Caden Lin - 2022 Mitra Scholar

2021-22 Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient Pink Panthers in Freetown: The Role of the International Monetary Fund in the Sierra Leonean Civil War Caden Lin

Pink Panthers in Freetown: The Role of the International Monetary Fund in the Sierra Leonean Civil War

Caden Lin 2022 Mitra Family Scholar Mentors: Ms. Jenny Achten and Mrs. Meredith Cranston April 13, 2022

Lin 2 “I ask you to deal fairly and honestly with your fellow men, to discourage lawlessness, and to strive actively for peace, friendship, and unity in our country.”

—Prime Minister Sir Milton Margai following Sierra Leonean independence, 1961 1 For 2.3 million Sierra Leoneans, independence from British rule in 1961 marked an era of new beginnings. The occasion had long been coming: for decades, Sir Milton Margai, a leading protectorate leader during the colonial era, had been drafting a new constitution, organizing a framework for decolonization, and using his political aptitude to win over opposition leaders to achieve independence.2 The nation’s first parliamentary election in May 1957 occurred peacefully and resulted in a landslide victory for Margai, who was beginning to emerge as a guiding symbol of political stability, social unity, and above all, hope for a bright Sierra Leonean future. On April 20, 1960, at constitutional conferences hosted by Queen Elizabeth II in London, Margai led a 24-member Sierra Leonean delegation in a negotiation for independence, which was granted on April 27 of the following year.3 Incidentally, for 2,000 employees of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Sierra Leone’s independence also marked an era of new beginnings. Through the 1950s and 60s, the IMF, evolving from its original purpose of regulating exchange rates, began to intervene more directly in global macroeconomic policy, gradually inserting itself in fragile nations on the brink of independence and subsuming economic authority under the pretext of improving financial

1

New African, “Sierra Leone: How Independence Was Won,” New African, August 9, 2011, accessed November 25, 2021.

2 3

David Harris, Sierra Leone: A Political History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 39-41.

Murtala Kamara, “Sierra Leone Was Ripe for Independence,” Awareness Times Newspaper (Freetown, Sierra Leone), February 28, 2011, accessed November 26, 2021.

Lin 3 outlooks.4 The IMF’s most prized means of strengthening its global influence include structural adjustment programs, conditional loans that restore a country’s balance of payments while adjusting the nation’s economic structure to precipitate sustainable growth, and austerity measures, economic policies such as tax increases and spending cuts intended to reduce government budget deficits. The cornerstones of international financial assistance, structural adjustment and austerity have always served as tried-and-true, crucial measures to achieve economic stability. Yet, both can also be forcibly imposed to manipulate a developing nation away from pathways of sustainable development into economies subservient to pre-existing international hegemonies—a practice with which the IMF is painfully familiar.5 In 1961, as one hoped for social, political, and economic prosperity, and the other strove for increased international influence, Sierra Leone and the IMF had not yet crossed paths. This, however, did not remain true for long. This paper explores the post-independence intersection of Sierra Leone and the IMF and investigates the IMF’s role in instigating the nation’s devastating decade-long civil war from 1991 to 2002, which proves to emerge more as a result of incessant maltreatment than individual misconduct—more an induced consequence than innate circumstance. Ultimately, although Sierra Leone’s instability initially materialized from political uncertainty following its independence from Britain in 1961, IMF structural adjustment programs exacerbated deteriorating socioeconomic conditions by suppressing internal diversification and intensifying political corruption, and ultimately instigated the nation’s violent civil war by dismantling essential public services.

4

David D. Driscoll, IMF: What Is the International Monetary Fund?, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: External Relations Department, International Monetary Fund, 1998), 10.

5

Brian Crisp and Michael Kelly, “The Socioeconomic Impacts of Structural Adjustment,” International Studies Quarterly 43, no. 3 (September 1999): 533, JSTOR.

Lin 4 The Road to the IMF: 1961 - 1975 Upon achieving independence, Sierra Leone’s central priority was to establish a sustainable nation-state that could maintain both political and socioeconomic stability without requiring external assistance. Despite fervent hope, this did not remain true for long, and the government turned to the Fund in the late 1960s for financial support. However, the aid provided by the IMF at this time was minimalist and non-interventionist; indeed, it was not until the late 1970s that multilateral assistance began to truly dictate the nation’s economy.

The Political Climate of Independence Sierra Leone’s political climate before, during, and immediately following independence is often described as tumultuous, turbulent, and unstable—and admittedly, for good reason. Since the declaration of the Protectorate in 1896, the political system in Sierra Leone was predominantly localized, with power, wealth, and authority concentrated in the hands of Paramount Chiefs and their ruling families. The Sierra Leone’s People’s Party (SLPP), though nominally in charge of local governments, failed to reduce the local power of chiefs and allowed localism to not only exist but dominate social structures around the country. 6 In fact, throughout the 1950s, the SLPP actively allowed chiefs to control district councils and attempted to increase the local authority of chiefs while subordinating their power nationally.7 In 1960, the SLPP’s failure to unite the nation even amid discussions of independence led to the formation of the All People’s Congress (APC), an opposition party led by Siaka Stevens, who had been a prominent figure in the SLPP until 1957. In Sierra Leone’s first election as an independent nation, the APC

6

Christopher Allen, “Sierra Leone Politics since Independence,” Oxford Journals 67, no. 269 (October 1968): 30506, JSTOR. 7

Martin Kilson, “Grass-Roots Politics in Africa: Local Government in Sierra Leone,” Political Studies 12, no. 1 (February 1, 1964): 55-64, JSTOR.

Lin 5 won a notable 16 out of 62 seats in the General Election, with most votes originating from the Northern constituencies—a reflection of the regional politics that persisted even after independence. For the first time in the nation’s history, a disciplined, formal opposition party began to pose a parliamentary threat to the SLPP. 8 However, a more holistic analysis of Sierra Leonean politics during the early 1960s yields contrasting conclusions to the assertion that the nation was politically tumultuous following independence. Although localized politics and the development of an increasingly powerful opposition party certainly threatened the social stability of a nation emerging from a long-fought battle for independence, the fractured system did not produce particularly damaging effects on the nation as a whole. Indeed, amid rampant localism, the economy, though not a perfect representation of the political climate, skyrocketed by all appropriate measures in the years following Sierra Leone’s independence.9 In addition, though the APC maintained a formidable opposition, the SLPP continued to enjoy a comfortable majority of 34 seats in the General Election, and the threat of the APC was more symbolic than practical. 10 Yet the relative stability of Sierra Leone during the early 1960s is perhaps most easily observed when its political climate is analyzed in comparison to other Sub-Saharan African countries at the time that were also in the process of achieving independence. Because although localized politics prevented equal modernization and development across the nation, Sierra

8

Allen, “Sierra Leone,” 309.

9

Rattan Bhatia, Gyorgy Szapary, and Brian Quinn, “Stabilization Program in Sierra Leone,” IMF Staff Papers 1969, no. 003 (January 1, 1969): 505, accessed June 7, 2021, International Monetary Fund.

10

Allen, “Sierra Leone,” 309.

Lin 6 Leone, in multiple ways, remained more stable than many of its African neighbors at the time. 11 In Sierra Leone, there were no provocative incidents that motivated sudden separation from Britain, as were found in Ghana; no violent conflicts between equally powerful political parties, as were observed in Nigeria; and no dramatic debates over independence, which in Sierra Leone was universally agreed to be a long time coming, as were seen in Kenya. Even further, Prime Minister Margai was not a revolutionary, rebellious, defiant ruler who had suddenly subsumed authority but a quiet, elderly physician by trade, who had been actively involved in the nation’s political structure for decades and, as evidenced in his inaugural speech, hoped for a peaceful unification of his beloved nation above all else.12 The 1966 - 1969 Standby Program There was earnest hope for Sierra Leone’s economy in 1961. With an abundance of mineral deposits, considerable amounts of fertile land, and a reasonably well-established educated middle class, Sierra Leone, in the eyes of leaders and civilians alike, “had no reason to be poor.”13 And indeed, until 1965, Sierra Leone experienced consistent, rapid economic growth alongside unprecedented levels of price stability. Between 1961 and 1964, the nation’s real GDP increased by 3 percent annually; and although there was a notable deficit in the goods and services account, there was an equal offset by a surplus in the capital account to ensure equilibrium in the balance of payments. This remarkable growth rate established Sierra Leone as

11

Davis Fashole Luke and Stephen Riley, “The Politics of Economic Decline in Sierra Leone,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 27, no. 01 (March 1989): 133, Cambridge University Press.

12

Bryan Keith-Lucas, “Sierra Leone: Problems of Independence,” in Africa: The Political Pattern, ed. Millar MacLure and Douglas Anglin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2019), 97.

13

Trevor W. Parfitt, Stephen P. Riley, and Jeffrey Haynes, The African Debt Crisis (London: Routledge, 1989), 16:194, ProQuest Ebook Central.

Lin 7 one of the fastest-developing nations in West Africa at the time. Agricultural production and mineral extraction remained the cornerstones of the economy, whose growth lay predominantly in the exports of these two commodities. Importantly, however, such industries also provided crops and resources that were consumed or sold internally, thereby contributing to gradual economic diversification that could potentially pave a road towards more sustainable growth—a market structure that abruptly juxtaposed the export-oriented economy that the nation would eventually develop into.14 Meanwhile, in 1962, Sierra Leone, like many developing nations hoping to establish themselves in the global economic sphere after obtaining independence, became an IMF member state.15 Sierra Leone’s aforementioned trade dependency was the downfall of its economy.

