ABSTRACT
A pact to eradicate poverty?^ Traditional development projects accounted for twothirds of expenditure under the Lome Conventions in the 1980s, but had declined to less then 40% of all payments in 1994. Increasingly, budgetary aid or rehabilitation of existing infrastructure has replaced the traditional schemes. In Lome III a sectoral import programme was introduced, followed by a general import programme under Lome IV, with the aim to ‘meet the needs of ACP states in financial crisis’.2 Other instruments for programme support exist as well.
