Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debt

Understanding Sudan’s current affairs is contingent on clearly grasping its postcolonial history. This history encompasses the rise and fall of dictatorships and the popular revolts that sought to unseat them. It is not just beneficial but essential for devising a successful development strategy. In the following sections, I will delve into the Sudanese case through three lenses: an exploration of how ’maldevelopment’ caused by Bretton Woods institutions weakened the Global South countries’ post-colonial dreams, an overview of post-colonial Sudan’s politics, and a brief on Sudan’s specific situation. I will then conclude with a potential way to envision a different future for Sudan, offering hope despite the moment’s challenges and emphasizing the urgent need for a new development model.

 Bretton Woods institutions and the imposition of maldevelopment on the Global South

Some primary challenges facing the Sudanese state after independence weren’t unique to Sudan but shared across the Global South. These challenges included building a new nation based on diversity, democratization, and a self-reliant economy, including robust national education, agricultural, and manufacturing sectors. However, in Sudan, and during the struggle for independence, the leaders of decolonization suggested that these challenges required specific national plans to fit the Sudanese specificity and be rooted in sovereignty. Yet, the colonized political elite chose a different route to nation-building: the path of connecting the new nation to former colonial power and new metropolitans, including global financial institutions such as the Bretton Woods institutions (the World Bank World Bank
WB The World Bank was founded as part of the new international monetary system set up at Bretton Woods in 1944. Its capital is provided by member states’ contributions and loans on the international money markets. It financed public and private projects in Third World and East European countries.

It consists of several closely associated institutions, among which :

1. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, 189 members in 2017), which provides loans in productive sectors such as farming or energy ;

2. The International Development Association (IDA, 159 members in 1997), which provides less advanced countries with long-term loans (35-40 years) at very low interest (1%) ;

3. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which provides both loan and equity finance for business ventures in developing countries.

As Third World Debt gets worse, the World Bank (along with the IMF) tends to adopt a macro-economic perspective. For instance, it enforces adjustment policies that are intended to balance heavily indebted countries’ payments. The World Bank advises those countries that have to undergo the IMF’s therapy on such matters as how to reduce budget deficits, round up savings, enduce foreign investors to settle within their borders, or free prices and exchange rates.

, the International Monetary Fund IMF
International Monetary Fund Along with the World Bank, the IMF was founded on the day the Bretton Woods Agreements were signed. Its first mission was to support the new system of standard exchange rates.

When the Bretton Wood fixed rates system came to an end in 1971, the main function of the IMF became that of being both policeman and fireman for global capital: it acts as policeman when it enforces its Structural Adjustment Policies and as fireman when it steps in to help out governments in risk of defaulting on debt repayments.

As for the World Bank, a weighted voting system operates: depending on the amount paid as contribution by each member state. 85% of the votes is required to modify the IMF Charter (which means that the USA with 17,68% % of the votes has a de facto veto on any change).

The institution is dominated by five countries: the United States (16,74%), Japan (6,23%), Germany (5,81%), France (4,29%) and the UK (4,29%).
The other 183 member countries are divided into groups led by one country. The most important one (6,57% of the votes) is led by Belgium. The least important group of countries (1,55% of the votes) is led by Gabon and brings together African countries.

http://imf.org , and the World Trade Organization, etc.). These institutions imposed tragic experimentations of policies (or conditionality measures) under the pretext of development and modernization, leading to mounting national debt without positive results. The conditionality measures, also known as the structural adjustment Structural Adjustment Economic policies imposed by the IMF in exchange of new loans or the rescheduling of old loans.

Structural Adjustments policies were enforced in the early 1980 to qualify countries for new loans or for debt rescheduling by the IMF and the World Bank. The requested kind of adjustment aims at ensuring that the country can again service its external debt. Structural adjustment usually combines the following elements : devaluation of the national currency (in order to bring down the prices of exported goods and attract strong currencies), rise in interest rates (in order to attract international capital), reduction of public expenditure (’streamlining’ of public services staff, reduction of budgets devoted to education and the health sector, etc.), massive privatisations, reduction of public subsidies to some companies or products, freezing of salaries (to avoid inflation as a consequence of deflation). These SAPs have not only substantially contributed to higher and higher levels of indebtedness in the affected countries ; they have simultaneously led to higher prices (because of a high VAT rate and of the free market prices) and to a dramatic fall in the income of local populations (as a consequence of rising unemployment and of the dismantling of public services, among other factors).

IMF : http://www.worldbank.org/ programs, which included defunding national plans on the population’s welfare and long-lasting austerity policies, had severe implications for the country’s economy and the development of crucial sectors like education, health, agriculture, and manufacturing.

The policies implemented by the Bretton Woods institutions in Sudan’s economy can be seen as a ’tragic achievement’ of the global financial system. Despite their claims to promote “development” and “modernization,” their conditionality measures led to the creation of crippling structures and an ever-increasing national debt. This outcome obstructed any possibility of supporting the population’s welfare across many vital sectors, highlighting the paradoxical nature of their interventions.

