This book brings into sharp focus the problems of development under conditions of structural adjustment and their relation to democratic change in Africa. Contributors to this volume are interested in specific countries such as Kenya, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, etc., but do bring to bear a rigorous comparative method which uses a political economy approach to the study of democracy, gender, industrialization, agriculture and the state. Its comparative approach in revisionist political economy allows for issues such as the new international division of labor to become central to the analysis of the relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries. The state-centric approach, although useful, may have missed important undercurrents in civil society. An analysis of development through the state's lenses has predominated the study of Africa. The approach by contributors in this volume is equally interested in the state but is also concerned with non-state actors. This dynamic approach characterizes few texts on Africa. This work should attract those who are concerned with African development, specifically, and international political economy in general.

As the World Bank famously put it back in 1989, 'underlying the litany of Africa's development problems is a crisis of governance.' This is a collection of authoritative essays bringing together prominent Africanists in political science and public administration to look at the role of governance in African development. The goal of the book is to move beyond the status quo debates about 'structural adjustment' and to look at all the public and civic institutions which are likely to play a critical role if Africa is to overcome its economic crisis.

Cloth Edition. Much has been learned about the need to modify structural adjustment policies and to apply them in appropriate ways. This book brings together the theory of researchers and the practical experience of policymakers.

Have structural adjustment programmes in Africa largely failed? Ought the World Bank and the IMF to be paying more attention to the particular circumstances of individual countries and to the alternative policies being proposed by the Africans? The contributors to this volume assert both positions. Case studies of education, health, public services and import-export performance demonstrate the frequent lack of success of structural adjustment. These are followed by alternative approaches to overcoming Africa's economic and human crises, including the importance of democracy in securing responsiveness of state policy to public needs, the structural advantages of regional integration, sustainable development strategies that build on the continent's resource base, and a new partnership between state and market.

This book reveals and examines the relevance of the macroeconomic theory and models behind recommendations for stabilization and structual adjustment. Alternaive analytical approaches are discusses. This is done on the basis of an up-to-date review of developments in sub-saharan Africa during the 1980's and within a common analytical framework.

Africa's societies and their economies are in crisis with mounting external debts and falling incomes leading to collapsing infrastructure, more widespread disease, illiteracy, malnourishment adn social conflict. The text argues that the problenms are not insuperable, but that whereas their causes are largely external, the only long-term solutions rest in African hands. The author shows that the adjustment programmes imposed by the World Bank and the IMF on many African countries have compounded the disastrous impact that foreign debt, trade restrictions and falling export prices have had. With the threats of proposed changes in the structure of world trade, they ammount to the virtual recolonization of much of the continent and offer its people little hope. To the contrary real development will only be achieved through long-term strategies appropriate to African circumstances, which return control of its abundant resources to Africans themselves and which ensure greater democracy and accountability in African political structures. The author is a member of the Economic Commission for Africa and Chair of the Institute for African Affairs.