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Gods of Development, Demons of Underdevelopment and Western Salvation: A Critique of Development Discourse as a Sequel to the CODESRIA and OSSREA International Conferences on Development in Africa

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni*

After almost half a century of development promises in Africa, the poor have remained poor, inequalities have widened and the hopes for a better future have just remained an aspiration for the majority of Africans. This is a direct indictment on the mainstream development discourse and it raises concerns about what development is all about. This article is a critique of mainstream development discourse in Africa from a post-development critical perspective. It raises such key questions as: What is meant by development? Who is the author of development? Whose interests are embodied in mainstream development discourse? Why is development remaining an issue in Africa after half a century initiatives to develop Africa? What do we mean when we say Africa is underdeveloped? What do we want Africa to be like? All these are questions that are taken for granted in the debate on development in Africa. Finally the article grapples with the crucial issue of the way forward for Africa.

Towards the end of 2005, two premier pan-African research organizations in Africa- the Organization for Social Science Research in Eastern and Southern Africa (OSSREA), based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), based in Dakar, Senegal - decided to hold conferences with a focus on development in Africa. OSSREA’s theme was International Aid, Trade and Development in Africa: The Search for a Development Paradigm and the conference took place at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC) in Addis Ababa from the 21^st to the 23^rd of November 2005. CODESRIA’s theme was Rethinking African Development: Beyond Impasse, Towards Alternatives and the conference took place in Maputo, Mozambique from the 6^th to the 10^th of December 2005.

The fact that these two premier research organizations in Africa decided to focus on the common theme of development, particularly their focus on ‘rethinking development’ ‘beyond impasse,’ ‘towards alternatives’ and ‘the search for a development paradigm’ indicated a recognition of a fundamental problem within mainstream development thinking. Introducing the theme of the CODESRIA international conference in the CODESRIA Bulletin (2005, 4), Adebayo Olukoshi (Executive Secretary of CODESRIA) and Francis B. Nyamnjoh (Senior Programme Officer of CODESRIA) noted the ‘deep-seated poverty of imagination’ characterizing contemporary development debate and the ‘current stalemate in thinking and policy.’ On the other hand, OSSREA’s international conference preamble calling for papers highlighted the following pertinent issues related to the development of the African continent:

Africa is currently engulfed in multifaceted challenges that are impeding sustainable development.

The continent is portrayed as a major repository of human tragedies resulting from a combination of human folly and natural adversities.

Africa suffers from unfavourable conditions grounded in the global political economy.

The effects of globalization in Africa manifest themselves through negative balance of payment, heavy dependence on bilateral and multilateral aid and the accumulated debt burden.

Relevant development approaches predicated on the African historical context are needed to mediate in the relationship between international aid, trade and development.

Africa’s place in the global political economy is determined by international division of labour that relegates the developing world in general and Africa in particular to peripheral positions.

Finally there is need for underlying causes of the current development challenges facing the continent to be critically examined (OSSREA 2005).

What is noticeable are some variations in the focus and concentration of the two international conferences. For CODESRIA, the focus was on re-thinking the development discourse itself, and for OSSREA the focus was on re-thinking causes of Africa’s current development challenges. This article takes the CODESRIA’s path of re-thinking the development paradigm itself and critically reviews of the mainstream development discourse which makes the Northern industrialized nations ‘gods of development’ with the right to issue ‘development commandments’ to Africans, who in turn, are perceived as the ‘demons of underdevelopment’ that require exorcism by the Western development prophets such as the World Bank (WB), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO). Western aid in mainstream development discourse is presented as the ‘salvation’ for Africa, and Western intervention in Africa is portrayed as benevolence from the ‘gracious gods of development’ and their prophets.

My view is that the debate on development in Africa must break from this patronizing position. Africa needs to define its own development path without being receptive to ill-defined, ill-conceived and ill-contextualized Western wisdom. Africans are their own liberators from the clutches of globalization which is a disguised form of imperialism. This call was made by the founding fathers of African states like Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere, but is even more crucial now when Africans and the African continent are being pulled more and more into a global village full of sharks that wish to devour African resources once more. It is crucial now as a spirit of renewal when some Africans have reached the TINA (There is No Alternative to Globalization) mode. It is crucial now when the Northern industrial countries are becoming more and more interested in intervening in African affairs under the guise of poverty alleviation and poverty reduction initiatives. It is crucial now when the mainstream development discourse has entered the phase of ill-defined ‘strategic partnerships’ with Africa that are couched in the oppressive donor-recipient relationship. It is crucial now when the African governments are accounting more and more to the donors than to their people. The time for African activism is now when the Northern industrialized nations are renewing the historical civilizing mission and White Man’s Burden that was used to justify colonialism and imperialism. My call is for Africa to unite if it is to fight the corrosive forces of globalization that are now covered under strategic partnerships.

The current toying with strategic partnerships between Africa and the Northern developed countries is just a disguised surrender by our leaders to the forces of neo-liberalism and globalization. The widely discussed New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) document is nothing to celebrate but a nest of contradictions that reflects the attempt by our leaders to appease the Northern industrialized countries for more donations that keep the umbilical cord between African elites and the Northern elites with a very negative impact on the African poor. The drafters of NEPAD had one foot in Africa and the other foot in the North. The document is reflecting a people with two hearts, people trying to serve two masters at the same time. This has created serious problems for African development project. The African political elites are not the right people to stir Africa out of the quagmire of underdevelopment. These are people whom as Paul Tiyambe Zeleza noted, are suffering from double consciousness, people who are straddling, often uneasily, coloniality and its modernist claims, and nativity and its supposed atavism. These people are feeling neither comfortable with Africa (which bred them) nor with Europe and America (which they were socialized to admire). These are dangerous people who have learnt to talk and dream in both indigenous and imported languages.² It is their diabolic spirit that inspired NEPAD as a loadstar of African development in this century.

