Senegal received its first structural adjustment loan from the World Bank in 1979, the first such loan extended to Africa. The economy appeared overheated, with a burgeoning balance of payments crisis and a fiscal deficit exceeding 12.5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Agricultural production was stagnant and had been weakened by recurrent drought. The country's small industrial sector seemed incapable of competing with imports, barely surviving thanks to protection and subsidies. Overall, Senegal's GDP had grown by 2.1 percent annually between i960 and 1980, even though its population was growing 2.8 percent a year over the same period. A year later, the government signed a three-year enhanced structured adjustment facility (ESAF) loan with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At the time, the IMF Survey blamed the crisis largely on drought and announced confidently that the loan would quickly restore macroeconomic balance.

Since then, the country has been undergoing “adjustment.” The country's international debt burden in 1980 totaled $1.47 billion, representing a dangerous but still manageable 49 percent of GDP, but the government did not hesitate to borrow from the international financial institutions (IFIs) and France to face the crisis. In the 1980s, it received fifteen different stabilization and adjustment loans from the Bank and Fund, several of which were canceled for noncompliance with conditions. In addition, it would receive some $350 million a year in bilateral assistance, and 2 billion French francs' worth of debt forgiveness by the French government in 1989.