Correspondent: Profits of Doom Tx Date: 4th November 2001 This script was made from audio tape - any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 00.00.00 Music 00.00.07 Tony Blair The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world. 00.00.12 Music 00.00.14 John Kampfner The rich nations are finally waking up to the dangers of global poverty. For years they wouldn't listen. Not even to the warnings of the head of the World Bank. 00.00.23 James Wolfensohn It's an issue of people coming in with a bomb or poison. Terrorism is something that is a new form of conflict, which can affect us wherever we are. 00.00.24 Aston 1999 00.00.38 John Kampfner Now, with the world in crisis, the issue of poverty has acquired a new urgency. With the old certainties gone, will the big powers finally act on the warnings of the prophets of doom? 00.00.50 Music 00.00.55 Correspondent Theme Music 00.01.05 Title Page PROFITS of Doom 00.01.11 John Kampfner Mary Agyekum is sitting on gold. But she isn't benefiting from it. She lives in the resettled village of New Atuabo in the West of Ghana. She breaks stones for twelve hours a day. 00.01.25 Aston MARY AGYEKUM Voice over Life is really hard for us; I can hardly look after the kids. I can't afford to feed them let alone clothe them. Yesterday I didn't have enough to buy them food when I left for work. They went without until I returned in the evening - that makes me really sad. 00.01.45 John Kampfner The World Bank called Ghana the 'model pupil'. But after twenty years of economic fundamentalism what do the people have to show for it? And if it's failed here, what chances elsewhere? 00.01.58 John Kampfner Mary's family lived quite well. They had a farm. Then a mining company turned up and took away their land. 00.02.06 Aston SIMON AGYEKUM Voice over One day the white men came. They said they needed to count up the total number of people in the village. We didn't understand at first. Later it was explained that the government had given them the land so we had to move out and leave the land for them. 00.02.24 Simon Agyekum Voice over If we refused to leave peacefully they would send in the military to force us out. 00.02.32 John Kampfner It's a familiar story. Two thirds of land in this region has been sold to multi-nationals. Compensation is minimal. 00.02.40 John Kampfner In a good week Mary and her children earn two pounds. The same policies, which drove her off her land, have put schooling and health care beyond her means. 00.02.51 John Kampfner Even the most basic commodity of all comes with a price tag. 00.02.58 Mary Agyekum Voice over We have to buy our water. The price of a plastic container fluctuates. When I don't have enough money we buy it on credit and pay for it after I've earnt enough from work. We also pay for using the toilet. Sometimes when I can't afford it I beg the attendants to allow me to use it without charge. When I feel I've had too many free goes I go into the bush. 00.03.24 John Kampfner The policy is called 'full cost recovery'. 00.03.31 John Kampfner It's part of the conditions that comes with loans from the World Bank and the IMF. 00.03.37 John Kampfner From the comfort of the capital, Accra, the battle for the essentials of life doesn't seem quite so acute. 00.03.46 John Kampfner How much do you travel in this country? 00.03.48 Aston PETER HARROLD Country Director, World Bank A certain amount. A fair bit. 00.03.49 John Kampfner How many ordinary people, people who aren't. 00.03.50 Peter Harrold Sorry? 00.03.52 John Kampfner .government ministers and economic advisors. 00.03.54 Peter Harrold Yes. 00.03.54 John Kampfner .do you talk to? 00.03.55 Peter Harrold Plenty. 00.03.56 John Kampfner Do you get out to the villages, do you? Do you talk to these people who now have to pay for their water, who have to pay to go to the loo, who don't get compensated for being relocated? 00.04.04 Peter Harrold You're, you're, I know you're trying to get me angry. I'm not going to get angry, ok, I'm going to stay calm because you're trying to provoke me and suggest. 00.04.11 John Kampfner No, I'm not trying to do anything, I am simply . 00.04.12 Peter Harrold You're trying to suggest that what I do is spend my time in an ivory tower and I've no idea what's going on in the countryside. That is not true. I don't have any knowledge of villages that are charging, whoever it is, who is charging people to go to the toilet? I mean, I've no idea what you're talking about there. What I have seen. 00.04.31 John Kampfner The village of New Atuabo. 00.04.33 Peter Harrold Ok and who is charging, who is charging whom? 00.04.37 John Kampfner The poor are being charged for all the essentials of living. Many Ghanaians never had access to clean water. The state run water company was a mess. That's not in dispute. 00.04.49 John Kampfner Azara Issah doesn't have the money to pay for clean water. Under the plans of the IMF and the World Bank, local communities have to finance their own supplies. 00.04.59 John Kampfner Their next step is privatisation of the water supply. And to get the state corporation fit for outside investment, prices have doubled. 