The economic crisis in Southern Africa: Some perspectives on its origins and nature

The crisis of development in most of Southern Africa has come to be regarded as an inevitable outcome of the failure of post‐independence development policy in those countries. That policy failure eventually led to the need for policy reform, which emerged most dominantly in the form of structural adjustment programmes. This article, which is a comparative analytical review, examines the origins and nature of the economic crisis in Southern Africa and the policy framework giving rise to it, drawing on country examples to illuminate and illustrate the analytical perspective.

Notes

United Nations Chief Technical Adviser to the Government of Botswana and Professor of Development Studies at the University of Botswana, and Chief Economist, Employment Policy Unit, Ministry of Finance and Development Planning, Government of Botswana, respectively. The views expressed here are personal and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations, the Government of Botswana, or any other organisation to which the authors are affiliated. This article is an extracted version of a larger paper prepared for presentation at the 18th Southern African Universities Social Science Conference, Swaziland, 4–7 December 1995.