8. Neoliberalism

 

Coups, invasions and other forms of obvious violence are generally less favoured means for the powerful to get their way around the world. Less direct tools that offer the cover of agreement between parties are preferred. Of course, as the fable relates, when a frog makes a deal with a crocodile to hitch a ride across the river it generally ends poorly for the smaller creature. But it was still an agreement freely entered into, says the crocodile. Or to quote the former coordinator of the United Nations Development Programme Aminata Dramane Traoré: “We are no longer, at least not in theory, colonies. But our countries are submitted to draconian economic and structural reforms that we didn’t ask for, and about which the majority of the population was not consulted, and which in addition, impoverish and subjugate us.”1

After independence many African countries attempted to reverse the foreign domination of their economies. They implemented protectionist policies in an attempt to build up domestic industries and overcome the weak, dependent economic structure left behind by colonialism. Many post-colonial governments also tried to reverse deep social inequities by redistributing wealth and improving the living standards of the poor. Nationalist governments imposed regulations on foreign investors while socialist regimes nationalized multinationals and enacted land reforms to break up large plantations and redistribute land to peasants. But corporate interests in the West (and Africa) generally opposed these efforts. In time they launched a concerted counterattack to promote “neoliberal” policies, which include the privatization of state assets, weakening of labour regulations and the liberalization of trade and investment.

The Third World debt crisis was the signal event that ushered in the neoliberal era. At the beginning of the 1980s many African countries were weighed down by debts they were unable to pay. Governments and businesses had borrowed from Western banks and governments to finance investments and imports but a sudden spike in US interest rates in 1979, combined with rising oil prices and falling commodity prices, greatly increased the financial burden. By 1982, indebted countries throughout the South were teetering on the brink of default, threatening a world financial crisis.

Ottawa joined the IMF-led creditor cartel that ensured the debtor, not the creditor, nations bore the brunt of the debt crisis.2 In The Use of Canadian Aid to Support Structural Adjustment in Africa Carolyn Bassett explains: “By promoting structural adjustment in debtor countries, the Canadian government minimized creditor responsibility for the crisis by forcing most of the burden of adjustment on the debtors. The major Canadian banks were large creditors to Third World countries and so were vulnerable to debtor actions such as full public default or debtor cartels forcing systematic changes in the debt management strategy.”3

For Ottawa and other wealthy capitalist countries the first priority was to prevent a major financial crisis and ensure that their banks were repaid. (While Canadian banks had loaned some money to a number of African countries in the late 1970s, most Canadian debt in Africa was held by government agencies such as the Canadian International Development Agency, the Wheat Board and Export Development Corporation. Canadian banks were, however, highly exposed to Latin American and Caribbean default.) But, they also sought to turn the precarious financial situation of the Third World to their advantage. The IMF and World Bank, dominated by the finance departments of the G7 countries, offered to lend money to the debtor countries on the condition that they radically reform their economies along neoliberal lines. Bilateral aid agencies, including CIDA, quickly aligned their policies with the IMF and World Bank, making aid conditional on the implementation of far-reaching changes known as Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs).

These policies emphasized repaying debts, attracting foreign investment and producing for export markets. SAPs focused on weakening labour protections, dismantling regulations, lowering taxes on big business and privatizing public enterprises. In order to free up resources to pay the debt and promote export production, governments were required to slash social programs, end “price distorting” subsidies and lay off state employees. These policies were supposed to allow poor countries to pay off their debts while spurring economic growth, the benefits of which would then trickle down to the poor.

Though much of the debt had been used to finance luxury consumption, military spending or capital flight, the IMF demanded cuts to public programs that benefited the poor. As Noam Chomsky emphasizes, the debt was largely “odious” (i.e. possessing no legal or moral standing) since it had been “imposed upon people without their consent, often serving to repress them and enrich their masters.”4

Structural adjustment was an assault on living standards that produced deep and enduring social and economic crises. The huge reductions in public investment, combined with anaemic private sector growth, sent much of Africa into a deflationary crisis. Unemployment increased, capital flight accelerated and the productive base of many countries crumbled. Rising import prices, falling wages, disappearing jobs and decaying social services expanded the ranks of the poor and worsened the grinding poverty of the poorest. Nutritional status, education, health and other social indicators declined in the wake of SAPs.