00.05.14 John Kampfner Twice a day Azara goes to a dam a few hundred yards from her village to collect water. 00.05.21 John Kampfner It's infested with guinea worm. She knows the dangers, but she has little choice. 00.05.33 Aston AZARA ISSAH Voice over Our inability to afford the money is the reason why we always come to fetch this water. The money that could be used to pay for the borehole water is used to buy food like kokoo for our breakfast since we can't afford both at the same time. For us it is better to spend the money on food or other things and fetch water free of charge from the dam because having good water without food is useless. 00.06.06 John Kampfner Full cost recovery, or cost sharing, or cash and carry. There are many names for the policy of making people pay for all the essentials. 00.06.16 John Kampfner This model is being applied throughout the developing world. 00.06.21 John Kampfner Azara scrapes together some money collecting groundnuts. Her limited income means she has to make tough choices between having food or clean water. 00.06.34 Azara Issah Voice over We cover the bucket with the net before we sieve the water to remove the disease that is in it. But if we are at home in the house, after the sieving we put it on the fire and allow it to boil for some time so that the other diseases and the scent in the water will be killed. 00.07.01 Azara Issah Voice over The disease that's in the water comes from tics. There are also other organisms, which can attach themselves to the human body and suck your blood. Once they've attached themselves to your body, before you realise they're there they've already sucked some of your blood. 00.07.26 John Kampfner She would use clean water if she could. It's not out of ignorance that she's doing this. 00.07.44 John Kampfner A borehole in the centre of this village. Cost recovery in action. 00.07.49 John Kampfner The World Bank has decreed that countries in debt shouldn't waste money on basic services like water. 00.07.56 John Kampfner Here it's a form of self-service. You bring your bucket; you pay your money. One rule for the poor another for the rich. In America, the government pours tens of millions of dollars into the public water system to keep it going. 00.08.12 John Kampfner In the villages fights tend to break out. Here a woman is begging for clean water from her neighbours because she can't afford to pay. This causes divisions within the community. 00.08.36 John Kampfner Ten hours to the north of Accra, to the poorest part of the country. 00.08.40 Singing 00.08.46 John Kampfner This area was Ghana's rice bowl. It provided ample work and it provided ample food for the people - another of life's essentials. The World Bank's policies changed all that. 00.08.57 Drumming 00.09.07 John Kampfner In the village of Kpembe, the people are summoned. Festivities are declared. On one level things haven't changed. Tribal elders have gathered to meet us. The dancing and the singing is in our honour. 00.09.21 John Kampfner They may have lost their livelihoods but the old traditions for greeting visitors are maintained. Formalities are strictly observed. 00.09.31 John Kampfner Chief, hello, very nice to meet you. Thank you very much for having us, thank you. 00.09.38 John Kampfner The Chief is holding court. But there's a change in the air. There's a new political awareness, which is challenging the inequalities of the economic order. 00.09.48 John Kampfner You used to farm rice yourself. You used to have, I'm told, a thousand acres in the Katanga Valley. 00.09.53 Aston ALHAJI IBRAHIM HAURRA Chief of Kpembe Subtitles Yes, I used to be one of the biggest rice farmers in the north. But because of the change of policy, I folded up. I used to employ so many people on the farm, here in the Katanga Valley. 00.10.08 John Kampfner What's happened to the local rice industry? Do you make your own rice anymore? What's happened to your huge farms that you used to have? 00.10.14 Alhaji Ibrahim Haurra Subtitles The local rice industry has virtually collapsed. When Ghana was subsidising fertiliser and subsidising seed. machinery was available and that gave employment to all who live here. Everybody - there was almost full employment in this area, even the young girls. Even on weekends, students used to go out and work on the farms. for something they could take to school during the week. 00.10.38 Alhaji Ibrahim Haurra Subtitles But with the collapse of the rice industry, there's nothing for anybody to depend on. Apart from moving to cities down south to go and look for something that is non-existent. So they come here and eventually they are half dead. Because they go there, they're hungry, they can't get good jobs. they come back with malaria and with other diseases. 00.11.01 Alhaji Ibrahim Haurra Subtitles Now we have to go and buy rice. Go and buy half a bag of rice - 50 kilos. Buy it for 300,000 (œ30) The IMF policy has been very negative and has affected this area terribly. Our standard of living has fallen very, very low. 00.11.22 Alhaji Ibrahim Haurra Subtitles When they say. they give figures That Ghana has done this and that. we haven't seen the effects on our people. 