Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-17-Speech-3-156"
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"en.20000517.9.3-156"2
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"Mr President, when one hears of the horrendous debt that has built up in many African states, the first reaction is one of deep sympathy. However, I have had the privilege of visiting many of these countries in the past year and I have to say that, in many cases, one’s sympathy turns to anger when one sees the abject poverty that people in these countries live in while their leaders and ministers revel in wealth and prosperity and one begins to question the distribution of aid and debt relief.
Despite all the help given from Europe, individual nation states and institutions, Africa’s external debt is growing by about 12% per annum and some countries are repaying more in interest than they are receiving in aid. That cannot be allowed to continue, but neither can the historic reasons for causing it to happen. I will be criticised by some honourable Members for saying it, but conditionality must be built into not only development aid but also debt relief.
I have always maintained that good governance was more important than pure democracy if you are going to stamp out corrupt practices, and if we cannot wipe these practices out we are only pouring good money after bad. We must therefore be in a position to monitor the effect of debt relief and make sure that all of it is spent on civil society to give better health, education and employment prospects to the people who are being denied it.
There is a secondary effect of bad governance and that is the lack of external investment into these countries which denies them the chance of improved prosperity, better employment prospects and a higher standard of living. The fight against fraud and corruption should be made a condition for allocating debt relief and development aid – not my words, Mr President, but the words of President Obasanjo of Nigeria in Abuja at the opening of the 13th session of the ACP-EU Assembly. If only that could be echoed by every other president in Africa, the resistance to giving debt relief would diminish and some real progress could be made in alleviating the misery and poverty of millions of people."@en1
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