June 25, 2025
By Ismael Dainehine, Co-Founder & CEO @ EverGive
I've just finished Alex Gladstein's Hidden Repression, and it's uncovered the cruel realities of how the IMF and World bank subjugate, exploit and profit from the global south. It has further ignited my passion and sense of purpose. Here is what I learnt:
For decades, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have positioned themselves as champions of global development. Their language is polished: “stability,” “growth,” “reform.” Their branding is immaculate. But beneath the surface lies a business model of financial colonialism that has kept billions of people in the developing world under quiet but brutal economic repression.
In his powerful book Hidden Repression, Alex Gladstein lays bare the tools of modern authoritarianism - not always tanks and guns, but bank accounts, currency controls, and debt. He argues that financial freedom is human freedom, and the emergence of Bitcoin offers an unprecedented escape route from this global stranglehold.
Let’s connect the dots.
The Dark Reality of IMF & World Bank “Assistance”
When developing countries are in crisis, the IMF and World Bank step in - not with compassion, but with contracts. These come with strings attached that almost always benefit Western interests, multinational corporations, and authoritarian elites, not local populations.
From the 1980s onward, countries that took loans were forced to change their economies according to World Bank and IMF demands, also known as structural adjustment programs (SAPs). These almost always mandated that countries maximise exports to the West at the expense of domestic consumption. Here are typical SAPs:
• Massive cuts to healthcare, education, and social welfare.
• Privatisation of national industries (often sold to foreign buyers).
• Removal of trade protections that crushed local producers.
🇬🇭 In Ghana, cocoa farmers lost stability as deregulation opened the door for exploitation.
🇿🇲 In Zambia, copper mines—once public wealth—were sold off, enriching foreign shareholders while Zambians stayed poor.
The scale of structural adjustment is astonishing. Between 1981 and 2004, 123 countries, making up 82% of the world's population underwent structural adjustment as a result of borrowing from the World Bank or the IMF.
Many countries now spend more on debt repayments to the West than on public services in their own country. And what do they get in return? White-elephant infrastructure projects that benefit foreign contractors more than local communities.
🇰🇪 In Kenya, billions in loans were spent on flashy projects that Kenyans didn't need, yet the country’s healthcare system remains underfunded.
🇭🇹 After the 2010 earthquake, “aid” flowed in, but much of it returned to donor countries via foreign NGOs and contractors. Haitians were left with the bill and little to show for it.
Historian Graham Hancock notes in his book The Lords of Poverty that for every US tax dollar, 82 cents are immediately returned to American businesses in the form of purchase orders. This applies to both loans and aid.
To qualify for loans, many countries are forced to devalue their currency, which leads to inflation that devastates the poor.
🇦🇷 Argentina has seen repeated currency crises under IMF supervision. In 2018, the IMF issued a record $57 billion loan. Today, poverty and inflation are worse than ever.
The IMF and World Bank often fund and legitimise dictatorships.
🇨🇩 In Zaire, the corrupt regime of Mobutu Sese Seko received regular support while looting the country.
🇪🇬 In Egypt, the IMF props up Sisi’s authoritarian government, even as the economy spirals and citizens lose purchasing power.
5. Exploitation Masked as Development
Major World Bank-backed projects have displaced communities and degraded environments.
🌍 In Ethiopia, indigenous people were removed from their land to make way for foreign agribusinesses.
💧 In the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline, oil wealth flowed to multinationals and corrupt elites while local communities remained in poverty.
What Gladstein makes clear in Hidden Repression is that fiat currency, banking systems, and international finance have become instruments of control. Gladstein notes that Bitcoin may be our last hope. Let's unpack how.
The IMF and World Bank operate on a simple premise: you are not sovereign unless you play by their rules. The core problem isn’t just debt, or corruption, or failed policies - it’s the monopoly on money. Across much of the developing world, authoritarian regimes and international financial institutions have absolute control over who can access money, how it’s used, and when it’s taken away. Whether it’s a central bank devaluing the currency overnight, a dictator freezing the accounts of activists, or the IMF demanding austerity in exchange for survival, the message is always the same: your economic freedom is conditional.
This monopoly is what makes oppression scalable and invisible. A government doesn’t need to jail you if it can inflate away your savings. It doesn’t need to ban protest if it can shut down your access to the banking system. And it doesn’t need to colonise your country if it can keep you in permanent debt servitude under the banner of “development.”
Bitcoin breaks this system at its foundation.
By operating on a decentralised network, Bitcoin removes the power to arbitrarily print money from any government or institution. Its monetary policy is hard-coded, transparent, and global. No one can alter it to suit their own political agenda or economic interests. For the first time in history, people have access to a truly neutral form of money—a currency that cannot be devalued by a central bank, cannot be frozen by an autocrat, and cannot be manipulated by global lenders enforcing exploitative terms.
Bitcoin offers an exit—not just from local repression, but from a global financial architecture that has long been tilted against the developing world. It enables anyone with a smartphone to store wealth in an incorruptible digital form, move money across borders without permission, and engage in economic activity beyond the reach of corrupt officials or exploitative intermediaries. It creates the possibility of building grassroots economies from the bottom up, rather than waiting for “aid” that often enriches the few at the expense of the many.
This is not an abstract promise. It’s already happening. Nigerian youth used Bitcoin when their government shut down traditional payment channels during protests. Zimbabweans turned to it to escape hyperinflation. Cubans are using it to get paid for work in ways their own economy and external sanctions had made impossible. Around the world, individuals are quietly reclaiming their financial agency - not by appealing to institutions for reform, but by opting out entirely.
Bitcoin doesn’t fix roads or hospitals. It doesn’t elect leaders or write policy. But it does one thing exceptionally well: it removes the permission slip. It allows individuals to operate outside of systems designed to control them. And in a world where economic control has become the most effective form of oppression, that is nothing short of revolutionary.
The IMF and World Bank sell dependence as development. Bitcoin offers sovereignty.
It is not just better money. For billions, it is their last hope of real freedom.
