The state and accumulation in Africa

This is a general issue that covers a wide range of topics, including indirect rule and the political economy of diamond mining and corruption in Sierra Leone; the role of multinational oil corporations in the Delta oil fields in Nigeria; illicit and habitual corruption in Mozambique; the negotiation of statist neoliberalism in Egypt – the political economy of post-revolutionary Egypt; and state monopoly of telecommunications in Ethiopia.

In his book Citizen and subject: contemporary Africa and the legacy of colonialism, Mahmood Mamdani drew attention to three core tasks that faced African states at independence: ‘1) deracialising civil society, 2) detribalising the Native Authority, 3) developing the economy in the context of unequal international relations’ (Mamdani 1996, 287). He argued that whilst the first two conditions have been addressed, the issue of democratisation, which he identified as the foundation for economic take-off, has been relegated to insignificance. He observed:

In the articles that follow, we shall see that the failure of African leaders to democratise politics and government in society, by mobilising the mass of the urban and rural population, led to a massive chasm between the rulers and subjects, thereby rendering development impossible: the strengthening of the role of rural and urban autocrats, whose interests are more in common with those of operatives from the metropolitan centres, has had major implications for the directions of capital flow away from African countries, and massive implications for capital generation to finance social services.

With few exceptions (such as Botswana, Rwanda and Seychelles), African states have been plagued by the problem of corruption, which has dominated their political economies, thus putting a check on economic development, and triggering political instability, as some groups are denied opportunities to participate economically or politically in their countries’ affairs. These strategically placed groups use their positions to act as conduits for imperialist intrigues and personal aggrandisement, thereby impeding the progress of the majority of their people, as potentially investible capital is drained away from the economy to the capitalist centres (Frankfurter et al., in this issue).

In many African countries, the failure to prioritise the needs and interests of the labouring classes and to indigenise democracy heralded the top-down approach that was imposed on the peasantry. This led to their alienation and stifled the domestic market by privileging elite markets and tastes. The successors to the colonial state promptly knocked politics and the state off their burgeoning democratic paths by imposing decentralised (personal) despotism and ‘indirect rule’ on the rest of society, a process which, according to Mamdani, became the hallmark of the postcolonial political landscape. For him, the emergence of ‘conquest states’ in the wake of European colonialism in the 19th century gave rise to a new variant of chieftaincy which undermined popular checks on state authority. The emergence of the Native or Tribal Authority created powerful chiefs, fortified from external threat. These inheritors of colonial largesse soon became powerful men in the postcolonial administrations that brought ‘political freedom’ to Africa, thus heralding a new dawn. There was much synergy between the powerful elites who occupied the political urban space and those chiefs who held the rural inhabitants to servility.

The first article in this issue is by Raphael Frankfurter, Mara Kardas-Nelson, Adia Benton, Bailor Barrie, Yusupha Dibba, Paul Farmer and Eugene Richardson, and is on the political economy of diamond mining and its relation to the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone. The authors point to the synergy between the urban petty bourgeoisie and the rural ruling houses of chiefs and their coterie through what the authors refer to as ‘neo-colonial strategies of indirect rule … deployed by foreign mining companies to facilitate the flow of resources out of Sierra Leone’. The local elite group is said to be entrenched in ‘powerful political positions within and parallel to the national government’ and to be ‘more beholden to foreign executive entities than their constituents’, which enabled them to grant unfettered access to the country’s resources (in this case, diamonds) to foreigners, thus undermining the development of regulatory institutions to capture resources for the country’s development. In the specific case of drain of value from the country’s extractive industries (e.g. diamonds, gold and iron ore), the authors, like Mamdani, have utilised the concept of ‘indirect rule’ to draw attention to the activities of foreign multinationals seeking access to the country’s resources, and their relationship with Sierra Leonean nationals in powerful political positions within the ruling party.¹ Using two case studies involving a major international corporate mine and a small-scale foreign diamond entrepreneur, the authors try to show how ‘indirect rule’ facilitates free access to diamondiferous land for foreign companies, thereby undermining the development of national and international regulatory authority to curb the ‘widespread evasion of mandated taxes that could be used to develop a more robust and capable national health system’. The authors also offer an analysis linking contemporary indirect rule and the 2014–2016 Ebola virus in Kono District to ‘the region’s intentionally underdeveloped healthcare system and the scaffolding of the public health response onto the paramount chieftaincy system’. The result is that by the time of the outbreak of the epidemic in Kono, there are just three doctors to care for 550,000 people.