For many African countries the structural adjustment period was worse than the Great Depression. Across the continent GDP contracted 0.79% in the 1980s and 0.46% through the 1990s compared to growth of 1.04% during the 1960s and 0.86% in the 1970s.5

In an incredible indictment of the structural adjustment period, the number of Africans living on less than one dollar a day increased substantially. The 2004 World Development Indicators found that between 1981 and 2001 the number of Africans living on less than one dollar a day rose from 160 million to 314 million. Employing a slightly different timeframe and data, a 2015 African Union and UN report concluded that the number of people on the continent living on less than $1.25 a day increased from 290 million to 414 million over the past quarter-century.6 After more than three decades of neoliberal economic policy, more than four in five Africans live on less than five dollars a day.7

Neoliberal policies didn’t harm all Africans (that is, if you leave aside the insecurity and social stress that generally accompanies growing inequality). Not a single African was identified as a billionaire in 1980 yet there were 55 of these superrich individuals from that continent by 2012.8 In their 2012 World Wealth Report Merrill Lynch and Capgemini estimated that there were 100,000 “high net worth individuals” in Africa with $1.2 trillion in liquid assets.9 Superrich West African oligarchs spent more than £600 million on London property between 2011 and 2014, typically spending between £15 million and £25 million on each home.10

Ottawa was a major proponent of the shift towards neoliberal policies imposed by the various international financial institutions. In a 2010 article on Canada-US relations in Africa, David Black and Clement Adibe note: “Canada became a strong supporter of the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, and continues to express confidence in market-oriented reforms.”11

At the start of the 1980s Department of Finance officials representing Canada at the World Bank/IMF backed these institutions’ shift towards structural adjustment.12 (Ottawa has significant clout within the World Bank. Alongside its counterparts from the US and Britain, Canadian officials participated in the 1944 Bretton Woods negotiations that established the post-World War II international financial institutions and as of 2008 Canada was the seventh largest donor among the World Bank’s 185 countries. In 2015 this country’s voting share at the World Bank was nearly 6 times greater than Canada’s proportion of the global population.)

As the decade wore on Canada’s aid agency increasingly aligned its policies with those of the multilateral donor institutions. In 1986 CIDA announced a five-year moratorium on debt payments owed to it by low-income African countries that adopted an SAP.13 The next year CIDA’s Winegard Report placed structural adjustment second of six new aid agency priorities.14

After five years as executive director of the IMF, Marcel Massé returned to the presidency of CIDA in 1989 and openly stated his desire to shape economic policy in impoverished countries. “As CIDA we cannot merely look at a series of projects as development,” noted Massé. “We have to be concerned about the overall economic policies, and we have to try to influence them.”15

In her 1991 thesis The Use of Canadian Aid to Support Structural Adjustment in Africa Carolyn Mary Bassett summarizes the many ways in which the Canadian aid agency backed SAPs. “CIDA now channels resources towards countries which have adopted structural adjustment programs, makes resources available specifically for projects related to a country’s structural adjustment agreement, and penalizes countries which do not maintain their agreement by slowing disbursements and cancelling some aid.”16
Tens (perhaps even hundreds) of millions of dollars in Canadian aid supported SAPs in Africa. According to two different estimates, between 20 and 25 percent of Canadian aid to Africa in the late 1980s and early 1990s was channelled towards structural adjustment.17 In a particularly striking example, a 1987 CIDA memo explained, “approximately 35-40 percent of cash flow for the next five-year period will be transferred as unstructured program aid to support balance of payments … all elements under this theme will be tied to satisfactory performance by Ghana under an internationally accepted SAP.”18

In the early 1980s Ghana was seen as one of the only IMF/World Bank “success stories” in sub-Saharan Africa. Elsewhere on the continent, adjustment policies immediately exacerbated economic difficulties. But in Ghana, after a military coup brought Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings to power, the government adopted IMF reforms in 1983 and the economy appeared to turn around. As the 1980s wore on, however, opposition to the SAP intensified. Trade unions, students and left-wing intellectuals organized large strikes and demonstrations against layoffs of public sector workers and the imposition of user fees for public services. They denounced the military government’s acceptance of IMF conditions as a betrayal of the Ghanaian state’s historic commitment to equality and anti-imperialism.

Growing opposition caused donor countries to worry that the government might back off from implementing further reforms. Concerned their star pupil may go astray, CIDA President Margaret Catley-Carlson promised Ghana’s leaders increased aid to “help you out over this very difficult period … We know that if you take on this [IMF] program of reform it will cost you. Your food prices are going to shoot up, and in the urban areas that is going to be very destabilizing.”19

The centerpiece of this effort was the Program of Actions to Mitigate the Social Costs of Adjustment (PAMSCAD), an $85.7 million social fund designed to help Ghana’s military leaders maintain political momentum for further neoliberal reforms while lessening their impact on the poor. CIDA was a key player in setting up PAMSCAD and contributed $8.4 million to the fund.20

PAMSCAD was widely perceived in Ghana as a “huge public relations exercise” for the Rawlings regime. Measured by jobs, access to social services or inequality, PAMSCAD was a failure. Economist Frances Stewart estimated that PAMSCAD created about 7,000 person-years of employment, “only a fraction of the 61,000 redundancies in the civil service and the education service” caused by the SAP.21

The layoffs led to growth in the informal sector but as the number of jobless Ghanaians increased the prospects for making a decent living from activities like street vending declined.22 Rural women traders were one of the few “winners” of adjustment among the poor, yet even here the victory was Pyrrhic. The success of traders was a result of the flood of imports that followed trade liberalization. While low priced imports produced short-term profits for traders, these same imports caused the hollowing out of industry, with the result that “under the impact of liberalization, Ghana was progressively ‘turned into a nation of shoppers and storekeepers with very little manufacturing or industrial activity.’”23

Thanks in part to PAMSCAD, Ghana remained a star pupil of the IMF and World Bank. The opening of Ghana’s market produced a profit bonanza for Canadian mining corporations, which capitalized on the newly liberalized mining law to buy up huge concessions and privatized state mines. While the mining-led boom produced impressive GDP growth, it caused significant ecological devastation and led to a “boom for the few and a bust for the many.” NGO worker Ian Gary explained the impacts of structural adjustment: “Ghana’s traditional sources of income — gold, cocoa, and timber — have benefited from the program, but this has only exacerbated the colonial legacy of dependence. Nearly all of the $1.5 billion worth of private foreign investment has been in mining, with most of the profits being repatriated overseas. ‘User fees’ for health care services and education have been introduced. Disincentives to food producers, and the damage caused to local rice producers by cheap rice imports, led to increased malnutrition and lower food security. Rapid and indiscriminate liberalization of the trade regime hurt local industry, while cutbacks in the public sector shed 15 per cent of the waged work force.”24

The principle preoccupation of the Ghanaian regime and the international donors was not to tackle poverty and inequality, but to mitigate the political costs of adjustment. In this respect, PAMSCAD was quite effective. The temporary influx of aid made it easier for the military government to permanently cut back social services, allowing it to divert funds towards debt repayments.

As was the case in Ghana, SAP promotion usually consisted of making money available to countries that followed the rules. But sometimes getting African countries to reform their economies along neoliberal lines took a stick. Ottawa withdrew food aid to Tanzania to pressure its government to follow IMF scriptures. In the Politics of Economic Reforms in Tanzania: 1977-1988 A. S. Z. Kiondo explains: “Canada also followed suit, and by 1985 its attitude towards Tanzania had become openly harder, complaining that its development assistance was being jeopardised by Tanzania’s ‘stubbornness’ in undertaking proper reforms. In February 1986, during annual meetings between CIDA and Tanzania, CIDA issued a very strong statement to the effect that no further development assistance would be considered for Tanzania if an agreement with the IMF was not reached.”25

CIDA took a similar attitude towards Tanzania’s southwest neighbour. In the latter part of the 1980s Ottawa slowed aid to Zambia in a successful bid to change the government’s attitude to neoliberal reforms. “Following Zambia’s break with the IMF [in mid-1987], CIDA ceased to develop new projects or to expand existing ones, although it stopped short of cancelling ongoing projects. Any disbursements to Zambia slowed considerably, and the Canadian line of credit supporting the World Bank program to restructure Zambia’s agricultural, industrial and manufacturing sectors was cancelled,” Carolyn Bassett writes.26 “In 1987 Canada had decided not to make any new aid commitments to Zambia for the time being because [President] Kaunda had abandoned a structural adjustment program for its economy favoured by the IMF, the World Bank, and major donors.”27 After Zambia fell into line with the IMF, CIDA recharged its aid program.28

