Agricultural ‘modernisation’ and the era of structural adjustment: Observations on sub‐Saharan Africa

Abstract

The World Bank's account of crisis in sub‐Saharan Africa and its prescribed solutions via structural adjustment policies represent a particular imperialist intervention in a conjuncture of global reaction. The article seeks to contribute to a socialist perspective on the acute contradictions of ‘actually existing capitalism’ in Africa, first by discussing the ideology, practices and effects of agricultural ‘modernisation’ which the World Bank (among others) has long advocated, then by proposing some theses about African states as likely ‐ or unlikely ‐ instruments of structural adjustment. The article concludes that while the World Bank's project of ‘enlightened’ bourgeois reform is a fantasy in the face of the intransigent realities of capitalism in sub‐Saharan Africa, its pursuit may generate results that are as brutal as they are ineffectual in terms of its stated goals.

Notes

Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9QS, UK. This article substantially revises and develops an earlier working paper of the Development Policy and Practice Research Group (DPP) at the Open University (No. 16 1989) on which useful comments were made collectively by Roland Brouwer, Kees Jansen, Peter Mollinga and Jos Mooij, and individually by Terry Byres, Brian Cooksey, Frank Ellis, Peter Gibbon, and Gavin Kitching. The author's thinking on the issues has been stimulated by discussions with co‐workers in DPP Maureen Mackintosh and Peter Mollinga, who will not necessarily agree with what follows, and by the important book of Philip Raikes (1988).