In light of the mass anti-austerity protests in Kenya and Argentina in 2024, Rea Maci offers a historical analysis of the neo-colonial relationship between the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and these two countries. She exposes the cycle of debt, austerity, poverty, and governmental negligence imposed by this institution of Western imperialism on nations in the Global South. Maci decries IMF policies as a form of unforgiving structural violence inflicted on the most vulnerable populations. She calls for renewed global solidarity to dismantle the institutions that perpetuate colonial power structures and economic dependency.
Rea Maci
Introduction
In the shadow of global institutions, austerity measures imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) across the Global South are a stark manifestation of neo-colonialism, producing structural violence and dismantling local economies. These policies, far from fostering stability, exacerbate extreme poverty, deepen economic dependency, privatise natural resources, and fuel political unrest in already vulnerable communities.[1] Over the years, three distinct waves of anti-globalisation protests have surged across the globe in response to IMF policies: first in 1976, in the late 1990s, and following the 2008 financial crisis.
This past summer, only weeks apart, the world once again witnessed the consequences of austerity-driven governance. In Kenya, youth-led protests against IMF-backed economic measures turned violent, resulting in at least 39 deaths, hundreds of injuries, 32 cases of enforced disappearances, and 627 arrests. Similarly, harsh state repression in Buenos Aires met waves of protestors challenging Javier Milei’s budget cuts as debates took place in the congressional building.
For many in the Global South, these events are part of a familiar cycle of austerity, poverty, and governmental neglect. Both Kenya and Argentina have experienced repeated uprisings against policies that prioritise debt repayment over public welfare. Austerity in the Global South is nothing new, yet its effects remain just as violent and devastating, prompting serious concerns about the IMF’s ongoing role in borrower countries.
Despite extensive studies documenting how IMF loan conditions lead to worsening poverty, exploit local resources and labour for global markets with little to no benefit to the local economy, and entrench social unrest— austerity in the Global South is rarely considered structural violence. Moreover, its connection to the larger history of colonial exploitation and neo-colonial power dynamics is often overlooked. Instead, austerity is framed as necessary economic reform caused solely by corruption and financial mismanagement by Global South governments, obscuring the broader context of exploitation by colonial powers.
This article analyses the histories of Kenya and Argentina to illustrate a broader neo-colonial relationship between the IMF and borrower countries in the Global South, tracing how IMF austerity leads to structural violence that disproportionately harms vulnerable populations. While Kenya and Argentina highlight the most recent consequences of structural adjustment and debt cycles, these cases represent a larger trend of austerity-induced instability and state repression that extends across the Global South. By reframing austerity as a multi-layered form of violence, the article emphasises the harm caused by the IMF and the shared struggle of Southern Countries under an austerity regime. It calls for accountability and alternative policies that prioritise sovereign economic growth, self-determination, and independent futures for the Global South. Progressive International’s ‘Program on the Construction of a New International Economic Order’ offers a concrete pathway for nations to collectively resist IMF hegemony and reclaim economic autonomy, underscoring the urgent need for global solidarity in dismantling institutions that perpetuate colonial power structures.
Neo-Colonialism and Debt
Historical Roots of IMF Interventions
While traditional colonialism relied on military power and direct occupation, neo-colonialism wields a more subtle influence through economic control. It weaponises debt, loans, and the withholding of aid to maintain geopolitical influence over the Global South. In this framework, IMF structural adjustments reflect the same colonial structures previously enforced through direct occupation. Thomas Sankara well understood the relationship between debt, exploitation, and control, noting that “imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail.” His observations remain as relevant today as during his presidency in Burkina Faso, highlighting how IMF policies became tools for maintaining global inequalities.
Recently, the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research released a dossier titled Life or Debt, wherein they examine the origins of the debt crisis in the Global South and the IMF’s role in worsening the crisis. At the IMF’s formation during the 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, its stated purpose was to stabilise the global economy. However, during its formation, the absence of meaningful participation by then-colonised nations foreshadowed their marginalisation in global governance.