My task in this essay is to raise a number of problematic issues related to the search for African development, beginning with problematising development itself. What is development? This is a key question which seems to be taken for granted by African scholars to the extent of assuming that it is a self explanatory term. To move beyond what Olukoshi and Nyamjoh (CODESRIA 2005, nos. 3, 4) terms ‘deep seated poverty of imagination’ and ‘stalemate in development thinking’ in Africa, a re-conceptualization and indigenization of the concept of development itself is called for. The question why the North is currently interested in African development, particularly after the 9/11 terrorist disaster in the United States of America, must also be subjected to critical analysis by African scholars. This is critical if we are to avoid falling into the trap of serving the interests of the North while the mother continent is perishing and its people are dying of disease and hunger.

Since its dawn, which is conveniently traced back to President Harry Truman’s inaugural speech in January 1949, mainstream development discourse has emphasized the fact that the causes of African development problems lie within the continent and the solutions lie outside the continent. Whether the development trajectory is looked at from the ‘basic needs’ approach of the 1970s, the ‘structural adjustment’ approach of the 1980s, the ‘good governance and neo-liberal’ approach of the 1990s or the current ‘strategic partnerships’ approach of this century where NEPAD is located, the rich Northern countries have posed as problem solvers and the poor countries of the South as a problem to be solved and largely passive recipients of Northern wisdom. The problem of underdevelopment is ‘African problem’ that needs Western intervention as problem solvers (Abrahamsen 2001). Everything in African domestic arena has gone terribly wrong, generating underdevelopment and requiring external remedy.

Rita Abrahamsen (2001, 2) notes that the other feature of the mainstream development discourse is the creation of hierarchies whereby the Northern industrialized states are placed in the apex of development and the African poor nations in the bottom level. This thinking invokes the idea of development in the image of the North. Anything different is not developed. The endpoint of development therefore remains largely imagined in terms of reaching the stage at which the North is, re-invoking the ghost of stages of development ala W.W. Rostow in Africa.

The act of conceiving development in Eurocentric terms has the effect of justifying the intervention of the North in the Third World (the South). As noted by Arturo Escobar (1995), the descriptions of Africa as underdeveloped and a problem to be solved played into the hands of the North which used it as a justification to intervene in Africa. Beginning with the notion of “civilizing mission” up to the current trends of strategic partnerships and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the North has not failed to use anything, even death, to justify its intervention in Africa. Development discourse is widely used to justify various initiatives and plans drawn by the North for Africa. Abrahamsen (2001, 3) wrote: ‘in the name of development, the continued right of the North to intervene and control, adapt and reshape the structures, practices and ways of life in the South is justified.’ Drawing intellectual insight from Michael Foucault and Antonio Gramsci, Abrahamsen noted that development discourse is intimately bound with prevailing structures and relations of power; he sees it as forming part of the multiple technologies of power employed in global politics that help to maintain and legitimise the North’s continued dominance and hegemony over the South.

Looked at from this perspective, the development discourse itself becomes a problem in Africa. Elisio Macamo (2005, 5) pointed out that “development is an argument, a fallacious one at that…development is a phlogiston of our times, an illusion that is at the centre of Africa’s failure to make good on the hard-won promises of independence”. He identified two ideas that are central to the notion of development: one is the belief that development describes the political, economic and social condition of Western countries. The other, which is even more important, is the assumption that any country which follows a set of policy recommendations that are thought to have led to the present condition of Western countries will attain a condition similar to them (Macamo 2005, 5). This is indeed a simplistic definition of development, seeing development as being similar to the West. The West has appropriated a position for itself in global politics that makes it the standard of measuring development in other parts of the world. A developed state must be similar to the Western nation-states. This thinking has generated even the dangerous ideas of re-colonization of Africa and re-introduction of colonial forms of trusteeship as a way to leap forward African nations into the stage where the West is.

It was from this type of thinking that Westerners developed arrogance and appropriated the wisdom of development as theirs which they have a moral duty to export to Africa where this wisdom was lacking. Today, the West stands on a high ground and lectures Africa on development. Some of the West’s ‘enlightened lectures’ recommend the following for Africa:

Commitment to democracy and human rights

Commitment to a free market economy

Commitment to rule of law

Commitment to fairness and transparency in political processes

Train its workforce

Giving education to the young

Bringing succour to the suffering poor

Observing gender equality

Observing the rights of the minorities

Conserving environment

Commenting on these so-called pre-conditions for development in Africa, Macamo (2005, 5) stated: ‘In other words, the very things which African countries are unable to do because their present condition prevents them from doing so are turned into preconditions for African development. Alas, these preconditions are precisely the properties of non-development.’ It is this wrong conception of development that is permeated by the equally erroneous conception of intervention that feeds into the patronizing idea that African development can only be brought about through enlightened outside intervention in order to correct what history, the environment, politics and culture have done wrong. Indeed there are two major problems with the current mainstream development trajectory: its conception is shot through with missionary undertones making the West the problem solvers in Africa while in reality they are part of the problem. The missionary undertones have the effect of absolving the West from some of the problems confronting Africa. Secondly, the practice of mainstream development discourse is shot through with disciplinary elements that have the effect of submitting African countries and Africans to monetary and fiscal discipline (Macamo 2005).

