Out of Economic Crisis? The IMF/WB and Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs)

Pessimism concerning Africa's development crises varied somewhat from region to region, but the general outline of them might be seen from an “internal” or sympathetic view and an “external” view which I would hesitate to call strictly “objective”. In the first, the crises can be seen as again divide in two: intrinsic crises factors and extrinsic ones. The intrinsic ones are conditioned by the actual facts of life in Africa. Equatorial Africa, for example, is unlikely to save itself from economic hardship by converting to wheat production for export. On the other hand, with urban growth at 6% per annum, and urban Africans demanding wheat-based foods (a cultural change influenced undoubtedly by European-cosmopolitan food choices), wheat imports become imbalanced as against native export. In communities such as Nigeria, this imbalance may be hidden by the presence in the Nigerian economy of a high-demand export product, oil. South Africa similarly appears as an oddity in almost any chart or graph of African crises, because of the presence of diamonds and gold and sophisticated extraction techniques at least partially controlled by companies inside SA.

Extrinsic factors may be roughly grouped together in the “neo-colonialism” category. Vibrant African economies in full competition with Western economies, while the fond dream of many, would diminish the short-term gains of Western economic entities as compared with flaccid African economies in debt-slavery to Western lending institutions. The IMF/WB is a prime example of the sort of “helping” institution that ensure de facto that LDCs remain LD. Thus the pessimistic strain in its “sympathetic” form.

The “external” form of pessimism toward the African economic situation sounds quite hollow when one reviews the machinations of Western governments and quasi-governmental institutions to de-stabilize African societies. The basic tenor of this form is to suggest that Africans are not yet ready – perhaps will never be constitutionally prepared – to oversee their own economic life. Just as the Christian missionaries of the past were needed to inform Africans of their sinful nature and then save them from themselves, just so the Keynsian missionaries of the present are needed to inform Africans of their inability to manage finances and the means by which they can “extract” themselves.

Balanced against this gloomy picture is an optimistic outlook (expressed in part in the articles by Jamal and Wulf) that although, yes, there are very considerable crises in Africa, these crises are a matter of focus. Jamal points out that insufficient effort has been applied to improvement of African agriculture, and that the effort that has been directed to the development of markets skews the vision of the African crisis. African economic independence may be hampered at present by misapplied effort; proper application of effort in the proper areas is likely to bring better results. Wulf suggests that by tying financial support to financial success, a vicious cycle is created which might be corrected by requiring developmental progress rather than fiduciary progress. Overall, the authors of the articles work from the assumption that Africans are perfectly capable of succeeding if placed in some way on a “level playing field” with their neighbors.

In 1988, when Jurgen Wulf wrote about them, the Structural Adjustment Programs of the IMF in Zambia were unsuccessful because they failed to institute or encourage retructuring of the economy so that exports consisted of more than raw copper, local production was competitive with imported goods, and the internal market was viable. Notably, the reasons for the failure to restructure Wulf describes as being related to the loss of technical and administrative capacities which may have been present in colonial times. One might argue that the Zambians should have followed the lead of their Tanzanian neighbors.

Mittelman and Will argued in 1987 that the IMF demonstrated the power (“flexibility and resilience”) of international capitalism. However, they were less sanguine about the effects of this power, which they claimed forced governments of countries under the IMF regime to employ coercive measures to accomplish their aims (thus supporting a cycle of violence). They argued that the IMF reduces the control of “dominant classes” and therefore “intensifies class conflict”, whether that is ultimately beneficial or not. Conditionality of IMF membership depresses wages, increases unemployment, and “facilitates resource extraction” without substantial benefit to the nation from which the resources are extracted, they proposed. The net effect of involvement of LDCs in the IMF, then, Mittelman and Will argued, is to shackle developing nations to international capitalism and to reinforce divisions of labor.

Economics is a subject I find daunting and confusing, and I confess I had difficulty following the probably fairly simple economic arguments advanced in the articles for this week. Overall, what I saw was that membership in the IMF, like membership in the UN, has been proposed with glowing rhetoric of democratic promise, but in fact is established not on democratic grounds (say, one nation, one vote) but on economic grounds: ever member nation receives a certain number of basic shares, which provide a basic vote, but then wealthier nations can have many more shares and thus many more votes. Somehow the framers of the US Constitution found a way to balance the democratic needs of the federation while recognizing that, say, Virginia's and Rhode Island's financial and political capacities are distinct. Why the IMF founders did not adopt similar quota schemes suggests that democracy and self-determination are lesser values when compared with the protection of capital investments.

Democracies, Dictatorships, and Military Coups d'Etat

The 1970s and 1980s were arguably the most tumultuous period of African history. Even in the often-bloody and unsettled 20^th century, these decades stand out. They have been called the Era of the Strong Man. The often great and inspirational first generation of independent national leaders had been killed, exiled, or marginalized. This first generation had been characterized by men of vision who either had learned to use the existing mechanisms of state control from the colonial era or had been willing to cut a new path. Unhappily for their hopes of peace and prosperity in Africa, their rise coincided with the cold war between the USSR, the USA, and the PRC. The leaders of the USA, eager to consolidate claim to global empire, were willing to resort to assassination to prevent African nations from courting the communist powers.

