Sorting Africa's Developmental Puzzle: The Participatory Social Learning Theory as an Alternative Approach 0761849076, 9780761849070

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Sorting Africa’s Development Puzzle The Participatory Social Learning Theory as an Alternative Approach

Almaz Zewde

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF AMERICA, ® INC.

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Copyright © 2010 by University Press of America,® Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard Suite 200 Lanham, Maryland 20706 UPA Acquisitions Department (301) 459-3366 Estover Road Plymouth PL6 7PY United Kingdom All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America British Library Cataloging in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Control Number: 2009935303 ISBN: 978-0-7618-4907-0 (paperback : alk. paper) eISBN: 978-0-7618-4908-7

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Contents

Preface

v

Acknowledgments

ix

Acronyms

xi

Introduction

1

Selected Development Theories: Some Post-World War II Theoretical Contests

23

The Alternative Development Theory: The Participatory Social Learning Development Theory and Model for Africa

47

The Institutional Imperative: Its Condition in Africa and Implications for Development

68

4

The Human Resource Imperative

99

5

The Resource Imperative: Natural and Man-enhanced Resources for Development

127

6

The Technology Imperative

131

7

The Investment Capital Imperative

145

8

Putting Together the Development Puzzle: The Participatory Social Learning Paradigm and the Five Development Imperatives in Practice: Case Studies

157

1 2 3

iii

iv

9 10

Contents

African Women: The Continent’s Undervalued and Overworked Development Assets

187

Looking Ahead: Some After Thoughts

212

References

233

Index

249

Preface

The subject of African development has been a life long interest of the current researcher. I witnessed in the late 1960s and early 1970s Africa itself, the beginnings of controversy as to what the nature and aim of development should be. Huge rural development projects like the Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit in Ethiopia were failing in their development effects despite hundreds of millions of dollars being pumped into it. As a young academic, using the occasion of many rural visits to “supervise” the activities of junior college students deployed on National Service, and interacting with diverse groups of village and town people, I learned the different orientations they bring to development prospects. The general sentiment of ordinary people was that it was the responsibility of government to bring about development and improve the lives of people. This attitude may have emerged from the projection of government power as the do-it all and know—it all entity in people’s lives. In some rare cases, people would say that development manifested in the growth of towns and building large structures did not comport with their cultural and religious sentiments. This diverse popular attitude seems to have created the social and attitudinal environment that favored top-down, elite control of development processes and assets that became the centerpiece of African development framework that endures to this day. But then, there were those classes of people that did not have firm development ideas but were duly uncomfortable of the role of elite-led and externally determined development strategies. There was a visible lack of a critical mass of informed public to seriously search for viable alternatives to the topdown strategy that was promising much and delivering little. Even within the Economic Commission for Africa, ideas of development generally tended to v

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Preface

comply with top-down strategies, modified only in the late 1980s with the crafting of African documents like the Lagos Plan of Action-itself generally top-down biased. Of course development is nothing other than the transformation of people’s own outlooks, capabilities, skills and knowledge, drive and initiative, and institution building to find new solutions to age old economic, health, social, and governance problems. Rightly, the government could only play as referee of intergroup and interpersonal interactions as the process of development and transformation progressed. Through the installation of increasingly competent institutional mechanisms including education, the government must provide the visions that society needs to chart its individual and collective development efforts. Control of corruption, conflict of interest, and partial administration of justice that hamper the development of organic economic and social networks that reduce transaction cost in development would also be the task of government. This would allow the full range of vertical and horizontal integration and evolution of an all- embracing economic, technical, and social institutions. The course of the people’s economic, social, and technological development would follow its own dialectic path of forward movement and accelerated development. Thus, development is all about setting in motion internal human, social, institutional, and cultural processes. But in the history of African development, these processes were neither seen as the essence of African development nor were the African people consulted or were free to participate, and through learning and experience, help shape policies and strategies that conditioned development processes, and made them significant stakeholders and innovators in the development enterprise. The recent argument that development has never started in Africa is based on this reality of exclusion of the people from policy and practice of development. This work is one added voice in this argument. For some who still say that Africa poses the most formidable development challenge, the answer is to be found in the context in which development is expected to happen. It seems the diverse recent rhetoric on democracy, human rights, and governance as key engines of development in Africa are the final recognition of some of the deeper sources of Africa’s underdevelopment that internal and external powers have helped put in place. For those who ask “Why has Africa grown so slowly?” and then give the reply “The short answer is: we don’t really know” (Moss, 2007, p. 90) some important, if modest, answers will be offered by this study. Beyond all this, the study was entered with the idea of presenting concrete alternatives as to how and using what methods Africa’s development could be made to restart. At the very least, it is hoped that this research will contribute to refocusing the conversation on African development towards very concrete questions of “why” and

Preface

vii

“how” of African underdevelopment. Very briefly put, the “why” of African underdevelopment can be answered: Because the African people did not have the chance and the freedom to do real development. And the “how” question can be answered by the participatory social learning model presented in this study- that is enabling and guiding people to develop themselves.

Acknowledgments

Too many are owed grateful acknowledgement for their support and encouragement of the development of my ideas over the years than can be mentioned here. Only a few will, therefore, be mentioned for the sake of brevity. The late professor Glenn Johnson of Michigan State University, Department of Agricultural Economics, and a well known scholar of development, deserves a special mention for his support and critique of many of my development ideas in the early phases of their formation. He was a renowned economist who transcended disciplinary boundaries and encouraged, indeed participated in, the development of pragmatic, multidisciplinary and even interdisciplinary approaches to economic development. I am eternally grateful for his legacy. Professor David Wiley, also at Michigan State has been my mentor, colleague and academic advisor, and above all, a friend over many years. His devotion to the study of Africa, promotion of development, democracy, and human rights in Africa have remained sources of encouragement to those of us who have worked with him over many years. His personal support has been invaluable in many ways. Dr. Aklilu Habte, former president of Addis Ababa University and a veteran development personality who served as department director at the World Bank for nearly a decade and half, provided valuable research materials, particularly on African education development, that will continue to be useful beyond this research effort. I cannot express adequately appreciation and gratitude for all his help and encouragement. Heartfelt gratitude and acknowledgement also go to my graduate students in the seminar class-Rural Development in Africa- and the Department of African Studies at Howard University, especially the Chair, Dr. Mbye Cham who always inspires me to do a lot with little and to ignore constraints in the pursuit of academic excellence. Over the years, my graduate students in the development seminar have been an inspiration. Even though the theory and ix

x

Acknowledgments

framework were still work in progress we used them to analyze development approaches. Often, students seized on the participatory social learning ideas in development to either diagnose the assets and deficits for development in specific African settings or to analyze the development outcomes of projects they identify for assignments. They never failed to astonish me with their creative application of the ideas. I thank them for all the pleasure of thinking and analyzing problems with them.

Acronyms

ACTS ADF ATRCW AU BBC BTC CD CEDAW DFDI ECA ECOSOC FDI GBM GDP GNP ILO IMF INSTRAW ISI LRA MCC MDGs MIT MNC

African Center for Technology Studies African Development Foundation African Training and Research Center for Women African Union British Broadcasting Corporation Bonsa Tire Company Community Development Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women Department of International Development (British) Economic Commission for Africa (United Nations) Economic and Social Council (United Nations) Foreign Direct Investment Green Belt Movement Gross Domestic Product Gross National Product International Labor Organization International Monetary Fund International Research and Training Center for the Advancement of Women Import Substitution Industrialization Lord’s Resistance Army Millennium Challenge Corporation Millennium Development Goals (United Nations) Massachusetts Institute of Technology Multi-National Corporations xi

xii

NGO NEPAD NKG NRM NWLG OAU RWMP TWAS TWNSO UN UNCTAD UNDP UNESCO UNICEF UNIFEM USAID WTO

Acronyms

Non-Governmental Organizations New Partnership for African Development Njinguni, Bitero, and Kabati (Kenyan rural water project) National Resistance Movement National Women’s Lobby Group (Zambia) Organization of African Union Regional Water Master Plan Third World Academy of Science Third World network of Scientific Organizations United Nations United Nations Conference on Trade and Development United Nations Development Program United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization United Nations Children’s Fund United Nations Development Fund for Women United States Agency for International Development World Trade Organization

Introduction

For a number of decades, the top-down, expert and capital driven “modernist” development model, vigorously promoted and implemented by the World Bank and other international development institutions, has been put on the defensive by different versions of people-centered, participatory arguments. Persistent challenges to the modernist model also came from many other quarters, including prominent journalists like Hancock (1989). The World Bank itself has tacitly acknowledged the failure of its development paradigm. Its rhetoric has changed significantly and since the 1990’s its literature and annual reports emphasize people’s participation, knowledge building, and institutional efficiency, transparency, and democracy as key development drivers (World Bank, 1996, 2000, 200/2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2004a, 2004b, 2004c). In practice, however, the old modernist paradigm, with some revamped African governments’ role in development implementation, appear to continue. Development is still a top-down elite-driven enterprise. Some demonstrable exceptions like the National Fadama Development in Nigeria1 may appear here and there. Even here, the final development strategies demonstrate the inherent World Bank urge to resort to its established top-down, command paradigm. A paradigm or development framework that serves as a powerful and convincing alternative to that of the Bank and Africa’s political elite is urgently needed to prevent such habitual reversal of the participatory rhetoric into topdown conventional practice. By such exercise, we can show why underdevelopment persists in Africa. Underdevelopment is not the fault of the African people but that of their development policy-makers and practitioners. With exceptions like Botswana, Ghana, Senegal, and a few others, Africa’s development failures are so pervasive, as witnessed from the ravaging poverty, famine, disease vulnerabilities, and socio-political turmoil, that we no longer 1

2

Introduction

need to interrogate the development condition of African countries individually. By the World Bank’s own account, “Unlike other developing regions, Africa’s average output per capita in constant prices was lower at the end of the 1990s than 30 years ago” (World Bank, 2000, p. 8), The same source explains that one of the major problems facing the African people is reasonable access to their own natural resources on equitable basis—a consequence, no doubt, of corruption. Those of us in the current African Diaspora know intimately the severity of the continent’s underdevelopment as its victims are our kin and kith. The World Bank estimates that 600 million Africans live well below the poverty level of $1/per day set for the Third World (2000, p. 10). So, we have to rush to advocate that the international community must now insist that African regimes do something they have never done so far—put the people in full charge of their own development. Africa’s continued and deepening poverty and underdevelopment in the face of massive external resource in-flows, its rich resource endowment, and energetic, resourceful population has emboldened many to speak and write loudly and boldly of Africa’s inherent inability to develop as others have. The point that development, as it was modeled and practiced everywhere (a practice that makes the people the reason, means and ends of development) has never been the official development strategy in Africa, and that the people have not had opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities for development had to be explicitly made and theoretically and methodologically argued. It is with this need in mind that this researcher and other African scholars are engaged in efforts to contribute to the formulation of alternative development theory and methodology that could stand the test of applicability and serve Africa better. The time to join those working on holistic development approaches and frameworks that provide clear alternatives to the persistent conventional model became urgent to show the self-fulfilling underdevelopment prophesy that inheres in the practices of reduced, top-down national and international development models. In this research, the Participatory Social Learning Model will be theoretically and empirically developed to offer a complete theoretical and programmatic framework hopefully, to replace the default top-down, “modernist” development model. The conventional top-down framework is so firmly established even in the minds of leading African political and social thinkers and practitioners that it threatens to continue for long years to come, even if the World Bank resists promoting it. If this were to happen, prospects of rapid poverty alleviation, creation of indigenous development momentum, democratization, and human and social capital building would continue to be hampered. This worry is based on my personal conversations with some very influential African

Introduction

3

leaders. Some years back, I had a series of discussions with two leaders of opposition parties of an African country. One of the bases of their opposition to the regime in power, insistent on staying in power for as long the leaders shall live, was that its development policies were pernicious to their country’s hopes for advancement and may even threaten the survival of their country. When I asked if they could give me their visions and ideas for implementing successful development in one economic sector, the quick response by one was “establish large scale commercial farms to overcome the food security problem.” His colleague heartily agreed. I, on the other hand, as a development sociologist and agricultural economist, was deeply worried by their strategy to defeat the perennial famine and food shortage in the country they were talking about. Food security, we all know, is not just a supply side problem. It is not just the availability of food that is the major problem, but accessibility to existing food supply by large segments of Africa’s population including the food producers who incur deficit during parts of the year. They suffer because they could not afford to buy food during months of shortage. Non-producers are in perennial hunger because they are poor and could not afford to buy food available on the market. It is well known that there are typically food surplus regions in the same country where large numbers suffer from malnutrition, starvation, and famine. Removing food insecurity and alleviation of poverty, which are Africa’s development mantra for the new millennium, cannot be met through a top-down mass production strategy that excludes the mass of rural population from active development participation. Empowering and enabling ordinary people to be agents of their own development should in no way be construed to mean negating longer-term intersectoral transformation of Africa’s economy, or hamper the scaling up of its production. This issue will not be discussed here. Suffice it to say that micro productivity growth, availability of better opportunities this will spawn, and accompanying growth in human capital and institutional efficiencies will inevitably usher in dialectical changes in people’s creativity, risk taking initiatives and general responses which will include gradual scaling up of production and consolidation of holdings. The way mass agricultural production is structured today, Africa cannot afford energy and technology—dependent, large scale food production to feed its people. Without huge subsidies, food produced in this manner would be too expensive for the average African to afford. Africa has a huge army of small producers whose production efficiency has been attested to by the Nobel Prize economist T.W. Schultz as far back as 1964. And these small-scale farmers (most of whom are famously women) can produce all the food Africa needs and more with modest amounts of help with hands-on practical education, access to land, and access to capital to

4

Introduction

improve their farm technology and farming methods. This strategy coupled with improved market access to supply Africa’s towns and cities is what Africa would need for its short and medium term development. After all Africa is very largely an agrarian society. Clearly, the one thing that has never been tried to overcome poverty in Africa’s is making the African peasants and rural population empowered and enabled development participants. This must now become a big piece of Africa’s development thinking. But from the anecdote mentioned above, this thinking does not seem to have found its way to African officialdom. In 2007, a similar discussion with high level officials of another African country led to a discussion of Africa’s woeful development failures. Their response was that if only African regimes in power could get their policies right and democratize the political arena, Diaspora Africans could return with their capital and expertise and eradicate unemployment and poverty in a decade. They directed us listeners to imagine what would happen if every Diaspora African returned, established production, distribution, and services enterprises and employed 10–100 people each. Poverty and unemployment would be history. Again, I was deeply concerned at this hugely reductionist notion of development. That is, the notion that development is a matter of injecting capital and creating production enterprises. There seems to be little awareness that this has been what Africa was advised to do and borrowed billions to implement it with dismal development outcomes. The notion of some development “agents” acting to pull Africans out of poverty seems to ignore the lessons of the past forty years of development experience and merely advocates repeating more of the same failed strategies. While a slight improvement over the neo-liberal orthodoxy of the World Bank and other international development institutions that have practiced various nuances of the top-down, technology and capital driven strategies in that it gives central recognition to the role of “democratization”, the views of these officials nevertheless ignores the many complex processes and prerequisites of development. In recent years, there has been an unapologetic mea culpa regarding this top down approach by those powerful external development forces, particularly the World Bank group as presented earlier. The modification of the development rhetoric to include good governance notwithstanding, the legacy of their top-down approach that reduces Africa’s development to a few quantifiable variables like investment, rates of industrialization or GDP growth, still form the core development measures in practice. The African authorities referred to above were reflecting their internalization of this governing development convention. Africans need to use their decades of failed development experiences to come up with easy-to-grasp theoretical and methodological formulations that can be popularized among scholars and

Introduction

5

students of development who in turn may influence, practitioners, and policymakers of African development. As an African woman with long years of practice in development teaching, research and practice on the continent and outside the continent, my conversation with these African gentlemen reminded me of Mamdani’s (1992) concern that “there is no alternative paradigm with a constituency that is sufficiently widely organized to provide the guiding line for the coming period. . .” (49) and Mkandawire and Soludo’s (1999, p. xii) call that “. . . Africans should . . . assume the leading role in defining the continent’s development agenda.” A well reasoned theoretical framework with general methodological pointers need to be developed by experienced Africans, if Africa is to go past repeating more of the same old practices and expecting different results. Encouragingly, bold ideas that Africa’s underdevelopment is directly tied to institutional and governance barriers that span the national and international levels, has been advanced by Leonard and Straus (2003). This perspective, while bold and new, still leaves out a number of essential dimensions or elements of development that must obtain if real development that incorporates the majority of the people is to start to occur. This work is an effort to bring together, refine and reformulate diverse but complementary development theories and perspectives that had emerged over the last thirty years or more to counter the reduced, neo-liberal model of development. The intent is to offer a practicable alternative to the present top-down model and to bring African empirical experiences to demonstrate its validity. This is hoped to make a contribution towards a unified theory of development that incorporates the institutional, human capital, technology, natural and manmade resource, and investment capital (credit) dimensions of development. Most important in the new framework is the addition of the elements of individual and social learning processes and the emphasis that will be placed on their impact on cultural and institutional transformation that can sustain indigenous development. It is hoped that this work will help to invigorate development thinking and theorizing by Africans and others that will take into account Africa’s diverse contexts. The important thing is to factor in a range of development imperatives in development theory and practice that flexibly address the complexity and multi-dimensionality of development in unique African contexts.

NEOLIBERAL DEVELOPMENT ORTHODOXY AND AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT The concept of development and the process by which it comes about has been the subject of lively and sustained theoretical, philosophical, empirical,

6

Introduction

and methodological debate since the end of World War II. This debate has been punctuated by spurts of international development programs reflective of different theoretical versions or persuasions, but always dominated by neo-classical “modernist” frameworks. At the dawn of African political independence during the 1960s, the optimism and euphoria was such that development was made to appear simple, straightforward, and achievable through rapid industrialization. Industrialization through massive capital and technology transfer from the developed world to poor African countries, it was simplistically assumed, will lead to economic growth which could then be followed by trickle-down benefits to the wider populous. This mechanistic development formulation justified the neglect of needed attention to the complex and myriad interconnections of development. The central importance of the personal, social, political, cultural, institutional, human capital, technological, and resource prerequisites of development were practically ignored by the externally advocated strategies of industrialization. In this formulation, development was simplistically equated with industrialization. The rush to industrialize Africa on imported capital, technology, and expertise picked up pace in many African countries. This era of African industrialization was tweaked to take the form of “import substitution industrialization” (ISI). Africa was to manufacture the few things that it imported to satisfy the consumption habits of a very limited class of people and this was expected to mark considerable development. This strategy became a spectacular failure in a very short period of time as will be demonstrated later by an analysis of a tire industry in Ghana established under the ISI regime; a more or less typical case demonstrating the shortcomings of this strategy on many fronts. This failure is amply discussed and documented (Adei, 1990, Brown, 1995, 58, 208, 306, World Bank, 1981, 1989). For a long time, these failed industries and infrastructure all over Africa were known on the continent and outside as “White Elephants”; that is, wasteful, externally directed initiatives that produced no sustainable outcomes, but gobbled up lots of resources. The reasons for this failure were many. To mention a few of the more important ones, Africa did not yet acquire the critical mass of the essential human capital or technological and management expertise to plan, evaluate and determine the cost and benefit of specific industrialization cases, much less manage externally prescribed industrialization ventures. Secondly, Africa’s early industrialization was fully planned and implemented by outside interests, with Africa paying exorbitant sums in partial or total support of the ventures that it did not control. Except for granting liberal privileges to investors and experts and picking up the prescribed price tags through loans and savings, Africa’s industrialization was fully dependent on outside tech-

Introduction

7

nology, expertise, planning, and management. Third, the industries created were too dependent on imported inputs as they were not designed to process locally produced raw materials. Their foreign exchange demand became unsustainable over time. Fourth, the industrial outputs were not planned on the basis of African markets that were emerging as a result of other sectors of the economy growing and creating gainful employment that enhanced peoples’ buying power, thereby creating a market for locally produced goods on an expanding scale. These and other related problems inevitably led to industrialization events that were tentative, unsustainable, and alien to local economic, institutional and market systems. The ISI strategy was a simple guess work of economic growth with little relevance to sustainable local development. Surprisingly, one is hard put to find, in the extensive assessment of this failure, the absence of developed local, national, or regional buying capacity as one of the crucial causes of the failure of African industrialization.

NEEDED REALITY CHECK Africa was emerging, in the 1960s, from centuries of dehumanizing chaos of the slave trade followed by the era of the so-called “legitimate commerce” (Freund, 1998, chap.4) which was nothing more than a brutal and rapacious plundering of African human and natural resources by violent European merchant and capitalist classes delivering “the horror of . . . the hideous, unacceptable face of European civilization” (Freund, 1998, p. 101). The culmination of this centuries long assault on the very identity and being of Africans culminated in the 19th century scramble for Africa and its brutal colonization for nearly nine decades ending with independence struggles that ended in Africa’s 1960s. What Africa needed at the end of its turbulent and tormented existence of nearly five centuries (nearly half a millennium) was not an un-meditated rush to industrialization under the control of unbridled greed of foreign interests, but a period of reflection, building a firm sense of self, and self-awareness/esteem. What Africa needed was a new consciousness of Africa’s position in the world and modification and reconstruction of African indigenous institutions reformed to help Africa face the challenges of modern development on its own terms, using its own concepts to design dynamic development frameworks and strategies. Eschewing this essential exercise, Africa was dragged into industrialization with colonial governance and economic institutions in place. Mechanisms of interpersonal and intergroup relations designed to subdue and exploit Africans were left fundamentally unchanged. Neoliberal orthodoxies masquerading as theoretically well grounded, infallible and “scientific” rushed in to occupy the development

8

Introduction

space that should have waited for African readiness to occupy it. Left to its own devices, Africa may have well arrived at some form of indigenously inspired and inclusive development framework and strategy that could have launched it on a more viable and feasible development path. At independence, the mass of Africa’s population was still agrarian existing on subsistence production. Those employed in European owned mines and plantations were not paid living wages to become consumers of industrial outputs. Peasant cash-crop producers were price takers, and not price setters. Africa’s ordinary people never had opportunities to build wealth and become educated to form a self-respecting and self-confident middle class with changed worldviews and a capacity to innovate, produce, and become owners of their own economies and resources (Freund, 1998, 100–120). Foreign-led industrialization in such a context makes no sense. It is a well studied conclusion of unique colonial behavior and strategy in Africa that, to keep the Sub-Saharan continent subjugated, the rise of an educated, aspiring, entrepreneurial middle class should be disallowed (Freund, 1998, 120–147). After all, Asians and Arabs were imported to fill middle and lower-middle class positions (Freund, 1998, 120–147). Not only was African education above primary level discouraged (Ajayi, Goma & Johnson 1996, 28, BrockUtne, 2000, 18–20), where a nascent class of educated and on the way to being educated (those who completed secondary school) were emerging, they were savagely eliminated from among the living. This was what Italy did in Ethiopia during its five-year turbulent occupation of the country during World War II. When the 1960s came, then, virtually all Sub-Saharan African countries, colonized and not colonized for long, were very poor, uneducated, brutalized, traumatized and their social and economic institutions distorted to serve the needs and demands of European intruders. Changing the resultant psychological, cultural, and institutional structures to independent thinking and purpose and realigning them to serve a new and enlightened-self interest based on the common good, should have formed the starting point and mission of the first few decades of African independence, or the onset of the progressive era of the 1960s. Instead, Africa allowed itself to be overwhelmed and overtaken by the false promises of mechanistic industrialization pushed by powerful outside interests, perhaps with good intentions. They flooded the African scene with large numbers of experts, equipped with the wrong knowledge and ideas to make good sense of the unique African condition. Africa’s development history does not start from a point of quiet self-reflection and taking stock of opportunities to make independent choices regarding optimal paths to its progress. The conditions of the 1960s provided opportunities for real African economic sovereignty but it was missed. Both internal

Introduction

9

and external thinking engaged in reifying the meaning and mechanisms of development as something floating over and above human, social, cultural, historical, institutional, and experiential contexts, making it an exclusively elite enterprise. The people were excluded from any form of genuine participation and learning about the development processes and challenges. And so, the 1960s industrialization strategy that depended on foreign design, experts and technology, all alien to the people, quickly collapsed. There was only one lone voice who saw the fallacies in this strategy, a French agronomist by the name of Rene Dumont, whose 1962 work in French was published in English in 1966 by Prager, New York, under the title of “False Start in Africa.” Given the post-independence irrational euphoria, he remained a lone voice in the wilderness. Some professors under whom this researcher studied, rejected Dumont as an eccentric, radical French agronomist who did not know what he was talking about. The more and the louder the criticisms were, the more this researcher got curious and read the book and different reviews and comments on it. Criticisms of his work were varied, though virtually all of them disagreed with his claims that Africa has taken a development trajectory harmful to achieving it. Dumont saw the futility of looking outward instead of inward to put Africa on a sensible development path.

THE AFTERMATH OF FAILED INDUSTRIALIZATION Following the aborted industrialization drive of the 1960s, a period declared Africa’s first development decade, a second development decade was declared by the United Nations and accepted by all other development agencies. The 1970s ushered in Africa’s second development decade. It reversed the failed industrialization course (for which Africa had borrowed enormously and was heavily in debt with no development of economy to pay for it) in favor of investment in what was called “basic needs.” Braidotti, Rosi, Charkiewicz, Ewa, Hauser, Sabine and Wieringa, Saskia (1994, pp. 17, 19, 134). In spirit, this approach emphasized human resources development, including health, education and nutrition initially advocated by the International Labor Organization (ILO). The concern on education, however did not include the revisiting of its curriculum content which remained outward looking in content and goals with little regard for its relevance for Africa’s development or problem solving needs. To affect and improve the development effectiveness of a generation of students, education needed to be about the values, survival achievements, and useful knowledge of Africans themselves, including their problem solving capabilities in economic, technological, medical and other

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Introduction

areas. To this body of local knowledge could have been added contemporary scientific and technological knowledge brought from outside. Most importantly, the scientific methods of observation, theory formation and methods of enquiry and resolution needed to be consciously incorporated as essential road maps to bringing about change and development from within. By ignoring locally accumulated knowledge, accessible and proven local knowledge systems became irrelevant, even primitive. African youths grew up admiring others and loathing their own achievements and survival successes. As a product of Africa’s primary and secondary education, this researcher knows this first hand, even though she was exposed to some local wisdoms and knowledge, perhaps a bit more than was typical. Education shortchanged students and failed to inspire that “can do” attitude and evoke the spirit of enquiry and questioning. It failed to challenge them to think independently and creatively to solve problems and to transform their heritage in a thoughtful manner. The pattern and focus of African education was one of memorizing verbatim all that was offered to pass qualifying examinations originating in Europe and designed by European universities. The basic needs approach was not internally rooted and was short-lived. The basic needs approach did not add skills and knowledge on how to indigenously produce the food and other materials which could sustain human capital formation over the long run. Instead, the program had looked to dependence on external aid and loan. With the oil shock of 1973 and subsequent slow down of the world’s economy, this approach fell into disfavor. Whatever generosity donors showed before the 1973 oil shock, could no longer continue in the context of the global economic downturn that followed the oil shock. Credit became tight and that aid-dependent basic needs strategy, an excellent one in concept if it had relied on domestic teaching and learning resource and the generation of material wealth to support it, became yet another dependent false start doomed to failure. Education is about human capacity building predicated on national capacity to support and develop articulated agendas. Human capacity-building or human resource development is a long term project that does not have quick and direct economic results. Countries should never think of embarking on human resource and human capital building agendas as matters of short-term projects reliant on temporary foreign funding. Of course, human resource and human capital development form the essential foundation of development and positive change. It, along with other development variables, rational institutions in particular, should be treated as priority in designs for economic and social transformation. Having initially pushed the basic needs approach, international institutions, notably the World Bank and IMF, grew nervous about further lending to Africa for the programs and Africa’s ability to repay past loans. By the

Introduction

11

1980s, the decade known as “Africa’s lost decade” (Adedeji, 1993, 4) was ushered in with the infamous Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) and its range of prescriptions and restrictions. SAP all but ruined Africa’s economies (Adedeji, 1993, 1–13). The SAP inspired endless contentions and studies. Both the program and its intellectual and empirical challenges continued well into the end of the 1990s, the end of the 20th century. The Negative effects of SAP (its full package including government downsizing, privatization, currency devaluation, and opening wide African markets in the name of trade liberalization) were exacerbated by the HIV/AIDS and malaria epidemics. Droughts and famine, and other hazards became endemic in those countries whose conditions were rendered even more precarious by dictators who were least sensitive to the plight of citizens with Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and the Sudan perching at the top of the list. In all of this development thinking and development paradigms shifts, Africa played virtually no role. Conceptualizing independently its way out of poverty and thinking through its own development philosophy and strategy were virtually consigned to outsiders. Development ideas and models originated outside the continent (Makandawire and Soludo, 1999, vii, Davidson, 1993, 17–27, Adedeji, 1993, 1–13). One well known African initiative called The Lagos Plan of Action for The Economic Development of Africa 1980– 2000 (Organization of African Unity, 1981) was, many believe, quickly shot down by the World Bank’s Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action (World Bank, 1981). Africa continued to follow the development paths designed by the World Bank and other cooperating donors. At the dawn of the twenty first century, some winds of change seem to be blowing. We witness unprecedented refocus on Africa’s development by the donor community. Some African countries seem resolved to take initiatives of their own. Designing their own development and determining how they will use donor assistance, where available, to achieve their goal is given as their new development trajectory. Malawi is one important case in point.2 Africa has also created its New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) though Taylor (2005) and others consider it a poor imitation of the modernist, top-down model which, in any case, has been already abandoned by African leaders. Its promise to improve governance as one of its key reasons for demanding billions in aid from the West does not seem to sit well with entrenched dictatorships. If there is one things that most African leaders shun, it is the rule of law and giving primacy to the development, rights, and interest of their African peoples.3 The former Prime Minister of England, Tony Blair, has established The African Commission to raise tens of billions to fund Africa’s development agenda, as though Africa’s underdevelopment could

12

Introduction

be solved by throwing more money at it. The United Nations Development Program announced its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to halve African poverty by 2015. The United States, under the Bush Administration, has created the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) with billions of dollars at its disposal to fund development programs in countries that undertake democratic institutional reforms and respect human rights. These are core development prerequisites and the Millennium Challenge Corporation has wisely conditioned its grants on them, among other metrics like capacity building. The Millennium Challenge Corporation’s program is the only aid initiative that tries to normatively address Africa’s notorious corruption, absence of rule of law, and rational institutions that can sustain and encourage development. Only those African countries that pass a minimum threshold of democratic governance, rule of law, institutional capacity building, and respect for human rights, have so far received the generous grant of the MCC, as the last check of its website portrays. Even the Bush Administration’s presumed allies in the global war on terrorism, like Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, have not so far been dignified by any grant from this fund. The results of the United Nations MDGs for Africa have already proven discouraging. A joint document drawing on the African Union Conference of Ministers of Economic and Finance and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Conference of Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development held on March 26–29, 2008 and March 31–April 2, 2008 respectively in Addis Ababa, provides insight into the MDGs achievements. The report shows significant improvement in only three areas established among the eight major agendas, not related to direct economic transformation. These three areas of improvement were universal primary education, gender equity in education, and parliamentary (political participation) representation of women. Impressive statistics elaborate the gains in these three areas. But a deeper examination of Africa’s records in these areas from field level researches tell very discouraging stories. More will be said about these in relevant sections of this study. In areas of economic, human rights and democracy improvements, the report says it lacked country data to report on. However, the report warns that “A lot remains to be done to meet MDG targets.”4 Only Ghana and North African countries are said to be on track to “meet the target of halving poverty by 2015. It cannot be expected to be otherwise given the allocation of resource and powers of decision making such as they are in most African countries. To those in the international system like the African Union, World Bank and the United Nations Development Program, development is just another career opportunity, an industry as some have called it, in which experts

Introduction

13

conform to paper rules and produce thousands of pages of reports annually to feel that they have done the job of development. They do not, and have not, seriously diagnosed the sources of Africa’s underdevelopment and addressed it in earnest. Africa’s largely self-imposed development failure, reinforced by powerful international interests who exploit its weaknesses, has not fully escaped some African leaders. Olusegun Obassanjo, former president of Nigeria, is quoted by Basil Davidson (1993, 19) as saying “. . . the bald fact is that in Africa we have squandered almost 30 years with ineffective nation-building efforts because our policies were far removed from social needs and developmental relevance.” More than a decade and half after this pronouncement and many others like it, things have deteriorated for much of Africa. Nigeria, to its credit, is struggling to follow the path of democracy with elections that have at least changed the top political players. The new leadership might start to work for positive change. One can argue, that Africa’s dismal development failure of the past half century and its slide into ever deepening poverty, disease, famine and starvation, and forms of social chaos had little to do with Africa’s own shortcomings in development theory, philosophy and design as already argued. This, however, is not to say that Africans and their political leaders had no opportunities to follow their own development path. They had options, but failed to show the stamina and resolve to explore them. Unfortunately, outsiders, perhaps with very good intentions but with no accountability mechanisms to hold them responsible and no knowledge of Africa’s diverse settings, were enabled to be the theoretical and programmatic architects of Africa’s development (Adedeji, 1993, 1–13, Davidson, 1993, 17–27). Perhaps it is in recognition of this disproportionately externally driven African development failure that Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain declared “The state of Africa is a scar on the conscience of the world” at the Labor Party Conference in Brighton on October 2, 2001 (Sudan Tribune, February 13, 2006). And yet, it is more of the same arrangement of outsiders needing to fix Africa’s economic woes that Blair advocates: “But if the World as a community focused on it, we could heal it. And if we don’t, it will become deeper and angrier” (Ibid). On the other hand, African development scholars have started to argue that African knowledge, expertise and experience need to help shape its development thinking and planning (Makandawire and Soludo, 1999, vii, Adedeji, 1993, 1–13, Kalu, 1999, 199–215) if the continent is to move forward. African civil society and community of civic-minded scholars need to be engaged in development discourse and planning if Africa is to get a true handle on its development issues. Most importantly, the African people themselves need to liberate themselves from tyrannical rulers and

14

Introduction

become empowered owners of their own development. They need to become creative innovators of institutional arrangements that facilitate their peaceful and democratic economic and social transformation. It is probably reflecting on the lack of civil society and people’s participation that the late Claud Ake (1992) had declared, “. . . it is not so much that development has failed in Africa but that development has not started at all.” This thinking on the part of the African academic and civil society elite is a welcome one. It still is not clear if this thinking takes the issue of African participation to all necessary levels. The African people themselves need to be empowered and given a voice in matters of development. Already, against all odds and neglect, ordinary people in Africa dot the continent with extraordinary achievements with little resource and technical assistance from the international community. The Green Belt Movement and the Njinguni, Bitero and Kabati (NKG) rural water project in Kenya, which will be analyzed later, and the Six-S networks in Mali and other West African countries are living examples of how much sustainable development ordinary African people can do with very little help. It is in this spirit of the need for Africans to engage and reflect on the continent’s crises and the need to use their experience and knowledge to participate in the theoretical and programmatic conversation on development that this work is undertaken. Coincidentally, the World Bank (2004b) undertook extensive studies, largely featuring Africa. This study discovered very instructive lessons on how Africans solve, in traditional ways, problems of economic production, conflict resolution, disease and sickness, and other technology applications. Appropriately, the work was titled Indigenous Knowledge: Local Pathways to Global Development. Africans can find ways of putting together what they need to bring about their own development, if only the institutional constraints of governance, abuse of human rights, and restrictions on the free expression and development of human talent were lifted from their shoulders. Like the Millennium Challenge Corporation attempts, the international community can best help the African people by being true to the causes of human rights and human freedoms, democracy, and the development of the people and the economy by the people. International donors and lending institutions are wasting precious time and resources by throwing good money after bad governance and corruption which block development. It is the stranglehold on the people and their aspirations that is a major factor in Africa’s poverty and underdevelopment inertia. This assertion should not be taken to ignore the role of the private sector, international donors and governments in development. In fact, they all have their appropriate roles to play to expedite development. The argument is that

Introduction

15

the people too should have legitimate space and claims to property, civil, and human rights to participate fully at whatever level they can and that there can be no replacement for the people’s full participation. In most African countries, the rural population constitutes upwards of 80 per cent of the total population. This population should be accorded a major role in shaping its social and economic transformation. Mamdani’s (1992) study of rual Africa is typical of the continent’s neglect of this sector. African countries neglect this sector at their development peril.

SOME CURRENT CONVERSATIONS ON AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT FAILURES The debate on Africa’s post-independence development failures has generated endless varieties of points of view recorded in mountains of books and articles. One of the most important dimensions of the debate has to do with the nature and sources of Africa’s development debacles. In this respect, two threads of argument can be identified. One thread of argument considers factors internal to Africa. This is sometimes referred to as the “internalist” perspective. It blames the absence of rule of law, endemic corruption, politically willed incompetence, absence of democracy and accountability of officials, oppression, absence of human and economic rights and the absence of political will for development (Ayittet,1992, 2006, Bates, 1998, Bayart, Ellis and Hibou,1999, Chabal and Daloz, 1999). The second thread of argument, the “externalist” perspective, largely emanating from African ruling circles and their apologists as well as many international development scholars (Korten, David, 1995/1996/2001, 164–166, Brown, 1995, Payer, 1982, Reynolds, 1998) and journalists like Hancock (1989) points to factors external to Africa. Donors and The World Bank IMF in particular, who have no accountability for the harm they cause, unwittingly or otherwise are considered as the main culprits in the continent’s underdevelopment. Other perspectives look at the intersections of both internal and external factors as causes of Africa’s underdevelopment. This researcher tends towards the latter argument and the theoretical studies that will be offered will be holistic enough to at least imply the broad connections between internal and external factors, unchallenged by abuse-tolerant African publics, playing out in Africa’s continued underdevelopment. The combined effect of internal and external institutions on Africa’s underdevelopment is best explained by Leonard and Strauss (2003). In a very important sense, both the “internalist” and “externalist” perspectives display several similar characteristics. First, both stress structural/institutional factors as being the only barriers to Africa’s development. The claim,

16

Introduction

and it is a very important and real one, is that if you fix the behavior of government or outside interveners, depending on which side the argument emanates, development would automatically occur. Second, both anchor their analysis in one or two development variables. For instance, some stress governance and corruption; others stress policy and politics, still others center external leverage and its effects on asset allocation. Third, both versions of the debate stop at the theoretical level of analysis and fall short of showing a developed framework implied by their theoretical arguments, if we discount the market and price doctrine of the World Bank groups as a basic framework of development. The reason for discounting it is the fact that they seem to be shying away from robustly imposing it as the deterministic model at this time. The general conclusion that can be drawn from the theoretical arguments of both the “internalists” and “externalists” is that both ignore the complexity and multi-dimensionality of the development process. This process includes patient and sustained efforts to construct the institutions of education and state to nurture common purpose, human creativity, validated cultural transformations and world views, as well as getting in place all the resources and the means of allocating them rationally. This can only be accomplished through sustained engagement by both internal and external forces. Psychology and sociology are as important as technology in bringing about positive change. People need to be hopeful and optimistic and fully involved if they are going to invest their labor and resources for development. The social-psychological mood of a nation can become positive and hopeful instantaneously, as was seen from the spontaneous flourishing of positive public sentiments and joyful human spirit immediately before and following the May 15, 2005 Ethiopian election in which the opposition routed the ruling party at the ballot box. Clearly, people felt that if their will and ballot can change a regime, it means that they will have greater voice in how their lives and economies will be managed under the new regime. The perceived end of the reigning regime’s deliberate and calculated dehumanization and frustration of the people and their history and diminution of their aspiration was enough to invigorate popular optimism and hope for the future. Of course, the incumbent regime of Meles Zenawi, would not allow society to slip from its grip. Zenawi declared a state of emergency and crushed and reversed the election results with massive and violent attacks on the opposition, opposition party members and even side-line supporters with total impunity in the full glare of international view, and in the capital city of the African Union. This egregious act did not even cost Zenaw’s regime a reduction in the massive amounts of external aid it receives. Suppose the opposition had managed to retain its victory and set out to serve society in benevolent ways. Would the jubilance and optimistic en-

Introduction

17

gagement of the people and the jubilant national mood cause the take-off to economic and social improvements? Not really. But it does create a fertile ground for reconfiguring the path of development in such a way that people and national resources could be mobilized to start the process of social and economic transformation. So much of institutional construction in education, state institutions, weaning society off the instilled corruption as the only way of survival, creating credible micro and macro policies, etc. need to take root for forward movement of society and economy. The source of optimism in such a case is not that development and alleviation of poverty will happen spontaneously with the installation of the right political environment, but that the conditions for development would be firmly institutionalized and rooted broadly in the cultures, institutions, attitudes and outlooks of the people. Hence, theory and analysis must serve development policy makers so that they could productively engage new opportunities to accrue development outcomes, while involving and educating the population on the roles and responsibilities of government, the people themselves, as well as the private sector in utilizing all available national resources and international aid to push forward development that benefits the common as well as the individual good.

THE PURPOSE OF THE PRESENT RESEARCH The purpose of this research is to contribute to the formulation of a theoretical and methodological framework for holistic African development which centers the people. The framework will be distilled from a wide range of theoretical discourses on development over the past decades, and the lessons from documented, people-centered transparently managed African grassroots development projects with sustainable results. It is hoped that this development formulation, and others similarly oriented will, in time, gain currency to offer an alternative to the conventional neoclassical or “modernist” elite and expert-driven development framework that is still operational in Africa in different nuances, despite its proven failures.

DISCOVERING THE FAMILIAR The reader is likely to be aware that what is called development today is nothing more than what people did and still do to improve their material life and well-being as a normal part of human activity. Economic activities happen in a social, cultural, political and physical resource and environmental context

18

Introduction

that link people as producers and consumers, competitors or collaborators. In an ideally laissez faire or open condition, where government interference in economic activities and transactions does not exceed the rational mediation of public and private interests and the maintenance of legal property rights and claims, entrepreneurs and innovators can accelerate their endeavors to meet existing material needs or demands in a population. In the process, entrepreneurs produce surpluses that exceed local needs. In a true free market condition, they would also try to discover and meet unmet demands for their goods beyond their borders. That is, entrepreneurs would expand their markets nationally, regionally, continentally, and in stages globally. History teaches us that Africans were engaged in such trade for centuries preceding the slave trade and colonization. In this way, the foundation of well—grounded development that leads to export benefits, while meeting increasing local, national, and African needs, can rationally arise. It is worth recognizing that innovators and entrepreneurs may not always be driven by uniform and predictable profit or wealth-seeking incentives. Any number of subjective and objective incentives and challenges besides the neo-classically enshrined “greed” and optimization, or individual wealth creation, could drive them to maximum effort and productivity. Every society has its own folk heroes who achieved great economic, scientific and technological feats for altruistic reasons or for sheer intellectual curiosity. The inventor of the Green Revolution, Dr. Norman Borlaug and his team of agricultural research scientists can be cases in point for the latter category. As in natural science, serendipity can play a role in social and economic life and institutional articulation. Left to their own devices, Africans could have evolved patterns of economic maximization and productivity in tune with their own cultural and value preferences. This did not happen, could not happen in Africa because of the violent and disruptive intrusions that characterize its history. Degradation of their cultures and traditions, and the reorganization of their economic and sociopolitical institutions to facilitate European control and exploitation are facts of history (Freund, 1998, pp. 40–43; 101; 104–109, Gordon & Gordon, 2001, pp. 31–53; 101–112). The footprints of this history are still evident in powerful and influential ways and significantly shape Africa’s existential crises. Historical accounts of African experiences over the last 400–500 years make it clear that African economies were set up by the controlling powers with internal collaborators (Freund, 1998, pp.56–58;122, 212–213), not to develop Africa, but to make it a reservoir of raw materials for industrialized metropolises, and to make its market open for dumping cheap or surplus manufactures. Nothing that resembles a free and permissive environment that allowed Africans to experiment, learn by doing, aspire, and

Introduction

19

produce value-added goods ever existed in this span of time. Unfortunately, this structural and economic paradigm still plagues Africa. It was never abolished and new structure with African logic and priorities placed in its stead. Every foreign power of the East or West uses this structural paradigm as entry point to fashion its economic relation with Africa and it always leads to the same pattern of exploitative relations-precious African raw materials for export on the cheap, to fuel the industrial growth of foreign lands and cheap, processed goods imported to African markets which depress any chance for industrialization and value-added economic activities on the continent. According to Adam Smith’s observation, producers and consumers of goods and services emerge within a domestic logic of supply and demand in a laissez faire environment. Today, we would refer to it as regulated market environment. The producer interested in making money from meeting the physical need of the consumer and the consumer paying what she perceives to be a fair and affordable price for the commodity she needs to satisfy a certain need (for food, clothing, shelter, wellness, aesthetics, luxury, comfort etc.) meet in a free market place. In this fair trade environment, producers and consumers would be linked by markets that mediate supply and demand. The behaviors of buyers and sellers, producers and consumers are conditioned by carefully estimated price structures that sustain incentive to produce ever increasing quantities of goods and services to meet increasing demand incentivized by ever more attractive price levels. The seeds of such natural evolution were never planted in Africa, where people and resources remained under the strict control of elite masters, internal and external. This is among the things that need to change. There is a lesson that should be considered by Africans as strongly applicable to their present condition. Adam Smith explored the role of agriculture, in addition to growing skills and performance specialization, in the creation of increasing levels of wealth. In his famous book, An Inquiry into the nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith sought to discover and explain the sources of wealth creation and economic progress. In chapter I of his book III (1976). Smith finds one of the sources of creation of national wealth. He says, “The great commerce of every civilized society, is that carried on between the inhabitants of the town and those of the country. It consists of the exchange of rude for manufactured produce. . . . The country supplies the town with the means of subsistence, and the materials of manufacture” (401). His towns and country refer to those of the nation state. He is suggesting that agriculture is the foundation of any society’s drive to develop and grow and that the economic interdependence of towns and agricultural villages is key to progress. This is not what one sees in Africa. Africa has lost this very

20

Introduction

vital link of town and village. The economic link between rural and town people whose economic and social transactions would have created a dialectic process of wealth, knowledge, and experience accumulation and progress has been lost. African urban and rural economies have been blindly and irrationally segmented and fitted into the international economic system hostile to the flourishing of such organic and essential African national and regional economic integration. In the process, rural producers are artificially taxed by political fiat, sometimes to favor towns, at other times to favor export of raw material to global centers of industrialization (Bates, 1998). How is Africa to develop if it does not process its own raw materials and create jobs, technology, and managerial capacity in the process? Whoever has ever developed by only selling cheap raw materials subject to secular price declines? There are no historical precedents to answer this question in the affirmative. It is not just those African countries and societies who endured the scourge of slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism that suffer this loss of economically reinforcing rural-urban integration within their economies and societies, but also the few that struggled to ward off constant attacks to subjugate, enslave, and colonize them. Some Africans are impatient with this reference to the colonial and slavery past and urge moving on fast beyond the memory of these horrendous experiences and confronting the continent’s present, multifaceted development crises (Ayittey, 2005, ii, xxii, xxv). Indeed, Africa should move on. But, it is unlikely that any enduring African development direction and process could start without thoughtfully addressing this history and bringing it to closure by making the African people the only masters of their destiny and constructing economic, social, and political institutions that reflect this. Here, established traditions that have rendered some Africans beneficiaries of the alien system and the masses its victims and losers, need to be sorted out and corrected if Africa is to head in the right direction. But institutional traditions, once in place, are very sticky and resilient to change and it will take a massive effort and the full support and cooperation of the international community to correct them. Experiences and memories get entrenched into peoples’ outlooks and existential practices which they transfer inter-generationally, often unconsciously, or false-consciously, to subsequent generations of political and economic powers. A valid starting point for African development is the unlearning of everything they have been taught about themselves and how they should manage themselves and their economies by outsiders. Africans need to create their own knowledge of themselves-good and bad and redesign their social and economic life. Improving on the good and resolutely fighting the bad aspects of culture and the contents of African consciousness, must form part of Africa’s self-transformation and the clearing of the path for authentic devel-

Introduction

21

opment. And so, this work aspires to interweave the human, institutional/cultural, economic and social as well as the technological and investment capital requirements for Africa’s authentic and sustainable development. The point to be marked from Adam Smith’s vision of free exchange and economic transaction between individuals, individuals and groups, and between groups is that the logic and process of economic progress and wealth creation depends on free and participatory undertaking of people, including decision making, prioritizing, and allocating resources to their most efficient uses as judged by them, within legal parameters serving the legitimate interests, needs and aspirations of the society. Presently, there are only a few African countries (Botswana, Ghana, and Malawi, among a few others) stand as promising cases at present, where legality of social, political and economic life and respect for the dignity and human rights of the people are mediated by legitimate institutions of the state. Curiously, the well known case of democracy, respect for human rights, and fast economic progress has been recorded in Botswana since its independence. The colonial experience of Botswana has not been severe. In fact, it was quite peripheral. Could it be that Botswana was spared the culture of violence and oppression that got built into colonial Africa’s experience which has been carried to its post-independence political culture? Today, Africa faces even bigger burdens. The rules of the national and global economic games are put in place by powerful, organized international interests, the rhetoric of Adam Smith’s precept of free economic processes notwithstanding (Broad, 2002, Hawkesworth, 2006). Africa seems to have no say in the writing of the rules. Can Africa script its own indigenous logic and basis of development to withstand these powerful and self-interested global forces? It can, if the people have their say.

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK In chapter 1, a brief survey of selected theories that have been competing for prominence in development thinking will be presented. In Chapter 2, an alternative theoretical framework and definition of development based on it will be formulated. Chapters 3–7 will address the different parts of the synthesized theoretical framework and Africa’s condition with respect to each. The different parts or components of the synthesized framework will be called development engines or imperatives. Chapter 8 will provide analysis of two people-centered, consequential, bottom-up projects that succinctly demonstrate the practical fit of the five development imperatives that constitute the framework. Chapter 9 will be devoted to a brief discussion of African women

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Introduction

as neglected agents of Africa’s and their own development. Chapter 10 will summarize the whole study and ponder some forward looking agendas that might genuinely redefine development orientation in terms of peoples’ roles as means, agents, and ends of development.

NOTES 1. The Fadama Rural Development Project in Nigeria was designed by the World Bank on the basis of its new Notion of Comprehensive Development Framework. It did demonstrate participatory approaches that was designed to give local people significant roles. The project has gone through three phases; the first phase was implemented 1992–1999 and declared a promising approach. Then followed Fadama II whose 2003 evaluation yielded very promising, people-driven development efforts. Fadama three which followed was similarly characterized. But a close research and analysis of the project by students in my Rural Development in Africa graduate seminar, during the Fall, 2008 semester discovered that Fadama projects had slid into the more conventional top-down paradigm. In Fadama three, of the total project cost of $450 million. Of this, only $73 million was allocated for local infrastructural development prioritized by the people from a range of pre-determined activities, while $100 million was earmarked for paying consultants for monitoring and evaluation. The $130 million allocated for human resources training was also found to have little relevance to solving indigenous problems, as indigenous perspectives, knowledge and sources of constraints were not factored in. Old habits and practices die hard. 2. The president of Malawi, Dr. Bingu Wa Mutharika, expressed this in person at a lecture he gave at the School of Business Auditorium, Howard University, on Tuesday, October 2, 2007. 3. Using the occasion of his commentary of the election victory of Barak Obama, George Ayittey, in an internet piece titled “Obama’s Victory Shames Africa” looks at the political malevolence and lawless kleptocracy of most of Africa’s leaders. He hides none of his usual disgust at the violent tyranny and accompanying poverty and disease that Africans are forced to live under, regretting the politically-correct support of the West to such tyrants. http://www.ethiomedia.com/aurora/9186.html. Accessed 12/5/008. 4. http://www.uneca.org/cfm/2008/docs/AssessingProgressinAfricaMDGs.pdf accessed on 3/9/009.

Chapter One

Selected Development Theories: Some Post-World War II Theoretical Contests

It was at the end of the Second World War that economists were made central to sorting out the challenges of underdeveloped regions of the world (Meir and Seers 1984, ix). Economists of the neoclassical persuasion become the dominant force in articulating and designing Third World development policies and frameworks to be diffused and implemented through post-World War II bilateral and multilateral cooperation and finance institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations specialized agencies (Payer, 1982, 21–22 Meier and Seers, 1984, 3–21). Development economics emerged as a new subject matter area within the discipline of economics. Its theoretical emphasis and macro economic prescriptions were rooted in production functions which totally ignored human, cultural, institutional, and the state of development contexts. In the bipolar, post-World War II era, the competing theoretical perspectives of communism and capitalism were at work to bring into the fold of their respective spheres of influence as many of the Third World countries achieving their independence from colonialism as possible. All Sub-Sahara African colonies of Europe, except Ghana which gained its independence in 1957, became independent during the post-World War II decade of the 1960s. These states were generally poor and underdeveloped. In the ideological struggle of the post-World War II era, the Marxists had their command planning theoretical formula for the resolution of the problems of economic and social development with social justice imperatives presumably included. On the other hand, the laissez—faire approach to free enterprise development had no organized, easy to grasp theoretical form that people could easily see as a way out of poverty and underdevelopment. The contest to develop cogent alternative theories of development, therefore, became and remained a fertile ground for intellectual activities over the decades following the mass independence of former colonial 23

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Chapter One

territories. A brief discussion of the more well known development theories that competed within the discourse on development will be presented below.

MARXISM The central thesis of Marxist formulation of the resolution of problems of economic progress rested with resolving structural issues of ownership of the means of production. Marxists propagated the ideas that social and economic institutions evolve over time following dialectical paths. Using the historical and anthropological data available to them during the nineteenth and early 20ty centuries, they formulated economic treatises that affirmed the proposition that economies and societies evolved through a number of stages that started with primitive communal ownership of all means of production. Communal arrangements proceeded to change through stages that gradually and systematically brought individual ownership of land and other critical production factors under individual control. The cunning and powerful claimed disproportionate shares of control of the means of production culminating in the capitalist order (Wheen, 1999, 201–205). The continued transformation of the size and nature of individual ownership of the means of production and the rendering of the mass of people as mere sellers of their labor has, according to this school of theoretical thought, brought the vast majority of the people under subjugation by the few owners of factors of economic production. In this school of thought, economic development processes started with primitive communal arrangements that mutated into primitive private ownership which in subsequent stages evolved into the slave-owning stage, the feudal stage and finally the capitalist stage with its inherent class contradictions (Wheen, 1999, 201). Beginning with the end of the primitive communal stage and the emergence of private ownership, ‘man’ has sought to exploit the labor of another for economic gains and challenge his full freedom and emancipation (Marx, 1976, 1984, 146). Yet, capitalism was taken to represent the most socially enlightened and technologically advanced stage in human progress, its contradictions notwithstanding. In Marxist epistemology, class hierarchies and class conflicts are seen as inherent to the capitalist economic arrangements which simultaneously create unprecedented prosperity for a few and misery and poverty of large population segments. Capitalism, socialists/communists argued, oppresses and impoverishes those who do not own the means of production both at home (husband and wife, children), and society at large.

Selected Development Theories

25

Through imperialist expansion, capitalism extends this oppressive unity of opposites-the haves and have-nots—with its inherent tensions and contradictions into the Third World and thereby retard the development of the latter. This negativism against the free market system, gave the framework to African elite in particular, to organize a single party system which would own all the means of production in the name of the people and manage development as a state enterprise. Marxists claimed the scientific irrefutability of their system which promised prosperity for all through centrally planned production and distribution of goods and services. As history would show, the result was not what was theoretically professed and promised but utter destruction of the potential path to development. With the emphasis of top level central planning, a system that should have legitimately centered on developing individual and collective human capacity for development and institutional innovations to nurture freedoms and individual creativity, the corner stones of any social and economic progress, was sacrificed. Nevertheless, Marxists/socialists were aggressive in selling the theory of development premised on central planning on behalf of the people globally, particularly to African countries achieving independence from dehumanizing colonial rule during the 1960s. The Marxist development model was presented so persuasively, that it appealed to many a poor society, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The capitalist camp had no comparable formula or theory of development packaged into a simple, unified and appealing model with a practical framework to offer an easy to grasp vision of social and economic transformation to those poor societies. An effort had to be made to produce an alternative theory and framework of free enterprise paths to development.

RESPONSES TO MARXISM: ROSTOW’S THEORETICAL PROPOSITIONS One of the early development theorizers of the free enterprise camp was W.W. Rostow. An economic historian, Rostow started his work with an article in a 1956 volume of the Economic Journal and through this work, initiated his challenge, it seems, both to Marxist formulations and the simplified, capital, expert, and technology driven, top-down “modernist” paradigm which became the conventional design of Third World development advocated by virtually all donors to African development. The modernist/conventional design, often called the neo-liberal paradigm, has been promoted and practiced by powerful international finance and development institutions led by the World

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Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This model rests on linear assumptions that development will occur as a result of the trickle-down of benefit to ordinary people from economic investments made by those with knowhow and resources. Foreign direct investment (FDI) was encouraged as a major means for Africa’s development. As the United nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) would later comment, “From this perspective, the pursuit of responsible macroeconomic policies combined with an accelerating pace of liberalization, deregulation and, above all, privatization were expected to attract FDI. . .” (UNCTAD, 2005, P.1). The pursuit of foreign direct investment or similar emphasis on massive capital injection into Africa not only became counter productive, but also remained major distraction to the serious work of real development. Davidson asserted this idea when he said, “Development comes from within or it does not come at all-besides which the essential failure is above all a failure of non-African legacies of dispossession” (1993, 19). Rostow too found this simplistic conventional economic development perspective ‘intolerable’ very early on and had formulated his own multidisciplinary paradigm in a major work that came out in the form of a book. He titled his work The Process of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960.) Rostow defines his work as follows: . . . an effort to introduce into the formal economic analysis variables which incorporate the human responses to the challenges and material opportunities offered by the economic environment. These variables are designed to constitute a link between the domain of the conventional economists on the one hand and the sociologist, anthropologist, psychologist and historian on the other (1960, 11)

Rostow sought to incorporate human, cultural, socio-historical and institutional as well as technology and capital accumulation processes into the process of society’s economic transformation. Nevertheless, his proposition would become controversial for its linearity and Euro-centricity. Many argued that its Euro-centric and linear assumptions are wrongly based on the neglect of Europe’s free exploitation of African and other regions’ resources and labor to bring about its development and also to benefit from protected markets for its surpluses in the colonies and domestic markets. In addition, he was seen as denying the historical and contemporary external interventions which hamper Africa’s authentic development, or any significant development at all. His idea of “natural” propensities that characterize societies that achieve high development did not help his case either, for they imply that only societies that display propensities he attributes to Europe, particularly England, had any chance to develop.

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Rostow declared, as self-evident truth the interplay of institutional, social, cultural and technological elements in economic processes which he described in five inherent propensities: a) b) c) d) e)

the propensity to develop fundamental science (physical and social) the propensity to apply science to economic ends the propensity to seek material advance the propensity to accept innovation and the propensity to consume (1960, 11–12)

According to Rostow, these propensities are determined by a society’s value system and level of cultural development as well as social and cultural institutions it is capable of creating and sustaining (1960, 12–13). Rostow asserted that the analysis of changes in terms of these propensities is essential since inherent propensities within a culture determine the pace and character of social and economic progress. These propensities would lead to the natural progression or evolution of society and economy in five distinct stages, an idea which he maintained throughout his works of the 1960s, 1970s and refined in the 1990s. The1998 version of his stages of development theory is presented below. This work was reproduced from his 1990 work titled The Stages of Economic Growth published by Cambridge University Press in Seligson and Passe-Smith, (1998, pp. 9–17). Stage 1, traditional society; where cultural attitudes and production function are limited and “pre-Newtonian”—meaning unscientific production assisted by only very low technology, he would argue. Stage 2, the precondition for take-off; a stage which embraces societies in transition. Here, people use science and improved technology and become conscious choosers and utilizers of financial incentives of “compound interest” to scale-up production. In the 1990s, he realized that unlike 19th century England which provided the basic model for his theory, this second stage is arrived at in the Third World, “not endogenously, but from some external intrusion by more advanced societies.” Stage 3, the take-off stage, where cultural and traditional resistance to steady growth are overcome; progress accelerates and this leads to steady, forward advance. Savings and reinvestment grow, new industries expand and engagement in international trade occurs; human and institutional capital have grown; the structures of society and economy are transformed. This should take no more than a decade or two.

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Stage 4, the drive to maturity takes a long time (he does not speculate how long). After stage three’s sustained, if fluctuating progress, societies at stage 4 establish a definite path forward. The society arrives at much increased application of more efficient technology, production exceeds subsistence and achieves significant surplus, national income grows and 10–20% of this income is reinvested into the economy. This happens because the level of investment outstrips natural population growth. Net economic growth is achieved on a sustained basis, with capabilities to replace old technology with new. Most importantly, this stage, says Rostow, assures cultural adjustments (read the transformation of habits and attitudes, values, norms and work ethics) with authentic native cultural flavors. Preservation of cultural flavors occurs without interfering with the need to accommodate the requirements of efficient production and social progress. This means that the societal and economic systems have matured to keep orderly progress going. Rostow defines maturity as, “the stage in which an economy demonstrates the capacity to move beyond the original industries which powered its take-off” (1998, 14). One can read this to suggest the movement of industrialization from light consumable goods production (typically marking the starting point of industrialization) to heavy industries where the economy engages in producing the heavy equipments required to produce light industry gadgets, transportation and other heavy equipments. Now, the society has sufficiently developed human resource and institutional capacity to conceptualize, plan and implement increasingly complex and challenging tasks and problems of production. Stage 5 is the stage of mass-consumption with high dispensable income and large bulks of the working population shifting from industrial production to service and office work.

