The Politics Of Africa S Economic Recovery

The waning of the Cold War means that major political powers no longer feel compelled to support African authoritarianism. Revised official consensus holds that, in Africa as elsewhere, political reform must accompany economic adjustment. According to this view, African recovery requires a reduction in the size and economic role of monopolistic and inefficient states, and their transformation into accountable liberal democracies. Is this a desirable and practicable political programme? Certainly, all over Africa the number of liberal democracies is growing. But can they survive and are they compatible with renewed economic growth? Richard Sandbrook answers these questions, and assesses the feasibility of the new political programme in reinforcing Africa's economic recovery. He argues that the programme has merit in the short term, but, in the longer term, a more self-reliant, state-directed approach should be adopted to ensure prosperity and durable democracy in the region.

In Agenda for Africa's Economic Renewal, ten experts from Africa, Europe, and the United States look beyond structural adjustment and identify the strategic elements that are needed to engineer Africa's economic recovery in the coming years. Starting from the considerable degree of consensus among policymakers and scholars about what ails African economies, the authors analyze the key choices that need to be made in the critical areas of agriculture, trade and industry, state capacity, and the social sectors. The authors consider these strategic priorities in the extremely fragile environment of democratic rule in many countries of the region, and they stress the long overdue need to focus directly on the political implications of economic policy choices.

A special session of the UN General Assembly was held in Abuja, the new Nigerian capital in May 1988. This volume reproduces the major papers, lines of discussion and conclusions of the conference.

African countries have experienced modest economic recovery during the 1990s. But these countries are caught in a vicious circle in which the existing economic structure cannot generate enough savings and export earnings needed to finance their development and mount a sustained assault on widespread poverty. Yet foreign aid has been cut back sharply and the continent receives only a trickle of foreign investment flows. New policy regimes are now in place, creating the right environment for external financing to make a major difference. Development finance is one of the foremost challenges facing African countries and the international community in the new century.

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.

In Agenda for Africa's Economic Renewal, ten experts from Africa, Europe, and the United States look beyond structural adjustment and identify the strategic elements that are needed to engineer Africa's economic recovery in the coming years. Starting from the considerable degree of consensus among policymakers and scholars about what ails African economies, the authors analyze the key choices that need to be made in the critical areas of agriculture, trade and industry, state capacity, and the social sectors. The authors consider these strategic priorities in the extremely fragile environment of democratic rule in many countries of the region, and they stress the long overdue need to focus directly on the political implications of economic policy choices.