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The first four years of the 1990s indicate that African economies have grown by a mere 1.5 per cent per annum worse than during the "lost decade" of the 1980s when Africa's economic annual growth rate was on average 1.8 per cent during the period 1980-1990. This growth is barely half of the rate of growth of Africa's population and is well below the annual average growth target of 4 per cent set by the World Food Conference in 1974, and still worse than the 6 per cent set in the United Nations New Agenda for the Development of Africa in the 1990s. This trend of continuing decline in per capita income also continues to translate itself into a further slide into hunger and poverty. The paper stressed that the current tendency of pushing African countries to intensify reforms in return for debt relief or special financial assistance of the types referred to earlier for the principal purpose of balancing the books in the current account cannot be a reliable cure to the widening problems of rural poverty. This does not guarantee that the financial gains accruing to the reforming countries through debt relief or external assistance will be judiciously utilized to improve the lamentable fate of the rural poor.