Indeed, though an export-oriented market structure may have yielded respectable growth in its initial years of becoming a powerful figure on the international market, it was never bound to achieve sustainable long-term development. Thus, with the emergence of both internal and external factors, these three years of prosperity—which was largely dependent on growth in export sectors—ended abruptly in 1965.16 As domestic economic mismanagement surged and international market prices for oil and minerals fluctuated, Sierra Leone’s balance of payments deteriorated rapidly, and growth rates slowed down.17

14

Alfred Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural Adjustment and Creative Survival in Sierra Leone,” Africa Development 18, no. 1 (1993): 53, JSTOR. 15

Samuel Jamiru Braima, Sierra Leone: IMF Crisis Solution Report, 20, 2011, accessed June 7, 2021, ActionAid International Sierra Leone.

16 17

Bhatia, Szapary, and Quinn, “Stabilization Program,” 505.

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 54.

Lin 8 To restore economic stability, the Sierra Leonean government embarked on an independent financial development program, financed by both external contractors and internal bank credit. The primary component of the initiative involved the Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board (SLPMB), which reasonably aimed to accelerate economic growth via improvements in agricultural infrastructure such as new plantations and industrialization.

However, the use of the accumulated trading surplus resulted in unprecedented monetary expansion, an inability to purchase produce to sustain exports, and a failure to repay external suppliers’ credits. In 1966, faced with the possibility of even more devastating balance of payments deterioration, Sierra Leone turned to the IMF—which, at this time, intervened primarily only through financial oversight and loan provision—for stabilization support, which arrived in the form of a three-year standby arrangement, a form of IMF assistance concentrated on short-term growth and development.18 The first IMF stabilization program in Sierra Leone was, in many ways, a major success.

The initiative targeted three main elements: the SLPMB, the government’s fiscal policy, and the monetary policy of the Bank of Sierra Leone (BSL) and achieved remarkable progress in the first two goals. By withdrawing 6.9 million Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), the IMF’s international reserve asset, out of 7.5 million available to them in 1966, Sierra Leone managed to reorganize the Board and increase agricultural prices to incentivize production.19 Meanwhile, the IMF reduced subsidies to transportation, education, health care, and defense spending to curtail

18

Bhatia, Szapary, and Quinn, “Stabilization Program,” 505; Michael Bordo and Harold James, “The International Monetary Fund: Its Present Role in Historical Perspective” (working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, June 2000), 5, accessed November 23, 2021.

19

International Monetary Fund, “Sierra Leone: History of Lending Commitments,” International Monetary Fund, accessed November 28, 2021; Bhatia, Szapary, and Quinn, “Stabilization Program,” 511.

Lin 9 current expenditures while maintaining efficient administration; such austerity measures achieved significant reductions in public spending from 1966 to 1968 and actually resulted in a budget surplus for the fiscal year of 1968/69.20 The program’s success declined sharply with the IMF’s attempts to reform the nation’s monetary policy, an ominous indicator of the nature of IMF intervention in decades to come. The IMF’s goal was to limit monetary expansion to amounts consistent with the nation’s current reserve levels, leading authorities to raise the legal liquidity ratio such that commercial banks would transfer money to the government and eliminate excess liquidity. In reality, however, because the increase in commercial banks’ credit to the government led to simultaneous reductions in credit to the private sector, the opposite result occurred, and the operations resulted in a net drain on the BSL’s reserves.21 Under the pretext of avoiding an ensuing speculative capital outflow, the IMF proceeded to encourage devaluations to the leone, which increased net exports but decreased revenues received by producers. Although the government was able to subsidize producer prices to incentivize maintaining production levels, such a policy, as the nation would continue to discover in years to come, was not sustainable, and the devaluation of the leone lay the foundation for an export-oriented, trade-dependent Sierra Leonean economy.22 Economic Decline in the Early 1970s With a relatively prosperous economic platform following the IMF’s three-year stabilization program, Sierra Leone experienced rapid economic growth during the early 1970s.

20

Bhatia, Szapary, and Quinn, 518.

21

Bhatia, Szapary, and Quinn, 518.

22

Bhatia, Szapary, and Quinn, 519; Earl Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State Failure, and Collective Violence: The Case of Sierra Leone,” International Journal of Peace Studies 11, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2006): 99, JSTOR.

Lin 10 While large-scale public infrastructural developments manifested throughout the nation, primarily to enhance industrialization and attract foreign capital, inflation was low, the balance of payment deficits stayed minimal, and the budget deficit remained less than 1.5 percent of GDP. Such financial conditions allowed Sierra Leone to experience an annual growth rate of approximately 7 percent until 1972, one of the highest in West Africa at the time. 23 However, throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were signs that such development was not sustainable, which lay primarily in the composition of the nation’s economic growth. Agriculture and mining, both related to the export sector, remained the two cornerstones of Sierra Leone’s economy, with diamond exports alone accounting for 69 percent of the country’s trade in 1969.24 Although any type of growth was to be warmly welcomed for a country emerging from its long-fought independence, the nature of this export-oriented economy meant that Sierra Leone was both highly susceptible to currency fluctuations and external trade shocks, both of which soon posed to be problematic. 25 Indeed, because of currency devaluation efforts introduced by the IMF and continued by the government, although the quantity of exports continued to increase, export revenues failed to grow accordingly.26 In addition, to compensate for a lack of non-market production, Sierra Leone began to increase its imports, particularly of commodities that it used to produce internally, such

23 24

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 54.

Zack-Williams, 54.

25

Victor Davies and Sylvain Dessy, “The Political Economy of Government Revenues in Post-Conflict ResourceRich Africa: Liberia and Sierra Leone” (working paper, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA, November 2012), 2, accessed June 7, 2021.

26

John Weeks, Development Strategy and the Economy of Sierra Leone (London: Macmillan Press, 1992), 42-43, accessed June 19, 2021.

Lin 11 as rice, a crop that the nation primarily exported during the mid-1960s.27 As a result, a trade deficit emerged in the late 1960s and increased steadily through the early 1970s, but was brushed aside amidst rapid growth by other measures. However, the over-reliance on trade gradually became more and more difficult to ignore during the mid-1970s, particularly after the OPEC shock of 1973, which quadrupled the price of oil; inevitably, for Sierra Leone, a nation that relied entirely on imported oil with a dwindling supply of foreign exchange, such a crisis had serious economic consequences and caused the already-increasing trade deficit to skyrocket rapidly. Cumulatively, by the mid-1970s, the growth rate had sunk to just 3 percent a year and continued to decline consistently through the remainder of the decade. 28 Amid these causes of economic decline, which were primarily related to Sierra Leone’s internal economic composition and the volatility of international markets, it is easy to forget the role of the IMF at the beginning of this financial catastrophe. However, the root of Sierra Leone’s financial issues was, and has always been, its over-reliance on exports, a phenomenon initiated and continually fueled by even the earliest forms of IMF intervention. Indeed, the IMF’s misdiagnosis of Sierra Leone’s primary economic problem as a lack of global interconnectedness led the institution to advocate for currency devaluation, which the government, trusting the Fund’s authority, implemented—thereby unknowingly entrapping its nation in cyclical economic foreign dependence.29 Such a market structure can be contrasted with import substitution industrialization, a development strategy through which growth is achieved through domestic

27

Zack-Williams, “Sierra Leone,” 23; J.A. Binns, “Agricultural Change in Sierra Leone,” Geographical Association 67, no. 2 (April 1982): 115, JSTOR. 28 29

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 54.

Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State,” 98-99.

Lin 12 production and internal diversification rather than external dependence. Indeed, following their respective declarations of independence in the 1960s, this process was adopted with great success by many Sub-Saharan African countries such as Nigeria and Zambia, which ultimately proved to be fortunate to not be forced into an export-oriented economy by the IMF as they achieved rapid, sustainable growth throughout the remainder of the century.30 Defenders of the IMF may argue that, given Sierra Leone’s economic position as a relatively poor, unstable nation in Sub-Saharan Africa, the IMF could not have suggested any alternative policies, as expanding the country’s presence on the global market was essential to improve its financial position.31 While the latter part of this claim may be valid—that globalization was required for development—the speed at which the IMF encouraged interconnectedness proved to be the downfall of Sierra Leone’s economy, primarily because of a certain duality that characterized the post-independence country which IMF officials either failed to observe or purposefully overlooked. On one hand, in rural areas, where the majority of the population resided, non-market production dominated, and there were no concepts of saving or investment since traditional dichotomies of work and leisure or social and economic reproduction were nonexistent due to the predominance of self-subsistence. Meanwhile, in urban regions, the economy, driven by monetization, revolved around the mining, manufacturing, and cash-crop industries.32 As these market-oriented sectors became increasingly significant and

30

Ana Paula Mendes, Mario Bertella, and Rudolph Teixeira, “Industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa and Import Substitution Policy,” Brazilian Journal of Political Economy 34, no. 1 (January 2014): 121, accessed March 16, 2022.

31

Ales Bulir, videoconference interview by the author, San Jose, CA, July 26, 2021; Monique Newiak, videoconference interview by the author, San Jose, CA, July 21, 2021.

32

Weeks, Development Strategy, 43.

Lin 13 profitable, Sierra Leone’s internal economic imbalances were exacerbated; and, as will be examined in later sections, such inequalities formed the driving foundations of the violent civil conflict that would emerge in subsequent decades.

