A new development model on the African continent

By Adriana Alarcón (Written for MakerZone)

The word development in the last 60 years has been synonymous with progress, democracy, good governance, wellbeing, urbanization, etc. However, all these under standards are dominated by the modern and Western developmental worldview, which has even managed to depoliticize Eurocentric ideals by referring to it as an aspirational term. Still, there is a great dilemma in what development means and what it implies.

For the Nigerian political scientist Claude Ake, development is not economic growth; it is not a technical project, but a process by which people create and recreate themselves and their life circumstances to achieve higher levels of civilization in accordance with their own choices and values. Development is something that people must do for themselves. Likewise, John Clark asserts that development is a process of change that enables people to take charge of their own destinies and realize their full potential. It requires the creation of people with the confidence, skills, assets, and freedoms necessary to achieve this goal.

The UN, on the other hand, takes a different view, under the ideal of sustainable development that seeks to promote prosperity and economic opportunities, greater social welfare, and environmental protection, which it assures is the best way to improve the lives of the population. Therefore, it is necessary to ask the question: at what cost? Since it is sought that they comply with the condition of sacrificing those "specificities" of their inherited culture that are in conflict with the fundamental logic of capitalist expansion.

Ergo, when analyzing the Western definition, the wrongly called marginal countries (underdeveloped, "Fourth World") are, in reality, those that have been brutally overexploited and are therefore impoverished countries, not countries on the margins of the system. This is due to the intensity of their integration into the initial phase of the global expansion of capitalism (mercantilism/slavery).

In comparison, the two definitions given by the aforementioned authors have in common that the people (call them inhabitants or citizens) are the ones who carry out this "progress" because they are the ones who know what their needs and opportunities are. Therefore, this implies the deficiency of implementing any form of development by an external agent. Since it's going to impose its own needs of development, for its benefit, and then there may be perhaps a benefit for the exploited. Yet, China and Africa are not the exceptions although, China claims to have a meritocratic-authoritarian model and a "socialist" state with a market economy, this does not free it from following the capitalist system under the creation of a new institution.

Thus, Transnational Corporations seem to dictate what is most favorable to their particular strategies. In this context, globalization offers no solutions to any of Africa's problems. Private foreign direct investment in Africa is negligible and concentrated exclusively on minerals and other natural resources.

The alternative, from the African point of view, must combine the construction of self-centered economies, societies, and participation in the global system. Nevertheless, on this point, it is important to differ with the author, since he only focuses on the composition of the capitalist system that encompasses it. But does not take into account that most African countries cannot generate development due to the lack of compliance with the concept of the nation-state. There is no identity, especially since most of them are composed as tribe-states. And although China wants to offer a "different" model of development by promoting urbanization, this continues to be reproduced by the instability of the State model, without reference to democracy, which is assumed to be of no interest to China.

From another perspective, Dos Santos argues that the general public must be able to influence more in the policies of these corporations, institutions, and bureaucratic apparatuses. Whereby, it's important to remember that democracy it's founded on the expansion of the powers of citizens to influence the fundamental decisions of the nation. In other words, the achievement of democracy is linked directly to overcoming the current wave of underdevelopment in Africa and other third-world countries. In this case, the externally based prescription of the Western powers represented by the Bretton Woods institutions, bilateral donor agencies, and donor governments is that liberal democracy precedes development.

However, the Chinese government, or any new institution, is not considered an investor. China's foreign policy does not involve democratic processes, and it is not usually ambivalent in its domestic and foreign policy. This could mean that it does not require democracy to promote development projects and that there is another development model focused primarily on Chinese profit. But as previously stated, even if there is another type of development, it is still created under the definition of modernity of capitalism, not under a Western ideal. Because what is being developed is only the capitalist world-economy, and this world-economy is polarizing. Therefore, the model of development that currently exists and that has been deployed will not generate any change because the conditions, the context remains the same, capitalism.

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Sources:

Amin, S. (2005). El Cuarto Mundo: subdesarrollo endémico en África. Retrieved on: https://es.scribd.com/document/424165827/Cuarto-Mundo-Subdesarrollo-Endemico-en-Africa-S-Amin

Amin, S. (2006). Las derivas de la modernidad. El caso de África y del mundo árabe. En publicación: Política y movimientos sociales en un mundo hegemónico. Lecciones desde África, Asia y América Latina. Boron, Atilio A.; Lechini, Gladys. CLACSO, Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales, Buenos Aires. Julio 2006. ISBN 987-1183-41-0 Retrieved on: http://bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar/ar/libros/sursur/politica/PICtres1.pdf

Dos Santos, Theotônio. (2007). Globalización, crecimiento económico e integración. En publicación: Repensar la teoría del desarrollo en un contexto de globalización. Homenaje a Celso Furtado. Vidal, Gregorio; Guillén R., Arturo. (comp).ISBN: 978-987-1183-65-4. Retrieved on: http://bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar/ar/libros/edicion/vidal_guillen/05DosSantos.pdf

Gumede, V. (2019) Rethinking and Reclaiming Development in Africa. Retrieved on: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340396375_Rethinking_and_Reclaiming_Development_in_Africa

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Wallerstein, I. (2015). La crisis estructural, o por qué los capitalistas ya no encuentran gratificante al capitalismo. Retrieved on: http://geopolitica.iiec.unam.mx/sites/default/files/2017-08/Wallerstein_Tienefuturoelcapitalismo.pdf