The 1990s: On to Fortune or Bound in Miseries?

In the last essay, we looked at global and domestic development policies since 1945 and the lessons which emerge. What conclusions can we draw for the decade ahead? We have described the 1980s as a lost decade for a large part of the Third World, especially Africa and Latin America. At the time of writing, the problems which have caused the troubles of the lost decade are still largely with us. The debt crisis has been contained but not resolved; commodity prices are even lower — in fact the lowest since the Great Depression of the 1930s — and terms of trade for developing countries have become even more unfavourable. Moreover, the growth rate of industrial countries has remained sluggish and ambitions for the next decade are limited to a 2–3 per cent growth target, not enough to restore the industrial countries as the engines of growth of the world economy which they were during the golden age; there is still no sign of effective macroeconomic global management; and there is no genuine democratically shared global consensus for North-South co-operation.