World Bank, IMF, and WTO as Agents of Financial Imperialism

This chapter examines the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as sustainers of international financial subordination (IFS) in Africa and the rest of the Global South countries. The trio is criticised for championing neo-liberal programmes such as privatisation of the public sector, trade liberalisation, and deregulation, all of which have paved the way for the multinational corporations, transnational capitalist class, and their African collaborators to export finance capital to offshore financial centres and tax havens across the globe. Drawing from the theoretical traditions of dependency, core periphery, and world system as well as the decolonial perspectives, Moyo surfaces the contradictions in which the IMF and the World Bank are presented as the providers of finance to contain poverty and advance the values of accountability and inclusive participation, while, at the same time being the chief architects of financial imperialism that generates debt slavery, poverty, and inequality in Africa. Moyo also argues that contrary to the narrative which claims that the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries are global reformers that are disrupting the Bretton Woods system, in practice, these Global South actors are merely seeking to be accommodated by the current neo-liberal world system rather than transforming it.