In the 1998 version of Rostow’s 1990s work, he started to speculate the possible addition of a sixth stage, that goes beyond the stage of mass consumption. His formulation of the fundamental characteristics of populations that have been in stage five over the last few decades is still under construction, he said. Since Rostow invokes sociological insight, among others, to glean and construct his system of thought, a serious variance from the standard sociological givens need to be pointed out. The notion of natural propensities in people that mark off developed countries from underdeveloped ones is alien to fundamental sociological principles. Sociology generally views constructed realities and diffusion of ideas to cross interstate development divides. Today, different levels of scientific, technological, managerial, and consumption communities coexist in the same state, creating pockets of differently oriented publics within the same society. Peoples’ condition depends on their access to knowledge, information and opportunities for higher stages of development not yet attained by a particular underdeveloped society as

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a whole. This has direct policy and development planning relevance on the part of the state not at all considered by Rostow. He believes in a natural, scientific, almost mechanical progression of the development process with the whole society moving in the same direction. In addition, the sociology of knowledge would stoutly refute any idea of natural propensities, people being considered products of the socialization and education systems that shape the content of their personality, motivation, disposition, possibility thinking, and creativity, not to mention external influences in an increasingly dense interaction between people of different cultures and levels of development. Even such global processes as tourism and their effects on local cultures cannot be underestimated, let alone the wide spread participation of Third World people in different philosophical and cultural systems through increased global communication networks and information contacts. Besides, virtually all people are known to be inherently similar, as present day DNA analysis also confirms. The differences between them are accounted for, not by their nature, or propensity, but by their life opportunities including health, nutrition, the educational, and experiential richness of their environment or lack thereof. Where institutional, cultural, and educational systems have been maladjusted and reorganized to ill-serve and ill-nurture people, of course, deficiencies will appear in many aspects of individual and communal dispositions and levels of accumulated personal and community talent. Africa, having been cornered into positions of economic, health, institutional, and cultural disadvantages by the ravages of slavery, colonialism and today, pervasive neocolonialism that masquerades as technical assistance, Rostow’s theory leaves too many loopholes to be an effective framework for grasping the nature and source of Africa’s development stalemate. And yet, Rostow’s theory cannot be wholly discarded as irrelevant to Africa. Parts of his theoretical system are insightful. However different their way of coming about might be, institutional and cultural improvements are key factors in development. Social, political, and economic institutions must absolutely evolve in ways and to levels that elicit the best efforts and creative energies of individuals, groups and communities. In this sense, governance institutions and the way in which they strive to nurture people hold the key to the transformation of other aspects of cultures and ethical life which in turn determine the nature of interpersonal and intergroup relations essential to the process of inclusive and broad-based social and economic transformation. Rostow’s postulate on the need for institutional, cultural and normative transformations occurring as society pushes ahead with its development is a key theoretical element that should be heeded in all development thinking. Fortunately, even the World Bank has of late recognized the absolute importance of

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good and properly functioning governance institutions as key pillars of development (World Bank, 2004a). We will return to this and related issues later. Another consideration here should be the breadth of exposure to rich and autonomous experiences that free people have had to develop their own knowledge and culture. Knowledge among free people is not only endogenously generated, it is also enriched by the knowledge and experience of others which autonomous cultures seek out from outside, distill, modify, and absorbs in its own culture out of utilitarian considerations. Knowledge always flows and diffuses over time and space and people borrow and adopt ideas and knowledge from different sources and modify and internalize them to fit their needs. The West would not be what it became without borrowing many ideas and technologies from the middle and far east and elsewhere (Linton, 1983) and making it its own and building on it. Similarly, Japan and other Asian countries would not be where they are without independently borrowing and adapting Western technology to serve their own style of progress. None of these societies relied on the owners of knowledge and technology to do their development jobs for them. They adapted what others achieved to their environments and did the job themselves. Has post-colonial Africa ever had conducive conditions to attempt a similar paradigm? Does this have anything to do with Africa’s native propensity? This argument against the notion of propensity that ignores many empirical factors pertinent to the African experience, is particularly important to mark because, without the caveat that people are what their life chances, culture and education have conditioned them to become, the temptation to attribute success and failure to hypothetical racial types is all too real. Adedeji (1993) and many like thinkers write convincingly of their insight into how Africa has been, by design, pushed to the margins of the global economic and political system. Yet, ignoring the glaring historical struggle to keep Africa down, ideas of social Darwinism always lurk beneath the skin of the discourse on Africa’s development failures. Intellectual insistence on comparing development achievements only between people who have had identical or at least comparable experiences must be vigorously promoted. Returning to applicable parts of Rostownian propositions, the complexity of development and its cultural and institutional dependence are very useful. These factors are acknowledge by development scholars other than those of the neoclassical persuasion. Rostow is absolutely right in pointing out that economic development goes side by side with institutional and cultural transformations that introduce new attitudes and acceptance of challenges. But his neglect of government support and participation in facilitating social and economic development in societies that are developing under very challenging and competitive global circumstances renders his theoretical system by and

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large in need of updating. For instance, as center-periphery theorists (Prebish, 1980, Love, 1980) investigate the relationship between industrial centers and raw material producers. They pointed out that owners of industrial goods tend to have the power to set their prices, while raw material producers lack similar power. This imbalance puts raw material producers at decisive disadvantage and retards their development. This means that unless purposely and skillfully designed by government, development left to laissez fair, tends to be uneven, leaving huge portions of a population in poverty nationally, regionally, and globally. Unmediated and unregulated, so called development, only exposes people and their resources to predators with no accountability or sense of ethics or fairness. Adedeji describes this serious development anomaly in Africa (1993, p. 7). One can only hope that the present global economic crisis, tightening since 2007, will incentivize all powers that be to reconfigure the global economic system in a way that allows the emergence of a more fair playing field for Africa and other developing societies. The structural imbalances that advertently or inadvertently cause inequality and poverty go far beyond the notions of stage-wise development of a given economy or society. There are now many forces that impact the content and directions of development nationally and globally that are beyond the African peoples’ capacity to control and manage under present arrangements. The power of the legitimate government must be brought to bear on creating the necessary development conditions for people to engage in their development. Government has, first to be made accountable to the people, guarantee the national interest, and nurture the development interests of the largest majority of the people. In the absence of democratic and accountable private-public partnership, national and global poverty in the context of prosperity for the chosen few is something that may become endemic (Bourdieu, 201, Rupert and Scott, 2006, Broad 2002, Hawkesworth, 2006, Stigltz, 2003). Further shortcomings of Rostow’s theoretical system, appealing in its theoretical elegance and discursive resilience is the fact that present development and global economic conditions have far outstripped it, thus rendering it unhelpful beyond its institutional and cultural imperatives. For instance, nationally, subsistence agriculture coexist with industrial sectors and modern service sectors; traditional agricultural production and commercial exportoriented cash crop production coexist without the latter helping to improve the former. The capitalist free market system does not seem to have transformative agendas. It has virtually subsumed subsistence, traditional, and commercial or capitalist production, or traditional and “modern” economic sectors simultaneously as its de facto tributaries. Contrary to Rostow’s mechanical evolutionary theoretical assumptions, deliberate development policy and program intervention is needed to mainstream economic development so

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that it becomes worthy of its meaning and address the livelihood concerns of the multitude. There is no convincing evidence to support Rostow’s proposition that societies and economies neatly and mechanically move in a linear progression. Historical precedents demonstrate the contrary; progress is the result of systematically and altruistically conceptualized public policy, government effort, and political commitment. Mark Germany under Bismark, the United States under Jeffersonian philosophy, Japan under the Marshall Plan, and earlier the Meji restoration leaders. The arguments propounded heretofore should lead us to speculate whether international aid is premised on false development agendas and assumptions, and not just faulty paradigms. Could it be that international assistance sought to step in and fill the capital accumulation implied in Rostow’s stage 2 in which surplus production leads to accumulation of investment capital? If so, the fallacy of international development assistance and intervention is clear. For Rostow’s model, its shortcomings discussed above notwithstanding, envisions the simultaneous accumulation, not just of financial capital, but also human, cultural, and institutional capital. This means that external injection of capital in the absence of other capitals is doomed to failure, which is exactly what has happened. Sadly, not only politicians like England’s Tony Blair, but also development scholars like Jeffery Sachs, and UN and other experts continue to advocate more of the same. While referring to external intervention in the passage of Third World economies from stage two to three in his 1990s works, Rostow does not deal with the adverse effects of external intervention. That Rostow sees intervention as a good and positive thing contradicts the massive evidence around Africa’s underdevelopment in the face of continuous external aid flows (Leonard and Strauss, 2003, Adedeji, 1993, Mkandawire and Soludo, 1999). The World Bank’s subtle admission that the lessons learned from its four decades of development intervention is that its macroeconomic premises of development do not work and that moving forward its development fundamentals will change (World Bank, 1999/2000, pp. 18, 1–50) As stated earlier, there is a very positive contribution that can be picked up from Rostow’s theoretical formulations. In incorporating psychological, sociological, anthropological and institutional dimensions of development, Rostow is implying that development is about people and the kind of human and institutional capacity they build. The trust they have in the system they live under, and the pattern of changes they make in their subjective (psychological, attitudinal, world view, experientially derived meanings, intergroup, and interpersonal relations, aspirations, knowledge etc.) and the existence of socio-political setting that nurture positive transformation in the social, cultural, and political economy realms is critical. All these are not external to development, but its essence.

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Many development observes affirm this type of self-directed transformation as serving the success of the Asian Tigers. The Asian tigers, among many other enlightened innovations, undertook prolonged human capital formation and institutional transformation strategies while retaining the essential Asian character of their changing cultures (Thompson and Thompson, 2000, 88–90, World Bank, 1993, 179–181). No similar process can be observed in Africa. What many African scholars now observe is that external development intervention in Africa has always been about interests other than those of Africa, and as such disruptive of any authentic African processes (Okigbo, 1993, 31–38, George, 1993, 59–72, Adei, 1990). We have to keep repeating, if we must, Claud Ake’s declaration (1992) that it is not so much that Africa has failed in its development over the past 50 years, but that it never started its proper, Africa-conceived development path in the first place.

MODERNIZATION THEORY: BEYOND ROSTOW The term “modernization” in the development context, is understood by many to mean upgrading the economic systems of poor countries to resemble those in the developed world. For a fuller understanding of the evolution of “modernist” theory and practice of development, it is important to understand its mutation from within the discipline of economics. The understanding of the economic development of the West itself is based on theoretical grounds of perfect rationality and knowledge of economic actors, a fallacy that the economist George Soros (2008) argues is stoutly exposed by the 2008 global economic and financial meltdown. The intellectual struggle against the heroic economic theories of neo-liberal orthodoxy that became the development doctrine of the World Bank and other donors, was challenged from inception by other more reality-grounded schools of economic thought. It is unfortunate that these other shades of economic thinking that would have been a better development starting point were elbowed out by the neoclassical, “modernist” thinkers. The main modernist assumptions are embedded in the neoclassical mindset which cleanses the social and economic world of all real life events and existential complexities and simply views economic growth as a linear production function. In spite of its extremely reductionist nature that hinders grasp of the complex interrelationships of the economy to other dimensions of society, it enjoyed ascendancy over the cogent arguments for broader, and more holistic economic formulations from within economics itself. In his 1985 seminal work, the renown transaction cost and institutional economist Oliver E. Williamson, provides compelling insights into the intersections of

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law, economics, and organization theories that were developed by a number of economist during the 1930s-1940s (1–7). These insights were believed to provide “A sound basis for further advances” (7) in understanding economic transformation which would be understood and framed as a complex and dynamic interplay of human, cultural, legal/contractual and social and corporate governance and, by extension, political governance considerations. Williamson laments that, in spite of the obvious multi-dimensionality and social foundations of economic activity, simplified and mechanistic formulations of neoclassical economic thinking assumed continued to assume prominence: The prevailing orientation toward economic organization in the thirty-year hiatus between 1940 and 1970 was that technological features of firm and market organization were determinative . . . firms were characterized as production functions; markets served as significant devices; contracting was accomplished through an auctioneer; and disputes were disregarded because of the presumed efficacy of court adjudication (7)

Thus, modernist theory purified the complex and messy economic processes and their socio-cultural, legal, and political foundations into a simplified and reduced mechanical process. The modernization paradigm became the universal formula for addressing Third World development. This rise to conceptual and practical preeminence of modernization as stated, did not go unchallenged. Resistance and challenge to the reduced and simplified modeling of neoclassical economics started to build momentum, and by the 1970s, some economists declared that neoclassical orthodoxy was dead and even went on to predict that other models that take into account more holistic organizational processes within economic enterprises, especially at the micro level, but also the macro level, would be rising (Williamson 1985, 7–9). Though they have not dislodged the neoclassical model from its global hold, other alternative ideas have flourished. The field of economics today has many streams looking at the psychological, sociological and historical contexts of economic institutions (Hirshman, 1970, North, 1990 Hodgson, 1988, Lea, Tarpy and Webly 1987 Williamson, 1985, Hirschman, 1981). Beginning in the 1980s, the neoclassical model has been put on the defensive by a host of opposing analyses from other social science disciplines, notably sociology. The renown sociologist, Amita Etzioni (1988) was among the leading voices opposing the claims of neoclassical orthodoxy. Others also made compelling contributions. All this notwithstanding, the modernist paradigm remains the default global paradigm. The reason for this appears to be the deep entrenchment of neoclassical economics into the national and international economic and policy powerhouses and bureaucracies.

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Rostow was presented in some detail above because he is still considered the father of “modernism” since his second and third stages of development are believed to have influenced the mode of development-finance intervention which the World Bank made conventional in development. In fairness, Rostow, as we already saw, condemned the excessive linearity and reductionism of the modernist orthodoxy. Beyond Rostow and “modernization”, it may be instructive to consider a few competing development perspectives circulating in the academy and the development community. To the present author, the following are the more resilient perspectives: • • • •

Dependency theory of development and underdevelopment World System theory The Humanitarian Development Paradigm Rent-Seeking societies theory

DEPENDENCY THEORY The dependency perspective is not a unified theory. There are some distinct nuances within this theoretical school of thought. Walter Rodney can be considered one of the pioneers of this school with regard to Africa. His bookHow Europe Underdeveloped Africa—first published in 1972 in Great Britain, then in 1974 and 1982 by Howard University Press in Washington DC, highlights the existence of direct but inverse relationship between African and European economic developments. As raw material supplier, Africa continues on the path of deepening underdevelopment, the recipient European metropolises continue their economic growth. It looks that the development of Europe has been predicated on the corresponding underdevelopment of Africa-colonial and post-colonial. Here is how he summarized Africa’s underdevelopment: The question as to who, and what is responsible for Africa’s underdevelopment can be answered at two levels. Firstly, the answer is that the operation of the imperialist system bears major responsibility for African economic retardation by draining African wealth and by making it impossible to develop more rapidly the resources of the continent. Secondly, one has to deal with those who manipulated the system and those who are either agents or unwitting accomplices of the said system (1982, 27)

Here, Rodney is clearly pointing to the external economic designs that link Africa to the industrialized West as mere raw material supplier that inhibit

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its development. Africa has been forced to remain in this position by external interests and African collaborators (political elites). In a similar vein, most versions of Dependency theory, with origins in Latin America and the Caribbean, became major challengers of the Rostownian and neoclassical, modernist schools of thought. The main figures in this school of thought today span many regions, though the currency of their ideas have diminished in recent decades. Dependency ideas vary some, (Chilcote, 1984, Gunder Frank, 1970, 1979 Samir Amin (1976), Emanuel Wallerstein (1979 reprinted 1986, 27–30)) but have similar messages. In their varied ways, all the dependency works highlight the nexus of economic relationships between first and third world countries that consistently seems to produce development in the former and underdevelopment in the latter.

WORLD SYSTEMS THEORY The main figure in this school of thought is Emanuel Wallerstein and much earlier on, John Galtung1 of the Scandinavian Institute of Peace. Wallerstein’s major work on Africa published in 1986 is titled Africa and the Modern World. This school of thought has had significant academic following. Like the Center-Periphery perspective, it takes the dependency idea and formulates it into a class nexus within first and third world countries, with the upper class in both colluding to exploit the poor. The World Systems project is to see how resources are extracted from the poor by the elite of third world societies and how these resources filter through the global system to benefit the economic elite of the first world. In other words, the elite in each setting benefits from the suffering and exploitation of the poor in both poor and rich countries. Today, when scholars speak of the Global north and Global South, they are looking at the shared worlds and values of the haves in the first and third worlds and the have-nots amongst them.

THE HUMANITARIAN DEVELOPMENT PARADIGM This theory, developed by the Oxford educated economist, Wilfred David (2004), advocates a complete rethinking and reorientation of the development conversation and enterprise. It challenges the conventional model’s assertions, metaphors, institutional power arrangements and the like, aiming for “people-centered dialogue, in which human agency becomes the primary unit of interpretation and correlative human choices, capabilities, and freedoms are elevated to center stage of development theory, practice, and policy” (p. ix).

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The fundamental differences between the conventional top-down, or trickledown framework and the Humanitarian Paradigm are carefully analyzed in a number of the book’s chapters. More importantly, chapter 4 of the book challenges the one-size-fits all mechanical dogma of the top-down, “modernist” paradigm. It argues that culture and human conditions are not friendly to a unitary, authoritative interpretation, and that a variety of interpretations are possible depending on the epistemological parameters employed. This fact alone argues against the application of rigid interpretation of cause-effect analyses and policy and program prescriptions based on them. It is a powerful argument for paradigm shift.

RENT-SEEKING THEORY This theory, pioneered by Erich Weed (1998) “Why People Stay Poor Elsewhere” advances the proposition that the rich First World or the industrialized countries have nothing to do with the poverty of Third World peoples. Poverty in the Third World is solely the function of kleptocracy and rent seeking by Third World elite. He defines rent as “profit above opportunity cost” which is a serious negation and distortion of economic activities. This particular school of thought emphasizes the argument that Third World leaders are uncaring about the welfare of their people and the normal functioning of their economies. So they steal and plunder and extract with impunity, against all the rules of economic management and market logic. Under this scenario, no economic improvement can occur and the rich in poor countries can only thrive on their predatory behavior which bars development. This is a tenuous theoretical proposition, clearly aimed at refuting the chorus of criticisms of the role of the developed world in exacerbating Africa’s economic and political suffering which are reflected in all other aspects of life. Its author ends up agreeing with dependency theorists that, though Third World elite are entirely responsible for their societies’ poverty, they are helped by the current structure of the global economic arrangement that allows the free flow of capital from anywhere to everywhere while it disallows the movement of labor competitively. This allows Third World kleptocrats to move around the world and invest the money they steal from national coffers. Third World people, on the other hand, are captives of their exploitative elite with no competitive opportunities to move around to better economic pastures-the only way that Third World cartel-like rent-seeking could be defeated (380–381). While the money stolen by Third World elite from their societies could be moved around freely and invested anywhere, their captive citizens who are the sources of the stolen wealth do not have the choice to

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abandon their abusive and exploitative leaders and go elsewhere to sell their labor for and under better conditions. In this sense only, the international system is complicit in the plight of Third World people, according to rentseeking theory. A few ideologues attempted to join this voice with quantitative analysis to buttress the theoretical point. This is a very recent theory that seems to have gained little traction in the conversation on development.

BEYOND FORMAL THEORIES OF DEVELOPMENT The frustration with Africa’s desperate development situation has triggered widespread Afro-pessimism within and outside the continent. Of course, in response, Afro-optimism has also risen to counter the defeatist sentiments of Afro-pessimism. Other sentiments triggered by Africa’s development debacle have other nuances or arguments about Africa’s development failures. These are found outside the formal theoretical development conversations. They can be considered to fall under the general genre of ‘internalist” arguments not necessarily aimed at proposing frameworks for solutions. But, they are important in the sense that they are attempting to lead to conclusions about Africa and its future that could easily spread into full blown debate that detracts from the main and critical development issues. Somewhat sympathetic researchers like Stephen McCarty (1994) see Africa’s own cultural and institutional arrangements perpetuating fundamental economic inefficiency that blocks development (31–32) McCarty is hopeful, though, that Africa, in time, will overcome its cultural and institutional constraints and move on the path of development. His argument of causation of development failure is entirely “internalist.” No other factors, besides Africa’s dysfunctional institutional arrangements and systems of values is responsible for the continent’s underdevelopment. In a similar vein, but reaching very radical conclusions are Schwab (2001), Chabal & Daloz (1999 ), Bayart, Ellis & Hibou (1999), Bates (2008) Hodges (2001) and many others. The thinking that emerges from these authors is that Africa is an aberrant region where, what would be abnormal and unthinkable in other regions, functions as a normal way of life and doing business. In these and similar works, it is pointed out that the social value systems and structures that manifest themselves in the pervasive and legendary corruption and incompetence of African regimes lead to poor and inefficient decision making that hinders development and progress. McCarthy, for instance, recognizes that Asian countries like Indonesia, noted for their institutionalized corruption, nevertheless end up making rational and economically efficient decision and their development

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is moving forward. In Africa, corrupt and inefficient decisions that negate the common good may actually be seen by corrupt officials and their entourage of dependents and beneficiaries as totally sensible and rational. The entourage of beneficiaries are generally clan or ethnic affiliates with their particularistic behaviors which makes scaling up or “universalizing” social and economic thinking and institution building impossible. Others in this genre think that disorder works for Africa, while others, Chabal and Daloz, in particular, declare that Contemporary Africa displays a new pattern of civilization that is based on consuming what it never produces. A very abnormal civilization, as the authors see it. In the interest of specifying the content of an emerging radicalism in interpreting African development challenges, a few words from Daloz and Chabal are in order. Claiming to base their argument on Anthropological evidence and the application Weberian framework on how modern states and bureaucracies are organized to function, the authors say that researchers on African development and underdevelopment “. . . must make sense what is happening without resorting to the so-called mysteries of African ‘barbarism’” (xvii). It is claimed that African states share a system of patrimonial sentiment and propensity to disorder” (xix). This leads them to place Africa’s inability to develop squarely in its own cultural traits: “. . . the fundamental reason why the continent south of the Sahara has ‘deviated’ from the common developmental norm is ‘African Culture’; the common core of which includes: apathy, a large dose of fatalism, a peculiar relation to the notion of time, the insignificance of the individual in the face of the community, a tendency to ‘convivial’ excesses, the primacy of conflict avoidance and the weight of the irrational” (128).

The authors cite other sources for most of the negative attributions they list, meaning this view is more widespread than is assumed. In this school of thought, development barriers are not confined to dysfunctional institutional and leadership formations since Africa’s domination by external forces, it pervades the very body and fabric of African cultural and social life. They are convinced that Africa is an aberration in development and will remain so: “Clearly, what is new in such argument is a self-critical approach rejecting the habitual exculpating explanations of Africa’s predicament and focusing attention both on the putative incompatibility of African culture(s) with modern economic development and on the hitherto virtually taboo question of mentalities. For decades, it was virtually unacceptable seriously to consider such issues since they would almost inevitably have been regarded as the remnants of an imperial outlook or even racist prejudices. After all, under colonial rule, cultural

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differences were readily employed as instruments of domination, of contempthence the understandable tendency to reject an emphasis on such factors as facile xenophobia. Unfortunately, those well-meaning responses eventually brought about a stifling political correctness, an excess of analytical conformism which all too readily branded as racist any attempt to discuss these issues, an attitude that eventually hampered our understanding of the continent” (129).

The present study will provide theoretical propositions and empirical evidence to refute this narrow and subjective attribution of failure to a generalized African culture, without denying the cultural uniqueness and mosaic that is Africa. Being unique does not at all imply being unable to improve ones life, health, economy, and envisioning organized approaches to common problems or seeking their universalized solutions—hard work, creating new solutions to old problems, and taking pride in having dealt with one’s own problems. The things that needed to be incorporated into Africa’s development vision and strategy and were not, for any number of reasons, will be presented and discussed. The general direction of analysis will be that Africa can rise up, but it has to learn to stand up for its interests like never before. Many non-Western societies were similarly dubbed a failure until they succeeded. India, for instance, was considered as doomed to perennial poverty at one time. I clearly remember Indira Ghandi’s lecture during the early 1960s, at the University of Washington, Seattle where I was undergraduate student. I believe she was foreign minister of India then. Her statement, that rings in my ears to this day, went something like this: “the world powers, the US in particular, do not take India seriously because they consider her condemned to eternal poverty and backwardness. If we are going to have any voice in how we relate to them, we better make sure that we feed and cloth ourselves.” Look at where India is today. Similarly, I met some American academics, in the 1980s, who had participated in the Korean war. They told me how wrong their low expectation was of South Korea, confessing that they were amazed at how differently, from their low expectation, South Korea had performed. Clearly, leadership dedication and commitment to development and the establishment of effective and well functioning institutions that nurtures the growth of human capital and other necessary development conditions are critical. Africa has been systematically shortchanged in this regard, as discussed in earlier pages. As we, in the academy constantly probe, the cause-effect relationships in development show themselves to be complex. They span the local, national, regional, and global structures and dynamics. It is true that the mark of genius and vision is the ability to navigate these spaces economically, socially, politically, institutionally and culturally to raise ones society to the level of

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self-sufficiency and competitiveness. It so happens that Africa’s historical predicament has not allowed it to be gifted with the sort of leadership that sought legitimacy and purpose from its own people through its demonstrated vision and ambition to move society forward. The leaders behave like imposters constantly seduced by the glamour of the “other” and kowtowed by its compelling powers of wealth and military might and the loathing of their own people, by extension, themselves. This being the case, it is the height of self-righteousness, and superiority complex on the part of Chabal and Daloz to make such a heroic generalization about Africa’s inherent anti—development and anti-progress characteristics on epistemologically weak and methodologically suspect grounds. The problem is not intrinsic African characteristics, but the intersection of many historically deep rooted wounds, enduring process and value and system deconstruction and reconstructions by outsiders that has undone Africa’s potentials. The distorted values and systems have resisted new and relevant reconfigurations in the service of the people because of the inevitable force of acquired cultural inertia and internal elite corruption and oppression supported by international complicity in this aberrational behavior. Economists often refer to the problem of localized, small scale economic and social organization as one of market and production fragmentation that cannot serve the needs of broad, national development agendas. Africa’s staple production and distribution (market) systems remain small, fragmented and localized because of the persistent neglect and indifference to centering development around the people the wealth production effects of which would have led to market development and integration at the national, regional and continental levels. For development to occur, first, each local community has to engage in economic activities that depart from subsistence production in favor of surplus production, and have stable environments in which transaction in tradable goods between neighboring communities and the value added processing of goods locally or nationally and beyond that, regionally, could be facilitated by institutional, credit, technology, logistic, and contract enforcement facilities. This has never been how African economies were designed to behave. In fact, rural communities, the powerhouses of any economy in early development stages, were ignored and exploited throughout Africa’s history. It is true that Africa’s development failure and the gross human insecurity produced by centuries of trauma, misrule, and abuse have caused people to retreat to particularistic enclaves like ethnicity, religion, clan and locale. Having observed the African particularistic dilemmas, many researchers, nevertheless, join the many Afro-optimist insights that, in addition to the encouraging precedents set by a few African countries like Botswana, Ghana and a

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few others, something positive is palpable in the many social and economic processes that are emerging outside the governments, among civil society groups (Ayittey, 2005, pp. xxiv–xxvi, Trip, Casimiro, Kwesiga and mungwa, 2009). These new and emerging trends, invariably led by young, enthusiastic people with “can do” attitudes, and by women, may form a critical mass of like-minded people to put Africa on the right path of development. These groups may well start to insist on regime accountability and respect for the peoples rights, and the rule of law. Still, one has to worry about the reaction of African governments. They could just as easily suppress or disallow these grassroots initiatives. This is why donors and the international community need to nurture and support these and similar groups and their demands for fundamental structural and political reforms to make sure that change and progress become irreversible. Without the creation of a viable and accountable state system, the energetic drive of many creative niches will remain non-transformational and marginal at best and may be dismantled or extinguished at worst. Overhauling the state system to serve coherent national economic and social processes which can feed into regional and continental economic systems must be a priority, no matter how difficult the task. The vocal pessimists do not detect the positive undercurrents that some see. In addition to Chabal and Daloz. (1999) for instance, there are among many Afro-pessimists those who see bleak chances for Africa to move out of the “heart of darkness.” According to these researchers, African states in general have evolved ‘from kleptocracy to the Felonius State’ (Bayart, Ellis and Hibou, 1999). They declare that the African state has been criminalized. Change always starts at the margins; at the individual and small group levels. It is people who think differently from the crowd that chart new territories in the economy, education, science, technology, and all other areas of human endeavor that help. Such individuals and groups inject new and innovative thinking that moves society forward, however slowly. According to the pessimists, Africans are not capable of such individualized and small group scientific discovery and forward movement. Progress has to be statewide and state-led, according to them. In part, the pessimists justify their reasoning on the behavior of African intellectuals whom they fault for falling back into their “backward cultures” when they assume power in their countries after extensive exposure to international development thinking and education in prestigious western universities. The cultures they fall back into are the very ones which they had robustly criticized while abroad (Chabal & Daloz, 1999, p. 131). They see no reasonable hope for Africa to make sense of its existence in the development sense that the rest of the world goes by. This perspective conveniently ignores the fact that without a critical mass of like-minded people, those with ideas differing from the majority soon get

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drowned out. They learn rationally, perhaps opportunistically too, that they must succumb to views of the majority to survive. Groups excluded from mainstream participation of any sort because of their gender, race or other factors, will tell that it takes a critical mass of at least 30% of the circle before you can advance new ideas and structures and have them successfully argued and implemented. African intellectuals who have the universal good in mind never achieved that critical proportion to change their societies. Time and space do not allow analysis of this huge fallacy in the thinking of these authors. What is significant is to note that strong voices are rising that say that Africans are inherently incapable of bringing about their development. Critiquing those who advocate that Africa launch a new, homegrown development modeled, owned and operated by itself to succeed in the future, Chabal and Daloz argue that development can only result from the “laborious adaptation of foreign models” (p. 125) and that the resort to indigenization is to avoid meeting the challenge of development and that those who advocate that Africa follow its own path offer no concrete development models. This last charge is reasonable and that is precisely the deficit this study will strives to contribute to. African intellectuals are in no doubt that the continent’s total institutional reorganization and destruction by colonialists have deleted the fundamental logic of African economic and societal principles on which updated institutions and practices could have been built and that this draw back will take a consistent effort to fix. In Frimpong-Ansah’s view (1991, pp. 55–58) the early start of Ghana’s economic development effort was colored by predatory British colonial institutionalized designs, a point of view that attributes the initial conditions of Ghana’s, and by extension other African economies, to a dependent, externally articulated and directed status. Similarly, Samir Amin (1976) modified and applied Rodney’s and other dependency ideas to Africa, and showed the destructiveness of external forces and interests to Africa’s economic affairs. Adebayo Adedeji (1993), compiled works by different authors all of whom point to the nexus of domestic and international forces that has had a stranglehold on Africa’s development. Adedeji characterized Africa’s strategic agenda, “. . . Africa must develop a common core of agenda of its own. It must be based on the vision of what development should be and what it takes to bring it about-courage, diligence, and confidence” (207). Up until the present, the collusion of international forces and illegitimate African state elites, has rendered Africa’s development platform a contested space that has been opened to foreign exploitation. On this dilemma, Adedeji quotes Achile Mbembe, whose views Adedeje obviously esteems: Africa as a trading post, or Africa in Development? An Africa with limited functions in the world economy, at best reacting to the convulsions of goods and capital

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markets as far away as economic and political power is from the lands where the majority live-or an Africa where at last, the much praised potential, both natural and human, is being given a chance to unfold for the benefit of those on the land? An Africa held hostage by the political outgrowth of a volatile clique of traders in drugs, used clothes . . . or an Africa where, through pains and labor, the going slow as it must be when public affairs are managed in the interest of all citizens, there will be a collective move away from hunger, disease, deprivation, and despondence and, slowly but steadily, towards sustained and pervasive hope? (207)

Since Africans conceive the right path to development, it also means that they prepare themselves to be capable methodologically and programmatically to implement it. The question now is whether those who can conceive Africa’s new path to development as it should be, will have the critical mass, the policy space and the material support to put their concepts into practice. What African intellectual leaders have, finally, understood is that no one but Africans themselves can develop their economies and bring about enduring dignity, respect, and improvements in their lives. Realizing what is needed is one big beginning step. But creating the conditions for it requires a momentous political, institutional, and governance commitment which has not yet come about, but which the African people must forge at any cost. Without fixing government to become a powerful tool for implementation of the common economic, social, and political well-being of all citizens, development efforts can go no where. The major players in Africa’s current development have varied from region to region and from time to time. For example, the West versus the Socialistassisted countries and regions in the past. At the present time China and India, particularly China, have become major competitors of the West, the World Bank in particular, in obstructing Africa’s development agenda. The major paradigm remains the same. China’s emphasis is on winning contracts for the construction of roads and other infrastructure and the accompanying raw material extraction. The people are not participating and learning the material and technological requirements of the future upkeep of these infrastructures. There are no visible designs to center the African people in the continent’s development at all levels and in all sectors; to develop their health, nutrition, knowledge, skills and competence to do everything at every level for themselves and to control and own them long term. China has simply followed the footsteps of previous exploitative pathways of outside interests and their intervention paradigms; raw materials from Africa, cheap, Chinese manufactured good to Africa. Ridiculously, in Africa where unemployment runs upwards of 70 per cent, Chinese laborers in millions and mid and high-level technical and managerial personnel dominate Africa’s landscape of fledgling economies and infrastructure development. What a development model for Africa. More will be presented and said about this later.

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LESSONS LEARNED It is clear that Africa must change its paradigms after nearly fifty years of playing around with different, externally originated and ideologically inspired paradigms and failing. For once, Africa has to believe in and depend on itself. African leaders rush to the bosom of whoever flatters their ego and is willing to throw a few meaningless but deeply corrupting loans and other favors. Now, new dependence on China, and to a lesser extent on India, is evident. One wishes it were based on a new framework of partnership; but it is not. It is very much a patrimonial relationship and a new dependence. This new dependence replaces previous dependence on the West. Africa needs new, visionary leaders with independent minds to frame their own development, to engage their people as partners, and to channel external assistance and aid to where exactly they are relevant or needed. We need to say again and again that what Africa needs is its own framework of development, not by reinventing the wheel but by putting existing ideas in a format that lends itself to sustainable and authentic African development. Mkandawire & Soludo (1999, vii) lament that to date, “A major irony of African development history is that the theories and models employed have largely come from outside the continent. No other region of the world has been so dominated by external ideas and models.” Africans have to own up to the challenges of their own development. From observation of many stirrings on the continent2 signs among the people are that their demand for their economic rights, political citizenship, and development ownership will increase. They will need a theoretical tool to organize their development thinking and this is an effort, in part, to provide that theoretical tool. In support of the growing demand for homegrown development modeling, it is necessary to think of and design a model that can serve both micro and macro needs. As one economic critique once put it “It is possible that the true heroes of human history and improvement are those who aim for small useful reforms” that open up opportunities for change that did not exist before and that can be a critical tipping point.

NOTES 1. I recall an article he wrote in 1972 or 73 on the Structure of Imperialism where he develops the linkage between African (Third World) elite and powerful economic elites of the first world that leads to the surplus and resource extraction from traditional as well as modern economic sectors of the former by the latter. Efforts to trace that article are still underway.

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2. This researcher presented a paper on China in Africa at a conference by the same name organized by Howard University March 31–April 1, 2008. In that study, many protest movements against open door policies for Chinese goods and workers was seen as growing in Southern and West Africa. The political resistance in Kenya, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe are also indicative of new trends.

Chapter Two

The Alternative Development Theory: The Participatory Social Learning Development Theory and Model for Africa

The Participatory Social Learning Theory of development is the alternative theory and model or paradigm that will be proposed for Africa’s homegrown and effective development. This theoretical framework is an interdisciplinary synthesis drawing on convergent ideas in sociology, education, psychology, economics and social-psychology. The participatory social learning theory or paradigm has been in emergence since the early 1970s, though its intellectual roots are traceable to classical theories especially in sociology, economics, education, and even Adam Smith’s ideas of growing production efficiency that comes from on-the-job practice and learning. The participatory social learning framework views socioeconomic transformation or development as a process of continuous learning and experimenting by people, individually and collectively. Through doing, experiencing and, reflecting and absorbing new ideas and technologies, people acquire the requisite knowledge, skills and empirical and theoretical reasoning that comes from targeted participation in concept building and the translation of concepts into purposeful action. In this sense, participatory social learning in development is not different from other principles of learning and learning-by-doing in school or informal education settings. As in education, social learning in development moves along a learning curve and provides proper meaning to new ideas and technologies and facilitates constructive use of them in the interest of the individual’s and society’s economic and social progress. The Sociological roots of the learning model are clearly evident in Emile Durkheim’s studies (1977/1952/ 1933). Durkheim was prominent among modern thinkers in analyzing the role of learning, experiencing, reflecting and using these to transform self and environment as a distinctly human attribute. Any differences we see between groups and individuals, he argued 47

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in his study titled Education and Sociology (1952, chapter 1) reflects the type and quality of education and experience they have been exposed to. His analysis was much more expansive and sociological than the usual nature/ nurture debate. This point needs no belaboring here beyond asserting that development, appropriately defined and understood, is a human enterprise of self, cultural, and economic transformation through education—learning and experimenting. Durkheim looked at what limited anthropological data was available to him and supplementing them with other historical data to formulate his concepts of “social facts” and “public moral.” These concepts correspond to what we understand today as “norms” and “normative standards”-shared values that help individuals and groups to organize their social and economic behavior in relation to each other. These normative standards are intergenerationally transferable to ensure social unity, stability and continuity even during the process of change. The extent and nature of human contact that underlie this process of value and ideas transmission, Durkheim observes, is affected by population size and settlement density and patterns. The smaller and more tightly organized the group, the greater the face to face interaction, and therefore, the stronger the control and influence each person and group of persons have on each other to maintain received norms and values. Here is a case where the individual and public or collective realms almost fuse, showing little space between them. The community is cohesive and more or less homogenous in observable thought and outlook (Durkheim, 1933, 70–100). Change in such environments happens very slowly and very cautiously, and only at the margins of mainstream thought. New ideas and methods are suspect and are carefully scrutinized for their impact on existing social and economic arrangementsthe status quo. This is characteristic of small-scale societies organized around well defined an rigorously enforced social norms. The closed, anti-change and particularistic nature of such traditional societies is not unique to Africa. It is universal. The reverse is generally true with large and complex, and typically heterogeneous groups held together by social structures built around symbiotic technical and functional interdependence. People of diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds are brought together in a unified or contiguous space by different pull-forces, like economic opportunities or life-style attractions. That is, different People come to live in close proximity to each other. They start to form clusters around functional necessities rather than cultural or ethnic likeness. Such clusters of specialized, functional and symbiotic groups characterize the make-up of large and complex organizations like cities and corporations and even modern states. Clusters are formed around technical or other complementary functional specializations. Members need each other to

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function and accomplish designated tasks that ensure the survival and progress of the individual and the complex whole. While new ideas and changes must still pass through a labyrinth of social and institutional pathways (Khun, 1970) they are still more readily accepted and incorporated into operational systems than they would be in traditional, tight knit and controlled setting thus pushing the frontier of new knowledge and its application forward. Durkheim suggests that the qualitative difference, and difference in rate of change, between the expected conformity and tight control over members by small scale traditional communities, as opposed to the technical, and performance expectations and requirements of large scale and technically and functionally differentiated groups is at the heart of the difference between the rates of change that can be expected from the small scale village style of organization of life and large scale, typically urban and industrial settings. Large scale human organizations reward innovation and change more readily since their survival and continuity depends on technical solution to increasingly complex problems shared by people not otherwise (racially, ethnically, religiously etc.) closely linked to each other. Small scale traditional structures, on the other hand, affective and tightly knit in their organizational form, are threatened by change and innovation that are unfamiliar, non-customary and alien to their system of values, outlooks, and ways of life. To introduce change and innovation constructively and in a manner that avoids chaos and anarchy and fosters smooth and gradual transition, thoughtful and learning based approach and strategy to the transformation of rural societies and their economies is needed. If we understand development to mean the ability of people to solve progressively more complex economic, technological and social problems on which improvements in the quality of life are predicated, patient education, encouragement, and familiarizing people with new thinking and new ways of doing this (learning and educating) become essential. This cannot be left entirely to the people without making them vulnerable to devious individuals and groups whose quick thinking and unscrupulous behavior may end up exploiting, disorganizing and derailing the economic, social, and cultural life of the people in need of improvement and development. It is the absence of the right education or learning based intervention to develop the people and their economies and the chaos and anarchy being created by self-serving local and international syndicates that seem to be the inspiration for the works of Chabal and Daloz (1999) Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou (1999) MacGaffey and Bazenguissa-Gang (2000) and their likes. African governments must assume responsibility for the healthy and coherent transition of their societies and economies by enlisting the partnership of the African people, civil society and intellectuals.

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To Africa’s development theory and practice, not only economics, but other branches of the social sciences like sociology, history and anthropology, education and pedagogy should all contribute. As already shown from Durkheim and other sociologists cited, sociology has a great deal to contribute. But so far, this field has been reluctant to engage in the field of development, or doing policy-relevant research. The reason given is the fear that engaging in applied areas and doing policy relevant research would compromise its basic knowledge building mission or that sociology’s quest for “objective,” and value free knowledge would be impeded. Some sociologists had countered this argument insisting that sociological inquiry is, in any event, rooted “. . . in values and preconceptions and that attempts to attain ethical neutrality are futile” (Hall and Midgley, 1988, 12). Such unresolved disciplinary controversies have generally kept sociology from actively contributing to the critical area of development. The general absence of sociological perspectives in development design has helped to strengthen the monopoly of neoclassical economics of the space and absolute supremacy in shaping dominant development frameworks, however inadequate its understanding of the complex social and structural intersections of economic transactions and innovations have been. Of all academic disciplines besides economics, the field of education remained heavily engaged in formulating ideas that would service rural development efforts (Zewde, 1991, 84), though the neoclassical orthodoxy gave little room for inclusion of the pedagogical perspective.

THE PARTICIPATORY SOCIAL LEARNING PARADIGM: THE EVOLUTION OF AN INTERDISCIPLINARY THEORY AND DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK The concept of participation, in the development literature, and development reports is problematic. People are often said to have participated in a project merely because they were made to comply with requests to have them bring stones and gravel to a development project, or contribute money, or labor, or whatever development experts and authorities demand. This is not participation. It is complying with orders from experts or local officials, which can actually be alienating. It does not engage and center the people as learners, re-conceptualizing the familiar, understanding, and learning new ways of solving old and familiar problems. In this sense, true participation in development has to have, as its core purpose, enabling, empowering, and engaging the people to learn, conceptualize, and undertake the varying range of tasks

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that incrementally lead to improving the total human condition and sustaining the positive outcomes of such an effort. Defining development in terms of learning alone also has its own shortfalls. If we conceive people as mere learners in development, we turn them into passive recipients of knowledge and skills of others, invalidating what they may have to offer themselves in addressing development and transformation challenges. In development, where much that is new needs to come from the outside, there is also need for the latent and manifest local knowledge and wisdom regarding the organization of life and scaling up of economic activities in a given environment. Knowledge of institutional structures, history and ecology is needed as part of the development equation. In African development, the people, their knowledge, priorities, wishes and aspirations never played a part. Even where much touted African initiatives like the Lagos Plan of Action were designed, it hung from the top in the air. There was no sign of it being part and parcel of ordinary African peoples’ undertaking. Development is always treated like an abstract machine designed by experts that will produce an imagined basket of goods and services called the gross domestic product (GDP), and per capita income. NEPAD, the latest African fad, takes this abstracted fallacy to a new level. To be real and goal-driven, development has to address the details of field level action that will produce change in the production habit, technique, application of labor, and scale of learning at each individual, family, firm, and community (rural or urban) level. This is why the two concepts of “participation” and “Social learning”, that have separately floated around in many a development literatures, are brought together, in this research, to form a conceptual whole. The participatory social learning theory or paradigm as an alternative framework to modernization became palpable beginning around the mid 1960s (Lipset, 1967, Poper 1959) but was energized by the 1970s. The economist, Edgar Dunn (1971), Kolb (1984, 109) Korten, (1984) Goldstein (1981), Gordon, W. and Marks. S (1981) Rotter (1982) were among the foremost development scholars vigorously developing, finetuning and promoting a social learning type paradigm. Among them, Edgar Dunn is considered by this researcher as the bench-mark contributor. He systematically explored and formulated the theoretical system of social learning in development in a manner that was, and still is, logically clear, consistent and convincing. From his theoretical reasoning, the usefulness of this paradigm for development gained its compelling logic. Coming from the intellectual tradition of economics, Dunn surveyed the origins of change in the natural world and used the evolutionary biological processes

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as metaphors for how societies and communities change and evolve their adaptation to their environment. He laid out his theme thusly: Evolution, biological and social, is a learning process. Phylogenesis is a learning process that has bred animal learning and human learning leading to social learning. Social Learning incorporates many characteristics of its antecedent learning processes but exhibits many unique characteristics of its own. Some of these are evident. Others will require the advance of social science to uncover. Many of the most critical human problems and social problems of our day are developmental problems that can be successfully approached through the medium of some understanding of this learning process. However, the conventional metaphors and methods of economics and other social sciences are deterministic models that cannot be stretched to accommodate adequately the reality of social development (1971, v-vii)

Dunn acknowledged that the roots of the social learning paradigm (to which this researcher added “participatory” to address the real field level issues of including the people as the essential agents of their own development) are to be found primarily in biological and sociological principles. Biology makes significant conceptual contribution because the self-preservation instincts that generate impulses aimed at survival through adaptation is its key concept borrowed by social science disciplines. These impulses are widely recognized as contributing to the conditioning of human and social behavior in a given environment. Sociological concepts make significant contribution because fundamental human self-actualization takes place in the context of social systems whose role and normative structures restrain or facilitate, give or deny meaning to behavior and action as legitimate. The practical and theoretical validity of the social learning paradigm arises from the fact that it recognizes the essence of individual and systemic survival as contingent on adaptability. Dunn looks at it this way: Over the long run, survival is served best by a highly developed learning capacity. At the human level social learning is an essential component of the absolute goal of life . . . Growth motives must be among the target values of the individual that social systems ought to be instrumental in serving. It must also follow that social systems that are instrumental in serving these growth motives . . . are also serving the most fundamental and absolute requirements of the evolutionary system (181)”

The economist Dunn, therefore, sees socioeconomic development as a cumulative, evolutionary process that builds on the lessons of each practical experience. Collective survival is a function of social systems’ capacity to learn from and adapt to changing environments. However small or large,

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change is an inherent characteristic of humans as individuals and as members of a given social and cultural system. Dunn hypothesizes that social systems that support the learning or developmental aspirations of their individual members will, in the long term, be the ones, in fact, the only ones, that will support development consistent with the requirements of survival (p. 181).

HISTORICAL PRECEDENTS OF PARTICIPATORY SOCIAL LEARNING Early American educators, philosophers and leaders had ideas similar to Dunn’s. Thomas Jefferson (1943, 1048–1115) was, perhaps among the earlier thinkers who propagated this perspective. He too viewed formal as well as practical and non-formal education as the foundation, not only of innovative society bent on continued improvement of the quality of its life, but also as the very pillar of an enduring democracy. To Jefferson, science, liberty, and literacy were reciprocally and inextricably interlinked (Lee, 1967, 17). Democratic involvement in economic, social and political affairs should never be taken away from the people because they are not educated enough to be fruitfully engaged, they should be enabled to engage through “learning while doing” opportunities. On this, Lee quotes Jefferson: “I know no safe depository of the ultimate power of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion the remedy is not take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education” (Lee, 1967, 17) The prominent American educator, John Dewey (1951), had similar convictions. As a professional educator, he had the advantage of methodological tools to practically implement his ideas. Dewey too saw the historical roots of learning in the social process itself. People have always learned from each other and from others and built on each other’s knowledge and skills since the beginning of time. He called this the indirect learning (1951, 9–11) which appears to be very close to what we here call social learning. To Dewey: “The social environment consists of all the activities of fellow beings that are bound up in the carrying on the activities of any one of its members. It is truly educative in its effects in the degree in which individual shares or participates in some conjoint activity” (26) Involvement and full participation are the key variables to the process of learning and improving oneself in performing a given task. Formal or organized schooling offers learning opportunities generally in theoretical terms. Its functions are essential because the range and scope of accumulated

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knowledge grows so large and specialized that hands-on learning through practical application and participation is not always feasible, and in many disciplines, not applicable. But the learning principles in formal and informal settings remains more or less the same. Learning must be purposive and must fill the social as well the individual needs, both of which can be complementary. This notion is consistent with sociological assumptions about social roles, interaction, communication, behavior modification and changes resulting from these. All these principles have profound implication for how socioeconomic development should be conceptualized and practiced. They directly suggest that socioeconomic development consists of sets of change activities which individuals, groups and communities evolve, through a give-and take learning process, in a variety of ways, using available material means and knowledge they are able to access or create. Consistent with Thomas Jefferson’s vision that society has the unavoidable responsibility to educate and pull rural society into full economic and political participation, the Land Grant University system was established by the First Morrill Act of July 2, 1862. The Second Morrill Act of 1890 was passed to apply portions of the assets given by the federal government to Land Grant Universities (all 50 states have one such institution), to African Americans (Commer, Campbell, Edwards and Hillison, 2006). The purpose was to democratize education or access to knowledge. The few private universities at the time concentrated on providing education to the elite classes. Congressman Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont considered that this narrow education could not serve the broader need of progress of all the people and tried to pass a bill to establish land grant universities in 1859 but failed. He succeeded in his 1862 legislative effort and the Land Grant University system came into being, with impressive grants in assets including huge tracts of land (Commer et al. 2006). Speaking about the 1890 Morrill provisions that brought the Land Grant system to African Americans, Williams (1979) sees the usefulness of that experience and its meanings to developing countries: “The history of the 1890 land-grant institutions is part of the history of the struggle of American blacks for equality. The history is the story of destroyed dreams and abandoned hopes. It is the story of courage against seemingly insurmountable odds, the refusal to let hope be quashed . . . and the relentless dedication to principles.” (p. 2). Characterizing the attributes that international development workers need to have, he advised: international development requires workers who are sensitive to the needs of others. The individuals must be strong enough to tolerate criticism, forceful enough to press for what they know to be true, humble enough to recognize that they do not have all the answers, wise enough to understand that they may be

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misunderstood, and human enough to accept the fact that they can be changed and can also be the impetus for change (p.4).

He stresses that the history of black 1890 land grant institutions mirror their understanding of these issues. The purpose of land grant universities was to bring knowledge to the people; to teach agriculture, mechanical arts, and military science as well as the, sciences and humanities to farming and industrial classes so that they could be full participants in and contributors to development and progress and enjoy fulfilling lives. In 1862 The Homestead Act which gave people who wanted to farm 160 acres was also passed empowering lots of rural people (Kirkendall, 1991, I-15). Thinking on how to serve and improve the lives of rural people continues to evolve and in 1887, agricultural experiment stations that generated relevant knowledge on improved farming and homemaking was established. Rural people demanded more immediate education that could help them improve their lives and so, the Cooperative Extension Service was established on a very broad basis in 1914.1 These were attached to colleges or faculties of agriculture in the Land Grant University of the state. This was later followed by 4–H clubs for youth-boys and girls. Agricultural and technological education of farmers, home-economics, and 4–H clubs to attend to the needs of youth and family all became part of the Cooperative Extension. Unfortunately, women were considered only instruments of family cohesion and comfort and given only home economics lessons to improve their service to the family, not necessarily to improve their own abilities to pursue their autonomous interests. Services which we can consider as conveyer belt moving relevant and applicable knowledge and skills generated by universities, that sometimes borrowed, tested and adopted technologies from the private sector, were laid out through the agricultural cooperative extension programs. Knowledge, skill and technology were actively disseminated throughout all sectors of rural and semi-rural communities. The Cooperative Extension Service was ingeniously designed to bring the resources of the federal government, state government, and county government in the service of the people. Cooperative Extension services were and still are organized at the county level, close to the people they serve, and have been made accountable to the people as well as the universities, and county governments under whose auspices they operate. This made the services of the cooperative extension system very responsive to the needs of the people and allowed their active input, making it a true learning and teaching process and efficient for lasting development and gradual transformation processes to take root. The staff of cooperative extension services includes community development specialists, nutrition and home economics, youth workers, and agriculture specialists who were directly accountable to the local farmers

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and farm families while being supervised by the county and the agricultural departments of land grant universities. At the disposal of these rural development specialists was a huge arsenal of evolving technology and a permanent stream of credit for farmers to acquire for investment in improved technologies and other development needs. Hence, human capital formation (farmers and their families being actively educated), natural resources (land etc.), institutional improvements (the continued growth of the Cooperative Extension service in range and quality, universities, county and state administration all geared to serve the growth and change of the people), technology, and investment capital all obtained in this model. Rural infrastructure development in the form of roads, phone and electric grids etc. also followed on the footsteps of developing communities both under government and private auspices.

A SMALL TALE OF FARMER-COOPERATIVE EXTENSION WORKER: A BRIEF EXCURSUS As a graduate student, this researcher was sent, by the United Nations, to observe cooperative extension programs in Michigan, Wisconsin and Porto Rico in late 1960s. For a young student from Africa, the experience was memorable. In Michigan, in particular, it was observed that the extension worker and the farmers called each other by first name as we went around to see different community and family development initiatives. In one case, a farmer came and complained that certain techniques recommended to him did not work and that the extension worker should come with the appropriate expert to examine the problem. It was more like an order rather than request. The two discussed the problem more thoroughly and the extension worker politely agreed to come and visit along with others the following day. But when the farmer left, the extension worker did not hide his dismay at the demanding attitude of these . . . (not a flattering word). And he added something like this: “if you do not oblige them, they report you to the authorities and you may lose your job” Clearly, the evaluations of the rural people on the relevance and quality of service mattered a great deal. They were in the driver’s seat of development and could directly affect the content and delivery of development services.

COMPARING EXPERIENCES When one compares this American experience with situations in rural Africa, best described by Mamdani (1992), one is overwhelmed with extreme sad-

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ness and hopelessness by the inhumanity with which rural African peasants and rural people are treated. It is not at all to argue that the American model should be replicated, but merely to compare the predation endured by African farmers with the pampering care that their American counterparts received early in the country’s development history. Mamdani found that in Africa, rural people are ruled by a single chief or government autocrat, who is in charge of everything, from security to education, health economy and adjudication of disputes or government tax claims. The rural governor or chief seems to specialize in sadistic abuse of the people, or at best, he ignores their existence, except to collect unreasonable and exploitative taxes imposed by the central government. This predicament of Africans goes back to traditions established more than a century ago, by European colonialism and other autocratic systems, to subjugate and exploit Africans. Institutional traditions are very resilient since they juxtapose losers and gainers of the system in a unity of opposites that is maintained both by habits incorporated into the life patterns of the people and their predators. Both groups are victims of perceptions that the received systems are inevitable. There is no real consideration of the people’s needs and wishes or the government’s responsibility for their development. It is in this context that some wonder why Africa is not developing. (Bates, 2008, Thompson and Thompson, (2000), McCarthy, 1994) Ayittey, (1992) and others devote their intellectual energies to the study of these problems whose undoing rests in fundamental transformation of the state and governance institutions. Other scholars find that international aid is part of the barrier to this much needed transformation (Leonard and Strauss, 2003) and still other (Thompson and Thompson (2000) find aid correlating negatively with African development (73–75). Africa’s case amply demonstrates that development is a theoretical and practical impossibility under the institutional conditions of animosity between the people and their rulers and the reality of regime illegitimacy. Legitimate authority and governance are, fortunately coming to a few progressive African countries outside South Africa of late. Examples of counties evolving better institutional conditions include Malawi, Botswana, Ghana, Gambia, Senegal and perhaps Nigeria.

DEFINITION OF DEVELOPMENT IN THE SOCIAL LEARNING FRAMEWORK Korten (1984) Friedman (1984) and Akoff (1984) launched efforts to define and formulate some practical development methodologies consistent with the social learning theoretical framework. Korten saw development as a drive

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for self-reliance. To him the logic of this self-reliance is the logical interconnectedness of people’s action, resources and their know-how in a locally or nationally self-sustaining system. In his own words: . . . the logic of place, people and resources bound into a locally self-sustaining human ecological systems . . . self-reliance as a development strategy involves giving first priority to the creation of conditions that enable the people of an area better to meet their own needs using local resources under local control (1984, 307)

In this formulation, Korten emphasizes the central role of self-reliance through pragmatic development modeling based on local resource possibilities and human capital. In this vein, Korten (1984, 299–309) presented a cogent argument for the need of Third World countries to decentralize and democratize access to decision making and allocation of resources such as land, as essential development precondition. He also advanced the proposition that enabling environment need to be created where self-help can be realized through the organization of small, indigenous institutions and resource control by the people themselves. He derived his formulations from his field experiences in South East Asia where he practiced development after leaving his Harvard Teaching post, and completing a teaching tour at the Haile Selassie I University in Ethiopia (now Addis Ababa University) in the 1960s. Akoff’s definition similarly considers development as a process of centering the people as the objects and subjects of their own development (1984, 195) people bring about positive change using the natural resources and other assets available to them. His emphasis was on development as a “possession of a desire for improvement and the ability to bring it about” on the part of the people (195). Friedman agrees with these definitions adding the importance of people’s theory of reality, its connection with their values, and political survival strategies to condition their determinant social action to the formulation. A very recent articulation of development by the Nobel economist, Amartya Sen (1999) is unequivocal in asserting that human freedom and rights supported by institutions designed to serve and empower them are key to development. To Sen, Development is freedom and the title of his 1999 book Development as Freedom tells it all. The Guardian on-line newspaper of March 31, 2001 summarizes Sen’s views on poverty or the absence of development thus: “To him, poverty is the lack of capability to function, so reducing it is related to positive freedom. What is important to people is to be able to do and be.” All of these are perspectives that incorporate the many necessary dimensions of development; human capital improvements, human resources, rights and freedoms, institutional changes and improvements and natural resources. These will be enhanced by the current researcher by inte-

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grating additional variables identified in later studies of social and economic development. This will help derive a definition of development that brings these and other variables in a combined whole so as to outline the profile of how sufficient or near sufficient development conditions can be created.

EXPANDING THE DEFINING VARIABLES OF DEVELOPMENT In a relatively little known research compilation by Professor Glenn Johnson, the late thesis advisor and major professor in agricultural economics of this researcher at Michigan State University, and his colleagues, the need to integrate technical subject matters in agriculture and economics with other fields of social science was impressively documented (Johnson, Bonnen, James with Fienup, Darrell, Quance, and Schaller 1991). Part III of that important document focused on “The Four Driving Forces for Development: Institutional Change, Human Development, Natural Resources and man’s enhancement of them, and Technical Advance.” The three categories (human development {improvements in human resources or capacity}, institutional change or improvement, and natural resources) appeared in common in this work and in the selected works by Korten, Friedman, and Akoff cited above. The Johnson et al definition added “technical advance”, meaning improvements in the technologies and production function determinations applied to development. Manmade capital appeared in the literature that elaborated on the “four engines” as physical assets like roads, irrigation canals, and other infrastructures. Investment capital as a category in itself did not emerge as one of the necessary driving engines of development, perhaps because it was taken for granted or assumed that credit would, in any case be used to purchase either human capital or technology. But, in the African context, credit in itself is a very critical development imperative. This researcher added on the credit variable as the fifth driving engine of development and combining these with the social learning framework, developed the Participatory Social Learning model of development. The model aspires to show how integrating the two sets of variables—the learning process and material resources—creates sufficient development conditions. Since the 1990s, the researcher has tried to more specifically articulate the dynamic interconnection of these categorical variables, termed driving engines or imperatives in development in a learning-teaching, participatory environment. Credit availability has been so much a part of the fixture of rural or agrarian development in the US and other contexts that development scholars often skip its importance. Credit is one of the most scarce development resources in

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Africa. Today, the over-emphasis of the role of micro-credit in local development, spearheaded by the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, the 6S in West Africa and the Shale, and different traditional African informal credit systems, bears out the importance of credit for development. Now we can distill a definition of development that weaves together the five driving engines or imperatives of development: institutional improvement, human resources improvement, natural resources endowment (and man-made improvements), technology, and investment capital (accumulated or borrowed) and the social learning component into a single conceptual whole—the participatory social learning theoretical framework—as follows: Development is the iterative, people-centered learning and experiential process in which goal-oriented, targeted, and unified mobilization of the five development imperatives (institutions, human resources, natural and man-made resources, technology, and investment capital) is employed to bring about observable social and economic transformation in a given community or society in sustained increments.