As in colonial times, paramount chiefs play major roles in rural administration: as custodians of land, they hold the land in trust for the people, distribute land to those desirous of land, levy local taxes, and are in charge of the chiefdom or tribal courts. The chiefs also use their privileged positions as gatekeepers to enrich themselves, and to obtain free labour from young men within their chiefdoms, as well as acting as gatekeepers to the wealthy urban elite in the capital, Freetown. Furthermore, the ‘paramount chiefs, who wield the authority to grant access to diamondiferous land, often operate as more beholden to foreign entities than to Sierra Leonean regulatory institutions.’ Thus, the authors conclude that, whilst indirect rule exists,

Finally, the authors warn that ‘indirect rule endures in an untouched form, continuing to enable corporations’ evasion of regulatory and taxation requirements, displacing ever greater numbers of rural people, and contributing to Sierra Leone’s continued healthcare underdevelopment.’

The title of Inge Tvedten and Rachi Picardo’s article, ‘Goats eat where they are tied up: illicit and habitual corruption in Mozambique’, recalls a piece of advice frequently, it is alleged, offered by the late president of Sierra Leone, Siaka Probyn Stevens, to his charges once he had managed to ‘find them jobs’ within the state bureaucracy. Namely, that they should help themselves to the public resources at their disposal, since ‘where a cow is tethered, that’s where it is expected to graze’: in short, start looting. This advice fuelled the kleptocracy that Stevens led with impunity in Sierra Leone for the best part of 30 years, eventually culminating in a decade-long civil war (Zack-Williams 1999, 2002). With regard to contemporary Mozambique, Tvedted and Picardo conclude that small-scale corruption is common in both urban and rural settings to the point that it has now become part of daily life for the vast majority of urban and rural dwellers, with the most severe impact affecting the poorest, who cannot afford to participate in corrupt exchanges.

The authors argue that in order to understand corruption as practised in Mozambique, it is necessary to combine analyses of the structural/systematic conditions that encouraged corrupt practices as seen by the people who are susceptible to this malpractice. The study is based on data from a longitudinal, quantitative and qualitative study in both rural and urban areas. The authors claim that people distinguish between large-scale and habitual corruption, linguistically and in their agency as citizens. Corruption is seen as a product of a de facto strong centralised state, combined with International Monetary Fund (IMF)- and World Bank-imposed liberal economic policies, juxtaposed with corruption throughout Mozambican society. The advent in the mid 1980s of the transition from a central planning system to a liberal economy was accompanied by the rise in the ‘candonga’, a form of corruption which meant that the prices of certain goods were kept artificially low through government subsidies, whilst the real parallel market price allowed sections of the political and economic elites to skim off profits. However, the authors point out that the transition to pervasive corruption was triggered not just by liberalisation, but also by the increasing presence of donors and the subsequent increase in the money in circulation. Thus, the authors concluded that ‘corrupt practices involving public officials and private citizens are part of an almost all-encompassing political economy, with checks and balances being “systemic” rather than “individual” in nature.’

According to the authors, what is surprising about the victims of corruption in Mozambique is that many of them

They see corruption not as the scourge of an unequal society, but ‘as an inevitable part of [people’s] efforts to improve their lives’. However, as the authors argue, under such regimes the benefactors are primarily those who already have a strong position in the district or community.

The third article in the issue, by Oluwatoyin Oluwaniyi, is a critique of the role of multinational oil corporations (MNOCs) in Nigeria’s economy, particularly in the Niger Delta region, where oil production has dominated the economy and ecology. The aim of the article includes an analysis of

Furthermore, Oluwaniyi argues that far from heralding the stable economic growth and social cohesion which have been championed by liberal advocates of MNOCs, the penetration into the Nigerian economy by oil giants such as Shell, Chevron-Texaco, and AGIP, and their presence in the Nigerian oil field, have been accompanied by a myriad of social, economic and environmental problems, calling into question the relevance of MNOCs in Nigeria’s development. She questions some of the alleged benefits that have been associated with the advent of MNOCs’ investment in recipient countries, such as investment in infrastructure, boost for local capital formation, and provision of foreign exchange and investments. In her view, African states should avoid extraverted structures of capital accumulation, which she argues contribute to underdevelopment and the stultification of economic development. These paths lead to subjugation, dependence, underdevelopment, and a new form of imperialism. In her view this is the path that the Niger Delta has followed, whereby ‘the oil-rich region has generally become a paradox of “so much oil and so much poverty”’, as environmental pollution through oil extraction has become the hallmark of MNOC activities in the region.

