>FDI = foreign direct investment. World Total FDI inflows 1998: $400 billion;
>inflows to Africa, $4.7 billion. 1.17% of total.
>
>My point: $200 billion could make a difference in Africa, but I think the
>likelihood of its getting there is pretty slim. "Official" organizations
>like the World Bank and the IMF still need motivations to send huge sums of
>cash that way. They won't send it out of the goodness of their hearts. I
>suspect that they would need motivations that could also draw FDI there in
>the first place.
Thanks for coming back to clarify our differences. Thanks for conceding that $200 billion dollars could make a difference to Africa.
I doubt the merit of your category of total FDI, however. The great amount of this is presumably capitalist investment for profit. Posing the question this way assumes that that is the only way capital gets transferred. In fact even the most laissez faire capitalist state has always used state policy to transfer large sums for social purposes. It is not capital in the strict marxist sense in that it does not exploit labour, but it is certainly a significant part of the social product. This could be anything from a giant stature of Bismarck, to a new embankment on the Seine, to a new ring road around Vienna to replace the 17th century city walls. It might be a cholera or an influenza hospital. It might be to fund missionaries to China. It might be more recently to stop adolescents passing HIV through infected needles. It might be a vast Bill Gates or George Soros charitable fund to earn fame and honour which money does not automatically carry with it.
I am talking about structures of world government deliberately transferring large chunks of surplus product to Africa, just as the USA federal government dishes out capital construction projects to the different states of the union, or the EU has a development fund for the poorer regions.
I find the suggestion that official organs need motivation puzzling. Of course such organisations are dominated by capitalism, but they are also arenas of struggle.
I attach some faq comments from the web site
http://www.brettonwoodsproject.org
This has been set up by NGO's trying to reform world institutions.
Chris Burford
_____________
What is the World Bank?
The World Bank aims to help countries reduce poverty by making
long-term loans to governments for projects such as dams or
bridges, or to back economic reform programmes. The World
Bank also produces many influential research reports and has
affiliates which back private companies investing in poor
countries.
What is the IMF?
The International Monetary Fund seeks to maintain an orderly
balance of international trade and payments by regularly
assessing economies and making short-term loans to those with
balance of payments difficulties. Countries wanting to join the
World Bank must first become members of the IMF.
Why are they so important?
The two agencies determine whether developing countries get
access to aid money and how it is spent. Northern governments
use them to carry out certain foreign and commercial policy
objectives, but as multilateral institutions they have the potential to
foster cooperative international approaches on key issues such
as environmental change.
Can they be reformed?
Most incoming World Bank Presidents promise major reforms,
normally emphasising poverty and the environment. The latest,
James Wolfensohn, is being particularly bold in his aims and has
unveiled a number of positive initiatives towards openness and a
more balanced view of economic reform. But many previous plans
have been thwarted by the Bank's institutional culture, which
prevents internal debate, and rewards large loans regardless of
whether they help poor people. The IMF remains a very secretive
and technocratic organisation with little concern for poverty or
environmental issues, but recently has made some attempts to
open up.
Back to the top
Who makes the decisions?
Each country is formally represented in each institution by a
Governor (normally the Minister of Finance or of Overseas
Development), but in practice almost all decisions are delegated
to an Executive Director, an official who is posted to Washington
for about 3 years. Whilst 180 countries are now members of the
IMF and World Bank, there are only 24 Executive Directors.
Voting power is allocated according to the amount of money
contributed to the Bank, which in turn depends on the country's
economic strength. For example the UK has a voting share of
about 5.5 per cent and the US nearly 20 per cent. The President
of the Bank is, by convention, a US citizen and the Managing
Director of the IMF is a European.
How can I make a difference?
Get informed and tell others. Not enough people know what is
going on with these distant international agencies. If you are from
a rich country your government (Finance, Foreign Affairs or
Aid/International Cooperation Ministries) is contributing your aid
money to the World Bank and IMF, and will have a strong voice in
how Bank money is used. You can contact your Ministers or
officials to make your views known and ask for their response. If
you are from a developing country then you now have the right to
obtain information about what the World Bank and IMF are doing
in your countries.
Best books for a more in-depth background
Mortgaging the Earth, The World Bank, Environmental
Impoverishment and the Crisis of Development Bruce Rich,
Beacon Books (USA), Earthscan (UK), 1994, ISBN 1 85383 221
9
Masters of Illusion, The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations,
Catherine Caufield, Henry Holt and Co (USA), Macmillan (UK),
1997, ISBN 0 333 66262 8
Peace Without Profit: How the IMF Blocks Rebuilding in
Mozambique, Joe Hanlon, James Curry, London and New York,
1996, ISBN 0 85255 800 7
Silent Revolution: The Rise of Market Economics in Latin
America, Duncan Green, Cassell/Latin America Bureau, London,
1995.