"Dakar 2000: From Resistance to Alternatives" Conference

• THE DAKAR DECLARATION FOR THE TOTAL AND UNCONDITIONAL CANCELLATION OF AFRICAN AND THIRD WORLD DEBT
• DAKAR MANIFESTO Africa: from Resistance to Alternatives

The following documents came out of the "Dakar 2000: From Resistance to Alternatives" conference that was held in Dakar, Senegal from December 11-17, 2000. This conference brought together leaders of NGOs and social movements from all over Africa to analyze the debt crisis and the impacts of IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programs on African populations. Conference participants also considered strategies for resistance to the neoliberal model and highlighted alternative approaches.

The conference was an important turning point in the global Jubilee movement, as well. The last two days of the conference featured a meeting organized by Jubilee South which brought together organizers of the Jubilee movement for debt cancellation from Northern and Southern countries. Strong themes that emerged from Global South debt networks in that meeting, included:

• Structural adjustment programs of the IMF and World Bank, under whatever name, including the new PRSPs, must be rejected;

• That no conditionalities should be placed on the debt cancellation process by Northern governments or creditors;

And that we must more consciously take stock of the ecological impacts of the debt.

New strategies for achieving ãlife without debtä were also proposed and discussed. Jubilee South groups are planning to build social movements in their countries to get their governments to refuse to pay their illegitimate debts. This strategy of building for repudiation of the debt comes in light of the failure of the G-7, the IMF, and the World Bank to accede to demands for total cancellation. The limited debt relief that the G-7 governments have offered thus far is wholly inadequate.

More details are outlined in the declaration and manifesto below.

For more information, see Jubilee South's website at http://jubileesouth.net.

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THE DAKAR DECLARATION FOR THE TOTAL AND UNCONDITIONAL CANCELLATION OF AFRICAN AND THIRD WORLD DEBT

We, participants at the «Dakar 2000 meeting for the cancellation of Third World debt», representing African peopleâs civil societies, supported by civil societies from Latin America, Asia, Europe and North America, from the analysis of the debt issue, of structural adjustment plans (SAPs) and development.

Realize that:

1. Third World debt to the North is at once fraudulent, odious, illegal, immoral, illegitimate, obscene and genocidal;

2. Countries of the North owe Third World countries, particularly Africa, a manifold debt: blood debt with slavery; economic debt with colonization, and the looting of human and mineral resources and unequal exchange; ecological debt with the destruction and the looting of its natural resources; social debt (unemployment; mass poverty) and cultural debt (debasing of African civilizations to justify colonization)

3. The debt structure and its computation are beyond the debtorsâ control. In effect, since 1988, the increase in the sub-Saharan African debt is due for 65% to arrears on amortization and capitalized interests. This shows that the debt burden has become more and more unbearable for the populations

4. Debt and structural adjustment plans (SAPs) constitute the principal causes for the degradation of health, education, nutrition, food security, the environment and sociocultural values of the African and Third World populations; 

5. Debt and SAPs are the cause for the aggravation of unemployment, the destruction of families leading to the rise of delinquency and prostitution, the worsening of womenâs socio-economic conditions and daily life, the ecological degradation of the continent and wars with their cohorts of refugees and displaced persons;

6. The fall in the incomes and purchasing power of African workers and producers has necessarily negative repercussions on economic growth in Northern countries, and therefore on the rise in unemployment and exclusion

7. To the brain drain, one can add the emigration of Third World vital forces to the North, with all their mafia-like consequences: generating, laundering and circulating dirty money, illegal drug, human organ trafficking, prostitution, weakening of innovative and entrepreneurial capacities;

8. Debt and SAPs weaken Third World countries by exposing them to unequal trade and to the ravages of deregulated financial markets. The World trade Organization (WTO) and the trade agreements imposed by the United States and the European union aim to further weaken Third World countries

9. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the governments of G7 countries refuse to cancel the debt because the latter is a mechanism allowing them to impose policies consistent with their interests and their control over the Third World

10. Debt is a neoliberal mechanism aimed at promoting the interests of transnational corporations, and for this reason, there is collusion between the IMF, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization

11. Africa is not immune to economic disorders provoked by international financial speculations

12. Our struggle is similar to those of Seattle, Washington, Prague and Nice

Therefore, conscious of the necessity of a solidarity among progressive social forces from the Third World and the North: NGOs, Labor Unions, Peasant Organizations, Womenâs and Youth Organizations, Religious Organizations, Cultural Workers and Actors, Communications Professionals, we participants at Dakar 2000

Declare that:

The right to development and the eradication of poverty is peopleâs fundamental right.

