By Prince Kapone | Weaponized Information | April 25, 2025
“Our house is burning and we are taking no notice.” — Jacques Chirac, hypocritical defender of the very system lighting the match
In a recent article published by African Business, the IMF once again laid bare its colonial playbook for Africa, shamelessly declaring that African nations must “prioritize the private sector” in order to absorb economic shocks. On the surface, it’s just another neoliberal talking point. But dig deeper and the agenda reveals itself: the IMF is prescribing poison, dressed up as medicine. Their proposal is nothing less than a euphemism for privatization, deregulation, and the gutting of what remains of Africa’s public infrastructure in the service of monopoly capital.
The IMF’s language may have evolved — less bark, more technocratic bite — but its fundamental purpose remains the same: to discipline post-colonial nations through debt, force them into economic servitude, and hand their sovereignty over to foreign capital and transnational corporations. This is not “development.” This is recolonization — economic, technocratic, and enforced by the financial whip of Washington and Brussels.
The Logic of Loot: Debt as Domination
As Éric Toussaint makes clear in Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank, the debt crisis of the Global South is no accident. It is a tool. A trap. A system of control forged in the crucible of neocolonial conquest. African states were lured into borrowing through Western-backed regimes and military dictatorships in the 1960s–80s. The money flowed in — often recycled petrodollars — but it rarely reached the people. It went into white elephant projects, presidential palaces, and offshore accounts. And when the bills came due, the IMF and World Bank arrived with their infamous Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), demanding “liberalization,” “austerity,” and “discipline.”
The results were devastating. In the words of Toussaint, “Debt has become a subtle instrument of domination, casting the net of a new form of colonization.” (Debt, IMF, and the World Bank, p. 11). According to Toussaint’s research, by 2006, Sub-Saharan African states were spending an average of 38% of their budgets on debt repayment — in some cases, more than double what they were spending on healthcare or education. In countries like Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire, debt servicing consumed more than 40% of the national budget, while basic social services received less than 15%.
Privatization: A Weapon of Mass Dispossession
The IMF’s latest suggestion to “prioritize the private sector” is nothing new. It’s the same con with a fresh coat of paint. Structural Adjustment Programs forced African states to sell off state enterprises to multinational corporations for pennies on the dollar, gut public sector employment, eliminate subsidies for food and fuel, and decimate social spending. In Zambia, for instance, the forced privatization of copper mines led not to development, but to mass layoffs, environmental devastation, and the loss of control over the country’s most valuable resource.
Privatization did not bring prosperity — it brought dependency. It didn’t create jobs — it destroyed them. It didn’t stabilize economies — it shattered them, leaving African countries more vulnerable to global shocks, not less. As Toussaint documents, the forced export-led growth model, with its emphasis on cash crops and raw materials, made African economies permanently vulnerable to price volatility, external shocks, and the demands of Northern markets (pp. 22–24).
The Shock Doctrine Reloaded
The IMF’s argument — that privatization will help African economies “absorb shocks” — is Orwellian in its absurdity. The IMF is the shock. It is the very institution that caused mass unemployment, hunger, and ecological destruction in Africa by pushing states to dismantle their safety nets and abandon food sovereignty. As Toussaint notes, “subsistence crops were abandoned, which often meant that countries that export agricultural produce had to import the foodstuffs they need.” Madagascar, for example, exports luxury-grade rice and imports inferior-grade rice to feed its people (p. 23).
And now the same IMF is telling Africa that the cure is… more of the same? More privatization? More dependency on volatile markets? More handouts to transnational corporations? This is not a policy prescription — it’s economic arson.
The Coloniality of Finance
The IMF’s program is not about “resilience.” It’s about control. About dictating the terms of African economic life from boardrooms in Washington and Brussels. Debt is not just a number — it is a political weapon. A tool of counterinsurgency. A strategy to make sure no African nation ever becomes truly independent or charts its own path to development. The IMF is not a neutral adviser — it is the enforcement wing of global monopoly capital, acting on behalf of the Yankee, European, and Digerati factions of the white ruling class.
And as Toussaint proves with data, the math doesn’t lie: between 1985 and 2007, developing countries repaid $760 billion more than they received in loans, yet their external debt more than doubled, from $600 billion to $1.35 trillion (p. 26). This is not a system of lending — it’s a system of bleeding. Of extraction. Of technofascist domination via spreadsheets and structural adjustment.
The Only Alternative is Sovereignty
The African masses don’t need private-sector trickle-down economics. They need public investment, food sovereignty, and popular power. They need debt cancellation, reparations, and the right to develop on their own terms — not according to the diktats of financiers and NGO technocrats. They need to be free of the IMF — not re-enchained by it.
The next time the IMF shows up with a “recommendation,” remember this: it’s not your doctor. It’s your colonizer in a pinstripe suit.
For deeper analysis,consult Eric Toussaint’s landmark work Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank.
Weaponized Information 
Leave a comment