The conditionality and global practices imposed by international financial institutions, backed by powerful Northern countries, have contributed to an exaggerated global trade’s structural imbalances, giving rise to the polycrisis. On the one hand, the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the 1980s restrained most countries in the Global South from investing in the agricultural sector – the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed loans conditionality that excluded state control on critical sectors such as agriculture, education, health, manufacturing sectors, which harmed population’s welfare and created a dependency on foreign (state and non-state) actors. Meanwhile, northern countries were just doing the opposite.

Countries of the Global South couldn’t invest and develop agricultural commodities Commodities The goods exchanged on the commodities market, traditionally raw materials such as metals and fuels, and cereals. due to loan restrictions, unjustified high interests, and the asymmetrical global trade system. The US and EU increased their agricultural production by benefiting from inconsistent policies of subsidies, tariffs, “free trade” agreements, and unequal quota systems. The overproduction of agricultural commodities led by the US and EU has dominated global markets. Global South countries became the dumping places for the US and EU’s surplus crops, often sold at lower prices than domestic crops, driving domestic farmers out of the market. On the other hand, Global South countries have been prohibited from pursuing similar policies of subsidizing their agricultural sectors and forced to accept unfair “free trade” agreements that made their agricultural products super-costly. As a result, the countries of the Global South have lost one opportunity after another to advance their local agricultural sectors, a gross injustice in the global trade system that should evoke a sense of indignation in all of us.

These systematic policies of underdevelopment have forced Global South countries to import essential agricultural and food commodities from wealthier nations. This global trade system boosted the agricultural sectors in the Global North while devastating social welfare in the Global South. Consequently, Global South countries have become extremely vulnerable and unable to feed their citizens. Subsequently, violent conflicts, internal and external migration, disease, food shortages, and famine have become inherent in Global South countries. The food aid phenomenon was a response to the devastation caused by such structural policies, wherein the Global South has been forced to seek political loyalty in exchange for food aid from wealthy nations. The “generosity” of donor countries is often used as a political tool to manipulate “development” plans in recipient countries in favor of the donor countries’ interests. [1]

Furthermore, free trade discourse departs radically from its practices. The idea of free trade implies an even exchange based on impartial market forces which determine the values of goods and services. However, the reality is that trade is highly uneven and concentrated. One such cause of trade imbalance is the 1980s Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), a set of economic policies predicated on strict privatization of public sectors, open national economies for multinationals, and austerity measures implemented by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to spur economic growth in the affected countries. These SAPs restrained most countries in the Global South from investing in value-added agricultural products, while the Global North was just doing the opposite. These policies have weakened most national economies in the Global South and made them highly vulnerable to the impact of the global financial system.

The current global trade system is a dysfunctional regime fostering imbalances in trade. For instance, intellectual and industrial property rights (IPR), influenced by powerful international actors such as multinational corporations, powerful Northern countries, and the World Trade Organization (WTO WTO
World Trade Organisation The WTO, founded on 1^st January 1995, replaced the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT). The main innovation is that the WTO enjoys the status of an international organization. Its role is to ensure that no member States adopt any kind of protectionism whatsoever, in order to accelerate the liberalization global trading and to facilitate the strategies of the multinationals. It has an international court (the Dispute Settlement Body) which judges any alleged violations of its founding text drawn up in Marrakesh.

), have hijacked the right of the Global South to “development,” where unrestricted deregulation of foreign trade shaped by the interests of the most powerful countries in the global North. Such practices have deprived Global South countries of their rights to pursue the appropriate path for suitable and sustainable development, to command desirable protection of their environment, and to apply indigenous practices to agricultural sectors and local food systems. [2]

 Post-colonial Sudan’s politics

On the one hand, since Sudan’s independence in 1956, the colonized political elite invested in militarization and non-state actors instead of building state institutions. This investment led to the subjection of the diverse Sudanese population to a semi-colonial structure of a racialized state that treated citizens as hostage subjects in a highly securitized and socially controlled state governed by particular coercive ideologies and policies. At the same time and throughout its history, briefly interrupted by popular revolts, the colonized political elite instituted public policies promoting “free-market” economic logic and neoliberal austerity choices. These sets of ideologies and policies worked to demoralize the Sudanese people (through military coups and civil wars) and to prevent them from engaging in social action to imagine decolonial nation-building and sovereignty. [3]

On the other hand, Sudanese social movements have demonstrated remarkable resilience, producing innovative models of resistance to guide their mobilizations for civil and democratic alternatives to totalitarian regimes. Their deliberate and patient organizing and mass mobilization have led to the overthrow of three dictatorial regimes, the end of two civil wars, and limited experiments toward democratic transitions. This resilience was evident in the popular uprisings of October 1964 and April 1985 and the most recent uprising of 2018.

