Is Africa's Progress an Illusion? GDP, Debt, and the Myth of Growth

There is no short of statistics claiming that most African countries have been registering a rapid growth in GDP. Côte d’Ivoire recently recorded one of the highest GDP growth rates in the world with a record high 10.2% in 2012 according to the World Bank. In 2015, Cameroon had a GDP growth rate of 5.8% while Côte d’Ivoire came in at 9.2%. The most recent statistics provided by the World Bank have Cameroon at a 4.8% growth rate with Côte d’Ivoire at 8.8%. These are the numbers usually broadcasted by the government to gain support for their policies. What we hardly ever hear about is something called the Debt-to-GDP ratio.

A country's gross domestic product can be calculated using the following formula: GDP = C + G + I + NX where C is equal to all private consumption, or consumer spending, in a nation's economy, G is the sum of government spending, I is the sum of all the country's investments, including businesses capital expenditures and NX is the nation's total net exports, calculated as total exports minus total imports (NX = Exports - Imports). We see clearly that there is no account for debt; so, if the government borrows money to spend on its economy, the GDP increases.

You should know the GDP is the godfather of the indicator world and it measures economic activity, not productivity or efficiency which to me should be better measures of economic health. If the government borrows money and misappropriates it through poor investments and embezzlement as we so often do in Cameroon, the GDP still grows then they throw that number around to say we are doing fine whereas in reality, on the ground, we do not see any significant improvements in the quality of life of the average individual and in our case, there is even a drop in the quality of life. Going by GDP alone, so long as there is financial activity, it is all good and the reason is so long as money is moving hands, the intermediaries are making money from those doing the exchanges in forms of interest rates, service and transfer fees, etc.

Of course I cannot fully debunk the whole financial system here and I doubt I will ever be able to because most of the truth about what is happening is systematically hidden from most of the world even though the signs are clear - to those with a good sense of discernment. Truth is, it is a well designed system that makes a few people (not countries) richer while the rest of the world become poorer and sold on an illusion of progress. If I were to say much more, I will have to back it up with facts which is sometimes the requirement by which most of the truth goes unheard because people have been trained to demand facts that can never be provided. It is just like if your bother went missing today and died, you will always live with the idea that he is still alive somewhere in the world rather than hear it from someone without proof that he is dead.

Any-Ha!

What have I been driving to all along you may ask? What I am trying to say is, most of the financial systems we as Africans have become subject to - namely the World Bank and IMF, which are agents of the lesser known Bank for International Settlements (BIS) which also controls all the central banks of the world -bodies like BEAC, are not designed to help us grow as Africans. You should note that the BIS headquartered in Basel, Switzerland is a sovereign city state just like the Vatican in Rome. To give you an idea of what that means: the Swiss Police cannot arrest someone on that property - basically, BIS cannot be investigated. The BIS would be behind financial manipulations to devalue the currencies of non-member countries like Zimbabwe which is why there is perpetual inflation in that country.

In Africa, like the rest of the world, we use facts to defend our economic position. Facts calculated and provided to us by people who do not have our self interest. It is like the doctor that will keep telling you you are sick just so he can keep performing procedures on you and getting your money, except in this case, they tell us our economies are growing at a rate that we’ll be able to pay all our debts - encouraging us to take on more debt that they’ll then use to wield political power over us when we can’t repay.

African visionaries have always known that the western imperialist will continue exploiting Africa - no longer by use of force - in what is termed neocolonialism. In 1963, speaking at a meeting of 32 African Heads of State and Government, Nkwame Nkrumah called for the creation of a Union of Independent African States that would have given us the power to guard our self interests but they never succeeded in getting the message across because the imperialists have mastered the art of using our elites to continuously exploit us. The initiative of a Union of Independent African States which Nkrumah proposed in 1964, a historic well-reasoned call, was ignored in favor of a weak Organization of African Unity (OAU). Decades afterwards, the OAU was replaced with the current African Union which is exactly what Dr. Nkrumah has never wanted it to be – a body controlled by the same imperialists who the African freedom fighters had fought to gain political independence.

In the current state of the world, there is no such thing as political independence without economic independence. Our leaders today make political moves on a basis of whether imperialist governments would approve of them or not. As time goes on, we become weaker as their methods become more elaborate.

- Tino Foy