As G8 leaders gather in Camp David, the world is being affected by an international debt crisis. Food security initiatives, to be discussed at the summit, will be undercut if the G8 doesn't address the growing sovereign debt crisis. If the G8 supports the creation of a fair and transparent debt workout mechanism, it would free up needed resources in the developing and developed worlds to create sustainable food security.

"It is impossible to have any sustainable G8 develop initiatives without addressing the international debt crisis," said Eric LeCompte, Jubilee USA's Executive Director. "Countries in the developing world have struggled under crushing debt burdens, risking default or paying debts at the expense of critical domestic needs for decades. Now that the debt crisis has spread to the Global North, a new framework is urgently needed to address the international debt crisis."

Friday 18 May 2012

IRIN Reporters.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has withdrawn its advisory team from Swaziland, saying it is unable to support the government’s proposed financial reform programme.

The IMF was assisting the government in implementing the Fiscal Adjustment Roadmap (FAR), to right-size the budget, where government spending currently exceeds its revenue.

“Government has yet to propose a credible reform programme that could be supported by a new IMF staff monitored programme… the budget allocates an increasing share of resources to some sectors at the expense of education and health,” Joannes Mongardini, head of the IMF team in Swaziland, told a recent press conference.

Swaziland’s severe financial woes began after the global slowdown in 2008, when revenue from the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) plummeted. The union - comprising Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa and Swaziland - applies a common set of tariffs and disproportionately distributes the revenue to member states.

The spending habits of King Mswati III - sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch - and the royal household are routinely splashed across newspapers, from the overseas shopping trips of his 13 wives to a “birthday present” for the king this year of a multimillion-dollar private jet. The South African daily newspaper, The Star, reported on 17 May that one of Mswati’s wives had run up a bill of US$65,000 at a luxury Johannesburg hotel during her month-long stay.

About two-thirds of Swaziland’s 1.1 million population live in chronic poverty in a food insecure country that also has the world's highest HIV/AIDS prevalence, with one in four people aged 15-49 infected.

HARARE, ZIMBABWE, 2 April 2012. The launch of the Policy framework document: Accelerated Arrears Clearance, Debt and Development Strategy (ZAADDS), by the Inclusive government of Zimbabwe on the 16th of March 2012, was a landmark event in the history of the inclusive government. ZAADDS is one among numerous important policy documents this government came up with since birth in 2008.AFRODAD is proud to have participated in the development of this key framework that is premised to resolve Zimbabwe’s debt overhang.