| BOOK REVIEW TITLE: PREPARING AFRICA FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Strategies for peaceful coexistence and
sustainable development
EDITED BY: JOHN MUKUM MBAKU
PUBLISHER: Ashgate Publishing Ltd, Gower House,
Croft Road Aldershot, Hampshire, GU11 3HR, England, and U.K. 1999
PAGES: 357
PRICE: US$79.95 (Hardcover)
REVIEWER: KOFI AKOSAH-SARPONG
The dawn of the 21st century is seeing all kinds of
preparations to free Africa from its apparent deathbed. There have emerged the
internalists, who see the Africa problem as more internal than external. There are the
externalists, who blame external factors like colonialism for Africa’s woes. There
are the African Renaissance preachers, a centrist agenda that blame Africa’s troubles
on both internal and external factors and seek to revive the African culture, for long
bastardised, and its fusion with the positive aspects of the global culture.
It is in these voices that PREPARING FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
adds, offering "strategies for the peaceful coexistence and sustainable
development" for Africa. The book, part of the contemporary perspectives on
developing societies, has eight African contributors teaching in various universities in
the world. The editor John Mukum Mbaku teaches at the economics department at USA’s
Weber State University. The list of tables gives statistics of African countries defence
expenditures and size of the armed forces and such data like Africa’s annual
distribution of major armed conflicts.
Earlier African elite have blamed the continent’s troubles on
colonial systems and its accompanying global schemes. Others put the troubles on policy
mistakes by honest but poorly educated or incompetent African officials. But new research
shows that the importance of institutions have not been critically looked at and that
"evidence points to the fact that the bulk of these so-called policy mistakes were
actually perverse economic programs designed and implemented deliberately by opportunistic
(but not necessarily incompetent or ignorant) elite searching for ways to enrich
themselves at the expense of the rest of society."
Added to the above have been misdirected decolonisation process
which continued to base laws and institutions on European values instead of African
values, and which would have been "designed to allow the indigenous peoples to
maximise their interests. A dispensation of this type would have properly constrained the
post-independence government (making it much more difficult for civil servants and
politicians to engage in opportunistic behaviours); and enhance the development of an
indigenous entrepreneurial class and the ability of the latter to engage in productive
activities."
The 1980s onward have seen rapid changes in both economics and
politics. Despite these changes much more Africans live in abject poverty characterised by
weak, poorly designed, inappropriate and inefficient institutional arrangements. Nearly
forty years after independence Africans are yet to see the kinds of institutional
arrangements that would lower political opportunism, enhance wealth creation, and advance
peaceful coexistence of groups. And this will come about only when Africa’s
institutional arrangements are rooted in African values, history and traditions first and
any other second.
As the 21st century opens up and Africa is increasingly
freed from the demonic Cold War game, says the contributors variously, the time has come
for African elite to properly reconstruct the neo-colonial state to "provide more
effective structures for development and peaceful coexistence in the new
century…Africans need to arm themselves with appropriate governance
structures—those that minimise political opportunism, maximise popular participation,
and enhance resource allocation systems that promote indigenous enterpreneurship and
wealth creation."
It is this light that this book joins the debate on how to prepare
Africa and Africans for the new century. The contributors believe, informed by their
experiences inside and outside Africa, that the first line of business in any instituted
transition program should be the reconstruction of the neo-colonial state wrapped around
transparent, participatory, and accountable governance structures. To this end there is
call for a new property rights regimes governance structures that will put environmental
resources in African hands instead earlier policies that put such in neo-colonial hands
and their African cohorts.
And this means a rethinking of the place of the region within the
global interstate system and among the rest of humanity, informed by recent historical
experiences of the region with the view of understanding the factors that have given shape
to its political economies and also to its social cultural attributes. Added to this is
the fact that democracy and democratisation have massive support from the African masses
in practically all the African countries in societies where people are tired of
oppressive, exploitative, and unaccountable leadership.
To contain destructive ethnic conflict there is
recommendation for ‘a process of governance that is transparent and open to public
scrutiny.’ Federalism is recommended, with important devolution of power to regional,
state and local tiers of government. And this needs enhanced human rights and political
tolerance to protect vulnerable groups by the accountable governance systems.
The continent’s preparation for the new century, the book says,
rests on regionalism, which will see individual African economies too small to allow
domestic industries to benefit from the economies of large-scale production benefit from
larger regional integration with its large internal markets that would help domestic
industries better and more efficiently exploit technological economies of scale.
In its examination of the state in reconstruction the role of
African women as a key and critical factor is looked into, and the need to provide
opportunities for their participation in both political and economic markets sounded in
the 21st century. This means freeing the African women from patriarchy and
other sexism that have traditionally inhibited their progress in relations to African men.
It is in this context that the African State is examined. Here, as we read in chapter 12,
for the state to be relevant to the African people it "must change market
incentives structures so as to minimise political opportunities (e.g., bureaucratic
corruption) and enhance indigenous enterpreneurship and the creation of wealth." |