Since the 1960’s Africa has grown accustomed to a steadily decreasing
standard of living. Today, especially south of Sahara, the continent
contains the highest concentration of poverty, famine and illiteracy in
the world. Catastrophes, wars and diseases such as Aids and malaria
provide some explanations to the African tragedy. But after all, a
region’s ability to cope with these problems is strongly related to
politics and economics.
Today, Africa is the continent that has the lowest amount of free trade,
the least economic freedom and the lowest share of investment by
Multinational Corporations in the world. Needless to say, much of the
blame for this belongs to the dictators and autocratic rulers in Africa
who have exercised these policies. But for many decades, the western
intellectuals encouraged these rulers to do so.
The following quote by Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedish economist whom received
the noble prize in 1974, illustrates this:
“All special advisers to underdeveloped countries who have taken the time
and trouble to acquaint themselves with the problems, no matter who they
are . . . all recommend central planning as a first condition of
progress.”
It was argued that Africa had too few resources and was too far behind to
be able to compete by exercising free market capitalism. The western
intellectuals also claimed that a free market approach would also create
an unequal distribution of wealth, which would not be affordable under
these scarce conditions.
Thus, they argued that the development should be planned and controlled,
so that resources would not be wasted by the irrationalities of a
decentralized and chaotic market. It was also widely accepted that only
government ownership could provide the required capital and resources
needed for large-scale enterprises.
So, inspired by western intellectuals proposing central planning, the
African Socialism was built. It was to be an alternative that might
import policies from both the capitalist system and the socialist
systems. The main feature was that this system should be ‘African’, being
different from both Soviet socialism and US capitalism. It was to grow
and be developed out of the already existing value system. Needless to
say, since the system was called ‘African socialism’ and not ‘African
capitalism’, it was still a socialist model where the state should
intervene and control the economy.
The founding father of African socialism was Julius Nyerere in Tanzania.
It was in Tanzania that the most intensive and most prolonged attempt was
made to put African Socialism into practice.
With aid from Britain and many other industrialized countries, Nyerere
attracted scholars, teachers and aid workers to assist in the training of
administrators and politicians in Tanzania. He got help from the British
Labour party to make socialist speeches and many idealistic, socialist
students from the west were drawn to Tanzania in the 1960’s.
In practice, Nyerere’s socialism meant nationalization of banks and
industries, a swelling bureaucracy and the imposing of collective farming
“ujamaa” villages. Consequently, agricultural exports were halved and
industrial output was down 75 percent. Nyerere left Tanzania as one of
the seven poorest countries on earth, despite receiving the highest per
capita foreign aid.
Many other countries in Africa, such as Egypt, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau,
Mozambique and Algeria, followed the example of African socialism in
Tanzania and pursued nationalizations. Other countries, being more
influenced by the Soviet Union, but also by western socialists,
implemented complete Marxism-Leninism. The proponents believed in a
command economy of the Soviet form, with state planning as the main
feature. The importance of state-administered farms was also stressed.
All these different forms of socialism not only implied huge economic
waste, inefficiency and poverty but also great centralization of
political power. As a consequence, African leaders gave themselves and
their parties great influence. This personalization of power is unique
for Africa and it implies that the leaders are the state and not the
institutions. Hence, in most African countries, the political power was
not subject to any control at all, neither electoral nor institutional.
The outcome of these political settings is not difficult to predict: a
great deal of corruption. The leader decides what to do and his power is
based upon the ability to sedate and bribe certain groups that he relies
upon. Sometimes that group is the military as in Zaire, in fact, most
African nations spend a lot of their scarce resources on military
expenses.
In countries with huge bureaucracies and a corrupt government it is
impossible to predict the consequences of ones own actions. Hence, in
order to accomplish anything, bribes are necessary. This system paralyzes
people and no corporations dare to invest in these countries. This is one
of the reasons why Africa has the lowest rate of Foreign Direct
Investment in the world.
To sum up, the rich world exported the ideas of Karl Marx instead of Adam
Smith to Africa. The ideas of Marx haven’t worked anywhere and apparently
they did not work in Africa either.
Christian Sandström
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