From Zimbabweland and TheConversation. Story by Ian Scoones.

Some have asked what can Africa learn from Greece. I argue that Greece (and others) can learn a lot from the African experience.

Debt is on the rise again not just in Greece, but across the world. A decline in commodity prices with a strengthening of the U.S. dollar makes debt unsustainable in many economies. These developments have led to rising proportions of government revenues being spent on debt servicing and debt accounting for higher and higher proportions of total gross domestic product.

The extremes of Greece, whose debt had risen to some 178 percent of GDP – probably more now as its economy has crashed – are rare, but the signs are ominous.

Zimbabwe has a massive external debt, amounting to 40 percent of GDP, while other countries in the region – such as Mozambique and Tanzania – are racking up debt to fuel growth. But, as a report by Jubilee Debt Campaign argues, such growth masks growing inequalities and huge liabilities linked to public private partnership deals. It also hides a debt servicing requirement that will squeeze public expenditure for many years.

Is this a return to the 1980s and 1990s, when many countries across Africa – like Greece today – were saddled with unsustainable debt? Then, African countries had to take the unpalatable medicine of austerity packages imposed by the international financial institutions.

Can Greece and other debt-vulnerable nations learn valuable lessons from this period and its aftermath? I think so.

In Africa, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank austerity measures of the 1980s and 1990s were not put to a popular vote. Like in Greece, they would have been roundly rejected. Governments of all political persuasions were instead bullied into compliance with drastic structural adjustment measures.

Zimbabwe is a good example. It abandoned its measured growth with equity strategy in 1991 in favour of the notorious Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), known in Zimbabwe as the “Economic Suffering for African Peoples”.

We know the consequences of this disastrous period, both economically and politically.

But what if structural adjustment (aka austerity) across Africa had been replaced by a more balanced debt restructuring, encouraging investment alongside reform while protecting basic services and the vulnerable?

There are lots of big what-ifs. But the damage imposed by austerity has been long-lasting – not only on economies and the lost decades of low growth, but also directly on people. These include those who missed out on an education, and with the decimation of health services, the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic unfolding across the continent at the same time was much, much worse.

Escaping debilitating debt while promoting both growth and social justice is possible. This was the deal struck following the end of the second world war in Europe. Greece was one of the parties that signed the agreement to cancel German debt, and allow it to grow successfully after its decimation by war.

African negotiators will recall how they were humiliated and demeaned by the international institutions who rejected pleas for a more balanced approach. They will have much sympathy with the Greeks today.

Unlike Greece, African countries are not so behoven to a dominating power such as Germany, and less tied to a particular regional economic and political project.

This is a good thing. Today across Africa, new perspectives are on the table, and not just the tired, old, failed medicine from the IMF and others. Most notably, new ideas – and finance – are coming from China, Brazil, India, Malaysia and South Korea – among others.

Read more at TheConversation.