The Political Economy of Debt and Structural Adjustment in Africa

Abstract

A study of political economy, like good art and pornography, is easier to recognize than it is to define. Yet crises in countries, systems, or societies are seldom unidimensional, and the analysis of, and response to, such crises, particularly in a region as large, complex, and diverse as sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), demand an approach that transcends the normal boundaries of a single institution, mandate, or discipline. Two recent publications, The Debt Crisis in Africa, by E. Wayne Nafziger, and Beyond Structural Adjustment in Africa: The Political Economy of Sustainable and Democratic Development, edited by Julius E. Nyang'oro and Timothy M. Shaw, exhibit the strengths and pitfalls of taking up such a challenge. In their admirably succinct introduction, Nyang'oro and Shaw outline the dimensions of the African crisis. First, since the region's economic crisis is only part of a larger issue, the solution cannot be neatly divided into ECA/OAU versus IMF/Bank prescriptions (though the contributors to this book undoubtedly have a softer spot for the former more on this later). Second, the crisis in Africa reflects a larger one in international capitalism. Although such notions may seem wonderfully dated, some papers in this book (such as Katharine Mosely's on Nigeria), as well as the first half of E. Wayne Nafziger's book, make the more tenable point that structural changes in world commodity supply and demand, or in international finance, have hurt SSA disproportionately. Third, the political dimensions of adjustment and change in the region go beyond the somewhat polemical debate over the size and role of the state (or public sector or whatever) during development. Nafziger would probably agree with this map of the problem, as his book touches on many of the same themes as the papers in the Nyang'oro