As part of a push for economic reform Ottawa secured an agreement that gave a former vice president of the Bank of Canada the role of governor of the Bank of Zambia, where he oversaw the country’s monetary policies and “responses to the IMF”.29 In her thesis Bassett notes, “instrumental in developing Zambia’s new ‘domestically designed’ [economic] program was the new head of the Bank of Zambia, Canadian Jacques Boussières.”30

Paid by Ottawa, Boussières was the first foreign governor of the Bank of Zambia since independence.31 This was not well received by some. Africa Events described Boussières as “a White Canadian who came to de-Zambianise the bank post under controversial circumstances.”32

The Zambian public bitterly resisted layoffs and cuts to social programs spurred by neoliberal reforms and during the “Christmas riots” of 1988 security forces killed 30 protesters in a bid to suppress opposition.33 The violence in Zambia was representative of widespread resistance across the continent with dozens of “IMF riots” and hundreds of thousands protesting structural adjustment measures. In the late 1980s and early 1990s anti-IMF protests “led to the fall of more than a dozen African governments.”34

Anti-IMF/World Bank protests, taken up later by movements in the North, discredited SAPs. The IMF/World Bank responded by softening the harshest edges of its demands and a repackaging of its policies. Beginning in 1999 the IMF/World Bank shifted away from SAPs and towards Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). A gathering of social organizations in Kampala in 2001 concluded that these were “Structural Adjustment Programmes in disguise.”35

In exchange for debt relief Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs) — 80% sub-Saharan African — had to agree to a PRSP. Edward Akuffo describes Ottawa’s support for PRSPs in Canadian Foreign-Policy in Africa: “Consistent with the apparent commitment to advance the neoliberal economic order with key allies in the G8, Canadian aid to African countries since the late 1990s has been anchored on the acceptance and preparation of in country directed PRSPs under the supervision of the Bretton Woods institutions [IMF/World Bank]. Unlike the SAPs that were imposed on African countries, the PRSPs are said to be a country led program that is built on local participation in the formulation of policies and strategies for broad-based growth and poverty reduction. The preparation of PRSPs involves the participation of domestic stakeholders such as civil society groups and external development partners including the IMF and the World Bank. CIDA’s Country Programming Framework for countries such as Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal, and Mozambique was based on the individual country’s IMF/World Bank approved PRSPs, which CIDA assisted these countries to produce.”36

Canada aligned its debt cancellation with the IMF-led HIPC initiative. In 2000 Ottawa said it would cancel 100% of HIPC debt owed to Export Development Corporation (EDC) and the Canadian Wheat Board. However, as noted by a Canadian Council for International Cooperation paper, this was “conditional on compliance by these countries with all the terms of their agreement with the IMF/World Bank Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC).”37

Between 2005 and 2015 Ottawa provided $200 million to the HIPC Trust Fund to help the World Bank and African Development Bank write off the debt for over a dozen HIPC-compliant African countries.38

Ottawa played a lead role promoting another neoliberal initiative in Africa. As host of the G8 summit in 2002 the Liberal government promoted the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which exchanged aid for policy reforms. To support NEPAD Canada set up a $500 million Canada Fund for Africa and committed to raising billions more from its G7 allies.39 Three months prior to the G8 Summit Prime Minister Jean Chrétien visited seven African countries partly to promote NEPAD. At an Organization of African Unity and Economic Commission for Africa summit to discuss NEPAD, Chrétien told the African leaders and press: “By establishing the conditions that are necessary to attract and retain private investment from Africa and abroad, we can shatter the perception all too deeply rooted that investing money in Africa does not pay, thereby securing capital flows that greatly exceed any foreseeable development assistance.”40

Though presented as altruistic, Ottawa promoted NEPAD to strengthen corporate power on the continent. Edward Akuffo writes: “Canada’s support for the NEPAD was driven by economic interest and the opportunity that NEPAD offered to ‘institutionalize’ the neoliberal ideology in African economies.”41 As a stark example of the corporate logic driving the Canada Fund for Africa, $100 million of it was devoted to the Canada Investment Fund for Africa (CIFA). Overseen by multibillion-dollar investment funds, Cordiant and Actis, CIFA’s stated objective was “to spur economic growth by providing risk capital for commercially successful private-sector businesses.”42 Among other projects, CIFA money was channelled to a telecommunications company, private banks and a half-dozen extractive sector projects (four operated by Canadian companies).43