Condemn the constitution and accumulation of Third World debt, by Northern countries, with the complicity of the formerâs rulers

Demand:

13. From Northern creditors (financial institutions and States)

• The unconditional and immediate cancellation of Third World debt in its totality

• The end to the economic and financial exploitation of Africa and the Third World by the abolition of the Bretton Woods institutions which, contrary to their mission, have only succeeded in spreading poverty and increasing inequalities

• The restitution of the amounts that have been unduly perceived

• The compensation of the African and Third World people for the human, moral, physical, material and environmental losses they suffered due the debt burden, SAPs and the spoliation of their wealth

• The democratization of the functioning of the WTO

The institution of a tax on capital movements to help citizens (Tobin tax)


14. From African and Third World Countriesâ Heads of State

• The outright repudiation of debt without warning and delay

• The establishment of a Repudiation Front to resist and fight back the pressures and sanctions which could result from this policy

• The rejection of SAPs

• The restoration in their place of genuine, equitable and sustainable development policies respectful of human rights, workersâ rights, and based on popular participation. This means promoting the Lagos Plan, the African Alternative Framework to SAPs, the Abuja Treaty, the Arusha Charter as alternatives to SAPs.

• To behave as genuine defenders of their peopleâs interests and care about the future of current and next generations, particularly of women and children

• To establish a sincere dialogue with their civil societies

• To put an end to pseudo ethnic and civil wars and conflicts maintained with the debt at the expense of social spending and productive investments

• To promote the mobilization of endogenous financial resources through internal savings to finance development before resorting to external ãaidä

To display a greater cohesion in the negotiations with international financial institutions, regional organizations (for instance, the European Union) and the WTO


15. From Third World Social Forces

• To resist the pressures and hardship imposed on them by transnational corporations, in collusion with the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO

• To fight back the pressures and be in the forefront of the offensive for social struggles from which will emerge alternative strategies

• To impose on their governments the implementation of concrete and workable solutions to the debt problem and to the negative impact of SAPs

• To impose their participation in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of alternative policies and programs to SAPs

• To demand from their governments the institution of social dialogue and the right to control as a governance method

• To set up independent national commissions on ill-acquired wealth and create a synergy among them

• To organize into national, Pan-African and international coalitions with the people of the Third World and progressive forces from the North

• To build an African Peopleâs Consensus to face up to debt, to trade and financial policies that constitute the neoliberal framework imposed by the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO and the G7 countries

• To build that Consensus from the bottom up, based on the concerns of the people

• To educate the people on the causes of their poverty and support popular resistance movements

• To support the establishment of popular resistance movements within an endogenous development framework, suited for our countries, for our continent

• To organize them into a powerful regional network to strengthen the African Peopleâs Consensus

• To coordinate these activities at the continental level to ensure a stronger coherence

To coordinate the progress of the African Peopleâs Consensus with the struggle of worldwide progressive forces


16. From African intellectuals, researchers and academics

• To further commit themselves to the search for alternative solutions based on our socio-cultural values of solidarity and from our own resources

• To make their works more visible and accessible to social actors

• The African experts who worked for international institutions should make their experience and relationships available to the African civil society in order to strengthen its capacity

To formulate and compel our States to implement our own paradigm based on peopleâs interests and positive African values


17. From African labor unions

To unite into a continental and international coalition with workers from Asia, Latin America and Northern countries for the total and unconditional cancellation of African and Third World debt


18. From womenâs organizations, African youth, artists and sportspeople

To organize into national and Pan-African coalitions and join the other actors for the success of the struggles, the search for, and the implementation of, alternatives to SAPs and to the Washington Consensus

