Tradition, Culture and Development in Africa

Historical Lessons for Modern Development Planning

Ambe J Njoh, Ambe J. Njoh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351878326
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

The fact that Africa continues to lag behind all regions of the world on every indicator of development is hardly contentious. However, there is fierce debate on why this should be the case, despite national and international efforts to reverse this situation. While this book does not attempt to answer this question per se, it addresses a largely ignored, but important issue, which might provide some insights into the matter. This issue is the link between culture/tradition and socio-economic development in Africa. By weaving a common thread through these concepts, this book breaks new ground in the discourse on development. It highlights the differences between Euro-centric culture, which is rooted in capitalist ideology and Protestant ethic, and traditional African culture, where concepts such as capital accumulation, entrepreneurial attitudes and material wealth are not of top priority. In doing so, it dispels popular myths, stereotypes and distortions, as well as discounting misleading accounts about major aspects of African culture and traditional practices.

Chapter 1
The Culture—Development Nexus

Introduction

Africa continues to lag behind all regions of the world on every established indicator of development. This point is hardly contentious. What constitutes the subject of fierce and often, rancorous debate is the question of why the continent remains perpetually underdeveloped despite national and international efforts to reverse the nightmarish situation. This question is not only germane, but also, its centrality in the discourse on development is undeniable. Yet this book is not about the causes of Africa’s underdevelopment per se. Rather, it is about how African customary and traditional practices, and the efforts to obliterate these practices by agents of Western civilization affect, or can potentially affect, socio-economic development in Africa. The book has two secondary objectives. The first is to contribute to efforts seeking to dispel the myth of pre-colonial Africa as a ‘dark continent.’ It accomplishes this objective by highlighting the accomplishments of Africans in domains such as family and social welfare, gender relations, health care, public administration, architecture and housing, prior to the European conquest. The second is to interrogate arguments that advocate supplanting African culture and tradition with Euro-centric values as a panacea for Africa’s development quandary.

The link between culture and development

At the heart of one strand of the debate surrounding Africa’s development/ underdevelopment is African culture. I employ this obstinate and nebulous term here, and throughout this book, to refer to the knowledge, beliefs, customs, morals, tradition and habits of African people. The implied link between culture and development is itself debatable. In its policy report, ‘Our Creative Diversity,’ The World Commission on Culture and Development (WCCD)¹ (hereafter, the Commission), questions the wisdom of inferring a link between culture and development. The report, written under the leadership of former UN Secretary General, Javier Perez de Cuellar, opines that it is meaningless to focalize on this nebulous relationship given especially that development is part of a people’s culture. The report further laments what it perceives as ambiguities arising from the ideological question of whether ‘culture’ is at once the aim and end of ‘development’ (WCCD, 1995).

De Cuellar and his colleagues commit a number of common errors. First, they fail to decouple the notion of development. In this regard, they define development ‘as a process that enhances the effective freedom of the people involved to pursue whatever they have reason to value’ (WCCD, 1995: 1). Second, they ignore the essence of development as a universal concept. In fact, by treating culture as an element, rather than an instrument, of development, they imply that some cultures may be oblivious, while others may be fully aware of, and attentive to, development since not all elements constitute common denominators in every culture. Nothing could be further from the truth. To be sure, every culture the world over has some concept of development and aspires to attain it. The difference surfaces only when the concept is decoupled and deconstructed. Such an exercise may reveal that the notion of what constitutes development in one culture may differ dramatically from, and in some cases conflict sharply with, what comprises development in another. For example, Euro-centric culture, in which the capitalist ideology and Protestant ethic are rooted, places much premium on capital accumulation, entrepreneurial attitudes, and material wealth inter alia. As we shall see, while these attributes are not completely absent, they are certainly not at the top of the priority ladder, in the context of traditional Africa.

What the foregoing narrative suggests is that while development may be a universal objective, as a concept, development lays no claim to a universal definition. To be sure, the concept assumes a bewildering variety of meanings. I have no intention of either regurgitating or analyzing the various meanings that are often associated with the concept of development here. However, it is necessary to reexamine the Commission’s definition stated above. This definition, the Commission claims, deviates significantly from orthodox conceptualization schemes particularly because of its sensitivity to varying cultural values.

