Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment

For decades now, many African countries have implemented the structural adjustment programs of the Bretton Woods Institutions. The results, however, have been less than sterling. Extreme poverty and underdevelopment continue to plague what is becoming the world's "forgotten continent," and it is now generally agreed that a new approach is urgently required. Our Continent, Our Future presents the emerging African perspective on this complex issue. The authors use as background their own extensive experience and a collection of 30 individual studies, 25 of which were from African economists, to summarize this African perspective and articulate a path for the future. They underscore the need to be sensitive to each country's unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy. Our Continent, Our Future is the very first publication to present the African perspective on the Bretton Woods approach to structural adjustment, and it does so with the input and support of top economists and scholars from every corner of Africa. This important book should be read by all people concerned with the future of Africa and issues of sustainable and equitable development.

Business & Money

Mkandawire, Thandika

Soludo, Charles Chukwuma

Economics

Conseil Pour Le Developement De LA

Hitherto the human rights debate in Africa has concentrated on the legal and philosophical. The author, Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, here moves the debate to the social and political planes. He attempts to reconceptualise human rights ideology from the standpoint of the working people in Africa. He defines the approach as avoiding the pitfalls of the liberal perspective as being absolutist in viewing human rights as a central question and the rights struggle as the backbone of democratic struggles. The author maintains that such a study cannot be politically neutral or intellectually uncommitted. Both the critique of dominant discourse and the reconceptualisation are located within the current social science and jurisprudential debates.

The Concept of Human Rights in Africa

Politics & Social Sciences

Shivji, Issa G.

Philosophy

The State, Development and Politics in Ghana (Codesria Book Series)

This collection of ten essays focuses and analyses Ghana's political, economic, agrarian and social development. The authors are all Ghanaian scholars, and they reflect on their country's experience from different perspectives, providing an indigenous voice to the debate about the  country's development. The subjects covered are the state, capital and  labour relations 1961-1987; from GTP to Assene: aspects of industrial  working class struggles 1982-1986; women's political organizations  1951-1987; changing relations between the IMF and the Government of Ghana  1960-1987; financial intermediation and economic development; trends in  foreign policy after Nkrumah; the land question since the 1950s; the state  and food agriculture; policies and politics of export agriculture; and the  problems of the health care delivery system.

The State, Development and Politics in Ghana

Hansen, Emmanuel

Ninsin, Kwame A.

International

Where did the fabled riches of the Congo go, and what happened to all the capital accumulated by colonial history? Why is Zaire still underdeveloped, while the Belgian economy now thrives? Tapping many and varied sources, this book challenges dominant historiographical assumptions and practice while analysing the past and present impact of Belgian joint stock companies on the Zairean economy. The author, an academic and specialist on African historiography and methodology, argues that colonialism paved the way for the triumphant return of other colonizers - the multinational corporations under the hegemony of the WorldBank and the International Monetary Fund, with structural adjustment replacing pacification. The author's contention is that his investigation of the Zairean economic history overturns colonial assumptions, rooting its analyses in the people's own history, raising questions both about the colonial past, but also about the framework underlying previous analyses.

From The Congo Free State To Zaire: How Belgium Privatized The Economy; A History Of Belgian Stock Companies In Congo-Zaire, From 1885-1974

Depelchin, Jacques

A Modern Economic History of Africa: The Nineteenth Century

Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe

Eighteen of Africa's most distinguished scholars have contributed to this major and timely work, including Claude Ake, Archie Mafeje, Ali Mazrui, Issa Shivji and Joseph Ki-Zerbo. As a first step towards greater consideration of the nature of the research environment in Africa and to reflect on the social and material context of research as an intellectual activity, CODESRIA co-organised a major conference on academic freedom and research in Africa in Kampala in 1990. A selection of the conferencepapers are contained in this volume. The papers cover the relationship of capital and the state to academic freedom, the historical processes which have shaped intellectuals in Africa, issue of autonomy and democracy andthe question of funding relationships, and the difficulty of alliances that question the right to independence. The book is divided into fivesections: Reflections; Methodological Perspectives; Global Influences andLocal Constraints; Intelligentsia and Activism; and Organizing Academics.

Academic Freedom in Africa

Education & Teaching

Diouf, Mamadou

Higher & Continuing Education

An Economic History of Ethiopia (Collection Intersections Europeennes,)

When Emporer Haile Selassie led Ethiopia out of Italian occupation, he promised much - liberalisation, land reform, greater prosperity, a modern army, and a modern bureaucracy. Thirty years later, resistance, radical movements and dissent were to rock the foundation of his fragile new society into revolution. The economic history of modern Ethiopia has not attracted sufficient scholarly attention, and there has been no publication of note since Pankhurst in 1968. In recent years, Ethiopian scholars themselves have begun to undertake serious research; but there has been a lack of detail and up-to-date analysis, making it difficult to understand the nature of the immense transformations the country went through during its imperial age. Written by Ethiopians, this work fills that gap. Agriculture, industrialisation, monetary policy and demography are investigated; and topics range from drought, the radical land protests of the 1960s, industrialisation and manufacturing, to migration and the struggle for a currency. The forthcoming Volume II will cover the "people's government" period of 1974.

An Economic History of Ethiopia: The Imperian Era 1941-74

Bekele, Shiferaw

Trade unions, burial societies, students, religious and gender movements, riots and mafias. Not to mention class. The kaleidoscope of African social movements is complex and broad. But their histories have strong common threads - the experience of past oppression and the constant struggle for an identity that will encompass survival. How have they contributed to the nature of African civil society and the formation of democracy?

African Studies in Social Movements and Democracy (Codesria Book Series)

Social Sciences

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