Africa's Debt And The Sustainable Development Research

In the wake of African debt crisis in1980s traditional debt reliefmechanisms were launched,but African debt distress has beenincreasingly severe after receiving traditional debt relief andimplementation of structural adjustment programmes-total externaldebt worsened significantly in the1980s and early1990s.Debt relief within traditional debt relief mechanisms consisted ofconcessional flow reschedulings,stock-of-debt operations,and bilateraldebt forgiveness of ODA claims by Paris Club;reschedulings andbilateral debt forgiveness by non-Paris Club official bilateralcreditors;and private commertial debt relief and buy-backoperations.In addition,multilateral financial institutions also suppliedthose countries with debt relief which required appropriate structuraladjustments and policy reforms in those countries.Due to the ineffectiveness of traditional debt relief mechanisms,theHeabily Indebted Poor Country Initiative(HIPC) was launched by theBretton Woods Institutions,the International Monetory Fund(IMF)andWorld Bank.The Initiative had made some progress but its aim to reducethe external public debt burden of “eligible” heavily indebted poorcountries was against its original background.In that case,an enhancedversion of the HIPC Initiative was proposed in1999whose goal was“deeper,broader and faster”debt relief,but it still had lots of problemssuch as slower process than expected and inadequate debt relief.In order to help low-income countries solve their debt distress,IMFand World Bank developed a framework which is Debt SustainabilityFramework for Low-Income Countries(LICs) in2005that has become asignificant instrument for analyzing debt-related vulnerabilities andhelping prevent the potential debt distress.The goals of this Frameworkare to guide the borrowing policy for LICs and lending decisions for creditors;improve World Bank and IMF assessments and policy adviceetc.In spite of all the actions that international community hastaken,African debt problems haven’t had any permanent solutions.Aswe can see,the most effective solutions are not from outside,insteadthey are Africans themselves.All African countries should unite andmake their efforts to reduce wars,strengthen education,pursue prudentdebt managemement strategies and sustained economic growthpolicies etc.