Addis Ababa — South African finance minister Trevor Manuel slammed the International Monetary Fund today for secretly planning to divide its Africa Department along "colonial" lines into English-speaking and French-speaking sections. The influential South African economist, who sits on the Fund's Board of Governors and chairs the World Bank's Development Committee, angrily confronted an IMF representative at a meeting of African finance ministers in Addis Ababa, and warned the Fund not to proceed without Africa's consultation and consent.
The meeting was convened by the UN Economic Commission for Africa to promote mutual accountability and policy coherence between Africa and its donor partners. Speaking to reporters after the conference Manuel noted that while the Fund was expanding its European Department to include the states of the former Soviet Union, the proposal to split Africa by language reproduced "the old colonial demarcation to which we are opposed." Before any changes in the Fund's Africa program would be accepted by its African members, he continued, "we must be consulted." A decision on the restructuring could come as early as June 16.
The exchange was only the most emotional of a long day of attacks on the IMF's Africa policies by the assembled African finance ministers and Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi. In a statement issued at the end of the meeting, the ministers accused the Fund of imposing rigid and intrusive conditionalities on African borrowers, and using "overly optimistic" projections of African trade and economic growth figures to calculate the amount of debt relief granted under the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) program. As a result, the ministers charged, "the HIPC initiative is not delivering long term debt sustainability as expected."
Ethiopian President Meles Zenawi drew laughs from the assembled ministers when he declared himself "a card-carrying member of the IMF bashing club." Despite the criticism, however, the ministers rejected proposals that the IMF withdraw from developing countries, noting that Africa's poor image among foreign bankers and private investors made the Fund's seal of approval necessary for the continent to attract development aid and investment.