Interestingly, the IMF’s financial misdiagnosis in Sierra Leone is not an isolated incident.

Throughout the 1960s, through policies like currency devaluation and austerity, the IMF successfully assisted Western European countries in stabilizing exchange rates, restoring current account imbalances, and establishing international monetary systems based on convertible currencies.33 However, crucially, such nations were significantly more prepared to handle globalization efforts, with solid economic foundations that were capable of undergoing rapid monetization—foundations nonexistent in Sierra Leone and other developing nations, like in Southeast Asia during the Asian financial crisis. Indeed, while Sierra Leone began to become subsumed by civil wars caused by IMF mismanagement, the IMF, in the 1980s, began to repeat the same mistakes in Thailand, Indonesia, and South Korea, by imposing unpredictably and unnecessarily harsh balance of payments measures in these struggling economies that were in no position to handle them. Although violent conflict did not emerge as it did in Sierra Leone, their financial recessions were significantly exacerbated and elongated as a result.34 Though such crises are not relevant to the discussion of Sierra Leone’s decline, they are important to highlight that the IMF’s miscalculations are rarely one-time mistakes, but rather reflections of its broader failure as a global multilateral institution intended to support sustainable development. Indeed, such empirics highlight that the Fund—dominated by wealthy nations like the United States,

33

Stanley Katz, “The Asian Crisis, the IMF and the Critics,” Eastern Economic Journal 25, no. 4 (Fall 1999): 423, JSTOR. 34

Martin Feldstein, “Refocusing the IMF,” Social Science Research Network, February 16, 1998, 2, accessed December 31, 2021.

Lin 14 Japan, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom—consistently and intentionally engages in exploitative programs that force poorer nations to export their natural resources to the global market at artificially cheap prices. The following section examines the economic catastrophe that emerged in Sierra Leone as a result of the IMF’s usage of devaluation as a one-size-fits-all medicine inappropriately dispensed to nations suffering from different maladies.

Globalization, the IMF, and Economic Catastrophe: 1975 - 1986 As IMF intervention persisted throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Sierra Leone became an increasingly globalized nation, despite of the fact that its economy could hardly support domestic populations. The internationalization of the country contributed to a swift and severe economic downfall that placed the nation in a worse financial situation than it was in during the years immediately following independence—a regression during a period that should have seen rapid growth and development. As the ensuing economic calamity exacerbated deteriorating living conditions for millions of Sierra Leoneans, the first seeds of social discontentment, civil unrest, and rebellion were planted.

The Emergence of a Financial Crisis Encapsulations of fruitless development and failed dreams, these first signs of economic downfall that emerged during the early 1970s ballooned into complete catastrophe over the next fifteen years. Regardless of the metric used, Sierra Leone’s economy was nothing short of shambolic by the end of the 1980s: compared to 1970, annual growth rates declined from 8 percent to 1 percent, yearly inflation rates rose from less than 7 percent to upwards of 180 percent, and the leone was fifty times less valuable. 35 Amid drastic changes in Sierra Leone’s financial conditions lies continuity: indeed, the fundamental principles of globalization and

35

Alimamy Bangura, "Sierra Leone's Economic Record 1961-2010" (unpublished manuscript, The International Growth Centre, August 2014), 9, accessed January 1, 2022.

Lin 15 monetized markets, ideas that were gaining popularity throughout the 1970s and 80s, continued to exist at the core of the nation’s economic catastrophe.

The roots of these issues do not emerge from Sierra Leone specifically, but rather the broader economic precept that economies are optimized when they are globalized—an axiom that was gaining traction throughout the latter half of the twentieth century as Western nations grew increasingly powerful and influential. The fundamental principle of globalization is to transform the international political economy into one single global market that encapsulates health, education, work, culture, and other key tenets of modern society. Prior to globalization, economies were regulated by individually autonomous nation-states, which, by the late twentieth century, were playing increasingly secondary roles in the socioeconomic structures of their people.36 Yet since the beginnings of intercontinental economic transactions, globalization—an exercise of transnational hegemonic power by international financial institutions and developed nations—has yielded severe, often unseen consequences to the developing world. 37 For poorer nations, this transnational process is frequently associated with economic and political oppression because they instead become victims of economic restructuring, a formal term for the widening of economic inequalities due to financial programs implemented by multilateral institutions and developed nations that serve their own interests. By definition, globalization involves believing in free-market infallibility, the subordination of public governance to private interests, intense competition among individual companies, and fierce commodification of culture and common goods alike—all characteristics that wealthier states

36

Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State,” 91.

37

Conteh-Morgan, 90.

Lin 16 can afford to maintain while their underdeveloped counterparts cannot.38 As such, the introduction and imposition of foreign, private firms into a poorer nation frequently drive out domestic businesses that fail to compete, hampering economic diversification and exacerbating external dependence. Meanwhile, increased openness to trade often forces countries to rely on resource extraction and international markets to maximize their economic growth, in turn discouraging domestic research and development activities, such as by inducing governments to allocate their limited supply of skilled labor to manufacturing instead of areas with more potential for long-term sustainable growth.39 Before discussing the case of Sierra Leone, however, it is both interesting and useful to briefly examine the case of Nigeria, one of Sierra Leone’s Sub-Saharan African counterparts that did not receive IMF aid throughout the 1970s and 1980s and subsequently achieved rapid economic growth. Indeed, despite being an IMF member since 1961, Nigeria did not make its first standby arrangement with the Fund until 1987—and, even then, withdrew zero of the 650 million SDRs agreed to in the loan—choosing instead to overcome numerous financial obstacles on its own accord.40 At independence in 1960 and throughout the decade, Nigeria, like Sierra Leone, relied predominantly on exports of resources like agriculture and petroleum to drive its economy, which achieved rapid but unsustainable growth. 41 Thus, sensing the long-term infeasibility of the export-oriented market structure that it was heading towards and that the IMF

38

Conteh-Morgan, 90-91.

39

Pierre-Richard Agénor, "Does Globalization Hurt the Poor?," International Economics and Economic Policy, 2004, 25-27, SpringerLink.

40

International Monetary Fund, "Nigeria: History of Lending Commitments," International Monetary Fund, last modified August 31, 2000, accessed March 16, 2022.

41

Louis Chete et al., "Industrial Development and Growth in Nigeria" (working paper, United Nations University, Helsinki, 2014), 1, accessed March 16, 2022.

Lin 17 and World Bank were urging, the Nigerian government rejected multilateral assistance programs and instead opted to catalyze internal industrialization. As a result, through the 1960s and 1970s, Nigeria enacted two National Development Plans that had the objective of mobilizing national economic resources and deploying them in a systematic attempt to embrace import-substitution industrialization.42 These plans included key infrastructural projects such as the Kainji Dam, the Ughelli thermal plants, oil refiners, a development bank, and a mint and security company—all of which provided a vital backbone for the nascent industrial sector. Correspondingly, between 1960 and 1970, real GDP recorded an annual growth rate of 3.1 percent, which increased to 6.2 percent between 1970 and 1978—an astonishing figure given the political and social instability associated with independence.43 Unfortunately, in Sierra Leone, a nation painfully familiar with the negative externalities of globalization, intercontinental economic dependency was implemented heavily throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, primarily through rigid IMF programs that expanded greatly from the initial stabilization plans of the late 1960s.44 Such programs were motivated by genuine economic concern: the balance of payments issues that emerged during the early 1970s—again, due to IMF devaluation—continued to exacerbate, causing the terms of trade of the country’s major exports such as cocoa, palm, iron, and diamond to deteriorate. As a result, the Sierra Leone Development Company (Delco) ceased its production of iron in Marampa, the site of the country’s largest iron mine, in 1975, a major blow to both the local and national economy.

Meanwhile, due to the undervaluing of domestic goods, a process encouraged by the IMF in the

42

Chete et al., “Industrial Development,” 3.

43

Chete et al., 5.

44

Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State,” 97.

Lin 18 1960s to support globalization, peasant producers frequently smuggled goods across the Librarian or Guinean border, where they would both receive better remuneration and be paid in a hard currency like the United States dollar (USD) or Guinea franc.45 As a result of the downturn in economic activity, government revenue fell to just 17.8 percent of GNP by 1978, the second-lowest rate in the world at the time, behind Chad. However, such declines in revenue did not concur with expenditures, which continued to rise through the 1970s into the 1980s, deepening the budget deficit that grew to crisis levels by the turn of the decade. Even worse, a significant proportion of expenditures were directed towards maintaining the spending patterns of the bourgeois class, who directed their money primarily towards consumption rather than long-term investment, exacerbating both inflation, which wrought havoc on vulnerable groups with fixed incomes, and economic stagnation.46 The crisis did not go unnoticed by Sierra Leone’s government. In response to the deteriorating economic conditions, officials withdrew external loans to finance budget deficits while prioritizing the internal production of resources that could rekindle the nation’s global economic influence. Indeed, recognizing that the global economy was experiencing upturns in other parts of the world and hoping that such prosperity would reach Sub-Saharan Africa, the government focused on developing export commodities like the kimberlite dykes in the Kono District, which they believed would serve as a deus ex machina for the economy.47 Although such practices worsened preexisting deficits and the domestic banking system through the artificial and unstable injection of liquid money into the economy, officials were hopeful that

45

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 53-56.

46

Zack-Williams, 56-58.

47

Zack-Williams, 58.

