The positive and negative influences of Scholars, Analysis, and International News Media outlets on New Africa Rising Regions and its programs

Written by Dennis S Murray Sr.

I have under covered many elements and subject matters that reflect the current economic state of Africa and numerous scholars, analyst’s, international media outlets, and our African officials affect the prosperity of mother earth and its people. Africa has always been a place that many of us in America have set side because we have seem it from the outside and not he inside of despair and the deplorable issues that haunt this population of people.

The following text Economic Growth and Development in Africa published by Horman Chitonge (HC) has influence my ability to understand along with the reading of documents that reflect its current state and methodology of what Africa people need, want, have accomplished, and are knowledgeable as it relates to the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and Highly Indebted Poor Counties (HIPC). I have engaged this knowledge from the arguments of scholars, analysis, and international media outlets whom played such a significant role in Africa’s development. I have truly understood how this industrialize world of culture, raw life, and beautiful people have been devalued significantly for decades throughout the European Union. First of all, I truly feel that discrimination has impacted the perception and sterilized our fears of neglected towards Africa particularly;  because of the negativity impacting this  developing countries which led to Africa never achieving the level of institutionalization growth requirements for a formal functioning state while remaining un-emancipated from societies disenfranchisement was challenged.    

Media has a powerful capacity to encourage this global awareness thereby promoting a cross-cultural understanding, tolerance and acceptance of ethnic, cultural, religious and gender differences in communities across this continent of Africa. Unfortunately, the media’s potentially enforces good as easy as it can backfire when it’s attempting to transform economic growth. By disseminating messages that create and reinforce negative stereotypes and perpetuate misconceptions, the media frustrated dialogue and works against mutual understanding seem to define message that insult the process in Africa.

Scholars, Analysts, and Africa’s officials report on CNN and BBC World a free fall phenomenon that the freedom of South African during Apathetic international growth didn’t’ reflect a positive change in revolutionary moments regarding economic freedom over the 24-hour news cycle. Because, the crisis in Rwanda was examined in tandem role of both the international media and Rwanda's news organizations in cataclysmic events of 1994 which encountered negative issues of positive growth in Africa while demonstrating concepts of New Africa rising people in economic development during 1994 genocide.

Most issues were eliminated the distance factors reported by the news outlets that portrays them by obtaining information from satellite television to created a public sphere and new political movements of advancement. These developments have been amplified and accelerated by the Internet, which is allowing growing segments of the general population to access and be part of the new media, even in many developing countries. Therefore, crucial arenas were challenged during prevailing attitudes regarding the many “others” across the globe. As individuals we don’t simply hold intellectual beliefs about peoples in distant lands, but rather, have strong emotional responses to divisions that are perpetuated in the media. One critical example is the influential idea of the clash of civilizations, which has spread out of the domain of news journalism and into all other forms of media. No where has the reproduction of the so-called clash been more powerful than in the two media markets that discusses old and New Africa. Western cultural productions display negative portrayal of Africa continents’ along with conflictions among these societies illicit and Africa officials strong emotional to Western media consumers.

Similarly, media in some Muslim worlds have made this misconceptions a phenomenon regarding how we see Africa globally. However, Neo-partrmonialisum explains the African crisis in general, from starting point to the poorest state formation along with the resulting into a weaker state institution in many African counties, which have made it impossible for states to play an effective role in promotion economic growth and development. However, this might be hampered by some Analyst suggestions that the levels of contestation around the state are the function of the degree of state legitimacy that weakens the legitimacy of the state. This broadens Africa’s effect and or connection to neo-partrimonialism and the economic growth and development challenges in Africa through the lens of Africa officials and WB.     

World Bank/International Monetary Fund “Structural Adjustment Programs” (SAPs) have been introduced in over 40 countries of Africa. This report outlines their economic policy measures and the experience of the countries that have introduced them, in terms of nutrition, health status, and health services. The evidence indicates that SAPs have been associated with increasing food insecurity and under-nutrition, rising ill-health, and decreasing access to health care in the two-thirds or more of the population of African countries that already live below poverty levels. SAPs has also affected health policy, with loss of a proactive health policy framework, a widening gap between the affected communities and policy makers, and the replacement of the underlying principle of equity in social responsibility health care policies in which health is marketed as a commodity that allows access to health care whom have become individually responsible.  There is a deeper contradiction between SAPs and policies aimed at building the health of the population and those in the health sector needing to contribute to the development and advocacy of economic policies in which growth is based on human resource development, and to the development of a civic environment in Africa that can ensure the implementation of such policies.  African intellectuals try to defend against those who control with the means of producing their scholars.

 Africanists have been acting as gatekeepers of knowledge production or in research grants.  In this capacity, the Africanists negatively assess and down play the scholarly work and contributions of African intellectuals to economic development during the 1980s and 1990s, African governments could only access some African intellectuals through donor contracted reports.

The Bank introduced two sided strategies of (1) restructuring the economy and (2) stabilizing the economy. SAP’s restructured the economy with long or medium term programs along with the goals of the Bank was to use such restructuring reforms to remove challenges to optimal functioning of the markets and to economic growth.  Stabilization involves short term measures to restore balance of payments, while structural adjustment measures are implemented on a longer term basis, to 'restructure the economy and generate economic growth'. These policies are closely linked and usually involve devaluation of currency, cuts in public spending, elimination of subsidies, cuts in the civil service, privatization of state owned industries, opening of local economies to foreign investment and an emphasis on export promotion in order to earn foreign currency to apply to debt servicing. 

As a direct result of these policies, women have suffered in three areas: health and welfare, employment and education. The effects of these policies have been felt even more intensively as social services are cut, particularly with rising poverty among women. With respect to the debt crisis, the goal of the IMF and the World Bank Structural Adjustment programs has been to ensure that indebted countries will maintain their balance of payments. Developing countries had no choice but to turn to them without IMF intervention and approval, there were few resources for them to access in order to keep their economies afloat. As a condition for their lending, the IMF and the World Bank called for drastic restructuring of their economies. 

There are some differences between IMF and World Bank adjustment policies in terms of the process but not the content. IMF programs are targeted at the short term, working to stabilize economies in order to address balance of payments problems. World Bank deals with the long term restructuring of an economy, by changing institutions and economies in the medium term. All of this affects the standard of living of people, particularly the poor. Credit is cut for local manufacturing, resulting in loss of local industry and jobs, particularly for women, yet transnational companies have access to cheap credit in their home countries and cheap labor in developing countries. Government deficits are seen as part of the problem, and as a result social services are cut. However, in the last decade scholars have agree that there has been a shift in global development paradigm whereby some IDA counties graduated to become IBRD counties and emerging nations as New Africa Rising.   

Reference:

1.       Economic Growth and Development in Africa published by Horman Chitonge (HC)