African Voices on Structural Adjustment: A Companion to our Continent, our Future

Abstract

The publication of a two-volume evaluation study on “Adjustment in Africa” by the World Bank in 1994 sparked off major controversies and re-ignited the debate about the direction(s) of Africa’s development. For most African scholars who live in and study these economies, the World Bank reports were yet another major disjuncture between reality and dogma. The urge to provide a critical response to the reports in order to straighten the issues was irresistible. The need for such critical appraisal of the structural adjustment program (SAP) as a development strategy provides the immediate rationale for this project. Furthermore, the failures of SAP, the simplistic diagnosis and highly tendentious performance evaluation of the 1994 report, as well as the seemingly changed environment that is more permissive of alternative viewpoints have convinced Africans to “re-enter” the debate. There is a growing call for “local ownership” of adjustment and for Africans to assume the leading...