would want to work with local groups that would want to facilitate this. It’s difficult for us to get down to these grassroots, and we very much depend on working with these groups. So, what I suggest is, in these countries, let’s figure out ways to get this information out better. We’re here, and we’re willing to listen on how to do this.

AMY GOODMAN: Algresia Akwi of Uganda, ActionAid?

ALGRESIA AKWI: I just wanted, you know, to clarify the dilemma here. We have structural adjustment programs clearly ongoing. That has never changed. Now, our understanding of PRSPs is really to reduce poverty in the sectors that have been most hit because of structural adjustment programs that are ongoing. Now, that’s where the participation of the civil society and poor people is expected to be. But the essential, basic relationship between our government and the IMF and World Bank is the subagreement, all that negotiation with the subagreement, which we did not participate in as civil society or local people or poor people. That has not really changed. So, on one hand, the trade agreements and the subagreements that have been negotiated adversely negate the possible relief that we could get from any debt relief. And that’s where we feel that the negotiations, even the capacity of ourselves to engage with the World Bank or with IMF, is really practically not there. Do we have a choice? We don’t really have that kind of choice to decide, because unless our PRSPs are approved by the World Bank or by the IMF, then we don’t really get access to debt relief, either.

AMY GOODMAN: Archbishop Ndungane, we’re going to end with you.

ARCHBISHOP NJONGONKULU NDUNGANE: Yes, I think that we have a fundamental issue at stake here, that these instruments service the interests of the creditor nations of the North. And there’s a call for the transformation of these institutions, because the world has changed from the time these Bretton Woods institutions were created, and so there needs to be a sharpening of minds and finding some creative and innovative ways of leveling the playing field, because there’s uneven development in this whole issue, that if the countries of the North and the countries of the South could be treated and deal with this as equal partners, and therefore needing to sit back and work on what kind of international instruments we need in this changing, globalizing world.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, on that note, I want to thank you all for being with us, just a continued discussion here on the issue of globalization, and particularly World Bank-, IMF-led development, as the heads of the World Bank and IMF are this week in Africa holding a major summit on Tuesday in Mali and now in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. That does it for this part of the conversation. Archbishop Ndungane from Cape Town, South Africa, successor to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, thank you for being with us. Also on the line with us from London, Njoki Njehu, director of 50 Years Is Enough Network; Algresia Akwi, Uganda, a deputy country director of ActionAid; and Pamela Cox, director of Africa region for the World Bank. And if you want to see the contacts for the different groups’ information, you can go to webactive.com. That’s www.webactive.com, where you listen to Democracy Now!, and you can also get all the contact information.

When we come back, the second part of “The Last Message.” Thirty-six years ago, Malcolm X was assassinated. This is one of his last speeches. Stay with us.