This is indeed a pertinent question that is sometimes overlooked by scholars. What do we mean when we say “Africa is underdeveloped”? What do we want Africa to be like for us to say, yes it is now developed? Here I will define development from the postmodernist constructivist perspective. Historically, development has functioned as a mechanism for socio-economic control, and politically, as an elitist project and practice of control, domination and exercise of power. Jonathan Crush (1995, 3) underscores that development is a powerful language which has historically been used as a tool to reorder space, imagine and transform societies, rewrite socio-economic and political landscapes and replace one reality with another. It has also functioned as the language through which people are constructed as objects to be acted upon and placed in a wretched category needing the ‘redemptive’ power of modernity. Its roots are traced to the Enlightenment idea of progress and the later ideas of European civilization (McMichael 2004, 286). It is associated with how Europe, after undergoing industrial revolution and the bourgeois liberal revolutions, glorified itself as a dominant civilization and producer of modernity ahead of other parts of the globe. McMichael (ibid) observes that Europeans transformed a particularistic conception of modernity into a universal human destiny. With the emergence of the United States of America as a superpower in the wake of the end of the Second World War (1939-1945), it envisioned a world in its own image. Likewise, President Harry Truman solidified the concept of development into a language and practice of social transformation and made it a key aspect of American global vision in 1949. Catherine Caulfield (1996, 480-81) argues that the formulation of development took place during the Cold War assuming the character of fighting the spread of communism.

Mainstream discourse on development was conceived by the West, particularly by the Americans after the Second World War as an ethical, ideological, economic, and political ‘beacon on the hill’ (Sachs 1992, 1). When this idea was exported to Africa it took the dimension of modernization where Africa was to live through the mirror image of the West. Sachs proceeded to argue that “development was the frame of reference for…[the] mixture of generosity, bribery and oppression which has characterised the policies [of the United States and the West] towards the South. [And] for almost half a century, good neighbourliness on the planet was conceived in the light of ‘development”.

Since the West constructed itself as the model of development and modernity, it was assumed that ‘underdeveloped’ countries could only overcome poverty, attain development and reach modernity if they mimicked the West. This thinking had the long term and dangerous effect of perpetual colonization of the imagination of non-Western societies and metamorphosing into an instrument for controlling social realities across the globe.

This analysis takes us to the idea of ‘underdeveloped Africa.’ What does it mean? Of course from a dependency perspective it describes how Europe underdeveloped Africa through slavery, imperialism, colonialism and neo-colonialism (Rodney 1972). This is not enough as an explanation and definition. More so, this thinking reinforces the othering of Africa by the West. What did Truman mean when he came up with the notion of ‘underdeveloped areas’? From a constructivist and postmodernist point of view, Truman was constructing a worldview, characterizing the South as the Other. Gustavo Esteva (1992, 7) points out that Truman was coining a homogenizing identity placing a diverse and hitherto heterogeneous South into “an inverted mirror of other’s reality: a mirror that belittles them and sends them off to the end of the queue”.

The notion of development cannot make sense without the corresponding notion of underdevelopment. It was a primary mechanism through which the South has been imagined and has in turn imagined itself, “thus marginalizing or precluding other ways of seeing or doing” (Escobar 1995, 212). This had the effect of colonising African imagination about development and plunging it into crisis, which is manifest today in the thinking about development. The idea of ‘developing’ the ‘underdeveloped areas’, particularly Africa, followed the earlier colonial logic of civilizing mission and the concept of the ‘Whiteman’s Burden’ (Sardar 1997, 44). Africa’s original path of development was elbowed out of existence and othered into traditions and myths. African indigenous thought was reduced into ‘everyday knowledge’ whereas European thought was elevated into ‘official knowledge.’ Eurocentric conception of development has thus succeeded in installing an enduring hegemonic worldview, colonized African intellectuals and leaders, and imposed a standard of judgment and a yardstick for measuring the social and political progress across the globe.

The confusion in Africa about development paradigm must be traced directly to this development in hegemonic Western thought. African leaders and policy makers are in complicity with this discourse. They are victims of mental colonization that makes them believe that the salvation for Africa will come from the West. This thinking seems to have even deepened in this century leading to the revival of the colonial idea of Euro-African development now disguised as partnerships between the West and Africa.

The ideology of Euro-Africa (L’Eurafrique) is a body of thought that originated during the heydays of colonial rule in Africa. The central thesis of the argument is that the fate of Europe and Africa is naturally and inextricably linked at the political, economic, social, and cultural levels. Guy Martin (2002) provides an interesting critique of this ideology of Euro-Africa when he contends that it is based on the twin concepts of complementarity and interdependence between Africa and Europe. The two continents are said to complement each other in almost every way and everything. Europe requires Africa’s raw materials, manpower and markets, while Africa needs the capital, technology and know-how of Europe (Martin 2002, 2).

France played a crucial role in promoting the economic logic of the Euro-African partnership during the hey days of colonialism and imperialism. In Francophone Africa, the names of Joseph Caillaux, Anton Zischka, and Eugene Guernier, among others, were very active in the nascent formulation of a Euro-Africa ideology at the beginning of the 20^th century. They worked very hard to justify and rationalize the colonial and imperial enterprise on the basis of the natural complementarity and resultant interdependence between Europe and Africa. One of these early proponents of the ideology of Euro-Africa had this to say: “The African soil is too poor for Africa to be able to do without Europe. The African sub-soil is too rich for Europe to be able to do without Africa. Thus, it must be recognized that Africa is an indispensable complement to Europe” (Quoted in Martin 2002, 6).

