AfricanREVIEW OF 4 Pnl.t.PoliticalY Economy EDITORS: The Review of African Political Economy Chris Allen and Jan Burgess (ROAPE) is published quarterly by Carfax Publishing Company for the ROAPE BOOK REVIEWS: international editorial collective. Now 24 Ray Bush, Roy Love and Morris Szeftel years old, ROAPE is a fully refereed journal covering all aspects of African political EDITORIAL WORKING GROUP: economy. ROAPE has always involved the Chris Allen, Carolyn Baylies, Lyn Brydon, readership in shaping the journal's coverage, Janet Bujra, Jan Burgess, Ray Bush, Carolyne welcoming contributions from grass roots Dennis, Anita Franklin, Jon Knox, Roy Love, organisations, women's organisations, trade Giles Mohan, Colin Murray, Mike Powell, unions and political groups. The journal is Stephen Riley, David Seddon, David Simon, unique in the comprehensiveness of its Colin Stoneman, Morris Szeftel, Tina bibliographic referencing, information Wallace, Gavin Williams, A. B. 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Consent to copy for general distribution, Hussein Adam (Holy Cross), Prexy Nesbitt for promotion, for creating new work, or for (Chicago), Betsey Schmidt (Loyola College), resale must be specifically obtained in writing Meredeth Turshen (Rutgers), Gloria Thomas- from ROAPE Publications Ltd. Emeagwali (Central Connecticut); UK: A. M. Babu (1924-1996), Lionel Cliffe, Basil ISSN 0305-6244 Davidson, Raufu Mustafa (Zaria), Phil O'Keefe, Peter Lawrence and Kevin Watkins. ©1998 ROAPE Publications Ltd Review of African Political Economy No. 75:5-7 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 1998 ISSN 0305-6244; RIX #7501 The Machinery of External Control Chris Allen This issue brings together several articles on the mechanisms of external control of, or influence over, African states and their policies, increasingly exerted through multilateral bodies, or through NGOs, even more distant from popular control and accountability than are national governments. With the end of the cold war, the US lost one key element of its Africa policy, containment of communism, though another remains - ensuring sufficient control over African economies and economic policy that US interests are thereby served. As with much of US Africa policy, such control is exerted increasingly through intermediary bodies. In the initial post-independence decades the chosen intermedi- ary was often a metropolitan power or even an African state, though economic goals tended to be left to US diplomats and companies, as David Gibbs demonstrated in ROAPE 72. Since the late 1970s however, the US has tended to secure its economic interests more through the IFIs, and its influence over international trade regimes, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO). This reflects a declining US direct economic presence within Africa as trade, loan and investment flows have declined. Within this context, US policy makers have searched for a new basis for policy; in turn the nature of those who would influence policy has changed, dramatically. Bill Martin's essay provides us with a succinct overview of current policy shifts and debate, especially two new developments: the 'privatisation' of aid, and the emergence of a new 'Africa lobby'. The former is in part a response to neo-liberal hostility to state provision and state funding, already reflected in the shift in aid disbursement from African governments to NGOs. Since 1994 the Clinton administra- tion has complemented this by promoting Africa as an important new focus for trade links and private investment, seeking to replace public capital flows by private, in the knowledge that debt and structural adjustment will prevent African governments from imposing any significant degree of regulation over investors. The old Africa lobby had three elements: private capital, African-American organisations (both of which tended to focus on specific issues or areas, such as South African sanctions), and smaller broad-focus policy groups drawn from those with a professional concern with Africa. With the growth of NGOs, and their increasing involvement in the delivery of development and relief, the last group has expanded swiftly in size and influence. Martin argues that it has largely displaced the African- American lobby, and in the process has lost what radical edge the earlier groups possessed, allowing it to cooperate closely with a variety of conservative and business-based bodies. The result is a policy community less critical of US policy, more amenable to being employed to defend and disseminate that policy, and less prone to monitor its impact. It is, however, more than ever necessary to monitor and criticize not simply US policy and action, but also that of the IFIs, so much influenced by US interests. Often hidden behind the coverage of the conflict between the European Union (EU) and the US (and 6 Review of African Political Economy Japan) over trade and investment regimes, the impact of recent reform of these regimes on underdeveloped economies is often severe. Patrick Watts' account of the impact of new WTO rules on the revision of the Lome Convention makes this sharply visible. Former versions of the Convention gave ACP producers a degree of preferential access to EU markets, though more for raw materials than processed or manufactured goods. Just as Lome IV has incorporated IFI economic and political conditionality (see Parfitt in ROAPE67), so the new EC guidelines seek to make Lome trade rules accord with those of the WTO. The WTO's prime goal is free trade: all states, no matter how unevenly matched, should come to trade with each other on an 'equal' basis. The rules do allow special treatment for poorest states: but the ACP includes 29 states that are not in this category, including Ghana and Zimbabwe. Those states have been offered continued lower tariffs in EU markets - but in exchange for the opening of their own markets to EU products, both industrial and agricultural. Watts argues that the EU need not offer so stark a choice, and offers a series of proposals to defer and mitigate the impact of the new regime. We have published so extensively on structural adjustment that another general discussion may seem redundant. Padraig Carmody's essay does however take us further. He argues that inherent flaws in structural adjustment programmes result not only in increases in debt, but undermine production and thus ultimately the programmes themselves. An alternative strategy exists, however, rooted in a greater degree of popular control of the state, the market and their interaction. Carmody sees state intervention in the market, and a degree of state control over 'economic insertion into the global market', as essential for development, as it was earlier in East Asian industrialisation. In particular, African states, while relying on the market and avoiding the past degree and means of regulation, should design 'appropriate incentive structures' for finance and trade, and in the public service. Given the embedded hostility to such policies in the IFIs and WTO, political pressure in support of such a strategy would be essential, both from African populations and from lobbies in the industrial west. Both Martin and Watts suggest that this latter political task may be more difficult that Carmody anticipates. The role of NGOs recurs in Julie Hearn's examination of Kenya's delivery of health care, which is heavily dependent on them - in this case, the mission hospitals. US aid has been channelled to these hospitals, and not others, on spurious 'efficiency' grounds, thereby confining the public sector largely to preventive medicine, and ensuring that in great part the finance of, and policy control within, the curative sector is external to Kenya. State provision is being further boxed in by the World Bank, which in the 1970s supported the construction of a network of public health clinics by Nairobi city council to provide basic preventive and curative services. Since 1995, however, it has supported their partial privatisation. While the council is opposed, its own corruption, underfunding and incompetence