New urgency for cancelling Africa’s debt

There is growing optimism that 2005 may prove a watershed year in the drive to cancel much of Africa’s foreign debt, a notion inconceivable two decades ago when the global anti-debt movement took off. “We are encouraged,” civil society groups declared at an African Social Forum in Lusaka, Zambia, in December, “that after many years of half-measures, full cancellation is being discussed” at the level of the Group of Eight (G-8) industrialized countries, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.