"GOOD GOVERNANCE" AND STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT PROGRAMS – The World Bank's Experience In Africa South of Sahara

In the past - until the epochal year of 1989 - the thinking of many African governments has been dominated by the dichotomy between capitalist and socialist development models. Thank God, this era with all its errors is over - a long time which cost the developing world expensive detours and dangerous illusions. Foreign aid helped the African governments to finance expensive development plans which were based more on wishful thinking than on realistic expectations. With the end of the cold war a new healthy realism in international politics came up, including a more pragmatic attitude by the donor community towards the necessary reforms in highly indebted countries. Although this new "unfriendly" policy of a greater realism came as a shock to some governments, in my view it had the advantage of forcing the governments and the peoples in Africa and elsewhere in the Third World to think about new ways to overcome their present economy as well as political crisis and to reduce their heavy dependence on foreign donors. The democratization of nearly all societies in Africa since 1985 (the coup d'etat against President Numeiri in Sudan) can be seen as a direct reflection of this new situation after the end of the cold war.