African Arguments

Top Menu

  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

Main Menu

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
  • About Us
    • Our philosophy
  • Write for us
  • Contact us
  • Advertise
  • Newsletter
  • RSS feed
  • Donate
  • Fellowship

logo

African Arguments

  • Home
  • Country
    • Central
      • Cameroon
      • Central African Republic
      • Chad
      • Congo-Brazzaville
      • Congo-Kinshasa
      • Equatorial Guinea
      • Gabon
    • East
      • Burundi
      • Comoros
      • Dijbouti
      • Eritrea
      • Ethiopia
      • Kenya
      • Rwanda
      • Seychelles
      • Somalia
      • Somaliland
      • South Sudan
      • Sudan
      • Tanzania
      • Uganda
      • Red Sea
    • North
      • Algeria
      • Egypt
      • Libya
      • Morocco
      • Tunisia
      • Western Sahara
    • Southern
      • Angola
      • Botswana
      • eSwatini
      • Lesotho
      • Madagascar
      • Malawi
      • Mauritius
      • Mozambique
      • Namibia
      • South Africa
      • Zambia
      • Zimbabwe
    • West
      • Benin
      • Burkina Faso
      • Cape Verde
      • Côte d’Ivoire
      • The Gambia
      • Ghana
      • Guinea
      • Guinea Bissau
      • Liberia
      • Mali
      • Mauritania
      • Niger
      • Nigeria
      • São Tomé and Príncipe
      • Senegal
      • Sierra Leone
      • Togo
  • Climate
  • Politics
    • Elections Map
  • Economy
  • Society
  • Culture
  • Specials
    • From the fellows
    • Radical Activism in Africa
    • On Food Security & COVID19
    • Think African [Podcast]
    • #EndSARS
    • Into Africa [Podcast]
    • Covid-19
    • Travelling While African
    • From the wit-hole countries…
    • Living in Translation
    • Africa Science Focus [Podcast]
    • Red Sea
    • Beautiful Game
  • Debating Ideas
Politics
Home›African Arguments›Politics›Recalling the “Unmanageable” Crisis of the 1980s

Recalling the “Unmanageable” Crisis of the 1980s

By Alex de Waal
November 26, 2008
1678
0

Sudanese leaders lead the world in their skill in handling simultaneous internal and external crises. In 1984, Sudan set a world record for the number of times its official debt was rescheduled (eight). Each time the Paris Club of official creditors met, they acknowledged that Sudan had been unable to meet the economic policy conditionalities imposed at the previous meeting, and pay the arrears that were due, but found a reason for keeping Sudan within the elastic rules of international finance. But when it came to Sudan’s request for a ninth bailout and rescheduling, it had become such a persistent non-performer, the amounts needed to bail it out had become so big, and it had run up so much arrears of debt to the IMF (which is not allowed to deal officially with a defaulter), that the Sword of Damocles fell.

In March 1986, the IMF suspended Sudan, the first time it had ever taken this Draconian step. Everyone expected that this would spell complete financial ruin for the country, that its official development assistance would also be frozen and that its public finances would simply grind to a halt. Certainly, Sudan’s economic crisis deepened. But, as described by the historian of Sudan’s economy and aid during this period, Richard Brown, Sudan somehow “managed the unmanageable”. (The account is found in Brown’s, Public Debt and Private Wealth: Debt, Capital Flight and the IMF in Sudan.)

But that crisis management came at a high price for Sudanese. The financial squeeze of those years was a major factor in starting the war and in how the war was fought. In particular, lacking the funds needed to pay for a regular army campaign, the government turned to the militia strategy, with disastrous consequences. (An outline of the story is told in African Rights’ Food and Power in Sudan, chapter 5.)

Within a year, the IMF had realized that Sudan’s strategy was simply to fail to pay its debt obligations and allow the arrears to mount, and ignore the fact that the country was technically bankrupt. Given a choice between meeting an international obligation and maintaining some essential government services and functions, the government chose the latter. And when Sudan defied the international norm, first the donors and then the IMF were forced to adjust their business practices to deal with it. The IMF created the innovation of a “shadow programme” to continue to deal with Sudan, while pretending that it was not in official negotiations. This continued until the IMF changed its statutes to allow it to deal with the increasing number of chronic defaulters around the world.

Fiscal crisis is closely correlated with political crisis in Sudan. The budget presented to the National Assembly tomorrow is based on revenue projections for 2009 amounting to just 47% of 2008. This means that Sudan is facing a very difficult year.

But the main lesson to be learned today is that international institutions and mechanisms, such as the IMF and ICC, rely on countries playing the rules of the game. If they refuse to play, then there is rather little that can be done to force them to do so, and often the internationals have to accommodate to intractable local realities rather than the other way around.

Previous Article

Recalling the Secret Wars of the 1990s

Next Article

Famine Crimes and Tragedies

mm

Alex de Waal

Alex de Waal is Research Professor and Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation at The Fletcher School, Tufts University. He was the founding editor of the African Arguments book series. He is the author of The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power.

  • Politics

    Another Rwandan Human Rights Organisation Bites the Dust – By Anonymous

  • Congo-KinshasaPolitics

    The best way to honour Tshisekedi is to take on the fight for democracy in DR Congo

  • Tanzania one party state elections
    PoliticsTanzania

    If the elections aren’t free and fair, Tanzania will be a one-party state

Subscribe to our newsletter

Click here to subscribe to our free weekly newsletter and never miss a thing!

  • 81.7K+
    Followers

Find us on Facebook

Interactive Elections Map

Keep up to date with all the African elections.

Recent Posts

  • Nigeria’s curious voter turnout problem
  • Cyclone Freddy dumped six months’ rain in six days in Malawi
  • The loud part the IPCC said quietly
  • “Nobody imagined it would be so intense”: Mozambique after Freddy
  • Libya’s captured prosecutor?

Editor’s Picks

ChadEditor's PicksPolitics

Chad’s transition to nowhere

15 months into an 18-month transition, there are few signs of it ending. And the Western-backed interim president is acting a lot like his dad. Chad’s return to civilian rule ...
  • The 8 December 2021 protest by the media against state-led press repression in Sudan. Credit: Ayin.

    “Back to the former lies”: Sudan reverts to media repression post-coup

    By Elzahraa Jadallah, Khaled Fathi & Tom Rhodes
    December 16, 2021
  • The making of a global port, and the unmaking of a people

    By Nasir M. Ali, Jutta Bakonyi & May Darwich
    December 1, 2022
  • African protest movements

    What the rest of the world can learn from Africa’s protest movements

    By Alison Faupel & Andrew Wojtanik
    December 16, 2020
  • Exhibits from Michael Soi's "China Loves Africa" exhibition at the Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi. Credit: Circle Art Gallery.

    Why is Africa always portrayed as a passive woman?

    By Nanjala Nyabola
    September 18, 2018

Brought to you by


Creative Commons

Creative Commons Licence
Articles on African Arguments are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
  • Cookies
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms & Conditions
© Copyright African Arguments 2020
By continuing to browse this site, you agree to our use of cookies.