#structural adjustment

[probablyasocialecologist]

Beginning in the 1980s and 1990s, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank implemented neoliberal structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) across most countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. SAPs imposed austerity, privatisation and economic deregulation and have been associated with severe negative impacts on human welfare, including (a) declining real wages and working-class consumption in some regions, (b) increased rates of poverty and basic-needs deprivation, (c) increased neonatal, infant, child and maternal mortality and (d) reduced health system access. Structural adjustment also created conditions for increased financial outflows and drain from the global South through unequal exchange. This paper reviews evidence of these damages and proposes possible options for reparations and distributive justice. We argue that the IMF and the World Bank should be democratised and restructured—or otherwise replaced by alternative institutions—to prevent further harm.

23 March 2026

[dailyanarchistposts]

The text below was written in 1999 for a proposed c0-authored (but never published, for various reasons) booklet in the Khanya College “Economic Literacy Series.” It examines Zimbabwe in the 1980s and 1990s, stressing the class struggles and rebellions faced by the ZANU-PF regime of Robert Mugabe, and the regime’s (these days, well known) pattern of repression, corruption and elite rule. Those enamored of the Mugabe regime’s current revolutionary posturing may not be aware that its history of repressing unions, students and peasants, while enriching ZANU-PF “cadre” and their allies, goes back to 1980.

Khanya College, then on Kerk Street, Johannesburg, was and is a left NGO involved in popular education: you can visit their site here. Founded in 1986, it was one the survivors of the rich 1970s and 1980s left-educational NGOs and LSO (Labour Service Organisations) milieu.

Khanya was soon to move into a space at the Workers Library and Museum, in Newtown, Johannesburg, where I was increasingly based. The Workers Library and Museum, founded in 1998, was another survivor, an LSO where I was active from around 1998 to 2003: see here.

What Khanya could do, and the Workers Library could not do, was publish. In 1997, Khanya produced Debating GEAR, which Economic Literacy Series no.1; , for 1998, there was May Day: facing the challenges of globalisation, a version ofc which (slightly different to the published one) is online here; in 2000, no. 3 of the Economic Literacy Series appeared, by far the best, Gear and Housing in South Africa. Zimbabwe would fit in, because its experience in the 1990s looked like presenting many lessons for South Africa, where the neo-liberal GEAR policy was adopted in 1997 by the state led by the African National Congress (ANC) – to the shock of the unions and others.

The next section of this booklet will examine how Structural Adjustment has impacted on a neighbouring country: Zimbabwe. But first it is necessary to provide some background on Zimbabwe’s history and social structure.

[fr-economics]

The IMF’s Bottomless Bottom-Line Cruelty ❧ Current Affairs

How the IMF & the World Bank—in the name of progress—succeed in keeping poor countries poor.

Have you ever wondered why exactly poor countries are still poor, decades after many of them achieved independence from colonial powers?

Do you have a sneaking suspicion that colonial power structures never really ceased, and wealthy nations are somehow exploiting poorer nations to this day?

Have you heard of the World Bank and IMF and know they’re powerful, but have no idea what they do?

This article from Current Affairs magazine does a great job of explaining the specific structures, institutions, and processes that keep poor countries poor. It's written for laypeople to understand, but there's still some terms/concepts that may be unfamiliar, so I'm happy to answer any questions readers have to the best of my ability.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Robert Pollin, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, calculates that developing countries lost roughly $480 billion per year in potential GDP during the 1980s and 1990s as a result of structural adjustment. To get a feeling for how much this is, total annual aid disbursements during the same period amounted to less than $100 billion per year. In other words, losses due to structural adjustment outstripped gains from aid by a factor of five. It would be difficult to overestimate the scale of human suffering – and the loss of economic potential – that these numbers represent. Indeed, structural adjustment turned out to be the greatest single cause of impoverishment in the 20th century: the number of people living on less than $5 per day increased by more than 1 billion during the 1980s and 1990s.

Jason Hickel, The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions

[probablyasocialecologist]

The genius of the World Bank’s conditional lending was that it was virtually risk-free for the creditors. The World Bank sells bonds on Wall Street, allowing commercial banks and private investors to buy global South debt. These ‘innovative debt products’, as the Bank calls them, are simultaneously safe (usually AAA rated) as well as high yielding, with returns of up to 15 per cent. How is the Bank able to deliver such large and secure returns? Because it wields direct power over its debtors. Through structural adjustment conditions, the Bank can force debtors to channel all their available resources towards repaying the loans, requiring them to cut spending elsewhere and raise new funds by selling off their assets. It’s a foolproof strategy. And it comes with the added benefit of prising open the receiving country’s market to foreign investors. This model of lending would never fly in normal commercial banking. Imagine you walk into Barclays to get a loan for a new business. Now imagine that they will lend to you only if you agree to give them complete control over your household, so that if your interest payments don’t come in fast enough, they can garnish your wages, liquidate your house and force your children to get jobs. Imagine, further, that you are not allowed to declare bankruptcy under any circumstances; if you can’t repay your loan you have to sell everything you own, stop feeding your children, stop buying whatever medicines you might need to stay healthy and channel all that money to the bank. Such an arrangement would never fly. We would never allow it. And yet such invasive conditions are routine when it comes to development loans.

Jason Hickel, The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions

[probablyasocialecologist]

During the 1980s and 1990s, the IMF and World Bank imposed extreme free-market policies across the South in the form of structural adjustment programmes: slashing tariffs and subsidies, reversing land reform, privatizing public assets, and gutting public healthcare and education – often in the face of massive popular resistance. The consequences were devastating. The number of people in poverty shot up by an eye-watering 1.3 billion during the structural adjustment period, and even the proportion of people in poverty rose, from 62 per cent to 68 per cent. These are striking figures. What they reveal is that neoliberal globalization during the 1980s and 1990s made poverty worse, not better. And it’s important to understand that this process was not just the unfortunate application of an overzealous version of capitalism. Economic historians argue that structural adjustment was an intentional strategy by Western states and business leaders to restore the rate of profit by breaking open new horizons for investment abroad. The forced liberalization of the South, with all its horrifying human costs, was perpetrated in order to keep Western capitalism chugging along.

Jason Hickel, Progress and its discontents

[tofutiger]

The Audacity of Change: A Specific Example of How the UN Can Still Make a Difference - PassBlue

GENEVA — One of the quiet pleasures of life is an early-morning cappuccino in the company of a good newspaper. That was before Covid-19 came along. The pandemic and resulting disruption of newspaper deliveries and shuttering of cafes has obliged me to suspend my habits of a lifetime. Pending the resumption of normal service, I ... Read more

[ciudadedebamba]