However, the rather tenuous definition implies that there is hardly any human activity that does not qualify as development. All it takes to be viewed as development is for the activity to be conducted by ‘a people,’ who have reason to value such an activity. Yet, there is a plethora of human activity and actions such as racial and gender-based discrimination, human rights abuse, bribery and corruption, which although some ‘people have reason to value,’ can by no means be regarded as development. Certain aspects of cultural and traditional practices in Africa in particular and other parts of the world in general, encourage behavior that constitutes impediments to development, however it may be defined. The question is: which are these aspects? This question is at the heart of the discussion in this book.

The incrimination of African culture as a leading cause of (socio-economic) ‘backwardness’ led European colonial and imperial authorities to take a number of dubious actions in Africa. For instance, to facilitate attainment of the economic objectives of the colonial enterprise, European colonial authorities and their collaborators proceeded with unparalleled gusto to institute policies designed specifically to supplant African culture and traditional practices with Euro-centric varieties. Thus, colonial authorities and other disciples of Western civilization believe that Euro-centric values are more likely than their African equivalents to facilitate the attainment of development objectives in Africa. This book challenges this belief, which has always been central to colonial and post-colonial development initiatives in Africa. The book essentially contends that the Eurocentric values, customs and traditions that have been adopted in Africa since the colonial era have hurt, rather than helped the development process. African traditional practices and culture hold more promise than Euro-centric equivalents in many domains, including but not limited to, primary healthcare, the family, gender relations, community development, housing, resource mobilization, self-help development initiatives, and local administration.

The civilizing mission of European colonialism

Efforts along these lines constituted part of a meticulous plan to ‘civilize,’ or to state it more accurately, ‘Europeanize,’ Africans. The concern with African culture as a hurdle to European colonial development objectives led some European powers such as France to redefine and couch their colonial goals in terms of a mission to civilize (or la mission civilisatrice) what they viewed as the ‘backward’ and ‘primitive’ people of Africa. It is therefore hardly any wonder that the French were pre-occupied with acculturating and assimilating Africans. Having said that, it is important to state for the record, that there is a penchant, on the part of analysts of European colonialism in Africa, to associate acculturation and assimilation as objectives of the colonial enterprise, exclusively with the French. Yet, colonial powers, without exception, were bent on assimilating and acculturating Africans. The results were, and continue to be, clashes or crises of cultures, or what I herein refer to as ‘acculturation crises.’ The principal objective of acculturation and assimilation efforts on the part of colonial powers was to transform Africans into ‘Black Europeans.’ Part of these elaborate efforts entailed a heavy dose of ethnocentricity on the part of Europeans and propaganda campaigns designed to deride African traditional practices while exalting European values.

The European mission to ‘civilize’ Africans met with fierce resistance on the ground. Most Africans were unimpressed by European culture and clung tightly to their traditional practices and institutions. In response, colonial authorities proceeded to employ a number of measures, including force, to inculcate European values in what they considered to be ‘barbarians.’ In most cases, a carrot-and-stick approach was employed. Thus, for instance, the French labeled Africans who had subjected themselves to French or European acculturation and assimilation as ‘les evolués’ and accorded them preferential treatment in society.² Those who insisted on maintaining their ‘Africanness’ were subjected to discrimination and exclusion from colonial social, economic and political activities. The assimilated and acculturated individuals had the privilege of living in European-style housing located in highly sought-after areas, close to the European Quarters. Additionally, they were given employment in the colonial civil service, and enjoyed the attendant social and economic benefits.

Christianity and the erosion of African culture

Christian missionaries, who worked alongside colonial authorities, were also active in the acculturation and assimilation process. They had moved very early during the colonial era to spread the gospel throughout Africa. Prominent amongst the many hurdles they encountered were African traditional practices, which they viewed as antithetical to Christian doctrines. If Christian missionaries viewed African culture as a hurdle, they hardly considered it to be insurmountable. From the following utterance by one missionary authority, it is arguable that African culture was seen as constituting no more than a menace that could/can be eradicated with facility.

