Category: Africa

Urban Africa under Stress: Rethinking Economic Pressure in Cities

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叠测听J枚rg Wiegratz,听Catherine聽Dolan,听Wangui Kimari 补苍诲听Mario Schmidt

Research on economic pressure in Africa has been approached from diverse vantage points.聽 While economists frame 鈥榩ressure鈥� as a consequence of market failures, or as a such as or technological and political change, anthropologists who zoom in on the economic pressures individuals face in their , i.e. the lived experiences of those who are 鈥榰nder pressure鈥� have focused more on topics such as uncertainty and precarity. Alternatively, economic psychologists tend to naturalise pressure as an individual response to an adverse financial situation, eclipsing the varied ways pressure is intertwined with and shaped by broader societal transformations, power structures, social relations and obligations, and webs of exchange. There are currently no studies we are aware of that focus on the multi-faceted societal constitution of economic pressure in capitalist Africa, or that compare how pressure is experienced across gender, generation or socioeconomic groups.Read More »

Sub-Saharan countries are taking on more debt, and women will bear the brunt of repaying it

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By Matthew Barlow,听 and

By May 2020, every African nation had registered cases of COVID-19. By late July, cases had . A key factor in Africa鈥檚 struggle to mount a response to the pandemic (although not the only one) is that years of debt servicing have eroded states鈥� capacities to build strong health systems.

Research on crisis and pandemics in different parts of the world, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), shows that countries will respond to COVID-19 in two phases 鈥� the fiscal expansion phase, which involves a series of stimulus packages, and the fiscal contraction phase, which is characterised by austerity. In the case of COVID-19, these phases will require significant levels of financing. In a region with predominantly , debt and donor aid have become an alternative way for governments to finance state obligations. Currently is below the 60% (danger) threshold, which is way below the crisis levels of the 1980s and 1990s.

However, due to low credit ratings translating into poor interest rates. By 2018, 18 SSA countries were at of debt distress and governments made austerity cuts to public services to service their debt obligations. In 2018, 46 low-income countries 鈥� most of which are in SSA鈥� were spending more on debt servicing than on healthcare. Annually, SSA countries were spending an average of $70 per capita on (supplemented with $10 external assistance), in contrast to $442 in China and an average of in the EU.Read More »

Pandemic Discourses – A Global Contagion Demands Global Perspectives

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By Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, , and

As the inaugural issue of goes online, 4.7 million cases of COVID-19 and nearly 320,000 deaths have been recorded by the World Health Organization. The waves of cases and deaths have been closely followed by mounting economic losses, leaving governments, communities, and individuals scrambling to find appropriate responses. Yet, even in this uniquely global moment, popular discourse around the pandemic has remained trapped within familiar terms.

Media coverage has to a large extent focused on experiences of the United States and Europe. The frameworks developed to respond to the pandemic have also been US/Euro-centric, frequently inward-looking and isolationist, paying scant attention to expertise, knowledge, and capacities elsewhere. The experiences of other parts of the world, even when taken into account, often serve to cement prior prejudices. In response to this lopsided discussion, Pandemic Discourses aims to foster a more expansive dialogue that encompasses voices from the global South, including China, India, and beyond.Read More »

A regional response to help avoid rice shortages in West Africa

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Screenshot 2020-05-08 at 10.39.07As COVID-19 threatens rice imports from Asia, West Africa has an opportunity to reignite its ambitions of a regional value chain. But this would require coherence in policies and collective action.

As the COVID-19 pandemic reaches African shores, countries are grappling with questions of food security. This seems to confirm a longstanding concern among many countries to reduce their reliance on food imports. Take the example of rice in West Africa. In the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) up to . This external reliance is what led ECOWAS countries to agree to a 鈥楻ice Offensive鈥� in 2014, to boost production in the region. It is also behind the seen last year.

Regional value chains have often failed to take off because . But at extraordinary times like these, there is a case to give precedence to regional strategies rather than narrowly focusing on national responses.Read More »

When does state-permeated capitalism work?

Andreas N枚lkeLeave a comment

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In recent years, state capitalism has become an important buzzword in the development economics discussion (again). In view of the very different ways in which this term is used, Ilias Alami and Adam Dixon recently highlighted the dangers of using the term too loosely in an article in . In view of its recent popularity, state capitalism could suffer a similar fate to the terms “neoliberalism” or “financialisation” by becoming a very loose rallying cry without any significant analytical value. To overcome this problematic situation, Alami and Dixon propose that future research should (1) develop a theory of the capitalist state, (2) circumscribe the time horizons of state capitalism, and (3) locate state capitalism more precisely in territorial and geographical terms.

