SUSTAINED UNDERDEVELOPMENT
By Hydar Ally
A STUDY conducted two years ago by the United Nations estimated that roughly four hundred thousand children die each year due to dirty water and poor hygiene. This problem was found to be particularly pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa where less than half of the population has access to clean water, compared to an average of 80% for the entire developing world.

According to the Report, at least 30% of the region’s water supply is inoperable because of age or disrepair. The UN Goal of providing three-quarters of the world’s population with safe drinking water appeared increasingly elusive.

One would have thought that something as basic and fundamental as water would have been low down on the list of privatization especially in poverty-stricken countries where money is hard to come by and where the average citizen lives on less than one US dollar a day. Yet, in the drive to optimize profits and promote market-oriented policies, poor people are forced to pay for water at rates that they can ill-afford to pay. Small wonder many people opted to continue using the contaminated water from rivers and streams rather than having to fork out money to pay for water.

The Millennium Development Goals still appears like a pipe dream after some eighteen years when it was first enunciated in 1990. The intention was to reduce poverty and stimulate trade. The reality on the ground is that little if any progress was made in terms of free and equitable trade. As for poverty, it has actually increased.

The underdevelopment of Africa which the late Walter Rodney so brilliantly researched and wrote about has not shown any sign of abatement. In fact, Africa’s exports have decreased from 10% of the world’s market 50 years ago to 2.7 % today. Also, economic growth fell from 36% between 1960 and 1980 to negative 15% between 1980 and 2000. The situation is made worse by huge subsidies to farmers in the developed world, amounting to some 1 billion US dollar per day which further depresses the economic situation.

The sad thing about it all is that there is extreme poverty in the midst of plenty on the African continent. Africa is rich in natural and mineral resources. The continent is finding it difficult to lift its growth rate which averaged less than 3% over the past few years. This is quite in contrast to those of China and India with average growth rates of 10 and 8% respectively. Africa accounts for only 1.5% of global Gross Domestic Product while its share of the global population is about 13%. Its share of global trade is a mere 2.1%.

Africa’s economy, which is roughly $600 billion United States dollars, has also seen foreign investment drop from 14 billion to 6 billion in a matter of one year. The IMF and the World Bank prescriptions in dealing with the problem have been to insist on a process of accelerated reforms which has at its centre-piece further liberalization of the African economies.

It is the same reforms that have facilitated the increase of poverty levels on the continent by 43% over the last decade. As things stand, it is estimated that about 300 million Africans live in abject poverty and by 2015, that figure is likely to increase by 45 million.

Diseases are also taking its toll on the people. About 6,500 Africans die each day from HIV/AIDS related illnesses and another 2 million die each year from malaria.

According to the findings of a recent study done, deaths from malaria have risen steadily, as the disease is becoming increasingly resistant to existing treatment. Malaria is the third largest killer in the Horn of Africa killing an average of 250 people a day. The aid agency Medecins Sans Frontieres believes that the reason for such high numbers of deaths is simply because the majority of Africans cannot afford to pay the US$ 1.50 required to purchase the drug.

This is indeed unfortunate. What Africa needs is not privatization and economic reforms but to utilize its own resources to improve health care, education and clean water and not the billions spent each year to service its huge debt burden.

The solution lies in a new world order where people is put at the centre of development strategies and not the optimization of returns on investment regardless of human and social costs as are invariably the case.

The African situation is not dissimilar to what obtains in other impoverished regions in the world including much of Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Structural reforms imposed by the IMF and other multilateral financial institutions have failed to address in any fundamental way the problems of poverty and underdevelopment and have in fact led to higher levels of poverty and inequity. What we have seen over the decades are policy measures that have resulted in sustained underdevelopment for much of the developing world in particular those that are forced into market-oriented programmes and policies.