Carol Cosgrove-Sacks (2001, 273) repeated the basic contours of the ideology of Euro-Africa and highlighted the fact that Europe and Africa, as natural economic partners with strong historical ties, were assumed to be in an ideal position to convert this historical and economic relationship into modern vehicles to promote further interdependence of the two continents for mutual advantage.

The former Director of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, Enzo Grilli (1993, 332-3) provided a comprehensive critique of the notion of partnership between Europe and Africa premised on the ideology of EurAfrica in these words:

To begin with, relative factor endowments per se constitute a less than decisive determinant of production decisions and trade flows across countries and regions. The development of the natural endowment and the evolution of technology, as determinants of specialization and trade, are critically important, particularly if one of the parties is relatively undeveloped. Economic policies also play a key role in shaping the growth of undeveloped economies. In addition, apart from being based on static foundations and being neutral with respect to technological progress and economic policies, the notion of Euro-Africa was inimical to the aspirations of most developing countries in Africa and elsewhere. They generally reject the specialization model it implied and advocated instead of development strategies and policies aimed at radically altering the traditional division of labour that lay at the basis of Euro-Africa. In pursuit of industrialization, they sought a new and different paradigm of international division of labour. The community dealt explicitly with the degree of acceptance of the Euro-Africa concept (and later interdependence) by the very countries that were supposed to be partners in it. The Community simply chose to proclaim its importance, ignoring in substance the issue of acceptability, and continued to preach complementarity of economic interests and interdependence between the two areas in a ‘raw materials-for-manufactures’ exchange mode.

The ideology of Euro-Africa perpetuated the marginality and peripherality of Africa in international political economy. What were described as ‘partnerships’ between Europe and Africa were a simple, disguised neo-colonial relationships underpinned by ‘donor-recipient’ nexus that was not favourable to the development initiatives of Africa. Martin (2002, 11) noted that the Lome Conventions were neo-colonial pacts. They linked Europe and Africa in a contractual relationship of little value to Africa, but of great benefit to Europe, and the ideology of Euro-Africa was used to justify this unequal relationship. One former European Commissioner for Development, Claude Cheysson was very open on the importance of this unequal relationship between Europe and Africa. He stated:

We are dependent on the Third World here and now as well as in future. It, in turn depends on us to a considerable degree. Our interests are linked. We should, therefore, try to express this dependence clearly and irrevocably (Cheysson 1979, 7).

The ideology of Euro-Africa has destined African countries to specialize in the production and export of raw materials and agricultural products that are bought cheaply in the North, and the North has reserved for itself the most capital-intensive, technologically-advanced forms of production such as computers that drive the global economy. Currently, the European Union has made efforts to renew the Euro-African relationship through what it terms the EU Strategy for Africa: Towards a Euro-African Pact to Accelerate Africa’s Development (12 October 2005) where it stated that:

Europe’s relationship with Africa is not new. It is deeply rooted in history and has gradually evolved from the often painful colonial arrangements into strong and equal partnership based on common interests, mutual recognition and accountability. Europe and Africa are connected by strong trade links, making the EU the biggest export market for African products. For example, approximately 85% of Africa’s exports of cotton, fruit and vegetables are imported by the EU. Europe and Africa are also bound by substantial and predictable aid flows. In 2003 the EU’s development aid to Africa totaled 15 billion euros, compared to 5 billion euros in 1985. With this, the EU is by far the biggest donor: its ODA accounts for 60% of the total ODA going to Africa. Moreover, some EU Member States retain longstanding political, economic and cultural links with different African countries and regions, while others are relative newcomers to African politics and development. At Community level, over the last decades the European Commission has built up extensive experiences and concluded a number of contractual arrangements with different parts of Africa that provide partners with a solid foundation of predictability and security (Commission of the European Communities 2005, 2).

The document went on to catalogue the main contours of previous engagements between Europe and Africa in what it termed ‘The EU’s longstanding relationship with Africa.’ Its starting point was the Lome Agreement of 1975 which was described as the first framework agreement with the countries of sub-Saharan Africa, as part of the ACP group of states. This was followed by other Lome Agreements up to 2000 when the European Community and its member states concluded the Cotonou Agreement. In all these engagements the issue of partnership, contractual nature of the relationship between Europe and Africa and the pledges to long term predictability of financing African development were debated (Ibid, 17). The EU saw Africa as divided into sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa. This was clearly indicated by the fact that it had separate agreements with North Africa. The EU’s relations with North Africa were based on the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership and Association Agreements and the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) as well as the European Action Plans. The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership was launched in 1995 when the Barcelona Declaration identified three main objectives of the Partnership as:

Establishing a common area of peace and stability through reinforcement of political and security dialogue;

Creating an area of shared prosperity through an economic partnership and the gradual establishment of free-trade area; and

Bringing peoples together through a social, cultural and human partnership aimed at promoting understanding between cultures and exchanges between civil societies (Ibid, 17).

