I have just written an article on capitalism and anti-capitalism in terms of africa’s potential for development. It has been made feature story on African Loft, so please take a look here.

Excerpt:

Sub-Saharan Africa is perhaps the greatest example of market failure, indicating that capitalism is necessary but not presently sufficient for development, creating a need for a mixed economy approach. The question that ensues is what system best complements capitalism in a mixed economy.

My article on African Loft titled ‘Globalisation and Africa’s Development’… take a look at it here.

‘This article aims to look at what Globalisation is, and provide a brief overview of how Globalisation has changed the way our world works within developed and developing countries. This topic is an important one to be aware of when considering the situation within Africa - how it is developing and interacting with outside organisations whether they be governments, companies or charities.’

The impact that both slavery and then colonisation have had on Africa is still evident today. There are many issues with respect of this, but the ones I am considering are the stifling of innovation, forced migration, and lack of self-esteem.
Firstly, pre-colonial trade has been recognised as stifling innovation, which was perpetuated by the subsequent colonisation, as described by Kyambalesa in his book ‘Socio-Econonic Challenges: The African Context’:

‘There is general consensus that pre-colonial trade in both goods and humans… seriously undermined Africa’s potential for indigenous-based technological advancement…European industries contributed to the weakening of the indigenous skills, expertise and know-how of communities in Africa…It is widely held that…[this] partly led to the creation of conditions for persistent technological stagnation, retrogression and protracted dependency…

European colonialism…further suppressed creativity and innovation among indigenous African’s… [which] effectively precluded the potential for further improvements in existing indigenous technologies and the generation of new forms of technology.’

The diasporas created by slavery can be analysed in comparison to the migration in the Western world from Europe to Australia, Canada and the USA. However, the significant difference between the two is that the western migration took place after the countries had implemented and developed a strong economy. Africa on the other hand, had not, and the migration created many problems such as:

‘…Coercion and violence, and, as such, was disruptive to the existing, as well as the potential transformation of the, political, economic and technological facets of African life.’

This problem was only made worse by the subsequent colonisation, which did not allow for the problems to be addresses, and they therefore became further ingrained.

My last point is that of self-esteem, by which I mean the faith that a country’s leaders have in their own people. The era of colonisation has arguably left its mark through the pre-conceived notions of local people that foreigners are more proficient at their jobs than locals, which leads to dependence on foreigners for development, particularly in areas such as technology.

This appears to be made worse by the lack of education and training of the local people in the present. Moreover, it appears that it is largely this lack of education and training, which can be blamed on the governments of the countries, that is causing this lingering problem, and if the governments dealt with the issue of education and training, they would also solve this one.

‘[There is]… unwanted preference of some government leaders in Africa for foreign experts, particularly those leaders who have… claimed that locally trained experts are half-baked… But if this state of affairs is true, then it is the government leaders themselves who are to blame for not having [enabled]… training of citizens.’ (Kyambalesa)

The attitude and priority that a government gives to investing in infrastructure is one that is deemed necessary of consideration prior to any plans for infrastructure development, whether it be funded and developed by external or internal groups of any kind. The term used to describe this is the ‘absorbative capacity’ of a country, which is defined as the capability to use, maintain and develop an infrastructure. The requirements that are needed to allow a sufficient absorbative capacity are defined by retired managing director for global infrastructure investment at the UK CDC with the following quote:

‘There is lots of evidence that unless a country is spending 4-5% of its GDP on infrastructure development, they will not sustain any increase in GDP per capita.’

As an increase in GDP per capita is a key indication of a country’s increasing development, this appears to demonstrate that unless a country is spending the required amount to have an adequate absorbative capacity, there is little point in other external, or private groups developing an infrastructure, as it will not be able to aid development in the country in the long run, as the country will not be able to maintain or develop it further. This point seems particularly relevant to my post about the Connect Africa summit, and its outcomes, which are to develop an infrastructure within Africa. It also seems relevant in light of the East African Submarine Cable system agreed investment over the last few days (talked about in an AfricanLoft article titled ‘East African Submarine Cable System Receives a Boost).

In conclusion, to reiterate the importance of infrastructure investment, I want to show the diagram provided by Henry Kyambalesa in his book ‘Socio-Economic Challenges: The African Context’, of the symbiotic relationship created by infrastructure development:

Following on from my recent post titled ‘What is appropriate development?’ I decided as promised, that I would take a broader look at the issues surrounding appropriate development, specifically the environment for which, or within which, they are being developed. As I discussed in the aforementioned post, one of the issues is whether the development is profit-led or not. Now, whilst this blog is all about whether development is needs-led - specifically how the concepts of user experience design apply, nothing works in isolation in reality, and I think it is equally important to know your subject area, and to know of the interlinking issues that surround it, to allow for more balanced assessment and opinions.

