Adjustment policies and sustainable development in Africa : some observations

This contribution to the Africa seminar 'Beyond adjustment', organized by the Directorate General for International Cooperation of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Maastricht, The Netherlands, on June 30, 1990, summarizes the distinctive features of the African economic crisis, discusses the relevance of adjustment policies to remedy the crisis situation, and examines how the basic policy objective of 'food security' is affected by the IMF/World Bank structural adjustment programme. In this respect, it is important to observe that IMF/World Bank programmes do not take the purchasing power of different socioeconomic groups into account, while the food supply effect of policy instruments such as devaluation is variable. Bibliogr