Cooperative agreement AFR-0000-A-00-8045-00, policy reform and poverty project 698-0519 : evaluation report

This report evaluates an A.I.D. project to test the validity of this assumption by investigating the short-term impacts of macroeconomic policy reform on lower-income groups in sub-Saharan African countries. The project has three phases -- generation of a common methodology, application of this framework in 6-8 country case studies, and synthesis and dissemination of the results of the case studies. The project is about 75% complete: a conceptual framework has been developed and country studies are nearing completion; the third phase, however, has only just begun. The project has already made major contributions to understanding how African economies operate and how structural adjustment has affected the poor. Especially valuable have been the collection and analysis of primary data for the country studies, and the advances made in applying complex modeling techniques to African countries, in which the available data leave much to be desired. The overall result has been the largest body of high quality, quantitative research on African economies in existence. The empirical evidence produced by the project supports the hypothesis that the poor have generally not been harmed by structural adjustment; instances in which this has occurred seem to be the exception rather than the rule. During the remainder of the project, efforts should focus on: (1) integrating the different analyses at the country level; (2) incorporating all research products into a single, definitive volume; and (3) examining more closely those cases in which structural adjustment has hurt the poor. Descriptions of the country studies are appended.