Against and beyond Structural Adjustment
Resistance to free market economics at the policy level was expressed in 1980, on what proved to be the eve of Structural Adjustment, in the ideas and suggestions contained in the Organization of African Unity (OAU)'s Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa 1980—2000.
The Lagos plan, arguably ‘the first continent-wide effort by Africans to forge a comprehensive unified approach to the economic development of their continent' (Asante, 1991, 60), largely reflected a development strategy designed by Nigerian economist Adebayo Adedeji. Although the Lagos Plan of Action echoed some of the radicals' concerns about the impact of neo-colonialist forces in holding back Africa's development (OAU, 1981/1982, 3), Adedeji was not a revolutionary calling for disentanglement from the capitalist world system, or advocating the formation of a socialist continental political union. Instead, rather like Raul Prebisch when he was Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America in 1950—63, Adedeji was expressing his scepticism about the benefits that developing countries could obtain by placing overwhelming emphasis on market mechanisms and engaging in free trade following the doctrine of comparative advantage (Asante, 1991, 51—5). The key pillars of the comprehensive strategy contained in the document, ranging from agriculture to environmental policy, were self-reliance in food and agricultural production, coordination through economic planning, the building of a stronger industrial base at both national and supra-national level, and the creation of an African common market (OAU, 1981/1982).Despite the unanimous political support of African leaders, the Lagos Plan of Action was never implemented, with virtually the whole of West Africa agreeing over the following few years to adopt SAPs. The conflict between the World Bank's SAPs and OAU's Lagos Plan, and the former's victory, was a crucial confrontation of two developmental paradigms in the political arena, and a reminder of the extent to which the fate of economic doctrines is dependent on the institutional arrangements and power structures supporting them.
Reactions to SAPs and the neoclassical principles which underpinned them have inspired yet another stream of literature written by West African political economists. In contrast with the grand-unified historical narratives advanced by Marxist scholars, as well as the ‘one policy fits all' approach advanced by the World Bank in the 1980s, economists like Nigerian Charles Soludo (b. 1960) stood up against what they saw as harmful reductionism. Indeed, claiming that economic development ‘is quintessentially a political process' (Mkandawire and Soludo, 2003, 15), Soludo and the Malawian economist Thandika Mkandawire, argued that reform should have addressed ‘a broad range of fundamentals: macro-economic stabilization fundamentals; proactive, supplyside (production) fundamentals; and sociopolitical [sic] fundamentals' (Mkandawire and Soludo, 1999, 94). The work of these authors needs to be understood within the broader experience of the Dakar-based Council for the Development of Social Sciences Research In Africa (CODESRIA), founded in 1973. Through a wide range of educational and research activities (exemplified by their journal Africa Development), CODESRIA has tried to give voice to African scholars to countervail the dominance of institutions like the World Bank in matters of social science and development policy.
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