Category: Africa

The Limitations of Zimbabwe鈥檚 Contenting Political Economy Paradigms

tinashenyamunda1 Comment

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As the 2018 elections in Zimbabwe draw near, the political contest on which political party is best suited to steer the country towards a better future will be dominated by the economic agenda during campaigns. The kind of language that both ZANU PF and the opposition coalition led by the MDC (M) will use to persuade the electorate has become all too familiar.

On the one hand will be the nationalist/patriotic discourse celebrating land reform and advancing the programme for indigenisation and economic empowerment. Inherently connected to that is a sharp criticism of global imperial machinations against Zimbabwe through sanctions against a party determined to defend the fruits of its economic transformation following the fast track land reform programme. Underlying this discourse is the argument that Zimbabwe is using local economic transformation to challenge the worst excesses of enduring global imperialism. ZANU PF will again depict the opposition, particularly the MDC, as a movement that is severely compromised by collusion with the imperialist west to the extent that it will struggle to balance local national interests against those of the British and American governments.

Offering an alternative narrative to this discourse is opposition politics that will claim that the more immediate struggle is against nationalist authoritarianism. Making reference to the unending economic crisis, the opposition will argue that the ruling party presided over a poor human rights record, economic collapse characterised by high deindustrialisation, record unemployment, the informalisation of the economy and hyperinflation in the period between 2000 to 2009; as well as its contrasting current excesses of severe illiquidity. The suggested alternative will be re-engagement with the global economy through attracting investment and creating jobs for all.Read More »

The Forthcoming 2018 Elections in Zimbabwe: A Gaze from the Economic Lens

tinashenyamundaLeave a comment

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This blog post attempts to proffer insights on the possible influence of prevailing economic circumstances and how they may play out in political dynamics in the run-up to the 2018 elections. Zimbabwean politics has been intensely competitive since the formation of the MDC in 1999, giving the ruling ZANU PF the most effective challenge since independence. Nowhere, however, did the opposition come any closer to clinching electoral victory than in 2008 where they were eventually talked into sharing power after a violent build up to the run-off elections. The two parties will face each other again in 2018 and the question that remains is whether the efforts at 鈥榞rand coalition鈥� building will address the deficiencies of the opposition. However, as 2018 draws near, it is becoming crystal clear that the structural constraints facing the economy is already setting the battlelines for political parties. Therefore, debates on 鈥榞rand coalition鈥� building in one way or another will have to address the question of the economy in a manner that will resonate with the ordinary men. The political parties that will see beyond electoral fraud and malpractices in their strategies will most likely have more traction with voters.Read More »

Lessons from Kaundanomics

grievechelwaLeave a comment

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A story is told that a few years after independence in 1964, Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia鈥檚 first president, visited one of the mines in the mineral rich Copperbelt Province and was immediately struck by the complete absence of Zambians in senior management positions. He proceeded to ask the mine owners as to when they reasonably thought Zambians would be ready to occupy positions of influence within the country鈥檚 mining sector. With straight faces, the mine owners responded 鈥渘ot before 2003, Mr. President.鈥�Read More »

An Economic Strategy for The Gambia?

Sanjay G Reddy1 Comment

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I was听privileged recently to spend a little time in The Gambia, whose people recently overthrew a megalomaniacal, authoritarian and in many respects vicious President, Yahyeh Jammeh, in an extraordinary democratic moment, due to their courage and the timely supportive action of other countries in West Africa (and very little if at all due to support from major powers, apart from their role in placing some effective limits on prior abuses and eventually supporting a Security Council resolution that helped to legitimize the ECOWAS action).

I was able to observe a moving event in which members of the country鈥檚 diaspora, from Alaska to Taiwan and from Cape Verde to Sweden, most of whom were active in opposition (and quite a number of whom were highly educated professionals successful in the countries to which they have departed) assembled to meet the new President and to express their pleasure at the New Gambia as well as their sincere hopes for the future. Conversations with ordinary Gambians reveal general relief and enormous optimism. Arguably, the current juncture provides the first opportunity since the country鈥檚 independence in 1965 for a broad ranging public conversation on the ends and means of development.Read More »

The Financialization of Africa鈥檚 Development

Richard Itaman4 Comments

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Financial development has gained prominence in Africa. Only with slight reservation around the regulatory environment, most country and regional studies of financial development paint a strikingly positive picture of its impact on growth, poverty and inequality. [i] This optimism with finance in Africa is corroborated with increase in financial flows, expansion of commercial bank branches, growth of regional banks, rise in microcredit institutions and success of mobile payment systems. [ii] However, poverty and inequality remain persistently high. There are more poor people in Africa today than in 1990, and 7 of the 10 most unequal countries in the world are in Africa. [iii] Hardly has any progress been made in addressing a most obstinate infrastructure gap unsettling the continent. In addition, Africa鈥檚 most recent average growth of 1.5 per cent is at its lowest in two decades. As such, the underscored belief in financial development as a driver of progress is exaggerated, since it seems to disregard the immediate needs of the people on the continent.

