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This report offers new perspectives on sub-Saharan Africa's economic experience in the 1980s. That experience is often perceived as one of crisis and decline caused largely by hostile external factors. By putting Africa's extraordinary difficulties in the 1980s in a longer-term and global perspective, the report suggests that external factors may have been less hostile than supposed and less culpable in explaining the crisis. Moreover, the report shows emerging signs of economic improvement since the mid-1980s. This different view of the 1980s puts Africa's future in a fresh perspective - with a brighter prospect of recovery and growth. The report suggests that programs of economic reform and adjustment have helped African countries begin to improve their economic performance. Between 1983 and 1988, over half the countries of the region began, one after the other, to initiate policy reforms to favor increased efficiency in the use of scarce resources and to strengthen their competitiveness. This wave of reform arose largely from the crisis facing Africa. But an important feature of the movement toward policy reform and orderly structural adjustment is that Africans accepted the principal responsibility for their economic decisions and destiny.
Our Continent, Our Future presents the emerging African perspective on this complex issue. The authors use as background their own extensive experience and a collection of 30 individual studies, 25 of which were from African economists, to summarize this African perspective and articulate a path for the future. They underscore the need to be sensitive to each country's unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy. Finally, they stress that Africa must, and can, compete in an increasingly globalized world and, perhaps most importantly, that Africans must assume the leading role in defining the continent's development agenda.
Despite economic hardships during the past 20 years, Africa has recently enjoyed positive real economic growth, transformed its economic structures and systems, and improved living standards. Much of this owes to the determined pursuit of growth-oriented adjustment efforts, with IMF support, by nearly 30 African countries. Edited by I.G. Patel, this volume discusses progress made by Africa in the 1980s and prospects and needs for continued development in the 1990s.
While the design of adjustment policies in the latter part of the 1980s has generally shown greater attention to their impact on growth and social implications, this book argues that several orthodox adjustment policies are still incongruent with long-term development in Africa. It goes on to discuss a development strategy which could lead to a much awaited economic recovery and improvement in social conditions in Africa in the 1990s drawing its conclusions from a general theoretical discussion and national case-studies.
This collection of case studies focuses on the processes and outcomes of reform programs in seven African countries--Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, and Tanzania--chosen for the wide variety of conditions present before their individual adjustment programs began. The World Bank's recent policy research report Adjustment in Africa: Reforms, Results, and the Road Ahead concludes that the adjustment programs launched in 29 countries in the mid-1980's have resulted in some improvement in the overall policy environment. These improvements have been strongest in the macroeconomic and agricultural spheres and weakest in the areas of finance and public enterprise. The study also finds that reform programs work in the countries where policy performance has been good; conversely, poor policy progress has been reflected in poor performance. This volume presents case studies of seven country experiences to supplement and reinforce findings from the Policy Research Report. The studies confirm that whenever adjustment programs are vigorously pursued, results are strongly positive from the viewpoints of growth and alleviation of poverty. A key element in ensuring a successful adjustment program is strong motivation and commitment by the leadership in each nation. Too many abrupt, unpredictable, and frequent changes and reversals of policies erode the credibility of the programs, intensify the uncertainties, and slow down investor confidence. In short, the success of reforms hinges on policy stability, continuity, and predictability.
Examines whether Africa's disappointing economic performance reflects a failure to undertake structural adjustment reforms or a failure of those reforms to boost growth. Covers 29 African countries that underwent adjustment in the late 1980s. To reverse the economic decline that began in the 1970s, many Sub-Saharan countries initiated programs to pave the way for long-term development and prosperity by restructuring their economies. This report addresses just how much those countries undertaking reform actually changed their policies, the extent to which their policy reforms restored growth, and the future for adjustment. The report recognizes that adjustment can work in Africa but that it cannot work miracles in reducing poverty or ensuring sustained, equitable growth. African adjustment programs must go hand in hand with long-term development efforts to invest more in human capital and infrastructure, expand institutional capacity, and provide better governance.
3. Investing in people.
Uganda in the 1970s and early 1980s was one of Africa's sadder economic stories. Emerging from civil war, it had to embark on reform in the early to mid 1980s from a position of severe political weakness. In this study, the effects of economic policy at the aggregate level are discussed in detail, but snapshot empirical analyses of responses at the household level, both urban and rural are also presented. Uganda was for many years considered to be Africa's worst case, its recent recovery thus provides hope for similar countries in the region.