People-centeredness is the key operative concept here. It assumes full freedom of people to participate at every stage of development. Iteration implies the nexus of on going expert-people or donor-beneficiary interaction in the development process. It is premised on the proposition that, as much as development experts and donors may have knowledge, technologies and other development resources to bring to the development table, the people too have many required resources (including their own development priorities, human talent and aspiration for life-improvement, trust and solidarity) and a reservoir of traditionally accumulated knowledge and wisdom about their ecological environment. No expert-national or expatriate—who is an outsider may possess these accumulated local wisdoms and knowledge. If new organizing principles, ideas, knowledge and technology are to be injected into African traditional systems successfully, dialogue with the people, give and take in teaching and learning are essential as Williams also affirmed earlier. Such dialogues in an atmosphere of give and take of ideas can help new ideas find meaning and acceptance in localities. There have been many local jokes and tales in Africa of the naïve technological and other resource application in agriculture, rural water supply development, and other sectors by international experts whose efforts went nowhere because they lacked basic knowledge about the social and physical environment all because they had avoided consulting and working with the local people. Iteration also implies acknowledging and respecting the significance of local knowledge in solving local development problems, no matter how modest the knowledge of local people may appear by conventional academic standards. As discussed earlier,

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this acknowledgement was finally accorded by the World Bank in its major document titled “Indigenous Knowledge: Local Pathways to Global Development” (World Bank, 2004b). Goal-oriented and unified mobilization of human resources, natural resources, and other development assets presumes the existence of free participation of the people on behalf of their own development. International donors and experts, as well as local authorities should assist but not replace the people as the main vehicles of their own development. What we learn about participatory social learning development can be summarized as follows: 1. Facilitate the identification of priority needs or development problems and help people adopt new attitudes towards their solution; disseminate relevant knowledge and information on possible solutions to the identified needs and problems 2. bring necessary expertise to bare on the design of pragmatic and feasible strategies and program approaches to help people tackle the problems using all locally available resources supplemented by essential technical and other resource support or supplement from government and donors; 3. help create institutional infrastructures that can be responsive and adaptive to changing and evolving operational needs and challenges on a sustained basis; 4. create institutionalized and rationalized opportunities for the people to learn relevant technical and managerial skills that help their sustained and growing participation in innovation as well as implementation of subsequent development programs individually and/or collectively 5. empower the people to demand legal, bureaucratic and institutional responsiveness to their needs and rational claims. 6. democratize the peoples’ access to local, national, regional, and international resources in support of development. This can include the dissemination of knowledge and information on technical and financial assistance coming from international, bilateral, government, and NGO sources to support the development of different economic and service sectors and how these could be accessed. This would increase accountability of all people managing development resources. It may also cultivate in local people, incentives to learn skills in how to organize and present their development needs to potential donors and for government assistance. It can be noted here that in institutional, human resource, financial as well as technological terms, both internal and external entities play critical roles in development, which means that both internal and external factors can be used to influence the direction of development in a progressive and positive

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direction. When not used in the context of freedom and peoples’ empowered participation, each can be potentiated to act as barrier to development. In a responsibly designed participatory development, external inputs supplementing internal efforts and resources can accelerate development. Even the venerable concept of self-reliance should only be understood as relying on the self for ultimate accountability and responsibility for outcomes. It should not and need not mean isolation from sources of needed external assistance so long as it is used to support internally generated goals and strategies whose mediumterm goal should be to wean society away from permanent dependence on external aid. A good external aid is one that either envisions its phasing out after a set time table, or strategizes to engage in other higher level development agendas because it had already helped to put in place a self-sustaining development momentum at basic levels. In resource-rich Africa, there is no need for perpetual aid dependence. With few exceptions of small and very resource-poor countries, the vast majority of African countries could attain self-sustaining development in a decade or two if the right kinds of development were designed around the people.

MODELING DEVELOPMENT IN THE PARTICIPATORY SOCIAL LEARNING THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Much of the discussion on participatory social learning development modeling will rely on research materials of the 1970s, 1080s, and to a lesser extent the decades following. The glaring failure of Africa’s Governance system to allow genuine development has caused much of the study and discourse on African development to shift its emphasis from theories and models of development to the role of governance institutions in development and the implications of their monopoly of resource allocation powers (Michael, 2004, Leonard and Strauss, 2003, Thompson and Thompson, 2000, Hyden, 1995) or on the predatory and non-developmental nature of African government institutions (McGaffey and Bazenguissa-Ganga, 2000, Schwab, 2001, Bates, 2008). Hyden, Leonard and Strauss and others have developed ideas on remedies to some of these problems that can be called “models to remedy the resource control of African regimes.” It is this monopoly of the power of resource and capital allocation that so empowers African regimes and disempowers the people so as to make economic and governance institutions block the free and innovative participation of people in their won development. This is a very critical contribution but only takes care of the institutional dimension of the development problematique. The major project of this research is to go beyond one or two variable(s) and to incorporate all the critical development

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variables that were referred to above as engines or imperatives of development. It is to address the challenge of how best Africa can conceptualize its total development framework. Development starts with enabling and committed leadership and institutions to match that commitment. But once the leadership and institutional will and efficiency is established, there will still remain the need to have all the other development imperatives present and in line for development to be realized. Fixing leadership and the institutions through which it discharges its activities is a necessary but not sufficient condition for development to occur. After leadership and institutional democratization is under way, development framing or design has to face the challenge of changing people’s stock of knowledge, and ability to think of new possibilities and embrace the challenge that these possibilities require. For this, the content of knowledge and experience of the people has to be enriched, meaning, they have to start to learn systematic ways of solving age-old problems in economic and other spheres of life in new and innovative ways that may not always comply with extant social and cultural values. For instance, Africans value socializing, throwing big traditional feasts, sharing what they have with relatives, all of which undermine development by diverting lots of time and money (capacity to accumulate and reinvest capital) away from productive use. These cultural habits will be challenged by arrangements that embrace fast-paced economic and social development. Learning in the development sense starts with being exposed to new and concrete ideas or methods of doing things, followed by active experimentation, then observation of results/reflection and finally accepting and integrating the newly learned system into the habit and standard practices of the person or group. This is what is meant by participatory learning. People learn to solve their problems of agricultural production, roads and other infrastructural construction, cottage or other levels of local industrialization, environmental protection and hygiene, whatever it is that needs improvement and transformation. It is not other people who can do this for them, if development is to mean a lasting transformation in knowledge, skills, habits, and cultural orientations and scaling up all types of production from their traditional subsistence states. The learning and growth process that is by definition intrinsic to the participatory social learning theoretical framework or paradigm, can be graphically presented as a continuous process as in figure l. This process of learning derived from the work of different researchers in development shows how people run new ideas through their cognitive mechanisms to incorporate them into their stock of knowledge and experience. The learning process is represented by the cycle of learning that starts with exposure to concrete experience (CE), moving on to actively and freely

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Figure 1. A model of the social learning process in development adopted from Kolb, 1984, Friedman, 1984, and Korten, 1984.

experimenting with the new idea (AE), with the option to accept or reject it depending on the outcome of the experimentation; observing, digesting and registering the meaning and significance of the experienced outcome and the change factors that account for it (OR) and in most cases, fully conceptualizing and accepting the new idea or method as part of normal practice (AC). Now, the person or group is that much richer and advanced in knowledge, skills and material or service outputs, because a new and useful knowledge has been learned with all the demonstrated benefits. Some may still not accept the new knowledge on several accounts that include a particular risk assessments, and the inability of the person or group to associate the new method or knowledge with his/her own reference—group values. This too is part of the development experience and will account for a certain amount of the disparity in the quality of life and income levels. People will fall at different levels of the learning curve, and a small percentage may not move along the curve at all and this will show up in the differential rate at which new ideas and

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technologies are adopted by different socio-economic sectors and the rate at which material well-being grows among them. This means that in any culture or society, acceptance of new ideas, methods, and technologies deemed relevant and important for development by outsiders is not automatic. This is why there needs to be caution regarding how adoption occurs through participation and learning; it is not uniform across different socio-economic classes or sub-groups (Everett, 1962, Everett & Shoemaker, 1971). Roger Everett studied this phenomenon in development experience of rural and semi-rural United States over decades and found that poor rural people, in particular, tend to be understandably risk averse and suspicious of new ideas. The poorer and the less educated people are, the greater this suspicion. Poor people tended not to readily accept new ideas and technologies even as others around them did. Innovators or quick adopters of new methods, ideas, and technologies were shown to be typically relatively well off people able to withstand the consequences of risk taking and experimenting with new ideas, Everett found. Other risk takers and quick innovators may be exceptional people who are curious and like the adventure of new experience. Introducing new ideas and having them integrated into traditional communities, therefore requires a process of learning and growth that results from dynamic and sustained interaction and trust building between experts (agents of change) and communities or beneficiaries of development who need to change their economic and institutional arrangements and production practices. The African people never had a methodically thought out exposure to learning and adopting new knowledge and experiences to bring their own development. Virtually everything done in the name of development goes over and past the people; it by-passes them except as occasional passive beneficiaries of hand outs and sporadic services. African experience so far is not instructive of the risk averseness or innovativeness of rural people. If there was an effort at rural community development in Africa, which would have at least marginally incorporated learning-teaching ideas, during the 1950s and 1960s, it was quickly abandoned as slow and inefficient by donors and external designers of Africa’s development. Development is slow as it requires transformations of many types. This much was made abundantly clear by Rostow’s stages of development-the one critical message that should have been picked up by donors and African governments alike. If the practice of Community Development had continued and was supplemented by the missing variables in it (credit, technology, land allocation etc.) its programs could have brought development practitioners and beneficiaries together in a learning-teaching nexus which could have started the process of indigenous development and transformation. Unfortunately, it was quickly abandoned

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before it could even broadly establish the needed tradition of dialogue and building of trust between experts, authorities and the people. As stated above, Community Development as development practice was abandoned for reasons of presumed inefficiency, and the presumption that the green revolution technology would be the automatic answer to rural underdevelopment, and other similar excuses fully discussed by Lane E. Holdcroft (1984). In a careful survey of the rise and fall of community development as a rural development strategy in Africa and the Third World generally, Holdcroft found that the strategy had great initial appeal to leaders of Third World countries and donors “. . . because it provided a non-revolutionary approach to the development of agrarian societies” (p.46). One cannot help but observe that this learning-based approach never was about the people to start with. During the Cold War era, people had to be convinced that there are other avenues to improving their lives other than communism, to prevent them from embracing that ideology. At its height during the 1960s, about sixty countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America had community development programs, according to UN estimates (p. 47). I had the opportunity to visit a number of community development training and service centers as a freshman college student, and later as college instructor. The training was inspiring and wonderful, but when we went to visit the service centers, there was nothing, except the bare hands of the community development worker. Holdcroft’s study found that the program fell into disfavor because it did not deliver the development results expected of it. What we see here is both the lack of commitment on the part of the national and international authorities that initially supported community development and their naivety that the program could do anything by way of development in the absence all the other development prerequisites specified earlier in this study. As concrete experiences of this researcher showed, there were no development funds or credit at the disposal of the community development centers and workers, the technology shelf was empty, people did not have easy access to natural resources like land. In addition, there were no institutional structures dedicated to rectifying these serious deficits or authorities to whom these development shortfalls could be reported with some confidence that donors or governments would supply the needed credit, technology, and other needed support. Community development had to collapse, at least in Africa, owing to its material shortfalls. Holdcroft found other reasons for the collapse of community development in India, a country that was far more committed to the program as an open democratic society. More will be said about the African experience later. With the unprecedented current flow of aid into Africa and the new communication technologies like satellite radios and cell phones, opportunities to create viable communications and iterative learning processes to create

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a momentum for purposeful and goal-oriented, orderly development for the people, by the people, and of the people is within Africa’s reach. The problem is the absence of political will nationally and internationally as common place knowledge of and conversation on African development and the facts on the ground indicate. The robust exclusion of the African people from learning and participating in any development, let alone decision-making, planning and implementation of development, is sufficient ground to refute the accusation of Chabal and Daloz that Africa is an aberration in world development experience and that Africans show themselves to be unable to undertake the rigorous exercises needed for economic and social transformation. The building of rational and functional systems and bureaucracies to facilitate and mediate social and economic process is the characteristic of liberal democracy and free, but regulated, market places of ideas, labor, goods and services. These have been methodically and sustainably denied to the African people over the past many centuries. No one has seen what African people are capable of if given the same opportunities and environments as all other people of the world. In the chapters that follow, we will interrogate the five imperatives, or driving engines of development and examine Africa’s condition with respect to each.

NOTE 1. In addition to the sources sited, information for this statement was gleaned from different tracts, and sources.

Chapter Three

The Institutional Imperative: Its Condition in Africa and Implications for Development

In a rare revision of its orthodox neo-liberal economic determinism, the World Bank started to acknowledge the central importance of institutions, especially the institution of government, to development. It “started to acknowledge” is meant to imply that the Bank has become very explicit in attributing a large portion of Africa’s underdevelopment to its dysfunctional political and administrative institutions. In World Bank Development Report of 2000/2001, sub-titled “Attacking Poverty” it stated: In most non-democratic settings, however, lack of institutionalized accountability has resulted in poor performance in growth and poverty reduction. Even successful developmental states point to an important lesson: undemocratic regimes face serious abuses of state power and they are prone to rapid policy reversals that can make their development gains fragile . . . The checks and balances of participatory democratic regimes—and the procedures for consensus buildinglimit the scope of rent seeking and drastic policy reversal, offering a much more reliable and sustainable path to development (113)

And it goes on to analyze how unaccountable, undemocratic institutions of governance disempower people and stifle development by limiting the range of freedom of initiative and individual resourcefulness to deal with development problems, while it empowers the parasitic, unproductive but powerful state elite who diminish society’s development opportunities. The Bank gave every indication that these institutional insights will be central to how it does its development business in the 21st century. This was in addition to an entire World Bank study titled “Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?” also published in 2000. In this important study, 68

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the Bank was emphatic on the absolute importance of Africa’s institutional reform if development is to happen. It emphatically stated: • Better governance is a development imperative for most African countries . . . Good governance should aim to achieve the ‘three Es’: • Empowering citizens to hold governments accountable through participation and decentralization • Enabling governments to respond to new demands by building capacity. • Enforce compliance with the rule of law and greater transparency (64) In spite of this powerful statement, the World Bank and its sister and cooperating institutions continue to deal with anti-democratic African government elite-adding power to their oppressive machinery. Perhaps there are underlying reasons, not easily researchable for this irony. The African people have long known that their oppressive governments and external forces that buttress them are a huge part of their development problem and poverty. Those of us who spent most of our lives as one amongst them know this first hand. Many a literary African, Poet Tsegaye Gebre Medhin of Ethiopia, Ngugi of Kenya, Achebe and Sonyinka of Nigeria, for example, and some African academics have been voicing this sentiment for the last forty years, not to mention the thousands of students and innocent citizens who have been martyred by dictators for their human right and democracy demands. Finally, in 2008, the international community sided with the people of Zimbabwe and Kenya. In both cases, the international community insisted on respect for election outcomes. It remains a mystery why the two were selected for ostracism while Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia who committed much greater human rights crimes following the May 15, 2005 election has met with little Western criticism. The international literature on African governance has never tired of pointing to the tragedy of African governance institutions, and how this has alienated people and caused them to retreat into their ethnic enclaves, and other particularistic alliances to survive. To the persistent criticism and development failures, the response of African governments has been to pass human rights declarations and continent-wide development documents like the Lagos Plan of Action, African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programs for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation 1989/19911, and NEPAD. The Banjul Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights was adopted around June 27, 1981. The African Human Rights Commission to supposedly implement the provisions of the Charter was created and by July 1998, formalities to create an African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights were concluded by the OAU (Murray, 2004, p. 24). But all these remain ignored in

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practice. The OAU, and now the AU has had departments for human rights, and yet right there in Addis Ababa, at AU’s door steps, untold massacres were committed against peaceful students and unarmed citizens protesting the illegal overturning of election results in 2005. Famine and starvation, clearly man-made disasters, have been widely perpetrated in Ethiopia and other countries ruled by despots. Yet one notices no moral indignation, in Africa, or the international community to hold leaders to account. The use of institutionalized power to counter any popular demand, has not allowed the emergence of institutions that allow, much less facilitate and encourage development. How then, can development come?

INSTITUTION DEFINED The concept of institution goes beyond the idea of a specific organization. It refers to the broad conceptions of ordered and structured arrangements and functional relationships to attain desired goals in the social, cultural, economic and political spheres. Typically, the goals of institutional conceptions are of higher and more formal order and address higher order purposes than specific organizations. The concept of institution, thus, conjures, into our consciousness, the image of predictable modes of action and behavior that help people to deal with issues in different sectors of collective life-including development. More explicitly, institution can be seen as a set of interconnected arrangements or functional structures in society to address different concerns and dimensions of collective life like education, economy, governance, law, administration, family and so on. Without going into detail, it must be mentioned that institutional arrangements or structures are designed to accomplished ends considered essential for the maintenance or advancement of the common good. This involves allocating different roles to different participants in the institutional system. Institutions play determinant roles in the economic and social development of societies. This is one thing we can reasonably accept from Rostow’s proposition concerning the advancement of institutional systems as one of the important preconditions of development. Given its dizzying range and quantity of natural resources (some estimate the resource endowment of Africa to account for one third of the planet’s resources) and human resources, Africa’s development failure can be non other than institutional failure or failure of its institutional formation and function. In the following pages, a closer examination of the emergence and characteristics of institutions in general and Africa’s institutional questions in particular will be addressed.

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INSTITUTIONS OF GOVERNANCE AND SOCIOECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION To avoid assigning mere economic interest as the organizing force of community and society, a brief examination of the bases that give human life its institutional forms and meanings is necessary. Towards the end of the nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth century when the breakdown of tight knit feudal (agrarian) order was giving way to chaotic industrialization in Europe, concerns about the ways and means by which societies could organize themselves in legitimate and sustainable manners under the storm of industrialization and rural dislocation took center stage. This, probably was one of the most vibrant ages when the issue of how large-scale social order could be organized and sustained was widely shared and debated. Famous intellectuals like Comte, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Gramsci and other thinkers conceptualized and debated how and why institutions evolve and either serve society’s progress or are periodically revised to remove their negative functions in the interest of social order and human progress ( Wilson, 1966, Collins, 1985,). In the beginning, the study of institutions, institutional and inter-group relations was a European enterprise. American sociologists carried the discourse of these intellectual traditions in the twentieth century Similar debates are not known to this researcher to have taken place in Africa, already deconstructed and reconstructed along non-African logic and purpose by colonialism, of course (Freund, 1998, 34–42, 97–122, Gordon and Gordon, 2001, 46). Other interveners, like Islam and Christian missionaries also contributed to the de-Africanization process. Thus, in contrast to Europe which was evolving and experimenting with adaptive institutional forms, African societies were continuously violated by outside forces to points of chaos and the installation of disorder. Throughout the slave trade, the so-called era of legitimate trade that followed it, the era of exploration and colonization that this trade relation with Europe spawned, economic, social and political institutions were put in place by European powers that functioned to subjugate and dehumanize Africans (Freund, 1998). The institutional systems, norms, and roles put in place by colonialism or their imitations continue in most post-colonial, independent African countries. Africa remained under neo-colonial institutional dominance and could not undergo autonomous or indigenous economic, social, and political institution building, much less revise and transform them in the service of Africa’s development needs. Africa has, therefore, been unable to independently craft innovative institutional forms carefully articulated and debated among its own thinkers and elders. Nor has it been able to benefit from freely borrowing ideas and technologies from wherever it wished to carry out autonomous institutional

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adaptation processes like, for instance, the United States did in its early days (Linton, 1983). Historical and empirical evidence shows that old institutional systems, especially ones designed by foreign intruders to exploit and demean people, could not and will not serve as positive instruments of change and development. The institutional forms Africa inherited and, unfortunately, maintained are contrary to what it needs. As we saw in chapter 1, some African leaders recognize that. But changing these institutional arrangements and the roles they play seems to be analogous to trying to turn around a big tank in a narrow alley. Because the political will and determination to reform or create alternative institutions is so slim and narrow, Africans are forced to endure all their negative consequences. The African people need to resolve to change this negative predicament. Among the classic social thinkers, this researcher considers the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim as one of the most insightful in analyzing the nature and development of social and (political) institutions. A brief study of some of his central ideas can help inform the process of conceptualizing and implementing viable and legitimate institutional reform in Africa. Durkheim (1893/1985, pp. 161–165) theorized that legitimate institutional formations, ideally, go beyond the logic of mere individual economic or some other discrete interests. If individual interest were the mere organizing principle, then societies would be rendered unstable, unless of course the potential instability is held in place by use of force and violence or manipulations that contradict the positive role institutions are supposed to serve. This is so because human interest changes (pp. 161–162). Society needs shared values and norms, and accumulated social capital to create stable institutions supported by anticipation of legal and contractual mediation of legitimate and normatively valid individual interests. We can see from this theoretical system why post-independence African societies could not be served by prior institutions designed to serve interests other than African progress. As Durkheim would argue the rights and expectations as well as duties of the individual in any group relationship needs to be anchored in norms that can be extended to all forms of relationships under changing situations. These norms are generally rules of compromise and accommodation by all parties involved, as they move in life, creating new situations and opportunities which may conflict with the opportunities of others. In modern states, legislatures are tasked with the responsibility of crafting these adaptive social norms that are formulated into civil and criminal codes. It is this tradition of rational dialogue and compromise between potentially conflicting interests that Africa lacks. Legal contracts of right and obligations are not aligned to empower people and to ensure their human security and dignity. It is the case that in most African countries legal institutions supposedly

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designed to regulate different kinds of contracts exist. But from the episodes of rampant corruption and the patrimonial state, it is clear that no such institutions function. There may exist sporadic instances where specific institutions work in a way they are expected to function. But these instances cannot account for society’s over all requirement that all of its institutions function in a uniform and complementary fashion to create conditions of confidence and predictability that stimulate individual and group initiatives. In addition to its immediate effect of promoting positive activities, the smooth functioning of institutions becomes a savings bank for the accumulation of social capital. The development of social capital, which will be discussed later, becomes impossible in conditions of uncertainty of institutional behavior. A system of shared and honored values and meanings is necessary in all cases to encourage healthy and open competition of ideas and creative impulses resident in any society. Max Weber (1978, XCI) extends this idea when he affirms that typically, “domination and administration are interdependent and extant in any society. Democracy is valued for its role in minimizing domination by guaranteeing relative equality of rights among members of society and allowing all to pursue their talents and interests without denying others the same opportunity.”

GLIMPSES AT THE OLD AFRICA A glimpse at African traditional societies provides sobering reminders of Africa’s indigenous democratic systems extensively discussed in Ayittey (2006). Village level or traditional systems were typically very democratic and participatory, though very prescriptive and limiting of the scope of innovative behavior. Thinking creatively, and as they say “outside the box” is assiduously discouraged in traditional societies that value continuity of the familiar. But with appropriate management, these could have been built into indigenous democratic systems that are flexible and dynamic and bring leaders and people into close normative contact. External intrusions and threats of intrusion in cases like Ethiopia had aborted the evolution of these indigenous democratic systems. As Durkheim’s and other theories in his philosophical tradition show, small-scale traditional communities are functionally and structurally different from larger-scale, more complex social formations. Transitions in social systems from small to large scale assume that many favorable and facilitating conditions occur. Merely poor people flocking to towns, as happens in Africa, will not result in the emergence of scaled-up, sophisticated and creative institutions. The growth of the economy in which Africans play commanding roles at all levels of national life, is absolutely essential for the functionally

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meaningful evolution of large scale organizations with African characteristics. For Africa, it seems like a vicious cycle has been created; the economy cannot really grow (and here we do not mean the meaningless GDP growth, but real growth that involves and benefits a large spectrum of the people) because of the institutional stranglehold, and institutions cannot transform into large, complex and symbiotic structures because there is no economy and technology growth that makes them feasible and even inevitable.

INSTITUTIONAL FORMS AND TRANSITIONS As discussed in chapter 2, traditional societies can segue into complex, largescale ones given the right environment for change and transformation. While traditional societies are bound by mechanical conformity to known rules, large-scale ones are held together by the organic logic of mutual interests and interdependence. They are more open to doing things and thinking in new and innovative ways. Organically linked, large-scale organizations and societies have no need for particularistic conformity or interests and sentiments such as clan, ethnicity, religion or race, though these have important micro-organizational value. Large scale “modern” societies and institutions function in accordance with self-enforcing and self-regenerating objective networking rules and norms, conditioned by rules-based behavior expectations. Subjectivity (for instance ethnic and religious partiality), likeness or behavior based on sentiment are not the governing norms in universalized and rule-based systems organized around common aspirations and national purpose. Here, universal rules are the bases of all formal economic and social transactions. Particularism and subjectivity are made functionally obsolete characteristics discredited as a characteristic of small-scale, traditional, and generally backward state of society. If formal agreements or arrangements are broken, the remedies sought are universal and applicable to all under similar circumstances and subject to negotiated compromises or interpretations (Durkheim 1933/1964, pp. 112–113). This makes governance by rules more elastic, non-particularistic, and more reflective and forgiving, compared to traditional, particularistic arrangements that can be quite intolerant when violated. Because of its universal characteristic, rational, large-scale, complex organizations tend to nurture trust in public institutions and minimize inter-group conflicts and reduce the transaction cost of creating a mutually beneficial collective economic and social life of religiously, ethnically and racially heterogeneous societies. This is what many African dictators and political elites have refused to allow to emerge because it would take away their personal rule by discretion and petty, particularistic favors.

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In the preceding paragraphs, a case was made for the harmonizing effect of rational, large-scale complex institutional formation. Beyond sociologists and economists, the importance of rationalized organization of life has been hailed by philosophers like Rousseau as the very foundation of prospering states. Without such institutional evolution, progress becomes precarious even in cases where societies may be ruled by a well intentioned, charismatic and benevolent ruler, because “The most perceptible disadvantage of government by one man is the lack of that continuity of succession which provides an uninterrupted bond of union . . . ” (Rousseau, 1969, 120). Rousseau, back then, also saw that among the virtues of the rationalized system is that “. . . the popular choice always elevates to the highest place only intelligent and capable men, who fill their office with honor, those who rise under monarchies {one man rule}are nearly always muddled little minds, petty knaves and intriguers with small talents which enable them to rise to high places in courts, but which betray their ineptitude to the public as soon as they are appointed” (119)

That this has been Africa’s fate is self evident and needs no further elaboration.

SOCIAL LEARNING AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT As the preceding analysis attempted to show, diverse groups can attain cohesion and pursue common ends if the appropriate institutions that impartially and universally mediate their interests are created. People learn the virtues of symbiotic structures and can even contribute to their further development. Implied here is that people are products of their learning and adapting and can find edifying meaning in the national group as in the ethnic, religious or any other particularistic group. Top-down dictation or the work of external architects of society and economy, national or international, can never replace this essentially indigenous, learning based process. The problem of development in Africa over the last half century has been that this needed internal process of dialogue, understanding, negotiation, learning, and compromise at all levels of society did not take place. This deficit is analyzed in detail by Ayittey (1992). Ibster (2003) also eloquently presents the betrayal of Third World development by both internal and external forces. The development discourse and methodology for Africa, that was superimposed on unreformed, and non-universalized institutions, has been derived almost exclusively from the international development institutions-United Nations Specialized Agencies, World Bank and IMF—that emerge after World War II (Braidotti et al, 1994, 22–25, Meirs, 1984, 1–24, Adedeji, 1993,

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chapters 1, Ake, 1992, Mkandawire and Soludo, 1999, chapters 1–3). Not only were the development discourses, development institutions and methodology external to Africa, but the very practice of Africa’s development itself became internationally institutionalized, and turned into an “industry” in which the role of the people and institutions building were neglected so that many an expatriate could aspire to gain enormous economic and material benefits as an agent of illusionary development. Institutionalization of Africa’s development turned the continent’s development issues from being about the people to being about the bureaucratic and technocratic experts and the administration of their endless privileges. To see this, one only needs to observe the life styles and wealth of those who work for the international development organizations like the World Bank, United Nations and many (by no means all) international non-governmental organizations in Africa, as this researcher had the chance to observe for decades. In the name of working for the development of the poor, the most privileged of global society enjoy a greatly pampered life style that removes them far from the messy, grassroots and on the spot learning and doing challenges. This condition inspired Graham Hancock (1989) to write his study titled Lords of Poverty: the Power, prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business. In this same vein, the 1987 dissertation research titled power and Visibility: the Invention and Management of Development in the Third World by a University of California scholar named Arturo Escobar is widely quoted in some development literatures (Braidotti et al chapters 2–3). Once development became a career path for many experts, it could bear no resemblance to the process and practice required for development, working with the people on the ground to facilitate, in stages, their increased learning and ability to solve problems through the construction of relevant and legitimate institutions, to innovate solutions and to build confidence in their own abilities and achievements. Little wonder that no African development occurred under the tutelage of external actors and national bureaucrats who follow their lead and prescription. The idea being built by this analysis is that there can be no short cut to the development of Africa. The responsibility of developing national and local institutions including institutions of governance, financial management, law and administration and development must belong to Africans and Africans alone. The international community can play constructive roles by insisting on common denominators like respect for Africans’ individual human, civil, economic and political rights, transparency and accountability and the freedom to change regimes that do not serve the public interest or have served their term peacefully. The deficits in these respects, whatever form of government African elites imitated (socialist or capitalist), is blocking development (Ayittey, 1991). The rhetoric both from governmental sources and

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the World Bank is grand. But the practice is to continue the status quo and to exacerbate its failures (Leonard and Strauss, 2003, chap.2, Adedeji, 1993, 7–9, Davidson, 1993, Okingbo, 1993, Rascheed 1993, 43–45). This should motivate researchers not only to question seriously and examine critically all top-down contemporary development trajectories and African elite alliances with external interests within it, but also to examine rigorously the role of new actors like China, and other emerging global players in their scramble for Africa’s natural riches and wide open markets, clocked in the fancy term of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and free market orthodoxy. In the context of the unchecked rampage of global capital and the new theology of globalization, Africa may be the looser yet again. China in particular, is a curious case of a rising global power that was expected to follow a new model of engagement with Africa. The discouraging reality of the path it is following in its relations with Africa is that its interventions are designed to follow the exact patterns of international economic relations that have relegated Africa to mere raw material supplier which has had so devastated Africa. Africa should have no illusion that the abstracted concept of “free market” will serve its true development. Free market arguments should never distract it from taking a hard look at its experiences under this ideology so far and understanding its serious shortcomings as the global economic chaos of the mid decade of the twenty first century demonstrate. Scholars on the left (Bourdieu, 2001) and the right (Stiglitzs 2002/2003, Stglitzs, 2007/2006, Broad, 2002) agree on the shortcomings of the global free market dogma. The Christian Science statement quoted on the front page of Stiglitz’s book says it all: “Development and Economics are not about statistics. Rather, they are about jobs. Stiglitz never forgets that there are people at the end of these policies, and that the success of a policy should be defined not by how fast international banks are repaid, but by how much people have to eat, and by how much better it makes their lives.” China’s investment focus is mostly extractive or elbowing out local contractors in infrastructure building, identical to previous foreign focus. Its other focus is dumping cheap goods and forcing shut fledgling local manufacturing. This too is inimical to African development and job creation. The emphasis on natural resources extraction and the penetration of African markets with poor quality manufactures enhances the similarity of China’s Africa presence to all others that preceded it. It is, in fact, an absolute replication of Africa’s post slavery, pre-colonial, so called era of legitimate trade, practices of European powers (Freund, 1988, 51–65; 97–111). We will look at one or two empirical statements on China and leave the subject. Karby Leggett of the Wall Street Journal observed in the March 29, 2005 edition: “Aiming to secure access to the continent’s vast natural resources,

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China is forging deep economic, political and military ties with most of Africa’s 54 countries.” China seems to have especial affinity for repressive regimes like the ones in the Sudan, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and Gabon, causing the erosion of the modest democratic gains made on the continent, as observed by many including Stephan Mbogo of CNSNews.com who declared the negative human rights effects of China’s alliance with oppressive African regimes in his piece of December 8, 2005. Howard French (2005), a well known New York Times reporter, similarly observes the deep disappointment of West African thinkers who see China as just another opportunistic intruder in Africa, making alliances with leaders who most oppress their people, and avoiding those who care about their people. The case of China’s relation with Gabon, among others, raises such serious issues. Gabon has been ruled, since its independence in the 1960s, by a single dictator—president Omar Bongo—who has become fabulously rich from the tiny country’s oil resources while its small population remains in the thrall of abject poverty. Leonard Vincent of Reporters Without Borders (BBC News, Feb. 13, 2008) put the new burden to the African people that China’s present style of intervention is causing “The influence of China in African affairs has been very toxic for democracy . . . African governments all over the continent have dared to do this year what they didn’t dare to do the previous year.”2 This then brings us to a number of questions. Can Africans build institutions that guarantee their human rights and economic freedoms to move their development forward? Do most African countries have legitimate leaders who take the peoples’ aspirations to improve their lives and the national interests seriously? Do African societies have national leaders, of the traditional or post-traditional types of Durkheim, committed to their all rounded development? How is it that foreign interveners either force or sweet-talk African leaders into doing their bidding in the name of African development? The speculative answers to these questions are likely to be varied. After all Africa now has some fifteen countries demonstrating commitment to democratic institution building as seen in the peaceful election and transfer of power in Ghana in December, 2008.

INSTITUTIONS, LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY AND ACCUMULATION OF SOCIAL CAPITAL FOR AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT Government is the most monumental institution that societies form. In its legitimate form, it is the only body that can legally use violence or the threat of violence as legitimate means of establishing, maintaining or enforcing civil,

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economic, and political order in the best interest of society and to protect society from deleterious external aggression or intrusion. When a government possesses significant characteristics that manifest national accountability and a commitment to protect its people and the national interest, the leaders in power can be considered to be legitimate. Government and leadership with legitimacy can enjoy legitimate authority to represent and act on behalf of society. The question is, how does one determine leadership legitimacy, and when do leaders become illegitimate authority that are more like alien powers who climb and cling to power by whatever means available to them like in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Sudan, and other countries? Leadership legitimacy and authority in democratic governance derives from the legitimacy of claims to state power. Typically, this claim is validated through open, fair, and freely contested election in which the majority of the people use their sovereign suffrage to express their consent to be governed by a given party or polity. Africa can devise more indigenous ways of popular expression of will to endorse a given system of governance and a particular leader if the conventional election process proves untenable for cost and transparency reasons. Who rises to power, and how a particular leader or leadership team rise to power, determine the legitimacy and character of leadership as we saw in Rousseau (cited earlier). Legitimate leaders construct institutions that serve them as instruments of policy and help them with the articulation and design of the common or national interest. The way African leaders ascend to and retain power can hardly be considered legitimate. Hence, their rule is illegitimate maintained by abusive use of state violence. Institutional legitimacy and functions determine the character and direction of social, economic, cultural, and political actions and outcomes. Among other things, institutions determine the quality and growth of human and social capital. Human capital, or more broadly, human resource, refers to the character, health, education, skill, competence, and wellness of the general population and its ability to face up to the challenges of economic and social transformation. Human resource formation starts before the child is born. Good maternal nutrition and health, while the child is still in the womb, affect the health and well-being of generations of youth and adults. A healthy and well nourished population is the foundation of development. Not only human resource and human capital, but social capital which populations are able to build is also essential for the coherent progress of society. As the primary image makers, state elite play a major role in the building or destruction of social capital. Social capital refers to the general reliability and predictability of inter-personal and inter-group relationships as well as peoples’ relationship with government and other institutions that mediate all types of transactions and interactions. It is associated with positive feelings and confidence as well

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as trust people have in their government and socioeconomic interactions. Positive social capital can exist within the inevitable context of competing interests. People are always concerned about the predictability of outcomes in their pursuit of opportunities within the state and society structures. The more people experience objective and universal treatments and the more they see guarantees for their wellbeing, the more they will care about the well-being of all others. Hence, people create a greater and growing stock of social capital as they consume more of it. In this sense, the concept of social capital can only be captured counter intuitively to other forms of capital, financial and asset or fixed capital, for instance. These latter forms of capital diminish as more of them is used or invested. The opposite is true of social capital. It grows and grows as we consume and expend more and more of it. Typically, social capital undergirds the level of mutual accountability and caring. African state institutions by their nature fail on all aspects of institutional function and social capital formation that provide continuity, stability, and reduced transaction costs in social and economic interactions. Africa’s legendary and crippling corruption is a mark of the total absence of social capital outside the family and ethnic group. The condition presents serious development challenges. In a state of legitimate authority, trust in government and its institutions set the model and mood for similar trust and ethical relationships between people, groups, and civic institutions. Collectively, relationships of mutual trust can nurture social virtues and confidence which in turn create and reinforce civility and harmony in inter-personal and inter-group interaction. Social capital actualization requires the conscious investment of government and civil society in tangible and intangible assets that help create webs and networks of benefits, norms, roles, values, that inspire positive-sum behaviors and outcomes at all levels of society. An important caveat omitted in the above discussion of social capital is the fact that its construction and accumulation presumes the legitimacy and acceptance by people of state and civil society standard setters. Social capital is, after all a concept resurrected from classical sociological concepts such as Durkheim’s ideas of “solidarity.” Solidarity can only exist among people who know, trust, and accept one another. Increasingly, social capital has come to be popularly accepted as an essential variable in development. In his study of the progress of societies, Fukuyama (1995) finds that trusting and more open relationship, even in company management, increases production efficiency (chapter 22). Writing about the economic and industrial success in the United States, Japan and Germany, Fukuyama argues that “A rich and complex civil society does not arise inevitably out of the logic of advanced industrialization. On the contrary, as we will see in the upcoming chapters, Japan, Germany,

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and the United States became the world’s leading industrial powers in large part because they had healthy endowments of social capital and spontaneous sociability . . . ” (p. 150). Most of the successful societies he examined, are found to be high trust societies, with high density civic life and associations. Because of their distressed lives, African modes of association have moved back to particularistic or non-universalistic forms. People are typically forced to lead fragmented lives alienated from each other along ethnic, religious, and other categorical divides. This undermines the rise of cross-cutting civil society organizations like professional and interest associations that coalesce around some defined shared goal. Contrary to what is needed to nurture social capital formation, African systems of governance are overwhelmingly based on the practice of divisive ethnic and religious patronage and favoritism. Their resilient hold on power is predicated on keeping people antagonistic and mutually hostile. This is reinforced by regime violence towards disfavored groups. In this process, social capital within privileged ethnics or other population categories, may be high. This seemingly positive process itself, however, adds to the diminishing of trust and spontaneous sociability between favored and disfavored groups, thereby undermining social capital formation at the intergroup level. In fact, total lack of trust and prevalence of mutual alienation between regime—favored and disfavored groups may exacerbate intergroup relations, forcing people to retreat into their particularistic identity enclaves even further. This was theoretically confirmed by Alejandro Portes (2000) who warned that negative social capital can be created by the same sources, government for example, that can or have the potential to create positive social capital among particularistic groups that it favors (pp.56–57) . That is, government favoritism towards particular ethnics can create trust mechanisms within the same ethnic group, while alienating and angering others towards that ethnic group and the government that favors it. This means that negative social capital formation can result when particularistic exclusion of the “other” or excessive claims of a small group on larger groups leads to “restriction of individual freedoms and downward leveling norms” (p. 56). This will inevitably lead to resentment and grievance on the part of the disfavored majority. In addition to other factors, the political and development problems of Africa are directly linked to this exact politically imposed phenomenon. The ethnic mobilization of African regimes like those in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia, the latter committed to its unique doctrine of ethnic apartheid, has made them the most conflict and famine-prone countries with destroyed economies. Because of this emphasis on the role of social capital in development, it seems, the World Bank convened a conference in 1999, bringing notable social scientists from around the United States and Europe to examine the

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subject matter. The proceedings of the conference were published in a book titled Social Capital: A Multifaceted Perspective edited by Dasgupta and Serageldin. The eclectic group of scholars examined the topic from every angle and in the end all agreed on its important role in promoting development. Coleman (2000) drew a sharp connection between social capital and human capital formation. Similarly, Krishna (2000, Turner, 2000, Uphoff, 2000) and many more pointed to the role of trusting and caring interaction between groups and individuals as the indispensable dynamics in creating relational assets in harmonious, positive, and productive life we call social capital.

AFRICAN GOVERNANCE INSTITUTIONS: FORM AND FUNCTION Called by different names like patrimonial, patronage, personal-rule (Chazan, 1992, 140–162, Leonard & Strauss, 2003, chapters 1–3) displaying a variety of forms, Africa’s governance institutions have remained fertile grounds for corruption and other forms of malfeasance that undermine public confidence and social capital formation. Because these corrupt and maleficent state elites and systems are buttressed by powerful external interests and international finance institutions, they become beyond the peoples’ capability to challenge change. Most of Africa’s state elite do not have to take the people as their necessary reference points, since their support and legitimacy is externally derived and anchored, a major point that Leonard and Strauss and other observers make. It might be considered a far fetched fantasy to suggest that what is urgently needed, therefore, is an international system of accreditation that applies democratic and human rights principles enshrined in the charter of the United Nations to validate the claims of legitimacy and authority of any African leader to represent the people and their interest on any international forum, including the United Nations system, donors, and lending institutions. As Leonard and Strauss (2003) declared: “Statehood is not rooted in domestic relations. Rather, in Africa it is sustained by the international system. The continent’s states persist as internationally recognized and funded ‘juridical entities without sufficient domestic bases of support” (l1). The United Nations must be the first place where the identity of such states should be examined to ensure that they represent the sovereign will of the vast majority of the people. But, the United Nations system has proven to be ineffective in insisting on legitimate representation of the people from its member states. It has not clarified the meaning sovereignty of states. Sovereignty seems to mean the unquestioned authority of elites rather than the autonomy of the people. The likes of Mugabe of Zimbabwe, al Bashir of Sudan, and Meles Zenawi

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of Ethiopia who ruthlessly torment, massacre and terrorize their people are treated as heads of states representing “their people” even though people in large numbers pay with their lives every day to try and rid themselves of these “leaders.” And the world knows this since the price they exact from the people are committed in broad day light. This is a political, moral, and philosophical fallacy of the first order. In a real sense, international organizations are partly responsible for the suffering of the people. The all too visible condition of persistent famine and other forms of misery in a number of African countries is man-made and avoidable only through thoroughgoing state reorganization and redistribution of powers among people and their leaders. Since the definition of development in this study centers the people and the institutions that that they are able to construct to serve them, it stand to reason to say that development failure has been imposed on Africa by international or external institutions as much as it has been by domestic ones. Again, Leonard and Strauss explicitly argue: . . . foreign aid reinforces and sometimes substitutes, for the effects of enclave production. As with enclave, overseas development assistance (ODA) creates a system in which state revenue does not depend on a functioning economy. State survival is again disconnected from the productivity of the general population. Not only do detached sources of income facilitate patronage politics and corruption, but they also hinder the development of capable states (18)

Based on her lived experience this researcher finds the intellectual candor of these authors refreshing and their input most relevant to inspiring meaningful corrective action by the international community and donors. Their insight renders inappropriate and irrelevant, the drives of the likes of former British Prime minister, Tony Blair, and economist Jeffery Sachs who want to continue more of the same harmful measures: throw more and more money at Africa’s dysfunctional economic system produced by extant dysfunctional state institutions. This is like pouring water into a bottomless bucket, the water simply passes through. What is most discouraging is that the United Nations itself is also a proponent of this same failed strategy (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development-UNCTAD, 2006). This document titled Economic Development in Africa, Doubling Aid: Making the “Big Push” Work only fiddles with the same failed strategies of throwing aid money at dysfunctional African systems that have proven incapable of progress: “. . . at the minimum, Africa’s additional aid requirements are likely to be around $20 billion per annum by 2008–2010, and increasing to about $25 billion per annum by 2015.” (p. 25). What a contrast with the analysis of independent scholars. Sadly, the document labors to disprove the significance of fixing institutions and the general proposition that

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aid has not served African peoples’ development: “Moreover, aid seems to work in a range of different environments and its positive impacts on growth, as will be discussed further below, is difficult to tie down to “good policies”, at least as narrowly defined.” (p. 27). It seems that some UN authorities need to go down and speak to the ordinary people whose development they write about to give sense to what they say. We can confidently repeat a thousand times that institutions and good policies are corner stones of development. It is for this reason that every one hails the few African countries well on their way to democracy and rule of law and demonstrating corresponding successes in development. There are rare but visible signs that indicate the scaling back of support for some African dictators defying human rights and democratic demands. The recent principled engagement of the international community has started to help the Kenyan and Zimbabwean people to resist the entrenched dictatorial oligarchies that effectively blocked the democratic and development aspirations of the people. Processes of dialogue, communication and reconciliation among elites representing differing visions and interests has started as a result of international pressure. On July, 24, 2008, the BBC evening news broadcast footages of Robert Mugabe getting together with opposition leaders-something he had vehemently resisted following his rejection of the results of the March, 2008 election. Kenya had enjoyed a similar situation earlier, and the country appears to be on the way to reconciliation. Most importantly, the International Criminal Court indicted Sudan’s al Bashire in July 2008 for the genocide and crime against humanity he committed in Dar Fur. May be impunity is shrinking for African dictators.

RECENT CONTRASTS Many cases of stark contrast to the aforementioned hopeful events exist in Africa. To a May 27, 1997 evidence-laden letter of an influential Ethiopian Diaspora group to the World Bank requesting the Bank to refrain from burdening present and future generations of Ethiopians with debts that do not benefit them as the loan is given with no conditions on institutional transparency, accountability and the rule of law, the World Bank replied: Economic growth has averaged 7.6 per cent per year between 1992 and 1996 after averaging less than 2 per cent per year in the 1970s and 1980s. Tellingly, even in the drought year of 1993–1994, growth exceeded the average for the 1970s and 1980s. Improved management of food security prevented the sort of famine that Ethiopia usually saw in agricultural years such as 1993–1994. All this has led to real improvements in the standard of living for millions of Ethiopians. (World Bank, June 10, 1997, signed by Oye Astra Meesook)

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The story of perennial famine under the present Ethiopian regime needs no telling, except for readers who may not follow African news on the international media. As it will be shown in chapter 4, some 7 million people were famine victims in Ethiopia in 1994–1995, even as the Bank unabashedly declared the economic success of the regime they were lending to. Besides, evidence was provided of the thousands of farm families being internally displaced refugees as a consequence of ethnic cleansing triggered by the ethnic bantustanization of the country. The majority of the rural population, then as now, was under tremendous insecurity, harassment, and displacement (Pausewang, S., Tronvoll, K., and Aalen, L. 2002, 180–184 and most sections of chaps. 5–12). And yet, the Bank continued to claim that they are about improving the lives of people and that they are achieving that goal. No amount of evidence from concerned Ethiopians could convince World Bank officials that the facts on the ground are contrary to their claims and that they simply needed to look at them. Clearly, as the high officers of the development industry, they were defending their comfortable positions at the expense of the suffering Ethiopian people. Since the mid-1990s, every two or three years, the country has gone into ever accelerating rate of famine, and the World Bank continues to sing praises for the impressive rate of Ethiopia’s GDP growth. GDP has become a convenient escape since it provides measures for a tiny modern sector of the economy owned by powerful elite and their surrogates. Even here, some random reality checks by new comers to the Bank are in evidence. In what can be seen as a rare and unusual statement, on June 18, 2008, the World Bank chief economist and Vice President, Dr. Justin Lin Yifu told reporters: “Ethiopia should improve its backward farming system to curb acute food shortages.”3 In 2008, four million, nine hundred thousand people in southern Ethiopia were afflicted by severe famine and in need of international food aid in addition to some eight million who were still on international foodaid for their survival: “Some 4.9 million more Ethiopians are in urgent need of food aid, the UN said Tuesday, bringing the total number of people in Ethiopia who need relief aid to 12 million or 15 per cent of the population”4 The regime, still a World Bank favorite, strives to hide the magnitude of the famine crisis by simply denying it. The international press and United Nations agencies are the entities battling to bring the disaster to international attention. For some reason, tyranny in Ethiopia has become an internationally tolerable order. Perhaps because its agony cannot be blamed on the legacy of colonialism and no one needs to feel guilty. How else can one explain the general official silence on the regime’s famine denials, and the uproar against election reversals in Kenya and Zimbabwe and silence in the case of Ethiopia’s 2005 election reversal and the jailing of entire opposition leadership and thousands of opposition supporters? And the massacre of peaceful

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and defenseless demonstrators protesting the election reversal? On the July 2, 2008 show of Charlie Rose, a renown Egyptian investor, with the first name of Nagib, said “there are many more Mugabe’s in Africa.” Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia is probably the very worst and most violent who nevertheless suffers no international sanction even of the mildest form. This brief discussion is meant to argue the existence of direct relationship between a country’s “most impoverished” status, even by African standards, and the level of political and social oppression. So long as the political, economic, and governance institutions do not serve the central goal of freedom of the people to do and be (as Sen has so aptly articulated) no development can happen in Africa. Even the World Bank (2000, p. x) puts four preconditions for Africa to move forward, though it rarely follows its own institutional and democratic prescriptions: • • • •

Improving governance Investing in people Reducing aid dependence and strengthening partnership Increasing competitiveness and diversifying the economies

This is the rhetoric, the practice is the same old one—support and empower unaccountable and anti-development, anti-democratic elites. If development is to be given legitimate support, the focus of internal and external development efforts should be not on measuring meaningless GDP, but insisting on the creation of essential institutional reforms to unlock the development potentials of the people. This involves listening to the rank and file among the people and giving them voice and choice. This requires that the development dialogue and activity be moved away from the state elite to the people, except for macro infrastructure projects covering the whole country or regions of the country. Jeffery Sachs and the United Nations Millennium Development Goals are already failing in Africa5 because they ignored the peoples’ right to speak for themselves and to engage in development that directly aims to enhance their problem solving capacity. EDUCATION: AFRICA’S MOST WORRYING AND FAILING INSTITUTION Not only is education constituted by and constitutive of struggles over the distribution of symbolic and material resources, but education implies and confers structural and ideological power used to control the means of producing, reproducing, consuming and accumulating symbolic and material resources.6 Mark B. Ginsburg

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Educators and philosophers of education have long recognized the intimate connection between educational institutions, educational goals, and the specific society and time in which education is situated. The function of education goes far beyond the mere creation of literate and skilled human resource-that thing which we have earlier called human capital. Education is also about enlightening, inspiring and nurturing the human spirit to reach for the highest possible goals for self and society, and shaping the mind with knowledge of self and society past and present, as well as creating cognitive awareness of ones place in the world. This forms the broad human and social foundation and purpose that should provide the essential platform for the enterprise of scientific and technical knowledge creation, cultivation of a culture of inquisitiveness, and experimentation. All of these are key to devising creative, indigenous solutions to local social and development challenges. Education is also about creating new ideas of possibilities and challenging people to a life of purpose that integrates the interest of the self with that of the broader society. This is what is meant by the oft evoked appeal to enlightened self-interest. Topped off with relevant skills and know-how, such education is the fundamental stuff of development and progress. One of the most profound of classical thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Emile Durkheim (1956) said of education “. . . each society sets us up a certain ideal of man, of what he should be, as much from the intellectual point of view as the physical and moral; that this ideal is to a degree, the same for all citizens; that beyond a certain point, it becomes differentiated according to the particular milieu that every society contains in its structure” (p.70). What this means is that every society sets up education to produce generations on a generalized and preferred qualitative premise reflective of its grasp of its existential condition and vision of its destiny. From this generalized and preferred premise, a common education content anchored in it is devised to serve every and each member of society, however diverse, with unambiguous equality. This, however, will not mean the creation of a uniform and homogeneous group of humans as each student’s preference and specialization will be differentiated in accordance with the aptitude and inclinations and the influence of the subtext of the society that immediately influences her/his choices. Every culture and society possesses a variety of traditions and sub-texts of traditions that, over long periods of its history, it evolves. This includes certain unique skills and intellectual inclinations that may influence personal preferences in the course of education. As an example, certain main stream cultures may have developed special agricultural, horticultural, animal husbandry economies with agribusinesses enterprises that process

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the produce from these economic sectors. But, economically more powerful sub-groups that produce specialists in money management, and trade may evolve into a distinctive sub-culture which may predispose youth from its midst to be inclined towards specialization in trade, banking or finance regardless of the premium society may place on agriculture, or horticulture. Hence, the possibility is strong that students growing up in a family of teachers may tend to prefer that profession; children of doctors, accountants, architects and so on may prefer to emulate their professional environment and the professions they are most exposed to, if they have the aptitude. However, even by choice and quite apart from aptitude, young people may abandon the established path of their immediate environment in favor of new and exotic experience. Some students might become fascinated by a new idea and knowledge they never had before, say astronomy, and wish to pursue this new area to specialization without anyone prescribing to them what to choose from the cocktail of subjects included in the general curriculum. This gives all learners the sense of being in a universal learning world in which only they, their diligence, and their abilities and preferences determine what they may become. Education in this sense becomes the most important arena for social capital formation in a nation, while fostering ever growing specialization and differentiation professionally at the same time. The examples above are given to explicate what Durkheim means when he says “beyond a certain point, it becomes differentiated according to the particular milieu that every society contains in its structure.” Durkheim further defines the essential and core characteristics of education: “Education is the influence exercised by adult generations on those that are not yet ready for social life. Its objective is to arouse and to develop in the child a certain number of physical, intellectual and moral states which are demanded of him by both the . . . society as a whole and the special milieu for which he is specifically destined” (p. 171). What we see again in this thinking is that education has to be designed with the unique needs and agendas of each society in mind. This is a direct statement that affirms that no one can design an effective education for a society except the totality of that society itself. Africa has had a long tradition of education. However, the traditional education systems of different African societies had as, their major objective, the transmission of received knowledge and wisdom, and ensuring the continuity of traditional knowledge and practices in addressing local needs. Though stability and continuity was the main goal of traditional education, some form of active enquiry and creating new knowledge did obviously occur as can be seen from the gradual progress made in the practice of medicine, science and

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metallurgy in pre-slavery and pre-colonial Africa (Harding, 1991, 218–249). It can generally be argued, however, that the focus of traditional education was not on change and progress, but on the maintenance of the established system. This tends to be the characteristic of all traditional and parochial education systems. The intergenerational transfer of knowledge was, by and large, confined to intra-ethnic and family audiences. This meant that the production and reproduction of knowledge, skills and technology was not scaled up to benefit from talents and experiences of larger and diverse populations, ecological, and cultural zones. Perhaps the biggest limiting factor was the existence of vastly differentiated languages and the absence of writing systems that could make African knowledge accessible to interested inter-ethnic and national publics. Other factors may have also played complex roles in limiting the scale of knowledge construction and its transfer inter-generationally. In some cases, negative stereotypes relegated certain valuable skills to low status ascriptions, thus limiting the scope of their practice. In other cases, knowledge was considered too “sacred” to be widely shared. In much of traditional Africa, it is known that even within given ethnic cultures, only specified people were designated as heirs to knowledge passed through known elders possessing the scientific, technical, medical and other forms of knowledge.7 Because there were no institutionalized traditional mass education mechanisms supported by public funding, common possession and transmission of knowledge was restricted to isolated individual initiatives which limited the human impulse to experiment and create new knowledge on a wider scale. Only those with extraordinary talents and interests probably engaged in the creation of new knowledge and the refinement of old ones. In such traditional systems, while some progress did obviously take place, it appears to have been at a very slow rate under the exclusive control of a few who, in the absence of writing tradition, could only orally transfer it to a few. In recent decades, there has emerged great deal of concern and interest to document Africa’s traditional knowledge locked in oral traditions vulnerable to extinction. Testimonies of the effectiveness of African knowledge and technology in different areas are emerging. Traditional medical practice is being integrated into Western style biomedical education and practice.8 The World Bank study (2004b) documents African traditional knowledge systems for solving medical, economic, environmental preservation, and conflict resolution issues. This is a mere start. There is a tremendous reservoir of African knowledge yet to be documented from oral histories and living traditional practitioners. It is entirely conceivable that African knowledge systems may, in the future, form important parts of the curriculum. Considering the broader purposes of education and its intergenerational character, the lost opportunity

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to incorporate its own knowledge system into its colonial and post-colonial curriculum undoubtedly handicapped Africa’s post-independence progress. By drawing on the insightful analysis of classical and contemporary scholars of education, this researcher has derived a definition of education relevant for Africa. The definition states: Education is the organized, standardized, and institutionalized intergenerational transfer of society’s accumulated knowledge, wisdom, values, world-views, ethics, philosophies, art, and skills, supplemented by appropriately selected and adopted external contents. While emphasizing authenticity, this definition does not preclude filling knowledge gaps with imported or borrowed contents or pushing the frontiers of knowledge forward. After all diffusion of knowledge has always been a global phenomena with every one borrowing accessible knowledge from everyone else whose knowledge and technology clearly appear new and innovative or are superior to the one available locally. What has been missing in Africa is the African content which should have formed the foundation of education. Africans learn very little about their own achievements and positive heritage. This has resulted in the lack of critical understanding of their own past achievements as well as shortcomings, leaving them with a lot of confusion, self-doubt and unresolved ambiguities about their role and place in the world. Here is what African scholars had to say about their education system: “. . . ignored the history, culture and ‘peculiarities’ of the African people, and proceeded in every way to give them foreign models to copy. The result . . . was that we as people . . . have lost our self-respect and our love for our own race, are become[sic] a sort of nondescript people . . . and are in many things inferior to our brethren in the interior countries” ( Ajayi, Goma and Johnson, 1996, p. 18).9 It is said that Amartaya Sen-the Nobel prize economist—started schooling in Bengal, India, which promoted curiosity rather than results (the Guardian, March 31, 2001). In Africa, education is still a relatively passive enterprise. It largely promotes rote memory generally of European content with little relevance to Africa, outside the science and technology fields. The emphasis is on attaining acceptable external examination results. From the story told about Sen by the Guardian, Indian youth grow up learning about their traditions and knowledge systems along with relevant Western contents, thus growing up unambiguously Indian and confidant of their own heritages and abilities. Indian scholars are famously recognized as extremely talented. Sen is just one of them. The economic and development concepts developed by Amartya Sen (1999) equate development with human freedom to act, explore, and advance without undue constraints created by those who control power and resources. He declares that development is freedom. This human freedom-based and holistic development paradigm of an economic Nobel Prize

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winner is today globally studied and respected by even powerful centers of “free market zealots” like the World Bank and other international financial powerhouses. In fact, Sen tells us that his ideas on development are a compilation of lectures he gave at the World Bank and similar institutions. Sen’s greatest contribution is that, from his position of global prominence, he is promoting ideas which largely invalidate the neoclassical economic and development paradigm promoted by the World Bank and so blindly embraced by Africa to its great development peril. Sen is an Indian economist who studied in the West and teaches and conducts research at elite institutions in England and the United States. But he retains his authentic version of economics and economic development which he evolved over time, through penetrating observation of the predicament of the world’s masses under the globalization regime that has been formulated and robustly pushed by international finance institutions, multinational corporations, and powerful established and emerging economic elites. Since they grow up being encouraged to think independently and creatively, Indians have been able to advance their society and economy and compete, on their own terms, on the world scene in a way that Africans have not yet managed to do. Africans grow up with confused ideas of the self and their identities, the education they receive being of foreign subject matters in European languages that say very little that is positive and affirming about them. Brigit Brock-Utne (2000) offers perceptive and comprehensive perspectives on this problem that merits a careful study by African policy makers and educators. Even with all their constraints, occasional sparks of independent and creative thinking on African development by African scholars has always been in evidence, though not energetic enough to challenge the conventional, de fault paradigm. An appreciable number of African scholars have started to unlearn what they have been taught about their economies. An anecdote in this researcher’s African experience is relevant here. It was on the occasion of a big celebration of an anniversary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa in 1983. A continental symposium on the state of the continent’s economy and development and “The African Perspective on The New international Economic Order” was organized by the Addis Ababa University and the United Nations University in cooperation with the Economic Commission for Africa. Scholars from all over the continent came with their learned papers on the subject. It was all doom and gloom for Sub-Saharan Africa. Virtually no presentation offered a hopeful scenario or a workable alternative framework that Africa should follow to reverse the gloomy decline of its economy. This was topped by the Oxford educated senior ECA economist, a highly respected African economist, who

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was with the organization since its inception. He too gave a litany of the dismal economic and development failures of the continent. At the end of that session, this researcher, dismayed and somewhat frustrated, walked up to this Oxford educated senior ECA economist and asked a series of questionssomething to this effect: “. . . were you not supposed to help Africa avoid all the failures you and others enumerated? Were you not supposed to help countries design better economic and development policies and programs to move the continent forward? Were you not trusted with the promotion of program ideas that advanced development? Why are you telling us of the continent’s total failure nearly a quarter of a century after the creation of ECA? What he answered was interesting. It went something like this: “Well my dear, it took us a quarter of a century to unlearn what we learned as economic development.” He went further, and explained that they “have now figured out that development starts with the little things people start to do for themselves and their surrounding like tree planting, building community schools, conservation, making household farms optimally productive, mobilizing the people to freely experiment with local and adapted technologies appropriate to their needs and so on. Governments and development organizations must focus all their energies on making it possible for people to address the needs of their families and communities. This will set the stage for Africa’s development. For too long, all of us have been focused on macro policy analysis and recommendations and designing grand projects.” The gentleman provided an authentically African perspective with a candid admission of the shortcomings of formal, Western economic training to address Africa’s development needs and challenges, and the absence of alternative African approaches cultivated by its education systems. In his pedagogical eloquence, he said that work on this has started and will continue. One can guess that this effort was manifest in later years by documents like the African Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programs for Socio-Economic Recovery and Transformation, The Lagos Plan of Action and the like. Being early learning initiatives, these articulations may still have had the usual top-down fallacy, but they were good beginnings in thinking for ones self. Unfortunately, nothing seems to have changed in African development thinking and practice. Another twenty years later, in June 2003, the present Executive Secretary of the ECA and United Nations Undersecretary, was repeating the exact same failures compiled by the participants of the 1983 conference, only on greater scales. To the meeting of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in Geneva, where this researcher sat as an observer, the ECA executive reported on Africa’s seemingly uncontrollable slide into deepening poverty and underdevelopment. As Africans, we have not studied our problems and committed ourselves to solving them in our own ways. If this

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were not the case, the 2003 report of the ECA executive could have mentioned and elaborated on at least a few new successful experiments and initiative that were going on in substantial quarters of the continent that demonstrate some forward movement. He did not do that, perhaps, because no such workable initiatives were designed and promoted in significant ways. One is left wondering what the purpose of all this elaborate and expensive network of international organizations working in Africa is all about if they are not making any difference and if Africa’s economic and social status is declining on their watches.

