Our Continent Our Future. African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment

Dakar, CODESRIA, 1999, 192 p., ISBN 9782869780743

The emerging African prespective on the complex issue of structural adjustment is here analysed. It answers the major challenge for Africans themselves to lead the reform process which has been dominated by external ideas and models. The editors, two of Africa’s top scholars, provide a succinct yet comprehensive synthesis of the adjustment debate from a truly African perspective, supported by thirty individual studies, twenty-five of which are from top economists and scholars from every corner of Africa.

For decades now, many African countries have implemented the structural adjustment programs of the Bretton Woods Institution. And yet extreme poverty and underdevelopment continue to plague what is becoming the world’s forgotten continent. Responding to this need for a new approach from within, the editors articulate a path for the future, underscoring the need to be sensitive to each other’s unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy.