Modernization and the Crisis of Development in Africa

The Nigerian Experience

Jeremiah I. Dibua

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351152907
• Subtopic: Regional Studies

In this book, Jeremiah I. Dibua challenges prevailing notions of Africa's development crisis by drawing attention to the role of modernization as a way of understanding the nature and dynamics of the crisis, and how to overcome the problem of underdevelopment. He specifically focuses on Nigeria and its development trajectory since it exemplifies the crisis of underdevelopment in the continent. He explores various theoretical and empirical issues involved in understanding the crisis, including state, class, gender and culture, often neglected in analysis, from an interdisciplinary, radical political economy perspective. This is the first book to adopt such an approach and to develop a new framework for analyzing Nigeria's and Africa's development crisis. It will influence the debate on the development dilemma of African and Third World societies and will be of interest to scholars and students of race and ethnicity, modern African history, class analysis, gender studies, and development studies.

Chapter 1
Introduction: "Experts," Africanists and Africa's Development Crisis

Discussions on what can be termed the "African Dilemma" have largely focused on the issue of development. The post World War II period, which witnessed the beginning of the process of political decolonization in Africa, coincided with the rise of modernization and its ideological cousin, developmentalism. Developmental!sm experienced a great deal of intellectual ferment in the 1950s. Expectedly, development economics occupied a preeminent position in the developmentalist discourse. There was also a significant preoccupation with political development variously defined as political system, national integration, increasing secularization, increasing space for political participation, among others. However, a common concern of the political and economic developmentalists was how to "modernize" the respective "traditional," "primitive," "barbaric" and "backward" African societies through transplanting into them the "civilized" and "modern" features of Western societies. Walt Rostow's "stages of growth" theory became the "gospel" on which the "catechism" of modernization and economic developmentalism was based.¹ On the other hand, modernization and political developmentalist discourse was anchored on the structural-functionalist approach developed in the 1950s, by political scientists associated with the Social Science Research Council Committee on Comparative Politics (SSRC/CCP).² While stating that the political functions performed in each society regardless of its level of development are the same, these scholars emphasized differentiation in social structures and the erosion of traditional social institutions as crucial indices of political development.³ Essentially, the developmentalist perspective adopted the Weberian binary division of societies into polar opposites: traditional and modern.

The preoccupation with developmentalism became of even more abiding interest with the attainment of political independence by majority of African countries in the 1960s. Development economists, preoccupied with how to effect a rapid transformation of the economies of African countries from their "traditional" state to a "modern" state, placed great faith on development planning. Scholars interested in political development were more interested in the issue of nation-building, a process that was expected to result in the replacement of the "traditional" structures of African societies with transplanted "modern" structures.⁴ Development economists adopted a state-centrist approach, which eschewed politics and regarded a developmental and authoritarian state as the primary agency for promoting economic transformation through the instrumentality of development planning. This was in contrast with political development scholars who adopted a more society-centrist approach and saw the state as an arena of political struggles for the authoritative distribution of scarce resources, rather than as the primary agency for national development. However, the shared belief of development economists and political development scholars on modernization and the linear conception of development made them to link authoritarian state or authoritarian political organization to rapid economic development.⁵ Indeed, the 1960s and 1970s witnessed the proliferation of modernist, state-centrist and developmentalist works on Africa.

In any case, the pervading interest on developmentahsm, created the opportunity for sending many Western "experts" to African countries by Western governments, international financial institutions, and Western-based aid agencies, to help in bringing about the rapid "modernization" of "traditional" and "backward" African societies. As noted by John Toye, the modernization paradigm fostered a situation in which Western "experts" occupied "an extremely prominent and powerful position as guides and advisers," in African and other non-Western countries.⁶ Development economists were the greatest beneficiaries from this enterprise as they were widely sought after to help in formulating development strategies. Based on often-cursory visits to Africa and without collecting sufficient data, these "experts" drew up elaborate development plans and programs, even if as some of them conceded, this amounted to "planning without facts."⁷ Underlying these plans and programs were prescriptions on how to promote development by replicating the "stages of growth" of the European countries. In spite of the fact that the prescriptions of the "experts" were not normally based on extensive empirical evidence and failed to take into account the socio-economic realities of the respective African countries, modernist scholars did not blame the shortcomings of the prescriptions for the failure of the development programs. Rather, the argument usually made is that the recommendations of the "experts" were sound but the programs failed because of internal irrationalities such as poor implementation, corruption, neo-patrimonialism, etc.