AFRICAN EDUCATION: A CONTESTED SITE As with other areas of its experience, Africa’s education system has been a battle ground for the control of its content and purpose (Brock Utne, 2000, 33–34, Ajayi, Goma and Johnson, 1996, pp.1–27). Modern African education was started by missionaries. Colonial governments followed in their foot-steps. Neither education providers had the goal and purpose to have African education serve the development needs and aspiration of African societies. Rather, European education for Africans was designed to produce the lowest level of functionally literate Africans to serve European low level administrative and security tasks and to indoctrinate them in the supremacy of Europeans. Koranic schools too had their own agenda (Gueteck, 1993, chapter 12).10 Koranic education being focused on teaching religion and religious laws, and enforcing religious rituals, it did not serve Africa’s needs for selfdevelopment and progress. Post-independence African governments did step in with expanding systems of schooling but became dependent on external aid in shaping every aspect of education and curriculum. The curriculum and the financing of education were not carefully analyzed, traditional knowledge systems incorporated, and the methods and content of education selectively fine-tuned and prioritized to fit the need to transmit relevant and practical knowledge to youth. Education did little to instill a new sense of purpose and consciousness in African people that would motivate them to develop skills and capabilities to work hard and independently advance their societies to realize the fruits of their newly acquired freedoms. African education remained a haphazard mix of externally driven and oriented curriculum with a very ambiguous purpose. It did not articulate the kinds of people African society needed to produce for its indigenously grounded and sustained progress. Education simply meant going to school and learning a few European subjects in European languages. African voices that had more indigenous perspectives were too weak to influence the content and direction of African education (Brock–Utne, 2000, 45–49).

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Based on her extensive field studies of African education and educational institutions, Brock-Utne focused her analysis on the impact of external actors and the policies they aggressively advance on African education, giving special emphasis to World Bank and the Jomtien Education for All convention. She started out to investigate whether both behave as interventions in African educational development “that resembles the one the colonialists had previously meted out for Africa: only a rudimentary education for a few years for the masses of Africans, the cheap labor force . . . (xxiv).” In chapters 1 through 3, Brock-Utne analyzes the effects of seminal World Bank documents on African education: Educational Policy for Sub-Saharan Africa: Adjustment, Revitalization, and Expansion (1988), Priorities and Strategies for Education (1995), and the Jomtien Declaration and Framework of Action. Brock-Utne finds both Jomtien and World Bank edicts harmful to the development of essential logics in Africa’s educational development. African points of view are suppressed in the design of education policy for Africa. Brock-Utne is not alone in this view. She refers to the 1993 study of Joel Samoff to support her assertion that . . . when it comes to World Bank thinking on education in Africa, the research base is largely restricted to that produced by World Bank staff or commissioned by the Bank. The result is a set of self-fulfilling prophesy. Research data support the policy that the bank wishes to pursue because that research has helped to shape that policy . . . Other studies, sometimes of a much more thorough nature, and sometimes even commissioned by the World Bank itself, are not cited when they go against the arguments made in the . . . document (p.47).

Such a condition does not at all auger well for the relevance and quality of African education as defined in this study. In all fairness, the Jomtien Framework for Action to Meet Basic Learning Needs (1990) is sensitive to the same issues that Brock-Utne’s study is preoccupied with: making primary education content-relevant and a source of empowerment. In article 1. 3, the Framework states, “Another and no less fundamental aim of educational development is the transmission and enrichment of common cultural, and moral values. It is in these values that the individual and society find their identity and worth.” Further, in article 4, the framework states “The focus of basic education must, therefore, be on actual learning acquisition and outcome, rather than exclusively upon enrolment . . . .” Though the unequivocal emphasis of Jomtien is on quality and relevant primary education for all, it does not negate the need for secondary and higher education. While not stressed in articles of the framework, the connection between quality primary education and higher levels of education is articulated in the preamble: “Recognizing that sound basic education is fundamental to the strengthening of higher lev-

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els of education and of scientific and technological literacy and capacity and thus to self-reliant development . . . ” It appears clear that Jomtien is not the culprit in the education crisis that has developed following its implementation. African governments are largely responsible for the distortions that have reduced the goal of education for all into meaningless mega numerical growth in enrolment. As will be shown later, primary education in Africa has become a herding of masses of children into spaces where no education can take place. Additionally, Jomtien would not be all that bad had it not been hijacked and put to unfortunate uses like insistence on expenditure reduction for higher education to expand primary education, irrelevant as this is, even as the continent continues to host tens of thousands of expatriate experts to carry out vital functions that Africans ought to be doing. And on this Brock-Utne and other voices have seen cynical designs to keep Africa as low capability, raw material producer for the global market, condemning it to eternal poverty, ignorance and misery, as stated in the paragraph above. African education is pushed as a mere exercise in numeracy and literacy that does very little in shaping the kind of well rounded effort needed to bring out the best in each child and person in the long run. As Brock-Utne puts it: . . . both the identified ‘educational issues’ and the proposed policy framework essentially reflect human capital assumptions within the broader context of the structural adjustment development agenda. Indeed, the main goals of the World Bank’s effort in education in Africa, both in terms of sectoral lending and as component of structural adjustment programs, seems to be to prepare people for the jobs that a global division of labor offers, which means primarily producers of raw material (45–46).

Indeed, the World Bank agenda for African education fails to give ground for refuting the statements above. Rather than focus on education quality, relevance, and the expansion of higher education, the World Bank does push primary education as the level Africa should focus on: “Cost benefit studies during the past decade in 16 African countries suggest that the social rates of return to investment in education are 26 percent for primary, 17 per cent for secondary, and 13 percent for higher education” (World Bank, 1989, p.77). The value of primary education to little children typically sets the stage for further intellectual and personality development. Its value as a terminal qualification must be hard to understand, let alone quantify. The intention here is not in-depth study of educational actors and the outcomes of their actions in Africa. It is merely to show how the most important means and end in Africa’s development, its people, are being shortchanged and inadequately groomed by the institutions of education so that they are unable to assume capable and responsible positions in their own societies’ development.

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Africa’s most critical institution, its educational system, is grossly inadequate, and even dysfunctional, to help the continent make sense of its massive and multifarious problems and the design of feasible solutions. Everything one studies about African education reflects theoretical and empirical contradiction in the typical sense of how and to what end education should function in a society. This dire deficiency and contradiction undoubtedly conditions Africa’s dysfunctional institutions of governance and state management. Elite behavior is unencumbered by ethical and normative socialization that reinforces the common good and common responsibility as a fundamental norm and premise of Africa’s educational system and institutions. Because the philosophical and theoretical premise of African education is not articulated in the way it should have been, what emerges clearly is the prevalence of confused sense of individual purpose which is unable to resist trivial temptations like nepotism and corruption. These easily open the way for the emergence of dysfunctional institutions of power which effectively block the emergence of other much needed Africa-centered norms and values. In a seminal work on African education, titled Educate or Perish, the renown historian and philosopher Josehp Ki-Zerbo (1990) had this to say: The larger truth . . . is that in practically all cases, interactions between Africa and the outside world have turned out to Africa’s disadvantage, leaving a negative balance when all costs in such sectors as agriculture, food, trade . . . technology, health, communication, etc. are taken into account. Of all these interfaces shaping tomorrow’s Africa, it is the educational sector, informal as well as formal, that presents the most absurdly negative aspect. Africa is the only continent without a controlled system of collective self-perpetuation . . . aim at a limited goal: to identify a number of major problems and challenges, to correlate them and place them in perspective, and then to map out a number of paths along which Africans may hope to retrieve control over a function that has in large measure escaped them so far: their social reproduction (pp.14, 15).

To move Africa forward, African education that encourages creative and independent thinking and experimentation with new ideas and commitment to the common will is key. It is the only way Africa’s problem solving capacity, attentive to national and local peculiarities, can develop. Education in Africa has yet to see this as one of its key missions. The absence of established educational and intellectual traditions of service, of enquiry and discovery may be one of the reasons why new ideas and dissent against old and dysfunctional practices are least tolerated in Africa. This inability of education to create a level of comfort with questioning old ideas and experimenting with new ones, especially in early childhood and primary education which captures children at their most impressionable and formative stage, may be a big factor in the

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continent’s inability to change course when old ways yield negative results in development, governance, or other sectors. Coming out of traditions of unquestioning compliance in the education and other institutional systems, most African leaders are most unfriendly to independent thinking. Progress demands that this mind-set change in favor of critical pursuit of institution and knowledge building, especially through education. They disallow any significant degree of free space for well intentioned Africans to think through Africa’s problems and propose home-grown solutions. The anti-African intellectual and intolerant nature of African regimes is seen in the brain drain that leaves Africa for the safety of other parts of the world. This, along with education deficits and their implications will be briefly discussed in chapter 4.

NOTES 1. www.africaaction.org/african-initiatives/aafall.htm accessed 6/27/2007. 2. The writer makes special reference to the number of free media journalists that have been jailed with impunity in many African countries since their robust engagement with China. 3. Reuters report provided this quote after interview with the said World Bank official in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on June 18, 2008. In nearly two decades of TPLF rule, not a single move that helps the farm community which constitutes nearly 85% of the population of 80 million, to “modernize” farming has been made, despite World bank praises of the regime’s economic performance. 4. “Five min. more Ethiopians need emergency food:UN, 2/17/09 http://nazret. com/blog/index.php?title=5_mln_more_ethiopians_need_emergency_food&m... Accessed 2/10/2009. 5. Various World Bank and United Nations documents and discussion groups including one at Howard University, African Studies Department seminar presentation by Dr. Kongo? On April 15, 2007. 6. Mark b. Ginsburg made this statement in his introduction to a book by Brigit Brock-Utne’s 2000 book titled Whose Education for All? The Re-colonization of the African Mind. Ginsburg titled his introduction “Questioning Assumptions and Implications of an Educational/ Political Slogan.” His series introduction is as refreshingly candid as the book it introduces. He highlights the political and structural/institutional foundation of education and how Africa lost it all. 7. A student project presented to my seminar class on October 21, 2008, for instance demonstrated that among some ethnic groups in Nigeria, only the oldest son in a family would be the designated recipient of the knowledge and wisdom of the family. Hence, the premium placed on the male child. 8. The University of Pretoria and other Southern African universities are incorporating traditional medical practice and training into their medical schools, as this researcher found in relation with other research work.

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9. The quote represents a compilation of authors’ ideas expressed in other cited sources 10. Using the example of Nigeria, Gutek shows how the divergent orientations of missionary, Koranic, private, and government school systems continue to confuse African education and deny it a unified purpose, despite quantitative gains in scope.

Chapter Four

The Human Resource Imperative

In the discourse on development, the human resource element is seldom accorded a central place. It is often the case that the African development debate ends up being about foreign direct investment, comparative advantage, market liberalization, privatization, GDP growth or other quantitative considerations that overlook the more important essence of development—that it is about people creating improved and more fulfilling quality of life for themselves. Edgar Owens summarized this succinctly: Development was thus defined as an exercise in applied economics. GNP was said to be all that counted. Governments, even though underdeveloped, were assumed to be the guiding hand of development, both planner and doer of rapid economic growth. Success was identified with the model of the large, highly mechanized industries of the urbanized West. Agriculture was a stepchild that could be modernized only after the industrialization of cities was underway . . . governments adopted a centralized approach to rural advance, with public officials guiding decision-making all the way down to individual villages . . . only a small number of persons was thought to be needed for wise decision-making. As GNP began to rise, some of the benefits of the wisdom of these few-jobs, food, roads, schools, clinics—would, so to speak ‘trickle down’ to the poor (1987/1989, pp.17–18).

The flaws in this version of the development process and the dismal failures resulting from it have caused some retreat in the bold rhetoric that accompanied earlier hubris. But little seems to have changed in actual practice. Contrary to this conventional development edict, which still pervades the African scene, the very reason that makes development a central concern is the need to enhance peoples’ individual, collective, and institutional capacity to analyze, understand, and change their distressful economic, political, health, nutritional and general human conditions. In Africa, on average, 99

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70–85 per cent of the people reside in rural areas, and any sensible thinking on development should first address their condition. Besides their numbers, rural people and their economies are inevitably the sources of raw material and human resource for the industrial sector and the foundation of national food security and food self-sufficiency-a strategic precondition for sustainable development. Earlier in this study, the proposition that development starts with the rational, economic and social linkage of rural and urban populations was discussed with the affirmations of Adam Smith as the starting point of the argument. In this sense, the aim of development, among other things, should be clearly stated as being an enterprise to build the people up physically, intellectually, and competence wise so that they could evolve individual, collective, and institutional capabilities to be charged with the growing complexities and burdens of development and socioeconomic transformation. Development can have no inherent meaning or value if it is not about the improvement of peoples’ intellectual, physical (health, nutrition, sense of well being . . . ), security, dignity, and capacity enhancement. Foreign aid or development intervention in African has not managed to focus development on the people. It has, in fact managed to help create a culture where the priority of state hinges on concerns other than the people—things like liberalization, opening their markets to foreign goods, encouraging investment and investors. Again, as Owens explains “. . . in an historical sense, trickle down is nothing more than a large-scale extension of the technology enclaves introduced by the colonialists in Asia and Africa and by feudal landlords in Latin America . . . it is not reform” (p.18). It does not represent a forward movement for social and economic transformation of society and notions of economic and social justice. Unfortunately, “it is the only kind of economic growth that” Africa in this case, “has ever known . . . ” (p.18). Owens refers to the woeful conditions of countries of Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. But since the book was written, much of Asia has moved on and it is only Africa to which the statement still holds. According to the World Bank “Africa continues to present the world with its most formidable development challenge. Of the 32 countries in the world with the lowest levels of human development, 24 are in Africa. While other regions have seen poverty levels decline dramatically over the past four decades, Africa has fallen further behind” (World Bank, 2004a, p. 3). The African people can in no way be implicated to have failed to bring about their own improvement. As already repeatedly shown, they never had a say or meaningful opportunities to participate in and establish the path for their future development. The struggle of most Africans with their colonial rulers to own their destiny continue today as most leaders have behaved no different from external oppressors. Here is what Ajayi et al. have to say about the early struggle of Africans to

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participate in setting the path for their progress: “. . . education policies were also the most effective instruments for the colonial administration to try to control the pace and direction of social change . . . the . . . administrators tended to regard educated Africans with the pretensions to claim . . . equality as dangerous radicals . . . ” (1996, p. 28). The claims of reasoned Africans for democracy, human rights and social and economic justice continue to be seen as grievous threats that must not be tolerated, even less, supported. What is distressing in all this is the tolerance of the international community of African leaders who abuse and bar their people from improving their lot, except where they become disagreeable to powerful international interests, like Mugabe has become. Nuances of this systematic neglect of the people’s rights have been amply studies by many researchers like Leonard and Strauss, 2003), Owens (1987/89), Bates (2008), Schwab (2001), Ayittey, (1992, 2005) among others. Until the people are lifted up to share responsibilities and rights with African governments in shaping and pursuing their societies’ economic and sociopolitical development, there can be no hope for Africa. In what follows, effort will be made to look more closely at the human resource imperative in Africa. As it was discussed earlier, the 1960’s marked the failed industrialization of Africa’s first development decade, partly because of the inadequacy of its human resource capabilities. When the “basic needs” strategy was implemented during the second development decade of the 1970s, aid and loans were poured into health, education, and other human resource-enhancing sectors, only to be abandoned and considered unsustainable during Africa’s lost development decade of the 1980s. The preoccupation became on how to make education an immediate instrument of economic productivity. Education started to be seen as an immediate instrument of economic production, a production investment (World Bank, 1995). Primary education was emphasized at the expense of secondary and university education. As discussed in chapter 3, the World Bank, was in the forefront of rate of return to education investment argument. Using unconvincing data, they pushed the idea that the most efficient education investment is in primary education and that education at this level should receive “the most public funding” (Brock-Utne, 2000, pp. 12–13). The disaster such de-emphasis of higher education has caused in Africa is the subject matter of chapters 7–9 in Ajayi, Goma, and Johnson’s 1996 work. There is a very important case to be made for considering the human capital factor as central to development. After all development is what people achieve in the process of experimenting with new ideas, knowledge and technologies to solve age old problems of scarcity in economic, health, institutional, and other sectors. In this practical sense, human capital valuation

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primes the contribution of the quality of human vision, skill, knowledge, and work ethic that translates into available labor or human capital to the development process. According to some economists, human capital is understood as a form of capital “because it is the source of future cash income or of future non-monetary satisfaction or both” (Johnson, et al. 1991, III p. 61). There can be no serious objection to this idea or understanding of the role of human capital since it underscores both tangible and intangible positive outcomes of human capital. Since this research is about demonstrating the inevitable role that people must play both as agents and beneficiaries of change and development, the focus in this chapter will be on human (resource) development which can broadly incorporate the intrinsic as well as the extrinsic value of human development. This implies the practical importance of human capital formation in development. Human resource or human capital development is here used to mean the entirety of human intellectual, skills, health, and psycho-social development and maintenance. Human development includes the richness of social networks, cultural and experiential learning, formal and informal education and the nurturing of human ingenuity and productivity, good health, and human security and freedoms provided by the state, and quality of life that enrich and give higher meaning to human life. In the discussion of human development variables, no reference will be made to the much touted Human Development Index of the United Nations, or similar World Bank indicators. This is because these indexes focus on outcome measurements rather explaining the complex processes that can describe the emergence of well developed human capacity or the factors that can and do block it. It is good to have reliable instruments for measuring human development outcomes. What is needed even more is to conceptualize and put in place measures and processes that bring about enhanced human development and defend these measures and processes by showing the points of blockage by powerful political interests that disfavor the realization of human capital development. This means that the international community needs to put in place systems that facilitate the growth and development of people in all aspects and endeavors of life and hold member states to strict account with regard to violations of these systems. The most important dimensions of human capital or human resource development clearly rely on institutionalized government action. An assertive redefinition of the validity and role of African governments seems in order. The legitimate role of African governments need to be strictly defined in terms of its commitment and ability to rapidly change the miserable condition of the people and the degrees of resource and political freedoms it opens for critical citizen engagement. No other measure or criteria need to be applied to define a legitimate African government or state. This definition is impor-

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tant since government action is determined by its ideology, purpose, and the means it relies on to acquire and retain power. The only African governments that should be considered legitimate must be those that have such respect for their people that they are impatient to tangibly eradicate hunger, famine and diseases. Governments must be held to high standards of dialogue with their people, face to face, on the people’s priority concerns. Who should judge or measure the efficacy of government focus on the needs and priorities of the people and the results it shows in meeting these? Of course the people, and only the people. I read an interesting innovation from India in this regard. The Public Affairs Center (PAC) in Bangalore, a civil society group, created a simple idea to monitor and certify government agency accountability and responsiveness (Thin, 2002, p. 80). It uses selected variables to measure public satisfaction with government services and issues a Citizen Report Card on the level of public approval. Both qualitative and statistical methods are used to figure the marks on the report card, including highly detailed data and information on bribes, who, what, and in which circumstances bribes are received and other forms of corruption and abuse down to the poorest person. This report card serves as feedback to government on what needs to improve or change radically. It is serious democracy at work. Serious African governments and the United Nations System can learn how to really derive indicators of success and advancement from such creative popular initiatives. The sad historical reality is that Africa, for the most part, has not had leaders who claim legitimacy on the strength of their demonstrated commitment to the people’s advancement and producing results in adumbrating the poverty and chaos that plague their societies. Because of this, African leaders never learned to justify their existence by showing result and respect for the people, as discussed in chapter 3. African people have known nothing but violence in their relation with the state. This is not to claim that democratic governments do not use violence to enforce rules. Their system of justice is robust in prosecuting those who violate public trust or trespass legitimate norms and rules of society. It is extremely impatient and unforgiving of offenses against the interests of the nation and public interests. In Africa, government violence has been used not to protect public interests and security, but to violate public interest and human security. Exploitative colonialists ruled by violence to dispossess African societies. Entrenched traditional feudal orders claimed divine rights of kings; and post-colonial regimes relied on colonial state apparatuses and logic of violence to administer or impose their will on people. Only a few post-colonial states strove to design new African orders, partially drawing on traditional orders of respect of the people and their rights to manage state and public relations more peacefully. States like Botswana and Mauritius have

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reaped a great deal of prosperity and harmony from such efforts. On the other hand, the likes of Meles Zenawi’s Ethiopia and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe have created living hells on earth that torment the people psychologically, socially, economically and politically. And these are very large and important countries. Little wonder that oracles of African doom Schwab (2001), (Bates, 2008)1 (Cabal, and Daloz (2001) (Bayart, Ellis, and Hibou (1999)2 among many others, see Africa as a hopeless proposition in terms of its ability to face up to the challenges of its misery and underdevelopment. Africa’s political elite and state managers have been the very sources of its underdevelopment and cannot be part of the solution needed until their total and complete transformation is attained. Human development and development processes in general emanate from the quality of state leadership and state-people relations (Rapley, 1996, pp. 142–145, World Bank, 1993, p.5, World Bank 2000, pp. 66–70). This condition is self evident and already discussed to merit any further corroboration here. Suffice it to say that donors will have to stop pretending that they are helping Africa’s development with the same leaders in power. They do not need to squander their tax payers’ money in a futile exercise of throwing money at problems whose solutions rest elsewhere. The manifest role of committed government was already discussed in chapter 2 in the discussion of the Land Grant University system, the Cooperative Extension system and the homestead act in the United States. In the 20th century, the Asian Miracle has been achieved through another form of deliberate government intervention (World Bank, 1993), which probably gave rise to the concept of the developmentalist state—a strong state led by the best and brightest whose policy design and appropriate mobilization of internal and external material, technological, and human resources brought about human, institutional and economic transformations for sustained economic and social progress. Given the artful and dedicated state and economic craftsmanship evolved by the Asian Miracle states, there should be no illusion that African regimes can replicate that model. Such resolve and will to dedicate oneself to the progress of the people and their economies does not seem to be coded into the political DNA of reigning African elites-especially those of the least developed and poverty-distressed ones like Ethiopia and Zimbabwe. Of course, this can change with the rise of a persistent demand and sacrifice of the African people in due course. But when this happens, there will be no need for the developmentalist state as the people will have created conditions to appropriate significant resource, economic and political power for themselves to be able to advance their own development. Institutionally speaking, Africans are oppressed not by a single, domestic layer of oppressors but by multiple layers. The layers start with the local po-

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litical functionaries interwoven in stages with regional and national systems. To these layers are added the continental layer. The OAU and now AU are part of the oppressive layers since their silence in the face of unspeakable political crimes is like standing against the people. In a speech the late Julius Neyrere gave at the University of Edinburgh on October 9, 1997, he is known to have said: . . . Being one of the hopeful, in a moment of extreme exacerbation I later once described the OAU as a Trade Union of African Heads of State! We protected one another, whatever we did to our own peoples in our respective countries. To condemn a Mobutu or Idi Amin or Bokassa was taboo! It would be regarded as interference in the internal affairs of a fellow African State.3

To this layer Leonard and Strauss in their work already mentioned multiple times in previous pages, and others add the financial nexus of national and international power arrangements that continue to weigh down on the aspirations and hopes of the African people. Even as these pages are being written, the design of Africa’s development remains divorced from the people. Rather than facilitating state-people dialogue and opening the social, political and economic space for Africans to participate fully in their development, international funds continue to flow into countries like Ethiopia in budget-support and other loans even as the regime’s oppressive institutions have decimated the peoples’ ownership of their affairs. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals MDGs also ignores the demonstrated fact that no development can occur in a context of unchecked government corruption and oppression of the people. The lessons of its own development intervention in Africa for more than four decades with little or no results to show should have informed the design of its Millennium Development Goals. The regime in Ethiopia, the poorest country in Africa, recently passed laws to control even the timid development and human rights work of non-governmental organizations, national and international.4 The international community seems to be in no mood to address the real causes of underdevelopment. Consider the case of two countries beholden to recurrent famine, starvation, and galloping HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis— Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. The leaderships in these countries have persisted in power for decades regardless of the sacrifices people paid in life and livelihoods to try and change them. Zimbabwe thrives on its rich natural resources. But Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi would be out of business fast without the more than $1.3 billion annual alms he receives in the name of the Ethiopian people. Zimbabwe, at least has come on the world’s watch list since the post-March 2008 election and Mugabe’s refusal to concede defeat handed him at the

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polls. The case of Ethiopia, however, remains one of the saddest of African stories. The tragic story of election 2005 has already been mentioned in chapter 1 of this study. Domestic human rights groups (Ethiopian Human Rights council, December, 5, 2005), Amnesty International (May 2, 2006), Human Rights Watch and other civil society advocates fought on behalf of opposition leaders, journalists, human rights advocates and the tens of thousands of ordinary citizens incarcerated in known and unknown locations for their audacity to aspire for democracy and their human rights. Opposition leaders and a few journalists were released in August 2007 but the faith of tens of thousands of opposition supporters remains a mystery. Using the most stringent standard of proof, an enquiry commission designated by the regime itself found 193 peaceful and defenseless protestors were massacred by government forces and other egregious human rights abuses continued following the government’s post-election opprobrium. The commissioners later escaped into exile with their report and documents as their lives were threatened by the regime for their minimalist honest findings. They presented their findings to the European parliament and to the US Congress in 2007. Beyond a short-lived rhetoric of outrage, nothing was done to redress this crime against humanity by either the US or the European Union. The people have been under siege mentality since and subjected to starvation and hardships. Government harassment, imprisonment and killing of suspected opposition supporters continue. As late as October, 2008, the regime harassed and detains opposition organizer who still dare to reorganize their battered party (press release by Kinijit/All Ethiopia Unity Party, Oct. 17, 2008). The State Department Human Rights Reports, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch continue reporting on the atrocities, but aid keeps flowing to the regime of Meles Zenawi at unprecedented levels, thus strengthening his iron hand against the people. With hundreds of millions in loans from the World Bank and the generous assistance of Western governments, Ethiopians are buying with repayable loans and alms in their name, their status as the poorest and most famine-prone people on the African continent.

NURTURING THE INTELLECT AND COMPETENCE OF AFRICANS: EDUCATING THE HUMAN RESOURCE OF THE FUTURE Many African regimes do spend a non-insignificant portion of their budget to education along with aid resources. However, the effective and purposeful utilization of educational resources to bring about meaningful human development is hampered by a number of factors. The most important, of course,

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is government non-accountability to the people and the absence of peoples’ voice in educational matters, as in other spheres of life. Another important factors was demonstrated by Brock-Utne (2000) and Ajayi et al. (1996). These include: a) distortion of Africa’s educational goals and methods, b) the absence of relevant curriculum and content or text material to make education effective and useful to African human resource development. In most African countries, virtually all textbooks at all levels of education are imported and reflect conditions of non-African societies. African curricula have been revised in line with imported textbooks and have little relevance to African conditions (Brock-Utne, 2000, pp.76–86). John Anyanwu, chief research economist of the African Development Bank and Andrew Frhijakapor, lecturer at Delta State University, Asaba, Nigeria (2007)5 wrote a well documented piece on different aspects of African educational issues. They started out with the all too familiar phrase that Sub-Saharan Africa “is the region of the globe where economic growth and social conditions have improved the least in spite of all the international efforts on its behalf” (p5). These researchers understandably focus primarily on education and related subjects, as sources of human capital. They found that, despite the continent’s abundance of natural resources and generous international resource inflows, Sub-Saharan African education, in particular, and all other aspects of continental Africa’s progress in general, lag behind all other developing regions. This lag presented in merely quantitative terms, not even looking at the qualitative and relevance dimensions of education discussed in chapter 3 of this study, is disconcerting. The quantitative lag is shown in table 1. It can be discerned from table 1 that Sub-Saharan Africa significantly lags in primary enrolment ratios compared to other developing regions, and this, as foot-noted by the authors, in spite of generous international aid flows to the education sector. More disturbingly, the New York Times on-site reporter in Mali wrote in the December 30, 2006 issue, that this lag in enrolment is accompanied by a massive herding of students into overcrowded classrooms with no teaching facilities and amenities. Enrolment is an instrument of bolstering Table 1. Comparative Regional Gross Primary Education Enrolment Ratios, 1995–2005 Developing Countries

1991

1999

2005

Latin America & Caribbean Northern Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Eastern Asia South Asia

104 89 71 124 92

121 101 79 116 94

118 105 95 112 113

Source: compiled from table 3 in Anyanwo and, Frhijakpor (2007). http://www.afdb.org, accessed on June 30, 2008

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primary education figures for international consumption rather than a serious effort to educate children. The piece by Sharon La Franiere which appears in an on-line article, titled “Crowds of Pupils but Little Else in African Schools” points out that each teacher is assigned 126 students. In situations where there is little or no relevant teaching material to support teaching and learning, what kind of education can one teacher offer to a class of 126 pupils? Sadly, even the disappointing statistics table 1 presents is meaningless if we consider the quality and content of education that the students receive under conditions described by the New York Times report. The testimony of the New York Times reporter hold for many African education cases. The same New York Times reporter, quotes the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) as saying: “nearly 22 million more students flooded classrooms between 1999 and 2004, increasing enrolment by 18 per cent, more than other regions of the world.” This bloated enrolment means little if content and quality are missing as they do. In this regard, the New York Times reporter asks, “What does this mechanical herding of students into class rooms mean by way of really educating the youngsters?” Africa is not serious about educating its youth. It is merely herding students into empty class rooms to meet international enrolment expectations, especially the Jomtien education for all mandate. This herding has merely sunk the system into deepening crisis. This crisis of African education is lamented even by the World Bank (World Bank, 2000a, pp.105–107). If there were real commitment and genuine concern by African regimes to install a system of viable education, it would clearly appear that false quantitative strategies that serve no educational purpose would be avoided. African countries would aim to provide meaningful, relevant, and quality education to the maximum number of children that can be realistically reached consistent with its own education philosophy, theory, and policy agenda . Such quality education will inevitably fall short of one hundred percent coverage of the primary school age population as budget constraints kick in. Under such constraints, education opportunities can be allocated rationally through innovative and impartial methods that guarantees equal participation for all population segments. It is worth noting that Ki-Zerbo (1990) also conquers with the idea of quality and relevant education that may not cover all rather than low-quality universal education that serves little purpose. He says “Education for all does not mean sending every one to school.” To him, effective African education demands “. . . a perennial endeavor to make African education an inward focused, self-reliant enterprise underwritten by the community” (p. 103). Here, his narrative of a number of cases where teachers, parents, and civil society

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groups in several African communities joined forces to design and finance good quality and highly relevant education programs with some government cooperation is heart warming. These experiences demonstrate the enormous potential inherent in African communities. When parents, educators and civil society are free to mobilize and share both in the cost of education and in the responsibility of designing the content and mission of education, government efforts are appropriately enhanced. Such local innovations appears to be far more superior to leaving education to the private sector, whenever government bureaucracies are pressed to expand education opportunities. Universal primary education is a goal that should be reached in stages. Experience informs us that in low stages of development, much of education should be targeted at specific skills among a group of people who can make immediate use of them. Important among such skills are inculcating many individual and social virtues like new work ethics, habits, and self-discipline required by an industry or changing workplace or imparting specific management skills. The focus of primary schooling should be to prepare children for further education. Emphasizing primary education as a terminal or final qualification is a waste of resources. Even the investment argument of the World Bank cited earlier, does not hold water here as little children do not join the labor force. Primary school enrolment in and of itself should not be an end when it means little educationally and has no qualitative impact on the learner as the New York times reporter and others observed. Primary education in Africa should retain its status as the beginning of secondary and university education. It is at these levels, especially the university level, that any form of mature and useful knowledge and habits of inquiry and creativity are acquired. Besides, by insisting that primary education is a panacea for African underdevelopment one is disclaiming the significance of native or traditional knowledge and skill that inhere in African communities. Traditional knowledge systems have not only sustained Africans over millennia, but are also serving Africa well today as a World Bank Study extensively documents (World Bank, 2004b). It is also the case that development experts observe that in the early phases of development, “accumulated experience of individuals seem to be a better investment than schooling. When a steady stream of new technology becomes available, formal schooling has an advantage over experience” (Johnson, et al. 1991, III, p. 61). This means that ordinary Africans can be helped to undertake substantial production and service improvements without necessarily learning reading and writing, though there can be no sensible objection to literacy and numeracy if it does not substantially interfere with the development of viable education systems at all levels. The affirmation of Johnson et al. is confirmed by the experience of this researcher

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who served as an unpaid volunteer board member during the 1970s to a small company in Africa that produced dry cell batteries and umbrellas. Both products were in big national and regional demand. A small company, originally set up with the help of the International Labor Organization in the 1960s to employ handicapped people to manufacture umbrellas, was struggling when it was taken over by a local, well resourced, welfare and development foundation. The new management upgraded the umbrella manufacturing and added a dry-cell battery manufacturing unit. As part of the social mission of its initiators, the little African (Ethiopian) company kept its commitment to employ very largely (nearly 90%) handicapped people like the deaf-mute, blind, and polio-disabled, all of whom were excluded from education and employment on account of society’s inability to cater to their special needs. Most of these employees lacked literacy and numeracy skills. But as producers, they were so well trained on the job to handle the more or less static application of a given technology, and were so motivated to do their best, that their productivity exceeded that of their counterparts in more developed countries, able bodied, educated, and using similar technologies. A comparative study of the recorded productivity of a similar company in a developed country producing the same item showed a significant advantage in favor of the African employees who were not educated. The average productivity of the small African company worker was higher by significant percentage points compared to that of the workers of the developed country factory used for comparison. That little company, The Jantila (Umbrella) Factory, thrived and grew its capital from tens of thousands to millions of dollars until the advent of its nationalization by Mengistu’s Marxist government in the late 1970s. It can, therefore be affirmed that, while primary education and literacy may be intrinsically good things to have, economic productivity and advancement can happen without them at low level of more or less static application of technology. It is only through producing and expanding wealth creation that sustained and meaningful education and educational institutions can be established and financed. Unschooled people motivated to pick-up skills on the job do amazingly well at production. With little help from its tax-exempt status as a non-profit enterprise, the company thrived and grew to withstand the stiff competition from a multinational suppliers like Ever Ready. I noticed a similar incident on private cotton farms in Ethiopia during the early 1970s where illiterate farm workers figured out ingenious ways of improvising many small parts to maintain tractors and trucks serving the farms. An American physicist friend whom I took around to visit one such commercial farm observed what the local workers were doing and remarked “It is a crime that these people with so much native talent should be so poor.”

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The African emphasis on primary education at the expense of secondary and university education to meet the primary education doctrine of the Jomtien convention or any other movement is unfortunate. It is an ill-conceived squander of time and resources and amounts to nothing more than blindly following a convention. For one thing, emphasis on primary education implies that there is a wealth of technology and literature that people are unable to access because they cannot read and write. In fact, there is very little for poor and literate people to read to acquire new knowledge and skills in Africa. This researcher has witnessed, in the 1970s, the graduates of a massive literacy effort go back to illiteracy within a few years because they had nothing of interest to read to sustain and reinforce their newly acquired literacy skills. There is very little literature prepared for this level of readers that is immediately useful. Additionally, it is typically small children who cannot join the labor force or participate in decision making at the family or community level that primary education addresses. In the views of many observers, undue emphasis on primary education at the expense of higher levels of education has only spawned negative consequences for Africa’s human capital development (Brock-Utne, 2000, chap.1). In any case, the totality of Africa’s education is in crisis today (World Bank, 2000a, pp. 106–107), a fact Ki-Zerbo emphasized back in 1990. Africa needs to think hard and fast to get a handle on its education crisis. To return to Africa’s human resource development through education, its secondary school enrolment demonstrates a number of inherent qualitative weaknesses as studied by Brock-Utne (2000) and others and in addition lags behind other regions even quantitatively. Table 2 provides the picture. Sub Saharan Africa, with its fast growing and very young population fares unfavorably in its secondary education. Its secondary enrolment ratio is the lowest of all developing regions as can be seen from the data in table 2. In addition to the dismal enrolment ratio, the African secondary school system suffers from many quality and relevance challenges (Brock-Utne, 2000, pp. 96– 107). The New York Times article referred to above indicates that 44% of Table 2. Comparative Regional Secondary Education Enrolment Ratios, 1991–2005 Developing Countries Latin America & Caribbean Northern Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Eastern Asia South Asia

1991

1999

2005

51 59 NA NA 41

80 70 24 64 46

88 78 32 75 63

Source: Adopted from Anyanwu and Frhijakpor (2007) table 4. http://www.afdb.org, accessed June 30, 2008

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Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is under the age of 15, making it the youngest population on earth. It is troubling to think that no tangible progress has been made to attempt creative ways of educating this population so that it could shoulder its future responsibilities. Since the 1981 World Bank Report-Accelerated Development in SubSaharan Africa: Agenda for Action (oft referred to as the Berg Report), the Bank, as amply documented by Brock-Utne, has issued a number of other reports and documents with some reference to African education, some constructive, more often not (Brock-Utne 2000, chaps. 1–3). After the 1990s, African education appears as a footnote, or an item in passing in World Bank (2000, 2004a, 2007) annual reports and other studies of African development challenges. Practically nothing is said about tertiary education being the vital key to Africa’s development. The Bank’s emphasis is still on investment, improving investment climate and liberalizing African markets as commanding variables in African development. Of course, in the new millennium, corporate and political governance, transparency, fighting corruption, and strengthening African institutions have been added to the rhetorical development honor role. How can one achieve all this in the absence of robust, high-quality and viable African education system, supported by civil society and African intellectuals, to produce the new blood and new expertise? Africa needs to go back to the drawing board, by itself, re-examine and fix its broken education system from primary to tertiary levels. To do this, the conversation on education philosophy and purpose that was began at the dawn of independence in the 1960s but was soon abandoned must be resuscitated and revisited afresh. Africa needs to study and evaluate the education road it travelled and the results in earnest. Specifically, a continental exercise is needed to analyze the guiding ideas in African education which could include: • • • • • •

Africa’s education philosophy and purpose its education theory and method its education policy and programs the relevance of its curricula development of teaching material that comports with the above training of educators and creating methods of evaluation and monitoring.

National resource allocation should target all phases of the education enterprise. Donor resources need to address the last two items for maximum effectiveness. Africa has enough intellectual capital to address this task at present. Governments should demonstrate seriousness of purpose by meeting the challenge of crafting an education system that truly address different levels and sectors of development in systematically designed stages.

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NUTRITION FACTORS IN AFRICA’S HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT A 1997 Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) Food and Nutrition Resource Book 6 found wide spread undernourishment in Africa and suggested the need for African societies to ensure household food security to produce a fit population. Africa’s nutrition status as a critical factor in human resource development is very discouraging. Virtually every year, after the mid 1960s, has been plagued by very significant rates of malnutrition in Africa. Good nutrition is essential to get a large pool of talented and energetic people able to take on the challenges of improving self and society. In this respect, the data in table 3 is disturbing. The rates of 38–43 per cent of malnutrition for the decades of 1969–1992 represent an overwhelming burden for African human resource and human capital formation and African development generally. The projection of 30 per cent of continued malnutrition to the year 2010 and the continued neglect of this huge continental problem is indeed worrying, the Millennium Development Goals efforts notwithstanding. Referring to United Nations sources, the BBC 10. pm news on the Howard University Public Television on September 25, 2008 pointed out that not a single African country was on track to meet the MDG goals. A significant elaboration of the MDGs progress was offered earlier in this study. Africa needs a well nourished, well cultivated, and well educated population if it is to make any sense of its own development and destiny. Food security built on a well conceived and prioritized rural and agricultural development strategy emphasizing multi-sector, small-agricultural and related development is an urgent prerequisite for Africa to move its economy and society forward. This should never be interpreted as a static proposition that ties Africa down to small scale rural production permanently. It should be understood to suggest that development momentum and transition to scaled-up, vertically (value-added) and horizontally integrated production can be created only by creating conditions that engage the overwhelming majority of the people as producers and consumers. Consolidating scaled-up production is a dialectic process. As will be shown later in this study, the state of undernourishment in Africa is a betrayal of its need of and potential for healthy human resource development. This is very largely a consequence of alienated, illegitimate, uncaring, and dysfunctional African system of governance institutions and irrational, distorted allocation of national resources. The political elite in most African countries cannot be held accountable to put in place policy instruments that allocate resources like land, technology, and capital to their best uses and users to overcome urgent problems of food deficit and food security. Again, it has to be stressed that these problems are symptoms of ill-defined

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development ends and means of African polity and foreign experts that work past the people instead of with them. It can be seen from table 3 that, up to 1992, the rate of undernourishment in Africa as percentage of the total population and in absolute terms continued to worsen. While the projection for the years after 2010 reflect some improvement, the total number of people malnourished remains staggering. USAID projection for 2010,7 suggests that 2/3 of all malnourished people in the world will be Sub-Saharan Africans. This scenario is more grim than the FAO figure shown above. There is consensus that, with visionary, committed, competent, and responsible leadership and governance, Africa could avoid such dismal predicaments (Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Affairs, 1985, McNamara, 1985, Leonard and Strauss, 2003, Ndegwa, 1996, chapter 6, World Bank, 2004a, 2004b, Part Tow, Notes1–4, World Bank 2000, Sen, 1999, pp. 177–179, Ayittey, 2005). The situations observable in Africa’s education, food security, and nutrition will, most certainly, deny Africa of the opportunity to move towards creating sufficient development conditions unless addressed with urgency. Essential conditions in human resource development and, therefore, the development of African nations and societies, hinge on nurturing Africa’s human resource formation on a large scale. It is often heard that African people generally show reluctance to work hard at physical tasks, so that the building of infrastructures must depend on imported unskilled labor from China for timely completion. What this view neglects is the burden of disease, ill health and malnutrition that undermine the energetic engagement of Africans in such tasks. Thankfully, some hopeful signs in this respect have been consistently present in Botswana since its independence and positive trends seem to be developing in Senegal, Ghana, Malawi, and to one extent or other, in at least thirteen other countries that are consolidating democratic and accountable governance. A small country in southern Africa, Malawi has a leader, Dr. Bingu Wa Mutharika, who shows every promise of being the kind of charismatic leader Africa has been in search of for a long time. A Ph.D economist educated in Malawi, India and the United States, and a veteran senior econoTable 3. Estimates and Projections of Chronic Under-nutrition in Africa Year 1969–71 1979–81 1990–92 2010–

Total Population (millions)

Undernourished as % of Population

Persons (millions)

268 357 500 847

38 41 43 30

103 148 215 264

Source: Adopted from table 9 of the FAO 1997 Food and Nutrition Resource Book for Africa.

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mist of the World Bank along with a long and impressive list of professional accomplishments serving African governments, the United nations and a number of other global institutions, Dr. Muthrika addressed a very receptive and enthusiastic audience at Howard University in Washington DC, at a public lecture on October 2, 2007. His presentation was titled, “Globalization and Africa: The Powerful and the Powerless.” Informed by his knowledge of the workings of African development, and international institutions, his thesis was that Africa has to take full ownership of and responsibility for its own development and no longer allow outsiders to dictate its policies or development paths. He gave informative examples of strategies and programs he is implementing autonomously. Here is one distinctive case where a son of Africa has used his extensive academic knowledge and international professional experience to reinterpret and redefine Africa’s development agenda. Dr. Muthrika focused in part on the abuse of African human resource through World Bank and other internationally imposed policies that insist on abandoning the people to fend for themselves. He pointed to cases where the World Bank and others urge African governments to abandon any support to poor African farmers (mostly women) who sustain the continent through their sheer devotion and labor, while they, the rich countries, generously subsidize their rich and well-to-do farmers and agricultural corporations. He used this contrast to illustrate the injustice and irrationality of what Africa is advised to do in the name of development. He saw this as an assault on the African people and their aspiration for development as well as their right to be in charge of their own development. The room echoed with thunderous applause. For a change, an African leader was talking sense and putting his words to action as demonstrated by his description of active programs initiated by his government. With competent and committed leadership, Africa can turn the corner and make real development happen through transformed institutions that facilitate and serve the peoples’ development needs and ignite their creative and productive impulses. Famine and starvation which appear endemic in African countries, Ethiopia in particular, have long been declared entirely avoidable, manmade disasters (McNamara in the report of the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Affairs, 1985). But African leaders, most notably the post 1991 Ethiopian leadership, use anti-peasant policies such as state ownership of land, dispossession of disfavored ethnic groups and individuals of their farmsteads and livelihoods as amply documented by Pausewang et al. (2002) to retard development and escalate food scarcity and insecurity. The use and abuse of the monopoly of the ruling party’s fertilizer distribution apparatus and monopoly control and ownership of land as a weapon of punishment of those who dare dissent or aspire for freedom and liberty has continued to

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hold very large segments of Ethiopian society hostage to perennial famine and starvation. Most African countries still under tyranny, have their own brand of institutionalized blockage of progress and need to be diagnosed and addressed individually. Here, the participatory social learning paradigm can serve both as an effective diagnostic and programmatic tool. In the Ethiopian case, a discussion by this researcher with some United Nations Development Program workers who had returned to the US from Ethiopia8 after the 2005 election, and the careful study and documentation of Pausewang et al correspond in significant ways. Famine and poverty are, if not intentionally imposed, results of policies that harm the interest of average people. The present Ethiopian leadership, at best, seems to think of the people as burdens to be silenced and made invisible even as it uses famine and the poverty of the people as reason for its unabashed demand for the endless stream of international aid and generous loan which it appropriates as it desires. At worst, the regime seems to view the development or improvement of the people and their economy as a direct threat to its hegemony to be avoided at any and all cost. And yet, because of the misguided perception of the regime as a partner in the war on terror in the Horn of Africa, the Bush administration, the World Bank and all of those that follow its footpaths continue to nurtures this anti-people regime that terrorizes and starves its own people and is determined to defer their development aspiration indefinitely. Seventeen years of relentless and massive demonstrations, letter campaigns, and other forms of pleas by the Ethiopian Diaspora, the continuous and scathing human rights reports and reports on government violence against the people by Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, Human Rights Watch, Africa Watch, the International Committee for the Protection of Journalists, the International Committee of Jurists, Amnesty International (which repeatedly testified before the US Congress and the European Parliament), even the annual Human Rights Reports of the State Department itself, and the authoritative study and testimony by prominent Scholars have made absolutely no difference in convincing Meles’ international benefactors to use their leverage to cause the easing of the regime’s stranglehold on the overwhelming majority of the people. A United States Congressman, Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey, outraged by the brutality and impunity of the regime of Meles Zenawi, introduced HR 5680– To encourage and facilitate the consolidation of security, human rights, democracy, and economic freedom in Ethiopia in 2006. The bill was sponsored by many republican and democratic members of Congress. But powerful lobbyists, DLA Piper Rudnick Gray C. retained by Meles Zenawi at a monthly cost of $50,000 (fifty thousand) to derail its passage9 succeeded. But through the resolve of Congressmen Chris Smith and Donald

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Payne, it was passed by unanimous congressional vote as HR 2003 in October 2007, only to be blocked from reaching the Senate for a vote by Republican Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma.10 All this with an inhuman disregard for the suffering of the Ethiopian people living under the post 1991 regime which has turned Ethiopia into the fabled land of endemic famine. Information contained in various sources writing about the various famine years11 and size of population affected, shows an increased pace in the occurrence in famine. The Guardian of April 18, 2003 wrote about the Ethiopian famine of 1994–1995 in which 7 million (some sources put it at 10 million) people were affected in scathing terms. The Associated Press said that 4.6 million were afflicted by a new wave of famine while millions were already on international food aid. The Times of September 18, 2008 puts the newly famine afflicted at 6.7, and quotes United nations sources as saying that the new figures may be as high as 8 million. As already cited, even as these pages are written, some 15% of the population lives under conditions of famine awaiting international hand outs. This general magnitude of famine has persisted every two or three years since 1991. One hears of no international or African outrage and Ethiopian voices remain echoes’ in the wilderness. In all this while, the Ethiopian government was in denial, saying that the problem was being exaggerated by foreigners. Initially the government blatantly denied that there was famine until persistent international reporting and pleas for help forced it to turn around and admit the problem. A similar case persisted in Zimbabwe preceding and following the 2008 election. The issue being underscored here is the alarming neglect and abuse of Africa’s chances to develop its human resources, and the absence of any sympathy and concern for the wellbeing of the people. Is it any wonder that no real development happens? In the face of such human tragedy in many countries of Africa, with Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Sudan being the special cases, some African leaders led by Tambo Mbeki of South Africa show themselves to be euphoric about an imagined African renaissance. Mbeki is known to have launched this illtimed and misconceived idea of African renaissance in a speech he titled “I Am African” delivered in 1996 to the Constitutional Assembly (Afriquest Plava Hut, Dec. 23, 2005). Afriquest titled its piece on the Mbeki initiative “A Vision Without Measure: A Neo-African Renaissance.” Indeed, most African leaders, of late, have proven to be all words and little wisdom, and not much by way of relevant and proactive program and action that favors the people. The neglect of African leader of the continent’s most precious asset, its human resource, has exposed the continent to many more potential dangers than those discussed in this study.

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HEALTH AND AFRICA’S HUMAN RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT The first reports in Africa on HIV/AIDS came as early as 1982–1984 (Zewde, pp. 2005, 523), with cases first appearing in Rwanda, Uganda and Zaire. Rwanda and Uganda took early steps and controlled the spread of the disease. But other African countries remained in denial for a long time and allowed the disease to spread out of control (World Bank, 2004b, p. 21, Sidastudies no.7, nd, pp. 209–224). By 2001, the disease had infected 26 million Africans (UNAIDS, 2002, p. 190) representing 70% of the global HIV/AIDS infected population, while Africa then, represented only 10% of global population (Zewde, pp. 2005, 524). The disproportionate African HIV/AIDS burden is clear. Why is this? To put figures to the percentages, in 2002, there were 40 million HIV/AIDS infected people globally of whom 28.5 million were Sub-Saharan Africans. There were dire economic consequences of the HIV/ AIDS crisis forecast for Africa. The extreme prediction was for South Africa, Africa’s economic powerhouse, expected to have its GDP reduced by 17% by 2011 if the 2001–2002 rate of infection and AIDS related deaths continued uncontrolled (UNAIDS, 2002, p. 57). All studies of Sub-Saharan Africa AIDS issues clearly show that the disease primarily attacks the most vital and productive age group, the 15–49 year age group as this group is mobile and active with wide social networks and contacts. This has its own sociological and economic logic into which it is not relevant to go here. Life expectancy throughout Sub-Saharan Africa has been dramatically reduced which means that well educated and trained people have a shorter life span in which to make positive contributions to development. Encouragingly, the HIV/AIDS crises seems to have abated some by 2007, with the number of new infections reduced from 2.2 million per year in 2001 to 1.7 million in 2007 (UNAIDS, 2007). This UNAIDS report also shows that Africa has reduced its global HIV/AIDS burden from 70% in the early years of the new millennium to 68% by 2007. But AIDS related deaths have actually increased in 2007, over 2001 rates, probably indicating the heavy infections of earlier years taking their final toll. By 2001, there were 20.9 million Sub-Saharan deaths while this number had grown to 22.5 million in 2007 (UNAIDS, 2007). Malaria and tuberculosis, two opportunistic diseases that accompany the HIV/AIDS crisis, factor in prominently in this heavy death tolls. Thanks to international intervention and the proactive participation and initiative of the African people and civil society (Zewde, 2005, pp. 527–533, Sidastudies, p. 7) all three diseases are being effectively attacked so that there are present signs of their slow retreat. Again, the point here is only to highlight the perils of the African development seen from the human resource development point

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of view. Until late, Africa’s formal state institutions did not respond to the health crises threatening the continent’s survival. Without great improvements in the care and management of the health of Africans, meaningful development will remain an illusive and irrational goal. People weakened by ill health and malnourishment will lack the stamina to seize all economic opportunities that advance development. They certainly cannot shoulder the responsibility for infrastructural and other development demands. Inviting Chinese worker en mass, in millions (Alden, 2007, pp. 52–58) to do the road construction cannot bring about Africa’s development. Development as appropriately defined in this study, is the sum total of human and institutional transformation that can productively mobilize technology, natural resource and financial capital assets to improve the quality of human and societal life and ensure multifaceted development. Road and rail infrastructures make sense only as part of overall development. Roads and rail systems built by outsiders will have no or very little impact if there is no demand for them by other domestic economic sectors and enterprises created by and for the native population. A dynamic African national and regional development seems to be assumed by the massive infrastructure construction project. In the absence of indigenous, dynamic and sustainable economic development, these infrastructures are likely to fall into disrepair for lack of maintenance skills and funds. There can, therefore, be no imported human resource substitute for the African people. And yet, because development is wrongly defined as expansion of road networks and other physical developments, Africa seems to be repeating the failed strategies of the first development decade of industrialization that followed a similar understanding and strategy of development. Asked whether Chinese workers doing all the construction work in Africa is not a set back for African people who suffer from 50–80 per cent unemployment, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, who gave the key note address at the CHINA AND AFRICA Conference at Howard University, March 31–April 1, 2008, replied simply that “the Chinese worker in Africa is good and necessary for efficient project implementation. The Chinese workers complete construction projects on or before time and hand it to the African governments and this is good for efficiency.” Such mechanistic understanding of development on the part of Chinese and African authorities and experts will seriously compromise and shortchange African development. The point here is not to show the negativities surrounding China’s intervention in Africa, but to show the profound misconceptions about how African development will or can come about. There is no known shortcut to development. The people who need it must have the full understanding and the wherewithal to bring it about themselves. There is no historical or empirical precedent that invalidates this statement. The building of institutions and systems that help

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put together all other essential pillars of Africa’s development is the starting point of development. Institutions must facilitate the enabling and empowering of the people socially, educationally, institutionally, politically, and economically to be active and innovative producers and consumers of the fruit of their labor. People and nations that meet their own basic needs are best positioned to participate in external trade competitively since they will have attained a level of comfort and self-confidence to be able to seek out unique opportunities and niches for their exports. The drive to meet basic needs must start with agricultural and rural development that guarantees the population with a steady and secure supply of affordable and accessible food that makes possible balanced and sufficient nutrition. Economic activities can then diversify into commercial production of crops and raw materials unique to the ecological environment and likely to be attractive for export in their processed or semi-processed form. The issue implied here is not whether nationals or expatriates design development programs, but the framework and model used to plan and implement it. To stress the human dimension of development, what has been analyzed by some economists in terms of X-Efficiency (XE) (Frantz, 1988, pp. 61–103) is that unquantifiable dimension related to the incentive, the drive, the will to excel, in addition to training and education, that account for creativity and impressive production efficiencies. It may not be easy to measure the exact portion of success attributable to X-Efficiency factors. But most definitely, it affects the pace and direction as well as outcome of economic productivity and the achievement of economic and social transformation. All these are marks of a free, secure and empowered people or society. Among Frantz’s conclusion of this unknown and unquantifiable human factor in any economic and other human endeavors is that, even when people assume both the rights and obligations of their participation in a given enterprise, there is always some level of underutilization of human potential that awaits some inspiring or motivating energy for its maximization: “human effort is not necessarily fully utilized, i.e., both income and job satisfaction can be enhanced if the correct stimulus is applied . . . One of the outcomes of this approach was the concept that an individual need not be a maximizer in the procedural sense. This, more than anything else has set XE theory at odds with neoclassical theory . . . ” (p. 103). Positive approaches and effective engagement under the right kind of policy and inspiring leadership environments can spur society into new heights of achievements. These are very much internal to the economic process and not at all external to it. This is what the last sentence of the above quotation affirms. A later analysis of documentary videos (chapter 8) will demonstrate that all this and more obtains in some instances in Africa. What is required to transform African economies and societies, rural societies and economies in

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particular, is to generalize these random instances. Rural people require very little help to transform their economies, infrastructures, and environments. And in the absence of government interference, they investigate and learn when, what, and from whom they ask the necessary help they require. With just a minimum resource and technical support from the outside, people carry out amazing projects that not only meet their immediate needs but also serve as pathways to new development trajectories. We will note development proceed far beyond the original plan as people seize new possibilities that emerge from successful projects. We see that African people can even do without deliberate and determined government support but need its tolerance of their efforts to improve themselves. Except for their resilience, it would be hard to imagine how Sub-Saharan African people manage when they carry the burden of nearly 70% of the worlds HIV/AIDS while representing only 10% of the world’s population. This continent, whose population size is nearing the 800 million mark, had an estimated total income that is equal to that of tiny Belgium12 at the turn of the new millennium. People only survive through the power of their ingenuity. The Participatory Learning theory for African development is already proving itself viable as the project processes followed in many grassroots development initiatives which, as mentioned, will be presented in chapter 8, closely correspond to the logic and process reasoning of the social learning development paradigm. It is not without reason that Ayittey (1992) considers most African leaders the forbidding obstacles to its development. Africans, in the stressful condition that they are, consistently demonstrate amazing accomplishments. Curiously, people—initiated local development activities follow the path and logic of free market with vertical and horizontal economic integration tendencies, showing that the market works in ways that emerge from local cooperative processes, and not just competitive impulses. Collective interest and mutual benefits can be as powerful development incentives as price incentives and individual utility. The problems for exploiting this sort of African tendency lies in the lack of natural resource rights and decision making powers by the people. As a statement in the report to the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues, cited earlier in this chapter notes, “If an aid donor and a government minister reach an understanding on a project, be it a hydro-electric dam that displaces thousands of people or a road that cuts through forest lands, there are few, if any, legal or political constraints. Africa has too frequently been a laboratory for the fancies of foreign development experts” (p. 33). Without claiming to exhaust the seminal issues of Africa’s human resource imperative in development, a glimpse must be taken at the brain-drain that plagues Africa’s human capital formation as a consequence of the despair and

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hopelessness that most African governments have created. This researcher believes that talented and enterprising Africans have been abandoning the continent since the 1970s not because of the prevalence of poverty, but because of the diminished opportunities to confront and defeat it. A World Bank study on Africa’s brain drain (2007 b) indicates that one third of all Africans who come to North America for higher education never return thereby undermining Sub-Saharan Africa’s human capital formation. Further, the best and brightest educated on the continent also leave the continent for Europe and North America within a few years of graduation. The study documents that “Countries like Nigeria have more than half of their academic personnel working abroad (p. 15). Countries like Zimbabwe have three quarters of all qualified doctors leaving within a few years. In Chicago, alone, there are more Ethiopian doctors practicing medicine than in the whole of Ethiopia” (p.15). The same study points to survey studies in US and Canada that show that Africans’ tendencies to emigrate or stay abroad is “strongly correlated with conditions that prevail in the country of origin” (p. 14). It seems clear that the most important factor in Africa’s development, its human resource development, has been made a victim of African governance institutions and the many other perils like famine, underdevelopment, and the hopelessness that this generates.

