Chair, comrades and distinguished guests, during World War II delegates from the 44 allied nations gathered for the United Nations' Monetary Financial Conference at Bretton Woods in the United States to set up the fundamentals. Some of those things were the rules, institutions and procedures to regulate the international monetary system. They established the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, which today is part of the World Bank.
As far as the structure of the African economy is concerned, Dr Daniel Tetteh Osabu-Kle of the Carleton University in Ottawa expressed the view that it is the product of centuries of Western disturbance, which has messed up the continent. During the 400 years of slavery, the diversified economies of Africa's social formations were transformed by the Western political and economic forces into production captives for Western enterprises. He contends that the structural adjustments in Africa does not conform to natural justice but is about organising for the human project in which decisions about who gets what, when and how becomes the source of this power struggle between the Bretton Wood institutions and the African leaders. This struggle may be conceived as an attempt by the Bretton Wood institution to recolonise Africans on behalf of their allies, while African leaders strive to resist that new form of colonialism.
The independent evaluation group who reported on the World Bank's agricultural programme in sub-Saharan Africa between 1991 and 2006 levelled a series of withering critiques at the bank's work and concluded that despite its presence of more than two decades in several countries, the World Bank's support has so far not been able to help countries increase agricultural productivity sufficiently to arrest declining per capita food availability.
A report by Oxfam International includes criticism of forestry operations in Uganda, in which the International Finance Corporation has a stake. More than 20 000 villagers claimed to have been unjustly evicted from their homes by the UK-based company to make way for plantations. The Ugandan case highlights how the current system of international standards, designed to ensure that people are not adversely affected by large-scale transfer of land or unused rights, does not work.
Chair, a so-called gentlemen's agreement between Europe and the United States, dating back to the Second World War, ensures that the president of the World Bank is always an American and only an American, with a European being the managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
The World Bank needs serious and genuine reform. The way the World Bank picks its president and the International Monetary Fund, IMF, its managing director is a place to start. Reacting to the announcement that Robert Zoellick is stepping down as World Bank president, a global collusion of campaigners has called for an open and merit-based process to elect the next World Bank leader and for developing countries to determine the selection. However, the impression that the rich governments who have run the IMF thus far are dragging their heels on this enormously important issue is hard to avoid.
At the close of the IMF African Conference held in Dar es Salaam in March 2009, the then South African Minister of Finance, Comrade Trevor Manuel, said that the global crisis was about to cause severe damage to the African economy. He demanded that developing countries and emerging markets be given a major voice in the governance of the IMF.
In conclusion, the delegates at the conference agreed that Africans must be part of and fully represented in the solution to the global economic crisis. There must be a closer synergy between the activities of Bretton Woods institutions and those of Africa's own institutions, like the African Development Bank and religious and economic communities. It will put us in a better position as an international community to meet the target we have set for ourselves in the Millennium Development Goals. It will put us in a better position as an international community to meet all our goals.
Comrade President Jacob Zuma has reiterated the need to reform the United Nations, particularly the Security Council and the Bretton Woods institutions. We have over the past decade been engaged more in a battle of ideas than in attempts to transform the Bretton Wood institutions.
We believe that the world needs a reformed and more stable financial architecture that will make the global economy less prone to instability and more reliable in future crises. We believe that there is a greater need for a more stable, predictable and diversified international monetary system. We will strive to achieve an ambitious conclusion to the ongoing and long overdue reforms of the Bretton Woods institutions.