The Army of the Cause, advancing at the bidding of the Lord to conquer the hearts of men, can never be defeated, but its rate of advance can be slowed down by acts of unwisdom and ignorance on the part of its supporters (Universal House of Justice, On-Line).

Hence, as their colonial counterparts, missionaries were always bent on supplanting African spiritualism and belief systems with Eurocentric Christian versions. Christianity entailed baptism, which went along with accepting a Eurocentric Christian name. This invariably supplanted the new Christian’s African name. Such was an important element in the acculturation process – it was symptomatic of ‘modernity.’ Christians and their families had the privilege of receiving ‘modern’ medical care and their children could attend mission schools. These were but a few of the benefits reserved for Africans who decided in favor of separating themselves from their traditional reality and existence. Those who resisted this transformation were pejoratively labeled as ‘pagans’ or ‘animists’ and denied any socio-economic benefits that were extended to Christians.

We will return to these issues a little later in this chapter and will delve into them in more detail in the chapters that follow. For the moment, suffice to state that efforts to eradicate African traditional practices were never preceded by any meaningful attempt to determine their actual negative and positive attributes. The rationale for their elimination was simply predicated on the fact that they were of African origin and anything African was invariably inferior and worthless in the eyes of Europeans. The only exceptions were the continent’s natural resources, which Europeans were determined to exploit at all cost.

Development economists and cultural erosion

At the eve of independence for most African countries in the 1950s, development economists and international development agencies were beginning to seriously contemplate the necessary strategies for facilitating development in the emerging nations. Again, the view that African culture was antithetical to socio-economic development re-asserted its dominance. The concept of development then was narrowly defined in exclusively economic terms. Thus, development was seen as constituting a sustained rise in gross national product (GNP).

Leading development economists such as Walt Rostow suggested that it was impossible for Africa to develop without abandoning its traditional practices and assuming Euro-centric cultural values, beliefs and ideology. Rostow summarized his views about the prerequisites for economic development, which entailed, as an absolute necessity, cultural transformation, in The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (1960). This work instantly became the Gospel of development, as one development agent after another went to work inculcating in Africans, Euro-centric cultural values, ideologies and philosophies. According to Rostow (1960), societies such as Africa were at the first of five stages that all societies must pass through in order to become developed. He referred to societies at this first stage as ‘traditional societies.’ The other stages include, ‘the pre-condition for takeoff,’ ‘the take-off,’ ‘age of high mass-consumption,’ and ‘beyond consumption.’

The notion of traditional society

The term traditional society, clearly defined in the minds of the development economists of that time the continent of Africa, which many had come to see as the ‘Dark Continent.’ However, to be fair to Rostow, he grouped under this rubric the entire pre-Newtonian world, including Medieval Europe, the civilization of the Middle East, and the dynasties of China. The traditional society is known for its adherence to what Westerners consider ‘primitive values,’ with agriculture constituting its most dominant economic activity. Here, the extended family, village and clan play a predominant role in social organization. It is this organizational unit that owns land and other valuable entities in society. Members of traditional societies are also said to be risk-averse, remain oblivious to their environment and lack the ability to manipulate this environment to their economic advantage.

Believing that there was a ‘one best way’ to development, development economists, especially in the late-1950s and early-1960s argued that in order to develop, developing countries had to follow the same path that the contemporary developed countries had followed. In Africa, as stated earlier, the most significant impediment to this process was identified as the continent’s cultural practices and traditional institutions.

