Major challenges facing
Africa in the 21st century:
A few provocative
remarks
Ibrahim Farah, Sylvia
Kiamba and Kesegofetse Mazongo
At the International
Symposium on Cultural Diplomacy in Africa
-
Strategies to confront
the Challenges of the 21st Century:
Does Africa have what
is required?
Berlin, 14th
– 17th July, 2011
Introduction
Western civilization and culture began to creep into Africa
when foreigners,--mainly Europeans --quest were aimed at imposing imperial
ideologies and pilfering African resources. Since then, African scholars argued
that this practice continued even after independence in the continent. A number of challenges face the continent in
the 21st century. These
include colonial legacy; foreign aid; foreign direct investment (FDI); the climate
change debate, Africa and the challenge of the MDGs; and cultural diplomacy as
a new tool.
This paper attempts to make a few provocative remarks on
some of the key debates forming these issues. The paper argues that whether the
continent is up on its tasks or not, there is lack of visionary leadership on
the African side while Europe has been honest about its interests more than a
mutually-agreed partnership with the continent.
Colonial legacy
Colonization distorted and retarded the pace and tempo of cultural
growth and the trend of civilisation in Africa.
The consequences of colonization have
resulted in political of the colonies which
led to an unbridgeable cultural gap between the beneficiary nations
and victims of the
practice. The era of colonization
pillage and plunder led to the relative stagnation and often decline of
traditional cultural pursuits in the colonies.
Mimiko asserts that:
The social fabric was completely devastated
and a new culture of violence was implanted.
Traditional African systems of conflict resolution were destroyed and, in
their places, nothing was given. The democratic process, rudimentary though it was,
but with great potential as accompanies every
human institution, was brutally uprooted
and replaced by the authoritarianism
of colonialism. A new crop of elites was
created, nurtured, and weaned on
the altar of violence and colonialism
armed with the structures of the modern state to continue to carry out the art and act of subjugation of
the mass of the people in the service of colonialism.
i. The above assertion
was supported by Kasongo
who argues “one could infer that while westernization was imported
to African countries, the hidden side of modernism was materialistic interest.
ii. To Kazonog, civilization
was just another concept of domination, imposition of incoming new culture over
traditional values.
iii. Standage, on the other hand, posits that the historical
context of westernization in Africa with
Europe was through the Atlantic slave trade, missionary and imperialism. The forced acceleration of the black populations into the new world represented the sustained assimilation
of western culture by Africans.
iv. Not that was all bad, however. Arowolo states that the colonial factor was
essential in the understanding of the process of westernization in Africa. As a
result, the effectiveness of colonization
in changing the sphere of life in
African societies is not hard to establish.
v. Its political effects include western civilization being submerged
and with the dismantling of indigenous institutions and cultures by instilling
foreign rule. There was also the introduction of liberal democracy that did not
necessarily work in Africa, not because Africa did not have its own pattern of
democracy before the imposition of liberal democracy, but the typical democracy
in Africa and its processes were also submerged by westernization.
vi. Mimiko insisted on the same
argument by stating that:
But the point is that the so - called Kabiyesi syndrome,
which has been accorded as unexplanation
for the shortage of democracy in contemporary
Africa is actually a betrayal of inadequate understanding
of the workings of the African traditional political systems. I strongly dispute this proposition as unhistorical
and therefore invalid in the context of Africa.
Our hypothesis is that in the epoch before contact between Europe
and Africa, the latter not only developed relatively advanced state structures,
but that emergent pre-colonial African states also had “sophisticated systems
of political rule” with strong democratic foundations. I argue that the basis
of the advertised inability of these societies
to sustain democracy in contemporary (postcolonial) times could not have consisted in the absence of a democratic
culture on their part. Rather, it is the
residue of constraints that were attendant upon imperialism, which has been the
dominant experience of the African peoples since the fourteenth century – defined most profoundly by slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, and their
handmaiden, military governance.
vii. Economic effects of colonialism
The economic effects of colonialism can be viewed as a
progressive integration of Africa into the world capitalist system within which
Africa functioned primarily as a source of raw materials for western industrial
production. The colonial economy also caused agriculture to be diverted towards
the production of primary products and cash crops, a situation that contributed
to hunger and starvation in Africa. Africa concentrated on producing more of what
was needed less and produced less of what was needed most. Africa was
perpetually turned to the production of raw materials, a situation that caused
unequal exchange in -- and balance of -- trade.
