Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

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by the government. The problem in the 1990s was that this system was not
practised effectively.
The Zambian experience provides an example. In the 1980–1999 period,
Zambia’s government entered into numerous commitments on macroeconomic
and sector policies with the IMF, the World Bank, the AfDB, and
– more generally – with several bilateral donors on governance. By the
second half of the 1990s Zambia’s policy autonomy had become seriously
circumscribed by these commitments. On top of this, Zambia made
numerous commitments on sector development policies and programmes
with the World Bank in agriculture, manufacturing, the energy sector, road
transport, the environment and the social sectors, water supply and
sanitation. In addition, there were programmes for public service reform,
privatisation and governance. It is no exaggeration to say that by the end of
the 1990s any significant modification to Zambia’s macro-economic or
sector policies required prior consultation with, if not approval of, the donor
community, whether from the IMF, the World Bank, the African Development
Bank or from major bilateral donors. The immediate consequence
of this was that the locus of decision making on Zambia’s policies and
programmes shifted out of Lusaka and towards Washington DC (IMF and
World Bank), Abidjan (AfDB), Paris (the Paris Club), as well as to the capitals
of donor countries. If anything, Zambia’s reform programme became
Graph. Bilateral and Multilateral Assistance 1980–1999
1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999
Source: van der Heijden, Hendrik, 2000.
All Assistance
Bilateral
Multilateral