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Structural Adjustment in Africa: a Failing Grade So Far

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Sayre P. Schatz
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Extract

The success of World Bank policy has recently been proclaimed in Adjustment in Africa: reforms, results, and the road ahead (New York, published for the World Bank by Oxford University Press, 1994), which maintains that the Bank's macro-economic policies have improved economic performance, and that, in general, the greater the degree of implementation, the better the results. My review of this policy research report is intended to show that the presented data fail to support this claim and even bolster the contrary thesis.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 1994 , pp. 679 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 The Economist (London), 5–11 03 1994, p. 24.Google Scholar According to this source, ‘A World Bank econometrician published a study in 1992 called: “Why Structural Adjustment has not Succeeded in sub-Saharan Africa”. The Bank retrieved it from the printers, re-issued it with a less controversial title and pointed out that the analysis was anyway flawed’. Ibid. p. 22.

2 Helleiner, Gerald K., ‘Conventional Foolishness and Overall Ignorance: current approaches to global transformation and development’, in Canadian Journal of Development Studies (Toronto), 10, 1, 1990, p. 111.Google Scholar

3 Relevant countries are those for which Adjustment in Africa had sufficient data, and which made significant changes in policy– i.e. were assigned a macro-policy implementation score other than zero.Google Scholar

4 The overall score for reform performance in Adjustment in Africa was arrived at by averaging the three separate policy-change scores on p. 261. The weights have been calculated simply by adding up the total scores for each set of criteria, regardless of sign: fiscal policy, 39 (38 per cent), monetary policy, 25 (24 per cent), and exchange-rate policy, 39·5 (38 per cent).Google Scholar

5 See, for example, Callaghy, Thomas M., ‘Political Passions and Economic Interests: economic reform and political structure in Africa’, in Callaghy, and Ravenhill, John (eds.), Hemmed In: responses to Africa's economic decline (New York, 1993), pp. 463–519.Google Scholar