THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 28, 1994 TAG: 9407280012
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Letter
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines
``The Rwandan exodus'' (editorial, July 20) was ill-informed in claiming that ``traditional tribal animosities throughout Africa have been inflamed in great part by Western development agencies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.''
There is no evidence to suggest that the bloody conflicts in Rwanda, Sudan, Angola, Liberia and elsewhere in Africa are substantially related to economic conditions at all, much less to Western-backed economic reforms. They are overwhelmingly rooted in ancient ethnic hostilities exacerbated by weak, repressive and corrupt political systems; religious differences; the collapse of feudal social structures; and ignorance and fear promoted by unscrupulous leaders.
But more to the point, your statement that the IMF ``has greatly damaged the economies of nations such as Zaire and Kenya'' is simply wrong.
On gaining independence in the 1960s, almost all African nations adopted the socialist, centralized, government-command economic policies then intellectually dominant in the European universities their leaders had attended. These Marxist-inspired systems, together with continuing political instability, poor leadership and declining world prices for many traditional African exports, led to steady economic decline throughout the '70s and '80s.
For example, inefficient state enterprises drained government treasuries; high tariffs restricted imports and stifled competition; unrestrained government spending made local currencies nearly worthless; and government agricultural purchasing monopolies kept food prices artificially low, impoverishing farmers (the majority of the African population) in order to subsidize small but more politically powerful urban elites.
It was these anti-market economic policies that the World Bank, IMF and Western aid donors - led by the U.S. - began in the mid-'80s to demand be changed as a condition of continued economic assistance. While many African governments, whose leaders personally profited from the statist system, indeed found these reforms to be painful, they are clearly necessary if Africa is ever to escape from its grinding poverty and begin economic development.
Your call for the Clinton administration to help Africa ``by moving the IMF and the World Bank in the direction of encouraging lower taxes and freer markets,'' while unexceptionable, is largely irrelevant to tribal conflicts and wholly redundant in view of long-established World Bank and IMF policies. It is precisely movement from socialist to free-market economies which has been the objective of the reforms urged by Western aid donors for the past decade.
J. R. BULLINGTON, director
Center for Global Business
and Executive Education
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, July 21, 1994 by CNB