Rodney suggests that the plunder age and systemically
corrupt enterprises established in the colonies to expropriate natural
resources in Africa to Europe have facilitated under-development of Africa
while it engendered the development of Europe.
viii. Alkali argues that colonization demanded a total re-organization
of the African economy. Even in its
current situation, life as an economic plan altered the way people produce,
create and consume.
ix. Neo-liberalism also cropped up in African societies which
was just an economic process that distrusts the state as a factor in development.
It can be seen just as a philosophy that
can be re-packaged over the
years with the aim being to make people
believe that the market
mechanism is the
most efficient allocator
of production resources
and therefore to have
an efficient and
effective economy, forces of demand and supply must be allowed to play a leading role. This has also changed
economies of African countries from communalism to capitalism and then to
neo-liberalism.
Social effects
The social effects of colonialism led to many challenges that included individualism of families
in an otherwise close knit-family structures, fragmentation of family/social
relations and rapid urbanization that has resulted into rural exodus and
displacement of large segments of
the population. Proficiency
in African languages is declining
in the continent because people are compelled to embrace western culture and
civilization. This has caused alienation for people who cannot speak foreign languages
as language has been used as a vehicle of
culture which has l literally created a dichotomy between the elite and the
masses.
Obadina argues that alien models imposed by colonialism laid
seeds for a political crisis in Africa....... By redrawing the map of Africa
and grouping diverse people together, ethnic
conflicts were created that are now destabilizing the continent.
x. Some
have argued that it was the allure of modernity with its promise of greater material benefit
that subverted African societies
during colonialism. It is impossible to imagine what would have been
the shape of contemporary African history had colonial rule never had
taken place. Some western historians have argued that less developed regions of
the world, particularly Africa lacked the social and economic organization to
transform themselves into modern states able to develop onto advanced
economies.
Foreign Aid
The nature of inter - independence of nations makes it
necessary for the granting of aid to needy countries. Neo-Marxists have always argued that the advancement
of developed countries’ economies have also facilitated the same measure as the
under-development of the third world through colonialism, slave trade and
unequal exchange of trade. The third world has acquired substantial amount of both internal and external debt, partly caused by foreign aid from countries in the West. The
aid relationship has
created a condition
of economic subservience and
of a master-servant relationship that could generate persistent
seeking and lobbying for foreign aid through borrowing.
Moyo argues that aid was not
working in Africa because it
interfered with development as the money always ended up in the hands of a
small chosen few, making aid a form of taxing the poor in the west to enrich
the new elites in former colonies.
xi. Peter Bauer, one
of the earliest
critics of aid argued most strongly that aid-based theories
and policies were wholly
inconsistent with sound economic reasoning and indeed with reality.
xii. The author and former World Bank economist Bill
Easterly has provided numerous case studies on the failures of aid policies
across the developing world. Paul Collier criticizes the blanket one-size-fits-all aid approach as paying no heed to the unique circumstances
of individual countries, and thus proposes
a more nuanced approach to aid driven
proposals, and only where they are needed.
Moyo argues that the mistake the west made was giving
something for nothing. The secret of china’s success is that the foray into Africa
is all business. The west sent aid to Africa and ultimately did not care about
the outcome, with aid excluding the majority of the people from
wealth, leading to political
instability. China on the other
hand, sends cash to Africa and demands returns. With returns, Africans gets
jobs, roads, food, making them better off and the promise for some semblance of
political stability. Places like Singapore have shown that even in
the absence of democracy, peace prevails when
the median citizen is economically
better off.
Calderisi posits that few
aid initiatives are well
thought out and the money
rarely reaches its intended target.
xiii. He points out
that the frequent theme of international has been how to measure the impact of
aid more effectively, a disguised complaint that suggests that current
yardsticks are not giving the right results.
xiv.
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)
Average annual inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI)
into Africa doubled in the 1980s compared with the 1970s. It also increased
significantly in the 1990s and in the period 2000–2003. Comparisons
with global flows and those of other regions may be more useful, however. In the mid 1970s, Africa’s
share of global FDI was about 6 percent , a level that fell to the current 2–3 percent.
Among developing countries, Africa’s
share of FDI in 1976 was about 28 percent; it is now less than 9 percent.
xv. Also in
comparison with all other developing regions,
Africa has remained
aid dependent, with
FDI lagging behind official development assistance (ODA). Between
1970 and 2003, FDI accounted for
just one fifth of all capital flows to Africa. It is well known that FDI
is one of the most dynamic international resource flows to developing
countries.
