Introduction

This book is a study of the impact of macroeconomic structural adjustment policies on the economy of Sierra Leone. It contributes to the ongoing policy debate over economic revitalization of the countries of Africa south of the Sahara. Sierra Leone is a small country of little importance to the rest of the world, and economics is viewed by most people as too esoteric or dismal to warrant more than passing interest. Thus, the nonspecialist might well ask why he or she should devote the effort to reading this book. The reason lies in the lesson carried by the Sierra Leone experience for other small, unimportant countries which suffered so tragically from economic decline in the 1970s and 1980s. Wracked by the instability of the world market and suffering from population pressure on its resources, Sierra Leone like other small and poor countries sought aid from the international development community. The aid that came was hardly generous and tied to a flagrantly ideological policy package singularly irrelevant for the country’s problems. And when the inappropriate policies produced their predictable and disastrous result, the dispensers of ideology blamed the victim for the failure. That, in brief, was the Sierra Leone story, and its moral has general application.