|
Get AfricaFocus Bulletin by e-mail!
Print this page
|
Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC) from 1995 to 2001 and by Africa Action
from 2001 to 2003. APIC was merged into Africa Action in 2001. Please note that many outdated links in this archived
document may not work.
|
Africa: Structural Adjustment Review
Africa: Structural Adjustment Review
Date distributed (ymd): 970805
Document reposted by APIC
July 14-17, 1997 marked the formal launch of the Structural
Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative (SAPRI), a joint project
of the World Bank and a global network to assess the impact of
structural adjustment in up to 10 countries, including Ghana,
Mali, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
This posting contains an article on the initiative from the
Development Group For Alternative Policies (DGAP, 927 Fifteenth
Street, N.W., 4th Floor, Washington, D.C. 20005, U.S.A.; Tel:
202/898-1566; Fax: 202/898-1612; e-mail: dgap@igc.org;
WEB: http://www.igc.org/dgap/),
which is coordinating NGO participation. It also contains information
on the African groups participating, taken from the section of
the World Bank's web site on SAPRI
(http://www.worldbank.org/research/sapri/index.htm).
For more information and updates please check both web sites.
SAPRI/SAPRIN
Energizing Worldwide Movement
by Tony Avirgan, Development GAP
A major initiative taken by citizens' organizations in conjunction
with the World Bank to assess the highly unpopular structural
adjustment programs (SAPs) promoted by the Bank is generating
a powerful grassroots mobilization around the globe.
The Structural Adjustment Participatory Review Initiative,
which was born through a dialogue between the then-new World Bank
President James Wolfensohn and the staunchest critics of the Bank,
is currently supported by a worldwide network of almost 1,000
civil-society organizations. It is being implemented in eight
countries by national coalitions that are bringing together non-governmental
organizations, labor unions, farmers' associations, women's groups,
chambers of commerce, manufacturers' associations, churches and
every other type of group that feels its members have been negatively
effected by the structural adjustment programs imposed by the
Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Most of these groups
have been separately struggling against SAPs, but SAPRI marks
the first time they have been united on the national and global
level.
For many years, NGOs, labor unions and other citizens' groups
in the South and North have pointed to the negative and sometimes
disastrous effects of SAPs, particularly on the poor, workers,
women, small enterprises and farms, food security, the environment,
and domestic productive capacity. Through a variety of vehicles
they have challenged the Bank to systematically incorporate local
populations, their organizations and their knowledge into the
definition and design of national economic programs and in other
ways to democratize the economic policymaking process.
In 1995, a group of U.S. and international NGOs led by the
Washington-based Development GAP met with Wolfensohn and proposed
that the Bank undertake a bottom-up review of adjustment programs
in conjunction with local organizations. The delegation leadership
subsequently responded to Wolfensohn's request for a concrete
proposal by shaping - in consultation with some 30 organizations
around the world - a comprehensive mechanism for a qualitative
assessment of structural adjustment and its impact on four continents.
Later, the Bank president accepted the basic elements of the
proposal and designated Lyn Squire, Director of the Policy Research
Department, to work out the details of the exercise with the leadership
of what has now become a network of 1,000 organizations of civil
society worldwide, including major labor unions including the
AFL-CIO, churches and peasant associations, that have given their
support to the Initiative.
The Bank and NGO teams have agreed that the principal objectives
of the endeavor shall be to learn about the workings and impact
of specific adjustment measures and to identify and set the stage
for appropriate changes in adjustment operations and programs
and for more participatory and effective economic-policymaking
processes. It is the common goal of the Initiative to bring into
the policymaking process with the Bank and governments those previously
excluded elements of civil society that work with and represent
local populations and that can provide in each country critically
important input regarding the "real economy".
The exercise had its official start on 14 July 1997 at a Public
Launch in Washington, D.C., Wolfensohn gave the keynote speech
for the World Bank and the civil-society network (SAPRIN) was
represented by Argentinian Senator Graciela Fernandez Meijide.
Each country investigation will commence with a public forum
organized by a steering committee comprising Bank staff and NGOs
and other representatives of civil society, such as labor unions
and peasant associations. These and other local organizations
will present their perspectives and analysis on the impact of
adjustment policies, informing Bank, government, and other official
representatives about local realities. Agreement will be sought
on matters related to the evolving circumstances of different
population groups and sectors under adjustment and on their policy-related
causes.
Issues that are not resolved will be investigated by a civil-society/Bank
team through field work that will rely primarily on participatory
techniques designed to take into account qualitative, as well
quantitative, information. The effects of measures ranging from
trade liberalization and privatization to credit, labor and fiscal
policy will be assessed from a local perspective, and their policy-related,
institutional and other causes identified by tracing the implementation
of these measures through the real economy. An emphasis will be
placed on determining where popular involvement can improve failing
policies or help identify more appropriate and viable policy measures.