Re-conceptualizing development

As the 1960s drew to a close, some dissenting voices could be heard in the development economic community. These voices, prominent amongst which was that of Dudley Seers, began to question the sagacity of defining the concept development in strictly economic terms. In a seminal article captioned ‘The Meaning of Development,’ which appeared in The International Development Review, the official outlet of the Society for International Development, Seers made a persuasive case against defining the concept of development in exclusively economic terms (Seers, 1969). Such a definition, Seers argued, tended to ignore other important attributes of development, such as levels of unemployment, levels of socio-economic inequalities, levels of poverty, and other conditions to which citizens of any given country may be subjected. Eight years following the publication of this work, Seers re-visited the issue of defining development (see Seers, 1977). Conceding that his critique of the conceptualization of development in exclusively economic terms left something to be desired, he added yet another important indicator of development, namely level of dependence. Thus, according to Seers, a polity cannot be considered developed whilst it continues to depend on others to meet the basic needs of its people (Seers, 1977).

The concept of dependence as employed by Seers is broad enough to include anything from cultural to economic dependence. In this regard, it will be foolhardy to suggest that African countries adopt the development model that was adopted by European and other contemporary developed countries. To appreciate this, it is necessary to understand the notion of culture as encompassing a total way of life, which embraces how a people treat death, how they greet or receive a newborn, what they eat, what they wear – in fact, how they live (Rodney, 1981). Efforts to alter the taste and consumption habits of Africans, which were central to the assimilation and acculturation initiatives of imperial powers and other agents of Western civilization, went a good way to ensure the continent’s socio-economic and technological dependence on Europe in particular and the Western World in general.

Efforts to deconstruct the culture and traditional practices with a view to addressing the vital questions regarding the relationship between culture and development have been scant at best. This is particularly true in the case of Africa. This rationalizes, to a small degree, the view that African culture was antithetical to development, which held sway during the colonial era, the immediate post-colonial period and continues to be popular within some circles today. However, it is necessary to state that this view is largely unsubstantiated by empirical evidence.

African culture, an impediment to development?

The difference between African and Euro-centric culture alluded to earlier is arguably at the root of the view on the part of colonial powers and later, some development economists (e.g., Rostow, 1960; Bauer, 1972) that African culture is antithetical to development. For a long time, as mentioned above, this view reigned supreme and was seldom debated or challenged. Here, it is important to draw attention to the fact that the seemingly elusive concept of development was defined narrowly to include economic growth engendered by a rapid and sustained expansion of production, productivity and income per head. Even if we disregard the limitations of this narrow definition, can we meaningfully argue that all aspects of African culture and traditional practices are antithetical to development?

As much as I am unimpressed by any argument that indiscriminately incriminates all aspects of African culture as impediments to development, I am equally not persuaded by arguments that exalt every thread of this culture as a real or potential facilitator of development. Elsewhere, I have cautioned against the dangers of being beguiled by sentimentalism when discussing African culture and traditional practices ‘as such can be justifiably subjected to the same criticisms as its converse, ill-founded disparagement’ (Njoh, 1999: 31). More recent attempts at analyzing and refining the concept of development suffer from the same deficiencies as those of the late-1950s and 1960s. They have paid only passing attention to the link between culture and development. More importantly, hardly any effort has been made to determine the potency of Eurocentric culture and values vis-à-vis the African varieties they usually seek to supplant, as instruments of development. Consequently, when faced with the need to attain a development goal, planners and other agents of development tend to seek Western means while ignoring considerably more potent indigenous African alternatives.

Objective, focus and central questions of the book

An important objective of this book is to contribute to efforts addressed to reversing this tendency. The book differs in many ways from previous works that capriciously condemn (e.g., Rostow, 1960; Bauer, 1972), or indiscriminately endorse (e.g., Rodney, 1981; Jarrett, 1996), all aspects of African culture and traditional practices. First, its thematic focus is on the link between culture and development. Although t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• List of Figures and Tables
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• 1 The Culture–Development Nexus
• 2 African Accomplishments before the European Encounter
• 3 Colonialism, Christianity and the Erosion of African Culture
• 4 The Traditional African Family
• 5 Traditional Land Tenure Systems
• 6 Women, Sexuality and Properly Inheritance
• 7 Traditional African Administrative Systems
• 8 Traditional Resource Mobilization Strategies
• 9 Traditional Healthcare and Healing Strategies
• 10 Traditional Architecture and Housing
• 11 Development Implications of Tradition
• Bibliography
• Index