It is stated clearly in the current EU Strategy for Africa document that “EU is not only a donor of development but also a political and commercial partner” (ibid, 19). This is very important because it indicates that EU is not concerned only with “accelerating Africa’s development” as the sub-title of the EU Strategy for Africa document wants us to believe. There are also political and strategic intentions in its engagement with Africa. The EU countries are hoping for the formalization of a Euro-African Pact at the Second EU-Africa Summit to be held in Lisbon (Portugal), sealing what they called “sound partnership between an enlarged Europe and a re-emerging Africa” (ibid, 3).

It is clear from the EU Strategy for Africa document that the old Euro-African ideology is taking centre stage at the global level. Its main selling point is “partnership.” The EU Strategy for Africa is said to be underpinned by five principles:

• Equality

• Partnership

• Ownership

• Subsidiarity

• Solidarity

• Dialogue

One of the important components of this broad-based dialogue is the launching of twining partnerships bringing together African and European universities and schools, parliaments, towns, cities and municipalities, businesses and industries, trade unions, civil society networks and museums. The fundamental question to raise is: Have the former colonial powers of Europe repented of their sins of neo-colonialism?

Indeed the current debate on African development is taking place within a context of heavily compromised and rather defeated Pan-African agenda on one hand, and a rejuvenated and even triumphant Euro-African ideology operating under new disguises of neo-liberalism, multilateralism, and globalization on the other hand. The marketing strategy of Euro-African engagement is predicated on ‘partnership’ and is succeeding in luring the African leaders to the disguised neo-colonial conspiracy of yester-years. Within the so-called global village, Africa is the least developed continent, still suffering from marginality and peripherality. This situation of the continent constitutes the biggest challenge to the ‘new’ leaders of Africa. At present, the ‘new’ African leaders are toying with the ideology of African Renaissance underpinned by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the African Union (AU) as the loadstar of their development initiative in the 21^st century. The African development agenda seems to have fallen headlong into the Euro-African ideology of ‘partnerships.’

Even though NEPAD is presented as the pledge by African leaders to be accountable to one another and to their own people, and as predicated on Africa’s ownership of the development process, its implementation is taking a clearly neo-liberal turn that is dictated by the triumphant ideology of Euro-Africa over the counter ideology of Pan-Africanism. The centre stage seems to have been taken by the discourse of partnerships emanating from the Euro-African desk. For example, there is the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAS) that the EU is currently negotiating with four sub-Saharan regions of Africa, The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, Euro-Africa Business Forum, and Partnership for Infrastructure as well as the New Partnership for Africa’s Development. The discourse on Africa, on African search for a development paradigm has suddenly been caught up in the web of partnerships with the West and the increasing interest of Europe and the North in African development initiatives.

One is left wondering whether the industrialized countries of the North have suddenly become born again genuine partners of Africa and their rush to Africa with various plans is not another scramble for Africa, Why the sudden interest in rescuing Africa from poverty? A number of issues need to be taken into account before one accepts the ‘helping hand’ from the North. First, one needs to take into account the global impact of the 9/11 incident. Since 11 September 2001, the countries of the North have been pre-occupied with security. All their initiatives became rested on this overriding security concern. If removing threats of terrorism involves eradicating poverty in Africa, they are forced to involve themselves in the initiative of development in Africa. Secondly, Chinese expansion into Africa has awakened the North from slumber and they need to re-assert their influence too.

African search for a development paradigm is taking place within an environment driven by the powerful and industrialized nations of the North. The main contours of neo-colonial and neo-liberal ideology of Euro-Africa that is taking Africa by storm through a plethora of plans and partnerships needs to be understood within this context. A critique of the status of the counter ideology of Pan-Africanism that is currently antagonizing under the weight of triumphant forces of neo-liberalism and globalization is vital too.

It is important to note that a clear understanding of the ideology of EurAfrica is very fundamental to the comprehension of the relationship between Africa and Europe in particular, and the industrialized countries of the North in general. What becomes apparent is that such development initiatives as the Younde Conventions (1964-1969), the Lome Conventions (1975-2000), the Cotonou Agreement (June 2001) as well as the Uruguay Round Table that created trade and aid relationships between Europe and Africa as well as other developing countries of the South, were crafted within the spirit of EurAfrica. This is even vindicated by the terms used in these engagements such as ‘partnership’, ‘parity’, ‘relationships’, ‘cooperation’, ‘complementarity’, ‘interdependence’, as well as ‘convention’, that helped to disguise the unequal and exploitative nature of the so-called partnership.

The Lome Convention was never designed to solve Africa’s economic problems (Cosgrove-Sacks 2001, 272). It was meant to safeguard the Africa-Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) market for the benefit of Europe. What accrued to the ACP countries was too little, too late and more often unintended. The Lome Convention must be judged more correctly as a political rather than economic instrument upholding the neo-colonial logic of Euro-African relationship.

Today the ideology of Euro-Africa is camouflaged under the guise of partnership and humanitarian assistance and is clearly taking Africa by storm in the form of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). But what is the current position of Africa within the international political economy and global politics? This is a vital question to address since it sheds lights on the options available to it. Is Africa able to determine its own destiny? Who drives the international political economy?

Pan-Africanism was more than an ideology. It was a policy guide that stood counter to the ideology of Euro-Africa. The ideology of Euro-Africa was underpinned by the notion of vertical contact between Africa and Europe, with African countries gravitating towards the centre providing the needed raw materials to the North. On the other hand, the ideology of Pan-Africanism ran counter to this notion. It encouraged direct and horizontal unity among African countries and minimal interaction with the North in economic terms as a way out of dependence and marginality in international politics and economy. To the Pan-Africanists like Kwame Nkrumah, formal Euro-African ties were to be resisted by all means necessary because they marked a dangerous development of multilateralization of formerly less dangerous bilateral dependency ties, with the prospect of economic annexation of the less powerful countries of Africa (Nkrumah 1965).

