The important statement below comes out of a recent pan-African meeting held in Kampala, Uganda at which African civil society groups, convened by Jubilee South, analyzed the IMF and World Bank’s new Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers" (PRSPs). The statement makes it very clear that despite the new rhetoric of "poverty reduction" and "participation" coming from the IMF and World Bank, the same old policies of "structural adjustment," which put corporate rights before human, environmental, and social rights, are firmly entrenched in the PRSPs. The document calls for the PRSP process to be exposed and for groups North and South to push forward with the demands of total debt cancellation and an end to devastating structural adjustment programs, under whatever name they appear.

The statement is signed by 39 organizations representing several pan-African and regional networks and civil society groups in 15 African countries, as well as the World Council of Churches and Kairos Europa.

Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: Structural Adjustment Programs in Disguise

The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have produced their Poverty Reduction Strategy Programmes (PRSPs) within the context of corporate globalisation. This process is being driven by and for the giant transnational corporations (TNCs) and global financial forces. These utilise the economic, political and military powers of their governments, and the World Bank, IMF and World Trade Organisation (WTO) to impose policies on the South and to restructure and run the world to serve their interests.

These forces have led to the enrichment of the corporations and their ‘share-holders’, as well as small elites in the South - to the heavy cost of the vast majority of people of the world. The World Bank and IMF have found it necessary to impose PRSPs onto the most impoverished countries because the intertwined processes of enrichment and impoverishment have led to growing international resistance to the forces, aims and effects of globalisation.

Social organisations and popular movements across the world have come out against structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in their various guises, particularly as based on the feminisation of adjustment to the further detriment of women and children. Our campaigns have exposed the use of debt as a deliberate mechanism utilised by the World Bank and IMF to enforce the implementation of ever harsher structural adjustment programmes that are wreaking havoc across the world.

As a result, the World Bank and IMF are facing a deepening crisis of legitimacy. Thus they have introduced PRSPs mainly as a public relations exercise to demonstrate a supposedly new-found concern for the poverty in the poorest countries of the South, and to prove that they have a genuine desire to see the people of these countries ‘participating’ in finding solutions to their poverty.

But we are not fooled! Our sharing of experiences over the days of this workshop have strengthened our common understandings. We are clear that the PRSPs represent nothing other than yet another attempt by the World Bank and the IMF to continue imposing their structural adjustment programmes on the people of our countries. In fact, the PRSPs will result in an even more comprehensive control by the IMF and World Bank - not only over financial and economic policies but over every aspect and detail of all our national policies and programmes. This will entrench the continuation of IMF and World Bank control over our countries, and contribute to the continuation of the global power relations, in which the rich overwhelmingly concentrated in the North dominate the South and the whole world.

 In this context, and on the basis of the long, deep and painful experiences of SAPs in our countries, we reject:

• SAPs in any form or with any cosmetic ‘adjustments’;
• PRSPs as the latest version of structural adjustment;
• HIPC initiative as debt ‘relief’
• All SAP-HIPC-PRSP conditionalities in order to be granted debt "relief";
• ‘Relief’ of only a portion of debt and continued repayment of the remaining debt which will simply ensure continued control and domination;
• Any attempt to use our organisations to legitimise structural adjustment, HIPCs, PRSPs or debt "relief"; and
• Any further role or interference of the World Bank or IMF in our countries.
• Any further loans to finance HIV-AIDS programmes which only serve to further indebt our countries, which increase our dependence on the institutional finance institutions, while millions of our people continue to suffer and die in the pandemic in our countries.

On the basis of our review in this workshop of a number of experiences of PRSPs in countries in Africa (and Latin America) and on the basis of in-depth analysis and wide-ranging discussion, we note that:

• PRSPs are located within the IMF and World Bank macro-economic framework and this is not open for debate. The poverty programmes are expected to be consistent with the neo-liberal paradigm including privatisation, deregulation, budgetary constraints and trade and financial liberalisation. Yet these have exacerbated economic and social crises in our countries.
• They focus only on internal factors and ignore the role of international/global factors and forces in creating economic crises and poverty in our countries.
• The only aspects of our realities that are open to consultation are those ‘outside’ the macro-economic realm, and even the realisation of these is actively contradicted by the requirements and constraints of the macro-economic prescriptions.
• The neo-liberal paradigm is also not acceptable because it fails to explicitly locate programmes to tackle poverty and subordination within effective gender equity perspectives and gender frameworks. Mere gender ‘mainstreaming’ is totally insufficient as a remedy.
• The World Bank and IMF are manouevering to regain their legitimacy by offering poverty ‘reduction’ and debt ‘relief’ whereas we demand full release from all debt bondage and the total eradication of poverty.
• These so-called poverty programmes have been imposed on countries in a manner which ignores and replaces existing anti-poverty and national development programmes. As such, they are an external intervention with little or no regard for national dynamics, and are an unacceptable intrusion . But they cannot easily be ignored given that countries have to implement these programmes as an additional conditionality even for the much criticised HIPC debt ‘relief’.

