The World Bank's Agenda for the Crises in Agriculture and Rural Development in Africa: An Introduction to a Debate

Abstract

A number of international agencies (as well as other prominent institutions and individuals) have issued reports assessing the crises now perceived to afflict development in Africa. The Organization of African Unity's Lagos Plan of Action (OAU, 1980) emphasized historical legacies, deteriorating terms of trade, and Africa's dependence on foreign markets, and set out elements for a general strategy to escape these constraints by building self-reliant, local, and regional economies. Various Food and Agriculture Organization documents (e.g., FAO, 1983) and UNICEF's State of the Children Report (UNICEF, 1983) provide particularly grim pictures of food and nutritional deficiencies. The Economic Commission for Africa, in its silver jubilee analyzing recent history, emphasized that, if present trends continue, the scenario after the next twenty-five years will be a nightmare of poverty and degradation of life (UN ECA 1983). The World Bank's 1981 report, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action (hereafter Accelerated Development) also portrayed a crisis situation in food and agricultural and called for some major policy changes in response. This document has probably attracted the lion's share of attention, certainly controversy. There are several reasons why the report deserves careful study and concerned discussion: it is readable, provocative, and comprehensive; it focuses on what are perceived to be immediate problems which must be addressed if the widespread decline in per capita output is to be reversed; it sets out an of new policies and programs to bring about this essential improvement in the production base (World Bank, 1983: 1). These recommendations can hardly be ignored since the Bank speaks from a position of power not enjoyed by the OAU or the UN agencies; its determination to press the seems evident from its more recent pronouncements (World Bank, 1983). The agenda is controversial. It embodies priorities and measures which will affect different groups of people in Africa in different ways; it also embodies some difficult value choices and some controversial assumptions. With these considerations in mind, the International Third World Legal Studies Association asked me to organize a panel to explore some of the