This is a general issue which covers a wide range of topics falling under the general heading of ‘the political economies of the everyday’. It covers such topics as debt (Carolyn Bassett), neoliberalism and gender in Egypt (Karim Malak and Sara Salem), extrajudicial executions and civil society in Kenya (Peris Jones, Kavita Ramakrishnan and Wangui Kimari), reform and counter reform in Kenya’s land governance (Jacqueline Klopp and Odenda Lumumba), the politics of the Kenyan sex workers’ movement (Eglė Česnulytė), military corruption among Zimbabwean troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Godfrey Maringira) and state building and educational expansion in the Congo (Cyril Brandt). In her article on Africa’s next debt crisis, Carolyn Bassett poses a discerning question: ‘Could we be seeing the beginnings of a new African debt crisis a short decade after debt forgiveness reduced Africa’s mountain of debt?’ Her concern is premised on the growing number of commodity exporters who are now beginning to experience debt servicing difficulties. She warns that the debt recovery system that is now being instituted by the international financial institutions (IFIs) is simply a return to the bad old days of the 1980s, which impeded African growth, and in its wake left ‘the “precarious” component of [heavily indebted poor countries] which is causing African governments to pay out large sums up-front and reducing funds for the [Millennium Development Goals]’ (Commission for Africa 2005, 367). For Bassett, the major source of this growing indebtedness is that African governments have increased their borrowing from several lenders, old and new, particularly from Africa’s international sovereign bonds, the focus of her article. She draws attention to the devastating sway of neoliberal thinking impelling African governments ‘down a dangerous path of higher levels of indebtedness… into global financial markets without proper regulatory mechanism in place’. She points to the need to strengthen the regulatory regime in order to pre-empt an impending crisis. Furthermore, while international sovereign bonds account for only a small proportion (5.8%) of sub-Saharan African’s debt, nonetheless, they have been steadily growing in absolute terms and as a percentage of total debt. She identifies four converging reasons why many African governments have been able to attract international bond investors since 2008. First, many African countries since 2008 have had their debts cancelled; second, there is a lack of attractive bond offerings elsewhere; third, after 2000, African economies experienced rapid growth fuelled by rising demand for raw materials; and finally, there are growing economic ties with emerging economies such as China and Brazil. Bassett addresses the question of the viability of international sovereign bonds in Africa’s development. In her view the downturn in the global economy puts Africa’s exports in danger and poses a major threat to the ability of African states to service their debt. The situation is aggravated by the fact that: ‘Most African international sovereign bonds were denominated in US dollars, whose value had risen relative to the currencies of most commodity exporters, [thus] increasing service costs.’ For Bassett, it is the duty of radical scholars ‘to raise questions about the wisdom of Africa’s international sovereign bonds and their prevailing neoliberal regulatory framework’.
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