00.11.29 John Kampfner Ghana now spends a hundred million dollars a year importing rice from places like America. Two policies rolled into one; remove subsidies and remove trade barriers. The free market, in its purest form. 00.11.45 John Kampfner It's a kind of economic Darwinism - natural selection, survival of the fittest. 00.11.51 John Kampfner Ghana was told to concentrate on two basic commodities for export, gold and cocoa beans and let the rest wither away. 00.11.58 Music 00.11.59 John Kampfner A variation on a theme from colonial times. 00.12.02 Music 00.12.09 Aston PETER HARROLD Country Director, World Bank Why should a tropical, a semi-tropical, semi-arid country be growing rice? 00.12.16 John Kampfner So it shouldn't be? 00.12.17 Peter Harrold I doubt very much if Ghana should be even contemplating being self-sufficient in rice. Why would you want to do that when you've got Thailand and Vietnam with all of their natural advantages, producing rice at a price dramatically lower than Ghana could ever possibly contemplate? 00.12.33 John Kampfner No, I'm talking about America, the world's greatest economic superpower that subsidises its own agriculture to the tune of twenty billion dollars a year, you don't let the locals subsidise their own domestic agriculture, isn't there something wrong there? 00.12.46 Peter Harrold There's something wrong in American policy on agriculture, absolutely. 00.12.49 John Kampfner No, I'm talking about. 00.12.50 Peter Harrold No, I don't think so. You think, you think Ghana can out subsidise America? Let me give you, let me give you a number that is shocking but true. Subsidies in the OECD countries on agriculture exceed the income of Africa. You cannot out-subsidise those countries. 00.13.12 Music 00.13.14 John Kampfner This game of natural selection is rigged. Poor countries are forced to apply the rules, the rich are not. 00.13.22 John Kampfner For the people of the International Monetary Fund, the economists who deal with the numbers and the theories, these problems are a little unsettling. 00.13.29 Music 00.13.33 Aston GIRMA BEGASHAW Country Representative, IMF I can only say that the two institutions, the IMF and the World Bank, are on record. They are on record asking the EU, US and other major countries to remove obstacles to export from developing countries. I mean the issue is really, you can say but at the end of the day these countries have to implement their own domestic policies. 00.14.00 John Kampfner So for as long as this situation exists, for as long as this situation continues, you accept that the rules are unfair. 00.14.09 Girma Begashaw Well the rules are not unfair, the rules are fair but countries have to implement them. 00.14.15 John Kampfner So the situation is unfair? 00.14.18 Girma Begashaw The situation is unfair but the rules are fair. Free trade is, you know, I mean at least a move towards free trade is a fair rule. But whether it is implemented or not is another question and the situation becomes unfair. 00.14.37 John Kampfner And those who are the object of this unfairness are the weakest. 00.14.45 Girma Begashaw That's again the unfair situation. Or the unfortunate situation. 00.14.51 Music 00.14.56 John Kampfner It's so unfortunate no-one's taking responsibility. The institutions blame the governments for not practising what they preach. The governments now blame the institutions for preaching the wrong thing. 00.15.09 Music 00.15.12 John Kampfner The rice fields lie fallow in the Katanga Valley. No work. No jobs. The essentials of life denied. It's a similar story in other countries. 00.15.21 Music 00.15.24 John Kampfner A new generation of activists is emerging. Yao Graham heads Third World Network. He's based in Ghana but he travels further afield monitoring the effects of World Bank policies. 00.15.35 Aston YAO GRAHAM Third World Network If you work it through in terms of the benefits, that very small input from the central government worked its way through in some very important ways in creating dynamism in the local economy, stopping the drift of young people from countryside to the towns looking for jobs where there is none and also really just maintaining the dignity of people, the ability to do things and support themselves. Of course they stay in the villages, engage in subsistence agriculture, unable to afford the growing demands to pay for basic social services like education, like health, like water. So we get this viscous circle. 00.16.20 John Kampfner The loans came with conditions - cut public spending, open up markets, remove subsidies, charge for the essentials of life. And the loans brought debt - mountains of it. 00.16.31 Music 00.16.34 John Kampfner Last year Ghana spent less than four percent of its budget on health, seven times more money went to repaying interest on debt. 00.16.43 John Kampfner The main hospital in Tarkwa, in the heart of the mining region. It now has to be self-financing. That means making the patients pick up the tab. 00.16.51 Aston THEOPHILUS M'NYAMEKYE Hospital Administrator At the moment people have to pay for the cost of health care. 00.16.57 John Kampfner And for example, this lady, do you know did she have to pay? 00.17.00 Agnes Essel She will have to pay for the admission fee. 00.17.03 John Kampfner How much did she have to pay for her admission? 