For these reasons, a growing body of literature now demonstrates wariness with the financial development narrative. An aspect of this literature reveals that the success story of microfinance in Africa is not quite what the proponents claim it to be. There is evidence of how the poor were plunged into a crisis of over-indebtedness in South Africa, through microfinance lending. By 2012, the country鈥檚 debt amounted to a staggering 75 per cent of disposable income. [iv] This experience contradicts the proposed poverty alleviating effects of microfinance. Like other forms of finance, its dominant motivation has been found to be profit seeking rather than poverty alleviation. Similar caution has been expressed about the celebrated rise of electronic payment systems,[v] prominent in Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. Yet, more than just caution is needed to ensure that the proliferation of finance does not continue to wield detrimental effects on economic development in African countries.Read More »

How Racist Rhodesia Did It And 鈥業ndependent鈥� Zimbabwe Is Getting It Wrong: Comparing Currency and Finance Under Sanctions

tinashenyamundaLeave a comment

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Although Zimbabwe was the victorious outcome of a nationalist struggle against Rhodesia, there were significant continuities in the country鈥檚 economic structures in the first two decades of independence. The government exhibited limited commitment to land reform and economic indigenisation. Even though the ZANU PF government needed to be tactful not to upset historical structures of Zimbabwe鈥檚 economic inheritance, it needed to strike a delicate balance and undertake some form of transformation to maximise the country鈥檚 future prospects. However, limited progress was achieved in terms of economic transformation in the first twenty years of independence, resulting in political disaffection in the 1990s.

To retain political support at the turn of the twenty first century, the state undertook sudden and radical measures aimed at transforming the racial structure of the economy, resulting in the Fast Track Land Reform Programme. However, the racial undertone and process of this overdue exercise was problematic. Moreover, land reform did more than destabilise race relations. Although a steady decline had started in the early 1990s under the weight of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP), land reform prompted rapid economic collapse. The most visible symptom of this was inflation. With its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) suspended at the World Bank and with its government officials facing European Union and American sanctions, these challenges ushered in a deepening political and economic crisis. By comparison, Rhodesian history had also been characterised by political conflict and international sanctions between 1966 and 1979.Read More »

Re-centering Inequality in African Economic History

Alden Young3 Comments

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African economic history today lacks a literature to provide an accurate portrayal of economic growth in Africa during the decades after the Second World War. [1] The scholarly field of African Studies has exacerbated problems caused by the lack of synthetic works on African economic history or discussions of national or regional policymaking, because of its focus on localized studies often undertaken with an anthropological focus. One of the fathers of the anthropological turn in African history, Steven Feierman noted in 1999 that the success of his methodology was making it increasingly difficult to tell African history at a macro-level on its own terms. [2]听 Read More »

Consequences of Deindustrialization in Brazil and South Africa, and Potential Remedies

jpellg1 Comment

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In a previous post, I wrote about the global trend of premature deindustrialization; the trend towards lower levels of industrial employment, and a shift away from industrial employment at lower levels of per capita income, and how the effects on human well-being of these trends are not yet clearly understood. An important question in understanding the impact of these changing structural patterns on individuals鈥� well-being is to whether either a lifting of the living standards of those not in formal employment, or the generation of employment to replace the manufacturing employment, is taking place.

, I illustrated how combining a household level indicator of well-being with decomposition of change analysis can shed light on these questions by focusing on two specific episodes of growth; South Africa from 1996 to 2007 and Brazil from 1991 to 2010. Using Census data from , I created indices of well-being on a scale of 0-100, using indicators such as child survival rate, access to clean water and electricity, and educations levels, culled from census data. Next, each household was assigned to a 鈥渢ype鈥� based on sectoral employment of the household head and urban/rural location, and average household scores were calculated for each type. A decomposition of change analysis was then used to assign improvement in well-being to improvement within the types and shifts in population between these types.Read More »