The initial mission of the IMF, as outlined in its Articles of Agreement, was to promote “expansion and balanced growth of international trade” and contribute to high levels of employment and income. The IMF was intended to provide short-term financial support to countries experiencing balance-of-payments crises, thereby preventing temporary problems from escalating into long-term crises. Despite the IMF’s original mandate to promote global trade and prevent short-term financial crises from becoming systemic disasters, its structure and decision-making processes remained dominated by primarily the United States and the United Kingdom.
As independence wars established newly independent nation-states across the Global South, many formerly colonised nations became IMF members. In its early years, the IMF operated with a limited role in these regions, largely providing modest short-term loans through the Compensatory Financing Facility (1963) and the Buffer Stock Financing Facility (1969). However, this changed following Mexico’s default in 1982, marking the beginning of the Third World Debt Crisis. In response, the IMF underwent a transformation, which its managing director Michel Camdessus termed a “silent revolution,” fundamentally altering its approach to lending.[2]
The IMF began to demand that borrowing nations undertake significant domestic economic reforms as a condition for receiving financial assistance. These reforms were crystallised in Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs), first implemented through the Structural Adjustment Facility (1986) and later the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (1987). The core of these programs demanded that borrower countries privatise their state sectors, commodify public goods like education and healthcare, eliminate government deficit financing, and remove barriers to foreign capital and trade.
Life or Debt underscores how the IMF’s policies in the 1980s and beyond disproportionately targeted countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America—regions already struggling with the effects of colonialism and capitalist exploitation. By enforcing reforms, the IMF effectively trapped these localities in a cycle of dependency, where they were forced to rely on external loans to meet basic financial needs, resulting in repeated borrowing, mounting debt, and diminished economic autonomy. This often led to debt spirals, where countries were forced to cut social spending, prioritise debt repayment over their sovereign development, and rely on raw material exports, which triggered a race to the bottom in global commodity prices.
Furthermore, in his book The Meddlers: Sovereignty, Empire, and the Birth of Global Governance, James Martin argues that the IMF’s interventionist powers did not originate in the late 20th century. Instead, they trace back to post-World War I international institutions such as the League of Nations and the Bank for International Settlements. These institutions gave “bankers, colonial authorities, and civil servants from Europe and the United States the extraordinary power to enforce austerity, regulate commodity prices, and oversee development programs in sovereign states.” [3] These early economic policies were rooted in financial imperialism, where European and U.S. actors interfered in the economies of borrowing nations, especially in the Global South, under the pretext of development or debt relief.
The IMF’s later structural adjustment programs echoed these earlier practices. Martin argues these policies are not solely a byproduct of the neoliberal revolution of the 1980s but have deeper colonial roots. The powers the IMF wielded in the 1980s were an extension of the earlier imperial economic governance structures that sought to maintain control over the economies of weaker states, cloaked in paternalistic or civilisational rhetoric.
By the time of the Third World Debt Crisis and later financial crises, the IMF’s demand for austerity and market reforms in exchange for loans revived many of these older practices. The IMF’s policies reinforced a global economic system that favoured powerful countries in the global north while entrenching inequality and dependency in the Global South. Martin’s analysis challenges the view that these policies were solely the product of a neoliberal shift in the 1970s, demonstrating that the roots of such interventionist global governance have always been rooted in colonialism.
Given the colonial roots of the IMF’s architecture, the protests in Argentina and Kenya this past summer in response to IMF-sourced policies are neither surprising nor isolated incidents. Rather, they are part of a larger, ongoing trend in which austerity policies consistently leave communities across the Global South in perpetual instability and socioeconomic precarity.
Austerity Trends Across the Global South
In addition to manufacturing cycles of poverty and socio-economic instability, these policies secure the financial interests of creditor nations, banks, and multinational corporations primarily located in the North. Esteban Almiron’s observation that “Today’s practice of trapping former colonies in unpayable debts is the result of well-engineered financial, diplomatic, political, and legal strategies” enforces the structural and intentional nature of austerity in utilising strategic debt entrapment to maintain the legacy of colonial exploitation.