STATE-PEOPLE RELATIONS: THE SOCIAL-PSYCHOLOGY OF FEAR, INSECURITY AND, RESIGNATION Political scientists and historians have been busy analyzing Africa’s political elite behavior and the nature of the state and governance they establish (Bates, 2008, Meredith, 2005, Young, T. 2003, Tangri, 1999, Haberson & Rothchild, 1995, Chazan, Mortimer, Ravenhill and Rothchild, 1992,) to mention a few. That African people live in fear, insecurity and resignation is rarely the focus of analysis. Academics who study African history and political behavior of given polities either overlook their human and social implications or simply lack the data and resources to take interest in this complex area. Both to understand Africa’s development debacle and the seeming tolerance of the people of political and economic abuses, we need to address this subject matter however inadequately and briefly. This can at least help put it on the agenda of future research. In this researcher’s lived experience during the continent’s turbulent 1970s and 1980s, it was always a short distance between fear and total submission to tyranny. Fear and insecurity create false consciousness that, on surface,

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appear as selfish and opportunistic justification of a tyrannical state.13 In the limited readings of this researcher, there are significant studies of the cultural and historical roots of compliance with, absence of dissent against, or indifference to extreme regime repression. It seems to this researcher, that the relative ease with which dictators rule Africa may be rooted in people’s traditional expectation. So long as the oppressors are native, there is a tendency to think that those in power get there by the will of God and that they will, one day be removed or be made to turn around by the same divine power. Only God and destiny have answers to Africa’s woes. This sort of justification tends to minimize the role of peoples’ agency and their responsibility to confront evil and injustice. If we take the case of the 1974 Ethiopian revolution itself, members of the military junta that ultimately rose to power, initially felt extremely insecure about removing the Emperor. For more than 6 months, the soldiers that were in the process of taking over, went to the palace each day to renew their (false) allegiance to the aging Emperor who was showing signs of senility. Yet, they were so frightened as to what it may mean to remove a reigning emperor that they not only renewed allegiance to the Emperor but also reassured the public and the military that they were doing everything in consultation with the 86 year old Emperor and in accordance with his will. This was broadcast to the whole nation on radio and TV. When they finally saw that no calamities came as they were increasingly usurping power, they deposed him, and prepared a gang of thugs to taunt and call him names as he was taken away from the palace in an old and shabby car. The brutal Derge had easy time early on, except for opposing Marxist groups’ short-lived resistance. Religious authorities preached non-confrontation with authority, so that the idea of historical destiny and the design and will of God being in charge got further validation. The prolonged and extreme repression, violence, and rule by sheer terror of the TPLF regime which replaced the Derge in 1991, seems finally to take the people to the tipping point so that fear and resignation are no longer existential conditions of the majority of people. The undercurrent of constant dissent in recent years has given the regime grounds not only to violently suppresses and preempt perceived threats through its massive spy apparatus, but also to use killing and massive jailing in a paranoid fashion to remind any dissenter of the consequence. The regime uses relentless terror and violence as a way of intimidating people into submission and subjugation. Much of the country side, according to some reports, has been organized into clusters of eight families, with one of these families being the agent-family that controls the rest and report to the government. Much of the loan and budget-support aid goes to fuel this machinery of oppression, hence the perennial famine. Any claim of poverty alleviation has to study and take this inhuman condition into genuine account.

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The political tradition of most of Africa is very different from that of Western democracies where people have traditions of demand of their governments to serve and protect them and otherwise do the right things by them. One notes that African regimes have changed primarily through coups; revolts of insiders who understand the working and weaknesses of the regime. Until very recently, people did not revolt in any significant way. Coupled with the diversity of traditions and interests that hinder the people from forming coherent and crosscutting perspectives and organizing principles, dictators and untoward groups could abuse and exploit African society with relative ease. Practicing ethnic divisions and hostilities to stay in power is the rule rather than the exception. The tragedy is, the more this persists, and the more Durkheim-style organic society formation discussed in chapter 2 is deferred, the more entrenched cultures of particularistic division, suspicion, and alienation become the norm. The social psychology of division and alienation will have much deeper and more enduring consequences for development that may outlast the era of tyranny in Africa. This is one critical reason why Western countries and institutions embracing democracy and human rights should work hard and remain faithful to the end of democratization, human rights and human security in Africa. NOTES 1. It is particularly striking that Bates states on page 163 that “. . . political institutions in Africa exhibit historisis. . . . the longer a country has been subject to a no-or single party system, the less likely it is to change to a multiparty system.” That is, Africa is doomed to eternal tyranny and one party dictatorship. 2. In their book “The Criminalization of the State in Africa” the authors practically tell us to be resigned to the fact that Africa is an aberrational regional which has devised criminalized state institutions as normal operating systems and that the continent considers it normal civlizational progress and adjustment. This is the ultimate giving up on Africa and has only recently started to emerge to the best knowledge of this researcher. 3. This quote was taken from Ayittey’s 2005 book titled Africa Unchained: The Blue Print for Africa’s Future, Palgrave, p. 425–426. He took the quote from Pan African News, September, 1998. 4. Amnesty international, Human Rights Watch warned of the dangers of the law to the well being of the Ethiopian people, and the national and international organizations working in the country pleaded against the law. The State Department and the European Parliament all expressed “concern” over this law, but the statements of Western governments did not comport with the pleas of national and international non-governmental organizations’ or the warnings of Amnesty and Human Rights

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Watch to make a difference in the passage and enforcement of the obstructionist law by a regime so accustomed to impunity. 5. J.C. Anyanwu and Andrew E.O. erichikakpor, posted at http://www.afdb.org, accessed on June 30, 2008. 6. This book was prepared as an instruction guide and resource book for teachers in agriculture. It looked at family food production and access to food by deficient producers and non-food producers, and the issues involved in food security as well as the need to improve food storage and processing to enhance food availability and access. 7. This figure along with other alarming information is given at http://www.aatfafrica.org/contacts.php?subcat=18, accessed on 7/7/2008. 8. One individual in particular, said she was working in the rural countryside where she observed both the land appropriation and fertilizer distribution methods as tools of punishment. Poor farmers and their representatives were reported to often resist fertilizer purchase because it was too costly to make economic sense. But the fertilizer distribution government agents insisted on farmers signing up for at least the very minimum number of sacks of fertilizer. Once a farmer representative signs for 5–10 sacks, 30–40 sacks would be delivered and the farmers would be obliged to pay for all of it. Many are reported to have to sell their live stock to pay for fertilizer thus delivered against the will of farmers-impoverishing them. Because of such tyrannical abuses, the UN worker said she knew the rural population was eager to rid itself of the regime at the 2005 ballot box and refuted government claims that it won the country side though it lost in cities and towns. Future studies will have to confirm this. 9. Mesfin Makonnen reported this commonly known fact. http://www.ethiomedia.com/carepress/update_071906. accessed on 7/21/2006. 10. James Inhofe, Inhofe’s Statement on Ethiopian Resolution. http://inhofe.senate. gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressRelease&Conte. . . Accessed on 10/23/2007. The senator is reportedly a good friend of Meles Zenawil. Meles Zenawi and his cadres are effective at cultivating personal friendship and favors with powerful people in the US government and subvert justice by permanently hiring powerful lobbyists in Washington DC—a case where personal favors and relationships trump the highest ideals of democracy and human rights in Africa and America’s promise to the World. Can the new President Obama remedy this sad commentary —powerful American politicians and lobbyists’ colluding with corruption, regime violence and terrorism against citizens, and abuse of Human Rights in Africa and subverting all that America stands for? 11. The data was glearned from CBS news, June 30, 2008, relying on Associated Press reporter from Shashemene, south central Ethiopia, the Guardian, April 18, 2003 and June 30, 2005, and United nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) sources. 12. The World Bank, in its 2000 publication Can Africa Claim the 21st Century, p. 7 provides this estimate and adds that the average African country has an economic output that is the equivalent of the output of a town of 60,000 people in a developed country. This shows that the people fend for themselves in the context of declining economies and rates of de-industrialization trends since the 1980s debt crisis, that is practically wiping out Africa’s tiny industrialization base. The United Nations

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Conference on Trade and Development document of 2005 document titled Economic Development in Africa: Rethinking the Role of Foreign Direct Investment, discusses extensively, the problems of Africa’s vanishing economic prospects under the new globalization regime and the myths surrounding Foreign Direct Investment strategies. The African people are left as passive spectators in all this, and trying to figure out how they can cope, often with some degree of success, as this researcher had witnessed their lives on the ground. 13. Between 1974 and 1984 in Ethiopia, the military junta that claimed to have converted itself into a socialist administration was so inhuman that human life lost any meaning, let alone any claim to human right respect. A popular revolution supported by students, teachers, the intelligentsia, entrepreneurs, police, and even the military as a movement to democratize a feudal society was received with lots of optimism and humor. Good jokes were common and the mood was upbeat. It took only two years of shocking inhumanity and contempt of the people, to reduce all who were accustomed to the relatively benign and normatively conscious rule of Emperor Haile Selassie, to insecure and subservient followers. Many in high government positions were in denial of the atrocities that were tearing society apart. If not actively justifying regime behavior, many who could not escape the country, simply became numb and non-communicative. They, including this researcher, were too busy surviving each day to engage in discourse of political morality, or the rights of citizens.

Chapter Five

The Resource Imperative: Natural and Man-enhanced Resources for Development

For development variables like institutions, human resources and technology to have a platform for productive application, a given country must have some natural resources. Where fortunate, natural resource availability can be even more useful if enhanced by man-made efforts like irrigation canals, renewable energy supplies, reforestation and others. Gone are the days when countries like Japan used their human ingenuity to use the natural resources and markets of other countries to develop a mighty economy. Even Japan had sufficient agricultural land with impressive irrigation networks to create food security for the population by the time of the imperial Meiji (enlightened) era between 1868–1912 when Emperor Mutsuhito launched the modernization of Japan led by its agriculture sector. With the exception of half a dozen or so very resource deprived countries like Burundi, Guinea-Bissau (World Bank, 2000, p. 122) for instance, most African countries have sufficient natural resource endowments which can form the foundation of their development. Africa as a continent is perhaps the best naturally endowed part of the planet. Here is what George Ayittey, a native of Ghana, says about Africa’s natural resource endowment: “As an old continent, it is the source of strategic minerals such as tantalite, vanadium, palladium, uranium, and chromium. It has the bulk of the world’s gold, cobalt, diamonds and manganese” (2005, p.2). Quoting a World Bank source, Ayittey adds that Africa “has enormous un-exploited potential in resourcebased sectors and in processing and manufacturing. It also has hidden growth reserves in its people-including the potential of its women, who now provide more than half of the region’s labor force” (p.2). So Africa is too resource— rich for its own good. Its resources have become a curse for its progress as it has attracted and maintained rent seeking and predatory behaviors by both 127

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internal elites and multinational corporations to the peril of the development and wellbeing of the African people. If comparative figures are applied to Africa’s share of global wealth, an astonishing contrast to its devastating poverty emerges. Africa’s rivers and falls endow it with 40 per cent of the world’s potential for hydroelectric generation. In today’s world of high energy cost and environmental demands for clean and renewable energy, this is a natural asset of enormous value. Southern and western African countries have enormous diamond deposits, the world’s largest. In addition to its huge deposits of chromium and about 30 per cent of the world’s uranium deposit, 50 per cent of the world’s gold, 90 per cent of its phosphates, and 64 per cent of the world’s manganese are in Africa. It supplies the rare minerals without which the world’s aviation and other industries would grind to a halt (Ayittey, 1992, p. 3). On its soil and by its labor, Africa also produces and supplies 70 per cent of the world’s cocoa, 50 per cent of the palm oil, and much of the world’s coffee (ibid). No other region can boast such abundance and variety of natural resources. Curiously, in all the pessimistic analysis of Africa’s development failures, this abundance of wealth, and the paradox of poverty amidst plenty is rarely or never referenced. Africa is naturally wealthy; the envy of much of the world. But its wealth has always been the source of its troubles. Recall the colonial scramble for Africa? It was all about resources and market. Today’s second scramble for Africa, which has attracted even more scramblers for African resources and markets, is an enhanced continuation of the colonial scramble. Africa’s international dealings should have been leveraged differently than it has been to date. In food production potential also, contrary to the usual allusions of scarcity of agricultural potential by many Africanists and international development scholars, the World Food Organization’s assessment shows that “Africa can feed herself even without using any modern farming techniques such as pesticides and with only the most casual approach to maintaining the soil. Fifty one countries of Africa presently have the potential to feed a population three times as large as that now living in the continent, even allowing for the fact that 47 percent of the land surface is useless for crops” (quoted in Ayittey, 2005, p. 237). In the specific case of Ethiopia (the fabled land of endemic famine since 1994–1995), a document issued in 1988 by the Ministry of Information indicates that the country has some 84 million hectares of arable land of which, at that time, only 6 to 7 million hectares were under cultivation. This is a tiny percentage of the country’s agricultural potential. With its large rivers traversing the country, the Blue Nile, the Awash, the Baro, the Omo, the Genale, Mereb, Tekeze and Wabe Shebele, it could, indeed be turned into the bread basket of the region with a little irrigation. There is a unanimous conclusion by most development observers, practitioners and scholars and the

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World Bank that the only thing standing between Africans and their chances for prosperity and development is the system they live under. The 2000 seminal document of the World Bank titled Can Africa Claim the 21st Century? shows, in every substantive chapter on education, human resource development, health, economy, gender and so on, that African government institutions represent a major challenge to the continent’s development. Ethiopia is a prime case. Pausewang, Tronvoll and Allen (2002) show how state elites actively subvert and shortchange the peoples’ potential for development in the exclusive pursuit of their own interests. This condition can no longer be apologetically bypassed or justified as contingent. African resources have not been used to improve the lives of Africans in most African countries, though, happily, there are growing exceptions to this dismal condition. The case of Malawi was cited in the last chapter as a new trend-setter. At least in rhetoric, the World Bank and other donor institutions have started to point these constraints as main development issues. Institutional capacity building, human rights, and democratization were just gaining currency when China entered the scene with massive, unconditional posture to form alliance with oppressive and violent elites. China too is keenly interested in Africa’s rich natural resources. Because of the new Chinese factor in Africa, it seems, the World Bank and Western bilateral donors have had to abandon enlightened, democracy and human rights concerns built earlier into their aid programs. This has, in many cases, reversed the small democratic gains that were made after the end of the cold war. As Journalists Without Borders put it, “China has become toxic for African freedom . . . African governments all over the continent have dared to do this year what they did not dare to do the previous year” (BBC News, Feb. 13, 2008). Africa’s plentiful resources have been a magnet for fortune seekers. The absence of citizen voice and power makes it easier for them to conclude exploitative contracts.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF RESOURCE ALLOCATION AND MOBILIZATION Having abundant resources is one thing. Who has rights to its claim is entirely a different question. While the market may not be a perfect allocator of resources in all cases, it does, on average, do much better than other systems when access to resources is democratized. In Africa, two levels of powermaintenance seem to override rational allocation of resources in favor of those occupying positions of privilege. One level is the state. The other level is the patriarchal family and community structure. At the first level, the patrimonial state retains monopoly of natural resources like land and allocates

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these as rewards for compliance and support, not to their best uses and users. This has been amply documented as an operating reality (Ege, 2002, pp. 72–86, Pausewang, Tronvoll and Aalen, 2002, pp. 184–190). As Pausewang et al. put it in the case of land allocation in Ethiopia “. . . redistribution was characterized by victimization . . . in practice, it targeted every peasant who had at one time or another been elected or appointed to a position of peasant association” (p. 40). Talking about access to resources in Africa generally, Schwab says “The playing field was essentially bequeathed to the African seekers of power whose ethical and humane political antennae were nonexistent . . . the non-Soviet era, which sallied forth from the Cold War, would offer Sub-Saharan Africa another mortifying period from which it would be hard-pressed to recover” (2001, p. 27). The second level of power that distorts the allocation of resources is the African patriarchal social and family system which derives its attitudinal and practical model from the state structure. The debate as to whether patriarchy as seen in Africa today is of traditional African origin or the artifact of colonial and missionary/Muslim influence has not been settled yet (Gordon, 1996, chapter. 2). But, that women in Africa produce most of the locally produced and consumed food without having land rights has been documented since the early 1990s. In the World Bank’s “Long Term Perspective Study, it was estimated that in Africa over 60 per cent of agricultural production and 70 per cent of staple food production are carried out by women” (Brown, 1995, p.240). The World Bank (2000b, p. 24) affirms both the ordeals of African women and how much African development suffers as a result. Without the security of rights to land and Africa’s other abundant resources, and belief in the legal enforcement of these rights, people (women) would, of course, not invest themselves and their meager resources beyond the bare necessities. From the foregoing, it is evident that Africa in general does not suffer from shortage of resources, but from the political economy of its access and distribution. If the world wants to help Africa develop, this bottle neck in the appropriation and management of resource, among other rights, need to be treated as direct issues of development; it sometimes is: “. . . there are many examples of well endowed and well connected regions and countries-Ghana, Guinea, Madagascar—whose performance has deteriorated rapidly as a consequence of worsening policies in the post-colonial period. Indeed, some of the areas with the strongest agricultural resource base are among the least developed on the continent-Angola, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon, Sudan, Sierra Leone . . . .” (World Bank, 2000, p. 178). It can be concluded that, in addition to the many man-made constraints that hamper Africa’s development, Africa’s vast resources have remained insignificant to its development and transformation because of policy-driven, paternalistic distortions in resource allocation.

Chapter Six

The Technology Imperative

It is common place knowledge that technology plays a determinant role in increasing the efficiency of production and distribution of good and services. Africa absolutely needs to mobilize every ounce of indigenously generated and imported, appropriate technology to push its development forward. Priority has to be given to Africa’s own technology innovation. As mentioned in the human resource discussion earlier, there are impressive reservoirs of local technologies that, with some credit facilities, could be developed for local use. Rather than enhance its own technology innovation or improvement, Africa has so far opted to import technology. In this chapter, a brief discussion of Africa’s experience with technology transfer or importation and its consequences will be discussed. This will be followed by a discussion of recent indigenous technology innovations.

AFRICA’S EXPERIENCE WITH FOREIGN TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER: THE CASE OF BONSA TIRE COMPANY (BTC), GHANA Back in the 1960s when Africa was led to define development as industrialization, many countries reached out to foreign direct investment or borrowed money to establish industrial enterprises. The end results were expensive failures. One example will help to illustrate this. In Ghana, early industrialization efforts, such as they were, were challenged, not just by the misguided assumptions about industrialization, but also by technology transfer mechanisms. Adei’s (1990) case study of the effects of technology transfer in Ghana in one industrial sector, tire manufacturing, illustrates a very important point. It will be summarized below. 131

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At the time of the acquisition and installation of the Bonsa Tire manufacturing company in Ghana, expatriates, paid by a joint venture agreement, were solely in charge of all technological planning, acquisition, installation and operations. There was no local ownership of technology choice, importation, installation, or management. Local people were not trained on-the-job or sent for specialized training to oversee and participate in all aspects of the company’s operations, let alone prepare to take the company over. There were provisions in the joint venture agreement for the training of technical personnel. These were safely ignored by the expatriate team and there was no timely local follow up to correct this breach in contract. Experience with negotiations and dealing with outside interests was clearly very limited. When Ghana entered into the joint venture agreement in 1963, there seems to have been unrealistic trust that foreign experts would do the right thing rather than understanding that they were not there out of the goodness of their hearts and that their sole incentive was maximization of their own economic benefits. The company was to convert locally produced rubber latex, combined with a few imported ingredients, into tires for cars, primarily for local consumption, consistent with the import substitution industrialization (ISI) strategy of Africa’s first development decade. Due to political changes that resulted in the change of joint venture partner and construction delays, the BTC could not start operation till 1969. The foreign partner was Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. Although there was a skeleton Ghanaian staff of two qualified engineers seconded to the project, they were marginalized and the company was set up exclusively by expatriate engineers and technicians. Ghanaians were denied any share in decision making and learning what they needed to know about the new industry. No Ghanaians were allowed to participate in any aspect of the technical installation or management of the manufacturing facility, or its production plans. The company’s annual production capacity was supposed to be 420,000 tires and at this rate of production, the life of the machines was to last for a set number of years. For some unexplained reason, the company’s output was pushed to reach 554, 858 tires by 1977, less than eight years into its operation. This exceeded its estimated normal annual production capacity by 32 per cent. The inflated rate of production started to quickly take its toll on the machine parts and the company’s capacity started to decline by the beginning of the 1980s. By 1983, annual production had fallen to a mere 69, 393 tires, a tiny fraction of the estimated normal capacity, had it been operated on its normal production schedule. Thus, the absence of national technological capacity, oversight and ownership responsibility led to an acceleration of machine depreciation. The company limped along at big revenue loses until 1989, when it could only produce a tiny per cent of its initial estimated capacity.

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The researcher Adei finds that Ghana and other African countries blindly followed the conventional development wisdom of the time which equated industrialization in its import substitution form with development, ignoring all other conditions of development: “. . . the government took technology transfer and the building of national capacity for granted. As a result, very little indigenous technological capacity was developed within the firms, and upon nationalization, the performance of the industries deteriorated” (p.1502). What other problems did this technology transfer indicate? First, in a manner that is abnormal for state-company joint venture where the state typically controls 51per cent of the shares to give it leverage, the foreign entity owned 55 per cent share while the government controlled only 45 per cent. This gave the company monopoly voice and excluded government from actively participating in all stages of planning and technology adoption by the firm, even within the capacity limitations of the state. Secondly, this external monopoly and leverage allowed the foreign partner to control the entire process of providing the engineering service, procurement of machines and parts and all technical matters related to setting up the company, and later running it. The government was a passive partner granting all the advantages the company asked, the most prominent of these being a ten year tax holiday and exemption from import taxes on inputs that had to be imported, as well as generous capital allowances. This seems to have given the expatriates the incentive to extract all the production capacity of the machines up front; before the end of the ten years of tax holidays and other benefits. A large number of expatriate engineers and other levels of workers were allowed to come in and do all the job required (p. 1503). Although there was a provision in the government-company agreement that “Ghanaians shall be employed to the fullest extent possible and . . . Firestone shall train Ghanaians in all aspects” of technology, no significant outcome in the transfer of knowledge and technology was effected. There simply was not on-going rigorous follow up of whether Ghanaians were being trained to become technologically capable, or whether the set up in fact was adequate to do meaningful training. All was left to the company and it did what profit seeking companies do: exploit the opportunity to the maximum even if this meant that the company would be worn out and in ruins by the end of the contract. When the term of contract of the expatriates expired, there was not a single Ghanaian who could take over the technical or managerial operation of whatever remained. The company had reeked all the profits it could in the decade of its operation, 1969–1981, and sold all its shares to the government in 1981. Essentially, what the government bought was the skeleton of a dead plant with no local expertise to resuscitate it to life. Within a few years of the government’s acquisition of the company, virtually all of the expatriate

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experts had left and the government was told to find a new partner within five years and to cease “using Firestone technology” altogether (p. 1504). Such failure, engineered outside of Africa’s control, is supposed to have contributed to the conclusion of the World Bank that economic failures are characteristic of government ownership. The direct consequence was Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), itself a paradox of monumental proportions. The Bank blamed the involvement of African governments in the economy for the colossal development failures such as the one described above. The staple of SAP ushered in during the 1980s and which included currency devaluation, market liberalization, and privatization, all but ruined African economies and societies, as amply discussed in chapter 1. This technology tale, Adei points out, repeats itself in the sugar industry and other light industries that were enthusiastically set up during the 1960s and early 1970s, so that Africa’s industrial production has been steadily declining by 1 % per year, between 1980–1987 (p. 1501) and even more subsequently. In more recent years, there have emerged a few African cases where the Ghanaian experience seem to be avoided. One case, though not exemplary by any means, is the Aluminum Smelting in Mozambique. This is a $3.1 billion project in which there are three international corporations, Billiton of Britain, 47 per cent owner, Mitsibushi, Japan, 25 per cent owner, Industrial Development Corporation, South Africa 24 per cent owner, and the Mozambique government, 4 per cent owner. The main benefit here is not national ownership, which is miniscule in this case, but the training of efficient local labor and the fact that in the short-term, Mozambique gains $400 million in foreign exchange earnings, while in the long-term the company will recruit and train a variety of technical staff from among Mozambique citizens, thereby enhancing the country’s technological capacity (Broadman, 2007, p. 297). In addition, perhaps, more importantly, there are, in many parts of Africa, hopeful signs of technology trends that are indigenous emerging. They are well worth a brief look.

TRENDS IN INDIGENOUS TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT African people, desperate in the face of repeated failures of externally driven development, are turning to themselves to find simple technology solutions to their pressing life problems. 1. One innovation is that driven by women whose burden of household responsibilities have become enormous as deforestation and environmental

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degradation deplete fuel and water resources for consumption. The Green Belt Movement initiated by Wangari Mathai of Kenya has strong fuel efficiency components which will be discussed in the appropriate section of this study. Other local technology developments such as local modification of auto and bicycle, even tractor parts are common as can be seen from some documentaries of informal sector economies. This researcher has met many an African entrepreneur engaged in these enterprises in Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda. At least one such encounter was specifically mentioned early in this study. In agriculture, home economists and agronomists had tried to innovate food processing and breeding techniques that were locally adapted. Back in the mid 1970s, in Awasa, southern Ethiopia, for example, a home economist, a colleague of this researcher, had innovated a simple gadget made of wood and metal scraps to reduce the labor time of enset preparation. Enset is a false banana type plant from which two types of carbohydrate extracts, highly valued among most Ethiopians, are made. Unfortunately, the technology could not be replicated commercially owing to lack of capital investment. Small innovations are cropping up everywhere. A graduate student of mine presented a study of solar panels in Kenya in 2008. In Ethiopia, an innovation by Menker Wolde Kiros, former head of rural technology in the Ministry of Agriculture, has innovated a foot-pedaled water pump that costs only $130 to buy. This simple equipment with no moving parts that can break is easy for any farmer to use and maintain. It can draw water from more than 7 meters deep and lift the water to more than 9 meter heights, supplying at l liter per second to irrigate more than a hectare per day (Ayittey, 2005, p. 367). This is the beginning of genuine African technology initiative that can take the continent’s development a long way and it is all done by the African people. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a cooperation between the Swedish and Ethiopian governments in rural development had, as a tiny part of its bigger development ventures, a program to assist and encourage local skilled and semi-skilled artisans to develop their trade. The result was quick and rather impressive. The artisans responded to potential local demands and designed a range of new tools and equipments for domestic as well as production uses (Zewde, 1991, p. 174). A 2004 World Bank document (Indigenous Knowledge: Local Pathways to Global Development) discovered an impressive range of traditional African technologies and new innovations that are helping solve many local problems. Two specific mentions of African technology innovation

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will help close this section. First, A simple African technology is helping to reverse the damage of imported, inappropriate technology. In this same World Bank study of 2004, it is recorded that the modernization of African agriculture towards mono-cropping and the application of agricultural technologies developed for temperate regions of the world, have “brought about a reduction of genetic variability” in Africa. The ill effects of this are being confronted by African researchers and producers who are reintroducing “indigenous species back into the gene pool of domestic crops and livestock (p. 24). This validates, in a serious way, the viability of traditional African agricultural technologies, very largely the achievement of African women farmers. Secondly, In Mali, traditional practice of growing the Jatropha plant as hedge has produced simultaneous benefits; 1) the seed of the plant is valuable as it serves as fuel or source of energy; 2) the plant protects the soil from erosion and replenishes soil fertility and 3) it prevents any animal and pest from damaging the crops (p. 25). How many costly pesticides and fertilizers would it take to achieve such a result? We know that much, much more of similar stocks of locally generated knowledge and technical/scientific innovations abound in different parts of Africa and they are helping the gradual emergence of local capacity. One more realization by the international community of Africa’s latent technological capacity is in order. . . . the importance of indigenous knowledge for development and the environment is now increasingly acknowledged by researchers and practitioners. Research and practical experience from all over the world, and perhaps most notably from Africa, show that indigenous knowledge has not only been a key factor in the development of local cultures and in their continued adjustment to modifications in their environments, but also an increasingly important contribution to actions undertaken outside the local community (p. 30)

This discussion should not be construed to suggest that Africa needs no technology transfer from the outside. The technologies so far discussed are for micro-enterprises that will help ordinary Africans to meet their daily life challenges. These will undoubtedly grow and scale-up and tune up. But Africa’s larger scales of development which fall in the domain of private corporations and government sectors will, in the short and medium term at least, need technology imports. One only hopes that local and national institutional and human capacity building will precede them so that the experiences of the decade of ISI will never again be repeated. It can never be overemphasized that the starting point for all this is the affirmation of unequivocal right of the people to live as free citizens able

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and empowered to apply their intellectual and physical energies to improve themselves and their society. Peoples’ legitimate access to natural and other resources, and their economic, social, and political freedoms and legally guaranteed human-security combined with locally available technology form a valuable development foundation.

SOME POSSIBLE TECHNOLOGY POLICY STRATEGIES The present energy trend is a timely reminder to Africa that it must lead the way out of oil dependence in its development, especially agricultural development. Its retarded development has at least the advantage that it is not stuck with wide spread fuel guzzling agriculture system and rural and urban economic enterprises. Agribusiness’ scale of production have been big temptations in Africa as observed in the conversation with African authorities documented in the introduction of this study. Back in the mid 1960s and 1970s, there was big flirtation with mechanized farming in the style of the West. In general, these have been failures as the benefits of scaled-up food production were more than offset by the cost of farm inputs such as fertilizers (Zewde, 1991, pp. 260–261), not to mention the sunk cost in tractors and combines. There have been well documented cases where, with resource security and supportive institutional environments, African farmers have registered impressive production successes without using expensive fertilizer or technologies; “Even without large inputs of artificial fertilizer . . . but using organic inputs, improved seeds and water conservation, with shared use of draught-power, very large increases in output can be achieved, amounting to returns of 60 to 140 per cent on farmers’ investment” (Brown, 1996, p. 272). Africa may well become the beneficiary of latest generation technologies designed with conservation and environmental protection in mind. It may even conceivably be the source of such intermediate technology. The point being underscored here is that technology strategies for Africa should search for locally available resources as well as looking at well digested possibilities for affordable and easily teachable technology adaptation and even importation from outside. The most important considerations may be the need for a serious study and regional development and utilization of Africa’s vast hydroelectric, thermal, and other energy resources to fuel its own development. In addition, regional division of labor within Africa, in research and development should be considered as a priority. There used to be fledgling efforts to establish centers of excellence in African universities during the 1980s. This is a huge subject that will not be treated in this present

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study. For now, our emphasis should rest with scales of production for which African entrepreneurs have shown great capacity to provide technologies for, if only funds for their development and manufacture were made available. The efficiency and virtues argument of small scale production widely spread among rural populations is an old idea made new. Back in 1973, the time of the first oil crisis, a renown economist, E.F Schumacher, had published his book Small is Beautiful: Economics if People Mattered. It is a very relevant book to revisit at this time, especially for Africa where development, as was argued, has not really started. Here is what he said about technological change. Modern agriculture relies on applying to soil, plants and animals ever-increasing quantities of chemical products, the long-term effect of which on soil fertility and health is subject to very grave doubts. People who raise such doubts are generally confronted with the assertion that the choice lies between ‘poison or hunger.’ There are highly successful farmers in many countries who obtain excellent yields without resort to such chemicals and without raising any doubts about long-term soil fertility and health. (p.158)

This quote is intended to remind ourselves that now and then, it is worth looking around for what works in ones own backyard, before rushing to blindly imitate or adopt technologies developed in different ecological environments and with different logics of needs definition. There is no doubt that the green revolution spearheaded by scientist Norman Borlaug, has done tremendous good under the right circumstances and without the added expense burden of pesticides and other chemicals that have joined the chain since his first breakthroughs. The problem has become that technology and the zealous promotion of it by those who use it to maximize their wealth, is driving all in a thought-deficit drive of automatic adoption. African policy should orient itself toward open civil dialogue on how best to proceed with development that that engages and benefits the largest possible number of people. Africa needs to balance its technology policies between what it can and should produce itself, and what it needs to import, or better, adapt. As the Ghanaian experience cited earlier shows, the place to start is adequate preparation of Africans themselves to innovate or manage proper adoption of technologies from abroad. Relying on imported technology managed by expatriate expertise is a sure recipe for failure and no body has more experience with such failures than Africa (Brown 1996, pp. 90–91). Education in this case becomes the most useful and powerful resource and is in urgent need of modification and revitalization to make it relevant to all the variety of challenges Africa faces. Among other things, the African curriculum needs to be made “African” and should incorporate local knowledge and technologies to

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provide students with inspiration of what they can do to improve and build on it; to create a “can do” attitude, and positive self-concept and self-esteem. Above all, Africa’s education policy and curricula must be treated as the lynchpin of its determination to transform itself.

COMPETING INTERESTS IN TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND ADOPTION Technology policy and adoption are not as straight forward as they may at first appear. First, there are competing and even conflicting interests in the national definition of what is relevant technology and how it should be financed. Experience shows that all over Africa, those who favor the import of advanced, sophisticated technologies generally control the agenda. National technology interests generally revolve around large dams, show-case, prestige projects like high ways, and other high-cost, and in Africa, low benefit activities. Though African life is made possible by the small, every day innovations of people in rural and urban communities, technology decision making seems to look over them rather than at them. This is the price of non-participatory and learning-based development thinking. The problem always goes back to who has the power to appropriate national resources and who has the voice to be heard. So far, in Africa generally, it is the people’s voice that is not heard. It is their skill and resolve that has not been tested because it never formed the core of Africa’s development commitment. One would have hoped that initiatives like the Millennium Development Goals, NEPAD and all those other grand projects, would emphasize the inclusion of the voices and ideas of the African people. As we saw in the American Cooperative Extension movement, people formed the very basis of determining the direction, pace, and content of development. There are rich accounts of how local feed-backs on the efficiency or inefficiency of certain technologies diffused through the extension systems, helped their modification and fast improvement. Ordinary users of technology can help drive its development to higher levels. That people-centered development movement in the United States, rooted in the Jeffersonian principles that people are the best hope and the most reliable stewards of innovation, democracy, and the nation, evolved in its form and content to great heights of effectiveness because iterative learning involving state agencies and institutions, development agent/expert and the common people being served provided the information and premise needed to incrementally perfect the system. The African people so far are resigned to being excluded and no true development can happen in this context of resignation and alienation.

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One would have hoped that after the failure of the last half century of elite driven development pretentions, that things would change. Whether political elites like it or not, the tide of change is approaching at their doors (Ayittey, 2005, I-XXVI). People-friendly governments will never be let down if they trust the people and embrace them as partners. Together, they can rise up to the challenges facing them and win. And the solutions to major problems of health, education, food and nutrition and other basic necessities discussed in chapters 3 and 4 are within the realm of peoples’ possibilities to solve in the short-term, if the focus of development is on them. Successful development and total transformation moves forward on a learning curve, repeating the learning process depicted early on, in figure 1 at ever higher intercepts. With a huge African Diaspora potentially interested in participating in Africa’s progress, a multi-pronged technology policy that accommodates local initiatives and higher level interests can be devised in a discursive way.

THE NORTH SOUTH TECHNOLOGY DIVIDE AND SOUTH-SOUTH TECHNOLOGY COOPERATION It may prove tiring to repeat that Africa, home to two thirds of the world’s least developed countries, is at the bottom of the pack when technology sharing and cooperation with the rest of the world is considered. Mohamed Hassan1 sees it as futile for any underdeveloped country to try and access First World technologies that are advancing at lightening speed with the help of enormous research and development monies and human capital resources invested. The only way to acquire technology that can effectively supplement and complement indigenous African technology to serve the ends of scaledup and improved production is to study possibilities diligently. As Hassan observed, by intensifying cooperation to enhance “its indigenous capacity to generate, manage and utilize science and technology in ways that address its basic needs” Africa can make significant headways in the foreseeable future. In this, Africa has many challenges, of course. For one thing, it has not laid down the basic research network, however rudimentary, and information dissemination infrastructure. Looking at the scientific publication output alone, Hassan finds that the “science-rich” north representing 20% of the global population produces more than 90% of the scientific knowledge of the world. Because of the technological and scientific divide of the north and south, the wealth gap has increased tremendously as well, so that while in the 1960s the North and South had a wealth growth rate ratio of 30:1, this gap had grown to 61:1 in 1991 and 82:1 in 1995 (Ibid). The solution, he advises is for the South to use the information and communication revolution to access avail-

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able stocks of knowledge via internet, and then for those who access and apply technology in this fashion to apply them to problem solving and to share both the process and product they come up with widely among the people of the South via internet. In other words, Africa’s lack of research and information infrastructure can be made up for by the use of the information superhighway to access, apply, verify, and share the information on technology adaptation, results and processes widely to as many African users as possible. With all of its limitations (limited African access to internet, for instance) and intellectual property claims, this may still be worth trying. Hassan also finds that the best and most beneficial technology applications for underdeveloped countries are those arising from science and technology innovations in the South itself. That is, Africa itself and Third World countries outside of Africa. There are a number of organizations, especially African ones, and others with a broader reach that are worthy of mention. There is the Third World Network of Scientific Organizations (TWNSO) and the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) at the global level. At a regional level, Africa has organizations like the African Academy of Sciences initiated in 1985, located in Nairobi; the African Center for Technology Studies (ACTS); the African Scientific Network2 and many others. These are good starting points for mid-level scientific and technological research and knowledge dissemination in South-South arrangements. But it stands to be recognized that, in all probability, these outfits are not funded by African countries and that they will attempt to get external funding and not succeed or succeed for a short time and then be forced to fold. The experience of this researcher in Africa has been that many brilliant ideas on technology education, production and dissemination come that could have advanced the local and regional technological environment for development. Training or research ideas fold up for lack of funding. And yet Africa is not cash-poor as figures of capital flight from the continent indicate (Taylor, 2005, pp.56–59). Hundreds of billions of dollars leave Africa for banks in Europe, the United States, Asia, and Latin America. What is required is for Africa to rethink its priorities and strategies and recommit to the idea of lifting itself by its own bootstraps. This means prioritizing funding allocations to start the process of appropriate technology generation for sustained, and Africa-owned development. Even governments that have the right strategies could hit snags of different sorts. The idea is to keep working on the only thing that has not yet been tried in African development—anchoring down, and working along a learning curve to initiate, experiment, and strive to sustain indigenous development processes entirely managed by and for the African people. This is the only way that Africa can overcome the stigma of always depending on others to do its development and always failing.

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Indeed, with the right strategy and commitment, technology generation and dissemination have never been easier. The advent of satellite radios and the internet can serve as inexpensive instruments of knowledge and information dissemination, at least on a scale much larger than has been the case this far. On this front, there is a very hopeful initiative by an MIT scientist who has created very durable computers that can be solar powered and inexpensively distributed to students in particular. Very recently, this researcher discussed with a former UNESCO communication specialist, now a private consultant on the possible use of radio as education medium. He informed that a South African has invented a radio that can be cranked manually to create and store sufficient energy to have it work hours at a time. This takes only a miniscule human energy and is like having energy-free radio service which can reach even the poorest of peasants in Africa. If the information given to me is accurate, not only is this technology available, its cost is very reasonable; less than $130 in 2008 dollars. African governments can use all of these mechanisms to enlighten, motivate, and inspire people to organize their activities in the most productive way possible. In the absence of a clear commitment to development and a people-centered strategy to bring it about, talk of African renaissance will remain hollow. Talking about “The African Renaissance and Technology Transfer”, Pieter Fourie3 expresses his frustration with the lack of vision of African leaders with respect to technology application and transfer to solve the most urgent and pressing economic, social, and health crises in the continent. Fourie declares: “Clearly, the ‘African Renaissance’ is a prescriptive rather than a descriptive concept-the expression of desire, need and hope rather than a plan for the future. Indeed, this might be the most disquieting facet of the so-called renaissance: the absence of any coherent, continent wide agenda or framework for change.”4 One has to look hard; but there are promising spots in emergence in Africa’s development. In addition to what was observed earlier, some encouraging trends are evident on the continent. In the field of health, especially, at the Eighth International Congress of the World Federation of Public Health Associations held in Arusha, Tanzania, October 14–16 1997, a group of African health professionals raised questions about their role in Africa’s unique health challenges in an ad hoc committee meeting.5 They engaged in selfchallenging questions like “How can African health institutions and experts best contribute to building a healthy Africa?” The Rockefeller Foundation was supportive (Zewde, 2005) of the Africans’ initiative to make meaningful contribution to their people and offered to finance a series of workshops to help them articulate the problems and its remedies. Things are moving slowly but in the right direction in some instances. The major problem for

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African groups to participate in service, technology or knowledge production is always finance, in addition to the obstacles created by suspicious authority. Of the $470 billion spent each year on Research and Development (R&D) globally, $400 billion is spent by and in the developed world including Russia perhaps. Only $70 billion is spent in the Second world, (middle income countries like China and India) and Third World countries,6 with almost no R&D money in Sub-Saharan Africa. African countries, even oil rich ones, do not seem to have taken R&D for the continent as a priority. There is some evidential movement to allay this frustration. Some anecdotal evidence suggests that some parts of the continent are mainstreaming local medical and other technologies as components of the national health and research system in universities.7 Reinforcing earlier initiatives, the Summit of the Organization of African Unity (now African Union) held in Lusaka Zambia during July 9–11, 2001, proclaimed the decade of 2001–2010 as African Traditional Medicine Decade.8 Given Africa’s record of passing declarations only to forget about them, one can be cynical. Let us hope that in time, words will translate into action. NOTES 1. Mohamed H. A. Hassan had a web piece in which he briefly discussed the need for South-South cooperation in science and technology as the north vastly widens the technology gap for third world countries to access. His piece titled Challenges, Opportunities and Strategies for South-South Cooperation in Science and Technology in the 21st Century was accessed at http://www.2000.math.jussieu.fr/9_2000_Feb_KOREA .htm, on 6/6/2008. 2. Information was derived from the Columbia University’s African Studies Site http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/climate.html accessed on 5/22/ 2008. 3. http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Square/6130/olvo103/fourie.htm? 20086 accessed on 6/6/2008. Fourier works as a senior research officer at the Australian High Commission in Pretoria, and seems frustrated that Mbeki and other African leaders talk of renaissance while the continent is trapped in a paradox of their euphoria in the midst of chaos and suffering that is worsening by the day. 4. ibid. 5. Afro-nest: African Networks for Health Research and Development, an independent group for Health in Africa http://www.afronets.org/egha.php accessed 12/ 10/004. 6. UNESCO Observatory, news letter no.45, March 30, 2000 http://un.apnic.net/ mailing-lists/s-asia/archive/2000/04/msg00015.html. 7. Robert Stanley writing of Dr. Hill Sekagya, an African dentist and traditional healer who made a presentation at the International Symposium on Biodiversity and

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Health in Ottawa in October 2003 discusses this new trend and documents that Dr. Sekagya is invited around the world to present his ideas of and model for streamlining traditional medicines and medical practices to play important roles in Africa. http://www.web.idrc.ca/en/ev55582–201–1–DO_TOPIC_html.2004–02–13 accessed 12/10/2004. 8. http://www.web.idrc.Ca/en/ev-41556–201–1.DO_TOPIC.html/ posted on 7/11/ 2001 and accessed 15/6/1004.

Chapter Seven

The Investment Capital Imperative

Capital in the form of development finance is a necessary variable that helps to complete the combination of development imperatives for near sufficient conditions for development. Its importance was highlighted in chapter 6. What is the source of capital that Africa can possibly tap into? Capital for development investment is seen broadly to include the potential assets that could be mobilized from within African countries if optimal policy, legal property ownership, and collateralization vehicles were in place. The magnificent social and economic results obtained from the injection of small amounts of investment capital has been amply demonstrated by the experience of the likes of the Grameen Bank, the Six-Ss in the Sahel, and many other micro-finance experiences. Without relying on capital injection from the outside, African countries, for the most part, could raise their own domestic capital under the right kind of property rules and policies. Hernandeo De Soto (2000) with his research team did extensive research in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America and declared that: . . . most of the poor already possess the assets they need to make a success of capitalism. Even in the poorest countries, the poor save. The value of savings among the poor is, in fact, immense-forty times all the foreign aid received throughout the world since 1945. In Egypt, for instance, the wealth that the poor have accumulated is worth fifty-five times as much as the sum of all direct foreign investment ever recorded there, including the Suez Canal and the Aswan Dam (p. 5).

Even if one retains some skepticism with respect to the exact magnitude of the claimed savings by the poor, the point that there is a significant capacity for poor people, in Africa particularly, to save and invest in their development 145

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cannot be questioned. The question is, why is such investment not happening. De Soto has a very interesting explanation, which takes us right back to institutional inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and dysfunction with respect to converting assets into capital. He says: “. . . they [people] hold resources in defective forms: houses built on land whose ownership rights are not adequately recorded . . . ” (p. 6) and we might add, ownership denied to property occupants, effectively making people mere tenants of the state, unable to collateralize their assets. In Africa, as in other underdeveloped regions, people own things but lack the means to convert these things/properties into capital. “They have houses but not titles; crops but not deeds. . . . It is the unavailability of these essential representations that explains why people who have adapted every other Western invention, from the paper clip to the nuclear reactor, have not been able to produce sufficient capital to make their domestic capitalism work” (p. 7). De Soto further asserts that the interventions of the West in regions like Africa did not intend to sabotage development but simply ignored this capital formation as essential development imperative: “. . . no body sees it, including the Americans, Europeans, and Japanese who owe all their wealth to their ability to use it. It is an implicit legal infrastructure hidden deep within their property system-of which ownership is but the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the iceberg is an intricate man-made process that can transform assets and labor into capital” (p. 8). A things like social capital-that is the belief in and trust of government and private institutions to abide by legally binding rules and contracts-also form the core of this man-made process. The absence of such capacity to transform rural assets into capital, and the government’s inability to provide needed development capital account for the failure of the well intended African community development programs of the 1960s and early 1970s. We saw earlier that researching the rise and fall of community development as a rural development strategy, Holdcroft (1984), found that the community development (CD) movement flourished during the 1950–1960 under financial support of the United States and in some countries known to this researcher, some Scandinavian countries. These programs started to lose ground soon after foreign assistance was removed, and most had disappeared since. They had no credit life-lines to keep practicing economic development activities. In Africa, Ghana and Ethiopia were the early adopters of community development.1 Community development ideas started with assessing the need of the people with them. They had all the good practice ideas but no sustainable credit facilities to help rural people acquire the technology, and other development inputs. Why would such a well articulated approach to and methodology of development become extinct, or nearly so in Africa for lack of what is evidently the most serious scarcity that should have been

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figured into the program?2 Holdcroft sees the major reason for the demise of community development in a number of factors: 1) disillusionment of leaders of developing countries and donors with the performance of community development programs in that they did not produce rapid and demonstrable development results; 2) decline of external financial support that arose largely from the perceived failure of the program (p. 51). This second point is highly disputable. From the first hand observation of this researcher of the Ethiopian community development program, which probably goes for other African countries, the main, in fact the determinant factor for their failure was absences of finances or development credit/capital to help peasants and rural entrepreneurs implement the development ideas presented to them and which they imbibed. Virtually all of the external assistance, except for the brief instances of program support mentioned earlier, that came in was in the form of training of community development workers, training materials, and salaries of expatriate instructors. Up on graduation, the young community development workers were sent to the rural country side with nothing more than their own salaries and their newly acquired skills to make development happen. In the absence of systems of capital access discussed above by De Soto, or government sponsored development credit, and other support services, there was no chance to implement real development programs. CD programs would have folded even if international aid which was about everything except development credit, continued. Clearly, community development programs were based on the unconscious myth that poverty is a function of ignorance and backwardness of traditional people. If only we taught them some new techniques, and taught them how to do things, and made them aware . . . then things would change. Remember the discussion of the United States Cooperative Extension system attached to the land grant universities in chapter 2. The contrast between that program for rural transformation and the African community development programs is striking. In the Cooperative Extension system, the ingredients of the rural development package included, training and education, deliberate diffusion of farm and other rural technologies, and most importantly, making credit available for rural people to invest in farm and enterprise improvement. The technology shelf was full, and always replenished with new and improved technologies; the necessary credit was readily available to the rural family, and the conveyer belt of education and information was always rolling. In Africa, there was no such provision; nothing that even remotely tried to give practical meaning to what people were being told to do. It was always just talk of ideas in community meetings called by the CD worker. Money or rural capital in any form were not made available, let alone any

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appropriate technologies that helped the peasant to implement the ideas that were presented to him as new and necessary. The technology shelf was empty as was the rural coffer to help people acquire any development asset. After a while, the peasants lost interest. The so called community development did not mean anything in terms of helping the peasant change the quality of life or the scale of production. A survey that the present researcher did in the late 1960s through funding from the Ethiopian Ministry of Community Development and Social Affairs, on the question of the extent of local peoples’ knowledge of and working contact with the community development center/station and agent, which were still active at that time, revealed a total absence of familiarity after the few houses next to the community development station or the residence of the agent. A few told of the early community meetings they had with the agent, and how impressed they were. After a few educational, meetings, the agent had nothing to offer to the people when they requested material, technological, or credit help to do some of the things that they were educated about. Community development programs were fertile idea generators but barren material and technological sources. Gradually people abandoned the community meeting as futile waste of time. The community development workers had to gravitate towards working with better-off farmers who had at least a modest wherewithal to benefit from the technical advice given to them. This gravitation of the community development workers towards better-off peasants is interpreted by Holdcroft: Participation, a major goal in the CD strategy, proved to be a most difficult and elusive goal to attain. Participation by nearly all segments of rural society, including the landless, and nearly landless, was rarely accomplished in any of the CD programs. In most instances village CD workers tended to identify with the traditional village elite, to whom most of the program benefits accrued (55)

In the absence of rural credit, CD created some necessary conditions, teaching the people and understanding the development environment, but it could never come close to creating sufficient conditions for development. It faded out for this reason. CREDIT, INVESTMENT CAPITAL, AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC CHANGE IN AFRICA It is not without reason that Rostow emphasized the second and third stages of transition form subsistence to surplus production on to industrialization. The meaning and significance of Rostow’s second and third stages where

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savings and reinvestment in technology innovation and application play central roles were discussed in chapter 2. De Soto cogently presents the same case for rural credit and capital formation as the essential ingredient of Third World development. As we saw, he further argued that with the necessary property and institutional rights line up, Africa can rely on its won accumulated wealth to provide itself with development capital. He says this is the mystery of western wealth generation: “. . . every piece of land, every building, every piece of equipment . . . is represented in a property document that is the visible sign of a vast hidden process that connects all these assets to the rest of the economy” (2000, p. 6). Obviously, this is a complicated area for policy makers and economists to sort through. It is very important that this be done to save Africa from perennially begging for aid. Mean time, whatever the limitation, foreign monetary aid and aid-in-kind could serve to create more and more of the visible assets that could later be converted into money or capital. Aid can be considered as a temporary means of capital accumulation if it goes beyond emergency relief and technical assistance. In Africa, there has been plenty of aid money flowing from different Western countries and institutions since the end of World War II. More than $300 billion has flown in aid, loan and credit to Africa since the 1960s (Ayittey, 1992, p. 281) with virtually no development results to show. So, it is not only that Africa has not figured out how to convert material assets into capital, it also misuses ready-made capital that flows in. Aid flow was never converted into development funds allocated directly for the development of rural and urban society and economy. It was always given to central governments or big non-governmental organizations that did not channel it to the people (pp. 281–290). It is very strange that a very familiar protest of African and other underdeveloped regions is about how the World Bank and other Western aid agencies never involve Third World (African) governments in real policy decisions, and the design of aid programs and financial flows (Kok Peng, 1992, pp. 12– 13,) and that “International cooperation has thus been based not so much on feelings of goodwill or principles of justice but more on power relations between countries acting on perceived self-interest” (p51). This is unconvincing rhetoric coming from the elite perspective. The problem, in Africa at least, has been not that elites did not have commanding voices of the aid forum, but that they did all they could to use generous international aid, even disaster aid, to enrich themselves and hide away millions and even billions in foreign banks from the same aid source that they complain about (Ayittey, 1992, pp. 281–283 Taylor, 2005, pp. 56–59). Where else would all this expatriated millions and billions come from if not aid, especially in non-oil and mineral producing countries? Taylor documents that in excess of $273.824 billion,

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with imputed interest, has been stashed away by African elite in foreign banks by 1996. It is because of this, that this researcher and others advocate that the development conversation shift from African governments to the African people. Some development scholars have attempted to work out mechanisms, at least financial ones, by which this can be done (Hyden, 1999).

THE POLITICALLY AUTONOMOUS DEVELOPMENT-FUND MODEL FOR MANAGING DEVELOPMENT CAPITAL As a way of getting the people into financial assistance participation by curbing government’s aid allocation monopoly, Goran Hyden (1999) had proposed a new paradigm he called the Politically Autonomous Development-Fund. After more than half a century of development and development assistance managed from the top, the ordinary African people who were the presumed beneficiaries of development assistance have been left worse off than they were in the 1960s. This is why the noted African development scholar —Goran Hyden—tried to offer studied mechanism for making capital, especially international development donations, directly available to the people, bypassing government and even non-governmental organization bureaucracies. Below, a closer examination of the mechanism proposed by Hyden will be discussed. In his Politically Autonomous Development-Fund Model, Goran Hyden presents what he calls “a novel proposal for how foreign aid can be made more productive in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa” (p. 15). It is a novel idea indeed; getting some development money to reach the people by easing the monopoly of government and non-governmental organizations. Hyden’s rationale for his proposed model is given as follows: “If there is anything that we should have learned from past experience with foreign aid, it is that it works best when prospective beneficiaries have a stake . . . when it makes people enthusiastic and ready to cooperate to achieve a common objective” (p.8). Hyden advances the much coveted, but unrealized idea that development funding, to be successful, must be available at local levels, and through mechanisms other than the centralized government mechanism subject to unthinkable corruption and subversion of funds to unintended ends. The existing aid flow mechanisms have only created added incentives for corruption and the use of aid as a political instrument. In the Politically Autonomous Development Fund model, government is not excluded from sharing in available funds. It simply does not control and monopolize it. Local administrations and citizen groups can equally present their documented development ideas

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and project plans and compete for funding. The Autonomous Development Fund Model is only about mid-level and micro project funding in all development sectors. It would not go into very large grants or loans for macro, national or regional project or program funding. Hyden identified four types of development funds models that were either attempted or proposed: • Rural development funds established by donors beginning during the 1970s, typically located in the office of the president. The aim was to circumvent the national bureaucracy in administering small scale projects. The funds had no board of directors to oversee their operation and were soon turned into “patronage funds,” generally defeating the development objective for which they were set up • Community level funding set up by some charitable foundations, with legal independence and their own boards of trustees. Unfortunately, many have been “politicized” tending towards particular political agendas. They did not serve grassroots development. • Funds established by donor agencies like UNDP or UNICEF to cater to local or village level development initiatives by excluded and vulnerable groups; the very poor and “groups at risk” (say women, or famine prone groups). Unfortunately, these funds too are made politically accountable “to the head of state or a designated minister.” In Africa’s case, this represents the paranoid need of rulers to control everything that may bring the risk of people developing and improving themselves and assuming some level of autonomy from dependence on the government. • The “social action or social development funds established with the help of the World Bank” to serve as social safety nets to adumbrate the ill effects of macroeconomic—reform programs, say Structural Adjustment Programs. (p.21) None of these funding formats have been able to address the monumental African governance challenges, always falling under the iron fist of governments who cannot appreciate the virtue of people developing and becoming stakeholders in the nation and defenders of the state and its legitimacy. And so, Hyden proposed a development fund model, deriving many lessons from the above four major types, and others, and aiming to free development funds from political and self-interest bondage and get it to the people who need to use it. The incentive for the Politically Autonomous Development Fund Model, itself tells the big dilemma faced in putting parts of the development puzzle together in the correct way for Africa’s development process. One can think of Hyden’s proposal as an effort to retrofit some parts

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of the development mechanism so that it works somewhat to get the job done. His belief was that getting development funds in the hands of people will start to show results which would then motivate greater aid flows from otherwise aid-fatigued international donors.

THE MECHANISMS OF THE POLITICALLY AUTONOMOUS FUND (THE FUND) Goran Hyden envisions the fund to have public sources (donor governments, institutions, even individuals) that will be aggregated into a single pool which will be managed by a politically independent organization. The organization will be a funding and not implementing entity. Its design will ensure efficiency and accessibility to all viable development project proposals. Proposals may be submitted by government and private/voluntary organizations, local groups getting together to design development initiatives of different types or non-governmental organizations long registered and practicing development. It will be set up to serve all in the nation, and its funding would not come from a single source but from varied international and local sources, where possible. The Fund is presumed to have the added benefit of allowing development to work around wasteful competition between different international and national NGOS, and other agencies through whom development funds have been traditionally channeled. Most importantly, the Fund model is envisioned to bring donors and recipients together in healthy partnerships whereby donors can see the direct result of their aid. Incorporated in the receiving country, the fund is to be organized under the management of a board of trustees whose representatives would comprise: a) three people to be appointed by the legislature; three to be appointed by donors; and three others that would be selected by the first six from among civil society. The board as an entity is recommended to be answerable to the legislature. Continuity would be ensured through staggered elections so that no more than three board members would be replaced at any one time. Goran Hyden goes on to articulate and specify, to some degree, how sectoral (eg. Agriculture, health, education) grant requests would be evaluated, fine-tuned and funded. The length to which Goran Hyden goes to work around government and NGO control of development funds is a testimony to the fact that these entities are much less about helping the people, and much more about their own agendas. The point that the Fund Model tries to project for our appreciation is how, on every development front, the people who are supposed to be the objects and subjects of development are marginalized by the management of development officials of all types, local or international

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non-governmental organizations, government agencies or others, and the fact that development capital, necessary as it is, could not filter through to the people. Whether it is government, bilateral, or multilateral agencies or the more recently powerful international NGOS, bureaucratic traps and incentives other than the rapid advancement of the people constrain the manner in which money, supposedly, allocated for development are expended. Though the rhetoric for peoples’ and civil society’s participation in development and expression of ideas has been prolific among African dictators and democratic pretenders, only few countries allow free expression and participation of people in their development (Ayittey, 2005, p. 359, Taylor, 2005, pp. 127–151, Brown, 1996, chapter 13, Gordon, 1996). While external agencies have their own national interests to observe, career and prestige interests of development professionals make them form uncritical alliance with visibly oppressive and corrupt African regimes. If all thought rationally, in the long run, their interests and careers would be best served by nurturing the real development and well-being of the people. Through his Autonomous Fund Model, Goran Hyden hopes to overcome all donor particularistic tendencies and the stifling credit hold of governmental and non-governmental organizations. His system would: 1) make foreign aid competitively available at the local level so that it can be used more effectively, and with little waste; 2) revitalize the generosity of aidfatigued donors, because they could see their aid making visible development difference and improvements in the condition of people.

Even with this sort of obviously benevolent design, Hyden’s ideas were not readily embraced. In fact serious questions and objections (Ojo, 1999) and an argument to pull it back to the conventional foundation model (Kohen, 1999) were penned in the same book where the Autonomous Fund Model was introduced. Established ways of thinking and doing seem to be sticky and not ready to yield to new ideas, however useful the new ideas may appear. More than a decade after it was proposed, no interest to even experiment with it has emerged. Much has been said about the ineffectiveness of channeling aid money to where it is needed through existing mechanisms, even international NGOs, with the possible exception of organizations like OXFAM. Based on many years of research, Sara Michael (2004), for instance, states that “. . . what many of us have long known and accepted: that power structures within development are unequal; that it is most often individuals and organizations in the South which lack power; and . . . the ability of an NGO to set its own priorities, define its own agenda and exert influence over others to achieve its ends—has undermined development in Sub-Saharan Africa” (p. 1). This

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gives great credence to Hyden type initiatives even though they may not meet easy and ready reception. Ojo dismisses Hyden’s proposal on the ground that: “Implementing the proposal in its current form can only lead to disappointment, perhaps even disaster (p.65) . . . ADF, like countless past innovative-policy measures or ‘advice” may lead to a disaster (p. 66). Among other complaints, he sees little logic in separating large infrastructure funding in the hands of government, while putting the mid-and small scale development monies under the Fund. He argues: “. . . I find dangerous the end which Hyden expects his policy of local government access to independent revenue to serve—i.e., an end to national or state control of decision making and resource allocation (in short, an end to state control of decisions over the economy and the direction it should go)” (p. 68). Honest people can disagree on issues of development; but Ojo’s insistence on keeping the same failed state control of development resources and the economy is disturbing. It seems that not all African academics are similarly disturbed by the state of the continent, nor do they appear keen to see new approaches tried to help Africans out of misery. Obviously, the dismal status quo is not without its intellectual supporters. Could they too be victims of false consciousness briefly discussed early on in this study? Africa has gained nothing from state control of development capital and resources. Its intellectual defense seems an outrage to some. We will see in chapter 8 that some African communities are actually bypassing NGO and government development structures and reaching out, on their own, to international donors, for exactly the kind of purpose Hyden is advocating. In some documented cases, people are achieving shining successes which should please any government. People can bring out the very best in themselves, and mobilize their inherent talents and creativity as well as their human and material resources, collectively and individually, for impressive success, when they are active stakeholders.

