SPECIAL INTERVIEW (Final Part) Emerging African development thinking

Development/Africa

Kofi Akosah-Sarpong continues his deliberations with Prof. George Ayittey on his argument that US President Barack Obama's Accra public statement that Africa's future is in Africans hands is an “intellectual vindication” for the “Internalist School” of African development

Q. Why was Barack Obama able to say so today?
A. President Barack Obama could rail against corruption, tyranny and rule of brutality in Africa for two reasons. First, being black himself, nobody would be able to accuse of being a “racist.” Second, his father is Kenyan, so, as he put it, he “has African blood in him.”

Q. “The instinctive reaction by African leaders to every crisis on the continent was to appeal to the international community and beg for foreign aid. That, to me, deprecates Africa's pride and dignity. Being an Internalist, I aggressive pushed for “internal solutions.” I coined the expression, “African solutions for Africa's problems” when Somalia collapsed in 1992. The solutions to the myriad of Africa's problems lie in Africa itself – not along the corridors of the World Bank, the inner sanctum of the Soviet presidium, nor on the planet of Jupiter.” Could you please elaborate on this?

A. There were free village markets in Africa before the colonialists arrived. Timbuktu, Kano, Salaga, Mombasa and others were all great market town. It is not the World Bank which must come to Africa to teach us abut markets. Nor is the Western donors which must come and teach us abut democracy. We have had participatory democracy base3d on consensus under our chiefs for centuries. There is nothing wrong with Africa's indigenous institutions.

The mistake our leaders made after independence was that they never built on Africa's indigenous institutions. [Only Botswana did]. Instead, they went abroad and copied all sorts of unworkable foreign systems and paraphernalia for transplantation in Africa. American farmers use tractors; so too must we in Africa. London has double-decker buses; so too must we in Africa. New York has skyscrapers; so too must we in the middle of nowhere in Africa. Rome has a basilica; so we built one at Yamassoukrou, Ivory Coast. France once had en emperor; so Bokassa of the Central African Republic spent $25 million to crown himself as one.. The list of unimaginative aping is endless. The continent is now littered with the putrid carcasses of failed foreign systems imported blindly into Africa.

The development that occurred in the post colonial period can be characterized as “development by imitation.” It is time Africa developed its own model and crafted its own “African solution for African problems.” Enough copying.

Furthermore, Africa doesn't need foreign aid. Its begging bowl leaks horribly. In August 2004, an African Union report claimed that Africa loses an estimated $148 billion annually to corrupt practices, a figure which represents 25 percent of the continent's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Two years earlier at an African civic groups meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Nigeria's President, Olusegun Obasanjo, claimed that “corrupt African leaders have stolen at least $140 billion (£95 billion) from their people in the decades since independence” (The London Independent, June 14, 2002. Web posted at www.independent.co.uk). But these are gross underestimates. According to one UN estimate, $200 billion or 90 percent of the sub-Saharan part of the continent's gross domestic product was shipped to foreign banks in 1991 alone.

Civil wars continue to wreak devastation on African economies, costing at least $15 billion annually in lost output, wreckage of infrastructure, and refugee crises. The civil wars are over power, not redrawing artificial colonial borders, and are caused by the adamant refusal of African leaders to relinquish or share political power. The crisis in Zimbabwe, for example, has exacted an enormous toll on Africa. Foreign investors have fled the region and more than 4 million Zimbabweans have left the country along with 60,000 physicians and other professionals. The Observer [London] (Sept 30, 2001) estimated that Zimbabwe's economic collapse had caused $37 billion worth of damage to South Africa and other neighboring countries.

Africa can't feed itself because senseless civil wars, preference for industry, misguided statist policies of price controls and marketing boards have devastated its agriculture. By 2000, Africa's food imports had reached $18.7 billion, slightly more than donor assistance of $18.6 billion to Africa.

Clearly, the resources Africa needs to develop can be found in Africa itself – only if its leaders were willing to reform their abominable economic and political systems, re-orient their development policies toward agriculture, curb corruption and invest their wealth -B legitimate or ill-gotten C in Africa. But the leadership, wedded to the old “blame colonialism” paradigm, is not interested. It is programmed to look outside Africa and badger the West for resources.

