Between Scylla and Charybdis: The Foreign Economic Relations of Sub-Saharan African States

Abstract

Over the last decade the foreign economic relations of sub-Saharan African states have focused increasingly on their severe debt and economic crises. These relations have involved wrestling with debt service burdens and the rigors of rescheduling with the Paris and London Clubs; conducting difficult negotiations with bilateral and private creditors; bargaining over conditionality packages with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank or fending them off; distributing the painful costs of adjustment; coping with import strangulation; and devising new development policies and strategies. The sub-Saharan states were already highly dependent on the outside world; the intensity, stakes, and levels of conditionality of these states' foreign economic relations have increased substantially since the middle of the 1970s. They are certainly political, as they impinge on very central issues—sovereignty, political order, development, and mass welfare. In this sense, they are foreign economic relations with very powerful domestic roots and consequences. African states and external actors are going to have to work together to ameliorate Africa's crises.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Adebayo Adedeji , “Foreign Debt and Prospects for Growth in Africa during the 1980s,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 23(1):60-61 (Mar. 1985).

2. This article concerns the 39 countries that the World Bank considers to be in sub-Saharan Africa; it does not include South Africa. Because comprehensive data on Angola and Mozambique are usually not available to the bank, much but not all of the data presented here exclude these two countries. Whenever “Africa” is used in the text, it refers only to sub-Saharan Africa.

Edward V. K. Jaycox et al. , “The Nature of the Debt Problem in Eastern and Southern Africa,” pp. 47-62.

Reginald Herbold Green , “Reflections on the State of Knowledge and Ways Forward,” in Crisis and Recovery in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Tore Rose (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 1985), p. 299.

on the case of Zaire, see Thomas M. Callaghy , “The Political Economy of African Debt: The Case of Zaire,” in Africa in Economic Crisis, ed. John Ravenhill (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 307-346.

6. It is important to note that these figures are based on World Bank projections of commodity prices, which often prove to be overly optimistic. These figures therefore may prove too low.

7. It might be possible to argue that interaction between countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on African debt matters in the Paris Club and other fora in the 1970s and early 1980s laid the important case law that greatly facilitated Group of Five cooperation in coping with the Mexican debt crisis in 1982 and other major cases since then. On the international political economy of the post-1982 efforts, see Miles Kahler , “Politics and International Debt: Explaining the Crisis,” International Organization, 39(3):357-382 (Summer 1985).

8. Nyerere , “Africa and the Debt Crisis,” p. 492.

Green , “Reflections,” p. 308.

10.

10. Carol Lancaster , “Multilateral Development Banks and Africa” (Paper delivered at the Conference on African Debt and Financing, Institute for International Economics and Georgetown University, Washington, DC, 20-22 Feb. 1986), p. 21.

11.

11. Gerald K. Helleiner , “The Question of Conditionality,” in African Debt and Financing, ed. Lancaster and Williamson , p. 70.

12.

12. World Bank , Financing Adjustment, p. 1.

13.

13. Justin B. Zulu and Saleh M. Nsouli , “Adjustment Programs in Africa: The Recent Experience,” IMF Occasional Paper no. 34 (International Monetary Fund, 1985), pp. 26-27.

14.

14. See Stephan Haggard , “The Politics of Adjustment: Lessons from the IMF's Extended Fund Facility,” International Organization, 39(3): 505-534 (Summer 1985).

15.

15. Rattan J. Bhatia , “Adjustment Efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa, 1980-84,” Finance and Development, 22(3): 19-22 (Sept. 1985).

16.

16. Green , “Reflections,” p. 293.

17.

M. Crawford Young , “Optimism on Zaire: Illusion or Reality?” CSIS Africa Notes, 50:8 (22 Nov. 1985).

18.

18. Financial Times, 11 Apr. 1986.

19.

19. Henry S. Bienen and Mark Gersovitz , “Economic Stabilization, Conditionality, and Political Instability,” International Organization, 39(4):730, 753 (Autumn 1985).

20.

20. Henry F. Jackson , “The African Crisis: Drought and Debt,” Foreign Affairs, 63(5):1087 (Summer 1985).

21.

idem , “The State and the Development of Capitalism in Africa: Theoretical, Historical, and Comparative Reflections,” in The Precarious Balance: State-Society Relations in Africa, ed. Donald Rothchild and Naomi Chazan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, forthcoming).

22.

22. World Bank , Financing Adjustment, pp. 1, 21-22.

23.

23. Ibid., p. 22.

24.

see also the very pessimistic analysis of Peter F. Drucker , “The Changed World Economy,” Foreign Affairs, 64(4):768-791 (Spring 1986).

25.

25. World Bank , Financing Adjustment, “Forward.”

26.

26. Philip Ndegwa, governor of the Central Bank of Kenya , quoted in African Debt and Financing, ed. Lancaster and Williamson , p. 9.