Structural Adjustment Programmes And Economic Development In Sub-Saharan Africa

Today, the aspects of underdevelopment in Africa look more serious than in any other regions of the world. The economic situation of Africa is quite dismal, and it looks especially miserable when compared to the economic achievements of the East Asian. The average per capita GDP of East Asian in 1995 exceeded $10,000, while that of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) remained only around $500. With these two groups at the opposite extreme, the differences in the Third World are now such that, as Barbara Stalling puts it, the composite term "Third World" has become an anachronism. Indeed, it might be said that Africa has now virtually become the poorest Fourth World."Structural adjustment" is the name given to a set of "free market" economic policy reforms imposed on developing countries by the Bretton woods institutions (the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) during the period from the early 1980s to the middle of 1990s, as a condition for receipt of loans.Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) were developed in the early 1980s as a means of gaining stronger influence over the economies of debt-strapped governments in the South. To ensure a continued inflow of funds, countries already devastated by debt obligations have little choice but to adhere to conditions mandated by the IMF and the World Bank.Africa' s economic performance has been very poor especially during the recent two decades. Moreover, many authors indicate that Africa is still seriously being marginalized from the world economy in the recent trends of globalization. How can we account for this phenomenon? Over this question, the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) implemented by most African states under the auspices of the IMF and the World Bank, are seriously analyzed and discussed. It is because the SAPs have been the single most important economic policy during the past two decades that have determined the development course of SSA countries.This paper will give a brief background of the events that led many countries to accept SAPs. It will describe how SAPs are being implemented and what results they have produced over the past 20 years. The paper will also give a short analysis of the failure of SAPs. At the end of the paper, it develops a general opinion on what one can do in SSA for next programmes.