Africa's Choices

For thirty years, the World Bank has proposed policies that have produced few economic benefits but have eroded the traditional strengths of African society--even the Bank itself now admits this. But while African leaders, many propped up by the West, are often corrupt or incompetent, an impressive range of regional initiatives and small-scale cooperatives, fledgling industrial projects, women's organizations, and peasant associations represent major signs of hope. These countless initiatives, now springing from the grass roots of African life, embody the realities of an African road to development. They speak for good sense and great courage against the failed miseries of today: against World Bank dogmas left over from the Thatcher/Reagan era, against pricing abuses, against uncanceled debts owed to the rich by the world's poorest countries--all of which have led to economic breakdown and war. They also challenge our failure to open up our markets to African exports and our minds to African expertise. Examined here in a manner that is both penetrating and hardheaded, what Africans themselves are saying and doing indicates the basis for a continent's self-transformation and an agenda for the kind of support they are seeking.