This paper examines a range of issues involved in the sustainability of economic reform in the new political circumstances evolving in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper draws from a range of disparate sources: literature on the politics of economic reform, both in Africa and elsewhere in the developing world; literature on the transition to democracy, which focuses predominantly on Southern Europe and Latin America; various assessments of the impact of structural adjustment in Africa, including both program and project evaluations and broader cross-national and aggregate studies; literature on governance in Africa; and on-going coverage, largely journalistic, of the process of democratization in Africa. The paper is a direct follow-on to the analysis initiated in “Beyond Policy Reform in Africa Sustaining Development Through Strengthening Entrepreneurship and the Non-Governmental Sector (PN-ABQ-091). It focuses on the interplay between the economic/technical and the political dimensions of reform, and on how USAID operations might more effectively promote the sustainability of reform. Section I briefly reviews both the background to “top-down” policy reform efforts and how adjustment themes came to play a more serious role in African policy agendas in the late 1980s. Section II examines the results of economic reform in Africa and discusses why they have been relatively disappointing, focusing on the phenomenon of partial reform, the inter-related problems of weak markets and weak states, and the ambivalent role that donor support has played. Section III addresses the political economy of structural adjustment, making transparent the implicit political model followed by the donors and discussing how adjustment undermined the existing pattern of politics and governance. It also discusses why CFA countries are highly unlikely to sustain economic reform in the absence of changes in the franc zone monetary arrangements. Section IV explores the new political environments emerging in Africa, arguing that democratization provides new opportunities for economic reform and emphasizing the interdependence between political liberalization and economic reform. Section V sets out four key dimensions for facilitating the sustainability of economic reform: 1) enhancing civil society; 2) establishing the institutional foundations for markets; 3) changing the role of government; and 4) improving technical capacity, especially in the area of policy implementation. Section VI presents the implications of the analysis far USAID operations, discussing options for how USAID might respond to the new political environment in ways that will facilitate the sustainability of economic reform. Includes bibliography. (Author abstract)