The global scope of this new austerity wave, highlighted in the article “Welcome to the New Age of Austerity,” shows that the global South is disproportionately experiencing harsh fiscal measures imposed by external creditors. Nigeria, Pakistan, Kenya, Sri Lanka, and Argentina, to name a few, are devaluing their currencies and reducing public spending, creating widespread hardship for citizens.[4]
Debt repayment to foreign creditors often precedes local development, healthcare, or education investments. As most borrowing nations are former colonies whose political and economic systems were destabilised by centuries of colonial rule austerity policies perpetuate the same colonial dynamics, though now achieved through economic policies rather than military occupation.
In this age of austerity, fiscal cuts have become the norm, leaving governments with little to no choice but to comply with the IMF’s demands. Nations have been forced to take drastic steps—halving the value of their currency and cutting essential subsidies—leading to mass protests against policies where the debt eats first, and the people starve. As Binaifer Nowrojee, president of the Open Society Foundations, noted, “More than 3 billion people across the world live in countries that are spending more on servicing their debt than on public spending on education or health.” This pattern follows a global trend across the South, where global institutions force governments to prioritise creditor interests at the expense of their populations, self-determination, resource sovereignty, and environment.
Moreover, the broader implications of austerity are not just about balancing budgets but about reinforcing a global power structure that benefits the global north. Clara Mattei, author of The Capital Order, emphasises that austerity is more than an economic calculation—it is a tool for shifting resources away from working people and into the hands of the wealthy elite. Echoing this sentiment, Eduardo Belliboni, leader of Argentina’s leftist group Polo Obrero, remarked that “Austerity is for the workers, not for the millionaires,” emphasizing how these policies are designed to safeguard the interests of the wealthy, leaving millions to bear the consequences.
A 2023 report from Development Finance International revealed that the global South now faces “the worst debt crisis since global records began.” On average, over a third of government revenue (38%) in the South is used to service debt, and in Africa, that figure rises to over half (54%). This means African governments are allocating more resources to debt repayment than critical sectors like education, health, and social spending. Meanwhile, interest rates—hiked across the globe in efforts to tame inflation—have remained high and are expected to stay high for the foreseeable future. This projection further increases the cost of borrowing for the Global South while simultaneously inflating their debt repayment obligations, making economic recovery even more unattainable. The report also highlights a staggering comparison: two years ago, low-income countries spent five times more on external debt payments than on addressing climate change; today, that ratio has ballooned to 12 times.[5]
As Luiz Vieira, coordinator at the Bretton Woods Project, explains, “Most of the global North is already undergoing recovery to different degrees, with the US doing quite well and soaking up all the capital that had flown into the global South during the low-interest rate period.” This dynamic exacerbates an already stark trend: wealth and resources are extracted from the Global South into the financial markets of the north, intensifying the inequality between the two.
A study by Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins further reveals that most governments began scaling back public spending in 2021, a trend expected to persist until at least 2025. This has forced more than 85% of the global population into some form of austerity. For the Global South, already grappling with the ongoing impacts of colonialism, heavy debt burdens, and limited public investment, these policies further aggravate already severe socio-economic conditions, contributing to the ongoing cycle of economic dependency and continuous extraction.
Rather than addressing fiscal deficits through fair taxation of the wealthy, austerity programs shift the burden onto the poor, ensuring that international creditors and multinational corporations continue to profit at the expense of the working poor.