Rather than supporting the International Jubilee debt cancellation campaign, NEPAD’s founding statement promotes initiatives to exchange debt relief for economic liberalization. It calls for the “support [of] existing poverty reduction initiatives at the multilateral level, such as the Comprehensive Development Framework of the World Bank and the Poverty Reduction Strategy approach linked to the Highly Indebted Poor Country debt relief initiative.”44

NEPAD also encourages the privatization of public infrastructure. The founding statement calls on African governments to “promote public-private partnerships (PPPs) as a promising vehicle for attracting private investors” and to “establish and nurture PPPs as well as grant concessions [to private companies] towards the construction, development and maintenance of ports, roads, railways and maritime transportation.”45

A host of African social movements, labour unions and women’s organizations rejected NEPAD, with the Council for Development and Social Research in Africa and Third World Network-Africa denouncing “the neo-liberal economic policy framework at the heart of the plan [NEPAD], which repeats the structural adjustment policy packages of the preceding two decades and overlooks the disastrous effects of those policies.”46 During an African Social Forum seminar on the subject Trevor Ngwane took this criticism further: “The reason Africa continues to suffer is because the advanced capitalist countries have the power to dictate to us what to do. Nowhere does NEPAD call for a change in the existing international power relations that compel Africa, for instance, to pay a debt whose legitimacy is highly questionable, or to succumb to an international economic system loaded against Africa.”47

Instead of pushing to reform an unfair international trade and investment regime, NEPAD reinforces structural imbalances that consign the continent to a position of economic subservience or “underdevelopment”.

Ottawa invested heavily in African neoliberalism with the Canada Fund for Africa providing some $30 million to promote “trade” agreements and neoliberal reforms. Another $8 million was put into the Program for Building African Capacity for Trade while $7 million went to the Joint Integrated Technical Assistance Program for help with “implementation of WTO agreements, policy formation and market development.”48 Canada also gave $14.7 million to the African Trade Policy Centre, which helps build African governments’ capacity “to formulate and implement sound trade policies and participate more effectively in trade negotiations at the bilateral, regional and multilateral levels.”49

In another push to liberalize trade and investment regulations, Ottawa contributed $1.8 million to the WTO’s Global Trust Fund for Trade Related Assistance to Developing Countries and $2.5 million to the WTO’s Aid for Trade (AfT) program.50 Commenting on this move, Edward Akuffo notes: “To a large extent multilateral aid to Africa through the WTO became an instrument for free trade and liberalization that would in turn advance Canada’s economic interest in Africa.”51

In 2012 Ottawa put forward $15 million to establish the Africa Trade Fund (AfTra).52 Set up in collaboration with the African Development Bank, AfTra was designed “to promote Africa’s efforts to integrate into regional and global trading systems.”53

Canada funded efforts to further integrate African countries into neoliberal trade and investment regimes at the same time as it pushed to expand the WTO’s purview against the wishes of the continent’s negotiators. The Southern and Eastern African Trade, Information and Negotiations Institute reported on Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast’s push to expand the scope of discussions during a ministerial meeting for the Doha Round of negotiations in January 2014. “One of the strongest statements at the TNC [Trade Negotiations Committee] was Canada’s reiteration of its position that new issues such as investment, competition, energy and environment should be added to the Doha agenda. Uganda’s trade minister, representing the negotiating group of least developed countries, rejected adding any new issues.”54 Canada also argued, alongside the US, European Union and Japan, to deepen cuts on industrial tariffs in the WTO’s Non-Agricultural Market Access (NAMA) negotiations.55 The Group of 90, an alliance of the poorest and smallest developing countries, opposed significant tariff reductions out of fear that they would further undermine their already limited industrial bases.

Ottawa pushed African countries to liberalize their economies despite overwhelming evidence that poor countries which prosper, almost without fail, pursue auto-centered (inward looking) economic policies. In Kicking Away the Ladder: Development Strategy in Historical Perspective prominent South Korean economist Ha-Joon Chang argues that all major developed countries pursued interventionist policies but once their industry got strong they tried to stop other countries from following the same path.

