Short Changed. Africa and World Trade

Short Changed. Africa and World Trade
Pluto Press & Transnational Institute

• Tables and Charts in Text
• Statistical Annexe: Tables and Charts
• Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements

Foreword: Exported to Death — the World Bank and Africa by Susan George

1. Africa in Crisis
   Falling Living Standards 
   Debt, Drought and War  
2. The Official Response
   Structural Adjustment Programmes 
   Export-led Growth 
   Korean Paradigm: a Model for Africa?  
3. Africa's Resources
   Concentration of Africa's Resources 
   Foreign Trade
   Dependence 
4. What Future for Export Crops?
   Declining Markets 
   Falling Terms of Trade
   Substitutes from Biotechnology
   Income Demand
   Elasticities
   Future Prospects
5. Which Cash Crops?
   Coffee
   Cocoa 
   Palm Oil and Groundnut Oil
   Sugar and Sweeteners
   Timber 
   Fishery Products 
   Live Animals, Meat, Hides and Skins
   Tobacco
   Tea
   Cotton and Textiles
   Rubber
   Other Agricultural Products  
6. Africa's Mineral Wealth
   Copper Diamonds and Gold 
   Aluminium from Bauxite 
   Iron and Steel 
   'Exotic' Minerals  
7. Africa's Fuel and Energy Resources
   Oil Refining
   Predicting Future Demand  
8. What does Africa get out of its Trade?
   Sugar 
   Cocoa
   Coffee
   Tea
   Tobacco
   Minerals and Transnational Control  
9. African Manufactured Exports
   Oil
   Coffee 
   Copper 
   Diamonds
   Cocoa
   Timber
   Cane Sugar
   Meat and Live
   Animals 
   Cotton 
   Iron Ore
   Lack of Foreign Investment
   First World Protection  
10. Export-led Growth and African Politics 
    Internal Problems
    Rent Seeking by Governments 
    Commodity-based Development?
    Foreign Investment in Africa Checked
    Failure of Structural Adjustment 

• References
• Statistical Annexe: Tables and Charts
• Index: Authors and Sources
• Index: Subject

 Short Changed is a detailed and devastating critique of the economic strategies which the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have imposed on African countries. In return for some limited rescheduling of debts, African governments have been forced to remove controls over trade and foreign exhange to increase exports of their primary commodities so that the debts can be repaid. The results of these policies are carefully examined in this book through studies of the markets for 22 major African exports. Short Changed makes it clear that, despite all the talk of ‘level playing fields’ and 'the international community', some participants in the world economy are more equal than others. This book supplies overwhelming evidence that the World Bank's export-led strategy cannot open the way to greater prosperity for Africa and that new approaches are long overdue.

• Michael Barratt Brown is chair of the Third World Information Network (TWIN) and Twin Trading. He is author of numerous well known studies on Third World Development, most recently Fair Trade: Reforming the International Trading System (1992).
• Pauline Tiffen is a fellow of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam and Director of the Third World Information Network (TWIN).
• TWIN is a London-based charity which works with organisations of small-scale producers in Africa and Latin America to help them get a better deal for their produce in the marketplace. TWIN's associate, Twin Trading, is directly engaged in the marketing of mineral and agricultural products from the Third World.