African Conditions Reported Worsening : Industrialized Nations Given Much of Blame in Meeting at U.N.

In the two years since the United Nations recognized an economic and social crisis in Africa and established a special program of aid from the developed world, conditions on the continent have immeasurably worsened, according to officials and diplomats meeting here this week.

Much of the blame should be shouldered by industrialized countries, diplomats from Africa and many Western nations agree. Although many such countries have pledged billions of dollars in new assistance to the poverty-stricken continent, by most economic measures the real level of aid has fallen sharply in the last two years.

“There has been a lot of sympathy and understanding but very little action to back it up,” U.N. Undersecretary-General Adebayo Adedeji, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, said in an interview here. “We have been flooded with rhetoric, but there’s been no extra step by the donor countries to help.”

Mid-Term Review

The dismal picture of Africa’s economic state and the developed world’s response emerged as the United Nations this week opened a mid-term review of its Africa Recovery Program. The five-year program was established in 1986 amid an atmosphere of crisis, generated in part by the severity of the 1984-86 drought and famine on the continent.

At the time, U.N. officials forecast that the gap between Africa’s export earnings and its financial needs would be about $45 billion a year, which was theoretically to be covered by pledges of aid from industrialized countries and such agencies as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the United Nations.

In the first year, however, world prices of coffee, cocoa, copper and other key exports plummeted, widening the gap by as much as $19 billion a year.

Meanwhile, despite the pledges that were made, foreign aid to African governments barely kept up with inflation. Using current dollars as a base, net aid increased to $13.3 billion in 1987 from $11.7 billion in 1986, but it declined in both years from 1985 when measured in 1986 prices and currency exchange rates, according to a report by U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar. Over the same period, private aid and investment in Africa has fallen sharply.

Further, diplomats here say that some of Africa’s leading donors from the past have been falling behind in their contributions. U.S. foreign aid for sub-Saharan African countries fell to $700 million in 1987 from $1.3 billion in 1985.

Overshadowing the aid picture are two other major economic problems: Africa’s immense foreign debt and the rock-bottom world prices for the commodities from which the continent earns most of its foreign exchange.

Africa’s foreign debt of $218 billion amounts to 44% of the gross national product of its countries, by far the heaviest debt load on the globe. These countries’ annual debt service today of $18 billion--the amount they are bound to repay in principal and interest--is the equivalent of 45% of their annual export earnings, leaving them little with which to reinvest in domestic projects or to buy needed foreign goods.

By the 1990s, annual debt service will rise to $45 billion, a level at which repayment will be simply impossible.

“We are playing with figures that are more and more unrealistic,” Jean Ripert, chairman of the Africa Recovery Program’s steering committee, said.

And repayment of loans continues to drain the continent of needed resources. Because so much in its African loans came due in 1986 and 1987, the IMF, which is designed to provide financial assistance to developing countries and to help them supervise their own economies, actually took a net total of nearly $1 billion a year in capital out of Africa in those years.

“The rule seems to be that from those who have not, the little they have will be taken and given to those who have,” Adedeji said.

Token Gestures

Diplomats here criticize Western governments for making only token gestures toward relieving the debt burden. At their Toronto economic summit this year, the heads of the world’s seven leading industrial countries pledged to “reschedule,” or renegotiate, the debt of the poorest countries, without specifying new terms or eligible countries.

“They must forgive the entire African debt or these countries are going to drown,” said Stephen Lewis, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, who is currently the secretary general’s special adviser on the African Recovery Program.

Meanwhile, the African countries’ ability to strengthen their own economies--by currency devaluations, reductions in government employment and an end to commodity price controls--has nearly run out.

In a process termed “adjustment fatigue” by the Organization of African Unity, restructuring programs in most African countries are now at the point where further cutbacks will lead to social and political upheaval.