The Politics of Neoliberal Reforms in Africa

written by Piet Konings

State and civil society in Cameroon

Neoliberalism has become the dominant development agenda in Africa. Faced with a deep economic and political crisis, African governments have been compelled by powerful external agencies, in particular the Bretton Woods institutions and western states, to pursue this agenda as a necessary precondition for the receipt of development aid. What is particularly striking in Africa, however, is that neoliberal experiments there have displayed such remarkable diversity. This may be due not only to substantial differences in historical, economic and political trajectories on the African continent but also, and maybe more importantly, in the degree of resistance internal actors have demonstrated to the neoliberal reforms imposed on them.

This book focuses on Cameroon which has had a complex economic and political history and is currently witnessing resistance to the neoliberal experiment by the authoritarian and neopatrimonial state elite and various civil-society groups. It is the culmination of over twenty years of fine and refined research by one of the leading scholars of Cameroon today.

Piet Konings

Piet Konings is a sociologist of development and a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre in Leiden (The Netherlands). He has published widely on socio-political and economic developments in Ghana and Cameroon. His most recent books include Trajectoires de Libération en Afrique Contemporaine (Karthala, 2000), Negotiating an Anglophone Identity: A Study of the Politics of Recognition and Representation in Cameroon (Brill, 2003), and Crisis and Creativity: Exploring the Wealth of the African Neighbourhood (Brill, 2006).