AFRICA BETWEEN STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT, DEMOCRATIZATION AND STATE DISINTEGRATION

Black Africa south of the Sahara is the region which faces the world's greatest development problems. This explains why it often ranks as a hopeless case. Development aid from Western industrialised nations - o ften accompanied by great expectations - seems, to a large extent, to have worsened rather than improved the situation. In the following art icle, Stefan Mair, an academic assistant at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Ebenhausen near which and an expert on matters relating to this region, analyses the underlying contexts and causes. Irrespec tive of the enormous problems, Africa does appear to possess developme nt options - some of them already utilised to a certain degree by indi vidual countries - which could take it out of the vicious circle of gr owing impoverishment.