The advent of the mid-1970s saw much destabilisation to the commendable development trajectory sustained since independence. This rapidly reversed the gains that had been recorded in areas of health, longevity, and infrastructural development. Several events, such as the oil price shock caused by the Yom-Kippur War of 1973 as well as the Iranian Revolution of 1979, which disrupted oil supplies from the region, have been identified as some of the key contributory factors. In addition, the current chapter explores the impact of the structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) that followed in the 1980s. Utilising secondary sources obtained in both grey and academic literature, the chapter found that SAPs resulted in the plunge of African economies below the level of the global economy during the 1980s. The programmes incurred significant human costs for the African economies. They resulted in the selling of public assets, the privatisation of basic services such as health services and education, and the retrenchment of government workers, thus impacting overall agricultural activities. The chapter concludes that SAP was one event that, after independence, shattered the potential of the emergence of prospects for autonomous development and industrialisation that had begun in the 1960s.