19. From NGOs supporting development

• To contribute to the economic literacy of grassroots communities and promote the conception and dissemination of appropriate pedagogic tools

To contribute to education for justice and to education for development according to the recommendations of the Dakar conference on education for all


20. Request from Northern countriesâ progressive forces

• To step up the pressure on international financial institutions and their States

• To intensify in their countries the campaigns for a popular movement in favor of the abolition of the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO and the end to their interference in the internal affairs of Africa, Asia and Latin America

To strengthen their solidarity with the progressive forces and the people of Africa and the Third World

Adopted in Dakar on December 14, 2000

DAKAR MANIFESTO
«Africa: from Resistance to Alternatives»

THE TOTAL AND UNCONDITIONAL CANCELLATION OF THE AFRICAN DEBT is a demand based on undisputed economic, social, moral, legal and historical arguments. Because the debt problem is not a financial or technical issue as the World Bank and the IMF are tempted to demonstrate. It is fundamentally a human, social and political problem. Debt service and conditionalities associated to it have contributed to the aggravation of poverty. Moreover, debt has been widely reimbursed: for the past few years, Africa has been transferring more resources to developed countries than she receives.

In addition, most of Africa's debt is odious, fraudulent and immoral. In fact, in most cases, debt has been contracted by not representative regimes that have used the amount received for purposes that were not of much use to their people interests. Often, this debt served to consolidate and even legitimize dictatorships that used it to oppress their own people, with the benevolence and complicity of Western countries.

Debt has also been contracted to undertake mega projects designed to stimulate exportations at the expense of the satisfaction of peopleâs fundamental needs.

The reimbursement of that debt is immoral: its service is diverting resources essential in the struggle against poverty, illiteracy and AIDS.

Thus, from whatever angle we consider the issue of Africa's debt, it is unacceptable. It is all the less acceptable that the historic debt that the West has incurred from Africa is immeasurable.

Accordingly, we demand both the restitution of what has been taken from Africa for centuries by sheer force and reparations for all the crimes and damages inflicted upon its people

Mobilized by the Amsterdam Appeal of April 2000, we representatives of womenâs movements, youth movements, rural and urban workers, international solidarity, gathered from 11-14 December, 2000, in Dakar (Senegal), with the support of our partners of other continents,

SHORT AND MEDIUM-TERM PROGRAM

We are inviting social movements to increase the campaigns calling for the unconditional cancellation of Africa and other Third World countries' debt. We recommend the use of all opportunities to reinforce the pressure on Africa's debtors, by organizing or participating in initiatives of all kinds, to draw the attention of the world public opinion to the criminal nature of the policies imposed by the World Bank and the IMF to compel African countries to pay a "debt", several times reimbursed. All the meetings organized by these two institutions and major Western leaders (G7) as well as other international gatherings will be as many opportunities to show our determination. Simultaneously, we demand that our governments set up a coalition of debtor countries and repudiate external debt by using the sums so saved to the profit of their people.

To better implement the above policy, we will endeavor to strengthen the international network fighting against Third World debt. We will first attempt to strengthen the relationships between organizations committed to this struggle in Africa and in other developing countries as part of the Jubilee South movement. In fact, we think that the strengthening of such links constitutes one of the preconditions for the success of the campaign for debt cancellation. Solidarity between these organizations represents the base on which the solidarity between South and North organizations must be built. The strategic alliance with the latter constitutes a solid link in the chain of the world human solidarity for breaking the resistance and egoism of Western states and multilateral institutions.

In this respect, regional campaigns will be undertaken and articulated to international campaigns. We have to massively involve the public opinion within each country in order to put decisive pressure on governments to make them rethink their relationships with the World Bank and IMF and to refuse debt repayment.

Solidarity among members of the network will be forged and reinforced through data exchanges, organizations of joint events, mutual assistance in the reinforcement of human and organizational capacities in order to be better prepared for a higher level of the struggle.

The credibility of the campaign depends on the ability of civil society organizations to articulate coherent strategies and to propose alternatives. Thus, the reinforcement of the civil society capacity to intervene is an essential task whose implementation requires a patient work.

