Chapter Four
An Alternative Framework to SAPsThe failure of African countries to bring about a process of sustainable development in spite of SAPs as well as the suffering of the people led to an outcry for an alternative. ...
It was generally agreed that any alternative to SAP must at least have the following basic features:
It must be a broad framework and not a standard program to be applied uniformly in all countries ...;
- The concepts of the framework must be viable, and relevant to the present African situation ...;
- The framework must be practicable meaning that it should be easy to implement ... and should not impose unbearable hardships and suffering to the people;
- The alternative should take, hand in hand, adjustment with long-term development objectives and strategies ...;
- For the framework to be effectively operational, it must, right at its conception and formulation, involve all the people at all levels.
... Any alternative to SAPs should attempt to find convincing answers to at least the following four fundamental questions ...:
First, to what should African countries be adjusting? While most, if not all, SAPs in African countries had taken the short-term view that Africa should be adjusting to the financial crisis ... what the African economies require is to bring about structural transformation, diversification and increased productivity ...
Balancing budgets on its own can never make the African people richer and can also never bring about real development. The alternative framework was, therefore, anchored on the premise that any adjustment program ... must not compromise long-term development ...
Second, what should African countries adjust? ... This was one of the most difficult questions ... it touches on almost all aspects of socio-economic life: political, social, cultural, environmental and economic. ... The answer that was found was that African countries should adjust three basic elements ...:
The different forces in the African society ... such as the domestic systems of government, the nature of the public sector, the learning systems, the cultural motivations and value systems, etc.;
- The different ways and means African countries produce what their people need. ... : the human resources in terms of know-how and imagination; natural wealth in terms of minerals, land, forests, livestock, wildlife, energy, etc.; the financial wealth in terms of what people can keep or have kept aside for the future;
- The goods and services that should be produced should, in the alternative framework, be those that are vital for the welfare of the people and for keeping the process of production running smoothly and continuously. These include vital goods and services like food, water, basic clothing, soap, energy for cooking, medicines, educational facilities and school supplies, cheap transport in rural and urban areas, sports and recreation as well as raw materials for small- and medium-scale industries.
The third question that the alternative set out to answer is that of how to adjust? ... Any adjustment that a country does should be done in such a way that ... that human welfare is improved rather than worsened and that economic transformation will occur along with the adjustment. ...
The last, but not the least, important aspects of the alternative framework relate to the question of Adjustment for whom and by whom? ... Adjustment must be for the benefit of the majority of the people and as such, adjustment programs must derive from within rather than from without the people. Hence the alternative framework insists that adjustment with transformation must involve:
Access of the poor to basic factors of production;
- Creation of employment opportunities;
- Improving the way national wealth is shared throughout the population.
Regarding the issue of who is to implement the alternative framework, it is necessary to emphasize the role of popular participation. Programs of adjustment with transformation should not be the property of only the government or the Ministry of Finance ... It should be the property of the people and the people's own grass-roots organizations. It is the people who should decide on the main thrust of such programs ... and also devise the means and actions to be taken to implement these programs.