The IMF and the World Bank in Africa : conditionality, impact and alternatives

Abstract

Most Sub-Saharan African countries have, during the 1980s, implemented a program of structural adjustment in conjunction with the IMF and the World Bank. These international institutions have thus had a decisive role in the formulation of economic policies in these countries. In early 1987, a conference on the "IMF and the World Bank in Africa" was arranged by the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies in Uppsala. In the conference the character of the conditionality requirements attached to these programs were investigated by a group of international experts and their impacts were analysed on a macro-level and through specific studies of Nigeria, the Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa, the Ivory Coast and India for comparative purposes. The conference also aimed at suggesting alternative and improved conditionality in the African context.