Alongside the liberalization of trade and investment regimes, most African countries’ manufacturing sectors stagnated or declined between 1990 and 2010. Between 2000 and 2008 manufacturing value added (MVA) as a percentage of African GDP fell from 12.8% to 10.5% while it increased from 22% to 35% in developing Asian countries.56

There are also other ways in which Ottawa promoted neoliberal capitalist policies in Africa. One avenue has been backing initiatives to promote the privatization of infrastructure and other traditionally public domains. Along with the African Development Bank, Canada set up the NEPAD Infrastructure Project Preparation Facility (IPPF), earmarking an initial $10 million to the IPPF partly to promote public-private partnerships in water and sanitation, transportation, energy etc.57 The stated goal is to “support [the] creation of an enabling environment for private participation in infrastructure.”58 It gained additional momentum in 2005 with Britain, Germany, Denmark and Spain joining the initiative.

Similar to the IPPF, the World Bank’s Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) was established in 1999 to address what it calls “a key constraint for improved service provision in many developing countries [which] is the lack of an enabling environment conducive to private investment.”59 Canada is one of a dozen donors to a facility largely established to convince sceptics of the benefits of corporations owning and operating infrastructure projects. Profiting From Poverty: Privatization Consultants, DFID and Public Services explains: “The PPIAF has also been engaged in the ongoing battle for hearts and minds in developing countries, running workshops, study tours and ‘public awareness campaigns’ in order to win over a sceptical public to the benefits of public service privatisation. One such project was the so-called ‘knowledge programme’ on water policy run for journalists from nine African countries in early 2000, which aimed to counter public scepticism over water privatisation in Africa by encouraging African journalists to provide more positive media coverage.”60

Stephen Harper’s Conservatives moved to lock-in neoliberal reforms in Africa. Since 2008 Canada has concluded and/or signed Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements (FIPAs) with Tanzania, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Benin, Cameroon, Zambia, Madagascar, Mali and Senegal. At the time of publication Ottawa engaged in FIPA negotiations with Ghana, Tunisia, Kenya and plans were afoot to pursue bilateral investment treaties with other African countries. According to the government, “A FIPA is a treaty designed to promote and protect Canadian investment abroad through legally binding provisions and to promote foreign investment in Canada. By ensuring greater protection against discriminatory and arbitrary practices, and by enhancing the predictability of a market’s policy framework, a FIPA gives businesses greater confidence in investing.”61

FIPA treaties include an Investor State Dispute Settlement mechanism that gives corporations the right to sue governments — in private, investor-friendly tribunals — for pursuing policies that interfere with their profit making. As such, they undermine the public’s ability to democratically determine economic policy. In a 2014 Tanzanian Business Times article headlined “Rethinking the Role of Global Investment in Africa’s Development”, Ugandan Yash Tandon explains: “It is now widely acknowledged, even in government circles, that BITs [bilateral investment treaties] are an exercise in undermining the sovereignty of the capital-receiving countries. BITs invariably provide for extra-territorial rights for the owners of capital, including, typically, protection from expropriation; free transfer of exorbitant profits and royalties; and litigation under the jurisdiction of either the capital-exporting countries or international arbitration.”62

Since few African companies invest in Canada there is little chance that Ottawa will face a suit or feel domestic policy pressure as a result of a FIPA with an African country. Nonetheless, the Benin and Tanzania FIPAs (the two I read) were in Ottawa’s favour with Canada negotiating two to three times more industry exclusions (economic sectors protected from the constraints of the accord).

Incredibly, FIPAs are usually locked in for 16 years. One clause of the Canada-Benin accord reads: “The termination of this Agreement shall be effective one year after notice of termination has been received by the other Contracting Party.” The subsequent line, however, reads that the agreement will “remain in force for a period of 15 years in respect of investments or commitments to invest made prior to the date when the termination of this Agreement becomes effective.”63 In other words, future governments’ ability to shift direction could be restricted for over a decade and a half.

If neoliberal policies don’t lessen poverty in Africa and also harm democracy, why have Canadian governments pushed them? Part of the answer is provided in the next few chapters, in which we look at the specific Canadian interests that have benefited from neoliberalism.