The World Bank and Africa’s Future Prospects

As has been illustrated by the case of Guinea throughout this book, adjustment and its relationship to the agricultural sector are intertwined in a multitude of complexities involving political and economic factors as well as various actors at the local, national, and global levels. Both the structural adjustment and agricultural project strategies advocated by the Bank for Guinea in particular, and for Africa more broadly, encountered serious difficulties in practice. These difficulties were linked to the complexities which were originally unforeseen by the Bank, especially those not captured by numbers and prices. Meanwhile, as these difficulties played themselves out, agricultural production and supply did not improve markedly, and the level of debt in Guinea nearly doubled between 1986 and 1994. This situation is clearly not sustainable.

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