Q. Is the “Internalist School” oblivious to the “Externalist School”? Is there any balance or confluence between the “Internalist School,” of which you lead, and the “Externalist School,” of Ali Mazrui of yesteryears? What is your disagreement with Ali Mazrui then?

A. I think all African scholars and intellectuals agree that there have been both external and internal causes of Africa's crises. Where Professor Ali Mazrui and I disagree [I debated him a couple of times] is in three areas. The first is what relative weights to assign to the factors. Whereas Professor Mazrui would assign 80 percent of the causes to external factors, I would assign only 20 percent to the external. Second, for far too long the internal factors have been ignored. The average intelligent person looks both ways before crossing a street or risk being hit by a truck. Africa is in bandages because its leaders always looked one way – at the external. Third, I lay more emphasis on the internal factors because they are subject to our control. Take corruption for example. We can curb it if we are serious. Whereas, it you take the unjust international economic system, reforming it is out of our control.

Q. The history of human development teaches that those who come up with new ideas, thinking, discoveries and inventions such as Socrates, Martin Luther or Galileo Galilei are either condemned, prosecuted or killed. You said following Barack Obama's Accra speech that the speech is an “intellectual victory” for the “Internalist School.” You wrote that “Well, “Ayittey is a nobody” which is what Ekow Spio-Garbah, Ghana's Ambassador to the U.S. said back then in 1996. Obama is a somebody. Maybe from now on, when Ayittey speaks people will listen.” How do you feel today as the Internalist School thinking is increasingly coming into the forefront of Africa's development thinking?

A. I should be gloating but I am not. Instead, I am ANGRY – VERY ANGRY! Imagine what would have happened if the powers-that-be had listened to George Ayittey back in the 1980s. We would have saved millions of Africans who perished needlessly. We would have saved many African countries from implosion, as well as many African economies. Here's the tall of death toll from Africa's senseless civil wars:

• 1 million Nigerians died in the Biafra War (1967)

• 200,000 Ugandans were slaughtered by Idi Amin in 1970s,

• 100,000 were butchered by President Marcias Nguema in Equatorial Guinea in the 1970s,

• Over 400,000 Ethiopians perished under Comrade Mengistu Haile Mariam,

• Over 500,000 Somalis perished under Siad Barre,
• Man-made famines claimed over 2 million between 1980-2000,

• Over 2 million have died in the wars of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast,

• Over 1 million died in Mozambique's civil war,
• 1.5 million in Angola's civil war
• 800,000 perished in Rwanda's genocide,
• 300,000 in Burundi
• 3 million have perished in Sudan's civil wars,
• 4 million have died from Congo's wars,
The rough total is 16.8 million and this does not include deaths in Chad, Western Sahara, Algeria and those who perish at refugee camps. Historians tell us that the total number black Africans shipped as slaves to the Americas in the 17th and 18th Centuries was about 10 million and Africa lost another 10 million through the trans-Saharan and East African slave trade ran by Arabs. This means that, in a space of just 50 years after independence, post colonial African leaders have caused the deaths of about the same number of Africans than were lost to both the West and East African slave trades. And we are not done yet. People are still dying in Congo DR, Somalia, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. Why? Because of POWER!

Take Somalia for example. The country is thoroughly destroyed, reduced to an ash-heap of rubble. Yet, you have educated barbarians who are fighting fiercely to determine who should be the next president.

Am I happy that I have been vindicated? Of course I am not.

Q. How will an “Internalist School” paradigm or more personally your “African solution for African problems” resolve your assertion that “Africa is stuck in a veritable conundrum”?