Lin 19 briefly expanding the nation’s export industries, which were now the country’s only semi-stable source of growth, would be sufficient to repay current debts and allow the government to focus on internal development in the future.48 Recognizing that many African countries were enduring financial crises following independence during the 1960s, the IMF drastically expanded its provision beyond original boundaries to begin imposing stringent structural adjustment programs that closely aligned with the Fund’s interests in globalization.49 Thus, it is unclear whether the government’s measures alone would have been successful or not, as they were almost immediately interrupted by the IMF, which inserted itself into the economy under the assertion that the crisis had been instigated by inherently misguided economic policies on behalf of Sierra Leone’s internal government.50 In 1977, the IMF proposed a standby arrangement in the order of 9.02 million SDRs, the equivalent of 7 million leone.51 In return, the IMF demanded that Sierra Leone’s government control budget expenditures appropriately while using the loaned money to stabilize the domestic banking system and balance of payments accounts. While such conditionalities certainly were appropriate given the nation’s economic situation, their terminal shortcoming was that the demands were not associated with proper financial assistance or monitoring to ensure that spending was sufficiently controlled. Indeed, despite being fully aware of the nation’s relatively corrupt bourgeois and

48

Zack-Williams, 29.

49

James Boughton, “The Events,” The International Monetary Fund, 2014, 21-22, IMF eLibrary.

50

Weeks, Development Strategy, 12.

51

James Boughton, Silent Revolution: The International Monetary Fund 1979–1989 (2001), 566.

Lin 20 undesirable spending trajectories, the IMF intervened in 1977 with less a genuine stabilization program and more a loan that appeared to come without strings attached. 52 As a result, the loan hardly curtailed and even exacerbated domestic spending while failing to stabilize other facets of the economy, and also contributed to the emergence of moral hazard, the phenomenon of governments making riskier and poorer financial decisions when given a sense of financial security to fall back on. 53 With overinvestment of IMF credit into deteriorating industries like cocoa and diamonds and simultaneous increases in corrupt government spending, fiscal overruns continued into 1978 while the economy continued to falter.54 Recognizing that its intervention strategy, which typically worked in more developed countries that enjoyed increased financial security and political competency, was suddenly failing in Sierra Leone, the IMF attempted to turn back to its classic, tried-and-true, one-size-fitsall remedy: currency devaluation. Indeed, under the pretext that a weaker currency would facilitate authorities’ ability to generate large spending cuts that could balance external accounts, as well as to force authorities to demonstrate definitive obedience to the Fund, IMF officials demanded a 5 percent devaluation by October 1978, a pegging of the leone to the SDR instead of the pound sterling, and eventually a 15 percent devaluation by the end of the year. 55 Although President Siaka Stevens and the Sierra Leone Production Board agreed to such conditionalities, they remained hesitant about their efficacy, particularly in regard to the demand

52

Boughton, 567.

53

Michel-Henry Bouchet, "Financial Institutions and Developing Countries' Debt Cancellations: How to Get Rid of Moral Hazard?," Journal of Risk Management in Financial Institutions 14, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 131, accessed January 18, 2022, Ingenta Connect.

54

Boughton, Silent Revolution, 567; Earl Conteh-Morgan and Mac Dixon-Fyle, Sierra Leone at the End of the Twentieth Century: History, Politics, and Society (University of South Florida, 1999), accessed January 18, 2022.

55

Boughton, Silent Revolution, 567.

Lin 21 regarding the pegging of the Leone to the IMF’s international reserve asset rather than a fixed, stable currency like the pound sterling. Such concerns are frequent among the recipients of IMF loans, particularly in underdeveloped nations. Because the SDR is reminiscent of a basket of currencies rather than a singular one, it is more volatile and susceptible to all global economic shocks; in addition, it is used negligibly in private markets, meaning it is almost always preferable for countries to peg their currencies to the pound sterling or the USD. However, because nations are often desperate for IMF loans, which require that they demonstrate long-term financial loyalty to the multilateral institution, developing countries like Sierra Leone, alongside fourteen other nations in the late 1970s and early 1980s, consented to such demands regardless.56 However, soon after Sierra Leone agreed to its terms, the IMF ironically expressed its own equivocations. In 1979, suddenly fearing that the conditionalities they had designed themselves were too stringent and that Sierra Leone would not be able to fulfill their demands, IMF officials lowered the amount of money lent by 2.1 million SDR and asked that Sierra Leone not make any drawings for a short period of time; although these demands had little direct meaning, they highlighted the existence of hesitancy on the IMF’s part that, in turn, made Sierra Leone distrustful of the IMF and reluctant to even spend the loaned money out of fear that future loans would be cut and investments would not be sustained.57 Even worse, in a 1979 board meeting discussing the program, the IMF later revealed that the aggressive devaluation demanded was implemented to protect the “basic principles and the credibility of the Fund”—

56

Graham Bird, “The Political Economy of the SDR: The Rise and Fall of an International Reserve Asset,” Global Governance 4, no. 3 (July/August 1998): 371-72, JSTOR. 57

Boughton, Silent Revolution, 568.

Lin 22 that is, to affirm the IMF’s reputation as a harsh, powerful, overseeing international financial lender rather than to serve the best interests of Sierra Leone. 58 Such an action, though insignificant by nature, was an apt embodiment of the IMF as a whole throughout its intervention in Sierra Leone and developing nations during this time period: fearing a loss of hegemony and credibility, the institution sacrificed the financial well-being of struggling countries to protect its own global influence. Ultimately, perhaps unsurprisingly, Sierra Leone, simultaneously reliant on and distrustful of the IMF, remained in a highly precarious economic situation at the beginning of the 1980s, which worsened into catastrophe throughout the remainder of the decade.

Full-Scale Economic Calamity The bulk of the economic decline outlined at the beginning of the section occurred during the 1980s, and particularly during the latter half of the decade. Again, the downturn can be fundamentally attributed to the IMF, whose failures during this time were primarily related to either the tampering of the leone’s value or the mismanagement of the nation’s fiscal deficit, as well as to early abrogations of agreements due to irrational demands or speculations by Fund officials. 59 Following the relatively small borrowing agreement in 1977, the next form of IMF intervention manifested through a three-year extended fund facility, a more long-term form of intervention relative to a simple standby arrangement, involving upwards of 150 million SDRs— a significant increase from previous programs to address the growing economic concerns.60

58

Boughton, 568.

59

Parfitt, Riley, and Haynes, The African, 16:194.

60

International Monetary Fund, “Sierra Leone,” International Monetary Fund.

Lin 23 However, this program was unilaterally terminated by the IMF after just one year in which only 30 million SDRs were distributed, again because the IMF feared that Sierra Leone would be incapable of meeting the conditionalities associated with the loan.61 Indeed, noticing a fall in exports of alluvial diamonds and agricultural goods, which occurred largely because of overproduction in previous years due to the IMF’s sudden emphasis on globalization and trade, the IMF believed that Sierra Leone’s financial position was too uncertain to maintain the support program. As a result, by the end of the year, foreign exchange reserves were at an all-time low, as was the general willingness of the IMF to collaborate with and support the Sierra Leonean government in its efforts at financial recovery. For future programs, debates over four primary issues emerged between Sierra Leone and the Fund: an overvalued exchange rate, a foreign exchange system imposed by the IMF, low returns for internal agricultural producers, and financial indiscipline and corruption by the government. 62 Such sources of contention continued to emerge in IMF programs that ensued, particularly in regard to the exchange rate and exchange system. Following the delinking of the leone to the sterling and the tying of the leone to the SDR instead in 1978, the government instituted a “pipeline” system of foreign exchange, where currencies were exchanged in a queue.

This system, highly inefficient at dealing with a large number of currencies, contributed to increased smuggling and the development of a large parallel economy as the rate of globalization accelerated into the early 1980s, a sign of an impending financial crisis.63 As a result, in 1982,

61 62 63

Weeks, Development Strategy, 30.

Parfitt, Riley, and Haynes, The African, 16:208.

Parfitt, Riley, and Haynes, 16:209; Jan-Peter Olters, “Foreign Exchange Queues, Informal Traders, and a Zero Premium in the Black Market: A Cape Verdean Puzzle,” (unpublished manuscript, International Monetary Fund, August 1, 1999), 1, accessed February 15, 2022, IMF eLibrary.

Lin 24 the IMF imposed a two-tier exchange rate system, in which there are both fixed and floating exchange rates in the market. The former is only applied to certain segments of the market, like essential trade and current account transactions, while the latter is used primarily for capital account transactions. Because the IMF held oversight over which financial sectors used fixed exchange rates and which used floating rates, the system was still largely inefficient, thereby failing to dampen the parallel economy that existed to bypass slow currency exchanges, and served only to increase Sierra Leone’s reliance on the IMF. 64 Indeed, using the newfound leverage they held over the nation’s exchange rate system, the IMF launched another standby program in 1983, in which they granted 20 million SDRs under the constraint of a board devaluation of 40 percent. By facilitating trade through a weaker currency while maintaining a highly inefficient exchange rate system, the IMF succeeded in nothing but greatly exacerbating the size and scope of the informal, parallel economy. Indeed, by the middle of the year, it became clear that the new exchange rate system, coupled with the devalued currency, was not achieving its goal: over 60 percent of diamond production and almost all gold production was being smuggled over the borders, there were drastic internal shortages of essential goods, and any legal trade was being bottlenecked by the two-tier system.65 As a result, by June of 1983, GNP was at the lowest it had been in the decade, despite alleged increases in exports and trade, while the current account remained in deficit. Realizing the clear failure of its exchange rate system, the IMF intervened again in 1983 in the economy in two ways. First, the two-tiered system was abandoned and replaced with a fixed rate, in which

64

Parfitt, Riley, and Haynes, The African, 16:209.