00.17.05 Aston AGNES ESSEL Ward Nurse She's not been, she has not been discharged. If she's discharged then we'll do the assessment and she will have to pay. 00.17.09 John Kampfner Right, so on discharging she has to pay. 00.17.11 Theophilus M'nyamekye Yes, yes. 00.17.12 John Kampfner And what about the other patients here? Is that the same for them or what about, what about the drugs, who pays for the drugs? 00.17.19 Agnes Essel They pay for the drugs. 00.17.20 Theophilus M'nyamekye They pay for the drugs. It's cash and carry. 00.17.23 John Kampfner Cash and carry. You call it cash and carry? 00.17.26 Theophilus M'nyamekye So.. 00.17.27 John Kampfner What is cash and carry? 00.17.29 Theophilus M'nyamekye The cash and carry system has been the policy of the Ministry of Health. Over the years there has been problems with financing of the ministry, of health care system and therefore it was thought wise to introduce what we call cost sharing. Now over time we realised that the government alone cannot take care of the health of the people and therefore individuals who need care have to come and pay. 00.18.04 John Kampfner Thanks to cash and carry Betty Krampa is a prisoner in this hospital. She's just given birth to twins; one died on delivery. She can't give the doctors the cash. Her husband's out of work; her parents are dead. Her jailers are as ashamed as she is at having to make her stay. But user fees have to be collected to keep the hospital going. 00.18.29 John Kampfner Could you just tell me, you have been discharged and you are staying until your in-laws can produce the money, is that correct? 00.18.39 Aston BETTY KRAMPA Voice over I'd like to go home but we can't pay the bill. 00.18.45 John Kampfner How long have you been in this hospital? 00.18.48 Betty Krampa Voice over I was discharged five days ago but my husband is looking for a loan to pay the hospital fees and hasn't been able to find it. He's gone to see if his uncle can lend him the money. 00.18.59 John Kampfner What was it like before cash and carry? 00.19.01 Aston Dr EBENEZER ACQUAH Principal Medical Officer I tell you one thing, when I was growing up I never paid for any medical services and I had several times been admitted to the teaching hospitals. It was good then; now it's like, if you can't afford then you are almost condemned. 00.19.25 John Kampfner Condemned by the debt mountain while living on a mountain of gold. 00.19.31 John Kampfner So it seems to me just having travelled around a bit in this area that you have a strange situation in which you have the mining companies making huge profits. Tarkwa should be a rich area. You are sitting on all this gold. 00.19.46 Dr Ebenezer Acquah On gold mine. 00.19.49 John Kampfner And here you have people who are detained here because they can't pay their medical fees. Why? 00.20.00 Dr Ebenezer Acquah Yes, umm, maybe if you had the chance to travel around the country you would notice that most of the mining areas have similar problems. All the gold is taken out but the people don't see the effects, the returns directly. 00.20.21 Music 00.20.31 John Kampfner In colonial times this was called the Gold Coast. It's always brought a rich seam of profits for foreigners. But the wealth has never poured down to the people. 00.20.40 John Kampfner Ghana was the first sub-Saharan country to go it alone. The main industries like gold were nationalised. But by the early eighties the economy had collapsed, corruption was rife, hopes were dashed. The IMF and World Bank, the white knights, rode in with a plan - structural adjustment. 00.21.00 John Kampfner Their message was simple - go for exports, bring back the foreigners to run things and the road to prosperity would be paved with gold. 00.21.09 John Kampfner First came privatisation then the incentives. Virtual tax holidays of up to ten years. Offshore havens for most of the profits. Rules on the environment kept to a minimum. 00.21.25 John Kampfner These investor friendly policies served as a model across the developing world. 00.21.35 John Kampfner The village of Dumasi. For the past nine years the locals have had to live within a stones throw of an open cast pit. It's taken them a while but now they're fighting back. 00.21.46 John Kampfner So this was your farm, yes? 00.21.48 Dei Nkrumah Safohene Yeah, this was my farm. You see the mining activities has degraded all the land. 00.21.53 John Kampfner And what did you used to grow? 00.21.54 Dei Nkrumah Safohene I used to grow cocoa, cassava, plantain, oil palm and cash crops, so many cash crops. 00.22.03 John Kampfner And now? 00.22.03 Aston DEI NKRUMAH SAFOHENE Community Leader All is degraded. All is spoilt. 00.22.07 John Kampfner You don't farm anything now? 00.22.08 Dei Nkrumah Safohene Anything. You see the whole farm is covered with their waste material. Most of the waste has just pushed to the cash crops. So we don't get anything. See we can't get money to afford to put our children into schooling. 