Africa fears contagion from rich world's money woes

By Pascal Fletcher

DAKAR (Reuters) - Diery Gueye doesn't have a bank account, a car or a house of his own, let alone a mortgage.

He hasn't heard of the global financial crisis that has sent markets tumbling and forced governments in the rich developed world to divvy up hundreds of billions of dollars to bail out collapsed banks and try to calm anguished homeowners and savers.

The only crisis he knows of is surviving day by day in his native Senegal, where the 45-year-old laborer barely earns enough to feed his wife and three kids and rent a room.

"It's tough ... sometimes I don't have work for two or three months," he says, speaking in the local Wolof language.

Welcome to Main Street Africa -- sprawling cities of dusty pavements, armies of poor and unemployed, chaotic traffic and bustling markets -- a world away from Europe or the United States in levels of individual wealth and of expectations.

In Senegal and across the world's poorest continent, millions in overcrowded cities and the remote bush eke out an existence on one or two dollars a day. Death, hunger and disease are the daily lot of many, especially in conflict zones like Darfur, Somalia, eastern Chad and Democratic Republic of Congo.

While African governments and educated elites are following the global banking crisis closely, the vast majority of their people have little grasp of sub-prime mortgages, toxic assets, bank bailouts and trillion dollar financial rescue plans.

But many do understand that when the rich world catches a financial fever, the planet's poorest may end up hurting too.

"I don't really know what it all means but I really hope that poverty here doesn't get worse just because they have problems," said Rose Camara, a Guinean housewife in Conakry.

"DEEP AFRICA"

"If the rich countries have problems, then that's going to end up coming here. You can count on it," said Ali Tapsoba, a garage worker in Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou.

The debate is open on just how much Africa and its people will feel the pain of the financial turmoil in the rich world at a time the continent's economies had been growing at their fastest pace in decades.

There are those like Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade who believe the crisis will be "limited" for Africa, where banking systems and markets are poorly developed in many countries.

"This is marginal for 'deep Africa'. We're talking about 700 million peasants, poor people. For these people, as long as they have something to eat, they're not doing badly," Wade told Radio France International this month.

The octogenarian leader, who faces protests at home over power blackouts and high food and fuel prices, believes financial solutions alone will not solve the North's crisis.