Pan-Africanism as an integrative force responded to the dramatic changes in world politics and economy and the serious repercussions which these changes had on the economies of Africa. Pan-Africanists realized that trade, based on unequal exchange and specialization that was encouraged by the proponents of EurAfrica, constituted the mainstay of Euro-African relations, be it the slave trade from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the trade economy of the colonial era from 1900 to 1960 or the unequal neo-colonial trade of the post-colonial era, as well as the notions of single ‘global village’ of the present century. Martin (2002, 7) made the point that the genesis of the ideology of EurAfrica should be kept in mind when the post-colonial era of Africa is being analyzed. This point is vital because since the disengagement of the colonial powers from Africa, the ideology of Euro-Africa competed fiercely with the counter ideology of Pan-Africanism up to today. At the present moment, Africans are caught up in an unenviable position where their options revolve around two options: falling headlong into the Euro-African trap euphemistically termed co-operation/partnership with the developed and industrialized countries of the North or entering the difficult but empowering process of crafting cooperation among African countries. Kwame Nkrumah stated it clearly that ‘Pan-Africa, and not EurAfrica should be our watchword and the guide to our policies’ (Nkrumah 1963, 187). Nkrumah outlined the pan-African framework of African development in this fashion:

Political union was to be the essential pre-requisite for African economic integration.

A Union Government of African States with the task of formulating comprehensive policies

African Common Market

Integrated communications network

Integrated industrial structure

Single integrated monetary zone

Common currency and a central bank

Unified defence strategy

African Military High Command

Unified foreign policy and diplomacy

As Guy Martin (2002) stated:

Utopian as this blueprint may seem to some, it appears as the only solution to Africa’s current problems. In this respect, I remain firmly convinced that the ideology of Pan-Africanism, as outlined by Nkrumah, offers the only way out of the neo-colonial predicament and towards the attainment of genuine and complete economic independence for the African continent (Martin 2002, 17-18).

The reality is that Nkrumah’s model of African development was never carried to its logical conclusion as it was destabilized from its inception by the counter ideology of Euro-Africa that had the effect of diluting African endeavours towards continental unity. Africa became balkanized into Anglophone, Lusophone and Francophone entities that fell neatly within the strategy of EurAfrica. De Gaulle of France, for instance, evolved a purely Euro-African neo-colonial apparatus, later to be known as Francafrique, as a strategy to maintain domination over African colonies. The strategy consisted of recruitment and support of puppet governments and the systematic assassination of nationalist and Pan-Africanist leaders. Leaders like Patrice Lumumba of Congo and Ahmed Sekou Toure of Guinea were victims of the Western strategy of assassinating Pan-Africanists. Nkrumah was also the victim of Western elimination of Pan-Africanists via sponsored coups. France projected its Euro-African ideology, though maintaining a tight grip on African economies that fell under the Francophone zone, to the extent of denying sixteen former French colonies of the right to have a currency of their own. French franc was used under the guise of Franc CFA, with metropolitan France controlling monetary and financial systems of former French colonies (Jallon 1973; Chipman 1989; Martin 1985).

The French neo-colonial strategy indicated one of the several ways in which the Pan-African development model was directly beaten back by the imperatives of Euro-Africa. After the death of Nkrumah, African leaders adopted inward-looking and individualistic positions, justified under the notion of sovereignty and territorial integrity. Worse still, in the 1960s and 1970s, African leaders became divided horizontally into pro-East and pro-West blocks, and vertically into revolutionaries, progressives, reactionaries, capitalists, socialists, traditionalists and middle-of-the-roaders (Asante & Chanaiwa 1999, 726). Within this context, the Pan-African economic integration did not see the light of the day. It only remained another linguistic arsenal in the propaganda and rhetoric of African leaders.

However, the continued deterioration of African economies and the disappointing African economic performance sustained the ideal of Pan-African model of development as the way forward for Africa. In spite of exports, many African countries showed throughout the 1970s and 1980s a pattern of sluggish economic growth, low levels of productivity, a circumscribed and fractured industrial base, high dependence on a vulnerably narrow spectrum of primary export commodities, low levels of life expectancy, and widening deficits on the aggregate current accounts of the balance of payments (ibid, 733). By this period it was apparent that Africa’s dependency on the economies of the industrialized Western countries had become greater than it had ever been. All this indicated the success of the ideology of Euro-Africa over that of Pan-Africanism.

Julius Nyerere agonized over the disappointing economic performance of Africa and reiterated the need for African solidarity and unity. He said:

Together, or even in groups, we are much less weak. We have the capability to help each other in many ways, each gaining in the process. As a combined group we can meet the wealthy nations on very different terms, for, though they may not need any of us for their economic health, they cannot cut themselves off from all of us (Asante & Chanaiwa 1999, 735)

African leaders realized that the Pan-African model of development was the only alternative to the ideology of EurAfrica that continued to deepen Africa’s dependence on Europe. The Lagos Plan of Action (LPA) was one initiative that was imbued by the spirit of Pan-Africanism and sought to reduce overdependence on Europe. The problem was that this plan was drawn in the absence of strong continental or regional integration that was going to give it life. Without this, the Lagos Plan as a concept and strategy remained unimplementable and quickly assumed the form of an aspiration just like the concept of Pan-Africanism itself.

