How the Neo-Liberal Strategy has Failed Africa

In a famous statement made by the former Prime Minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, There Is No Alternative (TINA) to the neo-liberal model of economic growth and development. This statement was made in a conference in West Africa, thus pointedly telling Africa to join in the process of globalisation and integration into the global system, or fall outside the map of the world. Indeed, many do believe that Africa has already fallen out of the map and marginalized, and those that come from the neo-liberal persuasion argue that what Africa needs is more capital investments, more open markets, more aid, and more experts from outside. This forms, in essence, the core of the strategy adopted by the World Bank and the IMF in dictating structural adjustment programmes to Africa in return for providing financial support and technical expertise. This is also the strategy followed by the donors in their bilateral and multilateral (through, for example, the WTO) relations with Africa, and the strategy advocated by the New Economic Partnership Agreement for Development (NEPAD). The 1994 launch of the “Blair initiative” that led to the setting up of the Africa Commission to “help” Africa out of its “marginalisation” is also part of this TINA strategy.

However, it is now generally agreed by wide sections of African society that the neo-liberal paradigm of development has failed the people. Poverty has not only entrenched but also deepened, and the gap between the rich and the poor has increased. The neo-liberal strategy is supported internally within Africa by a decreasing number of elite and the business community that are benefiting from the largesse from donors, and market access to and imports from the industrialised countries out of which to earn the precious foreign exchange. For the bulk of the people of Africa neo-liberalism is no gate to heaven. Indeed, at the macro-level, Africa is suffering increasing de-industrialisation and loss of manufacturing (such as in the textile sector) that had started during the first decades of independence. Africa continues to remain largely a provider of raw materials and minerals. Agriculture and fisheries that are the mainstay of the bulk of African population too are threatened by the neo-liberal strategy. Chicken legs, for example, dumped into west Africa from Europe are not only killing local industry but also peoples’ livelihood. Tourism is often paraded as the “growth sector” in Africa. But it has only produced a few five-star hotels in the major cities of Africa, displacing peoples’ homes and gardens, and it is essentially also an extractive industry with very little backward and forward linkages.

The ad nauseum reiteration of this failed neo-liberal strategy (by, for example, the Blair Commission, and hundreds of resolutions that come out conferences in and on Africa) is aimed at advancing the interests largely of the global corporate sector and a few hundred thousand rich individuals in Africa that hold political power and are “leading lights” of the business community. Indeed, the regurgitation of the neo-liberal strategy inhibits creative thinking and reflection for alternatives to neo-liberalism as a strategy for Africa’s development.

One extant example of an alternative to the Neo-Liberal strategy

There has been much talk about an alternative paradigm, but no real action. In more recent years, however, trade unions and civil society organisations in Africa, meeting as African Social Forum as part of the larger Global Social Forum, have been doing a good deal of work on thinking through possible alternatives to neo-liberalism. One of the attempts in this direction has come out of the broad trade union movement in Southern Africa comprising of the ten SADC countries. They took the initiative in 2002/04 to do something about it. The following is a reproduction of the main elements offered by the unions as an alternative strategy – called Alternative to Neo-Liberalism in Southern Africa (ANSA). It is the first serious effort at providing the people in the region with an alternative development strategy and programme that aims at being both visionary and at the same time practical.

A holistic bottom-up worldview to developing alternatives to neo-liberalism

Note: In the alternative model, the arrows lead from bottom to top, in contrast to the real world where they lead from top to bottom.

Main Elements of ANSA-Strategy

The principal aspects of the ANSA can be summarised into a ten-point strategy, namely:

1. At political and social level, a people-led (as opposed to the IMF-WB-WTO-donor-led) strategy.

3. Grassroots-led regional integration (as opposed to the current fragmentation of the region by the Empire).

3. At the economic level, an alternative production system, one that is based on domestic demand and human needs, and the use of local resources and domestic savings (as opposed to the present system that is dominated by an export-oriented strategy, based on foreign investments and ownership). This should lead to the horizontal integration of agriculture and industry (as opposed to the inherited vertical integration of each sector separately with the economies of the Empire), and an increasing (rather than as at present diminishing) returns to social labour.

4. A phased withdrawal from globalisation (as opposed to further deepening of integration within the existing iniquitous global system), and preparing for leveraged negotiated relinking in a restructured and transformed global production and distribution system.

5. An alternative policy on Science and Technology based on harnessing and owning the collective knowledge and wisdom of the people (as opposed to the present blind emulation of techno-science of the Empire that is rooted in commodification of nature and human labour for profit).

6. A strategy of alliance and networking with national, regional and global progressive forces (as opposed to the present system of co-optation of social forces in the capital-led globalisation process).

7. A strategy with a politically governed redistribution of the wealth and opportunities from the so-called formal sector in society to the informal sectors (as opposed to the present system of misallocation of resources, and the integration of the informal sectors through their providing cheap inputs and a reservoir of semi-employed labour).

8. A strategy where women’s rights are in focus as the basis for a healthy and productive society ( as opposed to the present system based on the exploitation of women labour, only followed by minor reparation activities to hide the hideous effects of capital led globalization on the women).

9. A Strategy where education is linked with production, and with improving the technical and managerial as well as research and development skills of workers and those directly in control of matters of production and governance (as opposed to education for a bureaucratic and academic elite).

10. A strategy where peoples’ mobilisation and visible demonstrations, and open hearings, in support of the evolving ethical and developmental state, are seen as embodying the democratic strength of the society – creating a dynamic, participatory and radical democracy (as opposed to the present system, where mobilisation is seen as a threat to the existing system, and where the representative democracy can sign away the future rights of people).

Conclusion

Those who argue that globalisation and neo-liberalism are “inevitable”, and that there is little one can do about it except to submit to them and make the best of them, have no respect for history, let alone of people’s struggles for liberation. History is not made only by those who conquer. It is also made by those who resist conquest. They may lose out in one period in time, but they are not permanent losers in all eternity. Africa has liberated itself from direct colonialism and apartheid. The next battle is against the forces of globalisation and neo-liberalism that seek to keep Africa in permanent bondage of a colonial economy of extraction of raw materials and commercialisation of public services as the basis for profit for those globalising forces that will not rest until they have extracted and capitalised the last Dollar.

Does Africa have the free will to determine its own future? Yes, of course, it does. The forces of history are not as immutable and unconquerable as the theorists of globalisation make them out to be. As against Thatcher’s TINA, one has to contend that There Are Hundreds of Alternatives (TAHA). Some of these are in experimental stage in many rural areas of Africa, and even in the depressed sections of the so-called informal sectors in the urban areas, where people are trying to create alternative forms of production and exchange, alternative ways of providing social services, and even alternative forms of money. The above described initiative by the trade unions in Southern Africa provides a concrete instance of a broad macro-economic and social strategy that is both visionary and practical.

For more information on the ANSA initiative, write to: ledriz@africaonline.co.zw