BEYOND THE AUTONOMOUS DEVELOPMENT FUND: HOW AFRICANS CREATE INFORMAL LIFE-SAVING CREDIT LINES Every African with experience on the continent knows all the ingenious varieties of informal credit arrangements people devise to thrive and even slowly move their enterprises forward. By way of celebrating these indigenous ingenuities, some will be mentioned here. The Six Ss funding mechanism in some West African countries, especially the countries of the Sahel, is a phenomena that transforms lives. Initiated by an innovative expatriate, impressed by how

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much people do with so little, the 6S credit networks work on principles similar to that of the Grameen Bank, only different in that the credit is not paid back to the lender but rotated to other similarly organized production or service groups. Small funds that help start income generating and time and labor saving activities such as flour mills, water wells, small production and food preservation enterprises, and many other types of economic initiatives are disbursed on the honor system in which a small group of entrepreneurs guarantee each other’s obligation to use the money productively and return the capital. Through a very austere local management systems and traditional social networks and controls, funds given to groups or individuals are passed on to succeeding village initiative when the loan or credit is due back. Susus in West and central Africa , and Ekubs (an Ethiopian mutual capital raising arrangement) and its likes in Somalia, all are important instruments for small scale capital development at local levels. The success of these micro-financing schemes epitomized by the more formal Grameen Bank, has made micro-financing a development buzz word, especially in rural development. In all traditionally tested cases of micro-finance, the rate of payment of debt is much higher than that of formal banks, illustrating that traditional and normative bonds work more reliably than formal contracts, at least in Africa. A brief caveat is in order here. Having tried to establish the importance of capital in development, especially small scale capital to set the development process rolling, it has to be stressed that in the end, true economic and social transformation will depend on the creation of formal national financial, infrastructural and monetary environments and institutional networks that can support increasingly complex and scaled-up development and economic activities. There can be no substitute to national capacity and credit building for accelerated development. Small-scale informal finance and credit can only sustain small scale activities that can relieve extreme present deprivation. Micro financing and micro-enterprise development are but the infant steps that should grow into larger and complex economic entities requiring the services and facilities of complex financial, economic, and infrastructures at the national level. This is why said earlier that economists and policy designers need to figure out such arrangements. Economic growth is about increasing wealth and service production, that which is typically known as GDP. A true GDP growth with social justice and equity can only be realized by thinking inventively and expanding the base of development participation. This merits the focus on fixing the dysfunction of state institutions. Prolific analysis of Africa’s development woes and their sources must continue, as it has, until the problem is solved and Africa put on a sustainable, institutionalized, rationalized and democratized macro and micro development trajectories.

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NOTES 1. This author was the Community Development Correspondent with the Economic Commission for Africa during the late 1960s-mid 1970s and knew of these facts; she also taught community development planning at Haile Selassie I University during late 1960s which and, among other things, explored the processes and spread of community development concepts and programs. 2. The author knows personally, that community development stations and programs were abandoned fully during the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia. Knowledge about the probable demise of the program in Ghana is indirectly derived from Ghana’s lack of firm development ideology and direction, as seen from the gyrations of its development outlook; early adopter of Structural Adjustment programs; following neoclassical economic liberalization tec. Tanzania, which had shown early interest, opted for centralized top-down planning under Ujama and African socialism. Similarly, other African countries did not follow the learning path to development, instead randomly adopting socialism or capitalism as their development paths.

Chapter Eight

Putting Together the Development Puzzle: The Participatory Social Learning Paradigm and the Five Development Imperatives in Practice: Case Studies In this chapter, two documentary videos of people-initiated African development undertakings will be presented and analyzed to demonstrate the dynamics of the participatory social learning development model when combined with the five development imperatives. Full participation constitutes the learning segment while access to essential development resources and assets helps to create a sufficient development environment or condition that yields sustainable development results. The documentaries are: 1) The Kenyan Green Belt Movement documented by The National Council of Kenyan Women; 2) A Kenyan rural water project (NBK) documented by the African Development Foundation and the international information network – ITN. These documentaries will be described and then analyzed to identify the development and transformational results that the five development imperatives, coupled with the participatory social learning process produced. At the end, a brief comparison between the people-driven Kenyan water resource development (NBK) and a similarly intended, but expert and capital driven system in Tanzania will be briefly presented.

THE GREEN BELT MOVEMENT The Green Belt Movement, an environmental, tree planting movement under the committed stewardship of Dr. Wngari Mathai, has become a powerhouse of a women-led, environmentally based development in which African men and women are enthusiastic participants and innovators. A brief description of the origin and workings of the Green Belt Movement (GBM) as presented by its founder, Wangari Mathai in the documentary video that the National 157

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Council of Kenyan Women produced, will be followed by a brief paradigmatic analysis.

ORIGIN Alarmed by the rapid rate of desertification, soil erosion and the diminishing state of the productivity and carrying capacity of the Kenyan country side, Dr. Mathai’s group studied strategies by which it can effectively tackle these ominous existential and futuristic problems. Dr. Wangari Mathai narrates, in the documentary, that the process of desertification started during the colonial era when white settlers developed cash crop production on commercial scale by clearing enormous tracts of forest land. Agribusinesses like tobacco curing and other processing enterprises which targeted expanding European markets, required a great deal of fuel. Then there was charcoal production for domestic use and export to the Middle East. Tobacco and other cash crop production and processing along with charcoal production and domestic use of fire wood by a growing population, demanded that more and more forest land be cleared. In addition, forests had to give way to an expansive real estate development by white settlers, each settler mansion being surrounded by many acres of garden plots. Exacerbated by land clearing by Africans displaced by white commercial farms and African homesteads expansion, the process of depleting Kenya’s forest resulted in unprecedented rates of soil erosion and the destruction of the medium and long-term productive capacity of the exposed or deforested land. Wangari Mathai called this problem worse than epidemic disease. Deforestation had other immediate consequences. As the forest kept receding, women as energy and water suppliers of the family, lost their traditional sources of fuel and water. Securing fuel and water for family consumption became a huge problem as springs and rivers dried up most of the year because there was no vegetation to hold the water over the dry months after the big rains. Women had to travel for hours to fetch water and fuel for the family. Diets changed from protein rich bean-based to one that became maize—based carbohydrate dominated, with big health consequences. Even if bean supply was available, it could not be cooked for consumption as it required considerably more cooking time and fuel than the simple porridge of maize flour. The condition presented a monumental challenge both to the environment and to the health and survival of the people. The GBM was an ingenious response to this looming crisis. The leader, Wangari Mathai, defined the larger environmental problems in terms of very personal and daily problems of fuel and water faced by women and families.

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It was not difficult to explain the problems of water and fuel shortage as functions of deforestation which was producing desertification and accompanying scarcity of water and fuel wood. This message was taken to rural women, the primary food producers and processors and suppliers of family necessities. It took some time for women to embrace the idea of reforestation as a viable solution to the immediate problems of fuel and water. Its promise for restoring fuel supply, even water by reversing the environmental damage of deforestation were not readily apparent to rural women. The dire consequences of deforestation-fuel and water shortage and the degradation of the quality of diet from vegetable protein-based to primarily carbohydrate with lots of health problems in children particularly (kwashiorkor), had to be carefully and patiently explained. It was not long before a few rural women innovators bought into the idea and started tree planting that would be directed by the central GBM office.

ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS AND RESOURCE MOBILIZATION The GBM had studied what the reforestation program must include to make it relevant to the solution of the people’s immediate problems. An important element of the program strategy included the restoration of indigenous trees that were best adapted to the ecological conditions of the country. Fast growing indigenous tree varieties would have to be resurrected through the gathering of their seeds and the preparation of seedlings. To this end, local arborists and forestry specialists identified indigenous, fast growing trees with unique soil enriching and multi-cropping properties, all qualities of supreme importance to local conditions. The GBM had to ensure that, as was being done in parts of the country, fast growing exotic trees like the eucalyptus do not invade and crowd out well adapted indigenous ones. The introduction of exotic tree species like the eucalyptus, to expedite replacement of forests being cleared had previously created new environmental hazards. They tended to sucks up the underground water while at the same time its wide spreading and deep roots made a very large area around it inhospitable to the growth of other plants. The introduction of this and other varieties of exotic trees was a misguided environmental risk that had to be reversed wherever the GBM operated. So reforestation aimed at two interrelated objectives: a) introducing indigenous trees that served multiple purposes—providing fuel within a few years and stimulating soil and water preservation; b) intensive, multi-crop cultivation, meaning simultaneous and multiple use of the same piece of land. The

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central office of the Green Belt Movement had to hire a number of nursery attendants who were given essential training in horticulture, tree planting and care as well as managing large scale production and distribution of seedlings of the selected tree types. This required substantial capital outlays and for this the GBM had to turn to international financial assistance, as Wagari explains in the documentary. Being a women-led initiative, it seems that the GBM had generous foreign response. International NGOs are replacing significantly much of official aid disbursement channels. By the end of the 1980s, the development role of networks of Third World NGOs like the GBM, and First World NGOs disbursed $6.4 billion, nearly 12% of all Western development aid accounting for greater resource transfers to the Third World than the World Bank (Turner and Hulme, 1997 p. 203). Wangari Mathai had plugged her organization into this rich resource network. As a few groups of women who came into the reforestation program of the GBM were organized into coherent tree planting and caring groups and got some money for the seeds they were collecting, others were incentivized and came to the program in large numbers. Word of mouth started spreading about the immediate modest income generating benefits and longer-term advantages of the program. Seed gathering and seedling preparation took up momentum. Women’s groups in the movement started by gathering seeds of designated trees which they would then sell to the GBM. This became an immediate reward system that attracted more and more women into the project and the supply of seeds to GBM nurseries became well established. The women, of course, were then drawn into the more serious aspects of reforestation-planting the trees and ensuring their survival. Women’s groups were given free seedlings to plant on barren land, often abandoned land, and around their homes and farmsteads. School children were brought into the movement to plant trees around their schools. Groups of women in most regions of the country formed GBM chapters and approached the CEO of the GBM, Dr. Wangari Mathai to become official members of the movement. Wangari Mathai, as the most internationally experienced and committed driver of the movement, became its very public and international face, earning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004 for her remarkable work in environmental restoration and protection work and through it, uplifting the most disadvantaged and vulnerable of the Africa’s population—poor women. This researcher was overjoyed with the accomplishments of GBM as it represented the implementation of the vision of that senior economist of the ECA we encountered in chapter 1 of this study. Recall his confession that he and other economists had to unlearn what they studied as development in universities and understood that development started with the type of things the GBM was

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doing? ECA or OAU/AU or African governments as formal organizations never realized that vision but African women did. Stephen Ndegwa (1996) found that by 1996, the movement already had 50,000 members organized in some 2,000 local community groups in twenty seven of Kenya’s forty two administrative regions (p.81). In the late 1980s when the documentary was made, Wangari Mathai had put the figure for the number of groups at 900 only. Since Ndegwa’s research, the movement has been more energized and spread all over Kenya and beyond to other African countries as depicted by Wangari Mathai’s Public Television and Public Radio discussions after the award of her 2004 Nobel Prize. Hundreds of thousands of rural people seem to be fully engaged. Attendant Institutional and Technological Innovations The importance of locally initiated, bottom-up development programs is that they tend to have benefits that were not part of the original program or project vision. There seems to be a natural, dialectical evolution that brings into place related technical and institutional innovations, not embedded in project conception but implied by it. The multiplier effect of the project and its spin-offs interlink the project to other emerging activities. First, besides the envisioned environmental ethic of caring and preserving land, soil, and trees, the virtues of reintroducing indigenous varieties are embraced. The benefits of locally evolved flora were made part of every day knowledge and consciousness of all ages of the rural population. Secondly, rural institution creation in the form of organization of civil society, the GBM, as a movement, were achieved. This led to activities far beyond tree planting. It led to the consciousness raising and empowerment of women as economic, social, and political agents thereby underscoring the power of organized civil society in democratizing the political system (Ndegwa, 1996, p.81–84). In 1992, when this researcher was in Kenya on a research tour, GBM women’s networks were on television protesting the lack of multi-part politics and the need for political reforms that encourage popular participation in national affairs. There was an implicit support in the protests for the opening of the political space to allow the participation of a newly formed political party, the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD), as it was called. After the women’s long struggle, and the unwavering support of the international community for democratization of Kenyan politics, the ruling party opened the political space and three elections that, at last, replaced the party in power by a competing party. Before 1992, the women also resisted and demonstrated against a plan by the World Bank to put up a huge building complexes at a cost of several hundred million dollars on a large parcel of

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land to be alienated from the Nairobi National Park. This researcher was informed, while in Nairobi, that the women and Wangari Mathai were beaten by police and detained on a number of occasions during their protest against urban developments encroaching on the Nairobi Park during the late 80s and early 1990s. In the end, their persistent protest caused the cancellation of that building project. A tremendous environmental preservation success against the plans of Government and the World Bank. What we see here is the emergence of civil society power at levels of political and social engagements that were not part of the original agenda of the GBM but evolved as its dialectical imperative. People organized around a given popular objective become a force for other causes that affect the people and the nation. GBM members have already created the power of organization that can help them mobilize to effect change and growth in related social and economic areas. Thus, the organization of people into working networks in one field of common endeavor ends up being an institutional innovation that helps aggregate the collective energy of sizable segments of people to act in support of reform and national improvement in other areas. Thirdly, technology innovation was another spin-off the GBM created. Here, the literature and the documentary demonstrate how, people not only produced more fuel and enjoyed the reality and prospect for stable fuel and water supply, but they also aimed for other fuel related technological improvements. Already by 1985, Wangari Mathai declared in the documentary, more than 30% fuel efficiency in cooking was realized through rudimentary village technology development. Fuel-efficient and more hygienic wood burning stoves were being produced from local clay. The stoves were designed locally in a way that avoided waste of heat by coning and directing the flame to an opening above a large tube designed to stock burning wood and draw air. The simple technology helped combine fuel with oxygen in a double fitting clay enclosure on top of which all cooking would be done on a hotter and cleaner surface. This rural technology experimentation was continuing to develop new stove types with greater fuel and energy efficiency. More elaborate features that would reduce fuel consumption and cooking time by substantial ratios within a few years was underway. This, no doubt, will enhance the convenience and hygiene of working in an African kitchen. Advanced technology innovation and production requires institutional support like marketing and capital. Japan in its early industrialization focused on cultivating local technology capacity, both imitative and innovative on a large scale. In fact, it was a singular government preoccupation to accelerate the development of human and institutional technology capacity (World Bank Policy Research Report, 1993, p. 21) that launched Japan’s industrialization. Africa has not seen comparable, systematic devotion for technology self-reliance and

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self-empowerment, relying instead, on importing technology and the expertise to run it lock stock and barrel, as we saw in the case of the Bonza Tire Company in Ghana. Cases like the rural stove innovation are likely to trigger new national trends for technology self-reliance and the institutional and financial improvements that can drive indigenous innovation. A new drive for technology innovation has been one of the by-products of the tree planting movement. That women, men, and children are learning about the biology of plants and the symbiotic relationships between plant species is also a tremendous technological advantage. The documentary shows people becoming very knowledgeable about the nitrogen fixing properties of some plants that can actually help support other food plants cultivated on the same land. The idea of multi-cropping is returning to Africa, and this too is likely to have tremendous food production and environmental benefit and efficiency. Tracking the Footprints of the Five Development Imperatives in the GBM Human Resource It took the person of a well educated, enlightened woman, Dr. Wangari Mathai, to conceptualize fairly simple and straightforward remedies for a huge national problem. She made the national environmental catastrophe a personal issue of rural households that comprise 80% of Kenya’s population at that time. In developing her work, she recruited and trained seedling specialists, and other technically skilled people who served and trained rural women, men and children in how to plant and propagate trees. The mobilization of local human resource was engineered by another layer of people. Wangari Mathai had her group in the National Council of Women to help create a national chain that mobilized human resources down to the local level. It is this human resource pool stretching from the national to the local level that incorporated, among other things, functional roles of planning, technology choices and technology application, management and implementation at all levels. It is this organization of Kenya’s local human resource that accounted for a big part of the success of the Green Belt Movement. Institutions and Institutional Improvement It is evident that the Green Belt Movement activities relied on a carefully structured voluntary organization with all sorts of institutional connections and operational capacity. The creation of the women’s organization was an essential institutional resource. It was in this institutional framework that environmental problems were articulated and their potential solutions designed.

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The institution also became the instrument for acquiring and channeling foreign aid so that the envisaged solution to the identified problem, in this case environmental problem, could be implemented. It was also the voluntary institution that developed, standardized, packaged, and disseminated the necessary knowledge to be used at the field level, the nursery management level and the level of community action. What one sees in the GBM is the creation of an institution that did not exist before to address the problem of rural fuel supply tied to general environmental problems. Beyond creating itself, the GBM as a voluntary organization also had the impact of creating and improving rural institutions such as the women’s groups. It continued to help the rural women’s groups to widen and strengthen both their networks and their interest from merely environmental to the social, economic, and political arenas that were at the heart of rural life problems. Institutionally, women created new forms of power to challenge entrenched political interests that hampered the well-being of people and their environment. Equally important are new institutional capacities for nursery management and the orderly distribution of seedlings consistent with the reforestation agenda. Development agendas can only be realized if there is the willingness to create and keep improving indigenous institutions that can continue to grow their capacity to handle ever greater agenda’s of action, each action implying a higher order of subsequent action. Institutional growth and improvement follow the path that is implied by the concerns that helped its creation in the first place. This is what we see in the case of the continued institutional growth and scope of action of the Green Belt Movement. It should be parenthetically noted that without the focus and deliberate intent on the part of leaders to ensure efficient and ever improving and growing institutions of development for the precise work they were intended, institutions can easily morph into forms that were not intended and in fact become hindrances to development. Across Africa, the problems surrounding its stalled development or retrogressive development are its deformed institutions originally proclaimed to serve people and their development, but gradually growing to do the opposite. Natural and Human-Enhanced Resources The natural resource deployed to achieve the environmental and economic programs of the GBM consisted of access to land and the existence of indigenous tree resources compatible with project objectives. If land was not freely accessible and available, there would not have been the necessary and basic resource to which human and institutional resources would be applied to produce the desired results. Availability of natural resources in some form and quantity is essential for any development to take place. Here is where indigenous development designs make better sense than the “one size-fit-all”

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approach typically used by external development agencies. Local people, in this case, had a much better understanding of what tree varieties to grow. This can be considered human enhancement of resources because indigenous tree varieties which were being replaced by exotic but environmentally unfriendly imports, were given higher and more preferred status. Recall, that earlier policy had imported tree varieties like the eucalypts which would compete with other trees and plants for water and land and exacerbate rather than solve the land and deforestation problem. Local people had to bring their insight and experience to convince others and themselves of the virtues of the indigenous varieties. Local people were much more in tune with land fragility and what kind of trees would restore the vitality of the land, thereby enhancing the use of natural resources for improved project results. Technology From the transportation vehicles that made movement of people and seedlings around large areas possible, the initial technology consisted of selection and breeding of beneficial trees, and the reintroduction of traditional multicropping made possible by the introduction of the selected indigenous tree varieties. Creating in young people and old, men and women awareness of environmental dangers and their technical solutions was the starting point of indigenous technology application. From nursery managers to tree planters, from the efficient rural stove innovators to multi-croppers, people were trying their hands at different types of technologies that improve the quality of life in the medium-term and pave the path for greater future innovations. Investment Capital Clearly, the whole project would not have been possible without the international financial assistance to the Green Belt Movement. Without rewarding the women who took time off from their daily chores to organize Green Belt Movement branches with some incentives, and providing cash to those who collected seeds, the movement would not have been possible. The establishment of nationwide networks of nurseries and other project related activities would not have been possible without the modest funds the GBM was able to secure either. The little income they got from collecting seeds from the receding forest areas gave the women additional incentive to organize and participate in the tree planting project and to spread the immediate and longer term benefits of GBM by word of mouth. Capital was even more needed for experimentation with technology development in clay stoves. The biography of successful development projects anywhere will tend to show the presence of these five development imperatives in some form.

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Uphoff, Esman and Krishna (1998) and Krishna, Uphoff, and Esman (1997) locate the success of development projects in developing countries in the presence of all of these imperatives (though they do not define and identify them as such), and to participatory learning. People’s access to capital and resources is important. But even more determinant is the way they are managed. It has not proven easy to ensure that capital and resources are mobilized for development projects they were intended for. The legendary corruption in Africa ensures this and people have learned not to expect much. This is why the aforementioned researchers emphasize the importance of able and committed management of resources and development processes at the project level for successful outcomes. When development monies are entrusted to local representatives or managers, they tend to do very well, as we saw in the case of micro-finance enterprises and the GBM—a very special case of a successful non-governmental organization. In matters of money management, local groups are much more effective because money handlers are subject to the pressure of local social and normative expectations. They have some level of social and cultural accountability to the people and their standing in the community will depend on how honorable they are believed to be with regard to keeping faith with peoples’ trust. The same cannot be said about government or national and international non-governmental organizations. The reference audience of these groups are not local people and so they are more concerned about looking good in the statistics and elegance of reports they produce for their financial supporters, rather than their achievement and standing in the communities where they work. This is one of the strongest arguments for the participatory social learning approach to development. Whoever is charged with development responsibilities, this system empowers local people and gives them voice and even decision making powers that raise their status to development partners and evaluators of outcomes as we saw in the case of the Cooperative Extension Program discussed in chapter 2. The responsiveness of development agents and authorities in such a scenario will certainly be different. Participation as an idea is a favorite rhetoric among the development community at the present time. But the meaning of participation is so ambiguously defined, that it has very little to do with real people’s participation. It often shows up as asking and having people do something, anything, in project implementation. Often, participation may appear in the form of asking people to contribute money, material, or labor towards the implementation of development projects designed by experts outside of the community, not in consultation with them. This kind of participation is hardly worth the name. The people are used as passive compliers with orders. In the Participatory Social Learning Paradigm, participation is specified to mean the iterative inter-

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action between development authorities or experts and the local people from inception to the completion of development projects. This iterative learning process opens development to the benefit of creating local identification with the project, local commitment to its sustained productive use, and technical and institutional exchanges that pedagogically integrates the old or local and the new or interventionist project ideas and methods of implementing them. This causes the melding of the new and old into a force for sustained forward movement as we saw in the case of the GBM. The learning paradigm highlights that development and positive change follow a learning curve that can be clearly observed in tangible, incremental changes in the quality of life and continued development engagement of local people. The brief analysis of the Green Belt Movement presented above demonstrates precisely these dynamics and attributes of the learning process. There was learning and teaching, give and take between development beneficiaries and sponsoring development authorities of the GBM. In the process of project conceptualization and implementation, people became agents of technical and institutional change. This location of the people in the development chain took them, along a learning curve, far beyond just reforestation into areas of technological and institutional innovations and endeavors that supported increasingly complex levels of technical, social, and political interests and challenges. They achieved successes far beyond what they originally started out to achieve.

A PEOPLE-INITIATED KENYAN RURAL WATER PROJECT: THE NJIGUNI, BITERO AND KABATI (NBK) PROJECT Origin In 1984, there was the well known severe drought in east Africa that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people and most of the livestock. The delivery of generous international food and other aid notwithstanding, the rural livelihoods of tens of thousands was disrupted and destroyed. In its aftermath, three Kenyan villages, the villages of Njiguni, Bitero, and Kabati (author’s spelling), all spread around the foothills of Mount Kenya, determined that unless they do something permanent to withstand future droughts, the problems of famine and starvation may grow more severe in the future. The village elders from the three villages got together and having caucused over the matter, gathered the people in their respective villages and shared their ideas of creating permanent water supply system for the villages to withstand future threats of drought and to get water within easy reach of all the villagers at all times. Because of many changes in the environment like deforestation,

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over-cultivation, over-grazing and the like, the land had become too exposed and water sources had retreated to locations far away from the villages. Each village formed a water committee. The three village committees met together and elected their executive committee from among them. A rudimentary institutional structure, a committee structure that would coordinate the water resource development involving the three villages, was put together. One of the first things the executive committee did was to look into past rural water projects around the general area of the villages. They discovered that there used to be wind-powered pumps that drew water from wells. But over time, the water table had sank deeper and the well water that could be drawn became inadequate and then the supply was interrupted. The executive committee then thought of a new water supply system that could capture the year-round trickle from Mount Kenya’s runoff as well as local streams and combine all into a single water supply system for the three villages. Once they reached consensus on the nature and scope of the water project, they approached the Kenyan Ministry of Water Resources to help them look into the feasibility of the project and to help them with its technical design. The water resource technicians at the Ministry of Water drew up plans that used gravity to bring all the water sources into a single reservoir thirteen kilometers down stream from the main sources of water. From the large reservoir, water could be distributed to all three villages through a network of pipes. The system also needed a diesel powered pump to draw the water from the reservoir for distribution to the three villages. The cost in labor, materials, and technical parts was worked out for them. From here, it would be the three villages that would figure out how to realize their water project. Process and Resource Mobilization The residents of the three villages were gathered by their respective committees and the project was explained to them. The people of the three villages were then asked to make generous financial contributions to realize the project. All agreed to support the project with all their financial means and labor. Unskilled labor to dig the thirteen kilometer trench and other trenches to distribute the water was automatically volunteered by all villagers, men and women alike. The villagers also raised, from amongst themselves, whatever funds they could. After all the locally available resources that could be commandeered for the projects were calculated, the project still required an additional $250,000 to purchase required technology, most notably the big capacity diesel pump, pipes and other technologies. There was no way that this amount could be raised from the villages. The Executive Committee of the three village committees approached the Embassy of the United States in

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Nairobi for help with the $250,000 the villagers could not raise. The Embassy got in touch with the African Development Foundation who made the grant of the needed $250,000 and project construction started. The three villages assigned themselves equal tasks in the digging of trenches to bury the water collection and distribution pipes, the main reservoir, and all other manual duties. Men and women took equal responsibilities for physical labor and, at times, to forgo their own farm work to work on their water project. The Water Resource Ministry provided them with technical assistance, checking, now and then, on the progress and technical adequacy of the collective effort. When parts of the paths designated for the pipes had to go through huge rocky areas, breaking through the rocks became a physical challenge. Some in the village brought forth technologically innovative ideas. In the absence of explosives to break up the huge rocks, they would gather wood from the surrounding area, burn them over the rock to heat it to high temperature, and then pour cold water over the hot rock. This heating and sudden cooling caused the rocks to crack, making it easier to break and remove in stages. The villagers used their technical ingenuity to substitute for the explosives that could not be had to break up the rock boulders. Working day and night, the three villages completed the work in about three years, and by 1988, they had provided themselves with a steady supply of water within easy proximity of each village. The villagers started to use the water, not just for household consumption and for watering cattle, but also for the added benefit of introducing irrigated horticulture and agriculture. Attendant Institutional and technological Innovations During the first year of water distribution, the village committees and their executive committee discovered one missing institutional element. That missing element was an institutional mechanism for water resource management and distribution. Without any external advice, the committees and the executive committee deliberated to institute a user fee schedule. They determined the fee to be 10 Kenya shillings per month per family. Five shillings of this was earmarked to hire a salaried person to tend to water distribution. The other five shillings was put in a maintenance fund to be used to repair any part of the water system that may require upkeep in the future. Thus, a whole set of water resource management institutional system was innovated by the people themselves. This is what is meant by the assertion that a social learning development process not only helps to produce desired development results in the current period, but also facilitates the dialectical evolution of institutional and technological systems implied by the project. People discover and innovatively fill technical and institutional gaps as they move through the development process.

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Technologically, it can be readily appreciated that people were using awareness of some scientific principles when they thought of heating and cooling to crack open rocks They were clearly using some principles of physics, though they may not have identified it as such. Then, the acquisition of knowledge to operate the pumps and water distribution system is also a newly acquired technological capability, not to mention the use of appropriate technology in the form of imported water pumps and pipes. The irrigation system that was brought into operation was another aspect of a new technological capacity. During the first year of the project’s completion, the villagers brought more than 150 acres of farm land under irrigation, growing corn and a variety of vegetables. They started to produce food in excess of their consumption need and started to sell produce on local and adjoining markets. More milk and dairy products also improved family diet, and the surplus started to come to market from these villages. There appeared a general environment of prosperity and blossoming of peoples’ outlooks and hopes. Within a short number of years, children were being sent to schools, well fed, clothed and healthy and the general level of family and village hygiene and nutrition had vastly improved. When interviewed, the village men and women expressed high optimism of what the future holds for them. They all declared that their lives have already been transformed, and they were telling people who documented the development process, that if they were to return five years thence, the villages will have been transformed into vibrant communities, beyond recognition. Such was the optimism and “can do” spirit generated by the success of a locally initiated, modest water project. People not only saw possibilities now, but also realized their own potential power to move their progress forward by creating ever increasing opportunities and institutional networks that work for them. Nothing could illustrate better the meaning, significance and dynamics of the participatory social learning paradigm of development. The aggregate effect of these institutional and technological changes learned during the process of development participation was to transform the villages’ quality of life economically, socially, psychologically and in many other ways, changing the entire dynamic of the communities. Tracking the Footprints of the Five Development Engines/Imperatives in the Project By the time the people were enjoying the fruits of their effort, there had occurred fundamental changes in the content of their experience and knowledge formation. Some of the changes were results of very conscious and deliberately targeted efforts. These constitute aspects of human capital in action. Others emerged as the logic of implementation of the project made

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evident the institutional, knowledge, management and technology gaps that needed to be filled to make the effort productive. But the over all effect of the transformation did not escape the people as was shown by their expressed attitudes and outlooks on life. Below, a summary of the transformative role of the five engines or imperatives of development will be separated out and briefly discussed. Human Resource One can see that the whole project started with the ingenuity of local people— local human resource—which was assisted or complemented by more technically capable, better trained human capital from the Ministry of Waster Resources. Because the project arose from local identification, definition, and prioritization of needs, and because it relied on local human resources and human capital, it was very effectively and efficiently implemented. Learning on the part of all facilitated project progress. The human resource and human capital component is very evident. Here, not only does one see the operation of the human resource/capital element, but also the development of social capital. Social capital, that stock of mutual trust and caring which resulted from the common bond that people built in the process of articulating their shared need and the ways of collectively addressing these needs. The communities’ social capital asset was made manifest in the people’s contribution of funds, labor and other assets with full trust and confidence that it will be used for the common goal that the villages had identified and agreed on. The human resources resident in each of the cooperating communities and in the government agency that they approached were among the driving engines of the water resource development. The human resource of the three villages served as the base, the means, and the end of development which is precisely what development should be all about. Institutions and Institutional Improvements The three villages did not traditionally have any of the institutional mechanisms that brought them together and made collective and individual action to solve problems of life possible. The first institutions created were the village assemblies, followed by the village committees they elected to address the water problem, and then the executive committee that was elected by the village committees to execute the solution to their common problem. So we see the rudimentary creation of a hierarchical organization of the modern type, starting from each village assembly and building to the unified representation of the collectivity of the villages. The general assemblies delegated tasks to their committees. These committees formed the link between the executive

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committee of the whole three villages and each household when it comes to appropriating duties and responsibilities down to the household level. The executive committee becomes the planning, policy, and program design and implementation team-the one to explore technical and material issues in executing the project and identifying sources for securing these, starting with the villages, moving on to the national and international sources. As the villagers basked in their success, definite issues made themselves apparent. How will the water supply be maintained over the long run, and who will ensure the equitable distribution of water? The village committees realized that they have to put in place new institutional means to oversee and maintain the infrastructure and also distribute the water equitably during all seasons and under unforeseen circumstances that may emerge. The villages never had institutionalized water supply systems and the need for such system dawned on them only as the common supply of water became a permanent part of their lives. The executive committee, village committees and the village people realized that they needed their own local, water resource authority and institution, something along the lines of municipal water authority. And so they thought of and instituted user fees of ten Kenyan Shillings per household per month and allocated five shillings of each assessment to hire a full time person to manage the water distribution and to oversee the condition of the infrastructure. The other five shillings would be put aside to meet future repair and other needs. The existence and/or creation of relevant institutions holds the other key to development success in the long run. Development is possible when the tasks required to make it happen and to sustain it are parceled out into operational bundles that specify roles and responsibilities to be filled by specific entities. The best way of understanding the innovativeness and dynamism that institutionalization brings about may be the saying “the whole is much bigger than the sum of its parts.” Institutions help organize roles according to functions and capabilities needed to accomplish and sustain given objectives. This is why in concept and practice, institutions represent much more than just getting a group of people to work on something. The documentary on the NBK project shows how people learned to identify logically connected variables as they moved forward with the implementation of their project. A cycle of learning—by—doing and doing—by—learning naturally became an established process that guide the creation of institutional functions. In addition, people also learned how to tap into institutional and material resources outside their village, in the country at large, and even beyond, internationally, demonstrating that institutional resources at all three levels can reinforce each other to bring about development when the people take center stage in the process

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Natural Resource and Human-Enhanced Resource In the progress of the NBK project, it can be seen that people had access to natural resources like water and land. The villagers are seen acting on both land and water as their rightful natural resource. And of course, human improvement of these in the form of dug trenches and laid down pipes, reservoirs and pumps and the irrigation scheme accounts for the resource component of project success. If the people did not have access to the land and the water or were constrained by entitlement and property rights issues, or the government owned the right to land, the project may never have materialized and the transformation of the social and economic life that was so vividly expressed by the people may never have occurred. The issue of resource access and property rights is a very involved one in Africa. That issue will not be discussed here beyond the simple recognition of how important resource availability and accessibility are for free and creative enterprise to succeed. Technology Clearly technology, both indigenous and adopted, was the other engine driving the project or development success. When the people lacked the necessary technology locally, they reached out to external sources. Locally innovated technologies were also used, among them stone breaking schemes by alternating heat and cold to remove rock boulders that became barriers to laying down of water pipes. The development of horticulture and dairy production on a somewhat commercial scale, one would assume, also required the use of improved technologies. Development Capital As was seen, local capital was raised by the villagers. But this capital was insufficient to cover project costs. The executive committee representing the three villages had to approach international sources to raise the bulk of the capital required. The African Development Foundation through the American Embassy in Nairobi granted the bulk of the critical capital. Without the access to the investment capital of $250,000 from the African Development Foundation, the villagers’ very appropriate project objective and design could never have materialized. The case of both technology and capital complements to locally available resources proves a number of truisms about effective indigenous development. First, for Africa to carry out authentic development that is of the self-reliance variety, international donor assistance can play an essential and a constructive role. Self-reliance or authentic, indigenous development

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does not have to mean struggling alone or rejecting external aid for fear of creating a habit of dependence. The two projects described above show how productive international development partnership can be forged when it is built around the people as both stakeholders and decision makers. In both cases, international aid helped people to create permanent streams of benefit that made local people independent and flourishing. It served as a catalyst to trigger locally sustainable development. What makes international technology and financial assistance negative for local development is when these are leveraged in favor of the wishes and interests of corrupt political or economic elites and extraneous interests that may forge alliance with them for reasons other than the tangible development of people’s economies and lives. And so advocating anti-corruption and proffering rhetoric of transparency and good governance will never replace designing simple measures that put people in the drivers’ seat of their own development and insisting on their human, civil, economic, and property rights. The world may not have needed all the expensive international development institutions if innovative thinking on how to achieve more with less were the indicators of positive development performance. Achieving great things with very little material means is something that the participatory social learning model of doing development has proved beyond any doubt. The two cases of the GBM and NBK are but examples of scores of similar initiatives across Africa where the official institutions of government may not serve the people, but at least do not work to actively hamper peoples’ endeavors by blocking access to natural resources like land and water, capital, and technology from wherever they may be available on terms favorable to people’s progress. The analysis of the component parts of three villages water project (NBK) and the GBM has demonstrated the need to have all the development imperatives simultaneously present in some form and at adequate levels for there to be sufficient conditions for development. As discussed earlier, the early African rural development movements, while excellent in their function to animate rural people to embrace ideas of change and development, lacked most of the development engines or imperatives and failed for that reason. It can, therefore be claimed that the participatory social learning paradigm, premised on the bottom-up approach to development complemented and reinforced by the institutional, human capital, social capital, technology, resource and investment capital imperatives is the only effective vehicle for the sustainable development of Africa. This implies a very important development caveat. Creating democratic institutions with unfettered legal, economic, and human rights provisions is the most important condition that international assistance should concentrate on if it is to make genuine development contribution. Concentration on throwing more and more good money at dysfunctional

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governance, and systems that deny economic rights, rights to resources, and human rights, can only delay Africa’s development at best and make development and poverty alleviation nearly impossible at worst. The obvious may need to be restated here. The arguments proffered above must not be interpreted to mean that in and of themselves, democracy, rule of law, and observance of human, civil, economic and property rights will bring about automatic development. All these rights are foundations of economic and social development. But these rights need to be supported by the other imperatives extensively discussed above to create sufficient development conditions and to bring about tangible development in a short span of time. A corollary to this assertion is that, money in the absence of rule of law, systems of legally guaranteed human, social, and economic, property and resource rights, will do nothing to improve the condition of underdevelopment. The case of Africa amply demonstrates this point. Between 1960 and 1997, inflation adjusted official development assistance and loan to the tune of $400 billion had flown in to Africa (Ayittey, 2005, p. 155).1 Sources Ayittey quotes put the magnitude of this aid flow as being the equivalent of “almost six Marshall Aid Plans” (p.155). The lesson is that the relatively massive transfers of wealth and money from the West to Africa over the past half century, has produced very little development results because the underlying social, legal, and, economic structures or systems did not facilitate the participation and learning of the people in how to solve problems of underdevelopment and accelerate real development. No amount of money can bring about development with existing dysfunctional systems and impunity of leadership prerogatives in place. The empirics of the Green Belt Movement and the NBK make a clear case for directing aid flows directly to the people to achieve multiple goals; to build appropriate institutions suited to the particular circumstances of developing communities; to build human capital through learning—by—doing; ensure infrastructure and production/service enterprise development; to achieve project sustainability by making it an integral part of the local social, cultural, and economic networks at least cost to donors and the country; and most importantly, to create a development and technological innovation momentum and can-do attitudes that can continue to shape and reshape future development directions. Many bottom-up local development initiatives with similarly sustained development results from different Third World countries have been identified, documented and analyzed by Uphoff, Esman and Krishna (1998) and Krishna, Uphoff and Esman, (1997). A careful study of the narratives provided by these authors shows a pattern of learning based participation and resource mobilization that exactly fits the participatory social learning

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paradigm of development, though the authors did not specifically mention the this model of development. Perhaps because it does not put the most powerful experts and authorities as the main drivers of development, the propositions advanced by these authors, the present researcher, and her intellectual predecessors amply mentioned in this study, have not achieved practical currency among the international development community. What we see is more of the same classic modernist framework that has been conceptually indirectly disowned by its early World Bank and other international architects. The few development thinkers like Goran Hyden, who attempt to think outside the box and suggest even modest programs for channeling development funds directly and competitively to local development initiatives, are either ignored or rebuffed and dismissed. With the rising tide of popular discontent with the conventional format of development management within Africa, the participatory social learning paradigm may provide a useful and ready-to-use framework that can be perfected and fine-tuned through pervasive application and continued theoretical interrogation. The NBK Versus a Top-Down, Expert-Led Rural Water Development in Tanzania: A Brief Comparison It will be more instructive to compare the outcomes of the participatory, bottom-up NBK outcome with similarly intended but expert led top-down efforts in Africa’s development history. In 1971, the Tanzanian political leadership committed itself to developing rural water resources so that by 1991, all rural households would be provided with clean drinking water within easy reach of each household (Therkildsen, 1988, 13). Under the leadership of Julius Neyrere, Tanzania had embarked on a path of socialism that was understood to be a new brand of that ideology-African socialism. African socialism had all the bureaucratic trappings of European or other socialisms. Centralized planning was one of the dominant features that made Tanzanian socialism like all other socialisms. In a hypothetical twist to the central planning formula, the people were considered rightful participants and partners in their development. Local Development and Executive Committees (DEC) on which party members would be represented were created as the front-line development planning and implementation instruments. Requests for specific development projects would presumably originate from villages and be passed forward to party development authorities (pp. 39–40). But the intent of popular development partnership was a rhetorical commitment rather than a deliberate policy and program framework that indeed empowered people and facilitated their genuine development participation. People presumably originated project ideas. However, as Therkildsen observed, “The end sta-

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tion for this bottom-up flow is in principle the Executive Committee of the Cabinet (a government organ) and the National Executive Committee (a Party organ)” for planning, implementation, and monitoring the water resource development activities (p.39). This structure was so complex, cumbersome and inefficient that donors who were eager to help with Tanzania’s earnest development effort found it necessary to bypass “this political administrative system both in the planning and implementation phase.” This meant that two parallel structures for water resource development were set up—one by the government and the other by donors—and neither of them had learning based participatory inclusion of the ordinary local people. Rapidly, rural water resource development became a political instrument rather than a purposeful development target. Therkildson observed that water policy “. . . provides politicians with a valuable political resource. The political leadership has used water schemes as carrots to encourage peasants to start Ujama villages when this was still done voluntarily . . . .Local politicians and bureaucrats also found control of the funds for new water schemes useful. It became a valuable chip in patron-client bargaining in which members of parliament were especially active” (p. 45). By 1988 when Ole Therkildsen of the Scandinavian African Studies Institute conducted case studies of the rural water projects, project outcomes had already started to unravel. Therkildsen says that his aim, in studying the Tanzanian rural water resource development project was to “. . . contribute to the ongoing discussion of the role of donors in rural development activities . . . the Tanzanian experiences are not unique . . . The specific conditions under which the planning and implementation of such activities are carried out here, do not differ significantly from the general conditions for rural development in many sub-Saharan countries” (p, 15). Because local people with stakes in development, projects were not involved to leverage decision making, planning and implementation, expert-driven top-down programs and projects always tend to mutate into unintended forms. A closer look at the expansive Tanzanian rural water resource development scheme will help to illustrate this. Self-Help and Donor Intervention The sacred Ujama incantation of do-it-yourself and self-help notwithstanding, government and donors came in force to develop the rural water sector. In this section, we will set aside the role of the government and concentrate on the role of external donors. As enthusiastic water development sector participants, donors of all types came to Tanzania and set up their own little project empires in many regions of Tanzania, bypassing the politically crafted

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development structure. They included Finland, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, and the World Bank. With foreign consultants and project designers in place and in charge of rural water resource development, local capacity and institution building for short and long-term sustainability, which were shown to evolve naturally and dialectically in the cases of the Green Belt Movement and the NBK water project of Kenya, evaporated into thin air. Foreign consultants and planners took nearly a decade, between 1974–1983 to draw up very elaborate technical plans, Regional Water Master Plans (RWMPs), at huge financial cost to donors and the Tanzanian government. “Regional Water Master Plans (RWMPs) were prepared for 17 out of Tanzania’s 20 regions” (p. 13). The tens of millions of Tanzanian Shillings expended are not given here because no currency conversion ratios were given to help the reader appreciate the magnitudes of expenditure on the exercise. Donor intervention did not stop at planning the development of rural water resources. Hired foreign firms took charge of much of the practical work of actually putting in place water systems, very largely water wells, using different kinds of pumps and other technologies coming from different countries. Non were properly evaluated for their appropriateness to the local setting. Therkildsen’s brief summary is instructive: Some donors subsequently got involved in the implementation of water supply projects in twelve regions with typical funding levels of around US$ .5 to 1 mil. Per region per year. This aid was frequently channeled through donor controlled regional implementation units. On average, donors have provided around twothirds of the total capital expenditure for rural water sector development over the last 15 years (p. 13).

As stated earlier, five donors participated in the project (Denmark, Finland, Holland, Sweden and the World Bank). Tanzania’s aggressive rural development drive coincided with the turn of Africa’s development strategy from industrialization to addressing the problems of poverty, illiteracy and illhealth, malnutrition and other problems. This era, as will be recalled, was generally referred to as the decade of “basic needs” approach. It was to alleviate poverty and construct the human, social, and institutional foundations of development and the supply of clean and safe water fell well within the basic needs theme. Good Intentions, Bad Outcomes When donors stepped in to help with Tanzania’s rural water supply development, they meant to do good. Good intentions by themselves, however, cannot guarantee good or positive and desired outcomes. Outcomes depend

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on the strength of creating models of work that bring together all the critical stakeholders and required development assets in an optimal combination that helps to produce sustained and sustainable results. The problem of donor intervention in this Tanzanian case was that development was reduced to mean the digging of wells efficiently and delivering on designated time schedule. The agenda and strategy did not include the involved task of ensuring that what is done has not only relevance, but also plausible integration into the local institutional and socioeconomic system. Therkildsen puts it best: “It is important to note that donors have their own ‘we-must-run’ policies” and favor large, prestige projects “. . . that can be implemented fast . . . and those that produce quantifiable results” (p.47). He points out that “. . . the non-engineering aspects of the plans have been ignored during implementation (training, participation, institutional development) . . . the emphasis has typically been on the purely technical aspects, and on fast production of new water schemes . . . Surveys show that the benefit from completed schemes are not sustained” (p.15) because local people and their institutions were not part of the development enterprise. Therkildsen variously describes how the meaning of participation was left so open-ended that participation was considered well applied when “villagers were paid to dig trenches or wells, or when they were trained as operators and put on the government or Finwater payroll” (p. 81). Sometimes, local participation even in labor was unwelcome. Quoting an expatriate project management source, Therkildsen reveals the general sentiment regarding the participation of local people: “village labor contribution may be more trouble than they are worth.” The net effect of reducing the meaning of development to routine technical implementation of physical infrastructure project was that constructed infrastructures started to fall into disrepair and disuse as soon as they were completed. Therkildsen summarized what happened at the end of the project cycle that focused on technical task completion by experts to the exclusion of popular local participation: “This resulted in the construction of many water supplies but soon after completion many of them did not function properly, or were not used as intended by the villagers.” In a number of the projects sponsored by the Danes and the Swedes, though definitely not the World Bank, participation and learning was incorporated into the project blue-prints. But, even here, hired consultants in charge of implementation avoided it by all means. Expert-driven, top-down rural water project that was intended to bring about rural development or improvement did anything but that. From some descriptions of what accompanied many of the projects, it appears that this enormously expensive development undertaking was a total failure. Here is how Therkildsen puts it: “The rapid collapse of donorimplemented schemes was also striking-especially when donors attempted to

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hand over completed schemes to the Tanzanian organizations” (pp.51–52). Therkildsen laments: “. . . the irony of this picture is that all efforts are made with good will and with the best of intentions.”2 Donors supplied funds directly to foreign firms through channels they established outside government and other local channels. In this context, copious activities and generous expenditures took place, but not development. The dimensions of recorded failures were many. It did not appear necessary to enumerate them all here as the basic intent has been to illustrate the qualitative and quantitative outcome difference between development rooted in people and communities and development that treated its goal as a dry technical and efficiency matter that fell in the domain of experts. In the end, the evaluator of the Tanzanian Rural Water Development Program-Ole Therkildsen gave the following recommendation: The other structural recommendation in the RWMP related to participation concerns of the establishment of Village Water Committees. A committee should consist of three women and three men and should specifically deal with water supplies and related issues. It should represent the village vis-à-vis the authorities and should be responsible for organizing the activities which should be undertaken by the village during the planning, construction and maintenance of a water scheme (p. 144).

This researcher was unable to find any evidence that the recommendations were implemented or even that the Tanzanian robust rural water resource development program continued after mid-1980s and beyond. It seems that the ambition to supply rural Tanzanians with water failed-at least during that first round of all out effort. The outcome contrast between this very expensive endeavor and the NBK success in Kenya is all too striking. A brief discussion of the reasons for this contrast will be provided below. The present African fervor for externally contracted infrastructure expansion needs to remind us of this Tanzanian experience. The old top-down and expert and expatriate driven project planning and implementation seems to be in place still. Institutional memories and deriving the right lessons from past development efforts appear to be in short supply in Africa. Comparing the Development Outcomes of the Green Belt Movement, the NBK Kenyan Water Project and the Tanzanian Rural Water Resource Development What is clear from the brief presentation of the Tanzanian rural water resource development experience is that after years of work involving millions

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of dollars in expenses and scores of expatriate experts, an external evaluator saw the dismal failure of the effort and made a recommendation that was somewhat like the starting point of the Kenyan rural water project—the NBK initiated by three adjacent villages and the GBM initiated by a local group of enlightened Kenyan women. It is said “somewhat like” . . . because even Therkildsen’s recommendation of creating local committees of three women and three men, ignore the issue of genuine representation. The fact that any two men and women are involved in some committee will not be the same as genuinely engaged local communities who digest their problems and elect from among themselves, those best suited to planning and implementing solutions that involve all. This was the case with the two people—led projects of the Green Belt Movement and the NBK. The two indigenously rooted initiatives undertook projects and programs with enormous economic and social consequences with very modest help and continued to succeed and build on their quiet successes. They started out with bottom-up (local) commitment to achieve real development, largely by mobilizing and innovating local institutions and developing local human resources that, with little supportive aid from an international source, resulted in sustainable and self-regenerating development. Local people demonstrated that development is a human and institutional transformational process more than it is mobilizing capital and technology, though these too are critical ingredients of the development process. The top-down Tanzanian network of projects defined development in terms of reduced technical efficiency. By so doing, it failed to make any development sense and even less, development impact. The installations that were designed and implemented by outsiders remained as alien appendages that did not meld in any way with local institutional, economic, social or human resource realities. Nor did the alien nature of the project open the space necessary to benefit from the intuitive capacity of people to innovate and put in operation missing operational and institutional capacities as we saw in both the Kenyan cases.

INTERROGATING AFRICA’S COMPLACENCY IN TAKING FULL CHARGE OF ITS DEVELOPMENT One has to ask the critical question of why, Africa, more specifically African leadership, has failed to take full charge of its development or destiny. Therkildsen kept reminding readers that what he was observing in the water sector of rural Tanzania holds for Africa’s experience in all sectors of development. Africa seems to lack a clearly articulated multi-sector or single sector development goal and objective and a strategic development framework

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supported by logically reasoned concepts (theories of development) that all who come to help and participate in development could be guided by. In the absence of such conceptual and strategic clarity, donors always fall into the temptation of creating their own mini-project empires where they do that which their discretion, often misinformed and misguided, defines as useful. Why do donors always resort to this during the past four decades, despite glazing failures? And why do African nations abide? It is reasonable to say that no one could know the full answers to such questions since any potential answer will involve subjective factors that can never be fully uncovered as well as objective ones whose sources and dynamics may prove illusive. In this researcher’s experience, one tentative answer may lie in two perhaps, subconscious predispositions. The first subconscious predisposition has to do with donors. The second has to do with recipient African governments. Each will be briefly examined below. As these are theoretical conclusions of the observer, they cannot be taken as proven empirical propositions. Donors, coming from colonial and post-colonial traditions probably unconsciously fail to visualize psychologically, Africans as independently capable people who have sufficient experience and expertise to solve complex problems. European elite probably have internalized the perceived outcomes of their centuries of domination and exclusion of Africans from meaningful education, participation in the construction of their economies, and in the management of state affairs. As history well shows, Africans were dehumanized in that state of domination and subjugation. Such denied and excluded people will naturally lack the experience, skill, knowledge and confidence that comes from these, to practice the art and science of development successfully. So, donor impulse, conditioned by such false consciousness, may be to do “everything for Africans.” The tale of development results over the last 50 years shows that expert ignorance of the processes of development in the African context probably had worse outcomes than African lack of knowledge and experience might have produced if they were the active actors in their own development. Our case analyses of the two people-initiated African developments, in fact, show the power and success of people acting on behalf of their own development. Whether or not countries where donors originate were former colonial powers, the general perception of Africa that informs European, Asian or other outside attitudes appear the same. This entrenched perception is exacerbated by the development assumption and model of conventional foreign intervention that come armed with rigid, mechanical, one-size fits all, economic growth strategies. This model has been variously referred to in earlier parts of this study as “modernist”, neoclassical, or top-down expert driven mechanical application of actions grounded in rational and optimization

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economic principles. These principles reduce the complex, multidimensional development problem into simplified mechanical rules and procedures. This reductionist growth orthodoxy is ill suited for the task of unleashing development processes as expressions of multi-faceted mobilization of local people and their human, institutional and material assets to change and improve the condition of their lives qualitatively and quantitatively. Institutional improvements, in the sense of creating growing organizational capacity to handle complex tasks which also incorporates power of decision making and choice, were ignored. Institutional arrangements of centralized power can prove to be insurmountable obstacles to development when people lack legitimate avenues for expression of public sentiments and demands, as Africa’s predicament clearly demonstrates. Many dissenting economists have written on this problem. Allan Schmid (1987), for instance writes, “Orthodox economics misses many issues of power . . . that a common theme in institutionalist thought is concern . . . The ability to participate in an economy depends on much more than competitive markets, ownership of factors of production and money income as conventionally defined ” (p. 4). Schmid goes on to affirm that “Rights are the instrumentality by which society controls and orders human interdependence and resolves the question of who gets what” (p, 5). Institutionalized and standardized human, social, legal, political, property, and economic rights are key development factors, since they all, in different ways, motivate production and innovation. In both the power sense and the sense of institutional capacity building to manage ones own development, external development intervention has been of little help to Africa. In terms of power, external experts only align themselves with their powerful counterparts in African governments, exacerbating the existing power asymmetry between dictators and citizens. In the institutional capacity building sense, experts and consultants in the international development industry are not focused on whether Africans attain real and sustainable institutional development capacity. Using their vast international contact and network of influence, they simply aim for contract arrangements that offer them immediate financial benefits that they otherwise would not have. Contracts are about specified, quantifiable results, and so the experts’ focus on achieving that quantitative goal, regardless of what it means to the development of the African people can only have ephemeral effects. Any argument that local development processes should start and proceed according to local insights and plans are rejected outright, in the rare cases they are offered, no matter how convincingly they are presented. Therkildsen’s observations on some of the Tanzanian water development programs, presented earlier, are cases in point. This researcher too recalls a protracted discussion with a UNDP senior staff in Africa—a Belgian gentleman with many years of experience in

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Africa. Agitated by a simple suggestion that certain portions of a development program could be inexpensively implemented by local institutions, he curtly retorted that internationally funded projects must maintain their international character, regardless of local wishes and capabilities. He said this in the context of discussions during the early 1980s, on how best UNDP development programs could be managed for better results. The UNDP expert and his colleagues were of the view that critical decisions and programs have to be left for international staff. The locals are not be trusted with any international development asset regardless of their superior qualifications to carry out the task and the high level of work and moral ethic that was well known even to the UN staff. This short experience must not be assumed to imply homogeneity of views and approaches of all professional staff within the UNDP or even World Bank. Many among development scholars were surprised by the audacity of a critical departure formally presented by Jacox (1988) to the Committee of the Whole on Regional Briefing on Economic and Social Issues in Africa. This researcher has met remarkable members of World Bank staff in Nairobi who carried their own internal struggles to bring about change in development approaches. The same is true of UNDP. The second leg of African complacency in its development has to do with its own internal dynamic. We will mention one. African governments seem to have uniformly bought the neoclassical dogma as the correct development strategy. At their best, African governments seem to have been extremely trusting that experts from the west will indeed deliver development; they knew how to do it and will teach a few Africans in the science of development, as was demonstrated by the Ghanaian early industrialization effort exemplified by the Bonsa Tire Company. The first in this fallacy is the perception that all westerners know exactly how their own development happened from early on and that they would know how to replicate it to bring about Africa’s development. The second fallacy may have been the belief that westerners who bother to come to post-independence Africa must have altruistic motives—to do good by Africa. Hence the general attitude that development responsibility can be safely entrusted to expatriate experts. Both of these are, of course, gross misunderstandings. First, the development of the west is caused by multiple international and national dynamics, not necessarily studied by all westerners who engage in Africa’s development. How many, for instance, know of the design and impact of the Land Grant, Homestead, or Cooperative Extension system as a vehicle for the economic and social transformation of rural United States? Not many, one can fear. In fact, few bother to even study the complex and enormously varied paths and factors that led to the industrial and scientific revolutions that became engines of Western economic, technological, and social progress. Experts are trained in few disciplines like

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economics, or engineering. Secondly, their going to Africa has nothing to do with altruism, except perhaps in cases of voluntary organizations like Oxfam, or Doctors Without Borders. The so called international development experts go to Africa strictly to get the maximum advantage and wealth at least expense to them in effort and expertise. But their coming has not been without profound consequences for Africa’s indigenous and sustainable development. Among the most important of these influences has been the entrenchment of a reductionist development orthodoxy and the alliance this formed with African dictators that has empowered dictators over people, and created a sense of impunity in squandering development resources and opportunities. Currently, the nature of development barriers and external interventions seem in the process of being replaced by looming and more intractable force. It is this thing that is generically termed globalization in which the powerful write all the rules by which the poor are to live. In the current scramble for Africa under the rubric of globalization, most African regimes seem to be rendered helpless. They are seen shifting from one global power to another to take cover from the ruthless rampage of international capital and its political surrogates that are accentuating Africa’s dispossession and dependence. All are pursuing their personal and national interests and it would be worse than naïve and irresponsible to think that one external power would be in any way better than the other where Africa’s interests and future are concerned. No one but Africa itself will stand for it. There are no development mysteries that are veiled from Africans but only challenges. The greatest challenge is for African governments to respect and trust their people and submit to their sovereignty and in return earn their respect and grant of legitimacy. Governments can achieve respect and legitimacy through demonstrated successes in serving society as all orderly, democratic societies do. International development assistance and cooperation also can add to development effectiveness only when they fit into people-led development initiatives or macro programs that dove-tail on these. In the achievements of the GMB and NKB in Kenya, we have already seen what miracles Africans bring about when they are in control and when international assistance supports their efforts,. Africa’s greatest challenge is within itself and the discourse on what Africans as people should do must pick up momentum. Africans must not sit and wait for their governments to do the right thing. Except by the determined demand of the people, most African governments are not likely to change their ways as their records amply demonstrate. As the common saying goes, people only get the government they deserve. Africans must prove that they are worthy of better treatment and respect from their governments than they have so far received. Accountable and enlightened governance, as has been repeatedly affirmed in this study,

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allows experimentation with and development of viable and progressively functional/rational institutions which are the irreplaceable development instruments that bring all other development imperatives into a positive complementary alliance that best serve the technical, economic and social progress of the African people.

NOTES 1. In the same place, Ayittey details that Africa’s rate of debt escalation surpassed all other Third World regions between 1980–1990 (the era of structural adjustment) even as its economy slipped into the doldrums. 2. Quoted in Therkildsen, 1988, p. 46.

Chapter Nine

African Women: The Continent’s Undervalued and Overworked Development Assets

Since Boserup’s (1970) first research affirmation that women are Africa’s major economic and agricultural producers, the economic and social roles of African women have become lively development topics. Nowadays, women are the biggest news in Africa. Their role as the economic and social pillars of African families, communities and societies is taken as an indisputable fact—a matter of common knowledge (Brown, 1996, pp. 239–263, Gordon, 1996, Ake, 1996, p. 146, Schwab, 2001, pp. 101–105, World Bank, 2006, p.18, Department for International Development (DFDI) 2007, P. 1,). Yet, all is not well with African women. The oppression and marginalization of women epitomized by gender-based abuse and violence has, of late, become very severe in Africa by many accounts (Gordon, 1996, Walker, 1999, pp.15– 21, 18, Dolan, 1999, pp. 21–26, Taylor, 2005, pp.127–151, Octive-Igbuzor, 2006). The problem is viewed as, perhaps, the severest in the world (World Bank, 2006, p. 1, 60). Walker (1999) refers to the cultural rigidity which holds African women down: “Women become dangerous when they question patriarchal models . . . for this is to question the foundation of institutions as broad as the state and as intimate as the family” (p. 18). In a similar vein, Catherin Dolan understands African women’s predicament: “. . . direct challenges to male authority entail too high a cost” (p. 26). Because of African women’s contradictory and complex conditions as abused and devalued members of society while they occupy dominant economic and social, productive and reproductive roles vital to the survival of society, one can speak of two distinct ways of looking at their realities. One way of looking at African women is as victims of marginalization, oppression, violence, and neglect by normative and institutional systems. These systems clearly are not in tune with the continent’s urgent development and 187

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transformation needs. In addition, an argument can be advanced that the continent shows a disinclination to recognize society’s obligation to uphold the inalienable human rights of women. This raises a serious issue pertaining to Africa’s ethical standing in upholding the sanctity of female life as equally worthy as male life. A second way of looking at African women’s condition is as a majority, typically invisible part of the population neglected and oppressed by the norms and institutions of society, but that nevertheless finds its own ways of surviving, thriving and providing for the needs of family, community and society. To this assertion can be added the fact that African women are not, on average, openly aggrieved by their condition and that they are non-aggressively and gradually pursuing assertive and empowering strategies for change. In this perspective, women are perceived as constituting an emerging force for Africa’s transformation. This emerging population block must still contend with denied property ownership as Africa’s male-centered property ownership laws and customs change very slowly. Women must generally rely on reduced usufructuary rights to resources like land to produce food. This retards the pace of their enlightened and empowered emergence. Consistent with this second perspective, this chapter will examine the condition of African women as survivors who are finding increasing voice, acquiring ever increasing rights and vibrancy in Africa’s survival struggles. The discussion will include a brief reference to gender arrangements in traditional African societies prior to the intrusion of foreign ideologies, religions, political and cultural systems. In addition to the multiple images of African women painted above, present day African gender discourse and discourse on women have distinct problems that make them ambiguous. The first problem is the contention that gender stratification as it stands today is non-African, an alien graft on the African culture and body politic by powerful external intruders. This graft, the argument would go, has been achieved by the imposition of Western (Allen, 1997/1993) and Islamic forms of patriarchy on a more benign African one. This can lead to the proposition that this graft has to give way to pre-intervention, authentically African gender systems if African men and women are to regain balanced and complementary roles and relationships, that many believe, characterized the condition of many pre-intervention African traditions. Researchers like April Gordon (1996) are not convinced that African traditional patriarchy was any different from its current form. According to Gordon, in traditional African cultures as now, gender equity was an issue. Many research findings, however, show that there was a marked equity in traditional African patriarchal arrangements. We will return to this matter later.

