ABSTRACT
Colonial processes are at the base of structural hegemony and depressive spatial polarity. The redressive process and associated projects would not produce major structural readjustments in the socio-spatial organization of the economy of the postcolonial state. Ever since colonial times, Sub-Saharan Africa economic geography seems to have been dominated by a process of inequitable spatial differentiation in development. The significance of the impact of redressive projects is rather measured by how much they had softened-up structural hegemony by establishing, through improvements in the quality of life of the masses, of what John Friedmann in his work on Mozambique characterized as the "bases for accumulating social power". Once refractive projects, which are often financed by altruistic transfers from the well-to-do in the nation as well as from abroad, disappear, structural hegemony will reassert itself. Policies for structural readjustment are targeted at the very system that maintains structural hegemony that causes socio-spatial polarization.