Oluwaniyi reminds us that:

Furthermore, Oluwaniyi argues that since the state is dependent on rents from oil sales, it thus sacrifices the well-being of the population to international capital. In her view, MNOCs are purveyors of underdevelopment in host countries.

In the ROAPE editorial for June 2018, Peter Lawrence reminded us of how ‘neoliberalism became the dominant ideology buttressing political capital’s fightback against labour’s increasing share of value and the ensuing falling rate of profit’ (Lawrence 2018, 181). Heba Khalil and Brian Dill in their contribution to this issue return to a similar theme in a case study of what they refer to as ‘statist neoliberalism’ in Egypt under the military strongman Abdelfattah El-Sisi. They argue that under El-Sisi’s leadership, Egypt was able to seemingly wed two contradictory state types: statism and neoliberalism.

The article aims ‘to explain how and why the Egyptian military continues to pursue seemingly contradictory economic and social policies’, despite the change of regime, which saw Hosni Mubarak being eventually replaced by the junta of El-Sisi. The authors distinguish between ‘statism’ and neoliberalism, with the former being described as a regime of accumulation, involving state control of the channels of planning, as well as relying on state intervention to contain social and class conflicts. Statism implies state control of the public sector through nationalisation and subsidies, as well as control of all channels of production, employment, participation and expression by transforming political parties into one mass movement. By contrast, neoliberalism is described as an economic regime that valorises individualism and rejects state intervention in the economy. Khalil and Dill draw attention to some of the challenges faced by activists. According to the authors, there were a number of challenges to be confronted, not least the fact that the neoliberal state is often anti-statist; a project which is best delivered by an authoritarian state. The transformation of the state often results in massive unemployment and the proliferation of the informal sector, thereby threatening its capacity to cope as the state’s role as an employer or provider of welfare is dismantled to meet IMF demands. Thus, the authors concluded that the implementation of a structural adjustment programme was in essence subsidising the private sector at the expense of the nation as a whole.

In the final article of this issue, on state monopoly of telecommunications in Ethiopia, Tewodros Workneh examines the external pressure on the Ethiopian government to deregulate the country’s telecommunication sector. He goes on to discuss the reasons why the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) did not succumb to the demand to end its state monopoly in telecommunication, as well as the political and economic basis of the EPRDF’s rule based on ‘development statism’ and ‘neopatrimonialism’. He also draws attention to the different models of telecommunication ownership whilst tending towards a mixed ownership model. He points out that globally when information communication technologies (ICTs) are driven by ‘capitalist affordability logic’, they tend to exacerbate existing inequalities within and between countries. He draws attention to the endorsement of the UN General Assembly call for a ‘people-centred, inclusive and development-oriented information society’; and he notes that the UN General Assembly, in line with its Sustainable Development Goals, ‘has established that access to ICTs is no longer a means of development but rather “a development indicator and aspiration in and of itself ”’. In his view, access to ICTs is crucial if African countries are to participate in the growing digital economy, leading to increases in gross domestic product. Workneh’s argument is not just premised on economic rationale, but also on the notion that

This includes women, who tend to have more limited Internet access.

Workneh goes on to discuss the EPRDF monopoly of the Ethiopian ICT industry by pointing to what he calls ‘Ethiopia’s uncompromising stance on state monopoly of telecommunications’, which he argues stems from the conviction that the industry is too important for the country’s development programme to be left with the private sector, whilst the government’s detractors accused it of neo-patrimonialism. Workneh compares the case for state ownership with that of private ownership of the ICT sector for Ethiopia’s development. Drawing attention to the success of the EPRDF in bringing ICT to the rural poor, Workneh observes that this is due to the fact that the revenue generated is invested in the country and not expropriated by multinational companies as dividend for a non-residential bourgeoisie, and goes on to warn that:

