ECONOMIC LIBERALIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA1

Over the past three decades, Sub-Saharan African (SSA) income growth has barely kept pace with population growth. After a moderate increase in per capita income during the 1970s, SSA growth averaged 2.1 per cent per annum in the 1980s and 2.4 per cent in the 1990s, i.e. below the population growth rate. Despite a modest recovery after the mid-1990s, SSA per capita income at the turn of the century was 10 per cent below the level two decades earlier. Slow and erratic SSA growth has been accompanied by regressive income distribution trends (Geda, 2005). The drop in average per capita income for the poorest 20 per cent in SSA was twice that for the entire population between 1980 and 1995 (UNCTAD, 2001: 53). For SSA, the new generation policies espoused by the “Washington Consensus ” – now involving “getting prices right”, “getting institutions right ” and “good governance ” – are still routinely offered as advice, if not imposed as conditionalities. Income levels in most of SSA are too low to generate the domestic resources needed for rapid growth. Meanwhile, under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, only part of total debt is eligible for relief and, even then, only for some indebted countries. Furthermore, despite some recent acceleration in implementation, HIPC progress remains slow. As of June 2006, some ten years after the launch of the HIPC initiative, only 15 of the 32 African countries included in the HIPC list of 38, had reached completion