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Imf And World Bank In Africa

            "The problem in Africa is not so much that development has failed as that it never really got started"(Ake 40). World Bank and IMF structural adjustment policies have caused 36 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to make many state owned companies and services privatized, downsized civil services, and cut and restructured health and education expenditures in an area where more than half of the population lives in poverty. What structural adjustment had done, instead, was to establish recession and stagnation in Africa. The money the IMF and the World Bank lend to debtor countries comes with strings attached. These strings come in the form of policy prescriptions called "structural adjustment policies." These policies called SAPs, require debtor governments to open their economies to infiltration by foreign corporations, giving them access to country's workers and environment on discount. Recent protests against the IMF and the World Bank have highlighted the way the institutions put the interests of wealthy corporations in the developed world above the interests of the world's poor majority. Structural adjustment policies mean all around privatization of public utilities and publicly owned industries. They also mean the cutting of government budgets, causing cutbacks in spending on health care and education; as well as focusing resources on growing export crops for industrial countries rather than supporting family farms and growing food for local communities. Structural adjustment programs are a failure. Studies have shown that adjustment programs brought negative effects on growth. The World Bank had been one of the leading supporters of structural adjustment. The IMF when it came to dealing with developing countries, IMF's process has too often focused on narrow macroeconomic objectives at the expense of broader human development. The World Bank and IMF have become immensely powerful institutions in Africa due to the economic crisis that hit the developing world in the late 1970s and early 1980s.


Essays Related to Imf And World Bank In Africa

1. The IMF and the World Bank

The IMF and the World Bank are the two dominant governance institutions in the world. ... And why have the IMF and the World Bank failed to produce as many benefits for the developing world as they imply to do so? ... These changes ultimately made the IMF very similar to the World Bank. ... For example, the World Bank's data indicates that per capita income was lower in 1999 for nine countries than in 1960: Haiti, Nicaragua, Central African Republic, Chad, Ghana, Madagascar, Niger, Rwanda, and Zambia (World Bank 2002). ... The lending programs that the IMF and the World Bank...

  • Word Count: 3351
  • Approx Pages: 13
  • Has Bibliography
  • Grade Level: Undergraduate

2. "The IMF and World Bank hurt poor countries and undermine de

The World Bank and the International Monetary fund (IMF) are both international institutions created at the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 to help reconstruct Europe after the Second World War. ... Today, the World Bank and the IMF classify 41 countries as Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC's), which, despite various debt relief initiatives are still the most hindered by external debt because they are forced to divert to their creditors, scarce funds and resources that otherwise could have been used to provide basic services for their people. ... These countries obtained the majority ...

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  • Approx Pages: 10
  • Grade Level: Graduate

3. The role of IMF

Others with a less hostile orientation advocate the merging of the IMF into the World Bank (WB) Group. ... Introduction In the aftermath of the financial crisis in Mexico in 1994-95, followed in 1997-99 by a succession of crises affecting countries in South-East Asia, Korea, Russia and Brazil a world-wide debate on the operations of the IMF and its future role has been underway. Most of the countries involved were in the developing or transition worlds, an exception being the collapse of an important hedge fund in the United States in the second half of 1998 which directly th...

  • Word Count: 3629
  • Approx Pages: 15
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4. The Changing Global Economy

In a personal level, globalization has led people to be connected throughout the world regardless of their proximity using the most recent technologies, which resulted in making our world a smaller place. ... For finance, I will talk about the World Bank and the International Monetary Funding (IMF) to prove that globalization made economic superpowers affect the world positively because most nations are economically interdependent. ... South Korea, at first, was not very significant in the world market so globalizing its economy was a risk for it did not have a stable economy to interact with...

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5. Africa

Africa Since Independence is an analytical piece by Colin Legum, which deals with four major themes in the realm of Africa's independence. ... The years from 1939-1970, Africa was engulfed in the romantic period, a time in which the dream of liberation was on the minds of most Africans. ... A hasten expectation of full democracy and development will further deteriorate the state of African nations, therefore programs by the world bank and the IMF tend to fail in the case of Africa. ... A wide array of criticism based on the idea of a corrupted Africa was formulated at this particular s...

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6. International Economic Institutions

The IMF has bailed out many countries from economic disaster, including India, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, almost all African countries, and are bailing out Argentina currently. ... World Bank). ... THE WORLD BANK GROUP: Founded in 1944, the World Bank Group is one of the world's largest sources of development assistance. ... The World Bank is aimed at reducing poverty and improving living conditions throughout the world. ... The World Bank Group has many positives. ...

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7. Structural adjustmen programs

Removal of state subsidies and tariff barriers may have adversely affected the standard of living of workers and the growth prospects of certain industrial sectors in the periphery, but they were needed medicine in order to get the prices right Western development institutions, notably the IMF, the World Bank and their major members attributed poor records to the prevailing policies and strategies of development which had been pursued in the post-war era. ... The means adopted by the West for achieving this in the 1980s was to develop a new breed of policy-based loans, "structural adjustment ...

  • Word Count: 1434
  • Approx Pages: 6
  • Grade Level: Graduate

8. Lagarde to Become Managing Director and Chairman of the IMF

Lagarde was backed by the United Kingdom, Germany, and most European powers, as well as some Asian and African nations. ... She is also a surprising successor because the IMF, which is made up of 187 member countries, traditionally votes for a Western European official. ... They argued that the IMF should consider candidates from rising economic powers in Asia and South Africa (Rooney). ... The fund was originally established in 1947 to aid failing economies in the aftermath of World War II. Currently, the IMF controls monetary cooperation and exchange rate stability, as well as facilitati...

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9. Africa and the Case for Foreign Aid

Especially in Africa, as of 2012 the population of Sub-Saharan Africa was 910.4 million, but 48.5% of the population was living off of $1.25 a day as of 2010 (World Bank). ... International financial organizations and institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) also play a role in getting funds to developing countries in the form of loans and grants. ... Instead of more aid, Easterly argues for better management of the aid that the West commits and by organizations like the UN, The World Bank and the IMF (John, Storr 128). ... The Africa...

  • Word Count: 1916
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