The experiences of the functioning of PRSPs in our countries raise a number of additional concerns with regard to the involvement of organisations of civil society:

• The PRSPs are not based on real peoples participation and ownership, or decision-making. To the contrary, there is no intention of taking civil society perspectives seriously; but to keep participation to mere public relations legitimisation;
• The lack of genuine commitment to participation is further manifested in the failure to provide full and timeous access to all necessary information, limiting the capacity of civil society to make meaningful contributions.
• The PRSPs have been introduced according to pre-set external schedules which in most countries has resulted in an altogether inadequate time period for an effective participatory process.
• In addition to all the constraints placed on governments and civil society organisations in formulating PRSPs, the World Bank and IMF retain the right to veto the final programmes. This reflects the ultimate mockery of the threadbare claim that the PRSPs are based on ‘national ownership’.
• An additional serious concern is the way in which PRSPs are being used by the World Bank and IMF, both directly and indirectly, to co-opt NGOs to ‘monitor’ their own governments on behalf of these institutions.

In some instances, notably in those countries in which governments have not been open to civil society participation or have not had poverty and development on the agenda for discussion, the PRSPs initially appeared to open up a space for civil society organisations to engage their governments. However, this has not achieved the desired effect of challenging structural adjustment. Furthermore, many organisations have invested so much energy in the PRSP processes that they have been distracted from their work in opposing SAPs and HIPCs and campaiging for debt cancellation. The lesson we have learnt is that we need to return to our own agendas and reinvigorate and further strengthen our engagement and work with people at the grassroots.

We as African civil society organisations need to:

• Continue and intensify our efforts to expose to the people in our countries, and the world, the inter-linked aims and effects of SAPs, HIPCs and PRSPs, and the strategic purposes of the World Bank and the IMF;
• Mobilise our people and link up with our allies in the South, and partners in the North, for immediate and total cancellation of our external debts without external conditionalities;
• Proactively engage with our governments on issues as determined by our agendas and on the basis of genuine participation and popular empowerment within our own societies, communities and cultures;
• Mobilise to encourage and push our governments to stand together and repudiate the debt;
• Mobilise our people to challenge and change the global economic system through campaigns and actions to shut down the World Bank and IMF and to stand up to other forces, including the WTO, Northern governments such as the EU (through the Cotonou Agreement) and the US (through AGOA), as well as their TNCs;
• Mobilise our peoples to oppose the ruling elites who are implementing structural adjustment programmes and further entrenching neo-liberal policies in our countries.

We call upon our peoples to develop further - and deepen through intensified analysis, discussion and full participation - our own democratic, people-centered, gender equitable and environmentally sustainable national, regional and continental alternatives as the basis for a united African challenge to the current oppressive, exploitative and destructive global system.

Participants
· African Organisation on Debt and Development (AFRODAD)
· African Women’s Economic Policy Network (AWEPON)
· Africa Trade Network (Southern Africa)
· Alternative Information & Development Center (South Africa)
· Associacão para Desenvolvimento Rural de Angola (ADRA)
· Asapsu Cote d’Ivoire 
· BEACON - Nairobi
· Botswana Council of Churches 
· GERA
· Catholic Commission for Justice & Peace (Malawi)
· Center for International Studies (CEI) (Nicaragua)
· CMID - Ghana 
· CONGAD (Senegal)
· Divida (Mozambique Debt Group)
· Ecumenical Support Services for Economic Transformation (S.A.)
· Gender and Trade Network (Southern Africa)
· Peace Humanus (Cameroon)
· International South Group Network (Southern Africa)
· Jubilee 2000 Angola 
· Jubilee 2000 Cameroon
· Jubilee 2000 Nigeria 
· Jubilee 2000 Senegal
· Jubilee 2000 Zambia & Civil Society for Poverty Reduction (Zambia)
· Jubilee South Africa · Jubilee South (Africa)
· Karios EUROPA
· Kenya Debt Relief Network (KENDREN)
· Ledikasyon pu Travayer (Workers Education - Mauritius)
· Malawi Economic Justice Network (MEJN)
· Mwelekeo wa NGO (MWENGO - Southern Africa)
· Southern African Peoples Solidarity Network (SAPSN)
· South & East Africa Trade, Info. & Negotiation Initiative
· Tanzania Coalition on Debt and Development
· Tanzania Gender Networking Programme
· T.E.I.A Mozambique · Uganda - ActionAid
· World Council of Churches
· Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development (ZIMCODD)
· YWCA of Kenya