Advice to Egypt and African Nations, Is Debt Forgiveness the Best Way Out?

Sabry Fawzy Gohara,

I read Mrs. Tomader Gohar's Arabic article about forgiving some African nations debts with interest.

As it is mentioned, Africa is a beautiful continent rich in natural resourcess, and not exactly suffering from lack of man power. Yet its peoples suffer from the lowest living standards in our world.

If we take Nigeria and Sudan as examples, we find that one is blessed with reasonable oil reserves and the other can be the bread basket of the continent as indicated by Mrs. Gohar. Yet both are in a hopeless state of disarray politically and economically. Their problem is not lack of resources but failed governments, or at least poor governance.

Another example is Zimbabwe with its ongoing tragedy. This country's economy is in a deplorable state. Its dictatorial and corrupt government is one of the most oppressive in Africa. Again, Zimbabwe was once the bread basket for the region under the colonial rule.

Forgiving debts therefore is perhaps not the solution to the continents problems. Good governance is. As a matter of fact offering these failed governments debt relief will only lead is going to tightening their grip on their suffering nations, and extends their harmful tenure.

The international community should establish well defined and agreed upon criteria to interfere and change failed governments rather than help them continue their corruption and oppression. Pretensions of sovereighty should not be used as shelters for failed governments to hide behind. The essence of soverignty is the protection of nations and not their continued abuse by what is actually an enemy from the inside.

As a matter of fact, the economic boycott of failed governments is probably a better way to go. This policy proved to be effective at least on one occasion. It brought up the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa. At the time, there was concern that this may pose additional hardships on the poor black population, but most of us agree that the current situation there is much better, and more humane than the conditions imposed by the brutal apartheid regime.

Looking at the situation in our country, Egypt, the infusion of a bit less than 2 billion dollars a year for the last quarter of a century or more, and the forgiveness of Egypt's debts as a reward for our participation in the 1991 Gulf War did not incur the expected economic relief to the great majority of the Egyptians. Most of whom actually feel that they are worse off now than they were in the past.

Today's world is too small and too interdependent. The harm inflicted by failed governments is not limited to their countries. It spills over an affects almost all other nations. Afghanistan, before the American invasion, is the starkest but not the only example to attest to this fact.

Failed governments do not only cause economic hardships to their nations, they are invariably always oppressive. Oppression becomes their only means to hold on to power since they cannot depend on their success to foster their popularity. Poor governance is usually associated with corruption and lawlessness or disregard of the existing laws. This is perpetrated by parasitic cliques that ingratiate themselves to the dictatorial regimes and create a condition of symbiosis and interdependence between them.

Debt forgiveness to some poor nations therefore is perhaps not the best help that can be offered. A patient has to accept some inconvenience, sometimes even pain, to achieve a cure of his or her disease. It is bad enough that they let themselves accept tyranny, corruption and oppression to the extent that their oppressors take them for granted . In most African countries, and for decades now since the 1950s and 1960s, the times of decolonization and the "new winds blowing over the continent" as it was once said, things have only got from bad to worse. The sad thing is that the winds brought up more destruction than badly needed rains.

Tyrants exist and survive because we let them. No tyrant has enough prisons to lock up a few hundred thousands peaceful demonstrators. And no soldier will shoot his kin if they gather peacefully in the streets to express their refusal to be taken for granted anymore.

African and all oppressed nations should first move to help theselves before they expect outside help. This is not callousness or lack of sensitivity to their suffering and plight, but it is perhaps the onlyy way for them to get out of their poverty.
 

Sabry Fawzy Gohara, M.D., FRCSC