ABSTRACT
A great tragedy has been enacted in eastern and southern Africa, as in much of the 'developing world'. It came out of a conflict between the post-colonial aspiration for national economic development and the hardening aspiration of the international financial institutions (IFIs) to establish a world market. The first IMF loans were made in 1975 and 1978, but since 1980 Kenya has undergone a series of stabilisation and structural adjustment programmes, with increasing policy conditionality, on World Bank assessments. The IFIs may well argue that Kenya's failure in the last two decades was caused by its failure to meet their conditions. Almost all countries in eastern and southern Africa experienced much faster economic growth before 1980 than after. The case of Mozambique illustrates in extreme form how the IFI's global agenda dominates even the poorest country's interests. Their involvement began while the country was in the throes of a civil war between the Frelimo government and Renamo rebels.