65

Parfitt, Riley, and Haynes, 16:211.

Lin 25 the leone was again devalued and now assigned a fixed, unified rate of 2.46 leone to 1 USD. 66 Second, in December of 1983, another agreement under the Fund’s compensatory funding facility was reached to the tune of 50 million SDR. Yet after just two drawings of credit worth a total of 19 million SDR, the IMF, again fearing Sierra Leone’s inability to meet the conditionalities presented, suspended the program, thereby continuing the trend of a lack of sustained structural adjustment and leaving Sierra Leone without any reliable source of external credit yet with lasting arrears. 67 IMF officials and supporters frequently argue that if the programs implemented were truly detrimental to the economy, then the Sierra Leonean government should have recognized them as negative influences and made attempts to abridge or terminate them entirely. 68 Such claims can be responded to simply with the fact that officials were indeed extremely and painfully aware of the devastating effects of structural adjustment programs and austerity measures: These are dangerous areas. What they (the IMF) want us is to do is raise [the] price of these essential items [in] one fell swoop, now that people are experiencing difficulties from rising prices. If you do that now, you will be in difficulties. They are asking us to commit political suicide.

—President Siaka Stevens, 198469

66

Parfitt, Riley, and Haynes, 16:211.

67

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 59.

68 69

Bulir, videoconference interview by the author.

Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State,” 97.

Lin 26 Yet the fundamental issue emerges from the fact that Sierra Leone, and other developing nations in dire need of financial assistance, had no choice but to turn to multilateral institutions for aid, hence the IMF’s colloquial label as the “lender of last resort.” 70 With a rapidly deteriorating economy that inhibited the nation’s ability to both receive and repay extraneous loans, external credit was required to sustain any hope of economic recovery. And as other nations were unwilling to provide foreign direct investment to a nation on the brink of collapse, the IMF was the only institution Sierra Leone could turn towards. Indeed, ever since its political independence in 1961, Sierra Leone—because of a combination of a highly unintegrated society, a limited industrial base, economic imbalance, rural neglect, and weak state structures— gradually became increasingly dependent on international markets, which were dominated by multilateral institutions like the Fund. 71 The Road to War: 1986 - 1991 By the mid-1980s, given the state of the nation’s economy and the inaccessibility of essential goods and services for most Sierra Leoneans, the prospect of armed conflict was already looming. Because of persistent globalization efforts on behalf of the IMF that continued to increase the value of exports in the Sierra Leonean economy, violent conflict emerged surrounding the extraction of diamonds in the late 1980s, forming the basis of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the rebel army that led the civil war. Meanwhile, because of rampant political corruption that was instigated by IMF-sponsored privatization as well as drastic reductions in the quality and quantity of essential public services like health care and education, the quality of life for the average Sierra Leonean decreased significantly, until many believed

70

Andrew Schoenholtz, “The I.M.F. in Africa: Unnecessary and Undesirable Western Restraints on Development,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 25, no. 3 (September 1987): 404, JSTOR. 71

Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State,” 98.

Lin 27 that armed rebellion was the only means through which change could be achieved. Thus, as the IMF looked on, the outbreak of war, though devastating, came as no surprise to everyday citizens, government officials, and external observers alike in 1991.

Increased IMF Intervention Under President Momoh All three agreements of the early 1980s can be defined by the fact that they were abrogated early either because the government feared the sociopolitical consequences of implementing the Fund’s strict conditionalities or because the Fund was concerned about whether its own conditionalities could even be implemented in the first place. They were, however, also similar in that they were signed during the regime of Siaka Stevens, whose tendency to adhere to traditional forms of leadership meant that relations with the IMF were relatively limited, with many support programs failing to reach a point of agreement at all. 72 Thus, when Stevens quit politics in 1985 and handed leadership over to General Joseph Momoh, many were hopeful that his chosen successor would serve as a younger and more progressive ruler with the discipline needed to correct the economic ailment of the country through a diligent and dedicated implementation of the Fund’s conditionalities. Indeed, founding his regime on the idea of a “new order” government, Momoh strived to specifically distance himself from the jaded administration of Stevens. Through this newfound vitality, the Sierra Leonean regime reentered negotiations with the IMF in 1986, and soon produced the most ambitious set of reforms yet, which had the intention of completely reversing the economy’s rapid deterioration that was exacerbating throughout the 1980s.73

72

Alfred Zack-Williams, “Sierra Leone: The Political Economy of Civil War, 1991-98,” Third World Quarterly 20, no. 1 (1999): 146, accessed June 2021, Taylor & Francis Online.

73

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 59.

Lin 28 This program consisted of a three-year concessional funding worth 40 million SDRs, in return for the imposition of a set of conditionalities of unparalleled stringency. Such demands included the introduction of a market-determined floating exchange rate, total liberalization and privatization of trade, drastic austerity measures, and a termination of subsidies on essential goods. Although encapsulating a wide variety of conditions, the aforementioned stipulations all served to either decrease the government’s role in its own economy or make the nation more dependent on external, preexisting market structures. As expected, the structural adjustment programs were implemented under the pretext of relieving the balance of payments crisis, stabilizing exchange rates, and increasing export earnings. Taking advantage of Momoh’s willingness and desire to work with the IMF, the Fund designed the program with unprecedented strictness, asserting that failure to impose any part of the deal would lead to a complete suspension of the agreement. Unsurprisingly then, in April of 1987, after only 11.5 million SDR had been used, the IMF suspended the program, citing the government’s failure to sufficiently accelerate the depreciation of the currency, which the Fund still believed to be severely overvalued, even though the leone had ultimately deteriorated from being worth 50 pence in 1980 to just 1p in 1987.74 The consequences of such policies were more severe than any earlier programs: in the presence of a floating exchange rate and an absence of domestic subsidies, inflation ran at over 170 percent in 1987, lowering the standard of living of everyday Sierra Leoneans and deepening the scarcity of essential commodities. By April of 1988, the program had been disbanded entirely, and the country was left with the worst of both worlds: zero

74

Parfitt, Riley, and Haynes, The African, 16:212.

Lin 29 external credit from the Fund to utilize yet a massive amount of arrears that needed to be paid back due to the early abrogation of the agreements.75 There is no better way to highlight the absurdity, greed, and criminality of the IMF’s demands than to provide the commentary of those who were unrelated to both the IMF and Sierra Leone. Indeed, Professor Ankie Hoogvelt from Sheffield University writes in a 1987 briefing: Dear Sir [the IMF], You have done it again! You have reduced yet another African currency sheet by sheet into a roll of fine toilet paper. Your capacity for destruction is unmatched even by floods, quakes, or drought . . . A visit to Sierra Leone which was recently plagued by one of your missions has left me . . . shaken by the new tidal wave of grinding, grueling poverty [and] outraged by the sanctimonious economistry with which you … administer mass robbery that surpasses the wildest machinations of the criminal underworld.

— Ankie Hoogvelt, “Open Letter to the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund”76 The language that Hoogvelt uses to describe the Fund’s actions may seem appalling and exaggerated, but if anything, it is an understatement. To see this, all one must do is examine the economic situation of Sierra Leone during the late 1980s following several suspended IMF programs and partial impositions of stringent conditionalities. While inflation was at an all-time high, it continued to rise at 80 percent a year, further impoverishing those on fixed incomes and wage earners whose revenues did not keep pace with rising prices, which included most

75 76

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 60.

Ankie Hoogvelt, “The Crime of Conditionality: Open Letter to the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF),” Review of African Political Economy 38 (April 1987): 80, JSTOR.

Lin 30 agricultural workers.77 Due to absurdly high levels of smuggling, diamond exports—which remained the cornerstone of the economy, accounting for 70 percent of export earnings—lay at 48,000 carats in 1988, a derisory level compared to the 2 million in 1970 or even the 595,000 in 1980.78 Meanwhile, by 1987, government debt had spiraled to 112 percent of GDP, the prices of rice and petrol had risen by 240 and 90 percent respectively, and GDP per capita was the lowest it had been since the 1960s. It was around this time that the gradual intensification of poverty over the past three decades meant that impoverishment was no longer confined to urban and rural peasants but was also engulfing sections of the bourgeois that were becoming increasingly estranged from politics. 79 The end was not at all in sight. In fact, in December of 1989, Momoh and his government were coerced by the IMF to independently implement the adjustment measures demanded previously without receiving any loans or credit, in order to demonstrate the willingness and capability to impose future conditionalities. Such policies again included austerity, a complete liberalization of the exchange system, foreign privatization of essential sectors like petrol, a commitment to repay outstanding arrears, and the elimination of government price controls. 80 Desperate to win IMF approval, Momoh imposed the policies quickly and efficiently; by April 1990, prices had been decontrolled, and the currency was left again to be determined by the free market, resulting in a 60 percent devaluation in just one month. As the government borrowed and

77

Alfred Zack-Williams, “Sierra Leone: Crisis and Despair,” Review of African Political Economy, no. 49 (Winter 1990): 29, JSTOR. 78

Zack-Williams, “Sierra Leone,” 30.

79

Weeks, Development Strategy, 45.

80

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 61.

