AFRICAN VOICES ON STRUCTURAL ADJUSMENTS: A Companion To: Our Continent, Our Future

The publication of a two-volume evaluation study on "adjustment in Africa" by the World Bank in 1994 sparked major controversies and re-ignited the debate about the direction 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. This book is a response to the need for critical appraisal of the structural adjustment program (SAP) as a development strategy. The failure of SAP, the simplistic diagnosis and tendentious performance evaluation of the 1994 report, and what seems to be a changed African environment that is more permissive of alternative viewpoints, has convinced Africans to re-enter the debate. There is a growing call for "local ownership" of adjustment and for Africans to assume the leading role in defining the continent’s future. About thirty studies were commissioned—within the broader goal of Africa reclaiming the initiative and providing a framework fo