Instead of African leaders building on the basis of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) that concretized some aspects of Pan-Africanism, like the decolonization of Africa, they chose to balkanize Africa into numerous regional organizations like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Southern African Development Community (SADC), Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and many other regional organs that copied and duplicated each other and competed for Western support. Asante and Chanaiwa noted, ‘Thus, structurally, this new level of pan-Africanism charts no new path for Africa, breaks no new ground, and offers no new perspectives’ (ibid, 741).

One of the clearest successes of the ideology of EurAfrica over that of Pan-Africanism was the era of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in Africa in the 1980s and 1990s. The cornered African leaders openly threw away the Pan-African model of development and capitulated and accepted Euro-African ideology’s neo colonial and neo-liberal prescriptions spearheaded by the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) development diplomats. One of the conditionalities of SAPs was opening African economies for direct exploitation and benefit of the West.

Paul Rich (2000) noted that ‘the principles underlying structural adjustment, such as market liberalization, openness in trade and financial orthodoxy, amount to a new and revised set of ‘civilized standards’ which developing states need to be seen to be fulfilling before they are accepted fully into the international society of states’ (Rich 2000, 25-6). The adoption of SAPs was an admission of failure to chart an autonomous and less dependent development paradigm by African leaders and a moot precursor to the controversial and desperate idea of re-colonization as a way forward for Africa. It was in the 1990s, amidst the SAPs, that a political party in the oil-rich Gabon campaigned for re-colonization of the country through turning it into a mere province of France. In Sierra Leone, the prime minister, of all the people, publicly and in front of news reporters suggested that the country should return to the status quo ante and become part of the British imperial order (Mwakikagile 2004, 37). These disgusting suggestions are extreme indications of desperation and are a serious indictment of the failures of African leaders and nations, as well as dangerous counters to the Pan-Africanist principle of decolonization as the foundation stone of autonomous African development.

The post-Cold War dispensation facilitated the triumphalism of neo-liberalism and the popularization of the notion of the world as the ‘global village.’ In this ‘global village’ no nation or state manages its destiny separate from the wider international community of states. In this dispensation, engagement and partnership among states, including African states, across the world constitute the agenda of the century. The EurAfrica ideology has found new sanctuary in the globalization discourse and is succeeding in displacing the counter ideology of Pan-Africanism, whose global outreach was rather limited to the Diaspora and mainland Africa. The ‘new’ African leaders have been pushed by the globalization wave to fight on two fronts, that is, in Africa and at the global level in their search for a development paradigm for the continent.

The current African development paradigm, underpinned by the spirit of African Renaissance and propelled through the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), is constrained from the start because it is caught up between the triumphant forces of Euro-Africa and the undying spirit and unending aspirations of Pan-Africanism. Africa cannot afford to go it alone in a ‘global village.’ The introduction to the NEPAD document states clearly what NEPAD is:

This New Partnership for Africa’s Development is a pledge by African leaders, based on a common vision and a firm and shared conviction, that they have a pressing duty to eradicate poverty and to place their countries, both individually and collectively, on the path of sustainable development, and at the same time to participate actively in world economy and body politic. The Programme is anchored on the determination of Africans to extricate themselves and the continent from the malaise of underdevelopment and exclusion in a globalizing world (NEPAD document, October 2001, 2).

A number of issues arise straight from this definition of NEPAD, the most important being that the development initiative, conceived and defined as a ‘pledge,’ focused on demands of two audiences. The first audience is that of the African community that desperately desire to see poverty eradicated. The other audience is the global community, particularly the Western audience that control and dominate the world economy and body politics. This double move indicates the enduring tensions between the imperatives of Pan-Africanism that are inward-looking (African) and those of Euro-Africa that are premised on global outreach (Western). Secondly, the development plan is called ‘the new partnership’- a term that clearly invokes the contours of the ideology of Euro-Africa predicated on the hypocritical and neo-colonial notions of ‘complementarity,’ ‘interdependence,’ and ‘partnership’ between Europe and Africa. The drafters of the development plan were quick to defend themselves in these words:

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development calls for the reversal of this abnormal situation by changing the relationship that underpins it. Africans are appealing neither for the further entrenchment of dependency through aid, nor for marginal concessions (ibid).

It is clear that even as the African leaders were drafting the NEPAD document were very alert to the criticism of selling Africa once again to the West through crafting another ‘donor-recipient’ partnership in the mould of the Lome Conventions. However, they did not succeed to hide behind the finger their true intentions of capitulation to the ideology of EurAfrica. Their capitulation is clearly evidenced in the last paragraph of their document where they elaborated that:

It is a call for a new relationship of partnership between Africa and the international community, especially the highly industrialized countries, to overcome the development chasm that has widened over centuries of unequal relations (bid, 3).

The terms ‘pledge’ and ‘appealing’ set the tone for a weak negotiator that Africa is in international politics and economy. The whole language of the NEPAD development initiative departs from the Pan-Africanist model and fits neatly within the discourse fashioned by the triumphant ideology of EurAfrica couched in neo-liberal terms of democracy and human rights. Based on the analysis of the NEPAD document, it is clear that the chosen path by the new African leadership is that of greater integration of Africa into the global economy and politics rather than of cooperation among Africans as strategy of moving out of dependency. What is being negotiated is a more benign domination and exploitation where Africans could also pick some pieces from the global high table. The document is crafted in the form of a marketing plan. For instance, it states that:

We affirm that the New Partnership for Africa’s Development offers an historic opportunity for the developed countries of the world to enter into a genuine partnership with Africa, based on mutual interest, shared commitments and binding agreements (ibid, 60).

