{The recently concluded China-Africa Think Tank forum which took place on April 14-16 in the southern city of Yiwu ( which I did attend as one of the presenters on our development path and which was attended by large numbers of Africa and Chinese academics and practitioners brought to light serious flaws in African development agenda, and the need to rely on other models of development to spur our own development. This has not worked for any country/continent and will certainly not work for Africa. }
Yes, Africa is not the same and although some western pessimists want to believe the contrary, this is a continent on the move, and the train left the station as the adage goes. Question is to where, and how fast? This is a million question facing African policy makers, whose policies are either too academic to capture reality on the ground or even a face saving exercise of appeasing development institutions (partners) which demand these policies as a precondition for financing their agenda, when such policies will not be implemented at all. Policy failure in Africa (not so in Rwanda) has been blamed on account of lack of political will to pursue the designed policies, weak institutions to pursue the same, lack of qualified, competent and independent implementers, and social capability to that end. Not so in China where the political will is given through their political setup which although was demeaned by many in the west in all sorts of manner possible, and called all sorts of names, has delivered for Chinese and they can show for it. It is the same western interest that now court China for their various economic interests never mind that, in the yester years, this is a country labeled communist, socialist etc, and any one working with it was as a bad guy as the very system they ostracized.
{{Africa is ‘a Country’}}
The theme of this very think tank “China-Africa Production Capacity Cooperation and Africa’s Industrialization” was viewed to be a win-win for Africa and indeed China. Consensus as to the strategic relationship between Africa and China is certainly shared by Africa’s policy makers, business leaders and academics.
All these parties are not only opinion leaders and movers in their own right and areas of influence, but also if properly coordinated can make the best of this relationship.
And whereas China certainly knows the best it seeks from this strategic relationship, the views expressed in this think tank indicates that, Africa may not know what it wants to gain from this strategic relationship. It is not finance, relative cheap in put goods and machinery, or capacity. It should be more than this. More so, it should be country specific. The biggest mistake in such fora is that, Africa is treated like a country. A simplistic view that has been held dear even in the west, and one which we Africans have not been able to dismiss as it negates the essence of each country and diversity in everything from leadership to culture, level of development to constraints to that end.
And so, we end up getting the theme ‘Africa’s Industrialization’… This deceptive and simplistic and in away a means of confronting problems facing Africa in general (under one size fits all Africans mindset) least avoiding to look into the face of our problems which would be half way solution to such problems.
{{SAPs and Africa’s Industrial Demise}}
It is worth remembering that, Africa’s industrialization was devastated by the SAPs (Structural Adjustment Programs) advocated by the World Bank, IMF and other multilateral and bilateral development partners who together advocated for privatization of nascent African industries in a bid to save finance for other development priorities. Finance which was hitherto was used to subsidize African industries that were perpetual loss making mainly because of managerial deficiencies and colonial manipulations that aimed at creating markets for their goods and services. Fulfillment of SAPs’ conditions was a fundamental perquisite for funding of Africa’s development agenda, that never was. Instead this turned Africa to a net importer of everything from bread to butter from western industries either in Africa, and sometimes shipped from the west. This situation persist today in francophone Africa.
But this is pure hypocrisy for even western industrial development was state led and diversification/privatization was more orderly phased with a few exception in UK under Thatcherite privatization policies that proved disastrous to UK economy. Industrial development is has to be state led, and although private sector need to be partners in this, nevertheless the state must guide this, and mobilize cheap and long term finance for this sector.
Africa will never solve the balance of trade deficits under the prevailing economic structure of agro-based production and commodity exports. Import substitution and export oriented industries are the only solution to this end.
This is where China’s strategic relationship would make a difference but only if each African country drew a master plan for their industrialization and sequencing of such industrialization which will necessitate modernization of our agricultural sector which will avail raw materials from such industries at the same time providing a market for goods and services to the same industries. This completes forward and backward integration process, critical for sustainability of such a industrial policy choice and through this, sustained growth and thus development.
It is a choice Africa should have made yesterday, for literally the entire continent is paying the price of not doing so, instead of relying on commodities trade that proved a total failure both under colonial administration and now under Chinese-Africa strategic relationship.
Professor Nshuti Manasseh
Economist and Financial Expert
Email: nshutim@gmail.com.
To be continued…
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