Call for cancellation of Africa’s public debt

Workers World received this petition from Fallou Guéye, a member of the Assembly of African Workers/Confederation for Democracy and Socialism of Senegal (Rtas/ CDS), who requested we republish it for your information.

Fellow Africans,

The negative repercussions that the Covid-19 pandemic will inevitably have on the economies, finances and living conditions of people in African countries, and whose effects are already being felt, are a challenge to us all.

African States must regularly repay an external debt contracted with the multilateral institutions of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. These payments further strain their meager resources.

Faced with such a situation, following the appeal of President Macky Sall of Senegal, the Bureau of the African Union, meeting on April 3, stated in its communiqué that it “echoes the call for a comprehensive recovery plan for Africa, including deferred payments and immediate suspension of interest payments on Africa’s public and private external debt, in order to create fiscal space for measures to counter Covid-19.”

Within this framework, we, patriots and pan-Africanists organized within the Confederation for Democracy and Socialism (CDS) of Senegal call on all Africans aware of the above issues to request you to sign the petition for cancellation of the global public debt of African States, estimated at $236 billion (about 141,500 billion CFA francs).

Mother Africa needs the mobilization of all its children to defeat Covid-19 and all of its financial resources to rebuild itself in order to rid itself of poverty and lift its people out of underdevelopment.

Click here to sign the petition: tinyurl.com/y7t8tye5