WB/IMF blamed for Africa's woes

Accra, April 11, GNA - Policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have been identified as some of the major causes of under development of Africa.

A research by the Alliance for Poverty Eradication (ALPE) in Ghana and Zambia has shown that debt crisis in developing countries had worsened, and that an estimated total debt of the countries had reached 2.2 trillion US dollars by 1997.

These were disclosed at the ALPE Africa Regional Workshop in Accra on Wednesday.

Mr Luke Atazona, Policy Officer, ISODEC who gave an overview of the research findings said widespread poverty and diseases had become common features of almost all developing countries as a result of failed programmes of the World Bank and IMF.

In addition, there were the donor communities' Heavily Indebted poor Countries (HIPC) initiatives and poverty reduction strategy papers, which had become the core of national policy formulation of many developing countries.

The report, he said, sought to analyse, identify similarities and divergence of civil monitoring of poverty and debt relief resources in the two countries as well as the different issues that emerged from the comparative analysis of country case study

Areas of commonality included National Poverty Reduction Strategy (NPRS) and utilization of debt relief, which have mainly social programmes but generally poorly targeted and leaked before destination and monitoring priorities. They were also located and targeted at rural areas and poor communities by Civil Society Organisation (CSOs).

Mr Atazona noted that in Zambia, CSOs were well organised themselves and made inputs while in Ghana inputs were limited and scanty in terms of good governance, accountability and equity.

In Ghana, coordination and regulation of monitoring activities were largely being done by individual CSOs that were into monitoring while in Zambia a coalition of CSOs coordinated their own activities.

The experiences of the two case studies, he said, had shown that for CSOs and other actors alike to effectively carry out debt relief and PRS monitoring, they must have several lessons for best practices. Among the best practices identified were timing of poverty monitoring and a recognition, that 'change issues' in poverty variables were gradual and should be the key considerations in developing monitoring systems and indicators.

Also CSOs in monitoring should pull experiences and expertise together to help improve the quality of findings.

The research, he said, recommended among other things that, CSOs' engagement in the implementation of the NPRS be formalised in respective case study countries and also called for legislative instrument and provision to enable them freely access public information on utilization and destinations of debt relief funds.

It also recommended the institutionalisation of CSOs activities through the enactment of a law by parliament that would enable CSOs get the maximum cooperation from state agencies and compel the executive to act on their findings