FDI is particularly important because it is a package of
tangible and intangible assets and
because firms deploying them are important players in the global economy. There is considerable evidence
that FDI can
affect growth and
development by complementing domestic investment
and by facilitating
trade and transfer
of knowledge and
technology.
xvi. The importance of FDI is envisioned in the New Partnership
for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), as
it is perceived
to be a
key resource for
the translation NEPAD’s vision of
growth and development
into reality. This is because Africa,
like many other developing regions of the
world, needs a substantial inflow of external resources
in order to fill the saving and
foreign exchange gaps and leapfrogs itself to sustainable growth levels in order
to eliminate its current pervasive poverty.
The Climate change debate, Africa and
the MDGs
Climate change has raised a debate among African countries,
the main concern being how to balance
between economic development and
environmental sustainability. Developing countries have argued in many
environmental summits that developed countries reached their level of
development at the
expense of developing countries in what was called the
brown way of economic
growth. Developing countries have argued that they need to follow the same path for
them to industrialize and reach desired levels of development.
With the debate
on reducing emissions,
developing countries have
demanded four aspects to be met
for them to comply with the demands of the West. First they want financing for adaptation,
mitigation, capacity building
and technology transfer, demands that
the west have been reluctant to finance. With the emerging economies,
the BRICS, there is likely to be no deal on climate change negotiations unless
they can compromise and reach an agreement, so the momentum is with developing
countries, to use forums as the G77 and China to push for a more favourable
deal when it comes to climate change negotiations.
With the green
economy concept likely
to dominate the
sustainable development agenda in
future, developing countries
need to rally
together for them
to influence the outcome of the negotiations. It should be
noted that developing countries pollute less than the developed countries. The emerging picture of Africa in the MDG report.
xviii. portrays a continent that has secured progress
in key areas
such as net
primary enrolment, gender
parity in primary education, political empowerment of
women, access to safe drinking water, and stemming the spread of
HIV/AIDS. Antiretroviral treatment
is becoming available
in a large
number of countries and maternal mortality rates are falling in some
places.
The report draws attention to policy innovations in Africa
that are facilitating progress toward attainment of the MDGs. These
innovations include new
and expanded social protection programs, which were once
thought to be unaffordable to most poor countries but are now
embraced as important additional interventions
to secure progress
on key human development indicators.
In addition, countries
have used the
MDGs as a framework for development planning, strengthening
coordination and cascading the MDGs to lower tiers of government.
Cultural diplomacy
In the period of European domination of the world, non-European
countries acquired a great deal of European
culture, values and technology.
Now that the European hegemony
has declined, previously existing
cultures, traditions will
manifest themselves again
to some extent, adapted
and hybridized with
European ones; the
question to ask
is to what
extent?
Watson has indicate that Thinkers like Toynbee, Spengler and
Bozeman have argued that the deep seated traditions and thought patterns of
cultures and civilization are not easily modified at all,
and remain substantially
intact even when
they adopt techniques
and ideas from others.
xix. Chandra has argued that in the beginning, globalization
was supposed to bring about peace and harmony and
basically lead to cultural diffusion,
but instead, it has imposed American
values and culture and a way of life on everyone everywhere
xx. Thomas Friedman has observed that globalization has its
own dominant culture, which is why
it tends to be homogenizing. Niall Ferguson
has indicated that globalization is a fancy word for imperialism,
imposing values and institutions on others.
Instead of conclusions
Many challenges remain, especially in the worst areas like
that of health. This sector has been difficult to achieve. It is still not “for
all” but rather characterized by glaring inequities among socio-economic groups
and classes.
Similarly, from the above, the adverse impact of climate change poses a
further threat to the issue of sustainability and to the achievement of
the MDGs. This also presents a significant
policy challenge for a continent that faces huge energy needs to power
its development and industrialization.
As a result, access to technology and financing become a must.
These all call for a genuine
partnership with Europe and with
other actors; partnership that is not based on colonial history or competition over
resources: maybe a plan like that of the Marshall plan for Europe and in a way that is consistent –to the extent
possible –with the African way.
http://www.culturaldiplomacy.org/academy/content/pdf/participant-papers/africa/Ibrahimfarah-Kiamba-And-Mazongo-Major-Challenges-Facing-Africa-In-The-21st-Century-A-Few-Provocative-Remarks.pdf
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