Iubinda Habazoka (Zambia) speech at the Global Conference on Multipolarity
Iubinda Habazoka (Zambia) – President of the Economic Association of Zambia
Thank you very much for letting me speak from the perspective of the African continent. The world as we know it has actually not been able to develop to provide basic necessities to its citizens due to the unfair conditions in the global financial economic architecture. If you look to the history of the development, we had different empires, from the Greek Empire up to the Soviet Union, and it is USA who created hegemony and unipolar world.
When you look from the African perspective to develop this world, should be able to develop a system where all countries are equal
Look at the issues that happened in countries like Cuba. For example, there`s a lot of discussions about which economic system is better: capitalism, socialism, elements of communism or mixed market economy. But unfortunately, socialism, for example, in countries like Cuba, has been unable to succeed , because of laws that world police made impossible for such countries to succeed. If sanctions were lifted today from Cuba, it would be one of the most developed countries in the world. If you look to the Cuban economy, it has one of the most advanced health systems, unfortunately due to unfair sanctions, pushed on it, it’s economy the economy is not performing well
Developments in Ukraine and other regions have shown, that even countries like Russia can be sanctioned, and that should be a signal to Africa, Latin America, even Asia, that even member of UN with the power of veto, a superpower with missiles can be sanctioned, removed from SWIFT, which two years ago was before a global instrument… Countries can be removed from SWIFT, which means than nobody is insured from such acts. It is quite important that countries realised (Latin America, Africa) that the world is unipolar, and we need multipolar world, we need competing powers, and of course the history gives the opportunity to Brazil, Argentina, South Africa and Africa, Nigeria, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran (which was attacked by sanctions) – each country has its own government system. There is no country that should force government system on another one. The United Kingdom, monarchy – nobody condemn that, but you find that it condemn countries like Eswatini which is also monarchy.
But the British monarchy is funded 100% government sources, and nobody has the same. You go to Saudi Arabia, and they all say there`s unfair system. Iran has its own system, that`s what they want to do, you can`t force them. Israel has its own system, African countries have their own system. Each one should live the way they want to live. But the world itself should be developed the way that there`s no country dictating on another – how we should live.
Why haven`t we developed, as economies? We didn`t develop, because the system created Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, United States in 1944, the dollar system. There was no way for countries like Zambia, where I come from, South Africa or China. But unfortunately we need to go on by US dollar just to ship goods across the border. We need to use US dollar just to buy goods, or sell goods to China.
And because we have to deal with that, we suffer just looking for the greenbacks. Because of that we are all dependent on a system where there is only one international currency.
We are also not able to speed out or implement necessary economic reforms that we want, because of the power of international economic institutions. We have IMF, where we are second class membersб where we have no say.
In conclusion, I`d like to say that the world should take this opportunity to ensure that BRICS and other big platforms create alternatives to make the multipolar world possible. We need strong Russia, strong China, and even strong US, or Italy. But we should not have one country dictating us how to live.
