By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, April
20 -- When
four African
finance
ministers
spoke to the
press Saturday
at the IMF
Spring Meeting,
it was South
Sudan which
stood out. Its
minister Kosti
Manibe Ngai,
calling his
country “just
a baby,”
stated that
for the last
year it has
foregone 98%
of government
revenue, due
to the oil
stand-off with
Sudan.
While
under the
Matrix of
Implementation
agreed to, but
not yet even
note
much less
congratulated
by the UN
Security
Council, the
oil's set to
start flowing,
Kosti said
that donors
will be coming
through with
$250 million
in direct
budget support
in the coming
year. (Click
here
for Inner City
Press'
reporting on
the Matrix,
and the Security
Council's
silence.)
Such
support, with
no strings
attached,
stands in
contrast for
example to
the trend in
Rwanda, where
donors attach
conditions
leading to the
country
increasingly
saying it is
willing to go
it alone, if
it must.
At
the IMF there
was discussion
of “diaspora
bonds,” and Ali
Soilihi
of the Comoros
decried IMF
restrictions
which refuse
to
classify
“ex-im loans
from India or
China” as
concessionary.
Cameroon's
Alamine
Ousmane Mey
talked up his
economy -- and
the recent
release of the
French
Moulin-Fournier
family, on
which (Boko
Haram) note he
passed
the floor to
Ngozi
Okonjo-Iweala
of Nigeria.
She
went
big-picture,
on how the
downturn in
the Eurozone
has hurt
African
exports, and
on the need to
coordinate
Continent-wide
on
credible
statistics and
transparency.
Among
the
questions, a
reporter from
the Democratic
Republic of
Congo asked
about minerals
just being
exported from
Africa for
processing
elsewhere. It
brought to
mind the
looming
conflict in
Katanga,
another DRC
region where
the Kabila
administration's
power is
notably
weak.
A
Chinese
reporter not
surprisingly
asked about
the BRICS
bank. Is that
and not the
IMF the future
for some
countries in
Africa?
Earlier
in
the week at
the UN, an
answer to
Inner City
Press is that
the IMF
is
all about
Europe now,
deeper and
deeper into
Ireland,
Greece and
Cyprus. So
whither
Africa? Watch
this site.
