Structural Adjustment and Long-term Development in SubSaharan Africa

Abstract

On underlying longer-term development processes in Africa it is possible today to hear two totally divergent positions. One, more optimistic, position is that the disappointing recent statistics of GDP growth (or decline) conceal the long-term build-up of considerable long gestation period capital, particularly human capital. Primary school enrolments as a percentage of the relevant age group were almost everywhere up by large proportions during the 1980s over their levels of twenty years previously (see Table 2.1). Secondary school and university enrolments rose proportionally by even more. Despite recent setbacks in social expenditures, the African labour force of the 1990s is thus far more literate and numerate than ever before. Secondary school and university graduates, no longer swallowed up by burgeoning governmental and large private firms’ demands, will find themselves launching new businesses and operating more effective farming operations, with potentially galvanising effects for development in both rural and urban Africa. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

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