IMF policies De-Stabilise Argentina & Kenya…again
As the country’s biggest creditor, Argentina’s long and troubling history with the IMF shows the reality of debt traps. The country’s financial troubles date back to its first foreign loan in 1824, which was marred by corruption and tied to British interests. This initial loan set the stage for nearly two centuries of financial dependency and neo-colonial control. The nation’s external debt (deuda), largely denominated in foreign currencies such as the U.S. dollar, prevents Argentina from printing its own money to repay debts, forcing the country to borrow more or increase exports.[6]
A key example of Argentina’s experience with neo-colonial debt occurred in 2001 when the country defaulted on $95 billion in loans—the largest default in history. Driven by unsustainable debt repayments, the crisis was exacerbated by IMF austerity measures that required severe cuts to public services, wages, and employment protections. Social unrest evolved into the Argentinazo in December 2001, with deadly riots in Buenos Aires and other cities that saw 39 people dead after the government imposed the “Corralito” policy, restricting cash withdrawals. The IMF’s refusal to refinance Argentina’s debt accelerated the collapse. Over 25% of bank deposits were withdrawn, leading to a full-blown financial crisis. President Fernando de la Rúa declared a state of emergency, but protests intensified, eventually forcing his resignation. The IMF’s decision to withhold further financial support increased Argentina’s dependence on external creditors, sinking the nation into political instability and economic collapse.
The cycle repeated itself in 2018 when Argentina took out a $57 billion loan from the IMF, plunging the country into another period of austerity and borrowing. These loans consistently prioritised creditor repayment over public welfare, worsening social inequality and stifling economic growth. Neoliberal policies, pushed by figures such as Domingo Cavallo, devalued wages, fuelled inflation and saw millions fall into poverty. Further complicating matters, the wave of privatisations and deregulation under President Mauricio Macri, particularly the removal of currency controls, led to significant capital flight, destabilising Argentina’s financial system. These policies often intensified during periods of military dictatorships and conservative governments, have contributed to Argentina’s deindustrialisation, increased unemployment, and worsened wealth disparities.
In this context, the recent approval of the Large Investment Incentive Regime (RIGI) under President Javier Milei’s administration represents another chapter of Argentina’s ongoing subjection to external economic pressures While not directly imposed by the IMF, RIGI reflects the same neoliberal economic model that international institutions like the IMF have long promoted. By prioritising the interests of multinational corporations, RIGI follows the same framework of austerity and deregulation that has characterised Argentina’s economic policy under IMF agreements. RIGI permits foreign companies to retain 100% of earnings from exports abroad, effectively legalising the full expatriation of profits. This provision, rarely seen outside of countries like Angola and Nigeria, epitomises the exploitative nature of the current economic policies in Argentina.
Critics like Emmanuel Álvarez Agis have condemned the RIGI for granting multinational corporations more concessions than requested, signalling that the government prioritises foreign corporate interests. RIGI reduces taxes for corporations and allows them to challenge local laws through arbitration bodies such as the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), enabling them to sue governments for lost profits. This grants external corporations’ greater control over national resources. As Senator Oscar Parrilli aptly described, the RIGI embodies “anarcho-colonialism,” allowing extractive industries to drain wealth from the country without contributing to the Argentine economy.[7]
Kenya and SAPs
Similarly, Kenya faces a severe financial crisis shaped by decades of economic mismanagement and IMF structural policies. Kenya’s 2024 Finance Bill was meant to increase government revenue through higher taxes, satisfying an IMF loan condition. However, the bill sparked mass protests across cities, including Nairobi, Mombasa, and Kisumu, as Kenyans already grappling with inflation condemned the additional financial burden. Protesters breached the parliament, setting fire to parts of the building and clashing with police.
The finance bill echoes Kenya’s history of structural adjustment programs (SAPs) in the 1980s and 90s when the country was forced to adopt neoliberal policies prioritising export markets and drastically cutting social spending on public services. As Kenya’s debt grew in the post-independence period, institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank imposed SAPs as a condition for receiving further financial aid. These programs, rooted in neoliberal economic principles, required Kenya to adopt market-oriented reforms that drastically restructured the economy.
The SAPs forced the government to cut spending on essential services and implement cost-sharing policies, leading to reduced spending in healthcare and education, which resulted in higher dropout rates and reduced access to medical care, particularly for the poor and rural populations. The Kenyan government was also required to privatize state-owned enterprises, deregulate the economy, and open its markets to foreign competition.
