Newcastle University has played a vital role in international development agendas. As a significant participant in organisations such as Make Poverty History North East and the Jubilee debt campaign, the University has, over several decades, helped improved the quality of life for people living in poverty across the globe.
There are 41 heavily indebted poor counties in the world, with 33 of these in Africa. Both staff and students at Newcastle have helped remedy the debt burden faced by African countries such as Tanzania.
Third world debt can be attributed to various factors, such as colonial exploitation, bad governance, lack of development, adverse terms of trade and growing dependence on assistance and loans.
Poverty drives indebtedness as an initially weak state lacks the capacity to improve social and economic services in order to drive the economy, and a heavily indebted country is unable to divert much needed resources to key sectors of society.
Take, for example, Zaire where 44% of their national budget is spent on debt servicing. This means that, rather than financing development programmes aimed at improving weak economic structures, Zaire is paying back money to countries in the Western world.
By reducing the debt burden on struggling African nations, those countries are then better able to provide for their nation’s citizens, with the hope that Africa will become less poor and more developed.
There is a widely held view that aid assistance, such as reducing the debt burden, has a negative impact on African nations as the countries become reliant upon assistance from the developed world, rather than developing their own economic and social structures to foster grass roots development.
Aid assistance can have both positive and negative repercussions for the third world, largely dependent upon the credibility of the government in power of the country receiving aid. Most debt relief programmes make it clear that debt relief will only be given to countries meeting certain conditions. Where aid is managed properly and diverted according to need, aid contributions can make a positive contribution towards development.
Children benefitting from education in Tanzania in 2007. The photo was taken after significant debt relief had helped the region.
The first campus-wide campaign in the world to promote poor country debt relief was started at the University of Newcastle in 1998. It is through the university’s commitment to eradicate debt in countries whose poverty is absolute, that children in countries such as Tanzania are now in full time education and living within reach of clean water.
In many respects the most efficient way of helping countries give their citizens clean water and good standards of living is to write off their debts.
Perhaps the most remarkable recognition of the University’s efforts to reduce poverty in developing countries was provided by President Mkapa of Tanzania who, in 2004, formally thanked the University for launching a campaign for debt relief, saying Newcastle was his “greatest partner” in helping wage a worthy struggle to obtain debt relief.
Tanzania, in 2001, as a country witnessing serious deterioration of basic services and a high and unsustainable debt burden, reversed its trends with our help. Significant debt relief resources were better directed towards
“Zewdie Tamirat’s eyes were swollen shut through malnutrition and her delicate skin was no longer able to mask the skeleton beneath. Brushing away flies from her face with a small twig, the little girl stood quietly as, in 2000, her father explained how three years of crop failure in Ethiopia had left his family facing starvation. Pitiably, she attempted a smile for the cameraman”. Photograph: Jim Loring, Tearfund.
priority sectors.
President Mkapa said, “In 2001 Tanzania was granted significant debt relief. As promised this was directed to the priority sectors of education, health, water, rural roads and HIV/AIDS, enabling us to increase resources for poverty reduction by 130 per cent.
President Mkapa of Tanzania thanked the University for launching a campaign for debt relief
“We have already witnessed tremendous successes. The primary school population has increased by 66 per cent - the greater part of an extra two million children - and the shortfall of the enrolment of girls has been eliminated.
“We have built 45,000 classrooms, 1,925 new primary schools and over 7,500 homes for teachers in partnership with their communities; between 2000 and 2004, we recruited 37, 261 new teachers, and retrained another 14,852.”
Since aid assistance, the children in Tanzania have more books and the teachers are more motivated, improving teaching and learning environments.
Hospitals have been rehabilitated and refitted with diagnostic equipment and the previous shortage of basic drugs is now history. The rate of immunisation has reached 83 per cent and the introduction of the hepatitis vaccine has saved 20- 25,000 lives annually.
President Mkapa hoped that such initiatives as supported by Newcastle University would be picked up by more academic institutions.
He said: “For, as this University’s founding statement puts it, ‘University staff who have enjoyed the privilege of higher education cannot be indifferent to the millions of children and young people deprived of even an elementary schooling - one of the greatest and most tragic effects of the burden of unsustainable debt.’”
Of course, whilst these changes are significant, Tanzania is still far from being anywhere near on an equal footing with schools and hospitals in countries such as ours. Total debt cancellation would enable the country to further develop these key sectors and subsequently improve the quality of life of its citizens.
Newcastle University is regularly doing more to assist countries such as Tanzania, highlighted by its role in the passing of the so-called Vultures Law earlier this month. The University was the only university in the country to back a campaign to protect poor countries from investment companies buying up
poor country debts at knock-down prices and making astronomical profits.
David Golding, Professor of Marine Science and Technology says that “most aid has helped the undoubted progress shown by the continent in recent years, not least in the growth of primary schooling and the provision of ARV drugs for AIDS.”
“We believe AIDS is the worst catastrophe ever to hit the world”
UNICEF’s Executive Director says, “We believe AIDS is the worst catastrophe ever to hit the world.”
There are 22.5 million people living with HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, with 18.3% adults living with HIV in South Africa in 2006.
Over 18 million African children will have lost one or both parents to AIDS. Millions of children not yet in their teens now find themselves totally responsible for younger siblings; millions of weak and impoverished elderly people are left to care for grandchildren.
Whilst many people see the problem of HIV and AIDS as never ending battle, it is important that we understand that the fight against HIV and AIDs can be won.
With more assistance, countries can invest even more in health care, mitigating the plight of the sick and the dying, and blocking the development of full blown AIDs by drug use.
The carers of orphans can be supported and the rate of new infections slashed. The medical tools and financial resources need to readily available in Africa.
Rather than blaming ‘aid’ for sustaining the underdevelopment of nations in the third world, one should rather look at the unfair international trade rules; enforced repayment of illegitimate, inherited debts; and tax fiddles by multinationals, each taking from third world countries far more than the amount they are receiving in aid.
The ‘aid’ assistance given to Africa just hasn’t been enough to outweigh the negative impacts of rich governments, companies and investment firms exploiting the third world.
Golding shared his own thoughts on this matter, saying, “I don’t believe Western countries deliberately set out to oppress poor nations, but the effects of our policies on the ground amount to nothing less than economic terror.”
(This feature was first published on 4 May 2010 in The Courier, the Newcastle University student newspaper.)