Why structural adjustment is necessary and why it doesn't work

Tanzanian coastal and inland ports and shipping: crises and policy options

“…A shared crisis of exports As with much of tropical Africa, patterns of trade remain uneven; many areas of Tanzania-and, indeed, the Great Lakes countries-import very much more than they export, other than in times of famine [108]. This places an additional cost on shipping firms servicing the region [109] and reflects the current malaise of primary commodity markets and the crisis of indigenous manufacturing following on the dropping of tariff barriers and deregulation [110,111]. Declining prices for primary commodities in the 1980s and 1990s were passed back to the original producers, resulting in many reverting to subsistence production or exiting from the sector [112].…”

Neoliberal accumulation and class: a tribute to Gavin Williams

“…In reminiscing with a comrade from the old days in ROAPE we recalled two such interventions which marked Gavin's readiness to depart from what might have seemed the logic of his own positions and certainly challenged some of the left-wing orthodoxies. Writing during the height of the indictment of all things to do with structural adjustment he offered a more ambiguous and contradictory view when he titled an article 'Why structural adjustment is necessary and why it doesn't work' (Williams 1994). He also offered a challenge to instinctive anti-market analysts of agrarian relations in Africa when he suggested that governments had become so corrupt that wresting agricultural produce marketing away from the state monopolies that had persisted since colonial days would be a beneficial step even if it was part of World Bank prescriptions, a way of 'taking the part of the peasant', as he once famously put it.…”

Illicit livelihoods: drug crops and development in Africa

“…7 SAPs were not always bad news for farmers, as, according to Gavin Williams, such policies sometimes raised prices for crops on local markets. But such gains were usually outweighed by the fall in export prices (Williams 1994). regional and global markets are for the commodity (Bernstein 1999;Klantschnig 2013, Laudati 2014. Consumers interviewed in Nairobi also reported how cannabis sold there not only comes from local production zones, but also as far as Malawi and Ethiopia, suggesting both the scale of regional trade networks, and the demand that exists for non-local varieties.…”

“…The 1970s and 1980s were times of economic crisis and structural adjustment in much of Africa. Rising oil prices and declining terms of trade for export crops such as cocoa or coffee, combined with economic mismanagement led to an array of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) in different African countries, which were marked by painful liberal economic reforms and a further deepening of the economic crisis (Williams 1994). These programmes would be implemented differently across the continent and at different times, but in most cases they negatively impinged on large sections of African society.…”