Introduction

The 1980s witnessed the phenomenon of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) imposed on the African continent with widespread repercussions. By 1993, at least 40 of the 56 countries of Africa were involved in one or another of these programmes. Structural Adjustment Programmes of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have transformed the realism, if not the interpretation, of African political and social economy. This transformation – from devaluation, privatisation to cost recovery and deregulation – has been effected not only in the economic and social spheres, but also the political. The hitherto near sacrosanct certainty of the centrality of the state and the seeming inevitability of development have been overtaken by the weakening of the state and the concentration on growth (as opposed to development), which in any case has been most erratic.

In examining the contemporary African economy, therefore, scholars and practitioners alike must abandon the paradigmatic state–centrism of one-party, military or ‘one man’ rule that characterised African states in the 1960s and 1970s. The spectacular responses and outcomes of droughts, food riots, widespread informal sectors, gender development and adjustment conditions have critical long-term implications that cannot be ignored. Adjustment has transformed not only the terms of trade (internal and external), but also the social relationships which underpin the terms of trade. As Shaw argues (1992), the very political economy of Africa – that is, definitions and relations of state, class, society and community – has changed. But has this change affected the deprivation of the mass of the Ghanaian and indeed, African poor?

The historical setting

Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa in particular, has recorded the weakest economic growth rates, let alone development, of all developing regions of the world in recent decades. Between 1965 and 1985, GDP per capita (even forgetting one's reservations about accuracy and meaning), increased by less than 1% a year on average. Arising from this negligible GDP growth rate, a large number of African states had lower per capita levels in 1985 than they did at independence. For most Africans, real income in the 1980s was lower than in 1970!

The SAPs of the World Bank and the IMF in the late 1970s and early 1980s came in for much criticism (for example, Helleiner, 1990; Herbst, 1993). A major element of this antipathy was the role of conditionality in the scheme of adjustment.