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In the context of this contested African gender discourse, arguments that depict proponents of gender equity as un-African or even anti-African culture are not rare. Raising issues of gender equity cannot be un-African or anti-African culture for a number of reasons. To support this assertion, we need to form a common understanding of what culture is and what it is not. Culture is not a permanent conceptual and practical fixture. Even accepting the assertion that the extant gender hierarchy is part of Africa’s own culture, irrational cultural rigidity in gender relations cannot be justified. There can be no fixed and permanent African culture for all time. Questioning gender hierarchy and investigating its anti-development and anti-human rights consequences need not be perceived by anyone as an affront to African cultural systems. It is not surprising that, in initial stages of inquiry or questioning of the culturally buttressed social construct of gender and gender stratification, some should manifest popular consternation. After all, both gender and gender hierarchy assume reified and mystified attributes above and beyond rational discourse in traditional attitudinal environments. By customary or cultural assumptions, gender role definition and stratification can be elevated to a state of nature or natural occurrence not subject to change or discussion. This is not a rational casting of the meaning of culture. This kind of mystification of the meaning of culture is dangerous for Africa, for it leads to the ossification of norms, attitudes, habits and practices that prevent necessary progress and adaptation to fast changing times and circumstances. In addition to many negative effects, this makes effective competition on the global economic, social, and political scene difficult. Culture, in its true form, is a living and breathing normative and institutional arrangement that is dynamic, accommodating change as it strives to maintain regularity and order in the way people relate to each other and to things in times of necessary change. In this process, culture continues to help people read and understand each other as they individually and collectively navigate through all facets of life in an environment of ever present forces of change. This means that society creates rules and symbols that represents the norms and values that give meaning and road-map to human behavior and action under changing social, economic and structural situations. The role of culture is not to block change but to provide the compass that can guide it. Culture, therefore, cannot be static and remain as a rigid received blue-print for all time. Two things appear unfortunate in Africa in this respect. The first is that closed mindedness on all issues related to gender appears prevalent in the rank and file male society. This excludes males from rational participation in and contribution to the discourse on gender. Males learn to avoid the discourse without knowing what it is all about. It needs to be understood that

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change is an inevitable part of life and that changes in gender arrangements are one of those things that will have to happen. This change can only benefit both males and females as what will be involved is the revitalization of the social structural and normative systems of society that can renew and invigorate it to meet the challenges of economic and social transformation. This is why issues of gender are not women’s issues but issues of reinventing social and cultural systems to make them competent to manage development and change that involve the entire society-men, women, young, and old. Hence the need for both sexes to engage in the discourse on gender. A rigid culture fixed in time can only break and disappear as irrelevant, under pressures for change from all sides because it was unable to direct and engage that change. A resilient and viable culture is always one that captures and owns change on its own terms. One of the greatest revolutionary changes of the 21st century can be considered to be the movement for gender equity. It is an irreversible global trend that most regions of the world are embracing. Africa will be well served by embracing and leading the world in this respect as it has the pre-colonial, pre-intrusion institutional and normative wherewithal to call upon and model societies with gender equity. The argument for gender harmony and equity rests on two legs-human rights (women’s rights are human rights) and the rational development and poverty-alleviation demand (efficiency argument) that societies, among other things, utilize the best talents, capabilities, creativity, and dedicated efforts, to emerge from disease and poverty, whether these reside in male or female bodies. African women are preeminent economic agents and sole care providers in a continent ravished by poverty and diseases (World Bank, 2006, Working Paper no. 73). Regardless of which strand of argument one prefers, the drive to free women from normative and institutional constraints that curtail their full participation in all sectors of society and economy will need to be pursued to final resolution.

AFRICAN GENDER EGALITARIANISM: MYTH OR HISTORY? Otive-Igbuzor (2005) recognizes that while patriarchal tradition is particularly rigid in Africa at the present time it is quintessentially present in all societies of the world. Recognizing the socially constructed and culturally fortressed nature of gender and gender hierarchies, she rationally wants to inspire society to revisit the way it socially recasts sex into gender. Referring to the process of ideation and indoctrination of the female child into second class citizenship in contemporary Africa, Otive-Igbuzor says:

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From the cradle to the grave, she plays little or no role in decision-making even concerning things that have to do with the use of her body. She learns very early that she does not have as much play or study time as her brothers because like you know, she has to ensure that their food is ready in good time. She receives lessons from her mother on how she must never argue with her brothers. These lessons stick to her memory and as she begins to relate to boys outside the home, she has no power to assert her rights. Even if she does, hardly will any one take her seriously.

Taking her argument further, Otive-Igbuzor shows how this socialization imbues both women and men with mindsets and habits that rise to the level of metaphysical conviction, an article of religious faith or ideology. “There is a mindset concerning what is feminine. Access to and control over resources or ownership of property are not part of it. Both women and men have imbibed this mindset. Many women are afraid to be rich for fear of being considered tough.” Reading Otive-Igbzor’s arguments to persuade Nigerian public on the mistaken content of their cultural gender formulation, one is left with significant disappointment that she, being from Nigeria, did not invoke the power of precolonial and pre-Western and Islamic contact traditional African gender systems. Nigeria and other west African societies are known to have been among African traditions and civilizations that had possessed enlightened “dual sex” systems that ensured equity, fairness, and complementary, rather than competitive and hierarchical male and female roles. Nigerian sociologist Ifi Amadiume’s extensive study on Africa’s pre-external-intrusion gender traditions, is summarized in Ward’s 1996 work titled, A World Full of Women. Amadume’s classic work (1987) provides the intricate genius of Africa’s gender identity formation and practice. Gender was not biologically defined as destiny. It was defined in a way that made allowances for people’s unique and capable contributions to the harmonious economic and social functioning of the community and society. Ward interprets Amadiume’s assertion in this way: . . . the best strategies for women and for national politics would be based on the patterns of sharing power between men and women that characterized traditional cultures. Under Western colonial influence, however, “local men now manipulate a rigid gender ideology in contemporary sexual politics and thereby succeed in marginalizing women’s political position, or in excluding them from power altogether. Amadume recommends building a true dual-sex political system modeled on many traditional and pre-colonial cultural practices”( Ward, 1996, p. 269).

Amadiume and Otive-Igbzor are mentioned here specifically only because their approach to addressing Africa’s gender issues contrast—the first advocating returning to Africa’s authentic traditional cultures as starting point

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in dealing with issues of gender, and the latter treating the extant African gendered culture as an authentically African and treating it as the system that needs to be revised to make room for women. Serious study of gender relations in traditional Africa and questioning whether the existing gender hierarchy is a Western or, generally external graft on African traditional systems goes as far back as the early 1950s and even a decade earlier.1 To this researcher, Africa’s authentic dual-sex and gender-symmetrical social, economic, and political roles is indeed a historical reality and not any myth. Sudarkasa, (2005) provides a succinct study of many documented sources for this purpose. She states: From my own readings on Africa and my research among the Yoruba in Nigeria and other parts of West Africa, it appears that except in the highly Islamized areas, women in Sub-Saharan Africa, more than in any other part of the world, were conspicuous in high places in the pre-colonial era. They were queen-mothers, queen-sisters, princesses, female chiefs, and holders of other offices in most towns and villages . . . Almost invariably, African women were also conspicuous in the economic life of their societies, being involved in farming, trade, or craft production (p. 25).

The most important thing that Sudarkasa finds is the absence of rigid, genderbased public, private domain delineation that form the foundation of present day gender division of labor: The purviews of male and female in African societies were often described as separate and complementary. Yet, whenever most writers compared the lot of women and men in Africa, they ascribed to men a better situation, a higher status. Women were described as saddled with home and domesticity, men were portrayed as enjoying the exhilaration of life in the outside world. For me, the pieces of the portrait did not ring true. Not only was there an obvious distortion, of the ethnographic reality-for, indeed, women were outside the home as well as in it—but there was also something inappropriate about the notion that women and men were everywhere related to each other in a hierarchical fashion . . . (p. 25).

Africa is noted for the presence of women in very high positions in the formal governmental structures. Africa is also noted for having parallel chieftaincies, one line made up of males, the other of females . . . the presence of women at the highest levels of indigenous government has been dismissed as an instance of women distinguishing themselves individually by entering the ‘public world of men’ . . . I would suggest that a formulation which makes an a priori judgment that any participation of women in the public sphere represents entry into the world of men simply begs the question. For in West Africa, the ‘public domain’ was not conceptual-

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ized as ‘the world of men’. Rather, the public domain was one in which both sexes were recognized as having important roles to play . . . (p. 28).

Sudarkasa asserts the pervasive and multifaceted nature of African women’s roles. What would happen if African males grew up learning about their own indigenous gender system? Might they embrace pre-intervention gender norms and feel that this would be one of their calming contribution to a world in turmoil? In the 20th century, women played impressive historical roles in independence struggles (Ekechi, 1999, Allen, 1997/1993, Prouty, 1986), only to be marginalized and rendered irrelevant at the end of survival and liberation struggles. This would not have happened in pre-intervention cultures. Here is where the nuanced idioms of Africa’s own gender history, if revived, could play a renaissance role. There clearly was practical neutrality to the concept of “gender” in many pre-intervention traditional African gender idioms which recognized contribution, not the sex of the contributor. This virtue alone could take African societies far beyond notions of “gender-egalitarianism.” Egalitarianism implies the grant of benevolence in the context of recognized power and status hierarchy. Even in this study, the notion of gender egalitarianism has been mentioned directly or indirectly, pointing to the current state of conceptual conditioning in accepting the “naturalness of gender stratification.” Each African needs to make conscious effort to disclaim the alien notions of supremacy of gender hierarchy and reclaim Africa’s genius in organizing social, economic and political systems that dignify and empower all citizens, male and female, according to their contributions to society and without stratifying private and public domains of life and delineating them as gender specific spaces. Africa can then claim its role as provider of essential pedagogies on how to create public and private spaces that are gender-complementary and uncontested. There are African men who have defied social prescriptions to stand on the right side of the gender-equity issue (Baba G. Jallow, 2004). Men advocating for gender equity have been considered a novelty, often outside mainstream masculinity. This is so because issues of gender have been defined not in terms of social structural and normative variables deserving of study by all members of society living by the rules and assumptions of these structures and norms, but as only women’s concerns which men avoid, look at with suspicion or even resentment. The absence of Africa’s half population in gender discourse have undoubtedly added to the problems of rampant gender-based violence. In this regard, however, things are gradually changing. It is very encouraging to note that of late, enlightened and progressive African men have started to step forward and not only join the gender discourse, but also organize to confront the intolerable levels of violence against women.

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The emerging positive continental trend is for organized men to tackle, among other African problems, issues of gender equity, gender discrimination and gender-based violence. Such groups of men from across the continent are reported to have met in Kenya in 2008 at a conference to discuss and deliberate on the menacing human problem of violence against women.2 Such civil society movements are essential ingredients for positive social, cultural, political and economic transformation rooted in balanced and well articulated changes in social and cultural attitudes, values, and practices by both male and female society. Africa needs such processes for its forward movement. At the same time, and not surprisingly, a non-insignificant number of African women-firmly socialized into gendered cultures—oppose any discussion of gender, labeling such a discussion as foreign and against African traditions and cultures. Otive-Igbuzor refers to this reality in her piece referred to earlier. This is the case even among African immigrant communities in the United States. One of the spirited discussions at a conference on African women and their potential role in Africa’s social and economic transformation, sponsored by the British Embassy in Washington DC and the National Geographic held at the premises of the latter (Grosvenor Auditorium), on October 31, 2007, was between African women activists and a few African women immigrants. The latter were objecting to any reference to gender and any implication that women are demanding freedom from male domination and discrimination. Ghanaian women are among the many in Africa who have a 50/50 movement, meaning that all decision-making on behalf of society is to be ultimately shared equally between men and women. There was a discussion around this movement at the conference. A few immigrant women were visibly upset at such audacity, and they had to be reassured that this is not meant to confront men, but to promote the rights of women. It was a hard sell.

REFLECTIONS ON SOME CURRENT REALITIES Gertrude Mongella, Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations during the 1990’s and director of the Fourth United Nations Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, depicts the condition of African women as strong survivors and agents of hope. She said: Given the problems women go through, you can say they are the strongest species on this planet. They are survivors. They solve problems which are so difficult to solve. I will give you an example from Africa. You are in your house and there’s no water, let alone cold water. May be the closest place to get water is a kilometer or more away. There’s no electricity either, and the food is not in the supermarket. Still you must lead the same life as the person who has all

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these things. You will get up in the morning, there is no fuel, there is nothing at hand; but at lunchtime, the people have something to eat. It’s only women who can make that happen. You make the fire, you get the water, you bring the food, you put it on the table; people eat. You still take care of the sick, you take care of the children, you take care of everything. Then, you still find time to dance (Bouvard, 1996, p. 228).

Much has changed for the worse since these words of Gertrude Mongella were uttered. Increased risks of gender-based violence and other abusive stresses have emerged to make women’s lives even more precarious. But the resilience of African women’s spirit still endures. And as we saw above, increasingly, African men are joining them in the fight for gender equity and women’s just causes. However, because of the magnitude and endemic nature of some gender-based problems, the efforts of men and women are not yet making big dents. Mention of a few specific conditions that exacerbate African women’s current problems is in order. The two most worrying of these, in Africa’s deteriorating contemporary conditions, can be considered gender-based violence, including rape and the spread of HIV/AIDS which accompanies it. In a continent that is in severe economic, social, and political distress on all sides, women appear to serve as scapegoats and objects for the release of pent-up male anger and frustration. This may be the more rational explanation for the rampant and accelerating spread of HIV/AIDS through rape and other forms of gender-based violence against women, in most African countries south of the Sahara (Turshen, 2001, Albertine, 2003, Kim, Martin, and Denny, 2003, Onyjekwe, 2004, Gruber, 2005, 2006, Kathewera-Banda, Gomile-Chidyaonga, Hendriks, Kachika, Zunzo and Seodi, 2005, Izumi, 2007). The problem of gender-based violence is so pervasive that the Harvard School of Public Health , Program on International Health and Human Rights (2006) undertook a literature review of all levels of studies on the problem. The range of abuses recorded by the different studies identified is astounding. These abuses are tantamount to Africa shooting itself in the foot to handicap its own current wellbeing and future advancement. It is now common knowledge that African women as custodians of Africa’s “care economy” (World Bank, 2006,Working Paper no. 73, pp. 91–92) are the main engines of the continent’s current survival capabilities. Abusing women is tantamount to working against the welfare of African society. Writing back in 1996, Michael Brown (chapter 13) argued persuasively, based on meticulous documentation of African women’s extensive economic contributions against innumerable constraining odds, how fast Africa could move forward socially and economically if only it improved women’s rights and opportunities, including access to land and other factors of production.

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His study showed the astounding economic role women play: “. . . it was estimated that in Africa over 60 per cent of agricultural production and 70 per cent of staple food production are carried out by women . . . Even where there is a man in the household, the woman puts in more hours of actual production than the man-between 60 and 70 of the total according to four country studies recorded by the world Bank” (p. 240). In World Bank publication referenced earlier—Gender, Time Use, and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa (2006, working Paper no. 73), edited by Mark C. Blackden and Quentin Wodon—it is affirmed that “. . . Women provided 50–75 percent of all agricultural labor” and that “. . . African women undertake about 80 percent of the work in food storage and transportation, 90 percent of the work of hoeing and weeding, and 60 percent of the work in harvesting and marketing . . . ” (p. 18). All of this is in addition to the caring for the family in sickness and health and running the full range of household activities such as fetching water and fuel, cooking, and cleaning that are labor and time-intensive. There is probably no other region where the skills and labor of women are so determinant to economic and social survival of society. Today, there is hardly any study of African development issues, particularly by the World Bank and other donors, that does not emphasize the need for including women as fully endowed and empowered development agents and stakeholders. All agree that women need to be uplifted if Africa is to get out of the messy economic and social doldrums and improve its development prospects. This is not a moral argument but a rational one based on well understood processes of development efficiency. The British Department for International Development Services (DFID) (2007) perhaps speaks for all other observers of and participants in African development when it states: “. . . We cannot end poverty until women have equal rights . . . In Sub-Saharan Africa, women produce up to 80% of basic foodstuffs. But a survey of credit schemes in five African countries found women received less than 10% of the credit given to male smallholders” ( p. 1). African formal legal provisions and rhetoric not withstanding, practical policy and material support for women’s development participation and protection of their human rights is very slow in coming. Regarding HIV/AIDS and its impact on development, the World Bank (2004a) writes: “HIV/AIDS is clearly the number one health threat in Africa. The numbers are staggering: 20 million dead, 30 million infected, and 12 million orphaned. Average life expectancy has declined by 20 years in some countries . . . ” (p.25). With regards to women, a UNAIDS press release in the same year3 put the picture as follows: “Women in Sub-Saharan Africa are the majority of people living with HIV—nearly 60% of those aged 15–49, and amongst young people aged 15–24, 75%t of those living with HIV are young women.” The press release added: “. . . not only are the majority of people

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living with HIV girls and women, but girls and women are the main providers of care. Girls are increasingly being withdrawn from school to provide care for their sick parents, because of the economic impact of AIDS on the family or when orphaned.” In the same press release, Dr. Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) added her voice, “. . . the pervasive gender inequality and the violations of the rights of women that accompany it is one of the most important forces propelling the spread of the HIV amongst women. If we fail to transform the status of women the catastrophe of AIDS will deepen and the ability of women to cope, already critically stressed, may totally disintegrate.” This sexual violence against women is strongly associated with the disproportionate spread of HIV/AIDS among women and girls. Speaking to this issue, a young African female told a CNN reporter in 2008 that “They wanted to destroy my body and spirit.”4 This is a sad state for any society to be in, but more so for Africa where women seem to be the only dependable safety nets in these times of deepening crises. African governments should stop their indifference to this critical problem and act to mitigate the risk of this campaign against women for the sake of African societies as a whole. It seems that sexual violence against women is a mere extension of the general tolerance in Africa, of gender-based discrimination and violence of all types. Abusing women and treating them worse than second class citizens seems to form a normal state of mind and attitude among most Africans. It was shocking to hear a young South African man in Sweto talking to a Public Television (PBS) evening news reporter Ray Suarez on March 23, 2009. The young man appeared indignant and surprised that the reporter would ask whether women have rights to say no to unprotected sex. “Women? Women can’t say no” to a man’s demand for unprotected sex or anything else for that matter. What was shocking was not only his expression that women cannot dare say no, but the contemptuous attitude with which he said it. That young man had all the wrong attitudes towards the mention of a woman’s right. He appeared indignant that the reporter would even ask about whether women have rights even in that sort of personal and intimate relationship. It was sad and dispiriting, but apparently, the culture tolerates it. Africa Renewal records some facts on the matter as well, “According to the World Health Organization (WHO), violence affects millions of women in Africa. In a 2005 study on women’s health and domestic violence, the WHO found that 50 per cent of women in Tanzania and 71 per cent of women in Ethiopia’s rural areas reported beatings or other forms of violence by husbands or other intimate partners.”5 The same source referencing Amnesty International, reported that in South Africa, “about one woman is killed by her husband or boyfriend every six hours. In Zimbabwe, six out of 10 murder cases

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tried in the Harare High Court in 1998 were related to domestic violence” and the dismal report continues for other African countries, and all forms of violence. One can go scanning different parts of Africa and the present picture is not pretty for ordinary women. At the same time, however, African women and many governments are increasing their commitment to advancing women’s roles and rights in society. In all the efforts of governments and women, the historical memory of what Africa’s own authentic gender relations were all about in pre-outside influence traditions and civilizations is not invoked. Going back and revisiting the many African indigenous societies’ own gender role and status models would ease and even enliven the gender dialogue between men and women and make the road forward much easier, more organic, and mutually reconstructed by both sexes. At the moment, the tension between male and female society with regard to changing gender roles and statuses is palpable and women’s groups are not only keenly aware of this sensitivity, but also tow the line of discourse very carefully.

GOVERNMENTS MEASURES TO ADDRESS GENDER DISPARITY Ultimately, governments hold the key to the pace and direction of the redefinition of gender arrangements in the economic, social, and political life of societies. Where governments enjoy legitimacy and the exercise of legitimate authority, they not only have the legal and resource power to sanction behavior, they also have the image making power and can shape norms, attitudes, and values regarding gendered life. The officially expressed values and gender perspectives are singularly important in moderating patriarchal attitudes and in encouraging women to reach deeper into their talents and efforts to reach greater levels of aspiration and achievement. It is not yet clear that all African governments have individually resolved to use this enormous imagemaking power of government to articulate and enforce women’s legitimate human, civil, and economic rights as set in the United Nations Charter and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). This is not to ignore the remarkable measures taken by a number of African governments to move the gender agenda along as part of their serious effort to confront the continent’s endemic poverty and disease, institutionalized corruption, oppression, and denial of human rights which have all conspired to arrest development. Also noticeable, however, is a contrarian reality; many more African governments resist any form of democratization and inclusiveness, gender or otherwise, even as they pretend

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to be committed to democracy and rule of law as for instance in Ethiopia (Puasewang et al., 2002) and other African countries as well (Schedler, 2006, Gopal & Salim, 1998, chap.4). Beginning in the 1970s, the Organization of African Union (OAU) now the African Union (AU) called for strong women’s participation in development and public affairs (Murray, 2004, pp. 136–138). The OAU also called on member states to ratify CEDAW and to intensify legal efforts to realize women’s participation in decision-making exercises at all levels of society (pp.141–142). In July 2003, African leaders assembled at the AU general assembly adopted a protocol on African women’s right (p.151) which was drafted under the sponsorship of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights headquartered in Banjul, Gambia. Before and following this protocol, African countries had enshrined women’s human rights in their laws and constitutions, excepting specific issues like sexual violence which can seriously challenge and retard women’s advancement. At a 2007 forum, in New York City, of The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, for example, a Kenyan delegate explained, “The motion to amend the sexual violence act had been introduced several times since independence and failed. Each time, it was seen by the male members of parliament as giving too much right to women.”6 It is hard to imagine how women’s right not to be abused and violated gives them too much right. Even in instances where there were laws to grant certain rights to women, the problem has always been in the implementation of these laws, partly because of Africa’s proverbial weak legal institutions and partly because of the lingering resistance of patriarchal values. The absence of strong, autonomous women’s organizations free from government control and manipulation and focused on the establishment of women’s legal and constitutional rights and monitoring of the implementation of these rights, is the major missing linking in making the transition from rhetoric and formal legal pronouncement to practical realization of women’s rights. Whatever the case may be, and however slow and difficult the process may appear, Africa, with significant exceptions, is moving towards the inexorable goal of putting into practice the full human rights of women.

AFRICAN WOMEN’S OWN CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ADVANCEMENT OF THEIR RIGHTS African women seem to be unfazed by the many obstacles and barriers in their way as they pursue their goal of gender equity and their full human rights. Even as conscious women work on different aspects of their issues,

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they never default on their duties as the main providers of basic necessities and care for their families and communities. With or without government support, they continue their struggle to ensure the production of food and other basic items and services to provide for family and community needs. They work diligently for the improvement of the same African societies that tolerate their abuse and marginalization. African women tactfully and nonaggressively confront norms of male impunity by organizing women’s groups and movements that label sexual violence as crime. Thus, Kenyan women demonstrate to oppose the unprecedented levels of crimes of sexual violence in Dar Fur.7 Nor are women retreating from their claim to rights to participate in national and local policy making and politics. There has emerged, since the late 1970s, a great deal of energy among African women of all walks of life to push forward genuine empowerment of women politically, economically, and otherwise with significant achievements (Tripp, Casimiro, Kwesiga, and mungwa, 2009). Using the moral mandates of international conventions like United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) to which all African countries are signatories, and the support of NGOs and foreign donors to Africa’s development, women galvanize and organize to claim their right, albeit, with significant apathy and indifference from many female and male quarters and down right opposition from yet others. Women are indeed making headway and are gaining official positions in government. Women parliamentarians are increasing in number in most African countries with post-genocide Rwanda toping the list at 49 per cent,8 a figure which was raised to an even more impressive 56 percent after the 2008 election.9 This makes Rwanda the country with the highest number of female parliamentarians in the whole world. In South Africa and Mozambique, women hold 30 per cent of parliamentary seats.10 Angola’s current ruling party has in parliament 77 women out of the total number of 191 it won.11 Though women work hard for their rights and for fairness, these results would, of course, not be possible without government policy to increase women’s presence in decision-making. Indeed, in all the countries with impressive female representation in parliament, the governments have taken proactive roles in promoting legal equality of men and women. Ugandan, Rwandan and southern African women parliamentarian recognize that without government quotas and other measures that trail-blazed women’s presence in politics and the legislature in significant numbers, their advancement would have been much slower.12 But even as women continue to grow their political gains, there are hurdles to be overcome. Women’s voices tend to be trivialized and undervalued to fully matter even at this high citadel of power. Many women parliamentarians in Southern and central

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African countries report persistent humiliation of sexual harassment and marginalization of female voices. The culture of viewing women as dependent and subject to men’s dictates is, unfortunately, not altogether uncommon where women parliamentarians are concerned (Tamale, 2000). Researchers like Sylvia Tamale record with amazement, the extremely indifferent reactions to, or accommodation of African women in parliament and other high places to unwanted sexual advances or harassment, and put down of women. She reports: My research revealed that sexual harassment was an issue that most women legislators had to deal with on a day-to-day basis. However, many female politicians did not regard the repetitive sexual remarks directed at them as problems, let alone constituting sexual harassment. ‘Brushing it off’, both literally and mentally, was the method adopted by almost all victims of sexual harassment in my study. Even the most radical feminists among the female legislators I interviewed adopted passive methods of dealing with it, and did not consider it serious enough to warrant court or other retaliatory action (p. 13).

It is not without profound reasons that African women have adopted this coping mechanism to humiliation. As we saw earlier, there probably are no enforceable laws that encourage legal action, nor the institutions of law enforcement. Nor would African men in legal institutions offend their male social networks by taking seriously the complaints of sexual harassment of women. In this context, the last thing African women would want to do is to openly challenge African male chauvinism or sexism as this may provoke deep seated hostilities in African society, male and female, as discussed earlier. But these conditions cannot be seen as perennially static. Two emergent factors are likely to change the gender condition and situations of sexual harassment. The first is rewriting the laws of property ownership to economically empower men and women equally, something that educated women’s lobbyists have been working on for long years. Women’s economic independence is likely to be an added power to their defense of their rights. The second is the inevitable good news that the problem of demeaning women is likely to diminish as the number of women in parliament and other positions of political and economic power increase to form a critical mass—around 35–50% in any one setting. At this level of presence or representation, they will form powerful blocks and can form support networks as the experiences of three southern African countries demonstrate. As their numbers increase, not only do women gain greater confidence and composure, both men and women get used to the idea of women serving society in decision making capacity and power sharing at all levels of state apparatus with dignity and competence. At present, both men and women have to get accustomed to, what they perceive

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to be, an esoteric female presence in the public arena. But as their sustained and increasing presence is maintained, both men and women are very likely to intuitively embrace a redefinition of female roles and female presence in political, social, and economic spaces that heretofore were exclusively male domains. Change is hard to accept, especially when it borders on rearranging the fundamental logic of organization of power and the structural and normative assumptions undergirding it. In this respect, a brief excursus into the strategic courses of action and attitudes adopted by southern African women might be instructive. In a compilation of the narrative of women’s struggles in Botswana, Uganda, and Zambia, a publication by the African-American Institute (1995) titled African Women in Politics: Together for Change shows the variety of methods and strategies women design to advance their struggle for rights. First, the document starts by identifying the mistaken stereotype of the African woman as a passive entity with a “baby strapped to her back with a colorful sash” bending “wearily over her hoe, tilling the field” (p.2). African women’s presence today span the whole range of Africa’s political, economic and social life, albeit with still uncertain and precarious forward movement at all level. The document says, “Tired of waiting for male-dominated power structure to act on their demands, more and more women are dedicating themselves to fighting for women’s rights from within the political system . . . ” But the styles of their struggles are different in the three countries. We will start with Botswana. In Botswana, women formed a non-governmental organization called Emang Basadi (meaning ‘stand up women’ in the national language) in 1986, following the Third International Conference on Women which was held in 1985 in Nairobi. By 1990, Emang Basadi had produced a major study on “Women and the Law” following which three national workshops were held to highlight the legal institutional inequalities that plagued women’s lives. The African-American Institute helped with sponsorship of the efforts. Botswana may be unique in that women dominate political work at grassroots level, unlike Rwanda, for instance, where grassroots women relinquish their nominations or give up posts or otherwise retreat from active grassroots activism in deference to demonstrated male disapproval of their departure from traditional gender norms and prescriptions for women.13 Even in relatively progressive Botswana, women are, nevertheless, excluded from participating in positions of power and decision-making above the grassroots level. The leaders of Emang Basadi figured that working hard and mobilizing grassroots people in themselves do not improve their conditions. They, therefore, decided to launch a Political Education Program prior to the 1994 national election. The centerpiece of this political education would be A Women’s Manifesto they had worked on. The targeted purpose of the Manifesto was

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to: a) increase the number of female parliamentarians and local government offices to 25%; b) ensure that political party platforms included commitment to women’s issues; c) educate women on the connection between their votes and improving their conditions; and d) create women’s consciousness on their political marginalization and the resulting neglect of their needs. The Manifesto further specified the women’s demand for change which included democracy, changes in law, rights in agriculture, employment, business, education, health and other areas of concern. The political education campaign which was launched in 25 of the country’s 40 political constituencies brought all these issues to the awareness of people at the community, neighborhood and family levels. The media picked up the Manifesto and the political education campaign and caused widespread discussion of women’s issues. Other related activities helped to strengthen women’s participation in local and national elections as candidates and voters. Noting the inexorable resolve of organized women, two major parties included the demands of women in their political platforms, and in just one year of effort, the number of women in parliament grew from 5 per cent to 11 per cent following the 1994 election. Though short of the Manifesto’s target of 25 per cent, this political achievement of Botswana women is remarkable. In Uganda, the strategy women adopted was different from that of Botswana and it took into account the country’s more than two decades of civil war and political strife. Even though the guerrilla movement-The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) was still fighting, Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) had managed to establish a government in 1986. The NRM government promised the institution of democracy which encouraged women to create their own, non-partisan “Women’s Caucus” to which women in parliament and other branches of government belonged. It seems that the Caucus lobbied for concrete measures to address women’s marginalization so that the NRM government mandated an affirmative action measure that required the Parliament and Constituent Assembly (one of the chambers of elected representatives) to have at least 15 percent of the members to be women. The Women’s Caucus within the Assembly created alliances with youth, labor, and other special interest groups to promote democratic rights and representation in politics. The Caucus also extended its reach and developed alliance with Uganda Women Lawyers Association. Recognizing the limitation of caucus members in political skills, it also approached NGOs and USAID, and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation of Germany for support to conduct workshops on advocacy and lobbying methods and strategies and public dialogues on gender equity. One of the tools the women used to promote their cause among male colleagues and male society in general was the use of gender-neutral words and ideas in their dialogue.

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Through many innovative trials, Ugandan women, using the platform of the Women’s Caucus, have managed to get the Ugandan constitution to declare legal equality between men and women. Women tactfully “. . . advance the arguments to their colleagues and often . . . ask a non-member to move the Caucus amendment. It diffuses potential opposition” (African American Institute, 1995, p. 9). The constitution now goes beyond mere assertion of gender equality and specifically “prohibits laws, cultures, traditions, or customs which undermine the dignity and well being of women” (p.10). In much of Africa, laws are passed and constitutions constructed to grant female rights but leave loopholes that allow local customs, cultures and traditions to trump them. This is a very common problem. Ugandan women seem to have managed to have those loopholes closed constitutionally. Ugandan women use tact and diplomacy to advance their cause, implement their legal agendas, and avoid male anger or resistance by co-opting them to their cause. The third and last group in this brief study of African women’s varieties of struggles is Zambian. Unlike the previous two cases (Botswana and Uganda) Zambia has offered no democratic opening that women could use to sneak their demands through, or demand to have their voices heard. In 1991, following the global tsunami of demands for democracy and multi-party systems, Zambian women quickly formed the National Women’s Lobby Group (NWLG). The ambition of women was to end “laws, customs, and practices that discriminated against women and to put women in political decisionmaking positions” ( African American Institute, 1995, p.12). Given Zambia’s strict gender stratification, this ambition was of a tall order. Predictably, in an environment of robust patriarchy (often defined as the control and domination of women by men), the NWLG faced stiff initial hostility from male politicians. Of special annoyance to men was NWLG’s insistence that it was a nonpartisan group addressing the issues of all women. It took quite some years to convince even many a hectored female to join or sympathize with the NWLG. But eventually, the persistence and hard work of committed women changed this condition. By 1995, the organization had broad following and membership with six offices, in addition to the offices in the capital, Lusaka, and active, fee paying membership of 1,500–2000. Rural women have become active and energetic members and supporters. The fruits of this organizing and mobilizing effort are likely to take time since there still appears to exist strong male opposition to women’s political participation and, obviously, demands for rights. While women form the majority population (51%), there were only 4 women among 21 members of the committee designated to draw up a new constitution. There is no national policy on gender and it is likely to take a long time for Zambian women to get to positions enjoyed by their Ugandan and Botswanan counterparts. The important point is that in the best

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and worst of circumstances, women are gently but resolutely following their goal for gender emancipation and a life that allows them the full realization of their full citizenship, human rights, potentials, and aspirations. It appears evident that there will be no going back on this—women’s commitment to realize their full humanity and their rights.

AFRICAN WOMEN’S ECONOMIC POWER: BEYOND AGRICULTURE African women’s entrepreneurial roles are less celebrated than their agricultural ones. But the fact is that they are also pillars of Africa’s small scale businesses and processing of goods, not to mention the Mama Benzes and women in powerful corporate positions, primarily in West Africa.14 Africa’s urban centers and slums abound with women entrepreneurs and producers of consumer goods. Women as economic and social engines of urbanization and providers of organized production and distribution of goods and services that lay at the heart of the emergence and growth of urban centers has a very long history (Sheldon, 1996, Berger and White, 1999, Tamale, 2000, p. 9, Musisi, 2005, Schroder, 2005, Mikell, Toungara and Derryck, nd. Section I). In addition to providing essential historical and contemporary contexts for women’s dominant economic roles, these and scores of other studies on this topic show how women are beginning to reclaim their historic past and to go beyond their colonial” traditional” roles. Even under colonialism, African women retained their economic autonomy and engagement in providing the material basis for family survival. Today, they are entering the competitive capitalist production and distribution system-that is doing business to make profit and increase wealth and prosperity where possible. African women use their increasing economic power to bargain with their husbands to achieve new intra-household balance of power in decision making and the general management of the family (Musisi, 2005, Shroder, 2005). The more this power symmetry grows at the family level, the more social perceptions and values will change at all levels of society. After all, power relation within the family is a microcosm of societal power relations, arrangements and hierarchies. Though change in established gender stratification, status allocation, and division of labor do not come easy, there are significant signs of these undergoing gradual change already in countries and areas of endeavor quite apart from the cases discussed earlier. Enlightened men who favor change will find it easier to advocate necessary modifications to social arrangements and norms as women push for and gain greater social and economic grounds at the family and community levels. It must be parenthetically noted, however, that economic power in and of itself

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and in the absence of active female agency and demand for legal and formal rights, will not lead to transformation of society’s powerful institutions of law and culture as these pertain to gender roles and status ascriptions. African women’s non-agricultural productivity and economic power is best documented comprehensively by researchers put together by Kathleen Sheldon (1996) and Aili Mari Trip, Isabel Casimiro, Joy Kwesiga and Alice Mungwa (2009). Sheldon starts her edited volume with this statement regarding urban women: “Their relative lack of education . . . women are most frequently found in the least profitable sectors of the urban economy. Yet within those constraints, their innovative efforts have shaped the way urban dwellers work and have improved the possibilities of survival for urban families” (p.19). Presenting her studies in the same volume, Dorothy McCormick (1996) discusses her study of women producers in the vast Nairobi slums. In local manufacturing, one of her early surveys showed that of 2,800 firms studied, 78 per cent were engaged in textiles, metal work and carpentry. Twenty two per cent were engaged in shoe making, basket making, wood carving and other incendiary production activities. Women owned 23 per cent of all manufacturing activities, and 45 per cent of all the textile firms. McCormick’s second survey showed that of 2,200 garment manufacturing firms studied, 97 per cent were small on scale. Women owned 70 per cent of them. Such firms employ between 4 and 49 workers, indicating the employment generating power of women (pp. 196–197). The success of women entrepreneurs seems to be fueled by their relatively loose ties to their rural areas of origin. Not being “traditional owners of land” and being overworked and unrewarded, they concentrate on their manufacturing and other production enterprises as their sole economic and life opportunity. McCormick found that, on average, men entrepreneurs tend to maintain strong rural ties since they own land and have claim to its proceeds, and tend to be less successful in growing their urban enterprises. Women grow their businesses faster and 89.2 per cent run profitable businesses to accumulate money to acquire rural land. Intriguingly, over 98 per cent of these women lived with husbands and raised families even as they managed thriving businesses. Studying a similar phenomenon in Harare and Bulawayo (Zimbabwe) Mary Johnson Osirim (1996) found the burgeoning of women in microenterprises. The new drive to create enterprises that grow and hire a number of employees is a new trend triggered by the austerity created by the down-sizing of state roles in the economy and macro policy changes, primarily designed to invigorate debt repayment. Debt repayment is a very important part of the privatization and government down-sizing, demanded by the World Bank. The World Bank, particularly through its Structural Adjustment Programs (SAP) privatization of the 1980s and 1990s pushed people to fend for them-

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selves (Osirim, 1996, pp.214–218, Gordon, 1996, pp. 128–129) . Women had to step in and engage in bold creative thinking and enterprise management to withstand the economic chaos created by SAP driven policies that disregarded livelihoods and failed to factor in Africa’s historical disadvantages. Among the more serious of these historical disadvantages were and still remain, Africa’s inability to develop a large enough entrepreneurial class with the requisite skills and experiences and the absence of financial systems with the necessary capital to offer credit to segue their government-led economies into privately held ones. As major providers of family livelihoods, ordinary women adopted quickly to the new realities of having to make something out of practically nothing to ensure family survival. And so the picture of women entrepreneurs portrayed by the studies of Sheldon, Osirim, McCormic, . . . and many others replicates themselves all over Africa. In Zimbabwe, Osirim affirms, quoting a 1991 study, “over 64 per cent of informal sector firms” (they are called microenterprises in present day lexicon), “were owned by women” (p. 220). Her own study found this figure as understating women’s microenterprise participation. From market trading to all sorts of small-scale manufacturing, women are learning new profit-making skills under fast declining African economic situations and pulling themselves and their families out of the dangers of starvation and poverty.

AFRICAN WOMEN REACHING BEYOND THEIR BOARDERS African women’s national struggles for equality of opportunity has been discussed earlier. Their role in articulating continental and global economic right and opportunities is worthy of mention as well. It is not popularly known that the creation of the African Training and Research Center for women (ATRCW), under the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the first of its kind in the world, is a product of African women’s lobbying as far back as the 1970s (Tripp, et al. 2009, p. 224). By the 1980s, the research done by the organization would come in handy as African women drafted policy proposals concerning women’s roles and rights in development (pp. 224–225). This proposal became the Women and Development section of the OAU’s Lagos Plan of Action. It also became the foundation for detailing programs to remedy educational deprivation of African women and girls (p. 225). Their creative initiative to request for the establishment of ATRCW and its realization became a “model for UN systems as other such centers were established” (p. 224). With this and other forward looking initiatives, African women established themselves as forces

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for progress continentally and globally. They developed creative partnership and collaboration between women’s organizations, governments and international organizations in their progressive efforts. African women have always been ahead of their counterparts in other parts of the world in designing and proposing national, regional, and international remedies for women’s, and by extension, national development and transformation bottlenecks. There are few organizations like the Green Belt Movement and other African womeninitiated networks in other parts of the world. A mention of just one more of the litany of innovations and forward looking initiatives undertaken by African women will help us close the discussion in this section. Trip et al. (2009) have this to say about the exemplary nature of African women’s organizing principles and strategies: Similarly, Women’s World Banking was inspired by women’s economic activity in Africa. A pre-conference seminar before the 1975 Mexico City UN Conference on Women discussed how women might be able to access capital to improve their economic situation. There the successful Ghanaian entrepreneur, industrialist, and philanthropist Esther Ocloo pioneered the idea of formalizing local women’s credit associations. Ocloo worked with Ela Bhatt, founder of the Self Employed Women’s Association in India, and Michael Walsh, a New York investment banker, and together they founded Women’s World Banking in 1979. Ocloo became the first chairperson of its board, serving in that capacity from 1980 to 1985. As of 2005, Women’s World Banking operates in forty-five countries around the world (p. 225).

African men and governments should be very proud to have such a unique female population that does so much to benefit Africa and the World with all the humility and compliance with the highest forms of ethical gender relationships one can hope to have. Such qualities should neither be taken for granted nor abused to a point that will force distortions in women’s ethical perspectives. Unfortunately, some such is already in evidence in the way some strata of women conduct cross-border trades and other economic undertakings-a subject so vast that space and time will not allow getting into it here. The point that needs to be made here is that Africa has a great asset in its women to help with its orderly, and self-reliant economic, social, and political transition. Fortunately, many African governments are, as shown earlier, capitalizing on this asset to move their societies forward. Ever since the slight democratic opening that started in the early 1990s, women in most African countries have peacefully mobilized to bring about orderly and incremental realization of their rights and the progress of their societies. Sadly Ethiopia, Africa’s oldest country, is among the few exceptions with closed and dictatorial systems with little or no opening for the expansion of women’s rights particularly, demo-

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cratic participation in society’s affairs generally. Compared to other African women, Ethiopian women are the least autonomously organized and the least active, as a category, in advocating for their collective rights and the rights of their society in general. This is undoubtedly a reflection of the numbing trauma and immobilizing effect of the level of severe government repression and intimidation that the country reels under. The 2008 law to regulate the activities of non-governmental organizations all but eliminates any chances for even the voice of civil society to express itself. Puasong et al (2002), and Schedler (2006, pp. 154, 211) clearly show the behavior of the present day Ethiopian regime as democratic pretender and electoral authoritarian respectively. At present, Ethiopian women sadly, rarely appear on the vibrant scene of African women’s discourse or forward movement. Given the political and governance reality in Ethiopia, the absence of vigorous, authentic and autonomous women’s movement or activity is understandable. Ethiopia presents, perhaps, the most severe case of repression in Africa which has grown worse since the regime’s ballot defeat in the 2005 election. Following the peaceful protest challenging the regime’s reversal of electoral outcomes during May-June 2005, mothers were shot dead while trying to protect their peacefully protesting children, and young girls were killed while trying to block the military assault on students. Female students were found dead in their classrooms days after military rampage on schools, many eye witnesses visiting their relatives in the United States told this author. Naturally, people feel more and more traumatized and very insecure to think of organizing or doing anything else but survive. The only significant women’s organization in the country appears to be those that are government sponsored or facilitated ones organized to help it tighten its grip on power. It needs to be parenthetically observed that regime atrocity in Ethiopia has worsened the longer it stays in power. This paradox of increased regime violence against the people, the longer the regime stays in power, needs a full theoretical and empirical investigation. When it is contrasted with the tyranny of the regime of Mengistu Haile Marian which it ousted in 1991, the current regime’s behavior and pattern of oppression is striking. With Mengistu’s regime, the longer it stayed in power, the more liberal and the more humane it became, and the more it opened the democratic and economic spaces for the people, including women. And that was long before the democratization bug spread all over Africa following the collapse of the Soviet block. The new oppressors seem to enjoy unprecedented financial and political support from the outside—the World Bank and the West in general and China—with no democracy or human rights conditions placed by China and only rhetorical posturing by Western institutions. As Richard Joseph said, Ethiopian autocrats, like others learned early on “. . . that they did not have to democratize”15

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to enjoy their standing among the international and African family of nations. Thus, international donors, while advocating rights rhetorically, have, in practice, become obstacles to women’s progress and democracy and human rights in general, by aligning themselves with undemocratic and tyrannical rulers. In conclusion, a few exceptions like the Ethiopian case notwithstanding, African women are continuously enlarging the space of their educational, economic, social, and political participation and gaining ever more expanding all rounded rights. In this process the positive role, encouragement and participation from their governments and enlightened and progressive segments of male society stand as remarkable sources of support as has been the support of the of international governmental and non-governmental organizations. Sadly, and as remarked above, the benefit of international support is confined only to countries where rulers are willing to open democratic spaces. In the end, it will be realized that what all women have asked for is nothing more than inherent rights that are due to every human being. It is heartening that at least some African countries are making palpable progress on this front.

NOTES 1. Meyer Fortes and E.E. Evan-Prichard had already edited a colonial period text titled African Political Systems in 1940, published by Oxford University Press. This author could only read some sketchy abstracts and summaries that seem to leave the question of women’s roles as distinct from Europe, but nevertheless ambiguous. 2. Anyango Reggy, in a dissertation she successfully defended on April 14, 2009 discuses this land mark conference and the constructive and objective approach men took with regard to the problem. Among other materials, the researcher cited Levis Onegi’s piece titled Involve Men in Struggles for Gender Equality, 2007 at www. newvision.co.ug which she had accessed on Oct. 18, 2007. 3. UNAIDS Press Release, UN Secretary General’s Report Calls for Action on Women, Girls and AIDS, Johanesburg, 6 July, 2004. 4. CNN live coverage, October 23, 2008, accessed on the Web at http://www.cnn. com/2008/WORLD/Africa/10/15congo.women/ on 11/13/2008. 5. Africa Renewal (Formerly Africa Recovery) Vol. 21 no. 2, July 2007, page 4 “Taking on violence against women in Africa: International norms, local activism start to alter laws, attitudes by Mary Mimani http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/ afrec/vol21no2/212–violence-against-women.html, accessed 10/8/008. 6. “Taking on Violence Against Women in Africa: International norms, local activism start to alter laws, attitudes “, Africa Renewal Vol. 21 no.2, 2007, page 5. http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol21no2/212–violence-against-women. html, accessed 10/8/008. 7. Africa Renewal, Ibid.

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8. Africa Recovery, vol. 18, no.1, April 2004, page 4, http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol18no1/181women.htm accessed 10/8/2008. 9. The dissertation research of my graduate student, Anyango Reggy, secured this impressive figure during her research in Rwanda, in 2008. 10. Africa Recovery, http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol18no1/ 181women.htm accessed 10/8/2008 11. Inter Press Service News Agency report, IPS, Thursday, October 9, 2008. http://ipsnews.net/print.asp?idnews=44078 accessed 10/8/2008. 12. Ibid. 13. 2008 dissertation research by Anyango Reggy. 14. This researcher has a documentary video titled “Mama Benz” with impressive narratives of very successful business women in textile wholesale and retail that create scores of jobs for other women and men. 15. Quoted in Schedler, 2006, p. 211.

Chapter Ten

Looking Ahead: Some After Thoughts

Africa’s persistent underdevelopment in the face of continuous flows of significant development assistance has earned it the distinction of presenting the “world with its most formidable development challenge” (World Bank, 2004a, p.3). In the 9 preceding chapters, effort was made to show that development understood as essentially a human enterprise in which people are enabled, led, or incentivized in some way to exercise their human ingenuity and their learning capacity to utilize development assets (termed development imperatives) to conceptualize, plan, and implement development programs with or without the collaboration of external agents, has never really been practiced in Africa. This is why Africa remains underdeveloped and has proven to be “a formidable development challenge.” By all documented accounts, development in Africa has been very largely an externally designed, top-down mechanical and technical undertaking that was “. . . essentially a statist and elitist project-not in the sense that it presupposes the pre-eminence of the elites’ interests but rather that it presupposed the pre-eminence of elites in both its elaboration and implementation” (Mkandawire, 2005, p. 17). Adedeje, Ake, and others, in works extensively cited in this study, have argued that real development has never even started in Africa It is hoped that this study has offered convincing answers to two central questions in African Development. These questions are; Why has development not happened in Africa? And how can it be made to happen? The “why” and “how” in African development point to the urgent need for making a clear departure from the practice of development that is current on the continent. The African state since the 1960s has acted, in collaboration with donors and lenders, as the sole development agent. Many African scholars have observed that ‘development’ as the mantra of African states has led not to development but to the abuse of the people and their rights as if such abuse 212

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were a precondition of their development As one scholar put it: “. . . ‘developmentalism’ had become an ideology that was abused by African governments, including those for whom development had never been on the agenda” (Mkandawire, 2005, p. 29). The so called developmentalist state model could be argued to have characterized most independent African states so far. This strategy and government role in development has failed Africa massively and must now be abolished in favor of people’s direct control and development participation. The participatory social learning model of development provides an adequate model for popular development participation and how to do real development. Africa’s moral, social, cultural and economic restoration and transformation can only happen through an empowered people and their civil society who, in cooperation with government, and where available, international assistance, can advance the economic and social well-being and development of African societies. In the current study, it was theoretically, methodologically and empirically argued that it is now essential to change the orientation of African development towards the people, away from the state, and not just relying on the market but also on dedicated pursuit of macro and micro policies that balance the creation of sufficient conditions for successful participatory development for and by the people with the goals of scaling up and diversifying production and distribution systems. A major paradigm shift is necessary and an alternative paradigm or framework was provided to show what the shift can be into. Documentaries of people-led and people-centered development projects were analyzed to highlight the great promise that the new paradigm or framework holds for the reduction of poverty, disease and all other forms of human suffering related to or arising from poverty. What has been called the Participatory Social Learning Approach or model in this study was implied but not specified in the work of the renown African economist, the late Claude Ake (1996). Claude Ake called his alternative to the top-down modernist and trickle down approach as “The Residual Option” (p. 124). Here is how he described his approach: “As an approach to development, this paradigm may be characterized as the residual option, to suggest what is likely to remain after separating out the confusion, irrelevancies, frills and distortions that stand in the way of strategizing development in Africa. What is left after this sorting out process is the energy of ordinary people.” (p. 124). Ake further argued that “Development is not economic growth even though economic growth in large measure determines its possibility . . . Development is not a project but a process. Development is the process by which people create and recreate themselves and their life circumstances to realize higher levels of civilization in accordance with their own choices and values” (p. 125). He expresses his firm understanding that:

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“Development is something that people must do for themselves, although it can be facilitated by others. If people are the end of development, as is the case, they are also necessarily its agent and its means.” Ake does, however makes it clear that what he is offering “. . . is the sketch of a paradigm, not a blueprint or an action plan” (p. 124). This work, in a sense, pushes foreword Ake’s framework which was work in progress. It takes further the enterprise of articulating a framework and methodology for implementing the participatory social learning (people-centered) development model; it extends and elaborates on Ake’s Residual Option. The participatory social learning model of development is a concrete model that can stand on its own. Ake’s specific points are mentioned here, for no other reason than to point out how long the realization in Africa has been that its conventional, top-down and elite (national and international) driven development path is misplaced and irrelevant. It is a discouraging commentary that this realization has not resulted in significant strategic changes in development approach, perhaps because African political elite, addicted to power and control of all economic resources, did not want to heed the advice. As the awareness and demand for rights and accountability are on the increase across the continent as can be seen from the myriad of blogs, print and broadcast media to and within the continent, things may start to change. They are, in fact, already changing in appreciable numbers of African countries as discussed in different chapters of this study. The participatory social learning models is designed to take into account the absence of the vast majority of Africans from environments where the envisioning, planning, and implementation of micro-level or local development takes place. Micro level developments, when aggregated, define and describe macro economic inputs and outputs. The model in no way grapples with issues of industrial and agrarian policies at the macro level (though liberal economic principles of least non-market interference in rational resource and labor allocation are implied) including demand and supply planning or management the absence of which could lead to agricultural overproduction demanding regional and international market outlets through trade. Here too private entrepreneurs or producer cooperatives in cooperation with government can create market links that serve producers and consumers. This area of concern is beyond the present effort which is focused on creating the theory and method needed to make development and surplus production possible in the first place. The driving idea has been to demonstrate how best Africa could defeat its perennial poverty, disease and lack of forward looking vision and create public sentiment of hope and possibility thinking. Success always breeds success and the participatory social learning paradigm or approach

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was used not just to provide a firm development alternative, but also to argue that, even in the absence of favorable public policy and development design, anecdotes of people-initiated and managed development in fields as diverse and challenging as developing rural water supply, reversing massive environmental damages, and developing irrigated agriculture, show how people could build positive, can-do attitudes on their successes. National development requires not only anecdotes of progress, but the deliberate and coordinated effort of government. The assertion then is that the African people cannot and should not be blamed for becoming victims of perennial failures not of their making. These failures seem to have resulted in hopelessness and resorting to coping mechanisms of informal sector economies that rely on cheap consumable imports (itself anti-African development). It is this picture of Africa being flooded with foreign imports that lead Chabal and Daloz to argue that modern consumption coexists with backwardness and underdevelopment as a special incongruent feature of African culture. If given a chance Africans can align their life styles with their own level of development-produce what they consume and consume what they produce and value this as an end worth working for. What has prevented Africans from being producers of what they consume and basing their advanced and more complex development based on this? Many factors including colonialism, neo-colonialism, unfair positioning of Africa in the international division of labor as mere raw material producer subject to the whim and fickleness of international markets, the role of African governments and powerful international interests, all have been analyzed as problems and obstacles for the development of the African people at different times by different scholars and Africa observers. Through the analyses provided in a number of the chapters of this work, it has been shown that a growing body of literature on African development increasingly demonstrate that African government elites and their international financial and political supporters are the single most important block of barriers to Africa’s development. In the end, the African political elite must bear the full responsibility for Africa’s failures, for without them as conduits, international interests could not distort African development processes. No one but the African states can assume responsibility for what has happened to Africa over the last half century. While a number of well recognized African states have always maintained commitment to their people and steadily advanced economically, socially, and politically (Botswana, for example), a number of others are showing encouraging changes. Unfortunately, the vast majority still hold their people and their development hostages to their own lust for power, and narrow and selfish interests. A few bold steps to overcome this dilemma can be suggested.

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RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, DEMOCRACY AND RULE OF LAW That African regimes have acted as devoted opponents of human rights, democracy and the rule of law –important variables in development-has been self-evident and the subject of many studies and books including important World Bank documents (2004a, 2000). No time will be spent here revisiting this particular genre of literature as this has already been done earlier. The degree of absence of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law and the rate and severity of the people’s underdevelopment and famine are directly related as established by the Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Issues (1985) and Robert S. McNamara (former president of the World Bank) writing with them. Famine, it is agreed, is mostly “a man-made disaster” and Ethiopia is the classic case of this. The degree of violation of rights and the extent of impunity of tyrannical regimes varies across Africa, with some countries being worse off than others on a scale of severity of oppression. It is no coincidence that the severity of chronic famine has intensified in Ethiopia especially since the beginning of the 1990s, reaching a point where one sixth or 16% of the population is reliant on food aid to avert daily catastrophe of famine and starvation.1,2 Where people have some degree of rights and access to resources, famine and starvation are uncommon occurrences and this proposition seems to hold for all African countries. The question then is, what must African people and the international community do to ensure the prevalence of all types of rights so that the peaceful and united intellectual and physical energies of the people are unleashed to trigger a new development momentum that benefit all? Africa has both constraints and opportunities in this respect. We should take a brief look at people-level cultural constraints. Kwame Gekye (1997) sees African patriarchal cultures themselves standing in the way of possibilities to construct accountable and dynamic government institutions committed to the welfare and progress of all. His view is that “Our African cultures appear to foster attitudes toward public or government matters that militate against the application of one’s greatest effort and induce apathy and carelessness in the service to the public.” (p. 256). This cultural attitude, according to Gekye, arises from the customary distance people create between the state and themselves, for traditionally, African societies were organized on small scales in which the “traditional states” of chiefs and kings were welfare states designed to accord: . . . great attention, albeit excessive, is officially given to the enhancement of the welfare of each individual, a conduct that would involve a great state expenditure . . . From the moral point of view, the welfare state has much to com-

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mend it; but the efficient management of the economy requires tightening the purse strings by limiting how much should go into cushioning an individual’s economic welfare (p. 257).

Though there are more variations in traditional African state arrangements than the above quote implies, one truism seems to hold; in all African cultures, there is a clear hangover from traditional African tendencies to share wealth for meeting immediate needs of the extended family, clan or ethnic community. This stands in the way of deferred consumption gratification in favor of accumulation of savings and investing in enterprise development that, in the medium and long-term, benefit all nationals. While the absence of the art of saving is a big problem, the major issues surrounding Africa’s underdevelopment has been the behavior of the state. A special feature of most African state behavior has been its particularistic, divisive tactics that foster continued absence of accountability and rationality in the management of state affairs. The lack of broad-based publics invested in the defense and promotion of the common will has rendered state management vulnerable to mediocrity, corruption and imperial forms of rule that disadvantage and subjugate all to benefit a handful of strategically positioned, but otherwise incompetent and unqualified, groups. This problem was amply discussed in chapter 2 of this study where legitimacy and social contract constructs were presented. Ethnic and religious diversity is Africa’s historical and existential reality, no different from that of India (with more than 200 ethnic groups) and many other countries with thriving democracies and flourishing economies. Ethnic diversity cannot be used as an excuse for dictatorship. It is never ethnic diversity that is a problem but its manipulation and mobilization by political elites. Frustrated by this, Ki-Zerbo (2005) declared: “By subtle subterfuge tribalism is used as a pretext to reject indispensable reforms.” He advices African people: “In the face of the exploitation of real or artificial ethnic identities for selfish ends, we have to foster a new African, nay-an African neo-personality that espouses the ethnic group and jettisons ethnicism.” (p.89) Educated generations of Africans need to recognize the serious challenges that their elite constructed and enforced assumptions pose and determine to create new ethics of accountability and common vision to move their entire societies forward. There are ample signs that the drive for legitimate governance in which government elites are held accountable and judged by the quality of their performance and outcomes, not their ethnicity, is beginning to take root. Many African blogs and web-based discussions give the growing range of awareness among Africans and their willingness to take up the challenges of their crosscutting, collective development and transformation. It will take the full recognition and support of the international community to nurture this emerging tendency.

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The emergence and growth of home-grown analyses of African problems and the design of enduring institutional mechanisms to address the continent’s enormous development challenges can be easily hampered by the international community’s resolve to simply throw more and larger sums of money at the problem with government and state machineries of oppression and tyranny intact and in place. As informed people often say, you cannot solve problems using means that created them in the first place. International development assistance as structured to date has been one of the major obstacles to progressive, and responsive reforms of the continent. Leonard and Straus argue this point most convincingly. The worst African tyrants have been maintained by international aid. The role of development assistance in exacerbating Africa’s problems of corruption, regime tyranny, and deliberate dysfunctional posture of the state has been amply discussed by sources other than Leonard and Straus. These were extensively cited earlier in this study.

POSSIBLE INSTITUTIONAL MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTING THE PARTICIPATORY SOCIAL LEARNING DEVELOPMENT MODEL More formal institutions like the old community development centers (discussed earlier in this study) with trained skeletal personnel can be reinstituted to serve as institutional delivery mechanisms that connect peoples’ initiatives and government and external resources, knowhow and technologies to advance learning-based participatory development. There can be any number and variety of other innovative and cost effective institutional development conveyer belts created. During the late 1970’s and early 1980s for instance, when Ethiopia’s revolutionary change appeared to promise, falsely as it turned out, the release of all available development resources to the people in the context of democratic, decentralized social and political frameworks, a number of visionary development institutions were designed by multidisciplinary teams. Among these, the prominent one, in the view of this researcher, was the rural skills training center concept and structure. The Rural Skills Training Centers (Ministry of Education, 1979) were designed to accommodate mobile, multi-sector development teams that would follow the rhythm of rural economic production cycles to work with the people directly on issues of literacy, agricultural production, other types of entrepreneurship, improved home construction, rural arts and crafts, environmental protection, environmental and personal health and hygiene, health and nutrition and many related subjects. The mobile teams would stay and conduct learningteaching and experimentation activities during seasons of slow or completed

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production cycles which followed relatively discrete seasonal sequences for each of the climatic or ecological zones or regions. Ethiopia has three climatic zones; Dega (high elevation lands) Woina-Dega (mid-elevation) and Kola (low hot lands). Each climatic zone represents different ecological environments with different economic bases and production. Each zone engages in different mixes of agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry and production peaks and ebbs in each during different months of the year. The rural skills training center program articulation and design was the brain child of an inter-ministerial technical committee on which the present researcher participated. The project was coordinated by the adult education department of the Ministry of Education. The idea of the skills training center(s) was to offer an effective but inexpensive medium for the infusion of all kinds of development inputs; credit, technology, functional literacy, technical training, motivation, etc. into rural communities so as to expedite their economic and social transformation. The skills training centers would be built according to standard plans developed for each ecological zone. The people themselves would be guided to build adequate structures for the rural skills training centers from locally available materials and taking into account local climatic conditions, cultures and customs. The centers would be fitted with minimum essentials to inspire new and improved levels of construction of homes as well as community facilities. Their design also included sanitary, living, child care, and cooking facilities to accommodate families (men, women, and children) who would come for brief periods of training and new experience during off-production cycles or low economic activities. Randomly selected groups of rural families would come to the rural skills training centers for training. Different subjects that enhanced their overall competencies and quality of life would be offered. A range of technical and government agencies would provide training through the centers and encourage the participants to share their newly acquired knowledge with others in their community on return. The most important feature of these skills training centers was that people built them according to standardized plans approved by government for each ecological zone and they were treated as development owners and partners with outside agencies bringing skills and resources to help them do development appropriate for their unique economic and environmental contexts. Other spin-off benefits were also anticipated; people would get ideas on how to build better structures (homes etc.) from locally available materials. Unfortunately, the concepts behind the skills training centers were turned into ambiguous ideas and practices as different organizations started implementing them under the intense ideological tumult of the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, they were turned into ideological indoctrination centers for the novice communist

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pretenders and Marxist zealots of Mengistu’s disastrous rule (Zewde, 1991, pp. 228–235). There are other least-cost options that could be explored to deliver participatory social learning based development strategies. Locally innovated institutional networks like the Six-Ss in the Sahel and West Africa (Krishna, Uphoff, and Esman, 1997, pp. 75–90), the Green Belt Movement and numerous other indigenous institutions and some externally inspired ones that dot the African landscape could be used to promote progressive and inclusive, self-regenerating, learning-based participatory development.

