AFRICA ’S RESPONSE TO THE SECOND SCRAMBLE

1. AFRICA’S RESPONSE TO THE SECOND SCRAMBLE CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

2. A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE • First Scramble: forced modernization; sporadic resistance but African societies and communities at “receiving end” • Decolonization: resistance within an enforced paradigm; fighting for independence using liberal-democratic norms; outcome amounts to an “away game” victory; Africa no longer merely an object but a subject • Post-independence development in the 1960s and 1970s: euphoric agency challenging historical experience; going back to African roots; development a ”zero-sum” game • Second Scramble: Africa engages the world; accepts history; treats development as ”positive-sum”game

3. DEVELOPMENT AND DEMOCRACY • What comes first? • Modernization and underdevelopment theory suggested a certain level of development is necessary for democracy (cf. Seymour Martin Lipset 1960) • Since the 1990s the relationship has been reversed: democracy (or “good governance”) is treated as precondition for development • How compatible are they? • Development state requires a definite degree of autocratic control that goes against democratic values, incl human rights (cf Ethiopia and Rwanda)

4. TRADE VERSUS PRODUCTION • Africa’s impressive economic growth record based more on trade than on production; few signs of a social transformation • Good governance agenda limited to improving conditions for market-based actors but ignoring conditions that enhance local production • Africa has a middle class larger than India’s; it has 100,000 persons with US$1 million to invest; the “Entrepreneur of the Year” for 2012 is a Kenyan – James Mwangi – the CEO of Equity Bank with 70% of all bank accounts in the country • Importance of diversifying middle class beyond public sector and move politics away from ethnicity toward social class

5. INFRASTRUCTURES VS SERVICES • Western donors have emphasized social development, incl. education and health under the auspices of the MDGs without consideration of political and economic effects • China, other BRIC countries and African governments believe infrastructural investments are more important; rapid urbanization calls for it in a dramatic way; public sector does not match expansion of private sector investments • Infrastructural investments come with two challenges: (1) easiness of corruption and (2) expanded maintenance requirements

6. BLUEPRINTS VS LOCAL SOLUTIONS • Western donors have relied on formal models – blueprints – that are viewed as universally applicable; investors, whether from China or other countries tend to adopt the same approach • Civil society organizations and academics, however, question the blueprint approach and argue for “going with the grain”, i.e. building on what already exists on the ground • With a growing role for women in politics as well as economics, circumstances are more congenial today for harnessing local resources, including human, for development

7. A NEW POLITICAL CULTURE? • Africa’s Achilles Heel may be its political culture, notably the lack or respect for the public realm. Community and private needs and interest precede those of the civic public realm (cf Ekeh 1975) • Introduction of competitive elections has not changed its neo-patrimonial or clientelist politics although political party systems are beginning to stabilize in many countries • Popular demand for constitutional reform is a new phenomenon of significance in many countries and new ways of holding public officials accountable are emerging

8. AFRICA – ONE OR MANY? • Africans hold on to belief that unity is strength; African Union still symbolically important in spite of lack of real successes • Africans favor regional integration as a way of strengthening unity • Practical economic integration, however, tends to create inequalities among countries and more political tensions (cf East African Community) • With more and more interest from outside actors, unification will be weakened and continent-wide organizations more and more difficult to sustain

9. WHAT TIME HORIZON? • Analysis of African conditions have shifted between “Afro-optimism” and “Afro-pessimism”; donors having sinned more often on the positive side; academics on the other side • With more evidence of African agency there is also greater chance that judgments will become more realistic and fair • Development takes time, so does institutionalizing democracy; history shows that there are “no shortcuts to progress” • So when we analyze Africa it is necessary to recognize that the glass is as often “half-full” as it is “half-empty”