00.22.26 John Kampfner It's a very short distance, isn't it? 00.22.27 Dei Nkrumah Safohene Yeah, it's a hundred metres, yeah. So the distance from the town to the pit is, the distance is too short. You see we have been meetings with the company, only they want their gold to go. They don't think about my life. 00.22.46 John Kampfner And tell me when, when they decided to dig here, to excavate here, what did they do? They came to the village. 00.22.53 Dei Nkrumah Safohene Yeah. 00.22.53 John Kampfner .and, and did they give you any notice, did they tell you what was happening or did they just say.. 00.22.58 Dei Nkrumah Safohene Ok, they came. They came nine years, nine years. This company is really using pressure. They came and say we allow them to operate, then the government allowed it. They brought in military and police personnel to do their mining activities. So even when you are going to your farming lands, they'd be brutal. 00.23.23 John Kampfner Allegations like these have been brought to a series of meetings protesting at the activities of mining companies. People from neighbouring villages have been mobilised. 00.23.35 Applause 00.23.41 Aston JAMES BEKOE Voice over They said we had a choice between relocation and re- settlement. On the sixth of February they brought thirty- six policemen with tear gas to force us out. They said we had been paid the value of our houses so we should leave. We refused until we had been paid the value of our lands. They beat us and pulled down our houses ruining everything we owned. 00.24.03 Music 00.24.07 John Kampfner For the people of Kyeyewere it's an impossible choice. Give up your land, leave your home and take the meagre compensation. But that's it, nothing to live on once the money runs out or stay put and face the consequences. 00.24.25 James Bekoe Voice over They also completely demolished all our schools. The nearest school to our settlement is now ten kilometres away and the children can't walk that far everyday. So they stay at home without any education. 00.24.38 Music 00.24.44 James Bekoe Voice over Life has become very hard for us. If you came to our village now, you would find us living under sheds. But since you at Dumasi have the support of your chief, I am sure everything will work out well. 00.24.56 Applause 00.24.59 John Kampfner The mining companies are keeping a watchful eye on the growing protest movement. 00.25.08 Security Guard As you probably understand you're trespassing. But I would rather this was.as soon as you like, ok. So the door's open down there for the BBC people. 00.25.19 John Kampfner Good. So we'll come down and see you shortly. 00.25.27 Aston YAO GRAHAM Third World Network I'm very happy to be here today in Dumasi and actually experience a mine executive come here, try to speak, his mouth was shaking like this, you know, and then off he went. I mean it just shows that the power of organised people is extremely important in any struggle that we are engaged in. You see because we are in a country where we had a transition to free politics, they say you can say anything you like. But you see you can't say anything you like, but if you don't have strength nobody will listen to you. 00.26.04 John Kampfner They are being forced to listen now and to answer for their actions. The balance of power is shifting. A human rights commission upheld the villager's complaints. But still the companies insist their local activities are a minor inconvenience. 00.26.19 Aston RICHARD GRAY Managing Director, Bogoso Gold Ltd. The impact of a mine has both good and bad effects. It has, it has what should be no more than nuisance value. If, if a mine is causing a, a, you know, the ailments you, you, you, you alluded to we definitely, you know, obviously we shouldn't be doing it. That wouldn't be, you know, totally unreasonable. But if the mining, you know, but we do accept that the mine does cause some nuisance value in terms of it is physically there, etceteras, etceteras. 00.26.46 John Kampfner Would you quite happily live within a hundred metres of that pit when the blasting takes place? 00.26.50 Richard Gray I don't, I don't, you know, to throw up the distance issue is one erroneous because they say there's the issue of who moved who. But apart from that we have, even where the nearest house is, we have done our monitoring in, in, in the presence of the community and they have agreed with us that blasting should continue because it wasn't an issue. So, therefore the answer to the question is yes, I'd be very happy to live there. I mean, I agree with what you said, it's not, you do hear it but you know it's a nuisance factor it's not a health factor or any other factor. 00.27.23 John Kampfner It was easy to fob off the villagers until they started enlisting the help of outside activists. 00.27.31 Aston HANNA KORANTENG Communities Affected by Mining People of Dumasi came to us last two years with their complaints. We have made interventions at the governmental level, at the local authority level and we have invited many people to investigate their problems. Problems of pollution, air and water pollution, problems of skin diseases, problems of children urinating blood, problems of communities not having fair and adequate compensation, problems of resettlement. 