Abstract:
The 1980s have been referred to repeatedly as a decade of crisis for African development. None of the factors underlying this "crisis" are new: declining terms of trade, declining per capita production of food crops, increasing foreign indebtedness, environmental degradation and continued high rates of migration by the young from rural to urban areas. But combined with two catastrophic droughts through much of sub-Saharan Africa, and the conflicts and political turmoil of the decade, the 1980s have witnessed the collapse of much of the formal, modern sector of Africa's economy, with a resulting decline in the standard of living for both urban and rural people. The droughts in particular provided the media with the necessary imagery to depict Africa as a continent in crisis.