The field findings will be presented, discussed and assessed
at a follow-up forum in each country. Concrete actions related
to changes in national adjustment programs, the opening of the
adjustment-planning process to broad local participation, and
modifications in the Bank's own adjustment-planning instruments,
such as Country Assistance Strategies, will be determined in these
meetings. These findings and agreed-upon actions from each of
the ten country exercises will then be presented at a major forum
in Washington, where recommended changes in Bank programming will
be discussed with Bank senior management and policymakers and
follow-up actions planned. This forum, like the in-country ones,
will be public and fully transparent.
In the eight countries that have so far been incorporated into
SAPRI -- Ghana, Mali, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Hungary, Ecuador, El Salvador
and Bangladesh -- citizens' organizations have expressed a willingness
to undertake the program and the government has agreed to participate.
The governments of Mexico and the Philippines have decided not
to be involved. The SAPRI Civil Society Network (SAPRIN) Steering
Committee has expressed its displeasure to the World Bank over
the fact that the institution has been unsuccessful in engaging
these or other large emerging-market economies in the Initiative,
despite the fact that they have received billions of dollars in
adjustment-related lending from the Bank and are used as models
for other countries to follow. What is more disturbing is that
the Bank has refused to even solicit government cooperation in
other countries, including Argentina, which, like Mexico, have
implemented an economic program that has had a disastrous impact
on most of its population.
In each of the aforementioned "excluded" countries,
citizens' organizations are considering moving ahead with a SAPRI-like
exercise, extending an invitation to the government and the World
Bank to join the process.
In the "official" SAPRI countries, local organizing
is proceeding, taking into account local conditions. In Uganda,
for instance, the newly formed NGO Forum, an umbrella group of
some 600 organizations, has taken on SAPRI. In keeping with the
SAPRI Standard Operating Procedures, the Forum was required to
reach out to organizations beyond its normal scope, and successful
solicitations to join the process were made to labor unions and
business associations. As in other countries, this marked the
first time that NGOs and unions have worked closely together and
both parties are enthusiastic about the possibilities.
In El Salvador, SAPRI is being led by FUNDE, a development
organization with roots in peasant organizing during 1980s. Although
a FUNDE official, Roberto Rubio is on the SAPRI global Steering
Committee, FUNDE's selection as the lead agency was not automatic.
Instead, FUNDE was chosen as the "outreach organization"
and set about to invite scores of unions, NGOs, farmers' unions,
business associations and indigenous groups to an organizing meeting.
Information packets on the SAPRI process were prepared and sent
out to every group in the country that was thought to possibly
have an interest. Nearly 100 groups showed up and, in a democratic
process, chose FUNDE as the lead agency.
In Zimbabwe, the "outreach organization" was not
chosen as the lead agency. Instead of the NGOs that were responsible
for building the coalition, Zimbabwean groups chose the university-
based Poverty Forum as the lead agency, primarily because of that
body's previous experience in handling the finances of large projects.
Zimbabwean SAPRI groups have been particularly imaginative in
their efforts to build the coalition. Because newspapers do not
reach many remote rural areas of Zimbabwe, arrangements were made
with a national radio network to broadcast a weekly show on SAPRI
throughout the life of the exercise.
This ground-breaking initiative being taken by the Bank and
some of its strongest critics reflects the beginning of a change
in attitude in some parts of the international financial community.
Sobering experiences with adjustment from Mexico to Russia and
ever-broadening public challenges to these policies, paralleled
by growing poverty and economic inequality almost everywhere that
these policies have been put in place, have created openings for
the first time for the beginning of meaningful policy dialogue.
The civil-society organizations involved in SAPRI are not naive,
however, about the possibilities of the exercise resulting in
a change in the World Bank's fundamental economic policies. In
fact, it is not lost on anyone that, while the Bank uses SAPRI
to demonstrate that it is doing something on the adjustment issue
with its critics and civil society generally, it is considering
TIGHTENING the adjustment noose around the necks of borrower governments.
If SAPRI does achieve its goal of creating greater flexibility
for governments to respond to the knowledge and priorities of
their own people -- and significant change in the reform agenda
does emerge from the exercise -- it will be an important victory.
But, as SAPRI progresses, participating groups are seeing that
its greatest value may prove to be the breaking down of barriers
that have traditionally divided civil society and the building,
on the national and international level, of large, powerful coalitions
demanding popular participation in the making of just economic
policies.
Information from the SAPRI Network of NGOs and Civil Society:
In-Country Processes
Ghana
SAPRIN outreach work is being led by the Integrated Social
Development Centre, ISODEC, with support from the TWN. So far
information has been exchanged and discussions had with a number
of NGOs both at the individual level, as well as through the national
umbrella organization. Also involved are individuals in academia
and elements of the trade-union movement, national union members
of the TUC, as well as the national leadership of the TUC, with
the active personal involvement of the Secretary General. The
work so far has tapped into a number of ongoing work and existing
initiatives around SAPs and has been spread quite well across
the country.
