Volume 24 Number 4 October 1993
Edited by: Jeremy Swift
Famine is a preventable tragedy. Unlike poverty or chronic food insecurity, famine could probably be eliminated rapidly by a quite simple set of policies. Such policies might be politically feasible. So the abolition of famine is a realistic goal, perhaps by the end of this decade. There are several reasons why this politically uncontroversial goal will probably not be achieved in practice. One is the continuing insufficiency of good theory about the causes of famine, of good empirical and comparative research, and of good experiments, especially in Africa, with anti-famine policies. This IDS Bulletin, is concerned with how these deficiencies could be remedied.
Volume 25 Number 3 July 1994
Structural adjustment can be dated to the World Bank's 1981 Accelerated Development (Berg) Report, albeit precursor World Bank programmes in Sub-Saharan Africa (e.g. Togo, Malagasy Republic) date to the late 1970s. It is taken by most supporters and critics alike - to be intrinsically neo-liberal in content, but the 1989 World Bank Report Long Term Perspective Study in fact advocates a sharp increase (from about 20 per cent to about 30 per cent of Gross Domestic Product) in government operating expenditure plus human and physical infrastructure. Many observers - again both favourably and unfavourably disposed - see the World Bank and IMF as monolithic in approach and giving top priority to external debt repayment, yet in SSA the Fund's shorter term, more demand management focused approach is often in uneasy balance with the Bank's focus on output enhancement and institutional reconstruction.