00.28.05 John Kampfner Each village has its own story but they form a common thread. 00.28.10 John Kampfner It's not the companies that are seen as the main culprits now, it's the foreign institutions which impose the rules. 00.28.17 John Kampfner Ghanaians no longer look to concerned outsiders to lobby for them. 00.28.23 Yao Graham I personally was going to be one of the many hundreds of thousands of people who would have been marching on the IMF and World Bank Headquarters in Washington. But as you all know the United States of America is in mourning because, I don't think anybody in the world has not heard of the terrible and tragic events that took place; the bombing of the World Trade Centre and also of the Pentagon. And anybody who has seen those images on TV, your stomach goes like that and properly everybody has condemned this, you know, as a senseless way of expressing whatever protest people want to express. 00.29.05 Yao Graham But we are living in a world where so many people are now feeling so taken for granted, not having power that unless the big powers become more and more sensitive to the demands of the weaker countries, all of us are endangered. So even as we condemn what happened in America, all of us also have a responsibility to press for foreign policy and policies generally globally which are more sensitive to the plight of the world's people. 00.29.40 Applause 00.29.44 Music 00.29.48 Aston IMF archive footage 00.29.48 Voice over At Bretton Wood, New Hampshire, delegates from forty- four allied and associate countries arrive for the opening of the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference. 00.29.57 John Kampfner The road to hell was paved with good intentions. The grand vision emerged from the debris of the Second World War. The IMF and its development arm, the World Bank, were the twin pillars guiding the world into a new era of growth. 00.30.13 John Kampfner The newly de-colonising nations were to fall within its warm embrace. New industries would be developed lifting them out of dependency. Trade would be pushed lifting them out of poverty. 00.30.24 Voice over ..and to create a foundation for lasting peace. 00.30.30 Gunshot 00.30.31 John Kampfner But as the disparity between rich and poor countries actually increased the doubts and the anger grew. 00.30.32 Aston Seattle, November 1999 00.30.38 John Kampfner Some of the protestors were spoiling for a fight. But most were driven by a moral outrage at the inequalities of the world order, at a globalisation process rigged against the weak and by the refusal of the big powers to listen. 00.30.55 John Kampfner The new man at the Bank arrived in the mid-nineties. To more caring Blairite and Clintonesque tones, he abandoned structural adjustment and unveiled a poverty reduction strategy. 00.31.05 John Kampfner He urged rich countries to support it and with startling foresight warned of the consequences if they didn't. Aston 1999 interview 00.31.12 Aston JAMES WOLFENSOHN Chairman, World Bank It's an issue of people coming in with a bomb or poison. Terrorism is something that is a new form of conflict, which can affect us wherever we are. And I believe that if you could have a more stable situation in the world, if you could have more equitable growth, then it's very much in our self-interest to make sure that that happens. 00.31.35 John Kampfner But it didn't happen and the protests grew. Each international meeting brought promises and platitudes. 00.31.36 Aston Genoa, July 2001 00.31.42 John Kampfner Wolfensohn called in the activists to discuss the policies but he shut them out when he didn't like their conclusions. 00.31.49 Music 00.31.53 John Kampfner Genoa this July - the meeting of the Group of Eight wealthiest nations. Three hundred thousand people on the streets. 00.31.59 Music 00.32.01 John Kampfner One protestor dead. The last mass gathering of the anti- globalisation movement. 00.32.07 Music 00.32.19 John Kampfner The violence may have grabbed the headlines but what went unnoticed was the presence of a growing number of political activists from all over the developing world including Ghana. They used every opportunity to tell the economic fundamentalists inside that their policies weren't working. 00.32.37 Aston HELLEN WANGUSA The big issue is debt in as far as it has acted as a leverage for conditionalities to be put in place, such as structural adjustment programmes and within that measures like privatisation of public assets and now privatisation of services and utilities like water and then liberalisation of agriculture, of markets, of trade, of interest rates that have direct impact on our productivity and our capacity to participate in the global process of developing our country. 00.33.12 John Kampfner Back in Accra, Hellen Wangusa is on the trail of more evidence. She has a rendezvous in the central market with a particularly vulnerable set of workers. 