ABSTRACT
In rejecting the claim of the international monetary fund and the World Bank that the structural adjustment programmes of the institutions in the 1980s had been to any degree successful, African leaders were thrown back on the ideas of self-reliance which they had begun to explore in the Lagos Plan of Action. In the African alternative to structural adjustment programmes of the ECA, the proposed ‘framework for transformation and recovery’ was not just a statement of economic policy measures and mechanisms for implementation and monitoring; it was also a statement of profound change in the philosophical commitment of Africa’s leaders. The most remarkable response to the African Alternative came from the World Bank itself. The African Alternative distances itself from dirigism and dogmatic public intervention as much as from doctrinaire privatization and excessive reliance on markets and prices as allocative mechanisms.
