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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The World Bank, structural adjustment and governance in Africa: some reflections
Author:Olukoshi, AdebayoISNI
Year:1992
Periodical:Nigerian Journal of International Affairs
Volume:18
Issue:2
Pages:92-104
Language:English
Geographic term:Africa
Subjects:political systems
World Bank
economic policy
Abstract:In the way it has been articulated by the World Bank and its officials, structural adjustment and good governance are supposed to be mutually self-reinforcing. The present author wonders whether this is really the case. He traces the origins of the Bank's current concern with governance in Africa, arguing that it is a reflection of three interrelated concerns of the Bank for the protection of its own interests: a concern for relevance in a changing international environment in which the Bank's principal financiers have declared a willingness to impose political conditionality; an attempt to avoid responsibility for the pitifully minimal achievement of structural adjustment and its sometimes spectacular failure; and, finally, an attempt to coopt and then neutralize the platform of the popular democratic forces in Africa which have been at the forefront of the struggle against authoritarianism and the structural adjustment programme. Furthermore, the parameters of good governance as spelt out by the World Bank - public accountability, governmental transparency, free flow of information, the rule of law, predictability in governmental business - are clearly not issues whose emergence or consolidation are being encouraged by structural adjustment. The protestations of the Bank notwithstanding, governance is but the latest phase of the Bank's unbridled intervention in Africa's domestic affairs. Ref.
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