00.33.22 Hellen Wangusa We are with a young group of women from the north, dislocated from their traditional habitat. They're doing manual work; they're working as porters for only fifteen thousand cedis. And when you break that down into how much they need to spend and save it really is very little. 00.33.41 Hellen Wangusa Can you describe for me a typical day's work? 00.33.48 Aston RUKAYA Voice over We get up at five am, arrive at the market at seven and our mistress comes at about seven thirty. We open the shop and set up the stalls and when people start coming we start carrying the goods. At about four pm we pack away the stalls. By the time we finish it's five and we go home. 00.34.11 Hellen Wangusa How many years did you spend at school? 00.34.14 Rukaya Voice over I never went to school. 00.34.17 Hellen Wangusa If you had the chance or a choice, what would you have liked to do? 00.34.24 Rukaya Voice over If I'd gone to school I know I would have found a better job. If I had gone to school I'd have loved to study dressmaking. I would have liked to acquire a skill. 00.34.35 Hellen Wangusa How can the bank and the IMF understand poverty unless they come and get that understanding from the people because the understanding they have is from what they do the analysis on in the books, by economists. That understanding is different from how the people define poverty. Poverty here is not only about people living below one dollar a day, it's like those girls being isolated, being dislocated from their social habitat. It includes all that; it includes their dignity. 00.35.08 John Kampfner The terrorist strikes on New York and Washington shocked and horrified people here. 00.35.13 John Kampfner Ghanaians are instinctively pro-American and pro- British. Religious tension is rare. Christians and Muslims live in harmony. But September the eleventh was also seen as the culmination of frustrations that had been building up for some time. 00.35.32 Hellen Wangusa I think we started seeing that even in the demonstrations in Genoa, they were peaceful demonstrations but there were definitely sections of the demonstration that were very violent. 00.35.41 Hellen Wangusa That comes out of frustration of people from seeing institutions that are in a position where they knew everything, they knew how to address poverty, they knew what the government was and over fifteen to twenty years they haven't been able to deliver. And in some countries people have been patient over fifteen years waiting for this, for this posterity to yield and it's not happening. 00.36.07 Music 00.36.11 John Kampfner Radio is the most powerful medium in Ghana and Vibe FM is one of the most influential stations. Its most popular phone-in is Point Blank. 00.36.20 Music 00.36.29 John Kampfner The programme is hosted by Kwesi Pratt, a former political prisoner. 00.36.34 Kwesi Pratt Hello and welcome to this week's edition of Point Blank. Today we are going to look at the whole concept of globalisation. 00.36.44 John Kampfner These days the World Bank is trying to re-invent itself as the 'listening bank'. The relationship has changed. Now it has to justify all its policies to a more questioning public. 00.36.55 John Kampfner Today the structural adjustment programme is being dissected; starting with all the conditions attached to the loans. 00.37.02 Peter Harrold Conditionalities, I mean they cover all sorts of different areas. 00.37.10 Kwesi Pratt If you can just take the main ones, you know. 00.37.13 Peter Harrold You name it, there have been at various times, it has to be said, conditions in almost, in almost every sector. 00.37.20 Kwesi Pratt But actually I wanted to know what those conditions are. 00.37.24 Peter Harrold Well, they're not particularly secret, they are, sometimes if you want to. 00.37.30 Kwesi Pratt You look quite uncomfortable talking about them. 00.37.32 Peter Harrold No, no, I'll talk about conditions, no it's just that there are so many of them. 00.37.36 John Kampfner These are the World Bank's new tactics - concede the arguments in principle and promise change. But actually on the ground conditions are being applied with as much vigour as ever. 00.37.47 Peter Harrold He thinks there is, everybody thinks there is. 00.37.49 Man No, no, it's in the IMF, you know, benchmarks. 00.37.56 Peter Harrold There's a difference between a benchmark and a condition but that's ok. 00.37.59 Kwesi Pratt A benchmark is a condition. 00.38.02 Peter Harrold Why? Because the Ghana Water Corporation has failed Ghana. If anybody thinks, here's a challenge, if anybody thinks they get great service from Ghana Water Company let them phone and praise this company, this company has failed Ghanaian society. 00.38.20 Kwesi Pratt Well, Peter, can I ask a question, can I ask the question? Obviously there are many people who think that your organisation has failed the people of the third world. 00.38.28 Peter Harrold That's true. 00.38.28 Kwesi Pratt Should we just sell it off to some multi-national corporation? 