Report of the twelfth meeting of the technical preparatory committee of the whole

At the heart of the African development perspective laid the desire for deep-rooted structural transformation that made for self-sustaining growth. African countries were rejecting orthodox structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) because they did not remove the structural bottlenecks; that required determined State intervention in the economy. The SAPs assumed that, since conventional instruments, such as the control of money supply, credit exchange, interest rates and trade liberalization had been relevant to well structured economies, they might also produce positive results for the weak and disjointed African economies. They had failed to sustain economic growth, and had instead exacerbated budget and balance-of-payment deficits.