Trade Unions in Africa have reaffirmed their commitment and efforts to help resolve Africa’s debt crisis. The Unions have strengthened their calls for the international community to provide timely and sufficient debt relief to countries facing unsustainable debt burdens and a comprehensive reform for an international debt architecture that breaks cycle of debt crises in future.

The representatives of the trade unions from across Africa made the call in a statement signed by Mr Kwasi Adu-Amankwah, General Secretary, ITUC-Africa, after a landmark continental workshop on Sovereign Debt organised jointly by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), and the African Regional Organisation of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC-Africa) in Dakar, Senegal.

This workshop provided a platform for fostering collaboration, knowledge sharing, and strategic planning to address the pressing challenges posed by sovereign debt in our continent, especially in terms of how the negative impacts of debt affect workers, members of their families, communities, and economies.

The trade unions were concerned that Africa’s development aspirations expressed in the African Union Agenda 2063 and the push for the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) would fail to materialise if the current debt burden of the continent was not halted and reversed.

COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated Africa’s debt crisis and contributed to the attendant vulnerability effects on the global supply chains, compounded by the ongoing war in Ukraine. The trade unions, thus, affirmed that the repercussions of debt distress and its effects had not spared African working women and men.

“Countries that have defaulted on their debt repayments have tumbled into deeply painful economic crises. Several African governments have sought to avoid repayment defaults only through adopting unpopular, harsh and repressive austerity measures,” the statement said.

Implementation of The New Social Contract

The trade unions, therefore, indicated they would continue to advance the implementation of the New Social Contract demands of the International Trade Union Movement, which, if effectively implemented, would contribute to addressing the social, economic, political and environmental development deficits.

The trade unions added that they would continue to resist the harsh austerity conditions imposed in response to debt crises across Africa to promote alternatives that protect workers’ rights and prioritise a job-and-wages led recovery for crisis-hit countries.

They resolved to use research, education (capacity building) and analysis to deepen their advocacy for inclusive, responsive, responsible and efficient debt contracting arrangements and management that work for all while advocating for transparency and accountability from both governments and creditors.

“We shall link our Illicit Financial Flows (Tax Justice – payment of fair tax share and progressive tax arrangements) campaign with debt as part of our resolve to continue contributing to and ensuring a secured fiscal space to drive our development aspirations.

“On the politics of debts that shape the rules and skew the asymmetry of power against developing economies and the intensification of austerity measures, which have continued to exert adverse effects on workers’ rights, shrink of civil liberty spaces and compromise the environment, we shall continue to engage local, national, continental and international development financing agencies such as national central banks, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.”
Mr Kwasi Adu-Amankwah

The trade unions urged those institutions to respond and engage with trade unions across Africa in meaningful dialogue to enhance sustainable, people-first responses to the debt crisis.

Among others, the unions said they would continue to build synergies, collaborations and partnerships with progressive African Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to advance pragmatic alternatives to the African debt crisis and explore and utilise solidarity engagements with our trade union counterparts and CSOs in the global North to ensure a pro-people arrangement for debt management.