联合国文件/第644部分 (共1000部分)

Several observers have expressed doubts not only about the quality of institutional infrastructure, but also about the capacity of sub-Saharan African States to design, implement and monitor such complex and demanding policies.

Behind this is a view of the African State as unable to escape patterns of corrupt, predatory or even kleptocratic rule.

This is a partial and distorted perspective on the African State that fails to take into account the significant differences between State histories and performances.

Neither does it consider the debilitating influence of external factors such as oil price shocks, volatile and generally declining real prices of commodities, and interest rate hikes on external debt.

Accordingly, it has also been noted that the negative view of the African State that has prevailed since the early 1980s is more a reflection of an economic ideology that is inherently distrustful of the State than an accurate portrayal of most African States.

This same economic ideology, neoliberalism, informed the structural adjustment programmes undertaken in many African countries during the 1980s and 1990s.

A closer look at the political and economic history of the continent reveals strong economic performances, achieved under the auspices of strong States, in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Starting in the mid-1970s, a combination of oil price hikes and export commodity price falls seriously affected African economic performance, leading to increased international borrowing.

The subsequent rises in interest rates on external debt led to economic collapse in much of the region.

One of the reasons African countries were hit so hard by the deteriorating international economic conditions of the late 1970s and 1980s was lack of economic diversification.

African countries, in many ways following the textbook advice of exploiting their comparative advantage, were highly dependent on unprocessed primary products.

Asian NIEs, which were just as dependent on external trade as a driver of the economy, had a more diversified export sector with a higher technological content, and weathered the global recession of the 1980s with considerable success.

This was not the only difference between African countries and Asian NIEs that might contribute to explaining their divergent performances.

The geopolitical context of East Asia in the 1950s and 1960s gave NIEs such as the Republic of Korea and Taiwan Province of China considerable strategic importance that translated into large flows of official aid and preferential market access to the United States.

In Africa, the Cold War context led instead to proxy wars and support for kleptocratic dictatorships.

Another important difference between African countries and Asian NIEs was the respective legacies inherited in the domains of State formation and national economic integration.

These political/economic features proved crucial in conditioning the coping strategies or abilities of the two regions.

The structural adjustment programmes further contributed to weakening State capacity and neglecting domestic capital formation in Africa.

Poor domestic policies cannot then be said to be the only factor in Africa's poor economic performance.

Strong growth in the 1960s and early 1970s as well as in recent years shows that African countries are able to thrive in a propitious external environment.

The time is now ripe for nurturing developmental States in Africa.

This requires a degree of policy space that countries can use to identify their priorities and develop the strategies to meet the challenges they face.

Currently, African countries do not have this policy space.

Their dependence on external funding gives donors considerable influence over policy formulation.