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Structural adjustment in Africa is based on neo‐classical economic principles derived from the experience of industrialisation in Britain and the United States. Neo‐classical economics claims that unregulated markets maximise output across contexts. However, this naturalisation of markets neglects that they are actively constituted by actors with different capabilities and levels of power. Structural adjustment has failed because comprehensive liberalisation has led to the autonomous development of the trade and financial sectors, to the detriment of production. Appropriate development strategies must recognise the necessity of regulating trade and finance in order to channel resources towards production, as in the developmental states of East Asia. However, in order to be successful, such strategies must be embedded in Africa's political economy. Development will require a remaking of both African states and the international financial institutions which dictate their economic policies.

Mit dem Beginn der Strukturanpassungsprogramme von IWF und Weltbank setzte auch die kritische Nachfrage nach den langfristigen makroökonomischen Erfolgen und den kurzfristigen sozialpolitischen Folgewirkungen ein. Der vorliegende Beitrag gibt einen Überblick über die theoretischen Grundlagen der Strukturanpassungspolitik und setzt sich mit einigen der prominenten Kritikpunkte auseinander. Besonders beleuchtet wird dabei die Frage, ob es einen afrikanischen Sonderweg zu wirtschaftlichem Erfolg geben kann bzw. ob die sozialen und kulturellen Gegenheiten afrikanischer Gesellschaften andere als neoliberale Wirtschaftsstrategien benötigen. (DÜI-Spl)

Argues that appropriate structural adjustment strategies must regulate trade and finance in order to channel resources towards production, and that such strategies must be embedded in Africa's political economy.

Title; Copyright; Contents; Abbreviations; Acknowledgements; 1 Introduction: new models of globalization; 2 China: globalization and the rise of the state?; 3 South Africa: another BRIC in the wall?; 4 India: the geo-logics of agro-investments; 5 Russia: unalloyed self-interest or reflections in the mirror?; 6 Brazil: globalizing solidarity or legitimizing accumulation?; 7 Conclusion: governance and the evolution of globalization in Africa; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Free market policies have been in operation across Africa for the past 25 years, yet they have failed to reverse deepening poverty. This book explores, with case studies, why such policies continue to be implemented and the ways in which they have been reinvented by socialization, depoliticization, regionalization and securitization

Is globalization good for Africa? Pádraig Carmody explores the evolving nature and impact of globalization throughout the continent, as China, the US, and other economic powers exert their influence. Drawing especially on the cases of Chad, Sudan, and Zambia, Carmody considers whether the resource curse that has for so long plagued Africa can become a blessing. He also evaluates the impact of the information technology revolution and the recent global economic slowdown. In the context of carefully articulated historical dynamics, he provocatively assesses the new role of Africa in the global economy

Much has been written recently about the nature, drivers, and impacts of large-scale land acquisitions or "grabbing" in Africa. We argue that current land grabs are a product of ecological scarcity and the opportunities this presents for accumulation and logics of state building. In effect, land grabs represent a reinscription and deepening of sociospatial power inequalities associated with previous eras. Together we term these combined processes ecolonization, as discourses of climate change mitigation and food and energy security facilitate continued and deepening domination of ecological space by domestic political elites and transnational investors, through the United Nations' Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation and enhance forest carbon stocks projects, for example. The new internal frontiers opened up by processes of capital accumulation are, in turn, fundamental to the reproduction and strengthening of colonial African state formations. Land dispossession thus serves hybrid economic accumulation and political logics across different scales and temporalities. The ways in which these processes are empirically expressed is explored through two case studies from Uganda.