Lin 31 spent large amounts of money to impose such measures, the IMF refused to consider debt rescheduling for Sierra Leone—or any country in Sub-Saharan Africa for that matter— exacerbating the region’s debt stock, which had grown to $150 billion by 1990. Even worse, most of the nation’s debt was denominated in SDRs, against which the USD, the currency in which export earnings arrived, depreciated substantially throughout the 1980s. 81 Equally incriminating as the IMF-induced financial condition of Sierra Leone at the time was the Fund’s response to this national crisis. As it shifted its role from a purveyor of loans to a debt-collecting, interventionist agency throughout the 1980s, the IMF attributed Sierra Leone’s crisis to internal problems and poor domestic investment. Crucially, however, such internal problems, such as the balance of payments deficits and abnormally high government expenditures, were funded primarily by international lenders like the Fund, which refused to terminate or alter its programs despite conducting research that proved that the imposition of multilateral programs hurt overall economic performance. 82 Even further, its programs were so detrimental because of a self-centered, misguided, paternalistic view of global macroeconomic policy. Arguing that Sierra Leone’s problems were due to a lack of liberalized trade policies, the IMF pushed for reductions in public spending and wages in favor of expanding the nation’s export economy, an idea that benefited Western nations that could gain newfound access to cheap agriculture and minerals. Operating under this neoclassical general equilibrium framework in which the economy was constrained by relative prices alone, an ideology that may be true in more developed nations, the IMF issued policies such as floating exchange rates that would

81

Weeks, Development Strategy, 11.

82

Weeks, 11.

Lin 32 allow the free market to determine the nation’s export quantities and prices—a phenomenon that was entirely inappropriate for the unstable financial climate of Sierra Leone at the time. 83 Indeed, like most of Sub-Saharan Africa, Sierra Leone suffered from a lack of aggregate demand, where there was little international demand for the specific goods and services that the nation provided. In this state of demand constraint, the relative prices of goods are determined by effective demand—the actual demand that exists in a market, which is dependent on both prevailing prices and incomes—rather than notional demands, the amount of desire but not absolute demand for a product that exists in a market, which depends solely on the price of a commodity.84 For instance, luxury sports cars today have high notional demand, since many people desire them, yet have lower effective demand, since most people’s incomes cannot justify the high price of such a vehicle.

By instead conducting its structural adjustment programs under the premise of notional demand, the IMF forced Sierra Leone to sell essential goods and services like petrol or rice at artificially low prices to the global market, which could have been more productively sold within domestic markets towards the Sierra Leonean people (or, as many realized, smuggled across neighboring borders at higher prices). The resulting trade disequilibrium was both detrimental to the national economy and an unfair, unnecessary crisis, as the source of the market failure emerged from policy mismanagement in trade partners abroad that Sierra Leoneans were expected to accept and adapt to passively.85 The absurdity of the IMF’s actions is difficult to describe: it is like an experienced topologist forcing students to use Euclidean principles on non-

83

Weeks, 18.

84

Weeks, 14.

85

Weeks, 9.

Lin 33 Euclidean surfaces; an expert electrical engineer declaring causality and time invariance for convenience; a world-renowned physicist assuming unironically that the cow is a perfect sphere in a vacuum.

However, the IMF did more than just impose structural adjustment programs that eliminated any hope for a sustainable economic future. Striving to justify its misdiagnosis and malpractices, the Fund actively asserted that its programs reflected a broader agreement of the international community, both by donors and recipients. 86 Although there was certainly a consensus that Sierra Leone, and Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, required significant adjustment measures to alleviate its deteriorating economic crises, there was no consensus around the IMF version of adjustment.87 In fact, quite the opposite emerged: with each passing year, IMF programs provoked increasing controversy and criticism from external financial advisors such as the Economic Commission for Africa, which observed “ . . . in spite of structural adjustment programmes, the crisis remained unabated. Many African economies moved from stagnation to declining growth; food deficits reached alarming proportions; [and] underutilization of industrial capacity became widespread.”88 Meanwhile, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) both expressed skepticism of the IMF’s programs, commenting that there was no evidence to suggest a positive impact on recovery.89

86

Ismail Serageldin, Poverty, Adjustment, and Growth in Africa (Washington DC: The World Bank, 1989), 5.

87

Weeks, Development Strategy, 21.

88

United Nations, “African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programmes for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation” (unpublished manuscript, Economic Commission for Africa, Addis Ababa, 1990), 16, accessed March 17, 2022.

89

Paul Mosley, Jane Harrigan, and John Toye, Aid and Power: The World Bank and Policy Based Lending, 2nd ed.

(London: Routledge, 1995), 1.

Lin 34 Even further, the institution claimed that its policies stabilized the country’s financial situation by citing the empirical data that GDP growth rates in countries receiving sustained adjustment programs were significantly higher than in countries that did not—a second platform to attempt to justify its policies upon.90 There are multiple issues with this assertion, however.

First, the empirical work was done on behalf of the World Bank, a close partner of the IMF also in favor of facilitating export-oriented economies whose data could not be verified by a third party. Second, the comparison was conducted between countries that received IMF assistance and those that did not; many countries in the latter category experienced financial conditions so desperate and dire that they were judged “unbankable” by the IMF, and therefore were bound to experience adverse growth rates. Third, the IMF’s programs often were associated with substantial inflows of concessionary finance, loans with offers more generous than market rates, which would inevitably foster immediate higher growth rates no matter the long-term effects of the policies—an effect that was significantly more pronounced given that the data set collected analyzed just two years’ worth of GDP data. 91 Alone, these critiques of the IMF’s claims are not necessarily convincing. Yet, when analyzed relative to third-party data and assertions, it becomes clear that the Fund’s empirical justifications of its programs were almost entirely falsified. Observational evidence produced by UNCTAD, an organization unrelated to the IMF entirely, indicated opposite findings to the IMF: on average, nations that implemented IMF programs experienced growth rates at about half the rate of other countries.92 Such data also aligns with the conclusions of the Economic

90

Weeks, Development Strategy, 27.

91

Weeks, 21-22.

92

United Nations, “African Alternative,” 12.

Lin 35 Commission for Africa, who found that the growth rates reported by the IMF were sorely exaggerated and that with a larger reference period and data adjusting for inflation, recipient nations of IMF assistance experienced subpar growth rates.93 Although it is possible that the misinformation reported and cited by the IMF was genuine oversight, it is much more likely that, given the overall macroeconomic knowledge of the institution, it was purposefully misreported in order to conceal the underlying effects of IMF programs—a testament to the extent of their financial malpractice.

Blood Diamonds and the Formation of the RUF Conflict diamonds, diamonds sourced from regions controlled by illegitimate forces instead of the government, have long been driving factors of civil wars across Sub-Saharan Africa. Highly lucrative and susceptible to smuggling and other forms of illegal trade, such minerals can easily result in violent disputes between competing factions, hence their nickname “blood diamonds.”94 As mentioned repeatedly in discussions surrounding Sierra Leone’s economy, diamonds have remained a key part of the Sierra Leonean export market since the 1930s, when extraction of diamonds in large quantities started becoming feasible. Indeed, for over five decades, the entire Sierra Leonean economy was fundamentally grounded upon the exploitation of diamonds, largely because of IMF policies of trade liberalization and privatization. Thus, unsurprisingly, as the precious minerals were increasingly smuggled into the

93 94

United Nations, 23.

Joseph Hummel, “Diamonds Are a Smuggler's Best Friend: Regulation, Economics, and Enforcement in the Global Effort to Curb the Trade in Conflict Diamonds,” The International Lawyer 41, no. 4 (2007): 1145], accessed June 7, 2021.

Lin 36 shadow economy and major mining firms like Delco fled the nation due to low profit margins, the country’s financial crisis deteriorated significantly.95 Yet as their name suggests, blood diamonds did more than hurt the national economy; desperate to secure access to these minerals—which, because of the export-oriented economy forcefully developed by the IMF, were one of the only dependable stores of value amid a highly unstable economy—illicit miners frequently relied on violence to protect their diamonds. The mining of Sierra Leone’s diamonds is particularly susceptible to violent conflict because it is based on the alluvial method rather than kimberlite, meaning that heavy machinery is not required to mine the minerals, which lie close to the surface. Initially, such skirmishes were typically small-scale and involved minimal casualties, but grew significantly in scope and magnitude as the economy became increasingly dependent on diamonds. Meanwhile, because the success of its programs was directly dampened by smuggling, the IMF mandated that Sierra Leone forcibly regulate the diamond industry in order to continue receiving IMF assistance.

Thus, in “Operation Clean Sweep” and “Operation Clear All” in 1990, President Momoh authorized the Sierra Leonean Army (SLA) to remove approximately 30,000 illegal diamond miners and traders from mining regions. In turn, by directly displacing miners who were now both economically deprived and resentful against the government, the army, at the IMF’s demands, set the first catalyst in motion for civil war, which would break out in just the following year.96 Indeed, in the eyes of these miners, the operations were blatant efforts on behalf of the government to deny ordinary citizens access to resources and instead reserve them for the

95

Weeks, Development Strategy, 11.

96

Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State,” 100.

