The Politics of Neoliberal Reforms in Africa: State and civil society in Cameroon

1. Contesting Neoliberal Reforms in Africa

1 1 Contesting neoliberal reforms in Africa Introduction Neoliberal globalisation has swept unevenly but steadily across the world, including Africa. Harrison (2010: 26-27) offers a definition of neoliberalism that appears appropriate to the African experience. In his view, the term encompasses a diverse set of interventions over a protracted period of time that are oriented towards the removal of political control of the economy, the free market and the rational individual. Since the 1980s, neoliberalism has been the dominant development agenda in Africa because of its championing by powerful external agencies like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and western neoliberal states that have compelled African states to pursue this agenda (Cammack 2002; Harrison 2004). An important contextual factor in this period was the end of the Cold War, which left African governments with a deep and prolonged economic and political crisis and no obvious alternative source of financial or political support apart from western neoliberalism. What is particularly striking in Africa is that neoliberal experiments there have displayed such remarkable diversity. This suggests that the global neoliberal agenda has had to negotiate complex internal dynamics despite the growing influence of international agencies (Oya 2007). Substantial differences can be observed not only in historical, economic and political trajectories in Africa but also, and maybe more importantly, in the degree of resistance internal actors have demonstrated to the neoliberal reforms imposed on them. This book focuses on Cameroon, which has had a complex economic and political history and is currently witnessing resistance to the neoliberal experiment by the authoritarian and neopatrimonial state and various civil-society groups. 2 The Politics of Neoliberal Reforms in Africa This introductory chapter is divided into three sections. The first provides an overview of the impact of neoliberal policies on Africa, showing how they have largely failed to generate the socio-economic and political transformations they promised. The second section examines the various forms of resistance by the state and civil society in Africa to neoliberal reforms, while the third offers a concise description of the essays presented in this volume on the contestation of the neoliberal experiment in Cameroon. The impact of neoliberalism on Africa The neoliberal agenda in Africa has deepened and broadened over the years. In the early years, neoliberalism had primarily an economic agenda that included a negative view of the state and the public sector. ‘More market and less state’ was the prime objective of the macro-economic stabilisation programmes that started in the late 1970s and the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) that were vigorously enhanced and extended in the 1980s (Fernández Jilberto & Mommen 1996; Demmers et al. 2004). SAPs were effected through the mechanism of economic conditionality and credit was only forthcoming if governments implemented ‘correct’ policies. Although SAPs varied to some extent between countries, all were based on a desire to liberalise economies. Their initial goals were to remove price subsidies within internal markets, abolish quotas and allow exchange rates to flow freely. Beyond these core components, SAPs would also involve policy commitments to privatisation, tariff reduction, the removal of state marketing boards, a reduction in the money supply with a view to curbing inflation, the encouragement of foreign investment, a reduction in the government payroll, and the introduction of user charges for public services. Following considerable pressure on the Bretton Woods institutions to modify their painful neoliberal economic policies, transitory social improvement packages were attached to the core neoliberal reforms of the late 1980s to cushion the social costs of structural adjustment and give it a ‘human face’. Subsequently, a series of ad hoc debtreduction and rescheduling packages were introduced, leading to the more rigorous Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative that was inaugurated in 1996 and enhanced in 1999. The HIPC 3 Chapter 1: Contesting neoliberal reforms in Africa scheme was premised on demonstrated commitment (if not progress) under SAP (with a minimum of three years of satisfactory adherence to an IMF structural reform programme) with the incentive of attaining a debt write-down to a ‘sustainable’ level of debt, which was expected to release money for renewed efforts in social expenditure, especially in primary healthcare and education. Also in 1999, and matching HIPC debt relief with a new credit framework, SAPs were replaced by the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and its related funding mechanisms within the World Bank and the IMF (Harrison 2010: 41-42). It was not until...