Nevertheless, the African economic crisis, which became acute from the 1980s, led to the neoliberal revolution anchored on the neoclassical economism championed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the public choice school largely championed by North American-based Africanists. This new orthodoxy blamed excessive state intervention and the resultant anti-market policies, as well as the neo-patrimonial nature and rent-seeking proclivity of policy makers for the crisis. The new orthodoxy therefore advocated state-retrenching policies that would lead to the ascendancy of market forces and the enthronement of liberal democracy and good governance as the solution to Africa's economic crisis. These policies were embodied in the World Bank sponsored Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) and the linkage of these programs to democratization.

Like the developmentalist era, the new neoliberal orthodoxy created opportunities for a new generation of "experts," this time, mainly monetary economists to be sent to African countries to assist in drawing up structural adjustment programs. Furthermore, like their development economists' precursors, the new "experts" occupied very influential positions in the policy-making bodies, and financial agencies and institutions of African countries. In fact, they occupied strategic positions in the central banks and the ministries of finance of these countries, as clearly exemplified by the case of Ghana - the so-called star pupil of structural adjustment in Africa. In addition, domestic "experts" who had been affiliated with the IFIs were appointed into strategic government positions in African countries. In Nigeria for instance, Idika Kalu Idika, a former World Bank official who was appointed as the country's minister of finance, presided over the introduction of the structural adjustment program in 1986. Furthermore, Olusegun Obasanjo's second term in office as Nigeria's president, which began in 2003, saw the appointment of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former World Bank vice president as the country's minister of finance and Charles Soludo, who had been associated with the World Bank as the governor of the central bank.⁸ However, the implementations of the neoliberal policies worsened, rather than improve the economic crisis of the respective African countries. Reminiscent of the modernization scholars of the 1960s and 1970s, the neo-modernization advocates of the neoliberal orthodoxy exonerated the "experts" while blaming internal factors, such as poor implementation, neo-patrimonialism and corruption for the failure of the reform programs. They argued that the neoliberal policies, which were fundamentally, sound, rational and sought to restore rationality to African economies, failed because of the irrational and neo-patrimonial nature of the African state systems and societies. This exoneration of the "experts" is clearly faulty because their prescriptions were not based on concrete analysis of the African reality; rather, they sought to subordinate the African reality to preconceived theories, models and paradigms.

James Ferguson has noted that most "experts" who formulate development policies in Africa, often demonstrate a startling ignorance of the realities of the locale that their policies are intended to help. Indeed, development "experts" and institutions generate their own forms of discourse, and this discourse simultaneously constructs the locality as a particular kind of knowledge while creating a structure of knowledge around the object of development. Development policies are therefore organized on the basis of this inadequately conceptualized structure of knowledge.⁹

Indeed, the discussions of Africa's development trajectory and the economic crisis have revolved around two broad themes: the state and individual/collective values. These themes, which are squarely situated within the modernization paradigm, have been largely based on the Weberian perspective. However, of great significance is the fact that Western-based Afiicanists have disproportionately dominated the discourse. According to Kwesi Yankah, this dominance is manifested in "the complete alienation of scholarly authority to the Western academy, which dictates the paradigms and metalanguage in which . . . (African) reality should be ordered, as well as controls the strategic outlets of knowledge dissemination."¹⁰ Nevertheless, the commitment of Western Africanists to Weberian themes and their modernist perspective resulted in a situation in which it was deemed that the African reality could only be more relevantly analyzed by finding a comparable stage in early modern European history. This Eurocentric and universalist approach not only privileged the European experience over the African experience, but resulted in a situation in which the African reality was lifted out of context."¹¹ Central to this approach was the production of various paradigms and fancy appellations that perhaps, inadvertently promoted what amounted to the "pathologization" of the African experience.¹² In the process, the specificity of the African situation was missed.

