The World Bank's Africa Strategy

[Donnachaidh]

http://counterpunch.org/bond05312011.html

A renewed wave of development babble began flowing soon after the February launch of the World Bank's ten-year Strategy document, "Africa's Future and the World Bank's Support to It". Within three months, a mini-tsunami of Afro-optimism swept in: the International Monetary Fund's Regional Economic Outlook for SubSaharan Africa, the Economic Commission on Africa's upbeat study, the African World Economic Forum's Competitiveness Report, and the African Development Bank's discovery of a vast new "middle class" (creatively defined to include the 20% of Africans whose expenditures are $2-4/day).

Drunk on their own neoliberal rhetoric, the multilateral establishment swoons over the continent's allegedly excellent growth and export prospects, in the process downplaying underlying structural oppressions in which they are complicit: corrupt power relations, economic vulnerability, worsening Resource Curses, land grabs and threats of environmental chaos and disease.

These are merely mentioned in passing in the Bank's Africa Strategy – the most comprehensive of these neoliberal-revival tracts – but a frank, honest accounting of the author's role is inconceivable, even after an internal Independent Evaluation Group report scathing of mistakes the last time around. That effort, the 2005 Africa Action Plan (AAP), was associated with the G-8's big-promise little-delivery Summit in Gleneagles.

The Bank admits the AAP was a "top-down exercise, prepared in a short time with little consultations with clients and stakeholders", and that the "performance of the Bank's portfolio in the Region" was lacking. Tellingly, the Bank confesses, "People who had to implement the plan did not have much engagement with, and in some cases were not even aware of, the AAP."

More at the link --

[Octafish]

1. 50 years ago, an American president wanted something more from Africa than its riches.

JFK wanted democracy.

Thank you for the heads-up, Donnachaidh. Glad to see someone at CounterPunch pays attention to what the Economic Hit Men do these days.