From Adjustment to Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Consensus and Continuing Conflict

It is time to call a formal end to the decade of ‘structural adjustment’ in sub-Saharan Africa. The intense and continuing debates over its meaning, its instruments and its efficacy no longer serve any useful purpose now that all at last agree that there are no economic ‘quick fixes’ for Africa and that appropriate change will take much longer than originally thought. The objective of African development that is both equitable and sustainable — in political, social, economic and environmental terms — is now virtually universally accepted among African governments, international institutions, aid donors and non-governmental organisations, in Africa and elsewhere. Whilst there is understandable impatience, particularly in Africa, over the pace of projected change and, in particular, that of poverty alleviation, there is also now broad understanding that development in Africa will take a long time. The weak initial conditions, continuing internal constraints, and unfavourable external environment make for fairly bleak medium-term prospects, even in the most optimistic scenarios. Overblown expectations of the effects of policy reforms (both those emanating from political independence and, in the 1980s, those described as ‘structural adjustment’) and the dimensions and effects of external assistance in their support have now been reviewed and are recognised as the counterproductive influences that they were.