Malema urged African nations to resist foreign “debt traps” and instead pursue Nigeria-South Africa-led industrialisation.
South African opposition leader Julius Malema on Sunday cautioned African governments against reckless foreign borrowing, warning that such loans risk trapping the continent in debt and mortgaging its future.
Speaking at the opening of the Nigerian Bar Association’s Annual General Conference in Enugu, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) leader said, “The debt trap of Africa to our foreign colonisers must be stopped, and that begins by regulating these loans that our leaders commit future generations to, because they will not be there when the colonisers come to collect.”
Malema highlighted his party’s Public Finance Management Amendment Bill, which seeks parliamentary approval before South Africa’s treasury contracts loans from the World Bank or International Monetary Fund.
He urged Nigeria and South Africa to deepen cooperation, stressing that both nations possess the resources and manpower to industrialise Africa. “Our salvation lies here, in Lagos and Johannesburg, in Abuja and Pretoria, in the hands of Africans who refuse to be divided,” he said.