Nor is it a problem if people are inspired to create an account to comment. As long as they follow the rules, that's how HN is supposed to work.
I'm sure Joe Stiglitz, a Nobel prize winner in Economics, would disagree. In fact, he clearly articulated why in his book: Globalization and Its Discontents.
"[It] is a book published in 2002 by the 2001 Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz. The book draws on Stiglitz's personal experience as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under Bill Clinton from 1993 and chief economist at the World Bank from 1997."
Another book to read is "Confessions of an Economic Hitman". Both describe essentially what both the USA and China appear to be doing - increasing global power and influence using subtler means than gunboat diplomacy.
All I’m asking is that people read facts about the World Bank and make their own opinions.
What has changed the equation for the continent started in the 2000s, the commodities boom along with telecommunications improvement, along with the entrant of new players such as China, India, Turkey, and until recently Brazil(in the Lusophone states).
So if we choose to look at those historical datapoints, without even getting into abuses at the IMF/World bank, we can effectively agree that the Bretton Woods sisters have done very little to move the needle on African prosperity.
Can anyone blame Africans for ignoring the World Bank and IMF when the countries that did ignore its orthodoxy, from China in the late 1970s to then India in the early 1990s, prospered?
> the countries that did ignore its orthodoxy, from China in the late 1970s to then India in the early 1990s, prospered
China and India did not at all ignore the 'orthodoxy', but enacted it and that is credited with their economic expansion. China and India adopted capitalism, opened their markets, and adopted economic fundamentals such as stable monetary policy.
African states on the other hand, about 40 states in the 1980s underwent what we would call Structural Adjustment programs. State owned enterprises were sold, huge slashing cuts were made to education and healthcare(This in part decimated Nigeria's regional class university system), and various legal reforms for the benefit of Western investors. The results of those experiments were generally failed and led to a disastrous late 1980s and 1990s on the continent.
In terms of a country that implemented many of those reforms and failed to get that far. I would say both Ghana and Tanzania are pertinent examples. Ghana has implemented about three to four rounds of IMF engagement since the 1980s and is hailed regionally for its rule of law and stable political and investment climate, it still only has a GDP per capita of $1,641. Then you have Tanzania which since the 1980s has largely abandoned state socialism and embraced a mixed market economy, its GDP per capita? a whopping $936.
I could make the same argument against this website:
I recommend that you read facts about what they do before reading random opinions online (from brand new accounts, especially).
Also, I know dang warns us about pointing out potential propaganda, but this seems like this post is a good example of what I’m talking about.