Africa: Jubilee warns of another 1980s debt crisis
JOHANNESBURG: The Jubilee Debt Campaign is calling for an immediate US$400 billion debt cancellation for developing countries to avoid returning to a 1980s-style crisis.
In the era of the "credit crunch", where bail-outs and stimulus packages are often quoted in trillions of US dollars, Nick Dearden, a Jubilee director based in London, said debt cancellation would enable the world's 100 poorest countries to fight poverty and relieve some of the devastating effects of the global recession on their economies.
To put it in perspective, Dearden said, the US government's bail-out of one insurance company, American International Group (AIG), could have wiped out the entire debt of all sub-Saharan Africa countries.
