A Greek Taste Of Medicine Designed For Africa

Since the late 1980s, many African countries have suffered the pain and humiliation of the so-called Structural Adjustment Programs that were designed by the IMF and the World Bank with the purpose of rejuvenating African economies. Needless to say that to this day the hoped for economic revival has not happened in most African countries. Now the medicine has been taken to Greece and the Greeks are being told the same story that Africans were told - that stringent economic reforms would avert economic collapse and revitalize the economy. The main difference between most African countries and Greece is that the Greeks are rightly not buying this story. That is why many of them are in the streets resisting the proposal which is being forced on them. If the stories of African countries that have taken this medicine is anything to go by, IMF structural adjustment programs hardly serve the interests of the people. I remember waking up in Cameroon one morning in late 1980s to hear that the CFA Franc was being devalued by 50%, civil servants were being laid off in droves, and public companies were being privatized. Since then Cameroon has only gone downhill. Most Cameroonians did not protest because they did not even know the effects of such restructuring of the economies. But the Greeks know the effects and they do not like what they perceive.