The Crumbling Facade of African Debt Negotiations

An analysis of Sub-Saharan Africa's debt negotiations in the 1980s. It provides a framework for assessing the major types of debt negotiation, showing that faulty procedure made agreements vulnerable to failure, so that nobody was winning.

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Negotiations on developing country debt have been largely secret. Drawing on confidential interviews and documents, this book is an analysis of Sub-Saharan Africa's debt negotiations in the 1980s. Its framework for assessing the major types of talks finds that their negotiating procedures made agreements vunerable to implementation problems, and often to certain failure. In the early 1980s, those powerful enough to change procedure could not see beyond their short-term repayment interests and uncertainty in the international economy, to fulfil their long-term interest in debtor economic recovery. Gradually they acknowledged that existing procedures made exorbitant demands on their staff and undermined their declared objective of "adjustment with growth". Nobody was winning. They changed them, and the facade of efficiency crumbled. Building on their initiatives suggests ways of negotiating external finance for Africa's development in the 1990s.