(introduction...)

With the end of the 20th century, sub-Saharan Africa is entering a new phase that is often viewed negatively. The 40-odd nations that are formally independent and recognized internationally display symptoms of disarticulation and impoverishment. The annual per-capita income in almost all countries of the continent is below $1000 (Table 6). The $450 average annual income in the countries of the intertropical region puts this population in the lowest quarter in the world (WRI 1992). Some people have called this group of countries the “Fourth World.”

During the last few decades, the participation of sub-Saharan Africa in international trade has fallen from 4% of world trade in the 1960s to 1.5% in the early 1990s, affecting its economic and geopolitical position. Today, many African nation-states are having trouble merely existing. There is little money to pay public employees, and national debts, which consume a large proportion of export revenues, are nearly impossible to service. In 1993, African debt stood at $140 billion. Some countries are paying more than a third of their export revenues in interest charges: Cote d’Ivoire, 41%; Ghana, 49%; Guinea-Bissau, 45%; Kenya, 33%; and Uganda, 81%. In most countries, income from legal exports does not cover the cost of the minimum

Table 6. Per-capita income in sub-Saharan Africa.

Source: WRI (1992). amount of imported goods, and military expenses still absorb a large part of the states’ budgets.

Many African governments have obtained assistance from richer countries in the form of “soft” loans, subsidies, technical support, and, to a much lesser degree, preferential commercial treatment. This has encouraged them to become dependent on international aid to the extent that, if this assistance decreased, their political equilibrium would be disrupted and their institutional structures would be threatened. In some cases, official development assistance (ODA) accounts for a large part of the countries’ gross national product (GNP). ODA amounts to 74.2% of Mozambique’s GNP; in Guinea-Bissau, 64.4%; in the Gambia, 50.7%; in Somalia, 47.6%; in Cape Verde, 32.2%; in Tanzania, 31.8%; and in Equatorial Guinea, 30.4%.