ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a study of the impact of privatization measures falling within the overall framework of structural adjustment programs and examines the debate on privatization in Africa. The general framework for economic recovery favored by the international financing institutions for the implementation of the programs is one of regulation by the market and openness to the international economy. The majority of workers in the countries belong to the informal urban sector or the traditional agricultural sector, where they engage in subsistence activities, in isolation from organized structures and established social protection systems. Many social security schemes in sub-Saharan Africa are experiencing increasing difficulties of an administrative and financial nature which are threatening to jeopardize their very existence. In a number of countries in the region the implementation of structural adjustment policies began at the start of the 1980s in a general context of relative economic stagnation in a long-term perspective, permanent indebtedness and rapid population and urban growth.