For example, in December 2018, Sudanese social movements, under the umbrella of Sundanese Professional Associations (SPA) and later the Declaration of Freedom and Change (DFC), successfully popularized the slogan “Freedom, Peace, Justice, and Revolution are the people’s choice,” to draw attention to the futile policies of the Islamist National Congress Party (NCP) and denounce its failures at the levels of governance, development, and the rule of law. It’s worth noting that the SPA and the DFC engaged urgently in concretizing the people slogan and took several steps to concretize it and forge a broad coalition to achieve its objectives. They first invited all political parties and civil society to participate in a broad new alliance, the Declaration of Freedom and Change (DFC), signed on January 1, 2019. The newly formed coalition comprised political parties and civil society organizations opposing the dictatorial regime, and it agreed to a specific transitional recovery program to be led by a civilian government after the overthrow of the dictatorship. The new social movement surfaced during the December revolt, led by the SPA. [4] It was visionary because it understood the inevitability of social change and focused on pressing sociopolitical and economic grievances. The movement recruited into its ranks victims of the regime, including young people, women, rural people, and the urban intelligentsia. In this way, it created a well-organized, underground, carefully designed, inclusive, and accountable grassroots critical mass. The SPA, which comprised many professional associations banned by the regime, including associations of young doctors, farmers, lawyers, teachers, workers, and other civil servants, engaged in novel styles of protest. They used places of worship and learning, neighborhoods, and rural community centers, and they wielded different tools and technologies for protest, including cultural and art forms, to reach many segments of society, both within and beyond Sudan. As such, they have been able to spread their message, exposing the regime’s crimes and weaknesses. For example, their focus on corruption within the ruling party enabled them to critique both the relationship between the state and religion, on the one hand, and neoliberal austerity politics, on the other.

 Sudan specific situation

The historical patterns of incorporating Sudan into the global economic system are well documented and shaped by structural linkages of the country’s economy to those of Europe and North America (the Global North). In the post-independence era, the country’s various economic activities and supply chains have remained uninterruptedly linked to their former colonizers. Then and now, the flow of products, knowledge, and information between producers and consumers was more effortlessly circulated across the seas than between regional and neighboring countries. Today, Sudan still has more established trade relationships with the Global North than neighboring, regional, or Global South countries. These trade relationships with the Global North were established during colonial times and reinforced in the 1980s through free trade agreements that further enmeshed Sudan in an unfair global trade system. The country is relegated to providing only raw materials in this trading Market activities
trading Buying and selling of financial instruments such as shares, futures, derivatives, options, and warrants conducted in the hope of making a short-term profit. system. This position has cost Sudan tremendously because producing finished goods is a more lucrative modality in this system. This position has prevented Sudan from building the infrastructures necessary for sovereign decisions in the most critical sectors supporting its population and providing sustainable pathways that fit the country’s needs and context.

Moreover, the global architecture that enforces the current legal, financial, economic, and political relations, in reality, resembles subordination, in which a demonstrated scandalous socio-economic-political hegemony of long-standing colonial and racialized structures is reinforced. That leaves countries of the Global South with only a few options to survive, such as opening their markets to low-cost essential commodities from the global markets. As such, the call to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 – albeit admirable and humanistic goals – is far from possible with the current global financial architecture. As such, there is an immediate need to employ a systematic and collective effort to materialize sovereignty as a fundamental right of states to remove structural imbalances that have paralyzed Global South countries from achieving equality and equity Equity The capital put into an enterprise by the shareholders. Not to be confused with ’hard capital’ or ’unsecured debt’. in the first place.

 Imagining a different path for Sudan

The Sudanese social movements must not relinquish the need for a broad democratic coalition to deal with Sudan’s chronic problems and to prevent Sudan from vanishing as a unified sovereign country. Instead, pro-democracy forces need to forge a broad coalition to achieve the dreams of decolonial political, social, and economic project alternatives to the devastated one of neoliberalism. Such an alternative must honor the aspirations that motivated the Sudanese people’s revolts. It will require any transitional government to act on clear goals brought by popular revolts time and again. These goals are (1) implementing an immediate national economic recovery plan beyond austerity measures; (2) restructuring of the state institutions and a revival of civil society based on the rule of law; (3) embedding the demands of a just transition into all development planning; (4) strengthening the culture of peace within the social fabric of society; and (5) transcending the state itself, to achieve the goals and objectives laid out in the DFC’s guiding principles.
Additionally, forging such a new path will require something other than guiding future objectives. It will require reckoning with past atrocities’ legacies and imagining justice beyond punitive methods. Such justice requires deliberate planning and delivery of people’s demands for human security, justice, and dignity for all Sudanese people. Such deliverables will be only achievable by canceling Sudan’s national foreign debt, developing sovereign and transparent plans for equitable development, creating a regulatory system to govern foreign direct investment to deal with the illicit flow of capital from the country, developing state institutions to enhance political and economic stability, and finally, centering all development plans in the context of sovereignty and self-reliant.

For the last sixty-eight years, the prescriptions of Bretton Woods institutions’ model of development have been proven to be a complete failure, which entailed unthinkable destruction. An alternative to such a model exists in the vision of a sovereign government that embraces pluralism in governance and accepts the wealth of identities, cultures, and diverse languages in Sudan. Only by achieving this vision can help the Sudanese people overcome the pains of the past. These political actions are what the people of Sudan need most as they steer clear of continuing colonized political elite and liberate themselves from the remanence of coloniality.