Lin 37 powerful elite. Frustrated, angry, and tired of lives defined by socioeconomic instability, many of these miners turned towards armed rebellion by banding together to form the RUF, the rebel army against the Sierra Leonean government that would soon instigate a full-scale civil war. 97 Meanwhile, because of poor pay and living conditions for government soldiers—which occurred largely because of IMF austerity measures that mandated reductions in state spending—the SLA remained largely unable to control the diamond economy, preventing the government from taxing its resources and thereby inhibiting sustainable development and exacerbating the cyclical shadow economy. Even worse, dissatisfied with their jobs and the government, many SLA soldiers joined the illicit miners in the RUF in their rebellion against the elite. Indeed, the counterinsurgency launched by Momoh and the IMF soon collapsed into widespread abuse and the exploitation of civilians by government soldiers, who banded with the very rebel forces they were supposed to be suppressing. As traditional policies of buying off the army through allowances, accommodation, and other social perks became increasingly unaffordable in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it should come as no surprise that the loyalty of soldiers deteriorated rapidly and eroded into corruption and malice.98 Thus, the RUF won initial support from a tired, politically distrustful population of miners who believed that armed rebellion was the only way in which ordinary people could attain equitable wealth distribution. Indeed, as the faction grew in size and strength, it gradually adopted primary objectives, one of which was to challenge the “conflicting ideas about who should control the State’s mineral resources.” 99 In early 1991, as members of the RUF began to

97

Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State,” 101.

98

David Keen, “Liberalization and Conflict,” International Political Science Review 26, no. 1 (January 2005): 8182, JSTOR. 99

Hummel, “Diamonds Are a Smuggler's,” 1150.

Lin 38 take action, it soon became clear that such declarations were not just statements but genuine goals: the rebellion began with revolutionary forces taking control of the alluvial diamond fields of the eastern Kono region and using the mines as ransom against the government. Thus, though later spurred by broader ideals of anti-corruption and wealth distribution, a close inspection of the RUF’s military tactics and propaganda indicates that their formulation originated almost solely because of a desire to seize the diamond-rich areas of the nation as a means of attaining individual wealth.100 Political Corruption and Social Unrest The nation’s catastrophic economy did more than worsen financial crises in both public and private sectors; it also exacerbated political corruption and social unrest, playing a crucial role in the outbreak of civil war. To discuss appropriately and accurately the political economy in Sierra Leone created by the IMF, however, one must begin with a high-level framework of Sierra Leonean society beginning from the colonial era. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when Sierra Leone operated as a British colony, the nation was incorporated as a peripheral dependency of the world economy, and domestic industries were already being restructured to cater to providing agricultural goods and minerals for the global market.

Recognizing the lack of sustainability in this export-oriented system, millions of Sierra Leoneans hoped that independence and assistance from the IMF would allow the nation to recollect their economy and instead pave the road for a stable financial future. Thus, as soon as IMF intervention in the late 1960s proved to accomplish the exact opposite mission, the seeds of

100

Marion Kaplan, “Carats and Sticks: Pursuing War and Peace Through the Diamond Trade,” New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 35 (2003): 567-68, Semantic Scholar.

Lin 39 social discontentment were already planted; by the 1990s, these exact roots would blossom into full-scale civil war. 101 From 1968 to 1980, most of the consequences of IMF interventions were economic rather than social or political. This, however, began to change in the 1980s, when general support for IMF recovery programs was already decreasing due to their lowering of domestic prices and agricultural returns for everyday farmers. Throughout the remainder of the decade, international intervention failed to curb and actually increased political corruption throughout the country.

This outcome is often surprising, given that for weak states, internationalization and the liberal doctrines of multilateral financial institutions like the IMF encourage fragile governments to privatize domestic holdings, seek foreign direct investment, lower tariffs, and reduce government spending—all of which should promote political efficiency, improve infrastructure, and ultimately reduce corruption and social unrest. In the world’s weakest nations, however, the opposite result is achieved: because Western policymakers from the IMF underestimate, either accidentally or intentionally, the instability of nations like Sierra Leone that have embedded patronage networks and drastic socioeconomic inequality, reform programs only exacerbate collusion among the political elites. 102 Throughout the process of globalization, IMF creditor loans facilitated the ability of politicians to impose economic policies that favor foreign firms at the expense of domestic communities, which proceeded to join the RUF and partake in armed rebellion against the state.

For instance, by encouraging privatization and endorsing Momoh to create mutually beneficial

101

Barry Riddell, “Internal and External Forces Acting upon Disparities in Sierra Leone,” The Journal of Modern African Studies 23, no. 3 (September 1985): 394, JSTOR. 102 Patrick Johnson, “International Norms, Commerce, and the Political Economy of Insecurity in Sierra Leone,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 41, no. 1 (2007): 70-71, JSTOR.

Lin 40 contracting agreements with external firms that seized control of diamond regions, the Fund antagonized the citizens who previously occupied those regions. Indeed, as competition for diamonds intensified in the early 1990s, it was these precise foreign firms that the RUF fought against.103 Such an occurrence should not have been unexpected: in fragile states, social relations between the government and external actors, rather than internal communities, determine statesociety relations. Indeed, when rulers lack popular support from domestic society, they inevitably seek relationships with outsiders to aid their domestic goals; thus, in an unstable state like Sierra Leone, Momoh’s unresponsiveness to citizens should not be viewed as a personal failure but as a rational short-term response to political insecurity that the IMF facilitated. 104 Devastatingly, the political structure and history of Sierra Leone made the corruption instigated by the IMF particularly damaging and violent. When attaining independence, the government prioritized overall development—such as economic growth, educational expansion, and infrastructural enlargement—while categorizing ideas of political representation and socioeconomic equality as secondhand. Though unideal, such concerns were natural and understandable for a nation looking to develop stable, autonomous rule above all else. However, as the country continued to develop socially, politically, and economically, the significance of distribution increased in importance; yet, with a political system constituted primarily upon patronage rather than democracy, it was difficult for citizens to express discontentment through politics. Meanwhile, with poor infrastructure and a lack of concentrated urban populations, even nonviolent forms of protest like strikes and demonstrations were ineffective and difficult to

103

Johnson, 78.

104

Johnson, 69-70.

Lin 41 organize, making armed rebellion, and therefore civil war, the only means through which the citizens could truly express dissatisfaction with their nation. 105 Dismantling of the State and Public Services Yet ultimately, the direct, driving force behind the outbreak of war was neither economic calamity nor political corruption, but the dismantling of public services through IMF-imposed austerity measures that fueled social discontent, human rights abuse, and eventually civil rebellion. By constantly and consistently attributing financial crises to domestic failures and internal government deficits, the Fund almost always attaches austerity measures to its programs.

Sierra Leone was no exception; indeed, ever since the 1970s, all IMF conditionalities to Sierra Leone included some form of demand for reductions in public spending.106 In addition, as the economic crisis deepened in 1987, President Momoh implemented even stricter reductions in public spending as a means to attract further IMF support, which was contingent on harsh austerity. This marked a distinct shift in Sierra Leonean fiscal policy, as his predecessor Stevens had always believed that the socioeconomic consequences of drastic austerity were not worth the financial support that IMF programs could provide.107 In particular, Momoh, as advised by the IMF, enacted drastic reductions in the subsidies on petrol and food prices, worsening the preexisting effects of devaluation and forcing citizens to rely on an inflationary free market whose prices rose dramatically faster than wages did. The effects of rising prices were exacerbated by the mounting pressure on land throughout rural areas of the nation, which had increased the

105

Riddell, “Internal and External,” 404.

106

Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State,” 98-99.

107

David Keen, “Liberalization and,” 77.

Lin 42 percentage of net food buyers (as opposed to food sellers) from 44.5 percent in 1965 to 66.8 percent in 1985.108 Essential services like healthcare were not spared from the cruel grasp of austerity.

Indeed, total real expenditure on healthcare, which had already fallen from 12.9 million leone in 1980 to 4.3 million leone in 1986, fell further to a meager 2.7 million by 1989. The consequences were tangibly apparent: while the number of hospitals fell twofold throughout the 1980s, the quality and accessibility of the remaining ones also decreased. State hospitals suffered from a permanent shortage of essential drugs, many of which were smuggled privately and illegally to those willing and able to pay astronomical prices for them. 109 Meanwhile, while medical services were practically free of charge prior to the adoption of austerity measures, most citizens could now not afford to pay for formal medical treatment even if they could access them.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that the average quality of life was appalling. In 1991, the death rate was 24 per 1,000, infant mortality was 160 per 1000 live births, and life expectancy was just 40 years. 110 The education sector fared no better. Cumulatively, real expenditure on state schooling declined from 34 million leone in 1974 to just 6 million by 1989.111 In 1987 alone, spending on education was reduced by 50 percent.112 As was the case for healthcare, the effects of austerity measures on education were swift and severe: at the end of the decade, less than 30 percent of

108

Weeks, Development Strategy, 83.

109

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 58.

110

Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State,” 99.

111

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 56.

112

Conteh-Morgan, “Globalization, State,” 99.

Lin 43 secondary school children were enrolled in education, and the adult literacy rate was 29 percent, one of the lowest in the world. For females, the figure was just 16.7 percent, largely because even for those who could access education, its opportunity cost was too high; indeed, the average Sierra Leonean woman worked upwards of 16 hours per day either in the home or field. 113 Yet even for men, the appeal of education also declined: schools that remained were in a dilapidated state; their affordability deteriorated as teachers began to privatize their services in pursuit of tolerable incomes, separating from the state and catering only to the elite who could afford to pay; and many experienced, qualified instructors moved to institutions outside of Sierra Leone in pursuit of better teaching conditions.114 Meanwhile, there were little to no job opportunities for skilled workers, meaning that increased education hardly increased wages and quality of living, even in years after graduation.115 Collectively, by 1989, Sierra Leone was spending more servicing its debt than on its combined budget for all social services combined. Two years later, at the outset of the war, social spending was just 15 percent of what it was a decade prior, and revenue collections had fallen to 20 percent of GNP in 1992, following a decade where GNP itself declined. Throughout this period, while those on previously sufficient incomes slipped into poverty, the already impoverished slipped into outright hunger; indeed, a peace campaigner in Freetown at the time recalls: “People became very poor and couldn't access basic needs [or] schooling. . . . people

113

Zack-Williams, “Sierra Leone,” 155-56.

