On Monday 20th July 2020, Zambian President Edgar Lungu picked a phone and pleaded with his Chinese counterpart to as a matter of urgency cancel all of his country’s $6bn indebtedness. The Zambian leader cited difficult times with COVID 19 as justification.
Zambia is a land locked African country blessed with rich natural resources such as uranium, silver, cobalt, copper, coal, lead, silver, zinc, emeralds and gold. Zambia is also a chief global producer of semiprecious gemstones and cobalt. Not only that, it also has significant deposits of limestone, silica, feldspars, platinum and coal.
With all these natural resources at its disposal, one wonders how this mineral saturated African country could be so indebted to such an extent of literally begging for debt cancellation and not even a form of bilateral trade off with China.
Infact Zambia is said to use about half of its internal revenue generation in servicing its debts. An unfortunate leadership failure which resonates all over Africa where presidents and other political or monarchical leaders continue to amass wealth at the expense of their citizens!
With such a turn of events, China may gradually exert such a strong foothold on the African continent and in a subtle manner become a new colonial master through these debt traps.
This reminds me of former President JJ Rawlings investment trips to some selected far Eastern Asian countries in the mid 90s for investment opportunities in Ghana. Some of the fruits of that extensive investment tour is the emergence of TV3 media network in 1997 and also the initial revamp of Ghana Telecom before its current takeover by British firm Vodafone under the Kufuor administration.
Lee Kuan Yiw, the founder of Singapore is globally acclaimed for his combination of authoritarian and diplomatic leadership skills to propel an island which had no natural resources, into a mega 3rd richest richest nation of the world, with a net worth of $480bn GDP, per capita income of $82,503 and a life expectancy of 82.9 years and boasting of New York level of skyscraper buildings!
During his tour of Singapore as part of that investment drive, President Rawlings met with the then Singaporean PM Goh Chock Tong and the legendary founder Lee Kuan Yiw. Mr Yiw was shocked to see Ghana coming to his country to seek investment opportunities as he once travelled to Ghana in the 1960s under Kwame Nkrumah, to learn more about transformational leadership, as Ghana showed so much economic promise!
The Bible says “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7) and with the kind of leadership legacy that Africa keeps passing on to its generations, an irresponsible economic relationship with China will not come cheap and there is a high risk of Chinese complete take over if care is not taken. Already Nigeria is making plans to adopt the Chinese Yuan as a reserve currency.
Below is a list of the top 10 African countries with the largest Chinese debts:
1. Angola (over $25bn)
2. Ethiopia ($13.5bn)
3. Kenya ($7.9bn)
4. The Republic of Congo ($7.3bn)
5. North Sudan ($6.4bn)
6. Zambia ($6bn)
7. Cameroun ($5.5bn)
8. Nigeria ($4.8bn)
9. Ghana ($3.5bn)
10. Democratic Republic of Congo ($3.4bn).
📌 MEDLAB PS: Last week between Saturday 1st to Wednesday August 2020, GAMLS Communications Team members with the likes of PRO Dr Dennis Adu Gyasi, Acting General Secretary Mike Amo Omari, Prosper Sokpe, Felix Sorvor, Samuel Appiah, Solomon Kwashie and yours truly, engaged on a BUSAC funded media blitz to strategically drum home the calls for the implementation of the National Health Laboratory Policy (NHLP) documents, which are needed the most in these COVID 19 times.
This is certainly not the first time that attempts have been made by GAMLS to bring the no show NHLP issue to the fore, but this latest media presence has been the most emphatic so far, in terms of the media organisations selected. Its effect is to such an extent that TV3 continues broadcasting it, as of Sunday 9th August 2020 during the prime time 7pm news bulletin.
The general elections is just a few months away and there is no better time than this to keep this media advocacy going. However it will take a collective will of our membership through innovative fund raising drives, to sustain it for our desired expectations.
“Consistency is the fruit of the tree of success. The more you do something effectively and with a goal in mind, the better you will get at it and the more you will feel fulfilled.” – (Dan O’Brien).
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