What accounts for the dominant position of Western-based Africanists in the analysis of Africa's development trajectory, and the African experience in general? In answering this question, Tiyambe Zeleza stated that the dominance is a reflection of "the historical and contemporary relations of domination and dependency between Africa and the West," and that "the production of knowledge is related to the structures of power." Zeleza further argued that "the way in which the field of African studies has historically been imprisoned by languages, epistemologies and discourses that are externalist, often means that . . . Africa becomes no more than an empirical lab to test pretentiously universalistic models, theories and paradigms," developed by Western Africanists.¹³ This externalist orientation and the claim to universalistic perspective is particularly applicable to the field of political science where Western based scholars, especially North American Africanists, have been very prolific in periodically churning out adjectival phrases and models that purportedly explain the African reality.

Nevertheless, the epistemological dominance of Western Africanist discourse is equally prevalent in the branches of African studies in which African based scholars, at least in the 1960s and 1970s, played a leading role. A significant example is the field of African history, which was largely developed by African based historians in response to the denigration of the African past by colonialist and imperialist historians. While the resultant African historiography greatly helped to disprove the myths and lies propagated about the African past and, therefore, helped to rehabilitate the African past, the scholars could not escape from the Western epistemological traditions under which they were trained. This gave rise to an African historiography that was based on Western empiricist and universalistic tradition and therefore uncritically accepted the modernization paradigm.¹⁴ This for instance, accounted for the attempts at seeking "modernizers" in the African past.

In essence, the modernization paradigm in trying to seek meaning and relevance in the African experience, only to the extent that it approximates or mirrors a specific stage in European history, promoted the distortion of the African experience. It tended to foster a racist and imperialist perspective that completely denigrated the African culture and practices and, so, created a situation in which these indigenous factors were portrayed as irrelevant, and indeed hindrances, to Africa's development. The liberal/neoliberal political economy of markets and liberal democracy fostered by the modernist scholars and "experts" is therefore out of tune with the realities of the African situation. This paradigm helped to entrench the peripheral location of African countries in the international capitalist system. The consequences of this peripheral location have been extremely detrimental to Africa's development.¹⁵ The liberal/neoliberal political economy perspective thus helped to aggravate the development crisis rather than promote development.

Scholars operating from what can be termed the radical political economy perspective have vigorously challenged the prescriptions of the modernist liberal/neoliberal political economy advocates. Apart from subjecting the modernization paradigm to serious criticism, they put the main blame for Africa's development crisis on the peripheral location of African countries in the global capitalist system. As noted by Adebayo Olukoshi, "the insights that emanate from the perspectives of the radical political economy school appear to be far closer to reality in much of Africa than the positions conveyed by the neo-liberal 'political economy'/public choice theorists."¹⁶ However, while the radical political economy school clearly interrogated the issues of dependency, authoritarianism and the role of the state, much attention was not paid to significant issues like gender and culture that are crucial for a more balanced and elaborate analysis of the crisis of development in Africa.

This book, then, aims at interrogating the central role modernization played in Africa's development trajectory, and the paradigm's contribution to the crisis of development and the entrenchment of the peripheral role of African countries in the global capitalist system. The book demonstrates that contrary to the popularly held belief, the influence of modernization did not end with the decline of development economics in the late 1970s. It states that the neoliberal political economy as manifested in the structural adjustment programs, good governance and liberal democracy projects from the 1980s, were firmly situated within the modernization paradigm. The book combines elaborate theoretical and empirical analyses in drawing attention to the dialectical and contradictory relationships between modernization, and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: "Experts," Africanists and Africa's Development Crisis
• 2 Received Wisdom and Africa's Development Trajectory
• 3 Colonial Antecedents
• 4 Democratic Experiments and Sustainable Democracy
• 5 Technology Transfer and the Crisis of Industrialization
• 6 The Dialectics of Agricultural Transformation
• 7 Oil and Economic Development Strategies, 1970-1986
• 8 Economic Crisis and Structural Adjustment Program
• 9 State, Youth and Women's Movements, 1986-1998
• 10 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index