UN CHIEF BERATES GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEMS FOR DENYING DEBT RELIEF TO AFRICA

By Lisa Vives GLOBAL INFORMATION NETWORK

At the opening of the African Union Summit in Addis Ababa this weekend, U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres scolded an “unfair financial system” for denying many African countries the debt relief and concessional financing they need.

“Systems and structures, from health and education to social protections, job-creation and gender equality are starved of investment for lack of support,” he said.

Developing African countries are often left out when global investment lenders create their financial plans, he stated. “African countries cannot invest in these critical areas and climb the development ladder with one hand tied behind their backs.”

Guterres continued: “We need

By Lisa Vives

GLOBAL INFORMATION NETWORK

The military government in Burkina Faso announced this week that the burial of the country’s former president, Thomas Sankara, will take place in a private ceremony next week at the spot where he was assassinated in a coup more than three decades ago.

“The burial of Capt. Sankara and his twelve companions murdered on Oct. 15, 1987 will take place on Thursday, Feb. 23,” said Communications Minister Jean Emmanuel Ouedraogo in a published statement.

Sankara’s remains will be reburied at the memorial erected in his honor in front of the place where he was assassinated at the Conseil de l’Entente. While the government had a new debt architecture that provides debt relief and restructuring to vulnerable countries, including middle-income countries, while providing immediate debt suspension and write-downs to countries in need.”

The U.N. chief accused the international financial system of charging African countries “extortionate” interest rates –which he called “a raw deal.”

He also announced $250 million in crisis funding, including for famine risk on the continent.

Public debt ratios in subSaharan Africa are at their highest in more than two decades, the International Monetary Fund said last year.

The coronavirus pandemic pushed many poor countries into debt distress as they were expected to continue servic- ing their obligations in spite of the massive shock to their finances.

Governments on the continent, including Ethiopia, sought debt restructuring deals under an IMF program to help them navigate the crisis, but conclusion of the process has been delayed.

Others, which have not sought to restructure their debt, like Kenya, have seen their debt sustainability indicators worsen after the pandemic hit their finances.

“Nearly all of us want to put our economies back on a growth trajectory but this will not happen without sufficient restructuring to make our external debt sustainable,” said Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

Meanwhile, the U.N. will spend $250 million from its

SANKARA FAMILY REJECTS PLOT CHOSEN BY GOVERNMENT FOR HIS REBURIAL announced reburial plans previously, no date had been specified.

The announcement came days after Sankara’s family said they would not attend the burial because they disagreed with the choice of the site.

“How can you bury such a hero in the place where he was murdered?” the family asked in a press release. “We believed and continue to believe that it is fundamental that a space be found that allows us to gather and appease hearts, and not divide and increase resentment.”

The government said the choice of burial site was “mainly based on sociocultural and security imperatives of national interest.”

After his murder in 1987 ordered by Blaise Compaore and his cronies, Sankara and his comrades were buried in some common fields with no names. Later, their bodies were exhumed in 2015 for legal proceedings. they were hoping to remove the “same old people.” emergency fund, the largest ever allocation, to respond to several crises around the world, including helping communities at risk of famine in Africa, Guterres later told a news briefing.

The 13 bodies were exhumed from a cemetery on the outskirts of the capital following Compaore’s downfall. An investigation that followed culminated in the trial of 14 people accused of plotting the assassination of Sankara.

In April 2022, Compaore, who was the main defendant, was handed a life term in absentia.

Nicknamed Africa’s Che Guevara, Sankara was a military officer and socialist revolutionary who served as the president from his coup in 1983 until his assassination in 1987. He remains highly regarded among leftwing Africanists for his antiimperialist stance.

Ogho Okiti, the managing director of BusinessDay Media Ltd. said the new policy, though profitable, is already showing signs of poor implementation.

Finally, activist and publisher Sowore Omoyele, endorsed by the Democratic Socialist Movement, has thrown his hat into the ring for a second time. At the launch of his campaign in Kano, Sowore publicly pledged to form “a socialist government focusing on workers’ welfare, free education, job creation, and pension reforms”.