Money that financed the Ukraine war could have turned the situation around in Africa
The IMF and World Bank have become the private piggy bank of the Ukraine war. According to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, the World Bank and its partners have mobilized $34 billion to help Ukraine, of which more than $22 billion has already been received, as reported by Reuters July 20. The last transfer to Ukraine, a 1.5 billion dollar loan from the World Bank, guaranteed by the government of Japan, was announced that same day.
On March 31, the IMF Executive Board approved a $15.6 billion loan to Ukraine, bringing the combined IMF-World Bank total to $49.6 billion (assuming the amounts are accounted separately, as it appears).
This, while the IMF is presently imposing genocidal conditionalities upon Argentina, before it dispenses a tranche of a loan, and has tried to force Tunisia to lift subsidies to basic goods as a condition for a 2 billion dollar loan – an offer that the Tunisian government rejected as it would create unrest. Both the IMF and World Bank deny Africa and other parts of the world meaningful development credit.
If figures published by RT on July 19 are correct, Kyiv had already received a total of €165 billion ($185.6 billion) from Western countries. Assuming that figure represents monies and munitions to Ukraine by individual Western countries, and not multilateral lending institutions like the IMF and World Bank, then Ukraine has or will receive $235.2 billion.
What could that $235.2 billion do otherwise? It has been estimated that the Transaqua project, the multi-faceted infrastructure project that would turn around the situation in the Sahel, bringing water, electricity, transport infrastructure and agricultural development to the region, would cost $50 billion.
With the remaining $180.2 billion, one could build and set into operation nuclear power stations in 23 African countries. Based on Russia’s Rosatom’s contract to build 4.8 GW of installed nuclear capacity at the El Dabaa site in Egypt for $30 billion, a standard 1.2 GW light water nuclear reactor plant can be installed and set into operation for $7.5 billion. Therefore, this $235.2 billion would suffice to install and set into operation twenty-three 1.2 GW nuclear power plants. Those nuclear plants in as many African nations, paired with building modern health and hospital, water management, and transportation systems, could have as great an impact on increasing the potential relative population density and anti-entropic growth of Africa as a whole, and thus simultaneously world growth as a whole, as perhaps any single investment.
