By ROGERS KALERO
THE International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank programmes have failed to help address the economic challenges of African countries because their interest is strictly business, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) has said.
EFF Secretary-General Changala Siame said the approach of IMF and World Bank was smart and shrewd for Zambia and other African countries.
He said the Bretton Woods institutions have indoctrinated Africans in business schools with a notion that they were a formidable solution to the plight of Africa.
In an interview in Kitwe yesterday, Mr Siame said Zambia needed to learn from its past mistakes or else economic recovery would remain a pipedream.
“We need to be learning from our past mistakes if we have to develop. The IMF programme was once applied and the outcome was very devastating and we have never recovered from it.
“The economic methodology of solving African problems as suggested by the IMF and World Bank, highly favours them. It is strictly business and not with any intention of addressing economic challenges of the country or indeed emancipating it from abject poverty,” Mr Siame said.
Mr Siame said there was need to revise the country’s education curriculum because of the narrative that promotes a notion that problems could be solved by the books.
“Our current curriculum over-stress that the easiest thing to solve our problem is going by the books because that is what our education system has taught us. If you have financial problems in a country, IMF and World Bank are emphasised as solutions.
“This impression has been created because it best fits the economic model of the Western economies where it is deliberately stressed that IMF and World Bank are the best possible option to remedy the situation financially in any given circumstances.,” Mr Siame said
He said anyone who did not agree with them or did not speak their language was deemed not to be intelligent, corrupt or uncivilised.
“If you don’t speak their language, you are deemed not to be intelligent. Against this back drop, they even formulated an adage, “if you want to steal from an African, you have to hide it in a book.”
“This has led to accelerating our commitment to adhere to the books authored by them for the sake of being accepted as equals on the global stage. We have developed an inferiority complex and a mind yearning for validation,” he said
Mr Siame said the impression has been created because it best fits economic model of the Western economies.
“Where it is deliberately stressed that IMF and World Bank are the best possible option to remedy the situation financially in any given circumstances. We always want to appease the West so that we sound and imitate their ways. The tiger economies skipped that rope!
“The most paramount aspect that are not so outlined or highlighted in the business faculty; is how Africa can utilise or harness its abundant natural resources and become super economies or equal to the West,” Mr Siame said
Mr Siame said Africa certainly sustains the economies of the West and the East through the provision of raw materials.
“Why not revolutionise our economic structure? Why not turn to our Emeralds, Gold, Copper and arable land to grow Pineapple, Suga, Soya beans,Wheat, Cashew nuts, Bananas, Tea, Timber, Sunflowe,; Live Stock-Chicken, Fish, Sheep, Goat, Cattle, Invest in Energy i.e. Solar/ Hydro.
“We enslave ourselves with misplaced education that projects and promotes a notion that we are the most impoverished continent that should depend on handouts from the West. As EFF, we will ensure that we take priority on focusing on optimisation of our God-given natural resources before looking elsewhere,” Mr Siame said.
