Beyond Structural Adjustment in Africa: The Political Economy of Sustainable and Democratic Development.

By most accounts, one of the fashionable topics of contemporary intellectual discourse on Africa is structural adjustment. Scholarly articles continue to appear in journals, especially those which specialize in Africa. Moreover, presentations are usually made on the topic at conferences, and commentaries have appeared on the pages of the print media. It is a topic that has galvanized enormous interest and emotion from virtually all disciplines and from all walks of life whenever it is brought up, especially when spoken in the same breath with Africa.

Hence, there is a steadily growing literature on structural adjustment in general and related to Africa in particular. A perusal of the existing scholarship on the subject suggests that most of the analyses have centered on, among other things, explaining the raison d'etre for structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in Africa, assessing the social, economic, and political ramifications of the adjustment drive in specific African countries, and recommending policy alternatives to African governments and their extra-African benefactors. Even so, very few works on the subject have succeeded in analyzing the situation in the context of a capitalistic global economy.

This is what seemingly sets Beyond Structural Adjustment in Africa apart from previous analyses. Edited by two notable scholars on African affairs, the book is comprised of an introduction and eight chapters, four of which are devoted to general discourse on SAPs in Africa. Another chapter discusses the agricultural sector in the region, and there are three case study chapters. The volume aspires to be different from previous scholarship by situating "Africa's continuing …