No, replied the IMF director for Africa department Mr. G. E. Gondwe, debt relief is not good for you. Because the money debt forgiveness leaves in your hands will not be usefully spent, it will be wasted through theft and the military. Such a response invites the assumption that debt relief is on the table. For a large part of the debt, it is not and is unlikely to be. For example, debt to commercial banks and certain multilateral institutions will certainly have to be paid.
Nothing defines the relationship between Africa and the West better than the debt issue.
Others view it as an extension of Africa's dependency, justification for the contempt they feel for a lazy, generally hopeless continent. In this case, they see the strings of international lending as the infrastructure for the continuity of colonialism with the IMF and World Bank ably discharging the role the imperial army once played. Yet a third perspective is that of those who regard debt as good business. For lending institutions, whose performance is judged by how much they lend, to lend is an end in itself. Some years ago, Western banks, awash with petrodollars, went on a lending binge, intent on ridding themselves of the excess cash in their hands.