00.38.32 Caller Good morning... actually, I want to get this directed to Mr Peter Harrold. I don't like the way he's trying to deceive everybody. Now this is the issue; the IMF, World Bank policies that come with the structural adjustment programme and economic recovery programme actually adjust government policy away from public welfare to debt servicing. 00.38.55 John Kampfner People know the detail now. They know how much has been spent on basic services and how much on debt. They're linking the local economy and global politics. 00.39.06 John Kampfner This phone-in was two days after the attacks on America. But already callers were suggesting a connection between poverty and terrorism. 00.39.15 Caller .now can we stop pretending, while the people are dying that what's happened in America should give us a clue that it's not the people, it's not just about terrorism. Who created the terrorists? It is God Almighty didn't create anybody to become a terrorist? It is the system that is making the people so. You see what I am talking about. 00.39.32 Kwesi Pratt Yes sir. 00.39.33 Caller .that this kind of chaos will continue, the unrest will continue, all this will continue. 00.39.37 Kwesi Pratt Thank you very much, your point is well made and thank you very much. Peter, quick reaction. 00.39.43 Peter Harrold He's right and we agree, we've changed and we are doing something about Africa's debt problem, so that that problem of resources only going to service debt instead of education and health etceteras will not be the same in the future. 00.39.54 Music 00.39.56 John Kampfner Frustration is growing. Reliance on gold and cocoa hasn't brought wealth to the people. Other industries are struggling like textiles. Locally made clothes have given way to second hand imports. 00.40.08 John Kampfner This time though the Bank says it really does have a plan for the poor. HIPC - the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative. For Ghana just the name marks the final humiliation. Model pupil turned beggar. 00.40.22 John Kampfner The Bank promises its intentions are good - write off much of the debt and divert the money to basic services. 00.40.29 John Kampfner So if it's so desirable, if it's only aim is purely to reduce poverty, if it's simply providing countries with debt relief on a plate - why are so many Ghanaians against it? 00.40.38 Peter Harrold There are people who, who were not enthusiastic about structural adjustment and believe this was just going to be more pain. They couldn't believe that the World Bank and IMF were advocating a programme that was actually going to relieve the country of debt. They couldn't believe that that would be the case even though it is the case. 00.41.01 John Kampfner So it was too good. 00.41.01 Peter Harrold There had to be a trick. 00.41.02 John Kampfner It was too good to be true. 00.41.03 Peter Harrold Too good to be true. 00.41.05 John Kampfner Every country that underwent structural adjustment is mired in debt. Even the bank admits average incomes have failed to rise in twenty years. 00.41.14 John Kampfner Is it surprising then that people no longer believe the grand promises for the future, given everything that's happened in the past? 00.41.21 Yao Graham Ghana moved from being the great black hope of structural adjustment, the shining star of the African continent to becoming one more highly indebted poor country among forty plus others. 00.41.39 Yao Graham If anything, I think it's very clear, that those who accuse the IMF and the World Bank of a market fundamentalism and also trying to impose a mono-culture of economic models on people, they have been validated. 00.41.57 Yao Graham When you ask the people from the Bank and the Fund to point you to one country where the model has worked they begin to tell you that people have not carried on with the programme enough. But they must show that the real world, it doesn't happen as they have preached it. If in the real world nobody is able to follow their orthodoxy, is it people who are wrong or what they are thinking in their heads which is wrong? 00.42.22 Music 00.42.28 John Kampfner They admit it themselves; their thinking was wrong. Economic fundamentalism has left hundreds of millions worse off than ever and the world more unequal than ever. 00.42.40 John Kampfner In these more unstable times, perhaps if only for self- preservation, the prophecies of doom will no longer be ignored. 00.42.48 Music 00.42.51 Voice over For more information about tonight's programme please visit our web site at: www.bbc.co.uk/correspondent 00.43.01 Voice over Next week - can men who've dedicated their lives to violent crime really change? In South Africa we follow two convicted killers as they're released from prison to try to make a clean break with the past. Credits 00.42.51 Reporter JOHN KAMPFNER Camera DEAN JOHNSON Dubbing Mixer PHITZ HEARNE VT Editor NICK KAMPA Graphic Design NICOLA OWEN Production Team ALEXANDRA CAMERON EMMA CASHMORE SARAH EVA KEITH POTTER ANJANA SHARMA Production Manager JANE WILLEY Unit Manager IRENE OZGA Film Research NICK DODD Assistant Producer ANTONIA GREGORY Picture Editor DAVID HOWELL Series Producer SIMON FINCH Directed & Produced STUART TANNER Deputy Editor FARAH DURRANI 00.43.14 Editor FIONA MURCH BBC ¸ BBC MMI 00.43.20 End BBC Correspondent 1 21