N.T. Wright on African debt relief

Written on 12/29/2008 10:02:00 PM by Miles

So, I just came across this today and was quite intrigued.  It's from May of this year, but it's completely new to me. Wright defends his opinion that the obscenely massive debt that Africa owes to Western countries and banks should be cancelled.  Here are a few quotes from Wright to get you started.  Read the entire thing HERE.

In the 1970s, for example, Western financial institutions loaned the best part of a billion dollars to Idi Amin of Uganda - a vicious psychopath and known to be such.  By doing so, they not only saddled that impoverished country will a millstone of debt, but financed the dictator's reign of terror.  These actions were both financially irresponsible and morally reprehensible.  After Amin's fall, the debts were inflated by massive rates of compound interest (up to 20% p.a.!) resulting mainly from economic policies pursued by the developed world, not least as long-term results of the Bretton Woods agreement.  At the same time, the bottom fell out of the market for Uganda's main exports.  

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Here in North East England, Christian Aid received an unsolicited email from Dr Simon Challand, when he was working in southern Uganda with the Church Mission Society.  He wrote that: "Debt relief means money stays in the country instead of pouring out to Europe and the US and there have been huge improvements in health and education...The Ministry of Health has just increased the grant to all the health centres by 85%... four years ago they got nothing.  Many health centres are able to provide immunisation, growth monitoring, health education and antenatal care to remote rural areas...Everywhere you go you can see new classrooms going up to support the Universal Primary Education programme which gives every child 7 years of free schooling."  [Uganda used its first tranche of debt relief to improve basic medical provision and to abolish fees for primary school.]

Posted in Africa, debt, NT Wright |