World Bank And IMF

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank were formed at the Britton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, United States, in 1944. They were designed as the mainstay of the post-war global economic order. The World Bank's focus is the provision of long-term loans to support development projects. The IMF concentrates on providing loans to stabilize countries with short-term financial crises

Critics of the World Bank and IMF have argued that policies implemented by African Countries, intended to control inflation and generate foreign exchange to help pay off the IMF debts, often result in increased unemployment, poverty and economic polarization thereby impeding sustainable development.

The World Bank and IMF became increasingly prominent

The removal of protections for the manufacturing sector, trade liberalization, and reduced government spending combined with the effects of the drought on agricultural production resulted in economic recession. As a combine result of the factors, the real GDP fell by nearly 8% in 1992.

Privatization is one of the IMF/WB conditionality which affected the mass population’s lives. Scott (2001) defines privatization as the term used to refer to the sale of government owned equity in nationalized industry, parastatal or other commercial enterprises, to private investors with or without the loss of government’s control of the organizations. Privatization is associated with higher levels of unemployment with its attendant social ills. Chakaodza (1993) states that while privatization may improve efficiency it will do so at the socio-economic and political cost of unemployment as well as depletion of needed foreign currency reserves. ESAP caused high unemployment rate because of its economic reforms. According to Sounders (2000) about 22,000 public service employees have been retrenched, alongside large cutbacks in real recurrent expenditure on services. In addition, the working conditions of the public sector was declining, Sounders (2000) added that, declining conditions of work and uncompetitive pay have chased many better-skilled

Products became expensive in the shops. The private sector did not perform as expected on the global market; low market prices affected the realization of foreign currency which was hardly needed to repay the debt. Cost of living increased to due to high prices on products and low incomes earned. Trade relaxation on currency exchange controls led to the externalization of funds

The Negative Impacts could have been avoided

ESAP was implemented in time of drought in Zimbabwe. World Bank through expertise could have realized that it was not feasible for farmers to harvest crops for export. It was wrong timing

ESAP was used as a one size fits all programs. They never looked at how other components of ESAP would affect the economy. Some elements needed omission on implementation for example, removal of subsidies on health and education.

ESAP was a theory that was to be put to test, an experiment that was never tested. So it was ideal to check first the feasibility aspect before implementation.

ESAP should have used the countries home grown crops in their equation than to change what farmers used to grow into cash crops suitable for global