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22 DPMF Occasional Paper No. 13set the prices for all commodities produced by African economies. Theyfurther controlled the financial system and set interest rates and otherconditions for African borrowing. Finally, the west controlled services e.g.insurance companies, and at the same time, provided the expertise andpersonnel to help African countries with highly underdeveloped humanresources.Needless to say, they advised African governments not to disturb thisestablished economic structure and to continue with the inheritedrelationship with the international economic system. After all, this was the“natural” division of labour in the world and any attempt by Africangovernments to change their economic strategies and policies to reorientthe relationship to their advantage was quickly stopped by variousinstruments Western countries wielded, and still wield.These instruments varied from the manipulation of the financial systemand of commodity prices against African countries to withdrawal oftechnical assistance and investment, and occasionally, direct sanctionsagainst non-conforming countries. In the face of this formidable power,most African countries continued to pursue economic policies anddevelopment in the way established by colonial powers. As noted earlier,by the end of the 1960s, the rapid economic growth initially observed inAfrican countries began to slow down and foreign currency reservesstarted to be exhausted.As the Cold War intensified and the ideological war of converting Africancountries heated up in the 1970s, externals increased in number beyondthe number of former colonial powers. Externals came to include theAmericans (representing the West), the Soviet Union (representing theCommunist East), Scandinavian countries (representing European socialdemocracy) and China (representing Third World Communism). All thesepowers played their parts in trying to influence political and economicdevelopment of African countries. And the story of the internal struggleamongst externals for control of African countries, though important, isknown only superficially.What is of interest here is that this serious political and military strugglefor African countries was accompanied by a heated ideological debateover alternative paths to development. The debate was not just confined toCapitalism and Marxism, but included several new ideas on possibilitiesof development in Third World countries. These different developmentpaths included those advocated by the Dependency School of Latin
Abdalla Bujra. Pan-African Visions of Development 23America and those based on the Scandinavian Social Democraticexperience, on the Chinese and Cuban experiences, and even on some ofthe woolly ideas behind the UN Development Decades assessments.Added to this mixed pot were calls by African and Arab political leadersfor African and Arab Socialism. In the end, what filtered to the rarefiedatmosphere of the OAU Assembly of Heads of States and Governmentswere Declarations, which contained a mild form of socialist ideas and astrong dose of nationalism. These ideas found expression in the support ofstrong public sector role, side by side with the private sector’s; some basicsocial welfare system; self reliance and economic cooperation in order toreduce African countries’ excessive dependence and to strengthen theirbargaining power. These principles were to provide the framework for thestrategies and policies to develop African economies in different sectors,including agriculture, industry, development of human and mineralresources, and science and technology.Thus, by the end of the 1970s, when most African countries were goingthrough serious economic crises, the well-trodden path of economicpolicies intensified after independence became the obvious target of blamebecause it had failed to bring about any development. And when Africangovernments began to seriously think about what to do with the crises, astrong temptation was to (a) reject inherited economic policies and (b)welcome and accept as an alternative, the mixture of mild socialist andnationalist ideas which had a strong presence in intellectual circles andamong some influential political leaders.Hence, the 1979-1980 period saw the mobilisation of African intellectualand political resources to produce three landmark declarations: theMonrovia Declaration (1979), the Lagos Plan of Action (1980) and theFinal Act of Lagos (1980). As pointed out earlier, all new initiativesfollowing these critical declarations were made within their framework,except that these simply added details about the nature and causes of theeconomic crises facing Africa and policies to be pursued in order toovercome the crises.3.2 The World Bank’s Berg Report (1981)Externals – mainly Western countries – were rather alarmed by the antiwesternlanguage of the LPA and the radical ideas it proposed. In October1981, the World Bank came out with a report called Accelerated
Page 1 and 2: Pan-African Political and Economic
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Page 5 and 6: Abdalla Bujra. Pan-African Visions
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