Countries such as Tanzania and Ethiopia spend nine times as much on debt relief as they do on education. In contrast, at the end of World War II, Germany was not required to pay more than 3.5 percent of its foreign exchange earnings in debt service. African countries are now paying up to 20 percent of their foreign exchange earnings in debt service to Western creditors. We've done debt forgiveness before. We're just disinclined to do it for Africa.
Race is still a driving force in American foreign policy.
The Growth and Opportunities Act requires that African countries lower taxes for Western investors, allow for privatization, there are no labor protections, and so on. The rules of globalization mandated by the World Trade Organization and some countries bilaterally have undercut indigenous businesses, killing off these businesses. Haiti used to produce enormous amounts of rice, but under pressures of globalization, Haitians are now buying rice from American producers and producing almost none of their own. What we've done in the Caribbean recently is criminal. We've got democratic, steadfast friends of the U.S., stable literate Caribbean countries like Grenada and St. Vincent, countries that have done all that's asked of them, whose single export is bananas.