A. Monumental leadership failure remains the primary obstacle to Africa's development. After independence in the 1960s, the leadership, with few exceptions, established defective economic and political systems that set the stage for the ruination of post colonial Africa. The economic system of statism or dirigisme with its plethora of state controls created chronic commodity shortages, black markets, spawned a culture of bribery and corruption, virtually destroying Africa's productive base. The political system of one-party states and military dictatorships degenerated into tyranny. These systems, with enormous economic and political power concentrated in the state, evolved into “vampire” or “gangster states.” “Government,” as an institution, ceased to exist, hijacked instead by a phalanx of unrepentant bandits and criminals, who use the state machinery to enrich themselves, their cronies and tribes. All others are excluded (the politics of exclusion). The richest persons in Africa are heads of state and their ministers. Quite often, the chief bandit is the head of state himself. But this “vampire state” does not endure. Eventually, it metastasizes into a “coconut republic” and implodes when politically-excluded groups rise up in rebellion: Somalia (1993), Rwanda (1994), Burundi (1995), Zaire (1996), Sierra Leone (1998), Liberia (1999), and Ivory Coast (2000).

These monstrosities were not colonial legacies; they were created by African leaders themselves. More importantly, these monstrous systems are alien. Traditional African political systems were characterized by participatory democracy based upon consensus under Africa's chiefs. Traditional African chiefs don't impose themselves on their people, nor declare their villages to be one-party states. Chiefs are chosen and can be removed at any time. Furthermore, traditional African economic systems were not characterized by onerous state controls. Free village markets, free enterprise and free trade were the African heritage. There were markets in Africa before the colonialists set foot in Africa. And market activity has been dominated by women for centuries.

After independence, most African states did not go back and build upon their own indigenous systems. Only Botswana did, which is why it is doing very well. The rest of the African leaders went abroad and copied all sorts of foreign systems. Obviously what is needed to turn Africa around is reform of its abominable political and economic systems. But the leadership is simply not interested, period.

• Ask them to cut bloated state bureaucracies or government spending and they will set up a “Ministry of Less Government Spending.” Then there is the “Ministry of Good Governance” (Tanzania).

• Ask them to curb corruption and they will set up “Anti-Corruption Commissions” with no teeth and then sack the Commissioner if he gets too close to the fat cats (Kenya), issue a Government White Paper to exonerate corrupt ministers (Ghana in 1996), or sned the anti-corruption czar off to the U.K. for graduate studies (Nigeria in 2007).

• Ask them to establish democracy and they will empanel a coterie of fawning sycophants to write the electoral rules, toss opposition leaders into jail, hold fraudulent elections and return themselves to power (Ivory Coast, Rwanda).

The reform process has stalled by vexatious chicanery, strong-arm tactics, willful deception, and vaunted acrobatics. Only 16 out of the 54 African countries are democratic and fewer than 8 African countries are “economic success stories.” Intellectual freedom remains in the Stalinist era: only 8 African countries have a free and independent media. But without genuine reform, more African countries will implode. Africa is stuck in a veritable conundrum.

Q. Yes, Africa is stuck in a veritable conundrum. But Ghana is showing some ways, as had been Botswana. But the difference between the Ghanaian case and that of Botswana is that Ghana is tackling certain inhibitions within its culture that have been blocking progress, such as using human rights values to refine witchcraft victimization. From its emergent democratic process to its on-going decentralization exercises, it appears Ghana is becoming a laboratory for the operationalization of the Internalist development doctrine. There was a workshop some weeks ago in Kumasi on culture and policy planning as a way of balancing the imbalances within the policies running Ghana that do not give adequate consideration to traditional Ghanaian values. Does this fit into the Internalist thinking?

A. You are confusing three concepts: social progress, economic development and internalist thinking. They are different things. All cultures undergo a process of transformation or modernization. Certain cultural practices become obsolete and are shed. Old ones are adapted, etc. Economic development deals with issues of poverty alleviation, raising income per capita, etc. The internalist doctrine deals with the internal causes of Africa's crises. Many of these internal causes are such factors as bad leadership, political repression, economic mismanagement, corruption, capital flight, senseless civil wars, etc. They have nothing to do with African culture.

Q. In the Internalist School, has Africa finally come out with a development philosophy that it can claim originated from its cultural values, experiences, history and the global prosperity ideals?

A. No, the internalist school has not come up with their own development paradigm et. I tried to develop one in m book, Africa Unchained in Chapter 10. I call it “The Atinga Development Model.” Atinga is a pseudonym for an African peasant.

