Thus despite the recent euphoria about Africa’s economic growth by the World Bank and others, the reality is that Africa today is going through a period of de-industrialisation. It is becoming more dependent on raw materials exports. Even the countries that had achieved a significant degree of industrialisation such as South Africa and Zimbabwe are de-industrialising as well. The Zimbabwe economy has halved since 2000, while South Africa’s manufacturing sector has declined from 25% of GDP in 1990 to 16% today. China’s manufacturing sector on the other hand is 50% of GDP while India’s is 35%.
The surge in commodity prices over the last few years has created an illusion that African economies are growing and restructuring. To illustrate the depth of Africa’s under-development let me give the example of Nigeria, Africa’s largest crude oil producer. Nigeria has no petro-chemical industries and therefore imports most of its refined petroleum products such as petrol and diesel. Nigeria’s manufacturing industry is virtually non existent accounting for only 3% of GDP according to the African Economic Outlook for 2006/2007 published by the African Development Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development.
Industrial and Green Revolutions transformed the ability of labour to produce a surplus through the application of knowledge especially of science and technology. Labour became capable of producing value many times that it required for its survival and reproduction.
There are many pre-requisites for Industrial and Green Revolutions to occur. Principal amongst these are the liberation of private property from political domination. The second pre-requisite of the Industrial Revolution is the liberation of the great majority from individual access to certain means of production especially land. These pre-conditions have not occurred in Sub-Saharan Africa.
The stunted and fossilised subsistence economic systems established by the colonialists and perpetuated since their departure by successive groups of political elites are unable to absorb new technologies and new management methods. Over time these stunted subsistence systems begin to literally eat up their own foundation leading to all the ills that Sub-Saharan Africa has became notorious for – declining life expectancy; falling school enrolment; capital flight; brain drain; deforestation; desertification; unpredictable conflicts; massive and growing inequalities and endemic and growing poverty; manipulation by outside forces; growing dependence of the African states on foreign patronage; dependence on foreign initiated solutions.
Secondly Sub-Saharan Africa does not have an established and stable social class structure and stable ruling classes that are legitimate in the eyes of most of the citizens.
Africa thus lacks a leadership with the continuity necessary to sustain and implement developmental economic programmes. This seems destined to carry on for a long time to come because of the mass emigration of African professionals. The World Bank estimates that 20 000 African graduates leave the continent annually.
In the four to five decades of its independence African countries have gone through a wrenching period as a result in which a number of negative factors became dominant:
- African countries lost the key indigenous institutions that had been created by the Africans themselves to fight against colonialism. These were the nationalist parties, the independent trade unions, civil society organisations and independent institutions of learning. These institutions were crushed by the military dictators who took control of African governments in the 1960s in collaboration with Western powers. Even in countries where the military did not take over nationalist parties degenerated into one man rule.
- African economies failed to breakaway from the economic model created by colonialism. Consequently African producers did not regain their autonomy but continued as had happened under colonialism to be dominated by the political elite that controlled the state. The new political class thus used its dominance over the producers to siphon savings from the producers to the private consumption of the political elite and of the state especially its repressive instruments. According to one source African countries jointly have over 2 million security forces that cost the continent an estimated $14-billion annually.
- The combination of military dictatorships, civilian dictatorships and the subordination of producers to the political elites lead to the underdevelopment of a middle class of Africa as well as to a massive brain drain from Africa.
If the driving force behind Sub-Saharan Africa’s underdevelopment is the structural powerlessness of producers and therefore their inability to retain and control their savings, it should be self-evident that until this equation is reversed there will be no development in the sub-region. But how is this to be reversed and by whom?
For Sub-Saharan Africa to develop, it therefore needs a new type of democracy, a democracy that will empower not just the political elite but that will empower Sub-Saharan Africa’s private sector producers as well, the great majority of whom are the peasants. The new democracy should be such as to restore the growth of an independent middle class as well as the development of autonomous civil society institutions.
In the first instance, it is necessary that peasants who constitute the core of the private sector in Sub-Saharan Africa must become the real owners of their primary asset, land. This is the only way that there can be land improvements in Sub-Saharan Africa instead of what is happening at present, that is, rampant deforestation and accelerating desertification. This means freehold must be introduced and the so-called communal land tenure system that in reality is state land ownership, must be abolished.
Secondly, peasant producers must gain direct access to world markets without the political elite, through state corporations, acting as the go-between. This means that internationally traded cash crops – coffee, tea, cotton, sugar, cocoa, rubber, etc. – must be auctioned by the producers themselves rather than being sold first to state controlled marketing boards.
Another important innovation that is needed are new financial institutions that are independent of the political elite that will address the financial needs of not just peasants but also other small to medium scale producers. These could be co-operatives, credit unions, savings banks etc. Besides providing financial services these institutions would undertake all the other technical services that are not being provided at present by the political elite such as crop research, extension services, livestock improvement, storage, transportation, distribution and many other services that would contribute to make agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa more productive.
This is where foreign donors could play a constructive role. Donors could support these independent institutions by providing the expertise to manage them and to some extent help shield them from predators.
These changes would for the first time bring into being in Africa a capitalist market economy that answers to the needs of African producers and consumers. Up to now capitalism in Africa promoted the interests of colonialists, and since independence, it promoted the interests of parasitic political elites which saw its survival as been threatened by the emergence of an independent middle and professional class.
If NEPAD is to contribute to Africa’s economic development it should help to re-design Africa’s political economy so that it promotes the interests of producers instead of those of the rent-seeking political elites.
An important lesson Sub-Saharan Africa could draw from are the agricultural reforms that took place in China during the past 25 years or so. It was in the first instance changes in the agricultural sector that made it possible for China to embark on its current break-neck industrialisation process. This was followed by the recognition by the Chinese Communists that the state alone could not industrialise China. The Chinese government therefore opened the space for the emergence of an independent private sector driven by the middle and professional class.
DEYOS-ZAMBIA - recognizes these challenges mentioned however do not agree entirely with the content.
DEYOS-ZAMBIA
Policy Analysis Directorate
No comments:
Post a Comment