ABSTRACT
A review of the activities of African IEOs suggests that rather than playing lead roles in the African development context, African IEOs have been unwilling or unable to extricate themselves from the ideological and policy dominance of the BWIs. It does not help that the majority of African governments, to whom the African IEOs report, have a natural proclivity to approve externally generated ideas of African IEOs. Why has the supply (from African IEOs) and demand (from African governments) for Africa’s development strategies and policy orientations been so exogenously inclined? Why did the African IEOs follow the “Washington consensus” of neoliberalism instead of pursuing inward-looking strategies of collective self-reliance policies? More importantly, what can be done to overcome challenges to the enactment of heterodox policies?1
