After the Second World War when most parts of Europe were in economic crisis, The World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Fund) were both set up to revamp the European economy.
This financial institution was put in place to offer soft loans to European countries which were deeply affected by the war.
Later on, operators of the institutions penetrated the African market under the guise of helping their economies get on track. They offered cheap loans to poor countries in Africa if the countries only operated an open market system.
This open system of market ideology enabled western countries penetrate their market and share the natural resources or better still take hold of their resources.
International relations expert Dr. Vladmir Antwi Danso says most of these poor African countries thought of the acts as philanthropy only to realise later the chains they had entangled themselves with. Now this trap by the World Bank and the IMF was just the beginning of the woes we face in Africa today.
Africans today live in extreme poverty and hunger while most western corporations continue to flourish based on the control of resources and markets they do not own. Therefore, if Africa wants to count its enemies, there can only be three supposed ones; The World Bank, International Monetary Fund and World Trade Organization. To further explain the structure and mechanics behind this mass destructive strategy of those three organizations, let us take Ghana as a case study.
Ghana is one of the countries with abundant natural resources. The resources are so much that the whole country could have been catered for without any external help since the country size is fairly small.
Some years back, rice farming towns in the northern part of Ghana were thriving. This was because these communities enjoyed subsidies (such as free subsidies fertilizers) from the Ghana government so as to produce rice on the large scale for the whole nation. Ghana back then witnessed abundant rice production where the people only enjoyed their locally produced rice.
However, the IMF and the World Bank came in and as part of their policies, the institutions would not grant the government of Ghana any more loans unless the subsidies being given to the rice farmers were cut off.
The strategy was to force Ghana into rice importation from the partners of the IMF and the World Bank including the USA. The effect we see is that Ghana now imports almost all the rice eaten in the country at huge prices while the rice farming communities in the country starve to death!
Dr. Antwi Danso is of the view that these organizations sometimes cancel the debt of the poor countries but to honestly put it, the IMF and The World Bank never forgives but instead, those huge debts are used as manipulative tools to control the affairs of those countries.
He explains that “if you (the country in debt) are not ready to be controlled, then you must pay your debt, which is near impossible”.
Any leader of these African countries who tries resisting the IMF and World Bank policies is deemed “autocratic” and “oppressive” and must therefore be overthrown or assassinated by external forces, he added.
Dr. Antwi Danso is calling on African government to sit and negotiate some deals of the Bretton Woods institutions which keeps making Africa dependent.
“I was surprised the president did not touch on the Economic partnership agreement between Ghana and the EU market. This is a serious issue which must be renegotiated”.