Citizens movements must reinforce so as to be in a position to not only take away debtorsâ arguments but especially to move the debate towards the center and identify the real issues.

STRATEGIC PROGRAM

1. Radical change of policies

It is essential to tackle the structural factors, which are at the roots of the debt crisis. In this respect, it is necessary to revisit from top to bottom the external borrowing policies, as well as the use made of the loans. When those loans are necessary, parliamentarian institutions must be involved and the issue must be debated.

Transparent and democratic rules must be applied under the control of the citizens. We must reduce as little as possible the use of external loans by mobilizing internal saving through a progressive fiscal policy, which compels the richest to contribute to the development efforts.

On the external level: we shall act head on. In order to stop or reverse the trend toward the deterioration of the terms of trade, one should set up mechanisms aimed at stabilizing the prices of raw material and commodities. Producers should form cartels to defend the prices of their products subjected to manipulation by big trading companies from the North. Likewise, international agreements of price stabilization should be negotiated under the aegis of the United Nations system. This would allow the increase in export incomes; limit the depletion of the natural resources and save the environment.

On the other hand, African countries should speed up their economic integration in order to reduce their external dependence, create the conditions for establishing a regional market capable of supporting a regional industrialization policy, which could promote export diversification, thanks to a greater value- added of local products. Integration should go hand in hand with the establishment of viable monetary areas in the different regions of the continent; the only means that will allow them to avoid the tyranny of foreign currencies on African economies

2 Reinforcing South-South Cooperation

South-South cooperation shall be considered as an essential stage by social movements and African governments. It will allow African countries to reinforce the trend for less dependence towards developed countries. In this perspective, we are urging African countries, members of the OAU to explore all existing possibilities, especially the recommendations of the South Commission Report, under the supervision of the late Julius K. Nyerere and to implement concretely the agreements concluded between them at the Sirte Summit (Libya) in 1999 regarding debt cancellation The cooperation between G77, that between G15 countries and other forms of cooperation must be developed in all areas.

Social movements must accept, support and widely circulate treaties signed among countries of the South.

African countries and their partners from the South should convince the United Nations to undertake concerted measures to discourage international financial speculations whose devastating effects have been observed in South East Asia, Brazil and Russia in recent years. The imposition of the Tobin tax, the funds of which will be devoted to human development, the fight against money laundering (notably by ending bank secrecy), as well as the shutting down or the penalization of tax havens, constitute appropriate measures.

3. Restitutions and Reparations

Another section of the strategic agenda is the issue of restitution and reparation owed to Africa by Western countries. Slavery, colonization and the various forms of exploitation and wealth plundering have left Africa bloodless, and caused a tremendous economic, social, scientific and cultural backwardness of the continent. One cannot understand the situation of the continent without taking into account the destructions, robbing and plundering Africa has gone through because of Western countries.

From that perspective, we are compelled to demand both the restitution of what has been stolen from Africa by sheer force and reparations for all the crimes and damages imposed on its people. Restitutions include cultural and scientific wealth.

In addition, we must repatriate ill-acquired wealth by African leaders and return them to the people that have been deprived of it. To achieve this objective, we have to use appropriate legal actions.

4. For an endogenous development

We must replace the notorious "Washington Consensus" now largely discredited with a vision of development inspired by the values of the African political, social, cultural, economic and scientific Renaissance promoted by an African peopleâs consensus. The fundamental values associated with this Renaissance include restoring confidence in Africans, rejecting all forms of exploitation and domination, reinforcing the culture of solidarity and the spirit of self-reliance, relying on the creative genius of the African people in order to create a new civilization of autonomous development so as to bring a great contribution to world civilization

The concept of endogenous development is to be conceived as a process of strategic reflection on the fundamental conditions of an African development, understood as a multidimensional emancipating project, i.e. on the economic, social, political, scientific and cultural and gender levels

The need for an approach to endogenous development proceeds from the basic historical fact that there is no ãuniversal modelä, out of space and time, e.g., valid everywhere and at all time. Development depends on the history, culture and experience of a people. It cannot be a carbon copy of another experience, especially one based on a reductionist view of the true history of the people, full of abiding cultural prejudices and built on the domination, exploitation and looting of the resources of other peoples. The outlines of an approach to an African endogenous development could have, inter alia, the following essential features:

1. A human-centered development, in order to meet the real basic needs expressed by the African people. The experience of Africa reveals the failure of the neoclassical model imposed as a turnkey model. The more one talks about growth rate, the more poverty expands. Well, what is the use of a ãgrowthä which crushes human beings and increases poverty and exclusion? The truth is that the only kind of development is the one, which contributes to the full blossoming of the human being. Understood from this perspective, development is first of all a qualitative and not purely quantitative phenomenon. It is no longer an unrestrained accumulation of wealth, often for a handful of people, but the permanent search of solutions to the basic problems of the majority of the people.

2. A development based, first and foremost, on our own vision of our future and the defense of our fundamental interests. Therefore, a development formulated and implemented by Africans themselves and according to their own priorities. In fact, the second fundamental break to take place is the rejection of an imported development, which treats our continent as a dumping ground where the waste of industrialized is thrown.

3. Another characteristic of the new approach to development is that the  latter can no longer be an ãeliteä issue, but a participatory, inclusive and democratic development. Especially, it is a development relying on agriculture and the mobilization of the numerous human and material resources of this sector, understood at the same time by intellectuals and non-intellectuals, by the rural areas and the urban zones. This raises the issue of the African cultural Renaissance and the use of the African languages in the formulation and implementation of development programs. The introduction of African national languages would allow hundreds of millions of African to use their creative power in order to fully participate in crafting development strategies and policies. Without the conscious participation of the people in the definition of policies that
affect their life and future, there will never be any development, because the people are the driving force of all economic and social transformation.

4. The new approach must also focus on the search for the continentâs collective self-reliance on essential and strategic needs, at the agricultural and industrial level. For this, it is must be within African integration, a fundamental framework of sustainable endogenous development. It is a truism to say that without integration, Africa has no chance to develop. The vicissitudes of history have made Africa one of the most fragmented continents in the world. That is one of the essential factors for its backwardness and current marginalization.

In the 21st century, Africa will be African only if the continent completes its integration and acts with a unique and single voice in the concert of nations. This approach does not mean that Africa will isolate herself from the world. On the contrary, it is to ensure the participation of the people of the continent in an alternative globalization to the neoliberal globalization. We are in favor of a globalization based on a solidarity among people of the North and the South and giving priority to meeting basic human needs.

5. That is why Africa must renew with the ideal of Pan-Africanism and base its practice on the principles and values of the African Renaissance. This also means that we should walk on our two feet, take agriculture as the basis of development and lay the ground for building a modern and efficient industry.

6. Another development means promoting and ensuring social justice, gender equality, democracy and respect for human rights. The high level of poverty and exclusion results from the bad influence of the ãall for marketä policy and the unrestrained search for private benefit, which pushed the State to abandon the policy, aimed at promoting equality and social justice.

7. Another development in Africa involves the creation of new development institutions, one of which is a new State ridden of its oppressive, exploitative and repressive colonial heritage. In fact, it is imperative to reconsider all institutions inherited from colonization and create instead, new institutions consistent with an endogenous and autonomous approach to development. The State and most present institutions are of ãelitistä type and carbon copies of their European counterparts. That is why they participate more in the repression and exploitation of the African people than in the creation of conditions allowing them to develop all their potential and to blossom. In fact, institutions created to enslave Africans would not, under any circumstances, serve to free them. Therefore, new institutions whose nature and functions are different from the ones inherited from colonization are needed. A new State, which will ensure equity between all and promote an integrated human development

8. The governance issue should be examined and resolved from that angle and not from the perspective recommended by Western countries, which aim only at making our institutions much more docile instruments to serve their interests. Citizens must conquer anew the ground lost by democracy. Institutions, consistent with an endogenous development, designed by and for Africans, are the instruments for African people liberation, institutions with which they will identify themselves closely, because they participated in their design, understood their nature and mastered their functioning.

The implementation of the above program requires radical breaks and major sacrifices from both African leaders and civil society organizations. The success of the African Renaissance is at this price.