11 - Commodities, Mercedes-Benz & Structural Adjustment An Episode in West African Economic History

Summary

In traduction

'In much of Africa, it is easier to find a bottle of beer than a glass of clean water.’

- Ali Mazrui.

By all accounts, Africa's economic performance since 1960 (the year of independence) has been dismal. Much has been said and written about the ‘disappointments of independence’, the fact that the advent of Uhuru (freedom) may have been ‘worse than colonialism’, to use the words of the poet Okot p'Bitek. Yet, many other post-colonial societies in Asia and Latin America have managed to escape the burden of history and establish themselves as self-sufficient, economic powerhouses. While it is difficult to generalize about West Africa, a quick anatomy of its economies suggests that their structural patterns and the engines/ drivers of economic growth over the past decades have often been similar. Performance has been dismal. Agricultural growth, which determines the livelihood of 60 to 80 per cent of African people, has been unable to keep up with needs. Because of ineffective strategies and population growth, food production per capita has declined since independence and many countries depend on imports - which creates serious foreign-exchange needs and balance-of-payments problems. Production is typically oriented to the limited processing of commodities and other low value-added activities. Even countries that have experienced industrial growth have done so by relying on a small sector of the economy (mostly oil), scarce and volatile foreign capital and skills, and import-intensive technologies. Faced with the shortage of financing, poor infrastructure and ineffective government policies, the services sector has mushroomed into a large informal sector which provides subsistence employment but not the productivity and income levels that can reduce poverty.

Exploring the reasons for this state of affairs has been a battle of narratives. This chapter discusses Africa's economic development through one particular narrative, the structural adjustment programs (SAPs) designed by the Bretton Woods institutions (World Bank and International Monetary Fund) as a framework for growth and poverty reduction. The package of economic and social policies known as SAPs emerged in the early 1980s and quickly became a central feature in the discourse on African economic development.