ABSTRACT
The Expert Group was particularly anxious to encourage investors into Africa to develop and to diversify commodity exports. The World Bank could not be blamed for the world recession, but could not escape its share of responsibility for all the other elements in this ‘complex brew’. The recommendations of the Bank’s Task Force included improving the quality of projects entering the portfolio, defining the Bank’s role in project performance management and improving its practices, but it emphasized particularly the need to introduce the concept of country performance project management and country portfolio restructuring in structural adjusting countries. Crisis management can no longer be limited to the delivery of food and blankets to starving refugees. The effects of structural adjustment policies on African agriculture in encouraging both increased production for export and more mechanization of farming, by means of the privatization of land holding and technical support for modern farming methods, have been subjected to some careful appraisal.