But the numbers of individuals capable of negotiating intramural rivalries, international relations, and the ravages of centuries of colonial exploitation were few. The leaders of the second generation, when sufficiently acceptable to foreign capitalists, were willing to accept funding and in-kind gifts of weapons in exchange for continued and in many cases expanded economic exploitation. Often these men had been officers in the national military under the first generation of leaders. They had an understanding of organization, but did not necessarily have broad or enlightened visions. Their political sensibilities often ran to personal grandiosity and ethnic prejudice. These characteristics combined with the already unsettled continental and global situation made the Era of the Strong Man also the Era of Genocide. The militarism of the second generation of leaders following decolonization, rather than advancing the peoples of Africa, tended to further the process of underdevelopment.

One point that might be made about the military leaders of the second generation after decolonization is that they were often conservative in their general view. They were not as a rule progressive and idealistic in their thought, although they might well have been given to a sort of whimsy. The “re-naming game” which many African nations played reflected a desire to return to a glorious pre-colonial past. Ghana and Benin are prime examples. Neither contemporary country is located where the namesake kingdom was. But the yearning for distinction was stronger than historical accuracy, and of course the pre-colonial kingdoms' boundaries shifted considerably over time. The Strong Men often adopted baroque combinations of Old African symbols and clothing and contemporary Western-style military uniforms and weapons. Their actions often reflected an attempt to reclaim uniquely African cultural expressions of magical ritual and trappings and exercise of authority. In these ways the Strong Men were analogous to the Nazis, the Fascists, and the Imperial Japanese of the 1930s and '40s, for these groups had sought to reclaim and re-energize national culture. In this way one must concede that they were not merely invested in personal aggrandizement at the expense of the populations of their respective states. They meant to make their nations great. That they were limited both by their own visions and by what must have seemed like unmatchable coercive forces from outside is perhaps only to say that they were finally only Small Men.

The rule of such men cannot ultimately build nations, even when their efforts are applied to conquest. Any efforts at expansionism would ultimately have been met by equivalent efforts from another Strong Man also supported by outside agencies. What the Strong Men themselves may well have seen, that they were ultimately only puppets, would not have humbled them, would not have converted them into another sort of leader. They burned themselves out, and in so doing, they served their masters admirably, if unwillingly.

The Post-Colonial State and the Search for Economic Self-Sufficiency

Why did many Africans adopt a socialist path after independence? This is an intriguing question which begs another: Did many Africans adopt a socialist path after independence? And what did they mean by “socialism”? “Socialism” suggests a connection with the European socialist thinkers of the 19^th century, particularly Marx. And while someone living in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the mid-20^th century might be expected to understand this association, yet the word “socialism” might be used to mean something other than what Marx used it to mean.

Nkrumah, in Ghana, was strongly influenced by European revolutionary ideas, notably those of Marx, yet the way he developed Marxist ideas paralleled the ways of Lenin and Mao, both of whom realized that socialism must have some degree of national character, even while moving ultimately toward a world communistic order. Nkrumah, however, saw socialism in Africa as being specifically the antithesis of colonialism, and from his perspective so long as colonialism was retained in any part of Africa, all of Africa was in peril. Therefore, Nkrumah advocated Pan-Africanism. He also favored industrialization and “modernization”, with the means of production in the control of the government.

Nyerere, in Tanzania, is harder to categorize. He viewed socialism as a means by which to achieve virtue, which he identified with communalism and rural agrarianism or pastoralism. He summarized this view as Ujamaa, a Swahili word implying community cooperation. Nyerere believed that the value people would derive from life in an Ujamaa village would lead them naturally to embrace a socialist ethic which would eventually determine their consideration of any problem. In the transition from the immediate post-colonial independence situation to full socialism, however, Nyerere was a reformer rather than a revolutionary, permitting capitalism to remain so long as it supported the development of Tanzania.

Nyerere's writings are reminiscent of those of John Locke, William Penn, or Thomas Jefferson: intellectuals who found themselves in the right place at the right time to propose their liberal aesthetic as a practical program. Like them, Nyerere is not necessarily a “good” historian, but he is eager to use history, in the sense of a story about the past (Metz says “myth”, but that is perhaps a bit too extreme, though it makes Metz's point well), to propose a moral truth. Like them, Nyerere selects carefully what he wishes to present about the past to support an affective experience in his reader. In my case, it worked: I literally wept when I read Nyerere for the first time, as he seems so sincere, so patient, so good. He is certainly an effective rhetorician, especially to a person primed by years of reading pro-agrarian thinkers.

Uganda's Milton Obote offers a third version of African socialism. He proposed state control of trade, oil, mines, banks, and insurance, and emphasized national mobilization. However, despite his theoretical interest in the common person (his fundamental position paper is called “The Common Man's Charter”), Obote seems to have been out of touch with public opinion, or rather, willing to superimpose his own ideas as against popular opinion. In some cases, such as the Trade Licensing Act, Obote's political position was righteous, if unpopular: in this Act, Obote defended Asian-descent Ugandans despite strong opposition. Obote was concerned to eliminate pre-colonial sub-national power structures, such as that of the Bakala of the Buganda, and his scheme to break this power, through an electoral system which required regional candidates to campaign nationally, is original. Obote's motivation was to create a sense of national identity, but this in itself is not socialistic. Obote's “Move to the Left” might well have steered Uganda to a more orthodox socialism, but Obote's removal in 1971 left the question moot.