| | In recent months a poster has appeared in the United Kingdom informing us that 'reality sucks' and advising us to 'try the alternative' . Anybody who has read the latest effort of the World Bank to defend its Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in Africa, Adjustment in Africa; Reforms, Results and the Road Ahead (also known as 'The Three Rs' in some circles), might feel that the number crunchers who seem so dominant in that institution have taken this advice a little too much to heart. Certainly there is some evidence to suggest that the policy advisers of the Bank and the IMF are more influenced by the sanitised, neo-classical virtual reality programmed into their computers than by the ugly, unsanitised reality of economic and social crisis to be observed in many African states. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of these states have to live with the unmediated reality of this crisis, which structural adjustment policies have done little to solve. Indeed, there is considerable evidence to suggest that such policies have done more harm than good in many states. The analysts in the previous issue of ROAPE and this one challenge the neo-classicist hegemony of the Bank. Although the articles in this issue of ROAPE do not specifically address the analysis made by the Bank in 'The Three Rs' , they examine several issues that relate to the claims made for adjustment in this most recent Report. |
