The Civic Scribe: Articles & Poems

BANJUL, The Gambia — A farmer stares at cracked earth where millet should stand. Drought has scorched his fields, but it is not nature alone he battles. His children eat one meal daily. School fees are a dream; medicine, unthinkable. His government, shackled by debt and austerity demands from Washington, has stripped away the supports that once made survival possible. This is the human face of The Gambia’s debt distress – distress amplified, not alleviated, by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The Gambia is a microcosm of a devastating pattern across the Global South. An IMF loan arrives, promising stability and poverty reduction. In return, governments impose harsh austerity – slashing spending, hiking regressive taxes, abandoning subsidies. Vague promises are made to “protect the vulnerable,” yet time and again, these promises prove hollow, leaving countries deeper in debt and their people poorer. The Gambia’s 12-year odyssey with the IMF lays bare this systemic failure.

The Austerity Trap: A Prescription That Fails

The cycle often begins with a crisis, like The Gambia’s severe drought. The IMF provided emergency support but demanded fiscal consolidation: reduce deficits, curb borrowing. The chosen tools? Introducing VAT and cutting fuel subsidies. This became the template, repeated in successive programs, including the most recent agreement. While the IMF pays lip service to protecting citizens, the core demands remain centered on spending cuts and revenue hikes that disproportionately impact the poor.

The IMF insists it has learned, often including “social spending floors” – minimum targets for health and education – in loan conditions. However, independent research reveals these safeguards are deeply flawed. They lack consistent criteria, are easily waived, and often merely set targets without guaranteeing adequate or increased real funding per person. In The Gambia’s context of relentless deficit reduction amidst high inflation and debt, sustained, meaningful increases in social spending seem unlikely.

Crucially, when the IMF does support social protection, it overwhelmingly pushes narrowly targeted, means-tested programs. This approach is fundamentally broken. It relies on error-prone eligibility assessments, breeds corruption and mistrust, and excludes vast swathes of the “near poor” and working poor who are barely surviving. Studies show such programs often miss the majority of those actually living in poverty. The Gambian farmer, likely hovering near but not officially below an arbitrary poverty line, is precisely the person these programs fail.

The removal of essential subsidies like fuel or electricity is another perennial IMF demand. While justified as fiscally prudent, doing this without robust, universal compensatory mechanisms in place first is devastating. Low-income families spend a disproportionate share of their income on energy and transport. The promised social protection consistently fails to provide adequate, timely compensation, leading to increased hunger, reduced access to services, and social unrest, as witnessed in other nations under IMF programs.

The Vicious Cycle: How Austerity Fuels Debt

The cruel irony is that this austerity-first approach undermines its own goals. Recent IMF research itself found that fiscal consolidations often fail to reduce debt ratios. Why?

1. Growth Suffers: Deep public sector cuts freeze hiring and degrade essential services. Hiking VAT sucks demand from the local economy. Combined, this stifles growth – the very engine needed for sustainable debt reduction.
2. Revenue Gains Stall: Austerity-induced recessions depress tax revenues, counteracting efforts to mobilize more domestic resources.
3. Human Capital Erodes: Malnourished children and citizens unable to afford healthcare or education cripple the future workforce and the nation’s productive potential.
4. Instability Rises: Protests against soaring living costs destabilize countries, deter investment, and further complicate economic management.

The Gambia’s recent growth figures offer false comfort. They likely reflect post-drought recovery and external factors like remittances, occurring despite the structural austerity embedded in IMF programs. Persistently high inflation and exceeding debt projections signal underlying fragility. The fundamental mismatch between austerity and development needs remains unaddressed.

A Path Forward: Rights Over Rigidity

The Gambia’s plight demands a radical rethink, especially from the IMF and its major shareholders.

1. Prioritize Human Rights Assessments: Before any loan is approved, the IMF must conduct and publish mandatory, independent assessments of the likely impacts of proposed conditions on poverty, inequality, and access to essential services. Gambians deserve to know how a loan will affect their rights before it’s signed.
2. Embrace Universal Protection, Not Targeting: The IMF must abandon its flawed preference for narrow, means-tested safety nets. It should actively support building universal social protection systems – like child benefits, pensions, and basic health coverage. These are more efficient, reduce exclusion, build cohesion, and stabilize economies during shocks.
3. Deliver Real Debt Justice: For countries in high distress like The Gambia, more austerity is a death spiral. Creditors, including the IMF and powerful nations, must support comprehensive, deep debt restructuring to free up fiscal space for essential investments. Minor relief or reprofiling is insufficient.
4. Finance Development, Not Just Deficits: The IMF’s focus must shift from narrow fiscal targets to enabling investments in climate resilience, quality public services, and job creation. This requires championing progressive taxation and vastly increased access to grants and truly concessional loans, while limiting risky financial schemes.

The farmer outside Banjul doesn’t need another IMF review praising deficit reduction while his children go hungry. He needs an international financial system that prioritizes human dignity over rigid balance sheets. The Gambia’s story is a stark warning: until the IMF fundamentally reforms, replacing austerity dogma with a commitment to human rights and sustainable development, its loans will remain anchors dragging nations deeper into the abyss of empty promises and unpayable debts. The time for a reckoning is now.