The results of SAPs were catastrophic. Widespread unemployment occurred as public sector jobs were slashed, and essential services became inaccessible to many due to the removal of subsidies and increased user fees. Unemployment particularly affected youth and women, while many jobs created in the informal sector were precarious and low-paying. Poverty rates surged as income inequality widened, and by the late 1990s, over half of Kenya’s population was living below the poverty line—up from just 35% in the early 1980s. Food prices skyrocketed, and the GDP plummeted, leaving over half of Kenya’s population in poverty and cementing the nation as one of the most unequal societies globally. The gap between the rich and poor widened, with the poorest 20% of the population receiving only 3.5% of national income, while the wealthiest 10% controlled nearly half.[8]
SAPs also reoriented Kenya’s economy toward export-oriented growth, with the country relying heavily on agricultural exports such as tea, coffee, and flowers. This shift left Kenya vulnerable to fluctuations in global commodity prices, further destabilising its economy. Additionally, reducing tariffs and other trade barriers allowed imports to flood the domestic market, undermining local industries and leading to further job losses.[9]
Kenya’s current condition cannot be separated from its colonial history, where British rule entrenched systems of cronyism and patronage, establishing a political culture that relied heavily on favoritism, nepotism, and the granting of economic advantages to local elites loyal to the colonial administration. These systems, inherited and perpetuated by post-independence governments, were only exacerbated by IMF neoliberal reforms. Today, as the debt burden grows and new austerity measures are introduced, the legacy of colonialism and structural adjustment continues to shape Kenya’s socio-economic landscape.
Austerity as Structural Violence
In their book The Violence of Austerity, Vicky Cooper and David Whyte highlight how austerity policies inflict what they describe as “slow violence,” a form of harm that unfolds gradually and is embedded within bureaucratic systems. This type of violence exacerbates poverty, homelessness, and social instability while remaining largely invisible because it is mediated through governmental and institutional processes rather than overt physical force. Cooper and Whyte argue that austerity’s effects are normalised and justified as economic reform, rendering the resulting harm an unfortunate but inevitable and necessary byproduct of fiscal discipline. This normalisation obscures the damage inflicted on vulnerable people as austerity strips away resources essential to well-being and survival.
While Cooper and Whyte’s analysis focuses primarily on the U.K. and U.S., austerity in the Global South carries an additional dimension of neo-colonial violence. The harm inflicted by these policies is a direct extension of colonial history, perpetuating the exploitation and control that characterised colonial rule. To fully grasp austerity’s impact in the Global South, it must be understood as a form of multi-layered violence—combining the slow, bureaucratic harm with the innate legacy of colonial and by extension, capitalist exploitation. This broader perspective reveals how these policies sustain global inequalities justified through narratives of economic reform.
IMF interventions, rooted in colonial power structures, continue to shape the socio-economic and political landscape of the Global South. Beyond macroeconomic shifts, austerity creates structural violence by embedding injustice and inequality within systems, policies, and institutions that reinforce oppression and restrict access to essential resources, resulting in preventable deaths, illness, and suffering. Structural violence operates through economic and political frameworks that marginalise vulnerable populations, constraining their capabilities, agency, and dignity. This violence is not experienced in isolation but rather targets entire classes of people, entrenching social suffering as their lived realities are shaped by these oppressive systems. Further, structural violence focuses specific attention on the social and often global machinery of exploitation and oppression and how “epic poverty and inequality, with their deep histories, become embodied and experienced as violence.”[10] By normalising inequality through stable institutions, structural violence perpetuates cycles of deprivation and exploitation, echoing colonial-era control.
In countries like Argentina and Kenya, IMF-imposed austerity visibly dismantles public services and deepens precarity, illustrating how structural violence operates. IMF loans are disbursed in instalments, contingent on austerity measures like cutting public sector jobs and wages, deregulating national industries, and reducing social spending on healthcare, education, and welfare. These measures are framed as essential for economic recovery, aiming to secure growth and protect IMF resources. Yet, the human cost is staggering.
