Review: Third World: Structural Adjustment in Africa
| Date | 01 June 1992 |
| Published date | 01 June 1992 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070209204700218 |
| Author | James Busumtwi-Sam |
| Subject Matter | Review |
456
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
common
interest
in
keeping
the
Indian
Ocean's
sea
lanes
open
during
time
of
conflict.
The
199o-i
Gulf War
indicates
that
the
Indian
Ocean
is
not
yet
the
zone
of
peace
that
many
had
hoped
it
would
become.
Since
these
papers
were
delivered
the
Soviet
Union
has
disinte-
grated
and
the
Soviet
navy
has
withdrawn
from
the
Indian
Ocean.
The
book
is
testimony
to
the
inability
of
scholarship
to keep
pace
with
events
in today's
rapidly
changing
international
system.
Arthur
G.
Rubinoff/University
of
Toronto
STRUCTURAL
ADJUSTMENT
IN
AFRICA
Edited
by
Bonnie
E.
Campbell
and
John
Loxley
London: Macmillan
[Don
Mills,
Ont:
Collier-Macmillan],
199o, xvi,
277PP,
$89.95
Over
the
past decade
adjustment lending
has
become
the cornerstone
of
efforts to
deal
with
Africa's economic
crisis.
This
volume aims
to
shed
some
light
on
the
origins
of
this
crisis,
to
examine
some
specific
policy
adjustments
that
have
been
designed
to
deal
with
the
crisis,
and
to
offer
a
preliminary
assessment
of
the
record
in
selected
African
countries.
The
volume
consists
of an
introductory
chapter
by
the
edi-
tors,
case-studies
on aspects
of
the
economics
and
politics
of
structural
adjustment
in
Tanzania,
Zimbabwe,
Uganda,
C6te
d'Ivoire,
Madagas-
car,
and
Morocco,
and
a
study
of
a
World
Bank
project in
Cameroon.
The
chapters
generally
share
a
concern
with
the
distributional
and
sectoral
impact
of
orthodox
policy
instruments
such
as
export promo-
tion
and
exchange
rate adjustment.
A
significant
contribution
of
the
volume
lies
in
the
attempt
by
several
of
the
contributors
to
expose
the
ideological
underpinnings and
explore
the
methodological
inconsisten-
cies
in some
of
the
World
Bank's
policy
recommendations.
Stoneman's
critical
appraisal
of
the
World Bank's
(mis)use
of
domestic resource
cost
analysis
in
Zimbabwe
and
Durufle's
chapters
on
Madagascar
and
C6te
d'Ivoire are
good
examples.
As
the
editors
correctly
note,
a
critical
approach
to
orthodoxy
in
the
adjustment
programmes
of
the
International
Monetary
Fund
and
the World Bank
does
not
necessarily
entail
a
rejection
of
all
policy
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