As non governmental organizations, constituent organizations and trade unions working on consumer, environmental, labor, development, health, human rights and related issues, we oppose the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) now being considered in the U.S. Congress.

During the past two decades, many African countries have suffered from recessionary economic policies demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Now the Africa trade bill proposes to extend African nations’ suffering indefinitely.

As a condition for receipt of existing and potentially some new aid and trade benefits, the Africa trade bill would require African countries to follow the most stringent requirements of IMF structural adjustment programs and satisfy a number of other economic policy demands. Among the trade bill’s many conditionalities, it requires:

 Compliance with programs and obligations to the IMF;

 Joining the World Trade Organization;

 Removing restrictions on foreign investment and providing national treatment for foreign investors;

 Minimizing government market interventions; and

 Privatizing many government operations.

We have seen from the ground level the consequences of following IMF policy prescriptions — and witnessed from afar the IMF-assisted debacle in Asia. These policies tend to undermine local businesses, drive up unemployment, damage the environment, harm consumers, undermine public health and increase poverty. We categorically reject any effort to impose such policies on African countries. We reject on principle the "conditionality" approach, which tramples on the sovereignty of African nations and the democratic rights of its people to shape national policy.

Certain IMF-style policies may be appropriate in some circumstances, but the same medicine surely cannot solve every illness; the complexities of Africa’s economic recovery require sensitive handling, based on local understanding, rather than a blanket cure-all designed in Washington.

We strongly support programs to provide African countries with debt relief and other initiatives which will support sustainable development in Africa. We are keen to stop the cycle of debt and dependency through genuinely sustainable national development policies. We are eager to work with Americans on such initiatives. But first the African Growth and Opportunity Act must be discarded.