Renewing Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

After two decades of economic reform programmes, the majority of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa still face the challenge of renewing the development progress that they were achieving in the 1960s and early 1970s. Promising beginnings in the post-independence countries ended in economic collapse in the 1980s. This led to stabilisation and structural adjustment reforms, but these have had disappointing results in most of the countries that applied them. In addition, local scale inter-country conflicts and internal strife within the region and post-war complications have generated new problems. Renewing Development in Sub-Saharan Africa reviews the ensuing debates and brings together specialist contributions, to provide a clear guide to the major complexities of African development. They lay the foundation for designing a range of individual country-specific policy-sets, in which the strategic components are prioritised according to each country's constraints and opportunities. Firstly the key issues of conflict resolution and prevention are addressed, indicating the possibilities for a degree of economic planning even during conflict. Without political stability and physical security, resources will be wasted and the capital formation required for recovery will not occur. Performance and policy options are then analysed and considered, in agriculture and rural development, environment, industry and urban development, international trade and transport, gender, health and education and the possible contribution of NGOs. The emphasis of the book is on the identification of effective strategies that will enable individual countries to most effectively exploit their growth opportunities and to meet poverty-reducing and other key equity objectives, rather than repeating arguments contrasting the merits of agriculture versus industrial development versus human capital formation. Steps can then be taken to ensure the renewal of African development, with suitable national and international policies.