Structural adjustment and drought in Sub-Saharan Africa

✍ Scribed by Ibrahim A. Elbadawi

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1996
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 992 KB
• Volume: 8
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-1328(199609)8:5<581::aid-jid373>3.0.co;2-4

✦ Synopsis

The extremely severe droughts which have hit Africa in recent years appear to have impacted negatively on its development much more seriously than droughts in other regions of the developing world. Such droughts, it appears, both acted as a trigger to the adoption of structural reforms in some countries and aggravated the initial adverse effects (including environmental effects) of such reforms. The policy implication of the latter finding is that the reform requirement for drought-prone countries needs to be more flexible to climatic conditions, and that in some countries reform of land tenure population policy and research and extension policy need to accompany reform of trade and pricing policies. 'Quoting Glantz (1987 distinguishes between four definitions (or impacts) of droughts: (i) meteorological drought, which is a reduction in rainfall supply compared with a specified average conditions over some specified period hydrological drought which pertains to the impact of a reduction in precipitation on surface or sub-surface water shortfall and so may lag behind periods of agricultural or meteorological drought; (iii) agricultural drought which is defined as a reduction in moisture availability below the optimum level required by a crop during different stages of its growth cycle, resulting in impaired growth and reduced yields; and (iv) social drought which relates to the impact of drought on human activities, including indirect as well as direct impacts.