When governments dismantle social safety nets and public infrastructure to satisfy IMF loan conditions, the poorest communities bear the brunt. Deprived of healthcare, education, pensions, stable employment, and essential services that sustain livelihoods, these communities are plunged into deeper precarity. In Argentina, three million new poor have been created in less than a year, and much of the population can no longer afford necessities like food due to price increases of over 50%. As a result, many are forced to depend on soup kitchens, which are fighting to stay open and keep up with soaring demands and long queues amid a growing hunger crisis. At the same time, 21 of 43 national care policies—primarily benefiting women, children, and the elderly—have been abolished. The dismantling of critical social systems and the creation of large swaths of poverty is nothing less than an act of violence. Despite the devastating social costs, IMF statements claim that “authorities have made significant efforts to scale up social support for vulnerable young mothers and children and protect the purchasing power of pensions,” largely ignoring the reality of these policies.[11]
Similarly, this past summer the Ruto administration in Kenya, under IMF directives sought to eliminate subsidies for essentials like maize, flour, and fuel alongside enacting a 25% excise duty on vegetable oil, which could have raised the price of soap by 80%. In Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum, residents confront mounting living costs daily, made worse by regressive taxation that disproportionately impacts the poor. A Human Rights Watch article details the story of Alfredo Akeyo, an electronics repairman in Mathare, another Nairobi slum, whose income has been halved from 12,000 Kenyan shillings (around US$80) to less than half that amount—due to rising fuel and electricity costs, combined with increased fuel taxes under Kenya’s IMF program. This forces him and his family to survive on just one meal a day.
Despite the IMF’s claim in a press release that “the burden of the adjustment should not fall disproportionately on working families” the reality is that it overwhelmingly does. Human Rights Watch found that over half of the IMF programs approved globally since the COVID-19 pandemic, including Kenya’s, focus on increasing revenues through regressive taxes like value-added taxes (VAT), which disproportionately burden the poor. Additionally, many of these programs remove subsidies for essential goods like fuel and electricity, causing sharp price increases that further strain low-income households. In Kenya, this has resulted in people like Alfredo going without electricity for days at a time because they cannot afford it, and his children staying home from school due to the doubled public transportation costs. The removal of subsidies, coupled with insufficient social spending to counterbalance these effects, again highlights the structural violence of austerity imposed on those least able to withstand economic shocks.
The compounded effects of austerity policies across time inevitably drive people to the streets in protest, where they face state-sanctioned violence—tear gas, bullets, and the militarisation of public spaces. The transition from “slow” to “fast” violence utilised by the state shows how the same policies that quietly exacerbate inequality provoke immediate, forceful crackdowns. The state’s use of force becomes an extension of the structural violence already at play, reinforcing the systemic control imposed by austerity. While austerity invisibly erodes communities’ well-being, the violent suppression of protests maintains this underlying system of exploitation, punishing resistance and deterring dissent. In this way, structural and state-sanctioned violence are interconnected mechanisms of control, demonstrating how austerity harms not only through socio-economic deprivation but also through the enforcement of compliance, pushing marginalised communities further to the margins of survival.
Toward a Future of Self-Determination
Austerity’s grip on the Global South is not just a policy issue but a symptom of systemic violence with its origins in colonialism. This article has examined how debt and austerity erode social safety nets, intensify poverty, and drive social unrest. It acknowledges that the path to ending austerity can seem daunting, with the institutions enforcing these conditions appearing both unyielding and constantly adapting. Still, global ‘end austerity’ campaigns are challenging the status quo and pushing for financial systems that prioritise equity and sustainability, as the question is not only how to dismantle debt and austerity cycles but how to build a more just future in their place.
Most recently, Progressive International released a ‘Program on the Construction of a New International Economic Order’, which seeks to end austerity and promote a system based on equity and sovereignty. It calls for restructuring the international monetary and financial systems to prioritise monetary sovereignty, financial insubordination, and disarmed interdependence—shifting power away from the global north and enabling Southern economies to thrive on their terms. By advocating for debt redefinition, fiscal justice, and abundant social programs, the plan offers a pathway to loosening the grip of structural adjustments while fostering global economic cooperation rooted in justice. This vision calls for nothing less than a comprehensive reordering of the global economic system—one that values human welfare over financial interests and ensures the self-determination of Southern nations.
