Meanwhile, the Western left, locked in its domestic struggle with U.S. president Ronald Reagan and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, conflated the limited reforms being urged on the governments of the bottom billion with the neoliberal savaging of the state they were fighting at home. As a result, reforms that should have been popular with all except corrupt elites became toxic in the media both within and outside Africa. The essential struggle between villains and heroes within the bottom billion became twisted into one between Africa and the IMF.