The issues I am going to cover are:

Education and Training
Research & Development and Data Collection
Slavery, Pre-Colonial Trade and Colonisation
Internal Infrastructure Investment
Lack of Communication Infrastructure
Power of IGO’s in global economy
Foreign investment
Patent protection
Debt burden

However, as there is quite a lot of detail required simply to overview these issues, I thought it better to start a mini-series of posts, under the title ‘An Enabling Environment’, where each separate post will look at one issue. So, for this first post, I am going to look at education and training issues.

Education and training

To begin, education in general should be defined as having two benefits in respect of creating an enabling environment. The first is that people need education to be able to invent or innovate. Secondly, people need an education to be able to make use of those inventions or innovations.

In regards to this, Africa certainly falls down. The lack of primary, secondary and tertiary education systems, or the poor quality that are provided, is a widely acknowledged problem. I am not going to delve here into the issues of why this is, suffice to say in general it is not happening.

The subsequent issue with relation to education is consideration of what happens to the people who do get educated successfully.

Two problems prevail here. The first is that they leave to work abroad, where they aspire to a better lifestyle. Ironically, it has been demonstrated that often these people end up working in jobs which are not equivalent to their professional qualifications, but their standard of living is still improved on if they stayed in Africa working in higher level positions.

The second point, which was something I was unaware of, and I have to say took me by surprise, is the issue of AIDS in respect of African educated males employed in high level positions within Africa. This information was provided to me by a retired Managing Director of CDC, who informed me that when he worked within Africa, approximately 25% of CDC’s African managers in countries such as Zambia died every year from AIDS. Whilst evidently it comes as no shock that AIDS is prevalent in Africa. What does however make the issue even more concerning in terms of development, is that the percentage of educated men dying of AIDS is much higher than uneducated due to the conceived status symbol of having lots of girlfriends, which is enabled through having money, which is enabled through training and employment.

In reference to this, I just read an interesting article on mthandenisoracle’s blog, entitled ‘Aids rises among SA’s rich!!!’, which reports on a study undertaken within South Africa which has shown that AIDS amongst the employed/educated people is growing. A spokesperson for the survey said:

‘If we thought the AIDS epidemic was having bad economic effects already, this could take us to the crisis point.’

It is clearly a good thing that this issue is being recognised, however, I would say that considering the retired Managing Director I spoke to knew about this issue from over 15 years ago, it seems that perhaps the ‘crisis point’ has been happening for years, and we should be asking why it was not recognised or acknowledged earlier and what effect this problem has had on development already, as well as looking at how to tackle the issue now. Maybe by analysing past mistakes, we can learn how to avoid them in the future?

Next section coming soon…

After reading a blog post on crisscrossed.net a few months ago, entitled ‘Mobile Phones for Development’, I began thinking about the concept of appropriate development in more depth.

The writer of the crisscrossed post appears to have the same outlook as myself on the issues of development with his comment:

‘…It seems clear that technology itself is not the driver for change, instead, it is what the people make out of it, and the approaches which are ideally developed or adapted to the local context.’

However, it would perhaps be relevant to take this comment a step further and consider the necessity for these development projects to be developed for profit rather than for charity. Whilst charity work is not to be considered anything less than vital by the author in many contexts such as war zones, famine and other crisis in need of short-term solutions, the long-term solutions, as is generally accepted, require more than charity to allow true progress in terms of socio-economic development.

As is discussed in the book ‘Socio-Economic Challenges: The African Context’ by Henry Kyambalesa (see Resources for info), profit-led development leads to much more than is perhaps visible on the surface. I should mention here that profit-led development and the benefits I am about to discuss require a nation that has a free-market economy. Without this, in a market controlled by government, the idea of ‘profit-led’ does not apply, and therefore neither do its benefits. (However, this issue and others surrounding enabling environments for development are not something I am going to cover here, although expect a post or two on this soon…) What I do consider crucial is that where there is potential for a profit-led economy, key benefits can be gained from profit-led development compared to charity-led development.
The key benefit of a profit-led industry, as Kyambalesa explains, is competition. Competition leads to

‘Lower-prices, high-quality products, and greater variety and abundance of products.’

It seems that without this competition element, a product will likely stagnate, as there will be no incentive to improve it. Without this incentive and subsequent development, there will be no long-term development. This is explained by Kyambalesa:

‘We know too well that the affluence being enjoyed today in such countries as Canada, Japan and the United States today is the direct outcome of a relentless quest for innovation and more advanced forms of technology…by individuals and institutions in such countries.’

This seems to support the conclusion that without competition spurred by profit-led development, there will be no innovation, and without innovation, there will be no long-term development or subsequent affluence.

This concept can probably be demonstrated more clearly by this diagram:

Therefore, when considering appropriate development of technologies for Africa in future posts, I will be considering whether the projects are profit-led or not, as well as whether they are needs-led or not. This is not to say that charity-led projects cannot have a positive effect, but in terms of long-term development they do not benefit from competition, and therefore are probably less likely to be sustainable. They can however clearly help a short-term immediate issue, and can also likely give good ideas for profit-led development, if a business strategy for its development can be applied.