Lutz Lindenau 
Neoliberal Policies as a path towards economic recovery in Sub Saharan African Countries ? 

Essay from the year 2002 in the subject Politics – International Politics – Region: Africa, grade: 8, 0 von max 10, University of Amsterdam (FMG), language: English, abstract: As a participant of the course ‘Abandoning Development: Africa and the
Contemporary Economic International Political-Economic System I am asked to write
a final paper about an issue that was dealt with in the course and which is also based
on the literature, that was provided.
Since I am a Political Science student, who specialized in International Relations, I
deliberately chose the course mentioned above to learn about the global economicpolitical
system and its impact on whole regions. The case of Africa, in particular of
Sub Saharan Africa, provides the participant with some understanding of the
relationship between the developed and the developing countries, it’s inequalities,
dependencies and perspectives, that I came across in other subjects like International
relations, International Political Economy, the Political economy of the Middle East,
etc. In that sense I feel that this case of an entire unprivileged region, like Sub Sahara
Africa, fits into that context which I have already studied.
At the international level, the fate of Sub Saharan African countries is highly relevant
not just for its 45 countries hosting 500 million people. The De-humanization of
Africa, as Manuel Castells refers to, goes in line with the rise of information/global
capitalism by the beginning of seventies in the last century. Consequently many of its
states disintegrated, societies collapsed, causing famine, epidemics, civil war, and
social/political chaos. If one perceives these deteriorating developments as structurally conditioned then one can easily see the link to the global economic
system and imagine the consequences, leading to several scenarios that the global
community will have to deal with. But rather than developing these scenarios, this
paper deals with the issue, whether recent policies and tools to ameliorate the
economic situation of many African countries are suitable and eventually led to
improvement in economic and social terms. Since the early eighties neoliberal
policies were introduced by US-president Reagan and the UK-Prime minister
Margaret Thatcher. […]