RELYING ON THE AFRICAN PEOPLE AND THEIR RESOURCES TO DEVELOP AFRICAN LIVELIHOODS AND ECONOMIES: NEW CHALLENGES Repeating Ake’s statement that “Development is something that people must do for themselves, although it can be facilitated by the help of others” is to restate the logical and the obvious. If we indeed define development, as we have done in this study, as a process that brings together the peoples talents and abilities to learn to use Africa’s bountiful natural resources and development assets to change the circumstances of their material and non-material existence, then development is about changing the technological, managerial, and all other essential capabilities of people to tackle development issues. Again, Ake reinforces this truth: “If people are the end of development, as is the case, they are also necessarily its agents and its means.” There can be no shortcut to development and no proxy of the people can practice development on their behalf. People must undergo all that they must to master and own their development and manage their natural and environmental resources. This brings us to the issues of foreign direct investment (FDI) and globalization as forces in Africa’s development. In a succinct article back in 1993, David Korten, after critically examining the state of the global economy, the pitfalls of the so called East Asian Miracle and Africa’s condition, had said Economic Justice, combined with the discipline and efficiency of private ownership and the market mechanism, is an essential cornerstone of a sustainable society in a resource scarce world. This can be achieved by democratizing the ownership and control of productive assets, breaking up national and international monopolies, and decentralizing economic activity to create a globally linked system of localized, self-reliant, recycling economies (p. 62).

And talking about the current state of globalization, the former chief World Bank economist during 1997–2000, and member and Chairman of the White

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House Council of Economic Advisors 1993–1997, and Nobel Prize winner Joseph E. Stiglitz (2007/2006) writes; In my years at the World Bank, I came to understand why there was such discontent with the way globalization was proceeding. Though development was possible, it was clear that it was not inevitable. I had seen countries where poverty was increasing rather than decreasing, and I had seen what that meant—not just in statistics but in the lives of the people. There are, of course, no magic solutions. But there are a multitude of changes to be made—in policies, in economic institutions, in the rule of the game, and in mindsets—that hold out the promise of helping make globalization work better, especially for the developing countries. (p. xi)

Stiglitz, like the chorus of other rising voices from the right and left of the spectrum of economic and social philosophy, warns of the grave dangers of globalization as it currently stands: “Among the central choices facing all societies is the role of government. Economic success requires getting the balance right between the government and the market. What services should the government provide? Should government encourage some sectors with incentives? What regulations . . . should it adopt to protect workers, consumers, and the environment?” (p. xv). Not only is he skeptical about the global rampage of multinational corporations, in the case of China it would be government controlled and owned, corporations, he strongly suggests that “Globalization, like development, is not inevitable.” (p. xviii). In Stglitz’s and other prominent views, another world of social and economic justice and fairness is possible. Clearly, all people of moral and social responsibility around the world are of the same view and working hard to confront the contrarian views the few privileged global monopolies. The World Social Forum has constituted itself as the counterforce to the unaccountable and mystified globalization rush being pushed by the powerful few. Stiglitz sees much hope in this fast growing global grassroots movement (pp. 3–6). “Globalization had succeeded in unifying people from around the world—against globalization.” (p. 7). Indeed, the World Social Forum is one of a number of movements that have opened the space for civil society and activists to argue for moral and ethical balance in economic development and to analyze and confront the negative effects of engineered globalization under the World Trade Organization (WTO) that has given a monopoly of economic and resource power to a few globally interlinked interests. As for the masses of the world’s people, especially those in Africa, globalization has meant the reckless rise of poverty and hopelessness: The sad truth . . . is that outside of China, poverty in the developing world has increased over the past two decades. Some 40 percent of the world’s 6.5 billion

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people live in poverty (a number that is up 36 percent from 1981), a sixth—877 million—live in extreme poverty (3 percent more than in 1981). The worst failure is Africa, where the percentage of the population living in extreme poverty has increased from 41.6 percent in 1981 to 46.9 percent in 2001. Given its increasing population, this means that the number of people living in extreme poverty has almost doubled from 164 million to 316 million. Historically, Africa is the region most exploited by globalization . . . . (p. 11).

Stiglitz recognizes that this enduring pattern of exploitation has meant unprecedented oppression which: “Unsurprisingly, they [the poor] stressed not just their inadequate income but their feelings of insecurity and powerlessness” (p. 11). And so the exploitative arrangements of globalization as it stands, is devastating not just for the pocket and the stomach, but for the mind and spirit of the vast majority of human kind-Africans in particular. Foreign direct investment (FDI) as practiced today under the rubric of globalization fares no better than the latter as far as producing real and constructive development that builds and dignifies people is concerned. After all, FDI is a large instrument of dispossession in the name of globalization. Sub-Saharan Africa is being treated by a large number of its leaders and outside interests as a wealthy land mass without a legitimate claim of a native populations over national resources. A Berlin based Inter Press Service wrote the following on April 23, 2009: “Sub-Saharan African countries have of late become the target of a new form of investment that is strongly reminiscent of colonialism: investors from both industrialized and emerging economies buy or lease large tracts of farm land across the continent, either to guarantee their own food provisions or simply as yet another business.”3 The article refers to sources that call this new foreign investment phenomenon “a new form of agrarian colonialism.” BusinessWeek on line, writing on May 4, 2009 writes, “In a rush to secure food supplies, investors from around the world are snapping up agricultural land . . . especially in Africa. These countries include Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, China India, Libya, and Egypt –at the forefront of a frantic rush to gobble up farm land . . . mainly in cash starved Africa.”4 International concern over sovereignty over the land and food supplies is rising and NewsWeek quotes some as saying: “There is a danger that host countries, particularly the more politically sensitive and food-insecure, will lose control over their own food supplies when they need it most.”5 The Tanzanian government is known to have granted Sun Biofuels, a British biofuel firm, 9,000 hectares (equivalent of 12,000 soccer fields) of “sparsely populated farm land” free of charge to grow plants for renewable biofuel production. All the company needed to do was promise to invest $20 million to build roads and schools.6

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Madagascar was poised to hand over for 99 years 1.3 million hectares of fertile farm land to South Korea early in 2009 when the deal seemed to collapse under criticism that the new land grab “harks back to colonial-era ‘plantation agriculture’ where rich outsiders force subsistence farmers off fertile land to grow export crops.” 7 Public anger in Madagascar over this land deal with South Korea’s Daewoo not only forced the government to cancel the deal, it also is believed to have contributed to the ouster of the president in April, 20098. According to Reuters, “Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, China, and South Korea are leading the global” grab of agricultural land with particular focus on Africa.9 The New Internationalist, writing on March 10, 2009 on Saudi Arabia’s acquisition of huge tracts of fertile agricultural land from famine ridden Ethiopia where 16 percent of the population is suffering from famine and/or starvation says that the Saudi’s realized their first harvest; “. . . the new colonialism could begin impacting the most primary of commodities, and what payments are made will go to governments, not to the economies, serving only to reward leaders for their failure to till the land themselves.”10 By whom and how is this massive Ethiopian land giveaway transacted?. The East African Forum reveals that three Saudi investors “. . . met Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi . . . They approved to lease us the farm land. They will exempt us from paying taxes and lease fees in the first years of production and they will allow us to export all our production.” This was told to Reuters by a Saudi investor, Mohamed al-Musallam.11 Africa starves and is food-aid-dependent and Ethiopia is in permanent state of famine. And yet, only 14 percent of its suitable land is under cultivation. This land belongs to the people who should have title to it and be assisted to develop different sizes of farms to meet local needs and export their surpluses for handsome sums which food grains now fetches on the global market. Foreign interests seem to be after this very resource that Africa should rely on to feed its people and develop as the launching pad of its general development and economic growth. Responsible and accountable countries like Russia are encouraging their people to engage more extensively in agriculture while participating in food production to enhance their peoples’ effort to produce more food.12 The new scramble for Africa’s agricultural land in the name of FDI will rapidly lead to the subordination of the African people as cheap farm labor to their new alien landlords. This is tragic as there is practically nothing in this kind of land grab to advanced the development ownership of the people. This drive can only permanently dispossess and impoverish the people in a manner that is worse than colonialism which could be easily displaced since it had no agreement with any one in its land grab. There should be no land

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sale in Africa except through popular referendum to secure the consent of the people-the collective owners of the land. Governments who deny the people their democratic rights, rights to own their land and to have a say in national affairs and natural resource management, should have no legal ground to sell off land that the people need to build their lives and are the rightful owners. Such practices must be held illegal under international law affirming the peoples’ economic and sovereignty rights. China not only engages in this “new form of agrarian colonialism” with huge holdings in Mozambique and other countries and eyeing many more,13 its huge African presence shows up everywhere: “. . . the ability of its businesses —be they state-affiliated MNCs or family-owned retail shops—to outbid, outsupply and outproduce any African firms . . . make it an apparently unstoppable juggernaut in terms of capturing market share” (Alden, 2007, p. 129). Between this land grab, direct investment in extractive industries, and cheap textile dumping, Africa’s development is being handcuffed, with its infant industrial capacity under serious assault. Nigeria, for instance, has been forced to close 80 percent of its textile producing firms by 2005 through Chinese textile imports, throwing out of their jobs 250,000 workers (Alden, 2007, p.81). In Zimbabwe, “. . . One report . . . claimed that ‘the police, under direct orders from Didymus Mutasa, the head of the secrete police . . . brutally removed any competition to Chinese traders whose shops have sprung up around the capital over the past few years” (Taylor, 2009, p.103). What are the African people to do against such assault on their right to work and live in their own country? It is hard to talk about development in a context where the native people are treated as third class citizens by their own leaders. In Southern Africa, the stress of this process has caused, mine workers, labor unions and small entrepreneurs to protests; their protest has produced only minimum effects.14 In a 2005 study titled Economic Development in Africa: Rethinking the Role of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), the United Nations Conference on Trade and development (UNCTAD) finds that “. . . all top 10 recipients of FDI in Africa in 2003 have large mineral and petroleum reserves.” (p. 7). This pattern too, is reminiscent of colonial age investments—in extractive industries that reduce Africa to mere provider of raw materials. As one observer from sierra Leone is quoted (in Taylor, 2009, p. 60) “Africa is like a drowning man and so will accept any help or any investment with no questions asked. No one asks whether the Chinese investment is good for the continent as there is little planning or vision by our governments.” In Africa, FDI produces a process that “propels their own firms into an open playing field of vastly uneven economic resources and power” (UNCTAD, 2005, p. 76), which, as we saw in the case of Nigeria, results in mass closures of fledgling African

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firms and enterprises. In a rational and accountable environment, a poor African country would do all in its power to protect its fledgling industry and its sovereignty over land. This is the very least that the stewards of African states should deliver to their people. Given the state of chaos captured by the West African observer quoted earlier regarding the disposition of most African regimes, the only chance is for responsible international organizations like UNDP, ILO, and UNCTAD to take a more proactive role in pushing for the implementation of more reflective policies. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and other concerned organizations engage in studies on different African problems. What is needed now is to implement sound policies and programs that help to uplift the African people consistent with such studies. The African Development Bank, UNCTAD, ECA, AU, and similar organizations can be empowered to facilitate policy and program implementation beneficial to Africa. Organizations like the WTO promote drives of globalization that have blatantly focused on enforcing rules devoted to “protecting the rights of foreign owners of capital, standardizing and harmonizing norms and policies relating to foreign investors, and disciplining policies which are seen to infringe on those rights” (UNCTAD, 2005, p. 76). One might guess, that African regimes, alienated from their people may be implementing this rampage of foreign dispossession of Africa in a bid to please the world’s powerful corporate interests as being the foremost compliers with their rules. In the West, any significant matter relating to natural resources and environmental management is open to public discussion and debate before it can be implemented, especially if foreign interests are involved. People use these democratic forums to either modify, accept as proposed, or fight and defeat projects they consider contrary to public interest. African political elite, with the exception of Senegal, Botswana and a few others, where the independent media is known to have persisted on demands for disclosure of government decisions on many issues with remarkable success,15 disallow such public disclosure and debate of dealings on natural resources with foreign interests in particular. The path that most African political elite are following is likely to exacerbate Africa’s economic and social chaos, unless the people, with the help of the international community, mobilize to reverse it.

RESOLVING PROBLEMS OF INSTITUTIONAL DEFICITS The new scramble for Africa, and Africa’s ceding on every front, is a painful manifestation of the continent’s paralysis caused by weak, dysfunctional and

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failing institutions initially designed to sustain the rule of a single strong man or a ruling oligarchy. The protection of national interests and vital assets can only be in comport with the integrity, strength, political commitment and accountability of national leadership and institutions. The preceding discussion on how African assets are being squandered points to the clear absence of such state institutions. Yet, Africa has more educated people aware of what the continent’s needs are than at any time in its history. The unfortunate case is that these people have been rendered irrelevant, if they have not been killed or exiled already. The African countries that appear the most vulnerable open seasons for all types of internal and external scramblers and predators are generally those ruled by unaccountable despots with little competence or will to serve and protect the people. The literature on these African regime types and the predicament of their citizens can fill several libraries. And yet, one can rightfully place much hope in the continent’s future given its resilience in the face of sustained adversity. The growing international concern over the new scramble for Africa, including the concern of some United Nations specialized agencies mentioned earlier is another source of hope. Serious African thinkers have, for several decades now, pointed out that as Africa moved into the twentieth century, its institutions were inadequately conceptualized and designed for the needs of the new Africa entering a new age. These inadequately designed institutions span the whole spectrum of national life: the institutions of governance, education, and economy. Africa’s undemocratic institutions of governance have fostered attitudes of self-preservation in power at any cost. This has set the stage for expending energies and national resources towards controlling and subduing, society (often through military force and violence) rather than opening up spaces for civil society’s creative engagement to push innovative development forward in cooperation with government. The unrelenting grip of power by dictators has created a leadership cult rooted in new traditions of corruption, deception and opaqueness which make leaders oblivious of their public charge and stewardship of public wellbeing and the legal facts that they cannot treat public resources and assets as their private property and mortgage them off at will. The reaction of responsible international community to this African aberration is one of concern, as we have already seen. The chorus of demands for democracy, transparency, and human rights as preconditions for Africa’s development are growing lauder even if challenged by interest circles like China. In all truth as experienced by most leaving the continent, Africa cannot save itself except by putting democracy and human rights in all social, economic and political matters first and foremost. The institutions of state governance determine the nature, philosophy, and purpose of critical institutions like education. A great deal of emphasis was given in different chapters

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of this study to education since it forms the foundation and pillar of development. The involvement and full participation of intellectuals and civil society, teachers, and parents is essential for the evolution of meaningful education geared to solving diverse national issues and development. Such participation requires an open democratic space, as we see in the United States and other democratic countries. At the dawn of the 1960s, Africa held a number of purposeful brain-storming sessions on the essential contents and purpose of African institutions of education (Ajayi et al. 1996, p. 191–208,). As the years wore on, that initial drive and idealism morphed into an African leviathan that strangled any creative initiative that involved African intellectuals and civil society. Constitutions were improvised to facilitate life-time presidencies and to eschew any aspiration to empower civil society in any context. Political power became not a position of legitimate leadership and public trust, but a prized trophy of the most cunning and violent. In this way, a system of governance totally detached from the needs and aspirations of the people emerged and with this emergence, a population generally frustrated and apathetic, interested only in daily coping and survival. This public apathy has made the kind of land and resource squanders discussed earlier possible for leaders. Democracy, institutional accountability and competence are, therefore, the first set of item that must be secured to move Africa towards development. On this there is internal and external consensus as we saw in this study, especially chapter 2. Renown African thinkers are of the view that the single most important place to reform Africa’s institutions is to start with its education system. African education has, as is well known, been a poor imitation of Western education in content and not built on African foundations, and, therefore, not really suited to its needs. Ki-Zerbo and Ajayi et al. provide the most insightful socio-historical analysis of the plight of African education since its modern inception (Ki-Zerbo, 1990, Ajayi et al. 1996) and provide rational ways forward. It is a journey back to the past idealism of Africa’s 1960s and early 1970s educational concepts, goal and content that is suggested to be the sensible way forward. Many historical factors helped to derail that initial African educational agenda which was to make it the engine for building self-reliance, self-confidence and to serve as a vehicle for Africa’s social, cultural, economic, and political transformation while promoting “accomplished citizenship” (KiZerbo,1990, p. 103). The cold war and its ideological competition lured Africa into one camp or the other in the illusive search for a quick development fix. It turned out that both the free market and the communist camps were more skilled in using Africa to wage their ideological battles than Africa was to benefit from their rivalry. The process, however led to one indisputable

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legacy of cultivating tyranny and dictatorship under the financial and political tutelage of each camp. Following the collapse of the communist camp, new expectations of democracy and accountable management of states were drummed up but too no effect. Cultures of impunity, corruption, and greed had taken firm root and they were not to transform themselves just because important centers of the international community expected it. Not so committed to democracy in Africa, the West did not insist on democracy and human rights so long as the tyrants and dictators towed the lines set for them. I would argue that in this process of outward orientation, African political elites over decades learned to ignore their people as irrelevant to the preservation of their power. Leaders strayed away from the people, often considering them as ignorant and poverty stricken nuisances. Their reference group and audience became the desk officers in the departments of foreign relations in Europe and the State Department in the US, lobbyists, World Bank experts, and those in the international development industry. It will take the commitment of these same entities to compel Africa’s political elite to be governed by rules of decency, law, and accountability to the people in whose name and through whose suffering they receive massive aid, and get debt cancellation of the hundreds of millions they borrowed and squandered with no development benefits to show. Going back to education as the fundamental instrument for African rational institution building, creativity, and problem solving, the curriculum needs to be seriously studied and reconstructed to include such subject areas as “basic health sciences; food and nutrition, basic technological sciences, ecology and environmental science, reading, writing and arithmetic, of course, civics-that isAfrican history, geography, institutions and values (Ki-Zerbo, p. 103). Ajayi et al. have similarly suggested extensive recipes to reconstruct and make relevant Africa’s education system. The hope is that through an appropriate education system, a generation of Africans dedicated to facing up to the challenges of developing their societies and the continent could quickly emerge and change the institutional and social order that has so far blocked development. African intellectuals realize that democracy , human security and human rights have to come urgently to have all the right players (parents across all class and social divides, teachers, civil society, and intellectuals) to join forces to create appropriate education systems and curricula that they and African governments could sustain in the long-run. To date, teachers’ groups and intellectuals have been rendered victims of resignation and apathy “. . . through harassment by public authorities scared stiff of their own educational systems.” (Ki-Zerbo, p 52). In a few West African countries where the space for democratic participation has been expanded, Ki-Zerbo documents impressive gains in quality

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education relevant to Africa’s technological and innovation needs. These new education arrangements are organized and financially supported by local communities, parents, teachers and civil society (pp. 109–116). The experience demonstrates yet again what marvels African societies can do when they have voice and freedom to participate and to conceptualize institutional arrangements that best serve their development needs. So, how can the African democratic and human rights space be opened for Africa to own its destiny and development issues? Sadly, a concluding observation on current African processes compels a rational thinker to admit that the necessary changes will take too long to emerge from within. Africa needs change now and this needs external push and demand on African regimes to reform urgently to become acceptable member of a fast changing global community of nations. Schwab (2001) rightly talked of Africa self-destructing and Bates (2008) studied African political elite behavior in the continent’s 21st century failure. Not much seems to be happening within Africa to confront this tragedy. Given African leaders’ outward orientation, necessary system changes that are benevolent to the people can best be pushed from outside with the people themselves seizing this external support to mobilize for change. The deciding factor will be strong action by international human rights organizations, the United Nations, and international legal system. Already, the adjudication of Charles Taylor of Liberia at the International Criminal Court, and the recent issue of arrest warrant for Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, are producing tremors throughout the African body politic. The African people need some place in the world where they can turn for some support and encouragement as they strive to reclaim their resource rights, human rights and their humanity. Looking ahead, then, the African people need the support of concerned and conscientious international groups to establish open and democratic systems that can nurture them and their socio-economic development as conceptualized in this research and elsewhere. A few additional considerations must be looked at with respect to international support for African peoples’ democratic processes. First, the United Nations needs to develop a special accreditation metrics for Africa to validate a regime’s claim to represent a nation on the world body. Critical to this metrics must be evidence of the people’s expressed will to elect a regime through some form of free and democratic balloting and the record of the regime in respecting the people’s Bill of Rights. The African Union should adopt a similar metrics. Secondly, no matter how inadequate, the African Union currently is, it must be vitalized to serve as the space and the site for pan-African strategies for managing resource transactions, negotiating trade and development relations. While one need not advocate delinking Africa from the globalization phenomena,

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as some would argue, the continent needs to rely on its collective strength to manage the tough, manipulative, and complicated negotiations involved in international economic transactions. Pan-Africanism and regional economic cooperation are old themes being seriously revived and reworked by young African scholars, this time with very concrete economic development strategies that could better serve Africa’s medium and longer term interests.16 It appears that it may not be an altogether a far fetched hope to envision an Africa that gathers its intellectual resources in a unified fashion to present, defend, and promote its interests on the globalization stage. Given the new rethinking of the global order in the face of the current global economic crisis, a space has indeed opened for proactive African engagement to reshape its role as a global economic player. Old economic assumptions and opaque alliances may have to give way to greater emphasis on honesty, accountability, transparency, playing by ethical rules, respect for human rights and the need to include people in development as full and free stakeholders. Global security and stability can be well served by this kind of new order. Very significantly, African intellectuals, scholars and civil society activists are joining the World Social Forum and other international grassroots movements to invigorate the impetus for change in the global order and for the full respect of human rights like never before.17 The powers that be are undoubtedly taking notice as we see from recent retreats from the assertive push of unbridled globalization so harmful to the weak and underdeveloped. Most importantly, it may have been this new and energetic grass roots mobilization on an international scale that may have contributed to the failure of the final rounds of Globalization negotiations at Davos, Switzerland, in the Fall of 2008. Still, there is enough reason to worry that Africa may yet again lose the opportunity to use the new spaces created by the global economic crisis to position itself in a stronger and more beneficial way. The new scramble for Africa’s fertile land and other resources has brought in players from diverse regions. These groups are likely to complicate forward movements that strengthen African institutions and state management since they may perceive that they can only benefit from the weakness of Africa, not its strengths. Indeed, it must be only the weakness, confusion, and vulnerability of African regimes that cause them to give away to foreigners, with little or no returns for African societies, fertile land that Africans need to establish lasting food security. This was aptly grasped by the West African observer we quoted earlier in this chapter. Informed observers confirm that “Economic Contests, like others, require competent . . . referees-that is, strong institutions” (World Bank, 1993, p. 11). African economic and governance institutions clearly lack the requisite strength and popular

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legitimacy to competently manage its internal and external economic and other challenges. Will African leaders show sufficient commitment, equanimity, and resourcefulness to solve their economic and social problems by bringing in the continent’s best, brightest, most experienced, committed, well educated, and ethical professionals to help from across Africa and the world? It remains to be seen, but signs are not encouraging that this kind of serious movement will be in the offing any time soon on account of internal government impulses for change and progress. And yet, Africa’s multifaceted crisis is so urgent that addressing it cannot be postponed without grave consequences for the continent’s future. This is why the plea was made above for Africans and the international community to work in tandem to install new, progressive and democratic institutions for change and to instill a new ethos of rule of law, democracy, decency, respect for human right, accountability, and competence.

NOTES 1. Rene Lefort, Ethiopia’s Famine: Deny and Denial http://ayyaantuu.com/Oromiyaa/NewsBlog/tabid/36/Entryld/4583/Ethiopias-famine-deny-accessed 4/24/2009. 2. http://nazret.com/blog/index.php?title=5_mln_more_ethiopians_need_emergency_foo&m.... Accessed 2/19/2009. 3. http://ayyaantuu.com/Oromiyaa/NewsBlog/tabid/36/EntryId/4714/The-secondscram... Accessed 4/24/2009. 4. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content.may2009/gb2009054_ 712296.ht... Accessed May 5, 2009. 5. Ibid. 6. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/sep2008/gb2008098_ 506787.htm... Accessed 5/5/2009. 7. Jullian Ryall (Tokyo) “Land grab in Africa falters” http://www.theage.com. au/world/land-grab-in-africa-falters-20090115–7i61.html accessed 5/5/2009. 8. http://www.businessweek.com/globabiz/content/may2009/gb2009054_ 712296.ht... Accessed 5/6/2009. 9. Reuters, “Take a Look-Farmland scramble for food security” May 5, 2009 http:// in.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idINLM96384920090505 accessed 5/6/2009. 10. New Internationalist, march 11, 2009, “Saudi Arabia Reaps Ethiopia’s Harvest” http://www.newint.org/features/special/2009/03/11/Saudi-arabia-reapes-ethiopias-ha . . . accessed 5/6/2009. 11. East African Forum (from Reuters), April 6, 2009 “Saudi Investors to Put $100 million into Ethiopian Farm” http://www.eastafricanforum.net/2009/04/06/saudi-investors-to-put-100–min-into-ethi. Accessed 5/6/2009. 12. Yulia Chebotareva PAVA views land assets as unique investment opportunity, May 6, 2009 http://farmlandgrab.blogspot.com/ accessed 5/6/2009.

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13. Ibid. 14. Margaret Lee, “Uganda and China: Unleashing the Power of the Dragon” Nordiska Afrikaninstitute, Current Affairs Issues no. 33, 2007, pp.26–40. 15. A number of students from Senegal and Botswana, and other Southern and West African countries in the author’s seminar classes presented studies in which the democratic spaces and relatively free media were shown to facilitate proactive public demands to know about major decisions taken by governments and succeeding. 16. A Howard University, Department of African Studies Ph.D. student, Geravais, Lagoki Gnaka of Ivory Coast has completed such a study in April, 2009. 17. Colleagues and academic contacts of this researcher who attended the 2008 World Social Forum Conference in Nairobi, Kenya provided full documentary accounts of the far reaching scope of African participation.

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Index

Accelerated Development in SubSaharan Africa, 112 Accountability, 62, 68 Accumulated knowledge, 60 Accumulation, 32, 80 Achebe, 69 Adam Smith, 19, 20, 21, 47, 100 Addis Ababa, 12, 58, 70, 91 Addis Ababa University, 91 Adedeji, Adebayo, 30, 31, 32, 43 Adei, Stephen, 33, 131, 134 Administration, 65; administrative institutions, 68 Africa 1,2, 3, 4, 10, 12, 13, 15, 18, 20, 21, 25, 29, 30, 33, 35, 36, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 56, 57, 60, 66, 68, 70, 71, 74, 82–83, 89. 92–93.95–96. 101, 109, 113, 118, 123–124, 128–130, 136, 138–140, 145, 149, 190, 193, 212, 216, 224 Africa’s agricultural land, 223 Africa’s brain drain, 122 Africa’s development history, 176 Africa’s development, 122, 130, 175. 220 Africa’s lost decade, 11 Africa’s plentiful resources, 129 Africa’s political elite, 122, 228 Africa’s problems of corruption, 218

Africa’s technological and innovation needs, 229 African, academics, 69; Alternative Framework to Structural Adjustment Programs, 69; traditional societies 73, 188; characteristics, 74, culture, 39, 188, 215; conditions, 67, 107; dictators, 74, 83; development, 13, 45, 51, 62, 67, 70, 77–78, 99, 112, 113, 115, 141, 212; development theory, 50; knowledge 13, 89; development challenges, 39; development institutions, 57; elite, 76; experience, 66; governance institutions, 69; progress, 72; regimes, 62, 81, 97, 124, 153, 216, 229–230 ; societies, 72, 78, 103, 201, 216; Human Rights Commission, 69; Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 68; intellectuals, 43, 97, 112, 227, 230; initiatives, 51; civil society, 13; peasants, 57; people, 67, 69 84, 100, 101, 103, 134, 141, 183, 186, 215–216, 229; poverty, 12 African agricultural technologies, 136 African American Institute, 202, 204 African Americans, 54 African assets, 226 African cases, 134 249

250

Index

African Center for Technology Studies (ACTS), 141 African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, 199 African communities, 109, 154 African community development, 146–147 African countries, 11, 12, 14, 15, 20, 21, 25, 41, 69, 71, 72, 84, 95, 116, 118, 133, 143, 145, 161, 198–199, 201, 210, 214 African cultural and social life, 39 African Development Bank, 107, 225 African Development Foundation, 157 African Development Foundation, 169, 173 African Diaspora, 140 African economists, 91 African education development, 94 African education philosophy, 112 African education system, 112 African education, 93, 95–96, 108, 111–112 African engagements, 230 African entrepreneurs, 138 African experience, 30, 91, 131, 181 African farmers, 137 African gender discourse, 188–189 African gender idioms, 193 African gender systems, 191 African gendered culture, 192 African governance, 122, 151 African governments, 42, 49, 65, 69, 101–103, 115, 121–122, 129, 132, 142, 161, 182, 185, 197–198, 208, 228 African heads of state, 105 African history, 122, 228 African homesteads, 158 African leviathan, 227 African men, 195,208 African patriarchal arrangements, 188 African patriarchal social and family system, 130 African perspective, 92

African policy makers, 91 African political elite, 104, 214 African processes, 229 African renaissance, 117, 142 African researchers, 136 African resources, 128, 136 African resources, 128–129 African scholars, 90–91, 212, 230 African Scientific Network, 141 African scientific Network, 141 African secondary school system, 111 African state behavior, 217 African systems of governance, 81 African technology, 136 African technology, 140 African thinkers, 226 African Traditional Medicine Decade, 143 African Training and Research Center for Women (ATRCW), 207 African Union (AU) 12, 70 African Union (AU) 143, 199, 229 African universities, 137 African women farmers, 136 African women, 161, 187–188, 195,200–202, 204–210 African women’s roles, 193 African(s), 14, 17, 18, 20, 42, 57, 63, 71,73, 91, 99–100, 104, 110, 114, 129, 154, 220, 224, 226, 230–231 Africanists, 128 Afro-pessimism, 38; Afro-optimism, 38 Agrarian development, 59, 137; agrarian policies, 214 Agribusiness, 137, 158 Agricultural: 18, 63, 223; agricultural production, 31, 63, 196 Agricultural: development, 56, 99, 113; economists, 59; specialists, 55 Agricultural experiment station, 55 Agricultural land, 223 Agricultural overproduction, 214 Agriculture sector, 127 Agriculture, 99, 127, 135, 219, 223 Agronomist, 135

Index

Ajayi, Ade, Goma, J.F, Lameck, K.H. & Johnson, G. Amphah, 90, 101, 107 Ake, Claud, 33 Akoff, Russel, L. 57, 58, 59 Al Bashir, 82 Alejando portes, 81 Alternative development theory: Participatory Social Learning Theory, 47 Amazement, 101 American educator, 53; Americans, 57, 71 Amita Etzioni, 34 Amnesty International, 106 Amnesty International, 106, 116 Amratya Sen (see also Sen) 58, 90 Andrew Frihijakapor, 107 Angola, 130 Animal husbandry, 219 Arusha, 142 Asia, 141, 145 Asian Miracle, 104 Asian Tigers, 62 Attitudinal environment, 189 Authoritarian systems, 57 Autonomous fund (see also politically autonomous fund), 153 Awash, 128 Ayittey, George, 15, 20, 41, 75, 101, 128, 135, 140 Bangalore, 103 Bangladesh, 60 Banjul Charter, 69 Banjul, 199 Bantustanization, 85 Baro, 128 Bates, Robert, 15, 20, 38, 57, 62, 101, 104, 122 Bayratt, Jean-Francis, Ellis Stephen and Hibou, Beatrice, 15, 38, 42, 49, 104 BBC, 78 Berlin, 222 Bingu Wa Mutharika (see also Mutharika), 114

251

Bitero, 14, 167 Blue Nile, 128 Bokassa, 105 Bonsa tire company (BTC), 131–132, 163, 184 Botswana, 21, 41, 103, 114, 214 Bourdieu, Piere, 31, 76 Braidotti, 75 Brain drain, 122 Bridgit Brock-Utne (see also BrockUtne) 91, 93, 94 British, 222 Broad, Robin, 21, 31, 77 Broadman, 134 Brock-Utne, 101, 107, 111–112 Brown, Baratt, Michael, 6, 15, 130, 137–138; 153 Bulawayo, 206 Bureaucracies, 67 Bureaucracy, 151 Bureaucratic, 76 Bureaucrats, 76 Bush administration, 12, 116 Business Week, 222 Capital accumulation, 32; capital formation, 82 Capital for development, 145 Capitalism, 23, 24, 25 Capitalist, 25, 31, 76, 205 Chabal & Daloz, 15, 38, 39, 42, 43, 49, 67, 104 Charles Taylor, 229 Chazan, 82, 122 Chilalo Agricultural Development Unit, v Chilcote, Ronald, 36 China and Africa, 119 China, 44–45, 77–78, 114, 119, 129, 209; 221–224 Chinese Ambassador, 119 Chinese factor, 129 Chinese investment, 224 Chinese laborers, 44; Chinese workers, 119, Chinese traders, 224

252

Index

Chris Smith (Congressman), 116 Citizens, 226; Citizenship, 190 Civil society & intellectuals, 49 Civil society, 103, 108, 118, 209, 213, 227–228, 230 Civilization, 39, 213 CNS News, 78 Cold war, 66, 130 Coleman, 82 Collins, Ronald, 71 Colonial government, 93 Colonial, 21, 90; colonialists, 43, 94, 100, 103 colonialism, 20, 51, 57, 205, 222; colonize, 20; Colonized, 8 colonialism, 57; metropolis, 35; universities, 10 Comer,Marcus M., Thosya, Cambell, Kevin Edwards & John Hillison, 54 Commitment, 63; 102, 110, 115, 142, 176, 198, 226, 228, 231 Committed leadership, 63 Committed women, 204 Communism, 23, 66 Communist, 219, 228 Community development programs, 147 Community development, 55, 64–66, 146–147, 218 Community schools, 92 Conference of Ministers of Economic and Finance, 12 Congress of the World Federation of Public Health, 142 Cooperative extension system, 147, 166 Cooperative extension worker, 56 Cooperative Extension, 55 Corruption vi, 218, 226 County government, 55 Credit, 10 Cultural, 17, 27, 31, 32, 34, 48, 63, 94 Curriculum, 88, 90, 93, 107; curricula, 112 Daewoo, 223 Dar Fur, 84, 200

Darwinism, 30 Dasgupta, 82 Davidson, 77 De Soto, 145–146, 149 Decentralized social and political frameworks, 218 Deforestation, 159, 165, 167 Dega, 219 Delta State University, Nigeria, 107 Democracies, 217 Democracy, 12, 14–15, 67, 73, 139, 161, 199, 210, 216, 226–228 Democratic institution building, 78 Democratic institutions, 174, 231 Democratic participation, 228 Democratic Republic of Congo, 130 Democratic, 31, 82, 129 Democratization 2, 4, 63, 129, 161, 198 Democratize, 58 Democratized, 129 Denmark, 178 Department for International Development (DFID) 187, 196 Dependency theory, 35, 36 Derge.123 Desertification, 158 Deterministic model, 16 Developing communities, 175 Development: agenda, 41, 115; alternative, 215; as freedom, 58; communities, 56; experience, 64, 66, 67; problems, 81; framework, 50, 63, 181; history, 57; methodologies, 57; modeling, 58; momentum, 2, 216; needs, 56; orthodoxy, 5; paradigm, 12; perspectives, 35; failure, 4, 30, 37, 128, 134; finance intervention, 35; institutions, 76, 25, 218; initiatives, 56, 151, 175–176; preconditions, 58; practice, 66; practitioners, 65; performance, 174; report, 68; scholars, 59, 150; specialists, 56; strategy, 2, 58, 178; imperatives, 59–60, 69, 157, 165; success, 173

Index

Development assets, 187, 212 Development assistance, 150 Development authorities, 166, 176 Development challenges, 212 Development efficiency, 196 Development environment, 157 Development experts, 109, 139 Development finance, 145 Development foundation, 137 Development intervention, 100 Development model, 214 Development of Africa, 174 Development ownership, 223 Development participation, 176 Development partnership, 176 Development process, 104, 166 Development projects, 166–167, 1777 Development puzzle, 157 Development resources, 154, 185 Development strategies, 220, 230 Development, v, vi, 1–42, 44–45, 47, 49–52, 54–55, 57, 59, 60–70,73, 76–77, 79, 81–84, 87, 90–92, 99–100–101, 104–105, 107, 109, 114–116, 119, 121, 124, 127–133, 137, 139–140, 142, 149, 151, 154–155, 164, 174–176, 179, 182, 208, 213, 219–220, 224, 227–228 Developmentalist, 104, 213 Dewey, John, 53 Diaspora, 4 Discrimination, 197 Disempower, 62, 68 Distribution system, 170 Domination, 182, 194 Donald Payne (Congressman), 116 Donor (s), 14, 66, 112, 129, 151–152, 173, 177, 182, 200, 210 Dual-sex and gender-symmetrical social, economic and political roles, 192 Dunn, Edgar, 52, 51, 53 Durkheim, 47–50, 71– 74, 78, 87, 124 Dysfunctional, 68, 83, 113, 174, 218

253

Ecological environment, 138 Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) (see also United Nations Economic Commission for Africa) v, 91–92, 160–161 Economic development, 31, 83, 229 Economic formulation, 33 Economic freedom, 78 Economic growth, 6, 27, 84 Economic link, 20 Economic power, 205 Economic sovereignty, 8 Economic transformation, 100 Economic(s), 20, 21, 77, 88; economists, 23, 102 Edgar Owens (see also Owens), 99 Educated, 8, 91, 110, 217, 231 Educating, 106 Education in Africa, 95 Education philosophy, 112 Education policy, 94 Education sector, 96 Education system, 96, 109 Education theory, 112 Education, 9–10, 12, 30, 47–48, 55, 57, 69, 70, 86–89, 93, 101, 107–109, 111–112, 138, 147, 226–228 Educational institutions, 110 Educational, 107 Educators, 87 Egypt, 222 Emang Basadi, 202 Emanuel Wallerstein, 36 Emirates, 222 Emperor, 123 Empower, 72 Empowered, 137, 196 Empowering people, 69 Empowerment, 94, 161, 200 Enabling government, 69 England, 26 Enlightened men, 205 Entrepreneurial, 8, 207 Entrepreneurs, 17, 18, 205–207 Environment for development, 141

254

Index

Environment, 18, 20, 30, 47, 51, 58, 60, 74, 137, 167, 170, 189, 221, 225 Environmental and economic programs of the GBM, 164 Environmental benefit, 163 Environmental management, 225 Environmental problems, 164 Environmental protection, 137, 218 Environmental resources, 220 Environmental, 17, 19, 159, 161, 218 Ethical, 130, 231 Ethiopia vi, 10, 70, 78–79, 81, 83–84, 104, 105–106, 110, 116–117, 122, 129–130, 135, 146, 197, 208–209, 216, 218, 223 Ethiopian (s), 16, 69, 84–85, 105, 110, 116, 122–123, 155, 210 Ethiopian autocrats, 209 Ethiopian Diaspora, 116 Ethiopian government, 135 Ethiopian Human Rights Council, 106, 116 Ethiopian society, 116 Ethiopian women, 209 Ethnic, 75, 85, 89, 217 Ethnicity, 74 Europe, 23, 26, 71, 81, 122, 141, 228 European: civilization, 7; industries, 8; education, 93; languages, 93; subjects, 93 European Parliament, 106 European Union, 106 European, 10, 71, 90, 146 Everett, Roger (see also Roger Everett) 64, 65 expatriates, 131; expatriate engineers, 133 experimentation, 63, 64, 218 extension worker, 56 external aid, 62 external assistance, 147; external intervention, 185 external development agencies, 165 external intrusion, 27, 73 externalist, 15

Famine, 1, 70, 106, 115, 117, 123, 223 Farmers, 55, 56 Farmsteads, 160 Federal government, 55 Finland, 178 First World NGOs, 160 First World, 140 Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) 113 Food production, 130, 163, 196, 223 Food security, 230 Foreign direct investment (FDI), 220, 222–224 Forum for Restoration of Democracy (FORD), 161 Four driving forces of development, 59 Frantz, Rogers, 120 Frederich Ebert Foundation, 203 Free market, 31, 121 Freedom, 36 Freund, Bill, 17, 71, 77 Friedman. John, 57–59 Frimpong, -Asha, Johnathan H., 43 Fukuyama, 80 Functional structures, 70 Gabon, 78, 130 Gambia, 57, 199 GDP, 4, 85, 99, 118 Genale, 128 Gender arrangements, 188 Gender hierarchy, 193 Genuine development, 62 George, Soros, 33 Germany, 32, 80, 203 Ghana, 1, 21, 23, 40–41, 43, 57, 114, 130–133, 146, 163 Ghanaian women, 194 Ghanaian(s), 131–132, 134, 184 Glenn Johnson, 59 Globalization, 185, 220–222, 229–230 Goldstein, Howard, 51 Good governance, 69, 174 Gordon, April, 51, 130, 153

Index

Governance institutions, 62, 86, 113, 152 Governance system, 62 Governance, 14, 34, 57, 62, 69, 70, 79 Government action, 102 Government autocrats, 57 Government corruption, 105 Government elites, 217 Government institutions, 216 Government interference, 121 Government support, 121 Government, 57, 61, 66, 78–79, 92, 100, 166, 224 Governmental organizations, 149 Government-led economies, 207 Grameen bank, 60, 155 Great Britain, 13 Green Belt Movement (GBM) 14, 135, 157–161, 163–165, 167, 174–175, 180–181, 185, 220 Guardian, 117 Guinea Bissau, 127 Guinea, 130 Haberson and Rothchild, 122 Hall, Anthony & James Midgley, 34 Harding, 89 Harvard, 58; h Hassan, 141 Health crisis, 119 Health, 118 Hirshman, Albert, 34 HIV/AIDS, 105, 118, 121, 195–196 Hodges, Tony, 38 Hodgson, Geoffrey, 34 Holdcroft, Lane, 66 Holland, 178 Home economics, 55 Home-making, 5, 55 Homestead Act, 55 Horn of Africa, 116 Horticulture, 219 Hostilities, 201 Howard French, 78

255

Howard University, 35, 115 , 119 Howkesworth, Mary, E. 21, 31 Hulme, 160 Human capacity, 25, 102 Human capital development, 111 Human capital formation, 121 Human capital, 6, 10, 56, 58–59, 79, 101–102, 111, 171, 175 Human development, 102, 102, 106 Human dimensions of development, 120 Human enterprise, 212 Human freedom, 90 Human ingenuity, 127, 212 Human potential, 120 Human resource development, 111, 113–114, 122 Human resource, 9–10, 58–61, 70, 79, 87, 99, 101–102, 104, 106, 111, 113, 117–119, 127, 163, 171, 181 Human right, 12, 14, 21, 69, 78, 82, 101, 106, 124, 190, 199, 209–210, 216, 226, 228–231 Human rights of women, 199 Human Rights Watch, 106, 116 Human security, 72, 103, 124, 228 Humanitarian development paradigm, 36 Humanitarian paradigm, 37 Hyden, 62, 150–151–152–154, 176 Hydroelectric generation, 128 Hygiene, 63, 218 Ideological indoctrination, 219 Ideological, 219, 227 Ideology, 191 Idi Amin, 105 ILO, 9 Implication for development, 68 Import substitution, 6 Improved technologies, 56 Independence struggle, 7 Independence, 23 Independent Commission on International Humanitarian Affairs, 114–115, 121, 216

256

Index

India, 44, 103, 222; Indian, 90–91, 114; Indira Ghandi, 40 Indigenous development, 173 Indigenous innovation, 163 Indigenous institutions, 58, 220 Indigenous knowledge, 14, 135–136 Indigenous responses, 158 Indigenous varieties, 165 Indigenous, 75, 159 Industrial capital, 27 Industrial development, 134 Industrial growth, 19 Industrialization, 5–9, 20, 63, 71, 101, 131, 183–184 Industrialized, 35, 68, 70 Industry, 8, 12 Infrastructural construction, 63, 119 Infrastructural, 119 Infrastructure, 6, 141, 154, 172 Inhofe (Senator) 117 Innovation (s), 165 Innovativeness, 65 Institution (s), 8, 14, 17, 18, 20, 63, 70, 71, 73, 75, 96, 119–120, 124, 127, 129, 172, 199, 218, 228, 230 Institution building, 71; institutional change, 28 Institution of government, 68, 226 Institutional: capital, 32; capacity, 183; constraint, 190; dependence, 30; development, 137; framework, 163; formation, 70, 72; forms and transitions, 74; foundation, 178; growth, 164 Institutional: structure, 51; failure, 70, formation, 75 Institutional accountability, 227 Institutional arrangements, 38, 65, 72, 189 Institutional deficit, 225 Institutional economist, 33 Institutional improvement, 56, 68, 163, 171, 183 Institutional innovation, 25, 161 Institutional networks 155

Institutional reform, 69 Institutional reorganization, 43 Institutional resources, 172 Institutional structure, 168 Institutional structure, 66 Institutional transformation, 119 Institutional, 18, 20–21, 25, 29, 31, 104, 161, 172, 181, 218 Institutionalization, 20, 75, 172 Institutionalized, 61, 76, 89, 102, 183 Institutions of governance, 71, 226 Intellectual resources, 230 Intellectual tradition, 51 Intellectual, 88 Interdependence, 19, 74 Internalist, 15–16, 38 International aid business, 76 International aid, 116 International and national nongovernmental organizations, 152 , 210 International assistance, 32, 174 International Committee for the Protection of Journalists, 116 International Committee of Jurists, 116 International community, 14, 20, 69, 70, 76, 93, 84, 105, 136, 161, 218, 225–226, 231 International consumption, 108 International cooperation, 149 International Criminal Court, 84 International development assistance, 218 International development community, 176 International development industry, 228 International development institutions, 4, 75 International development scholars, 128 International development, 6, 32, 54 International donors, 14 International finance institutions, 82 International finance, 25 International financial assistance, 160 International Information Network, ITN, 157

Index

International intervention, 118 International Labor Organization (ILO), 110, 225 International law, 224 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 10, 26 International remedies for women, 208 International, 20–21 Investment capital, 59, 60, 145 Irrigation, 170 Islamic, 188, 191 Japan, 32, 80, 127, 134, 162 Jefferson, 53–54 Jeffery Sachs, 32, 83, 86 Jomtien Education for All convention, 94 Jomtien Framework, 94 Jomtien, 94 Journalists Without Borders, 129 Julius Neyrere, 105, 176 Kabati, 14, 167 Kenya, 14, 69, 85, 161, 178, 180 Kenyan Ministry of Water Resources, 168 Kenyan rural water project (NBK), 167, 174, 173, 176,178, 180–181, 185 Kenyan villages, 167 Kenyan women, 200 Kenyan, 157–158 Kinijit, 106 Ki-Zerbo, 96, 108 Knowledge construction, 89 Knowledge production, 143 Knowledge system, 90 Knowledge, 20, 30, 32, 47, 50–51, 53– 55, 60–61, 63–64, 67, 87–90, 131, 136, 138, 140–142, 164, 171 Kohen, 153 Kok Peng, 149 Kola, 219 Koranic education, 93; Koranic schools, 93 Koranic, 98

257

Korean War, 40 Korten, David, 15, 51, 57–59 Krishana, 82 Kwashiorkor, 159 Lagos Plan of Action, 51, 69, 92, 207 Land Grant System, 54; Land Grant University (system) 54, 104, 147 Latin America, 25, 66, 141, 145 Lea, Stephen, Tarpy, Roger M. & Webley, Paul, 34 Learning curve, 64 Learning process, 63, 66 Lee, Gordon, C. 53 Legitimacy, 79, 82, 102–102 Legitimate authority, 57, 79–80 Legitimate leadership, 227 Legitimate, 79, 103 Leonard, David & Strauss, Scott, 15, 32, 57, 62, 82, 105, 114 Liberalization, 134 Libya, 222 Linton, Ralph, 30, 72 Lobbyists, 228 Local Development and Executive Committees, 176 Local initiatives, 140 Local wisdom, 60 Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), 203 Lusaka, 143 Maathai, 158 (see also Wangari Maathai) MacGaffey & Bazenguissa-Gang, 49, 62 Madagascar, 130, 223 Malaria, 118 Malawi, 21, 114, 129 Mali, 107 Malnourished, 114 Malnourishment, 119 Malnutrition, 113 Mamdani, 15, 56–57 Manifesto, 202–203 Manufactures, 17 Manufacturing, 131–132, 206

258

Index

Marginalization, 187, 200, 2003 Mark B. Ginsberg, 86 Marshall Plan, 32 Marx, 24 Marxism, 24–25 Marxist, 24–25; Markists, 23, 24–25, 123 Mauritius, 103 Max, Weber, 51 McCarthy, Stephen, 38, 57 McNamara, 114, 216 Mediocrity, 217 Meles zenawi, 12, 16, 69, 82, 104–106, 223 Mengistu Haile Mariam, 209 Mereb, 128 Meredith, 122 Michael, Sara, 62 Michigan State University, 59 Michigan, 56 Middle East, 145, 158 Millennium Challenge Corporation, 12, 14 Millennium Development Goals, 12, 105, 113, 139 Ministry of Education (Ethiopia), 218–219 Ministry of Information (Ethiopia), 128 Ministry of Water Resources (Kenya), 171 (see also Kenyan Ministry of Water Resources) Misrule, 41 Mitsibushi, 134 Mkandawire, 11, 13, 32, 45, 76 Mobilization, 129, 217, 230 Mobutu, 105 Modeling development, 62 Modernism, 33 Modernist assumptions, 33 Modernist, 25, 33, 35, 182 Modernist: framework, 5; theory, 34 Modernization, 33–35 Modernization: theory, 33; paradigm, 34 Mohammed Hassan, (see also Hassan)140

Morill Act, 54 Mortimore, 122 Mount Kenya, 167–168 Mozambique, 134, 200, 224 Mugabe, 82, 104–105 Multinational corporations, 128 Museveni, 203 Muslim influence, 130 Mutharika, 115 Nairobi national park, 162 Nairobi, 141, 202 National Council of Kenyan Women, 158, 163 National Resistance Movement (NRM), 203 National Women’s Lobby group, 204 Nationalization, 110 Natural resources, 7, 56, 58–60, 70, 129, 173, 225 Ndegwa, 114 Neo-classical orthodoxy, 34 New international Economic Order, 91 New Internationalist, 223 New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), 11, 51, 139 New York Times, 107–109, 111 NGOs 61 Ngugi, 69 Nigeria, 57, 69, 98, 107, 224 Njiguni, 14, 167 Nobel Prize, 90 Norman Borlaug, 18, 138 Nutrition, 113, 120, 140, 170 Nutritional, 99 OAU, 69–70, 105, 207 Obassanjo, 13 Oho, 153 Okigbo, 33, 77 Oklahoma, 117 Omo, 128 Owens, 100–101 OXFAM, 153 Oxford, 36, 91–92

Index

Pan-Africanism, 230 Paradigm, 1, 32, 63 Parliamentarians, 200, 201, 203 Participate, 142 Participating, 223 Participation, 47, 50, 53, 65, 150, 166, 190, 213, 227–228 Participatory development, 213 Participatory learning, 166 Participatory: social learning, 47, 53, 59, 60, 213 Participatory social learning paradigm/ model, 166, 50, 174, 213–214 Participatory social learning paradigm of development, 170 Participatory social learning theoretical framework, 60, 62; participatory social learning theory, 121 Participatory, 21, 47, 166, 213 Particularistic, 74, 81 Paternalistic distortion, 130 Patriarchal family and community structure, 129 Pausewang, S. Tronvoll, K. and Aalen, L, 85, 115, 129–130 Payer, Cheryl, 15 Peasan, 8 People-centered, 60 Permanent dependence, 62 perpetual dependence, 62 Planning and economic development, 12 Political economy of resources, 129 Political Education Program, 202 political system, 30 Political, 21, 30 Politically Autonomous Development Fund, 150–151 Post-independence, 9 poverty alleviation 190 Poverty reduction, 68 Poverty, 1 Prebish, Raul, 31 Predatory behavior, 127 Predatory, 61 Primary education, 101

259

Primary school enrolment, 109 Privatization, 134 Process learning, 65 Production capacity, 133 Production efficiency, 120 Production peak, 219 Production, 24, 109 Property rights, 174 Ravenhill, 122 Reductionist, 33 Referendum, 224 Reforestation, 127, 159–160 Regional water master plan, 178 Religion, 74 Religious. 74–75 Rent-seeking society theory, 35, 37 Reporters Without Boarders, 78 Research and Development, 143 Resource mobilization, 168 Resource rights, 175 Resources, 129–130 Reuters, 223 Reynolds, Alan, 15 Roger, Everett, 64–65 Rostow, W.W. 25–33, 65 Rothchild, 122 Rotter, Julian, 51 Rousseau, 75, 79 Rule of law, 216 Rural development, 135 Rural families, 219 Rural people, 57, 63 Rural Skills Training Centers, 218 Rural technology experimentation, 162 Rwanda, 118, 200, 202 Sahel, 60, 154 Samir Amin, 36 Samoff, 94 Sara Michael, 153 Saudi Arabia, 222 Scandinavian African Studies Institute, 177 Scandinavian countries, 146

260

Index

Schwab, 104 Second World War, 23 Self-confidence, 120 Self-empowerment, 163 Self-reliance, 173 Self-sustaining development, 62; selfsustaining system, 58 Sen, Amartaya,58 Senegal, 1, 32, 57, 114 Sharon La Franiere, 108 Shoemacher, E. F, 65, 138 Sidastudies, 118 Sierra Leone, 130 Six-Ss 154 Skill, 61, Schwab, Peter, 62 Smith, Morill, 54 Social: systems, 53; environment, 53; process, 53; learning framework, 57 Social capital, 78, 80–81 Social implications, 122 Social learning development process, 169 Social learning, 51, 52 121; social learning development paradigm, 121 Social mission, 110 Social networks, 155 Social problems, 51; social progress, 104 Social Science, 51–52 Social virtues, 109 Socialism, 176 Socialists, 24–25 Socio-economic transformation, 71 Soludo, Charles, 11, 45 South Africa, 57 134 South Korea, 40 Southern Africa, 208, 224 Southern African women, 202 Sovereignty, 222 Specialization, 20 Specialization, 87–88 State Department Human Rights Report, 106 State Department, 106 Stephen Mbongo, 78

Stiglitz, 77, 221–222 Stratification, 205 Structural Adjustment Programs 151 Sub-Saharan Africa, 91, 94, 107, 111, 114, 118, 122, 130, 143, 150, 153, 222 Sub-Saharan, 8, 11, 23 Subsistence agriculture, 31 Subsistence, 31 Sudan, 82, 130 Sufficient development conditions, 59 Sun Biofuels, 222 Sustainable economic development, 119 Sustainable, 68, 71 Take-off stage, 27 Tambo Mbeki, 117 Tangeri, 122 Tanzania, 176, 178, 181, 197 Tanzanian experience, 177 Tanzanian government, 222 Tanzanian political leadership, 176 Tanzanian shillings, 178 Tanzanian socialism, 176 Tanzanian, 176– 179–181 Taylor, 149 Teaching and learning, 108 Technical advance, 59 Technical awareness, 59, 87, 133, 136 Technical support, 121 Technical, 61, 121, 212 Technological capacity, 133–134, 136, 161–162 Technological systems, 169 Technological, 9–10, 17, 21, 28, 49, 61, 104, 228 Technologies, 56, 60, 64–66, 92, 110, 135, 138, 165 Technology decision making, 139 Technology development, 134–135, 165 Technology innovation, 139, 149, 161–162 Technology policy, 137, 139 Technology solutions, 134 Technology strategies, 137

Index

Technology transfer, 131, 133, 136 Technology, 4, 26–27, 30, 55, 59–60, 66, 90, 109, 127, 131–133, 135, 137– 138, 141, 143, 168 , 171, 173 Tekeze, 128 Theoretical: assumption, 31; framework, 47; proposition, 39; reasoning, 51; system, 51, 72 Theoretically, 81 Therkildsen, 176, 177, 179–18 Thin, 103 Third International Conference on Women, 202 Third World development, 34, 75 Third World elite, 37 Third World Network of Scientific Organizations (TWNSO), 141 Third World NGOs, 160 Third World people, 37 Third World, 2, 6, 23, 25, 29, 34–35, 37, 58, 66, 141, 149, 160 Thompson and Thompson, 33, 57, 62 Tony Blair, 13, 83 TPLF, 123 Traditional communities, 65 Traditional education systems, 88 Traditional education, 89 Traditional societies, 48, 74 Traditional, 65, 89, 103, 165; Traditional agriculture, 31; traditional committee, 65 Transformation, 5, 16–17, 20, 25–26, 33, 55, 65, 67, 71, 79, 104, 130, 171, 173, 184, 188, 208, 227 Transformed, 27 Tripp, Casimiro, Kwesiga & Mungwa, 42 Tsegaye Gebre Medhin, 69 Tuberculosis, 118 Turner, 82, 160 Uganda, 200, 202, 204 Ugandan women, 204 Unaccountable, 68, 226 UNAIDS, 118

261

Undemocratic, 68; undemocratic regimes, 68 Underdeveloped, 23, 28, 140 Underdevelopment, 1. 5, 13, 15, 23, 32, 35, 39, 66, 68, 104, 122, 175, 212 Undernourishment, 113–114 UNICEF, 151 United Nations (UN), 23, 32, 56, 66, 75, 83, 85, 91, 103, 117, 229 United Nations Charter, 198 United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, 199 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) 83, 224–225 United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), 198, 200 United Nations Development Program, (UNDP) 12, 116, 151, 184, 225 United Nations Economic and Social council (ECOSOC) 92 United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, 91, 207, 225 United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) 108 United Nations Millennium Development Goals, 86, 105 United Nations University, 91 United States (US), 65, 80–81, 91, 114, 116, 141, 209 United States Department of State, 228 Universalized solution, 39 US Congress, 106 USAID, 114, 203 Variables of development, 59 Vermont, 54 Village assembly, 171 Village committees, 171–172 Village communities, 169 Village, 169 Villagers, 168, 170

262

Index

Wabe Shebele, 128 Wall Street Journal, 77 Walter Rodney, 35 Wangari Maathai, 157, 160–162 Weber, Max, 71 Weberian framework, 39 West African observer, 225 Western governments, 106 Western institutions, 209 Western intervention, 146 Western technology, 30 Wheen, Francis, 24 Wilfred David, 36 Williamson, 33–34 Wilson, Everett, 71 Wisconsin, 56 Woina-Dega, 219 Women and Development, 207 Women’s Caucus, 204 Women’s Manifesto, 202 (see also Manifesto) Women’s organizations, 208 World Bank, 2, 4, 10–12, 14–16, 23, 26, 30, 32–33, 35, 60, 68, 75,77, 84–86,

90, 94–95, 101, 104. 108–109, 112, 114–116, 122, 127, 129–130, 135, 149, 151, 160, 162, 178, 184, 206, 209, 212, 216, 220–221, 228, 230 World Food Organization, 128 World Health Organization (WHO) 197 World Social Forum, 221, 230 World Systems theory, 35–36 World Trade Organization (WTO) 221, 225 World War II, 75, 149 X-efficiency (XE) Theory, 120 X-Efficiency factors, 120 Young, 122 Youth worker, 55 Zambia, 202 Zambian, 204 Zenawi, 12, Zewde, 50, 118, 135, 137, 220 Zimbabwe, 11, 78–79, 81, 85. 104, 117, 122, 197, 206–207, 224