An African economy consists of three sectors: the traditional, informal, and the modern sector. The vast majority of the African people who produce Africa's real wealth – cash crops, diamonds, gold and other minerals – live in the traditional and informal sectors. Meaningful development and poverty reduction cannot occur by ignoring these two sectors. But in the 1960s and 1970s, much Western development aid was channeled into the modern sector or the urban area, the abode of the parasitic elite minority. Industrialization was the rage and the two other sectors – especially agriculture – were neglected. Huge foreign loans were contracted to set up a dizzying array of state enterprises, which became towering edifices of gross inefficiency, waste and graft. Economic crises emerged in the 1980s and billions in foreign aid money were spent in an attempt to reform the dysfunctional modern sector. Between 1981 and 1994, for example, the World Bank spent more than $25 billion in Structural Adjustment loans to reform Africa's dilapidated statist economic system. Only 6 out of the 29 “adjusting” African countries were adjudged to be “economic success stories” in 1994.

Real development must start at the grassroots level – the village level or in the informal sector. It assumes that there is peace, order and economic freedom - that is, the country is not wracked by conflict and the Atingas are free to produce what they want, sell wherever they want, at whatever prices they choose to charge. It takes what is there and attempts to build upon it to improve its efficiency. In most cases, this would entail a mere reorganization of the existing ways of doing things. If Atinga produces 300 bushels of corn a year, the object is to raise his productivity to, say, 1,200 bushels a year, using whatever technology that is locally available. This technology must be simple and inexpensive.

The ingredients and strategies of this Village Development Model involve three basic steps:

1. Setting up a Village development committee or council (VDC) under a traditional ruler, say a chief, who still commands authority and respect. The chiefs constitute Africa's most important human resource. They are closer to the people, understand their needs, and command their respect. It defies common sense to exclude them in any rural development strategy.

The functions of the Village development council would be to provide some basic infrastructure and the following services on a 50-50 cost-sharing basis with either a district or a regional administration:

• Education by building simple schools for elementary education,

• Clean water through the provision of bore wells for common usage,

• Health care by building a simple clinic, encouraging the interaction between traditional and modern medicine,

• A civic center or hall,
• A market, a market, a market, and
• Feeder roads.
2. The second step is to mobilize capital for investment. Capital can be raised through participation in and modernization of existing revolving credit schemes (microfinance).

3. The third step is investment in cottage industries by young African graduates. The state or government should be left out of this.

I have emphasized peace because economic activity cannot take place in an atmosphere of conflict, violence, and chaos. But a peaceful environment has eluded Africa and must be established as a first order of priority.

Once peace and order are established, then development can proceed under the traditional chief.

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It is indisputable that chiefs play a crucial role in the development of any given country. Being the closest to their subjects, traditional rulers are expected to spearhead and successfully execute developmental projects in their areas; like building schools and clinics, sinking boreholes and other ventures to uplift the living standards of their people. And the Zambian Government knows that very well. That is why it has, from time immemorial, sought a closer working relationship with traditional rulers. Without their involvement, nothing tangible would be achieved.

Our traditional leaders are people who command a hearing and therefore, whatever they say, the general public heeds their advice and counsel.

-- Editorial, The Times of Zambia (Ndola), Feb 4, 2004.

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Under the direction of a chief or a traditional ruler, schools, clinics, civic centers and markets can be built with “communal labor.” The chief, with the concurrence of the council of elders, may set a day or two aside and summon able-bodied men to contribute free labor for the construction of schools and markets. Consider these cases taken from Ghana:

• “Inhabitants of the 62 towns and villages in the Mamprong area in the central region have contributed $250,000 for the establishment of a rural bank. Disclosing this to the "Graphic" at Mamprong, Nana Abedu said he had already offered his own building to house the bank. He said his people were prepared to offer communal labor (free) and are collecting a levy of $50 per head as their contribution towards the government's efforts to provide them with electricity and good drinking water. (Daily Graphic, Sept 15, 1982; p.8).