As the program emphasises, the enduring dominance of northern-controlled financial systems continues to sink Southern economies into debt and inequity. The program calls for concrete measures, such as developing multilateral, Southern-based payment systems and alternative currencies to reduce dependency on Northern-dominated financial infrastructure. Additionally, independent Southern-led credit rating agencies would challenge the stranglehold of existing Northern-based agencies, ensuring that Southern nations have greater control over their creditworthiness assessments and financing terms. Moreover, reforms like commodity buffer stocks, procurement clubs, and value chain coordination across the South could bolster regional economies, stabilise markets, and foster South-South cooperation, creating resilience against the volatility and exploitation inherent in the current system.
Confronting austerity demands a fundamental shift in how global economic systems operate. The cycles of debt and austerity are not inevitable; they are the products of deliberate policies that prioritise foreign interests over local communities. To break from these cycles, Southern nations must reclaim their economic sovereignty and build resilient systems that serve their people, and turning this vision into reality will require unwavering global solidarity, grassroots movements, and a reimagining of what political and economic justice look like. At its core, the struggle against austerity is a struggle for dignity and freedom—one that calls for dismantling colonial legacies and building a new order where prosperity is shared.
[1] Reinsberg, Bernhard, Thomas Stubbs, and Louis Bujnoch. 2022. “Structural Adjustment, Alienation, and Mass Protest.” Social Science Research 109 (August): 102777. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2022.102777.
[2] Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. 2023. “Life or Debt: The Stranglehold of Neocolonialism and Africa’s Search for Alternatives.” Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. April 11, 2023. https://thetricontinental.org/dossier-63-african-debt-crisis/.
[3] James M. Boughton, The IMF and the Silent Revolution Global Finance and Development in the 1980s (International Monetary Fund, 11 September 2000), https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/silent/index.htm#3
[4] Justin Villamil. 2024. “Welcome to the New Age of Austerity.” Inkstick. March 13, 2024. https://inkstickmedia.com/welcome-to-the-new-age-of-austerity/.
[5] Strub, Friederike. 2023. “Data Show Global South Is in Worst Debt Crisis Ever, with Another Lost Decade Looming.” Bretton Woods Project. December 13, 2023. https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2023/12/new-data-show-global-south-is-in-worst-debt-crisis-ever-with-another-lost-decade-looming/.
[6] Almiron, Esteban. 2022. “How Argentina Has Been Trapped in Neocolonial Debt for 200 Years: An Economic History.” Geopolitical Economy Report. December 18, 2022. https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/12/18/argentina-neocolonial-debt-history/.
[7] Cholakian, Daniel . 2024. “The New Colonialism of Milei’s Investment Plan.” North American Congress on Latin America. June 27, 2024. https://nacla.org/new-colonialism-rigi-argentina-milei.
[8] Rono, Joseph Kipkemboi. 2002. “The Impact of Structural Adjustment Programmes on Kenyan Society.” Journal of Social Development in Africa 17 (1): 81–98. https://n2t.net/ark:/85335/m56t0kz71.
[9] Ford, Nicholas. 2024. “The IMF’s Policies Are Destroying Kenya, Again.” Jacobin.com. 2024. https://jacobin.com/2024/03/imf-kenya-austerity-debt-william-ruto.
[10] Rylko-Bauer, Barbara, and Paul Farmer. 2011. “Structural Violence, Poverty, and Social Suffering.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Social Science of Poverty, edited by Linda M. Burton and David Brady. New York, Ny: Oxford University Press.
[11] Nadale, Martín Fernández . 2023. “Supermarkets and Shops See Price Hikes of up to 50% | Buenos Aires Times.” Www.batimes.com.ar. December 12, 2023. https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/economy/supermarkets-and-shops-record-increases-of-up-to-50-percent.phtml.
Rea Maci is a policy researcher focused on political and social justice in the Global South. She holds a Master of Public Policy from the University of Michigan and studies reparations, while exploring how global institutions and colonial legacies perpetuate structural violence and dependency in the South.
Featured Photograph: Kenya protest against IMF in 2024 (Wiki Commons)
