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TERRITORIOS / Africa
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PRSPs : a new phase in sub-Saharan structural adjustment programmes Roger Benítez
The launch of Poverty Reduction Strategic Papers by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund has marked a shift not just in the discourse of those organizations but in the multidimensional focus on under-developed countries by the advanced capitalist powers. Owing to the unsustainable crisis of legitimacy undergone by the Bretton Woods institutions and the consequent redesign of the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, the PRSPs have become one of that initiative's basic conditionalities. The Structural Adjustment Programmes that formed part of the agenda of African governments throughout the 1980s, rigorously monitored by the World Bank and the IMF, revealed their shortcomings in the resolution of economic problems inherited from the external debt crisis. The social impact of those programmes deepened scourges like poverty, malnutrition, illiteracy and others, guaranteeing the structural deformation of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. On the other hand, after political independence, the direct influence of former colonial centres' neocolonial policies towards their erstwhile colonies sharpened that deformation in the areas of trade and productive development. The crisis of those institutions that had proclaimed "purely orthodox" policies gave way to the search for apparently more humane arguments, weighted fundamentally in favour of communities and NGOs. That is why the PRSP objectives according to the IMF turn on:
The novelty of these declarations lies precisely in their recognition of poverty as a multidimensional phenomenon and not the result of individual capacities, the precept dominating market economies where the role of the State is minimized. Whatever signs of deep weakness the public sector may show, not including it along with donors and local projects creates a distortion makes it harder to define a coherent national strategy and thus marginalises it during the negotiation process despite being the main policy counterpart of the Bretton Woods institutions. As for the level of homogenization, one can make out two clear points of divergence from the Structural Adjustment Programmes. In the 1990s, the adjustments were notable for their abrupt imposition. Their standardized mesaure for all African countries failed to take specific characteristics into account. The PRSPs, for their part, differ quite a bit from that conception. Their departure point leaves governments to work out their "National Plans". For that reason, an exhaustive analysis of the PRSPs has to take into account not just the bases from which they start but also the shape they take in each country eligible under the HIPC initiative. At the end of August 2005, 49 countries had finished writing their PRSP and were at the stage of applying it. Another 11 countries had finished writing the paper, but had still not implemented the policies. (Here one is referring to all the less developed countries including the African ones.) Senegal turns out to be an illustrative case given its historical relations with the Bretton Woods institutions. Senegal's government wrote their PRSP in 2001 and it was approved by the IMF andthe World Bank in 2002. (2) The paper is based on the mechanism of Priority Action Plans under which projects are grouped in three categories, those related to wealth creation; those concerned with building capacity and social services (or, infrastructure); plans to improve living conditions for the most vulnerable groups. (3) Paradoxically, for 2004, Senegal had reached the point of decision for inclusion in the HIPC initiative and had only begun 54 of the 79 plans presented in the PRSP. 79.31% of the plans linked to wealth creation were approved, 85.19% of those relating to infrastructure and 34.78% of those aimed at improving living conditions for the most vulnerable sectors.(4). The results show a marked interest in the more productive or profitable sectors or else for those which create attractive infrastructure for direct foreign investment. So, far from building a plan aimed at directly fighting poverty as a phenomenon, the PRSP remains a policy based on attractive sectors and does not lay down priorities favouring social sectors. Critical neoliberal orthodoxy affirms that applying PRSPs constitutes a correction of the Structural Adjustment Programmes by taking into account "social distortions". However, they are little more than an effort to win social acceptance for neoliberalism. The direct relation they establish between local organizations, basically NGOs and external donors, is the new Bretton Woods institutions' mechanism for making more keen the dismantling of African States and for turning civil society into a defender of neoliberal arguments. The World Bank and the IMF have not given up the idea of efficiency according to the received international pattern. So applying the PRSPs does not contradict the need for a neoliberal adjustment but aims to persuade the masses with arguments for poverty eradication and external debt relief while the processes of privatization, deregulation and export orientation continue as before. This shows once more how the international financial institutions create a propitious framework to ensure world capitalism reproduces itself to undermine efforts by developing countries to escape the critical marginalization in which they find themselves. Today's neoliberal policies are not the same as those of decades past. But PRSPs are nothing more than a superior stage of the Structural Adjustment Programmes whose arguments evolve together with the new tendencies and phenomena confronting less developed countries, especially those in sub-Saharan Africa. NOTES Roger Benítez is a researchers at the Study Centre on Africa and the Middle Eastbased in La Habana, Cuba. Translation copyleft tortilla con sal
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