• At the swearing-in ceremony presided over by the Ashantehene, Nana Bosu Brako, the newly-installed chief of Achiase, assured the Asanthene that he would lead his people to establish a large community farm, proceeds from which would be used for development projects in the area. (Daily Graphic, Oct 14, 1982; p.4)

• A 5-year Development Plan estimated at $4 million has been drawn up by the Akrodie Traditional Council to improve the area.

Projects envisaged under the plan include the construction of a secondary school, renovation of elementary school buildings, tarring of streets and extension to the local health care.

Launching the plan at Akrodie, the Omhahene, Nana Dankwa fanin Ababie, said all the projects would be undertaken through communal labor.

Voluntary contributions of $300 per elder, $200 by young men and $100 per woman have been levied. Nana Ababio said proceeds from the sale of foodstuffs from 27-hectare farm near Akrodie would be used to meet part of the projects cost. (Daily Graphic, Jan 6, 1983; p.8).

• The people of Bibiani District are sponsoring the facelift, project of the Bibiani's Government Hospital at a cost of more than $200,000 through voluntary contributions. (Daily Graphic, Dec 3, 1982; p.8)

• The present chief of Akim Abuakwa Juaso, Barima Kofi Osei, has set up a development committee, which initiated a bee-keeping course to teach bee-keeping to farmers in the village. The chief hopes to make Akim Abuakwa Juaso, the leading honey producer in Ghana. Courses in snail farming and mushroom production are to follow . . . The development committee also has plans to set up a community farm shop. They intend to utilize cocoa waste products as raw material in a planned agro-processing micro enterprise. The village is also setting up a consortium consisting of the people of the village, who will provide community labor or sweat capital; the family who are the single biggest landowners in Akim Abuakwa Juaso, who will provide the land as their capital contribution; and a sustainable development NGO that will provide management and advice. They will team up and establish an 88-acre oil palm plantation, which they hope will feed the planned oil palm factory at Kade. (Insight, Nov 10, 2005; p.6).

• The rural locality of Tonka, in northern Mali, is an example of the endeavors that villagers in Africa are already making, despite extremely adverse conditions. By digging simple irrigation canals from a local river and lake, Tonka's 4,500 producers, organized in village cooperatives, have been able to increase their output of rice, millet, sorghum, potatoes, cassava, beans, and other foods. Tonka's marketplaces now attract buyers from other regions in Mali, and even from across the border in neighboring Mauritania. Thanks to the additional incomes they have earned, Tonka's residents have been able, during the past four years, to help finance the construction of nine primary schools, four health clinics, several wells, two livestock markets, a warehouse and several sanitation facilities” (Africa Recovery, Jan 2004; p.13).

Of especial importance is the building of a market and the providing of roads or access to the market:

• In Sikorola, a village in western Burkina Faso, farmers generally benefit from adequate rains and more fertile soils. But their efforts to expand output are hampered by the area's very poor physical infrastructure. AWe are ready to produce more maize and potatoes,” says one member of the Siguizani family, Abut there is no road to transport the crop.

Sikorola is not unusual. Across Africa, paved rural roads scarcely exist. Much produce is taken to market by cart or bicycle over unpaved roads or by foot along narrow paths cut through the brush. Africa has the lowest density of paved roads of any world region. Out of 1.8 mn kilometers of roads in sub-Saharan Africa, only 16 per cent are paved.

Moreover, many of Africa's paved roads have deteriorated badly from overuse and inadequate maintenance. Because of poor road quality, lorry drivers in rural Cameroon may charge an extra CFA1,000-CFA2,000 ($1.70-$3.40) for just a short trip of 6 kilometers. Higher transport costs raise the prices farmers must charge, reducing their competitiveness in both domestic and international markets.” (Africa Recovery, Jan 2004; p.14).

This only a sketch of the Atinga development model and obviously it can be improved. But the essential elements are that:

1. It is focused on agriculture, which accounts for more than 60 per cent of the GDP of most African countries. Agriculture is also the occupation of the majority of Africans.

2. The model involves the participation of chiefs.
3. It is centered on the village level.

Development / Ghana / Africa / Modernghana.com

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