The following is from an editorial by Guy Standing of the Basic Income Earth Network:

“To those unfamiliar with it, Africa might seem the most unpropitious part of the world for a basic income. It is the most impoverished continent, and administrative structures of government are scarcely among the most developed. Yet the casual observer could be mistaken.

Part of the reason is that the capacity of governments to operate standard forms of social security is weak and prone to be very costly as well as inequitable, particularly bearing in mind that only a minority of people is in formal employment. Yet the need for basic income security is acute. Forced by a series of social and economic shocks and emergencies that we have all seen on our TV screens, foreign aid agencies have been turning to simple cash transfers. Initially, they have tried to target them by trying to identify the poor to whom they should give such transfers. Then they have found that this exercise is futile, misguided or simply very expensive to carry out. And they have realised that the costs of means-testing have threatened to eat up much of the money available for the poor and economically insecure. The fine people working on the ground have passed the message back, and to their credit the administrators of international development or emergency aid have been listening.

Thus it is that Africa has become a continent in which forms of basic income are being introduced on an experimental basis. And, guess what, they are working just as BIEN members would expect. No doubt the likes of the IMF will tell African governments that they cannot afford a basic income scheme, as they have done recently in Namibia. They will quietly overlook the huge subsidies being given to the rich, to large corporations and selected export-oriented sectors. They will support ‘tax incentives’ for multinationals. But they will oppose the one policy that could dramatically and effectively reduce poverty while boosting the livelihoods of communities ravaged by AIDS, malaria, drought, ecological decay or economic devastation. Shame on them.

We must energise the debate in Africa. And a start was made at the BIEN Congress held in Cape Town on November 2-4, 2006. The BIG (Basic Income Grant) Coalition is reorganising in South Africa, and it was wonderful that at the end of the Congress Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel Laureate and one of the great figures of the anti-apartheid struggle, gave a moving and effective speech in favour of a basic income (video). More good news followed the Congress. A day afterwards the Minister of Social Development of the South African Government issued a statement saying that he favoured the introduction of a basic income in South Africa. The time surely will come when the President and the Finance Minister will see that their legacy could be made by their introduction of anti-poverty grants.”