Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

UNITED NATIONS, April 20 -- When four African finance ministers spoke to the press Saturday at the IMF Spring Meeting, it was South Sudan which stood out. Its minister Kosti Manibe Ngai, calling his country “just a baby,” stated that for the last year it has foregone 98% of government revenue, due to the oil stand-off with Sudan.

While under the Matrix of Implementation agreed to, but not yet even note much less congratulated by the UN Security Council, the oil's set to start flowing, Kosti said that donors will be coming through with $250 million in direct budget support in the coming year. (Click here for Inner City Press' reporting on the Matrix, and the Security Council's silence.)

Such support, with no strings attached, stands in contrast for example to the trend in Rwanda, where donors attach conditions leading to the country increasingly saying it is willing to go it alone, if it must.

At the IMF there was discussion of “diaspora bonds,” and Ali Soilihi of the Comoros decried IMF restrictions which refuse to classify “ex-im loans from India or China” as concessionary.

She went big-picture, on how the downturn in the Eurozone has hurt African exports, and on the need to coordinate Continent-wide on credible statistics and transparency.

Among the questions, a reporter from the Democratic Republic of Congo asked about minerals just being exported from Africa for processing elsewhere. It brought to mind the looming conflict in Katanga, another DRC region where the Kabila administration's power is notably weak.

  A Chinese reporter not surprisingly asked about the BRICS bank. Is that and not the IMF the future for some countries in Africa?

  Earlier in the week at the UN, an answer to Inner City Press is that the IMF is all about Europe now, deeper and deeper into Ireland, Greece and Cyprus. So whither Africa? Watch this site.