Dept Relief
African activists against the debt

«There are countries in critical need of debt relief that are not in the HIPC process.» Kwesi Owusu

Africa Recovery / afrol.com, 6 February  - Since its launch four years ago, the Jubilee 2000 campaign - an international coalition of churches, civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) - has emerged as a major advocate of debt relief for developing countries. In this interview, Kwesi Owusu explains the successes and setbacks the campaign has had in its almost four years of existence. 

- We’ve been pretty successful in pushing the debt issue onto the world’s agenda, Jubilee 2000 Africa Initiative Director Kwesi Owusu told Africa Recovery. "We’ve mobilized a huge constituency in Africa and around the world. Our last signature campaign totaled 21.2 million people for debt cancellation."

One of the major successes of the Jubilee effort, said the UK-based Ghanaian activist, is that "the issue of debt has changed the context of the discussion around African development. We have linked debt to poverty, and by extension to poverty reduction.... Debt has been used as leverage to push through structural adjustment programmes - to pry open markets, lower trade tariffs and create a situation where there’s a free flow of capital. We are completely against structural adjustment programmes because they are at odds with the objectives of poverty alleviation."

The only condition the campaign supports, he noted, "is the popular conditionality that [debt relief] monies are released into poverty alleviation programmes. This process should be transparent to ensure that local elites are accountable to their own people." Uganda debt campaigners "have actually been involved in managing the poverty action fund with government, and have monitored how funds released through debt relief have been used. That is an excellent model," Mr. Owusu asserted, "and I think other campaigns are looking at it very closely." 

Jubilee supported the inclusion of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers in the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) process because it required consultation between governments and civil society, he explained, "even though the process is taking too long and has held back" debt reduction. 

The real problem with HIPC, he maintained, is that the process is too political and too limited: "There are countries in critical need of debt relief that are not in the HIPC process. Nigeria is certainly an example... If HIPC is implemented fully, we are talking about only a third of Africa’s total debt cancelled."

Since the launch of the Jubilee Africa Initiative in Accra in April 1998, he explained, national campaigns have been established in 20 African countries. "The activists are really doing sterling work. They travel around using drama groups and films. In Uganda and Cameroon they translate all our literature into local languages. They are very much linked to adult education programmes. Mobilization through the church has been fantastic."

The work of the Jubilee 2000 Secretariat in Africa, he said, "has been two-fold: working with campaigns and working with governments... We have always criticized African governments for a lack of leadership on this issue, but in the past year, we have seen many leaders becoming pro-active." 

Mr. Owusu described Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa and Abdelaziz Bouteflika of Algeria as "even more radical than Jubilee 2000, calling for total and absolute debt cancellation." The UN also "has played a very useful role in bringing together all the leaders who have been championing debt cancellation."

December 31 marked the formal end of the Jubilee 2000 campaign. But the drive for debt relief, Mr. Owusu said, would continue. "The successor organization will be called Jubilee Plus. We have a special initiative ... to mobilize our entire international network for deeper debt relief" at the Group of Seven meeting in Genoa in July 2001. "Jubilee Plus is also going to look more at the causes of debt... We want to be more sophisticated in terms of how we generate development in Africa... At the end of the day, it’s the political [arena] that will generate the changes."

Text by: Africa Recovery, United Nations

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