114

Zack-Williams, 28.

115

David Keen, “Liberalization and,” 78.

Lin 44 were barely surviving and gritting their teeth.” And to those in rural areas, the government was seen as an entirely alien entity that had practically zero meaning for the lives of residents.116 The consequences of such reductions in spending were deeply exacerbated by severe wage cuts to the state workers in charge of public services. Urged to reduce the number of state employees, many of whom the IMF deemed useless and referred to as “ghost workers,” Sierra Leone decreased its total civil service wage bill by over 40 percent between 1987 and 1989. Yet as the government and everyday citizens would soon realize, such individuals held crucial positions in state sectors—most notably in health care, education, the bureaucracy, and the military. Public health employees often worked for months without pay, leading to widespread demoralization, lower quality of services, and most devastatingly, privatization of many health services that used to be free to the public, which was the only way through which skilled medical professions could generate sufficient incomes.117 Meanwhile, cuts in pay to teachers forced educators to abandon their jobs and seek more stable employment opportunities in agriculture or mining, while others, after not being paid for up to 12 consecutive months, held strikes that temporarily evaporated the educational system entirely.118 State officials faced a similar story: underpaid and demoralized, government workers exploited local populations and the economy through bribery, smuggling, and extortion in order to earn a livable income. Some even embezzled money from soldiers to fund their own salaries, depriving many army members of their monthly wages. This practice, in conjunction with the independent wage cuts to the SLA, encouraged soldiers to also engage in corrupt behavior to sustain themselves; this most often

116

David Keen, 77.

117

Zack-Williams, “Crisis, Structural,” 57-58.

118

David Keen, “Liberalization and,” 80.

Lin 45 involved joining the RUF, whose violence they were already enduring without regular payment, as well as exploiting the diamond resources they were assigned to defend. 119 Collectively, because of the overwhelming prevalence of dissatisfied, disillusioned, disaffected segments of the population, the RUF faced no difficulty recruiting an increasingly sizable number of soldiers ready to take up arms against the government.

A close analysis of Sierra Leone’s financial crisis proved that the IMF’s story of the nation’s economic maladies, which Fund officials declared to be excess spending, was deeply falsified. Throughout the 1980s, during which the crisis worsened by multiple orders of magnitude, the Sierra Leonean government was already cutting spending to no avail. 120 Any nominal increases occurred because of rapid inflation, which was induced by the adoption of the floating exchange rate; in fact, the level of real expenditure declined from an average of 213 million leone from 1978-1982 to 101 million from 1983-87, a draconian reduction unmatched by no other Sub-Saharan nation during the decade. The only increase in real expenditure throughout this time, which occurred in 1986, can be attributed to the government’s attempts to compensate for the disastrous effects of the IMF-fostered floating exchange rate; indeed, by the next fiscal year, real expenditure fell again by half, after which Sierra Leone was one of the only countries in the world in which government expenditure was less than one-fifth of GDP, as reflected by the appalling state of the nation’s public services.121 Thus, the proper fiscal advice would have been instead to simultaneously increase both taxation—or, ideally, receive external support, yet the IMF was unwilling to loan while also

119

Conteh-Morgan, "Globalization, State," 98-101.

120

Weeks, Development Strategy, 121.

121

Weeks, 124.

Lin 46 rescheduling debt—and spending to amend the pauperized public sector. Such was exactly the argument made by financial advisors from the International Labor Organization (ILO), whose 1990 assessment of the nation’s economy declared that, given the already meager levels of government spending, it would be unreasonable to exercise restraint on expenditure and that the country’s crisis could not be improved without “the urgent rehabilitation of the public sector.”122 Meanwhile, the emphasis on wage reductions highlighted how the IMF adopted perspectives reminiscent of those of a private employer, which would conclude that profit could only increase if costs of labor were reduced—a painfully nearsighted outlook, especially from an international financial organization.123 Such a conclusion represents the juxtaposition between objective economic analysis, provided by the ILO, and the preexisting ideology that internal government failure serves as the source of economic distortion, provided by the IMF. 124 Yet it was the IMF, rather than the ILO or any sensible financial institution, that was responsible for intervening in the nation’s economy. And consequently, it was suffering, rather than prosperity or development, that the Sierra Leonean people were forced to endure—all the way until 1991, when they were willing to endure no more and saw armed rebellion as the only means of achieving economic, political, and social change. Collectively, with 70 percent of the population unemployed—millions of people who saw no choice but to join the RUF—by 1991, the outbreak of civil war should not come as a surprise. 125 With a dwindling population of the

122

JASPA Employment Advisory Mission, Ensuring Equitable Growth: A Strategy for Increasing Employment, Equity and Basic Needs Satisfaction in Sierra Leone (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: ILO, 1981), 14-15, accessed February 23, 2022, African Union Library.

123

Weeks, Development Strategy, 17.

124

Weeks, 124.

125

Conteh-Morgan, "Globalization, State," 99.

Lin 47 nation enrolled in school, children and young adults who were otherwise wandering streets and engaging in criminal activity turned towards revolutionary forces to seek fulfillment, greatly expanding the scope and magnitude of the RUF, which capitalized on the country’s deteriorating social conditions. Indeed, by adopting a position of idealistic populism, the RUF managed to develop a philosophy that greatly appealed to the growing population of disenfranchised, disillusioned citizens, declaring in its pamphlet “Footpaths to Democracy”: “We are crying out against hunger, disease, and deprivation. . . . We are tired of state-sponsored poverty and degradation.”126 Interestingly, unlike in any other civil war in Sub-Saharan Africa of the time, such as in Liberia or Sudan, the political crisis of Sierra Leone mounted by the RUF did not assume any ethnic or religious dimensions and instead was solely focused on socioeconomically estranged classes, more evidence that the crisis was instigated by the financial malpractices of the IMF. 127 As the catastrophe deteriorated, the RUF adopted an increasingly aggressive stance, declaring that armed rebellion was the only medium through which change could be achieved—an assertion that simply catalyzed the preexisting belief that millions of Sierra Leoneans had already held for years.

The only way to stop this corruption of power is for the people to take up arms in order to take back their power and use this power to create wealth for themselves and generations

126

Revolutionary United Front, “Footpaths to Democracy: Towards a New Sierra Leone,” speech, Intelligence Resource Program.

127

Zack-Williams, “Sierra Leone,” 148.

Lin 48 to come by reconstructing a new African society in Sierra Leone consistent with the highest ideals of our glorious past and the challenges of the modern world we live in.

—Revolutionary United Front, “Footpaths to Democracy”128 While Sierra Leone suffered from economic turmoil, political instability, and ultimately violent civil war for over three decades, many of its African neighbors, including Botswana, Kenya, Morocco, and Tunisia, all with significantly fewer natural resources and agricultural land, achieved rapid economic diversification and social prosperity following 1960.129 These countries, incidentally, also received minimal intervention from the IMF, which only inserted itself to provide financial security blankets in the form of stabilization programs and loans. A comparison to its sub-Saharan counterparts is just one of many ways, however, to highlight the atrocities of IMF intervention in Sierra Leone: from a failing economy to rampant political corruption to the destruction of basic social services, all of which culminated in a decade-long civil war involving millions of casualties, the Fund’s failure in Sierra Leone is undeniable and apparent.

Yet perhaps most importantly, Sierra Leone’s history with the IMF, though devastating, is neither unique nor depicted accurately by many historians, economists, the media, or the Fund itself. Indeed, Sierra Leone is just one of many developing nations that desperately required multilateral assistance yet could only turn towards the IMF, whose structural adjustment programs and predatory loan conditionalities continually entrap nations in cyclically exportoriented economies that are structured to cater towards the developed nations that control the Fund. Yet meanwhile, the international community is quick to blame developing countries like

128

Revolutionary United Front, “Footpaths to Democracy,” speech, Intelligence Resource Program.

129

Parfitt, Riley, and Haynes, The African, 16:194.

Lin 49 Sierra Leone for their political instability, social unrest, and violent civil wars. These views are paternalistic at best, dehumanizing at worst: they conveniently yet fundamentally ignore the decades of neocolonialism that have dominated these countries’ historical struggles and culminated in violent conflicts that have affected millions of innocent civilians who, even today, remain powerless at the hands of international financial lenders.

There is no clear-cut way to stop these cycles of economic manipulation. In fact, during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which an unprecedented number of countries have turned to the IMF for support, this painful pattern will only continue, if not exacerbate, in decades to come.

Just like any other resistance to systematic oppression, however, that does not mean that the fight against such multilateral institutions is a hopelessly lost cause. By observing, recognizing, analyzing, and advocating the truth surrounding IMF intervention, we can gradually draw attention to the crime of conditionality and resist cycles of political turmoil and economic subservience that will otherwise prolong into the twenty-first century and beyond, where they will continue to devastate nations, states, societies, and individual lives.

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