Abstract
Chapter 21 points out that, beyond the Cold War, there has been a structure of asymmetrical global power relations of Western nations and multilateral institutions that has disadvantaged sub-Saharan Africa. The author expands on the Bretton Woods institutions—the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund—which he claims to be the greatest purveyors of poverty in Africa. The chapter recommends reform measures for the WTO and IMF that would discard neoliberal Western-dominated agendas through giving African states more voice and leadership in these institutions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The World Bank and International Monetary Fund each designate North Africa as part of their Middle East and North Africa Region, thereby excluding North Africa from their Africa Region, which thus comprises members from sub-Saharan Africa only.
- 2.
The World Bank, formerly known as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, is a member of the World Bank Group, which has four other members: the International Development Association, the International Finance Corporation, the Multilateral Guarantee Agency, and the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes.
- 3.
See World Bank, http://www.worldbank.org/en/about/what-we-do
- 4.
- 5.
Catherine Caufield, Masters of Illusion: The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations (New York: Henry Holt, 1977), p. 44.
- 6.
World Bank, “New World, New World Bank: Synthesis Paper” (2010).
- 7.
Jacob Vestergaard and Robert H. Wade, “Protecting Power: How Western States Retain Dominant Voice in World Bank Governance”, World Development 46 (2013), pp. 153–64. See also Bretton Woods Project, “Analysis of the World Bank Voting Reforms: Governance Remains Illegitimate and Outdated”, briefing (30 April 2010).
- 8.
I am grateful to Iyabo Masha for drawing my attention to this point in a private email correspondence with me.
- 9.
See Claude Ake, Revolutionary Pressures in Africa (London: Zed, 1978), pp. 17–18.
- 10.
Compare the debate generated by the Colloquium on the African Road to Socialism, held in Dakar, 3–6 December 1962. See also United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, “Capturing the 21st Century: African Peer Review Mechanism, Best Practices, and Lessons Learned” (2011), pp. 21–73.
- 11.
Projects funded included railways (Côte d’Ivoire); irrigation (Sudan); dams (Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Sudan, Zambia); highways (Burundi, South Africa); ports (Nigeria); power plants (Swaziland, South Africa, Mauritius, Uganda); an iron mine (Mauritania); a manganese mine (Gabon); and telephone systems (Ethiopia). See Catherine Caufield, Masters of Illusion, pp. 70–90.
- 12.
Lester B. Pearson, Partners in Development: Report of the Commission on International Development (New York: Praeger, 1969). Pearson “[d]is covered that developing countries were using a huge proportion of their foreign loans simply to pay interest due on earlier foreign loans, [and warned] that if borrowing continued at existing levels … Africa’s annual debt-service would be 120 percent of its new borrowings” by 1977. Quoted in Catherine Caufield, Masters of Illusion, p. 89.
- 13.
See for example Jeff Haynes, Trevor W. Parfitt, and Stephen Riley, “Debt in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Local Politics of Stabilisation”, African Affairs 86(344) (July 1987), pp. 347–8; Emanuelle Fantini and Luca Puddu, “Ethiopia and International Aid: Development Between High Modernism and Exceptional Measures”, in Tobias Hagmann and Filip Reyntjens (eds), Aid and Authoritarianism in Africa: Development Without Democracy (Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute, 2016), p. 93.
- 14.
Tobias Hagmann and Filip Reyntjens, “Introduction: Aid and Authoritarianism in Sub-Saharan Africa after 1990”, in Tobias and Reyntjens, Aid and Authoritarianism in Africa, p. 4.
- 15.
See UNECA, “Capturing the 21st Century”, pp. 35–52.
- 16.
Ian M. Little, Richard N. Cooper, W. Max Corden, and Sarath Rajapatirana, Boom, Crisis and Adjustment: The Macroeconomic Experience of Developing Countries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 124.
- 17.
Colin Leys, the Rise and Fall of Development Theory (London: Currey, 1996), p. 82.
- 18.
Leys, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory, p. 95. See also L. Adele Jinadu, “Globalization and State Capacity in Africa”, technical paper, UNDP Seventh African Governance Forum, Building the Capable State in Africa, Ouagadougou (24–26 October 2007).
- 19.
Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa (Ibadan: Spectrum, 2001), pp. 94–5.
- 20.
Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa (Ibadan: Spectrum, 2001), pp. 94–5.
- 21.
See J.B. Adekanye, “Structural Adjustment, Demonstration, and Rising Ethnic Tensions in Africa”, Development and Change 26(2) (1995), p. 355; Tade Aina, “Globalization and Social Policy in Africa”, Working Paper no. 6, Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, 1996; Claude Ake, Democracy and Development in Africa; B. Beckman, “Empowerment or Repression? The World Bank and the Politics of Adjustment”, in Yusuf Bangura, Peter Gibbon, and Arve Ofstad (eds), Authoritarianism, Democracy, and Adjustment: The Politics of Economic Reform in Africa (Uppsala: The Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1992); Liisa Laakso and Adebayo Olukoshi, “The Crisis of the Post-Colonial State Project in Africa”, in Adebayo Olukoshi and Liisa Laakso (eds.), Challenges to the Nation-State in Africa (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstituet, 1996).
- 22.
Claude Ake, “Democratisation of Disempowerment in Africa”, Occasional Monograph no. 1, Centre for Advanced Social Science (1994), p. 12. Compare Bany Gills and Joel Rocamora, “Low Intensity Democracy”, Third World Quarterly 13(3) (1993), p. 502; the authors claim that the neoliberal version of liberal democracy “is in danger of becoming a term of political mystification or obfuscation, serving as a euphemism for sophisticated forms of neo-authoritarianism”.
- 23.
Andre Gunder Frank, “Marketing Democracy in an Undemocratic Market”, in Bany Gills (ed.), Low Intensity Democracy: Political Power in the New World Order (London: Pluto, 1993), p. 35.
- 24.
Claude Ake, “Democratisation of Disempowerment in Africa”, 1994.
- 25.
Ladi Adamolekun, I Remember (Ibadan: Safari, 2016), p. 242.
- 26.
Chukwuma Obiegwu, “Post-Conflict Peace-Building in Africa: Challenges of Socio-Economic Recovery and Development”, Africa Region Working Paper Series no. 73, 2004.
- 27.
IMF, “Ghana: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper”, Country Report, no. 06, June 2006, p. 1.
- 28.
- 29.
This follows the periodisation in UNECA, “Capturing the 21st Century”, p. 42, characterising the period between 1990 and 2000 as one marked by “paradigm shifts … rethinking and reinventing”.
- 30.
Grant Masterson, Kojo Busia, and L. Adele Jinadu (eds), Peering the Peers: Civil Society and the African Peer Review Mechanism (Johannesburg: Electoral Institute for Southern Africa, 2010), chapters 2 and 4; L. Adele Jinadu, “Governance and Development in Africa”, in Charles Mutasa and Mark Patterson (eds), Africa and the Millennium Development Goals: Progress, Problems, and Prospects (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015), pp. 51–66; Adele Jinadu, “Building Democratic Institutions in Africa”, in African Peer Review Mechanism, Background Papers: APRM Tenth Anniversary Colloquium (21–23 May 2013); Steven Gruzd and Yarik Turianskyi (eds), African Accountability: What Works and What Doesn’t (Johannesburg: South African Institute of International Affairs, 2015).
- 31.
APRM, “Sierra Leone”, Country Review Report, 15 January 2012, p. 287.
- 32.
APRM, “Uganda”, Country Review Report, January 2008, pp. 234–5.
- 33.
APRM, “Uganda”, p. 241.
- 34.
- 35.
David Craig and Doug Porter, “Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers: A New Convergence”, World Development 31, no.1 (January 2003), pp. 53–69.
- 36.
See Chapters 6–7 and in some reports Chapter 8 of the APRM’s Country Review Reports: for example, “Nigeria”, Country Review Report, June 2009, chapters 6–7; See also APRM, Country Review Report no. 5, September 2007, chapters 6–7; and APRM, “Republic of Benin”, Country Review Report, January 2008, chapters 6–8.
- 37.
L. Adele Jinadu, Personal Communication received from Iyabo Masha, October 2016.
- 38.
World Bank, Annual Report, 2015, http://www.worldbank.or/en/about/annual-report
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Jinadu, L.A. (2018). Sub-Saharan Africa: The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In: Nagar, D., Mutasa, C. (eds) Africa and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62590-4_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62590-4_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-62589-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-62590-4
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)