Whilst drawing attention to the external pressure on the Ethiopian telecommunication sector to open to private competition, Workneh also points to support for participation by the nation state in the sector, by groups such as WSIS. Many of these organisations see ICTs as having a major role to play in globalisation and agree that ‘they have become quintessential tools of economic development’, extricating society from Castell’s ‘fourth world’ status, ‘a state of social exclusion and economic stagnation’. Not surprisingly, the EPRDF’s leadership has in the past been committed to state ownership of the sector. While Workneh promotes a mixed ownership model, he observes that in the view of the EPRDF’s leadership, ‘the sector is too crucial for the country’s economic development programme to be run by a privatised, profit-driven model’; and is crucial also for delivering the ‘developmental state’. Furthermore, the author recalls the EPRDF’s historic position that ‘market forces work contrary to the government’s direction towards achieving universal access and universal service in telecommunications services’, rather than transforming Ethio-Telcom into a ‘cash cow’ for foreign owners, thereby inducing capital flight abroad. In defence of state control, the EPRDF’s position is that such an infant industry deserves protection from the vultures of the capitalist world and should be treated as a ‘natural monopoly’. That the national airline Ethiopian Airlines is one of the most successful on the continent has shown that with skilled personnel and committed leaders, nationalised industries can thrive in Africa.

This issue of ROAPE features the second of a series of special reports on a new ROAPE initiative to return the journal more effectively to its roots in Africa and give more space for African contributors from the Left. Amongst these we include researchers, analysts and activists, those aiming both to make sense of developing realities and to change their world. A series of three workshops, which we named ‘Connections’, has been held in Africa. The report on the first workshop in Accra appeared in ROAPE 156 (Bush, Graham and Zeilig 2018). This issue features an account of the second workshop in Dar es Salaam, including short pieces from an exciting and unusual set of speakers, and lively and thoughtful excerpts from blog commentaries submitted afterwards, reflecting on the impact of the workshop. A third workshop has been held in Johannesburg, a report of which will appear in the June 2019 issue of ROAPE. The Dar es Salaam workshop was notable for the high level of interaction between activists and scholars (and many who straddled both situations). Conversations and debates focused particularly on the issue of how young people view their conditions of life, on socialist models of revolutionary (and not so revolutionary) change, on struggles about organising politically and finding an adequate language to express their hunger for change. We anticipate that this initiative will not end with the Connections workshops. We have learnt much about the way a journal like ROAPE is viewed in Africa and the need to transform its positioning.

The last quarter has been busy on our website, and across social media, with a large number of important blogposts and other activities. We live-streamed the third workshop in Johannesburg at the end of the month on our Facebook page; the footage remains on the page and can be accessed by our readers. We also had a number of stand-out blogposts, including Lee Wengraf’s (2018) piece on the sharpening inter-imperial rivalry on the continent. She argues that Chinese imperialism in Africa is not identical to that of the USA but that it has been able to take advantage of the door kicked open by neoliberal deregulation and privatisation promoted by the West. The piece was a blogpost in its own right, and a contribution to a debate we had at the workshop in Tanzania (before this, in October, we posted Peter Lawrence’s reflections on the legacy of Julius Nyerere and socialism also from discussions in Dar es Salaam).

Another popular piece was Lena Gronbach’s (2018) exposé of the World Bank’s poverty discourse which sees poverty as a problem of financial exclusion and restrictive financial markets, rather than the result of deeper structural issues. In addition, we published on the site Jörg Wiegratz’s (2018) agenda-setting piece on the absence of any serious discussion of capitalism in Africa. He asked why capitalism does not feature more prominently in titles of major Western conferences on Africa, and articles of main African Studies journals. The piece was shared, debated and republished across the Internet, including on the website Africa is a Country. Other pieces have also made a similar impact, including our anonymous blogger on Rwanda, who continues their investigation of the Kigali government’s poverty statistics. The blogger accused the World Bank of being guilty either of a worrying level of leniency and incompetence, or of outright complicity in the manipulation of Rwanda’s official statistics.

Nick Bernards’ (2018) excellent blogpost in our series on capitalism in Africa argues that the kinds of work performed by African workers have often been key reference points in global debates about governing irregular forms of work. He argues that placing African labour in capitalism requires that we think seriously and in historical perspective about the politics of irregular forms of work. This was an important contribution in a lively debate on the website.

In the coming months we will be posting on Zimbabwe’s protest movement, the uprisings in Ethiopia, and debates on pan-Africanism. The website remains a core part of ROAPE’s activities, bringing in a new audience and extending the reach of our radical analysis of trends and developments in radical political economy.