In short, the NEPAD document is clear that the ‘new, African leaders have chosen the path of ‘partnership’ with the developed countries of the world as a strategy of development. However, the ideals and aspirations of the Pan-African model of development are not completely lost. The OAU has been revived as the African Union and given a developmental task and synchronized with NEPAD (Centre for Policy Studies, 2004). The real challenge facing the proponents of NEPAD is how they will continue to climb the tight rope pulled by the imperatives of EurAfrica and those of Pan-Africanism. The difficult task is how to harmonize the antagonistic ideologies of EurAfrica and Pan-Africanism without sacrificing the other.

At the present moment it looks like the ‘new’ African leaders are already agonizing over the continued process of delicately balancing the imperatives of Pan-Africanism and those of Euro-Africa and benefiting from both. The predicament is compounded by the fact that, from its birth, the NEPAD document seemed to be selling very well outside Africa than in Africa.

A number of African based analysts view the NEPAD as elitist, neo-liberal and ‘a nest of contradictions’, confusing growth with development. Despite its claims to African-ownership and leadership, it has never been submitted to the people in the form of referendum, rather it seems to be drawing its legitimacy and support from the North, where African leaders seem to be accounting for their actions in Paris, Washington and London (Zounmenou 2004, 25-27). In the final analysis, it sounds like a pledge for aid from the North.

Martin Guy, a latter-day Pan-Africanist, believes in what he terms ‘the continued relevance of Pan-Africanism in the twenty-first century’ (Martin 2002, 267). To him, the African development dilemma is linked to the way the African state was shaped by various historical exogenous processes of political domination and economic exploitation that included the trans-Atlantic slave trade, mercantilism, imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism as well the current sophisticated forms of Western domination and exploitation of Africa that have emerged under the guise of globalization. Guy argues:

In fact, globalization is just another name for a neo-imperial order characterized by the dominance of a global culture based on Western political, economic and cultural values and institutions-parliamentary democracy and market economy-leading to a progressive westernization of the world’ (ibid, 268-269). These historical exogenous processes cumulatively led to the creation of an “African leviathan, a dysfunctional monster without any historical, cultural and ethnic substance and reality and whose main function is to exert political control and domination and to maintain economic exploitation over the African people (ibid 271).

Together with Mueni Wa Muiu, Guy suggests that the way forward for Africa is to reconstruct the African state and base it on the still functional remnants of the African indigenous institutions and drawing ideological inspiration from the political thought of various African philosopher-kings. The African philosopher-kings and thinkers identified by Martin and his colleague include: Claude Ake, Steve Biko, Amilcar Cabral, Cheikh Anta Diop, Frantz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Anton Muziwakhe Lembede, Samora Machel, Julius Nyerere, Thomas Sankara, Edem Kodjo, Ahmed Sekou Toure and Makau wa Mutua. Using the concept of Fundi wa Africa (Builder of Africa/Tailor of Africa), they call for the building of a democratic and developmental state as an instrument of people’s power as an essential pre-requisite of a ‘genuine and thorough African re-awakening and revival (ibid 271). They see the way forward as lying in transcending the artificial sovereignty of existing African nation-states to create sub-regional and federal structures within which the various national cultures would be accorded the right of self-determination and be granted sovereignty. To them, “Indeed, the United States of Africa is an idea whose time has come” (ibid, 280). What these latter-day Pan-Africanists ignore is the seeming capitulation by the ‘new’ African leaders to neo-liberalism and globalization. This makes it very difficult to implement the idea of a ‘United States of Africa.’ The African state that is being built today and that is welcomed by the international community is one that responds positively to global and neo-liberal trends, and is prepared to compromise its sovereignty for crumbs falling from the global high table.

The simple call is for Africa and Africans to unite. Africa’s main problem is that it is not uniting at a pace that can counter the negative impact of globalization. African thought is locked into Western thought about development. What is needed first is mental decolonization, before we can think of an African development paradigm. The starting point is to liberate our African languages so as to communicate development issues using indigenous terms familiar to the African grassroots. Today, because of the use of European languages, debate on development has become an elite preserve, ring-fenced by foreign languages. This makes it hard for the grassroots to contribute to the development discourse while in reality they are the beneficiaries of this development. The second step is restoration of African dignity and self-respect through taking seriously African thought on development. The first level of disengagement and re-engagement is to put African history into the same status with that of the West. African history is still ‘colonized’ by European analogies. True development must flow from African context and African historical realities. Jumping into the globalization train without a proper contextualization of African demands, wants and needs is fatal. Africans know what they want. Instead of studying European economics and historical developments let us study our own continent and understand what is wrong. Development can never be given by one civilization to another civilization. It is always fought for rather than negotiated for. It involves sacrifices and clear planning not false celebrations of the fruits of globalization that accrue only to the elites, while the poor remain poor. I conceive of development as putting food in the mouth of the hungry, cloth on the body of the naked, shelter over the head of the homeless, clean water into the mouth of the thirsty, blanket over the body of the cold and dignity to those who are denigrated and alienated.

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* Dr Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is a Zimbabwean historian currently teaching International Studies at Monash University, South Africa Campus, Roodepoort. sgatsha@yahoo.co.uk. P/B X60, Roodepoort, 1725, South Africa

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