"Debt forgiveness will not change Africa's difficulties"

Caroline Galactéros has a doctorate in political science and is president of the Geopragma think tank and heads the strategic intelligence firm PLANETING. She has notably published Vers un nouveau Yalta. Collection of geopolitical chronicles 2014-2019 (Sigest, 2019).

FIGAROVOX.- The Head of State is committed to “erasing” part of the debt of African countries, was this the best way to help these countries in the face of the unprecedented economic crisis which is threatening the whole world?

Caroline GALACTÉROS.- France has decided to redirect part of its development aid to the tune of € 1.2 billion to alleviate the bilateral debts of certain African countries towards us and to strengthen the healthcare, research and detection systems, in particular via the Pasteur institutes. Paris has also pushed the Paris Club, which brings together the creditors of Africa, to declare a moratorium on 20 of the 32 billion dollars due this year alone, by 76 poor countries including 40 African. It is therefore at this stage a moratorium, not a cancellation or even a reduction or a rescheduling. In addition, the IMF and the World Bank have also activated some of their mechanisms to be able to take charge of debt service for a few months or lend (like the EU to the tune of 20 billion euros) to African countries whose budget is very heavily in the service of the debt and which risk too great a weakening if the crisis of the coronavirus were to affect them massively overwhelming their notoriously insufficient health structures and often dependent on humanitarian intervention.

When we see the undersizing and under-equipping of our own healthcare system, while we were perishing on its global superiority a few months ago, we can imagine the impact of a sudden spread of Covid-19 on some large or small African states. For the time being, however, the continent is little affected except for Algeria, Egypt and South Africa. The countries most at risk are paradoxically the most developed and those which depend heavily on tourism and oil, two resources in free fall. The economic crisis linked to the pandemic threatens at least 20 million jobs, could deprive African states of a third of their tax revenues and drop their growth by at least 1%, not to mention the fact that African economies remain mostly informal, which makes the concept of containment simply impractical.

From this point of view, Paris is once again in the generous incantation, without great risks, but also a little offset compared to the reality of the new balances of power and influence. The French initiative hardly masks the growing concern that is ours. By calling for debt cancellation, Emmanuel Macron also seized the opportunity, after his failed European offensive on the pooling of European debts, to put THE hot topic on the table once again. That of our own debt that the valves now wide open of monetary creation to counter the collapse of the national (and European) economy will also make it ubiquitous and in fact soon unreimbursable! A bit like when you want to ask a personal question to a psychologist and you "ask him for advice for a friend".

However, this salvo of generosity towards Africa undoubtedly also corresponds to a broader and partially sincere impulse, which the tragedy of the current world situation allows to invoke ... without believing too much. Indeed, France is also in the process of "testing" with the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, a text calling for a global truce of the conflicts in progress, while Russia, for its part, offered its assistance to America. Donald Trump had seemed to be listening. Oil crisis probably obliges. Finally, China has repeatedly called for the unity of the world and the strengthening of multilateralism in the face of a threat which targets the human community as a whole.

Obviously, as with the shipments of sanitary and medical material delivered by Russia to Italy or by Beijing to Europe, there is a cry for propaganda and the instrumentalization of solidarity. How can we imagine that there could exist, alongside an obvious opportunism and the well understood management of national interests, an ounce of empathy or gratuitous generosity in the action of these democracies? In my view, these attacks are both childish and counterproductive. They exude frustration and helplessness. We, too, would like to be out of the storm, to have protected our populations, to limit losses and to put our productive apparatus back in motion, offering us the luxury of coming to the aid of others and making them feel how much they depend on us for having given up their industrial or health sovereignty…! We are very far from it. The Coronavirus crisis is a crisis of humanity. It reveals indifference, rapacity, the lack of global apprehension of our fate beyond abstract flights on multiculturalism. It is already multilateralism that is in pieces and that we should know how to revive.

Isn't China the biggest creditor of Africa?

Indeed, China holds around 40% of the African debt: 145 billion dollars out of 365. You should know that this debt is not only public, but partly held by investment funds, banks, private companies . Chinafrique is not a myth. China has been buying Africa for almost 20 years, out of the rubble of our influence tainted by repentance. The lack of political conditionality put on his financial support (it suffices to recognize the existence of a single China to be in the nails) has ensured him an immense success which makes him own entire swathes of the economy of certain States or sometimes their entire debt.

Beijing therefore has no interest in canceling anything, but in further deepening its economic and monetary hold, as elsewhere in Latin America. The New Silk Roads project provides this significantly and aims to install bridgeheads, in particular ports, for Chinese products destined for local but also European markets. It is moreover obvious that at the time when this "generous" moratorium is concluded, multiple counterparties in mining concessions, agricultural oil must undoubtedly be negotiated under leonine conditions, against the Chinese help (as probably against that of the other creditors continent). The pandemic has just accelerated the current shift for over a decade from global world leadership to Asia and everyone is looking to capitalize on it, or at least not pay too much.

Will this aid be sufficient?

Obviously not. It is not commensurate with the problems of Africa which are endemic. There is no guarantee, moreover, that it will be genuinely "swayed" towards good use and that it will not at least partially disappear in the pockets of its official African recipients. It is a gesture that does not cost the Paris Club a lot at the G20 and will also not bring much benefit to the African populations.

In my opinion, it is above all a means of hoping to delay the destabilizing effects of the pandemic on an overpopulated continent which we would like in Europe to fix its populations in order to prevent the prospect of uncontrollable one-way migratory flows, and this even more so now that our own populations are going to be out of jobs by the millions and that the economic and social costs of the epidemic in Europe are going to explode.

The closure of European borders has slowed migratory pressure for a while. Should we expect it to intensify in the coming years because of the crisis?

Yes. Firstly, because there should be lasting awareness for the Schengen area to remain truly closed, which is imperative. I remind you that France, while the pandemic is still raging, has still not seen fit to close its national borders with its immediate neighbors while Germany or Italy are infinitely more pragmatic ... Our Europeanist and ideological taboos tell us weaken in response to the crisis.

In the case of Africa, the worst in terms of migratory pressure is therefore to come. Because of the crisis, because of the suicidal destabilization wars that we still support in the Middle East without seeing that they are digging away the bed of national destructuring. It is also because of the environmental issues that affect an Africa already so structurally struck by the elements. More probably than this pandemic, the migration challenge is and will be for Europe the test of its survival. If it does not know how to understand that the sovereignty of its members and the reestablishment of lucid and solid states with assumed regal bases are not handicaps, but the conditions for its rebirth as a whole that counts, then the EU will gradually die from its Above-ground Europeanism, from its naive mental and strategic allegiance to an America more patriotic and unilateralist than ever, of which it in fact docilely constitutes continental strategic depth vis-à-vis Russia and vis-à-vis China. To survive, and all the more after this economic downturn, Europe will have to reserve its strengths and its means for its own populations and promote community preference in all areas. To restore her strengths and her balance, without indifference to the rest of the world, but without living in a permanent renunciation of herself. This jump will only be possible with rulers endowed with vision, consistency and political courage.