Although I am not sure whether the genius can be put back into the bottle by developing a unified theory of the state (too many different theoretical traditions are involved by now), I am very sympathetic to the latter two demands. Our recently published book “State-permeated Capitalism in Large Emerging Economies” () is a modest contribution to the latter goals. It deals with the economic development of Brazil, India, China and South Africa between 2000 and 2015. Departing from a 鈥�鈥� perspective, we have developed an ideal type of state-permeated capitalism – as opposed to liberal, coordinated and dependent capitalism – and examined to what extent large emerging markets are approaching this ideal type. Read More »

Abolish Africa鈥檚 Sovereign Debtors鈥� Prisons Now

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By Ndongo Samba Sylla and Peter Doyle

This piece was written before the Coronavirus outbreak. It is a timely proposal of action. Given the high exposure of the developing world to the virus in contexts of medical and other logistical shortcomings, the damage to their productive capacity is likely to be much more severe than for the advanced world. 聽This fact is already reflected in particularly sharp virus-stirred capital outflows from these countries. 聽All this greatly increases their exposure to the present global structures for sovereign insolvency, and the urgent need for those structures to be radically reformed鈥攁s the authors propose with the Pre-Emptive Sovereign Insolvency Regime (PSIR).

In a radical call for reform of the IMF鈥檚 pro-creditor and anti-growth approach to indebted countries in Africa, Ndongo Sylla and Peter Doyle argue that the continent has a choice to make. Creditors, using the IMF, must be stopped from forcing devastating output losses by imposing high primary surpluses.

Within a decade, just to keep up with the flow of new entrants into its labour markets, sub-Saharan Africa needs to create 20 million new jobs every year. This is a huge challenge. But it is also a thrilling opportunity鈥攖o harness the energy and creativity of all of Africa鈥檚 young.

However, after it reviews these issues in Africa, the IMF鈥檚 immediate message鈥攍iterally in the same sentence鈥攊s to pivot to 鈥榖udget cuts to secure debt sustainability!鈥�

That is plain wrong. For Africa to meet its development objectives, the IMF must radically change its pro-creditor anti-growth approach to highly indebted/insolvent countries.Read More »

Facing a liquidity tsunami? Profit, risk, and discipline in emerging markets

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In April 2012, at the White House on her first visit to the United States since her election in 2010, Brazilian president Brazil Dilma Rousseff scolded advanced capitalist economies for unleashing a 鈥�tsunami de liquidez鈥�, a 鈥榣iquidity tsunami鈥�, onto the developing world. The expression liquidity tsunami suggests that the sheer scale and volume of financial capital flows to developing and emerging markets had become an issue. It indicates that these quantities were overwhelming and could trigger devastating damages.聽

This in itself is puzzling. Have we not been told by development economists and practitioners that financial capital flowing into the poorer areas of the world economy is something good and desirable? That one of the main causes of underdevelopment is actually the lack of capital and domestic savings in developing countries, and that this should be compensated with foreign capital inflows? Following this line of reasoning, vast swathes of financial capital flowing into emerging markets surely should be seen as a boon.

And there was some truth to that. The capital flow bonanza from the mid-2000s to late 2013 (coupled with the primary commodity super-cycle) did deliver some benefits to emerging markets. It helped governments fund themselves at better conditions. It provided the material basis for significant redistribution via a number of social policies. It contributed to economic growth performances much higher than over the previous decade. It also made a minority of people much richer in a very short period of time. In sum, the capital flow boom temporarily helped deliver some economic and social gains, and this was instrumental in consolidating social contracts between governments and their populations.Read More »

Immanuel Wallerstein (1930-2019)

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Photo:聽Brennan Cavanaugh

Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein, historical social scientist,听, world systems theorist, intellectual provocateur and polymath, has passed 鈥� and with him has passed the last giant of the golden age of anti-Eurocentric history. Wallerstein was born in 1930, educated at Columbia, from where he successively received BA, MA, and PhD degrees by 1959. From his early adulthood, he was seasoned and beguiled by national liberation struggles, reading the texts of Nehru and Gandhi, attending youth congresses alongside participants from African countries in the heat of anti-colonial militance. His earliest works focused on colonial and post-colonial African governments, including a number of neglected monographs 补苍诲听聽document collections on the African liberation movements.Read More »