Impoverishing a continent: the World Bank and the IMF in Africa

This paper critically assess IMF and World Bank policies of the last decades. In doing so the paper highlights the dominance of the U.S. within the IMF and World Bank. The main focus of the assessment is the impact of the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) on Africa.

As the report points out, the consequences of SAPs in Africa include:

• slower growth
• increased poverty
• lower incomes
• low human development indicators
• increased debt burdens
• decrease in health care and increase in disease.

Those findings are underlined by case studies from Zimbabwe, Ghana and Coted’Ivoire. The report also makes suggestions for radical policy changes. The elimination of the World Bank and the IMF are seen by the authors as a prerequisite for any progress. Furthermore, the authors argue that all debt needs to be cancelled, and that only an African leadership will be able to implement viable alternative development strategies. They should include:

• participation: there is a crucial need for governments to consult their poor majorities, so damaged by SAPs, about the best development course to take
• redistribution of wealth within countries: land reform, official provision of essential services (education, health, electricity, water)
• promotion of agriculture: land reform should increase production, and generate a surplus for industrialisation
• an industrial strategy: industry should be agriculture-linked and aimed at supplying the needs of farmers
• regional integration: this will mean one African market for the continent’s manufactured goods which would lessen its external dependence, promote export diversification and lead to greater value-added of local products
• South-South cooperation: greater trade and exchanges and political coordination with the rest of the Third World will lessen African dependence on developed countries and strengthen the continent’s position in relation to the West.