Wolfensohn's visit in February, and the NGO preparations for
an exchange with him, provided an opportunity for further outreach
work. At the meeting with the NGOs, Wolfensohn was asked to, and
did, endorse nationally and publicly the importance of SAPRI and
the participation of Ghana. As at the time of leaving Accra on
the 21st, plans have been developed among ISODEC and the other
contact points for more systematic and wide-reaching outreach,
which is expected to culminate in the formation of the national
committees and election of a lead agency. No major problems are
so far anticipated.
Key participating organizations:
Trade Union Council (TUC), Local Government Workers' Union,
Teachers and Educational Workers' Union, ISODEC, TWN-Africa.
contact: Yao Graham, ISODEC/TWN; Tel: 233-21-224-069; Fax:
233-21-773-857; e-mail: isodec@ncs.com.gh
Mali
The outreach organization is the CCA-ONG, an NGO umbrella group
with 110 members and 124 affiliates. They are planning an outreach
meeting which will include small-business and manufacturers' associations.
The labor umbrella organization, UNTM, received the project
enthusiastically and took responsibility for involving all the
unions in the country. OXFAM-UKI was enthusiastic and will help
with outreach beyond CCA-ONG members. Several other local NGOs
with good grassroots contacts are committed to participation and
helping with outreach beyond CCA-ONG members.
Key participating organizations:
CCA-ONG and UNTM (Trade Union Central)
Outreach contact: M. Mamadou Sekou Toure, CCA-ONG; Tel: 223-22-21-12;
Fax: 223-22-23-59; e-mail: CCA@balazan.gn.apc.org
Uganda
Things are off to a good start. The main outreach organization
is the NGO Forum, a newly formed umbrella group for 600 NGOs operating
in Uganda. Also helping in outreach will be the National Organization
of Trade Unions (NOTU) that is made up of 17 trade unions, five
of which are PSI affiliates. The head of NOTU expressed enthusiasm
for SAPRI and promised to enlist the support of all NOTU members.
Organizations involved have begun to list the issues they want
SAPRI to address:
- Cost sharing that has resulted in a sharp reduction of social
services;
- rising unemployment and dramatically falling household incomes;
- increasing rural poverty with 62 percent of the population
falling below the WB's poverty line;
- the government's obsession with economic policy and lack
of concern with poverty reduction;
- the development of two economies, one benefiting from privatization
etc. and the other falling behind;
- no voice for people at the grassroots level, and
- shift to non-traditional crops leading to lack of food security.
Ugandan groups that have so far enrolled in SAPRIN are:
NGO Forum, DENIVA - Development National Ingenious Voluntary
Association ACFORD - Action for Development, UCOBAC - Ugandan
Children and Orphans, UCBHCA - Ugandan Community Based Health
Care Association, Ugandan Media Women's Association, UWONET -
Uganda Women' Network, Action Aid, Uganda, OXFAM (UKI), Uganda,
NUDIPU - National Union of Disabled Persons in Uganda Disabled
Women's Network, COOPIBO, Church of Uganda Women's Network (maybe
already on list) World Vision, Uganda, NOTU, FINCA, USSIA, Legal
Aid Project of Uganda, Foundation for African Development, Ugandan
Women's Finance and Credit Trust Kigulu Development Group, Wearld
Leaning, Uganda, Council for Economic Empowerment of Women in
Africa, Uganda.
Contact:
Shiela Kawamara, Chairperson, NGO Forum, c/o Uganda Women's'
Network (UWONET); Tel. 256-41-255-146; fax: 256-41-255-144; e-mail:
uganda@wvi.org (mark c/o Moses
Dombo)
Zimbabwe
A dozen groups have done an incredible amount of first-class
work on SAPs. They are all enthusiastic participants in SAPRI.
They include NGOs, churches (that have a SAP monitoring project
and extensive experience in participatory research at the village
level), labor unions (that have published numerous studies on
SAPs, including a comprehensive alternative economic policy, and
are enthusiastic about the SAPRI methodology), and various networks.
They have already formed a Steering Committee and are planning
a large "SAPRI Introductory Forum" to take place in
April after extensive recruitment is done in all regions of the
country. This forum will choose the preliminary "long list"
of suggestions for further investigation. Innovative means of
outreach, such as the use of public access radio and a nationwide
tour by a small "recruitment team" are being explored.
A media sub-committee has been formed and is functioning. There
is enormous energy, expertise and enthusiasm in Zimbabwe.
Key participating organizations:
Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Zimbabwe Council of Churches,
Poverty Forum - Institute of Development Studies, University of
Zimbabwe, Silveira House, Zimbabwe National Farmers' Union, Zimbabwe
National Chamber of Commerce and AFRODAD.
Outreach contact: Margaret Samuriwo, OXFAM-US; Tel: 263-4-707
613; Fax: 4-707-614; e-mail: maggy@oxfamus.icon.co.zw
This material is being reposted for wider distribution
by the Africa Policy Information Center (APIC), the educational
affiliate of the Washington Office on Africa. APIC's primary objective
is to widen the policy debate in the United States around African
issues and the U.S. role in Africa, by concentrating on providing
accessible policy-relevant information and analysis usable by
a wide range of groups and individuals.
|
