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Structural adjustment has become a development catchword: in international development discourse, aid has become inextricably linked with the introduction of "good governance" and economic reform, all in the best interests of everyone concerned. But the effects of structural adjustment programmes have been far from uniform. In some areas of the world, their imposition has had many strongly negative aspects - economically, socially and politically. Voices from the periphery have begun to ask who really benefits from structural adjustment: recipient or donor? This work looks at the effects of structural adjustment programmes "on the ground" in sub-Saharan Africa, now one of the poorest and most heavily indebted regions in the world, partly as a consequence of the undifferentiated adjustment policies that have been imposed on the area. The contributors to this volume highlight the complex and problematic connections between the global and the local, and offer a more holistic and comparative perspective on the problems of underdevelopment and the sometimes tragically inappropriate remedies that have been prescribed. A particular feature of the book is the focus on different geographical scales and the combination of rural and urban as well as locality and sectoral analyses. The book offers a challenge to the ambitious claims made for structural adjustment, by demonstrating a detailed understanding of how those programmes really affect the peoples and the countries concerned.