WHAT ORDINARY AFRICANS EXPECT FROM THE G20 MEETING IN LONDON!

For many ordinary Africans, the G20 meeting in London will only be counted as a success, if the meeting decides to close all the loopholes in the international financial system, which enables Africa’s corrupt ruling elites to successfully hide and launder the huge sums they siphon off annually from the continent. In their view, such an outcome will be one of the most effective means of helping to end poverty in Africa.

Another outcome from the G20 meeting that would help the ordinary people of Africa to escape from poverty, is for all the wealthy Western nations to pass new and tougher laws, which will make it illegal for companies domiciled in their territories, which invest in Africa, to engage in any acts of corruption in the continent. They must also make sure that those tough laws will make it possible for those companies to be sued by individuals and entities from Africa, in the wealthy nations that those companies are legally domiciled in, for any acts of corruption they engage in, in Africa.

A leading cause of poverty in Africa is the willingness of foreign investors from wealthy nations to collude with corrupt African politicians to cheat the nations they rule. A case in point is the astonishing situation in Ghana – where parliament incredibly passed a law that in effect indemnified Vodafone from prosecution for all actions pertaining to its takeover of the state-owned Ghana Telecom for a paltry US$900 millions: when the company was worth a great deal more than that figure. Why would a major multinational with a clear conscience seek such legal protection – and would eyebrows not be raised if that occurred in any telecoms privatization deal in the UK?

Ordinary Africans, desperate to escape from poverty, would be delighted if the G20 decides to abolish tax havens worldwide. They understand the importance of the role that tax revenues play in the provision of schools, healthcare facilities, roads, etc., etc. Consequently, in their view, tax havens must not be tolerated in whatever new international financial system the G20 eventually comes up with – as that will stop Africa’s wealthy and corrupt elites from keeping their money offshore to evade their tax obligations.

As the tragic situation in Darfur has clearly shown, aid money from the wealthy nations that is channeled through the most reputable international NGO’s working in Africa, helps poor Africans directly, in those African nations that are governed by corrupt, brutal, and tyrannical regimes – such as the regime of President Omar Bashir, the war criminal indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC), who currently leads Sudan.

The wealthy nations of the West must stop providing all governments on the continent with aid money to support their budgets – as that only serves to prop up lazy, unimaginative, incompetent, and corrupt regimes that should not be in charge of the nations they rule in the first place. It will hasten the demise of corrupt and inefficient African regimes that fail to improve the quality of life of their people. Such aid money will be far better spent if they are given to international NGO’s working in the continent, such as Fearless Planet, the American NGO that is doing such wonderful work helping rural farming communities in Ghana to prosper.

If the huge sums of official aid money given by some of the G20 nations to various Ghanaian regimes since independence, had gone to NGO’s such as Fearless Planet, for example, millions of ordinary Ghanaians would have become prosperous individuals by now – and it would all have been achieved without damaging their natural environment, either: thus helping to preserve their natural heritage and improving the quality of their lives in the process. Above all, the wealthy nations of the world must open their markets to goods and services from Africa – as most ordinary Africans do know that trade, not aid, is what will help end poverty in Africa.