POLITICAL IMPACT OF STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT AND DEBT
RELIEF ON AFRICA
INTRODUCTION
Structural adjustment and debt relief has important consequences
of the way that politics is conducted in Africa even if the World
Bank and others who recommend reforms are unwilling, or unable,
to describe them.
CONSEQUENCES OF STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT
Structural adjustment directly attacked Africa’s political status quo.
The political process on this continent, more so than other parts of
the world, revolved around the state. Government institutes were
recognised as key providers of employment, services and
resources. In effect, the state was the gatekeeper to opportunities
of social mobility and welfare. Clients would offer their support to
governments in return for benefits such as jobs in the public
sector, administrative ‘favours’, new schools for their region, as
well for their village, the metalling of a local road. It was this
client-patron interdependence that provided the social ‘glue’ that
bound the whole political system together, thus generating a
degree of stability. SAPs consciously aimed to break these client-
patron relationships, as they were judged to be economically (if
not politically) inefficient.
A key element of structural adjustment, this respect, was ‘rolling
back’ the state. It aimed to keep the state’s intervention in the
economy to a minimum, promoting civil society activity instead.