Numbers / Numéros 1 & 2, 2017 ISSN 0850 - 8712 Editorial

Reaching New Frontiers

his issue of the CODESRIA Bulletin is produced at been entrusted with: “Reaching New Frontiers in Social the end of the 2013–2016 programme cycle, and Science Research and Knowledge Production for African Ttherefore at the beginning of a new programatic cycle Transformation and Development.” The new strategic plan and strategic plan. The 2017–2021 programme cycle has builds on the recommendations of major comprehensive internal reviews aimed at sharpening the council’s mandate to develop In this issue / Dans ce numéro the social sciences and humanities in Africa for better transformation Editorial: Reaching New Frontiers 1 and development within the context 1- I speak, I lie!, Tekletsadik Belachew 4 of continual global changes. These 2- Who is setting Africa’s intellectual agenda?, Patience Mususa 5 include: review of the intellectual 3- What if democracy itself were the problem?, Elísio Macamo 7 agenda, membership, governance 4- Africa Rising, Afro-pessimism – or Racial Capitalism?, Jordanna Matlon 9 and management. The new strategic 5- La renaissance africaine ? Épître pour redonner son sens à un mot chargé plan builds on the achievements of d’histoire et porteur des enseignements du passé, Fatou Kiné Camara 11 the past strategic cycle, ensuring 6- Africa and Industrialisation: What Role for the Research Community?, consolidation and renewal, and Theresa Moyo 14 ushering innovations in programme 7- The Cheetah Generation: The Birth of the Captains of Industry in Africa? delivery and management; deeply Horman Chitonge 16 emphasising the importance of basic 8- Urban Studies: A View from the Continent’s Southern Tip, Sophie Oldfield 18 research, and its relevance for policy, 9- L’Afrique et son potentiel rural mondial, Carl Manlan 19 as well as community and civil society engagements. The new strategic plan 10- African Auxiliaries, Cultural Translation and Vernacularising Missionary prioritises three key thematic areas: Medicine in Colonial North-Western Zambia, Walima T. Kalusa 21 democratic processes, governance, 11- La sociologie africaine : un paradigme de rêve, Nfally Diémé 22 citizenship and security; ecologies, 12- Emerging Trends for Psychology in Africa, Shose Kessi 24 economies and societies; and higher 13- African Social Sciences and the Study of the Economy: Building an education dynamics in a changing Independent Pan-African Infrastructure, Vito Laterza 27 Africa. In addition to these three thematic 14- Rethinking Sexuality from Africa, Thomas Hendriks and Rachel Spronk 28 priorities, a set of six crosscutting 15- Comment renouveler le débat sur le développement en Afrique ? themes meant to suffuse all CODESRIA Notes introductives au débat, Moussa Mbaye 33 research; training and publications 16- Capital in the Twenty-first Century: A Critical Engagement with Piketty, have been set. These include: gender; Alemayehu Geda 36 generations; alternatives and futures; inequality, rurality and urbanity; and memory and history. Most notable is a re-imagination and narrowing of

This quaterly Bulletin is distributed free to all social research institutes and faculties in Africa to encourage research co-operation among African scholars. Interested individuals and institutions may also subscribe. Contributions on theoretical matters and reports on conferences and seminars are welcome. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 2

research vehicles such as the traditional National Working Groups, The debate over higher education reform and its relationship Comparative Research Networks, and Multinational Working to knowledge production is one which preceeds the current Groups which have now been collapsed under one vehicle – the generation of students and scholars, but has resurfaced as a Meaning-Making Research Initiative (MRI) to offer researchers the core part of the reenergised struggles against decolonisation. space to carryout and produce deeper empirical but also much more Over the past five years, particularly Black students in South theoretically grounded and policy relevant basic research. Africa, Ghana, the UK, the US and Brazil have taken issue at the symbols and resilience of colonial structures and For this issue of the bulletin we put together some of the institutions, especially in universities which have become the discussions on emergence held during the CODESRIA day and frontiers of this revolution. Charecterised by the topling and around which we invited a cross section of diverse researchers to dismantling of colonial symbols such as protests against Cecil offer reflections on how to build research futures or ‘futuristic’ John Rhodes’ statue at the University of Cape Town and the research agendas for Africa with respect to its place in the ensuing anti-imperialist movements which emerged from these world, and how to incorporate the world within the continent. protests in Oxford and other universities across the world; They were asked to address what they consider to be the big there’s a renewed momentum to re-interrogate pedagogies issues, key questions and grand debates for the continent, and of learning, knowledge production processes and practices also what they identified as the next big issues and questions and the ways in which they are grounded in local everyday that we need to learn to deal with in order to emerge from our experiences. A critique that has resurfaced is that even after ‘development’ process. It is thus for this reason that some of more than fifty years of independence, universities serve as the articles reflect on the place and role of research in Africa’s incubators for new strains of the modernising colonial project. ‘emergence’. We set off with poetry, in an attempt to expand Amongst these debates, the meaning, purpose and form of our pedagogies of knowledge within a context characterised research, especially in the social sciences and humanities by intergenerational ruptures around the focus and tools of particularly with respect to the ethics of being, patriarchy, knowledge production, leading to calls to interrogate, and in epistemic violence, hierarchies of research relationships, some cases, abandon the knowledge production enterprise. and appropriateness of tools are at the core of the renewed This is also to re-iterate CODESRIA’s long work in and challenge to scientific authority and the relevance of research. commitment for interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary work with As part of these critiques, calls for the university to be humane the social sciences and humanities. and questions about whether the university can be human and if it has the capacity to take the human seriously have exposed A change of practice in this particular issue is our major loopholes in the universities and intergeneration' experimentation with a methodology to approach the Pan- cleavages about how to reform. Key questions remain what African experience that underpins CODESRIA as a space the postcolonial university should do, what it should look for conversations across all regions, genders, generations, like, how should it contribute to the transformation of society, disciplines and languages. Since it’s founding, CODESRIA and what should be the role of research institutions such as adopted and continues to operate in four official languages: CODESRIA? English, French, Portuguese and Arabic, with plans to expand to other African languages. For its forty-five years of existence We are told that Africa is rising. That the continent is at the and since the start of the Publications and Dissemination verge of breaking its curse and reputation as the world’s “heart Programme, CODESRIA publications have provided a space of darkness”. It is the time of ‘emergence’. ‘Emergence’ has for Pan-African discussions, enabled through simultaneous dominated discussions and processes of political economy, translation of key publications such as the bulletin. For years development, growth and the post-structural adjustment era the secretariat has struggled with simultaneous publication in Africa. These debates are centred around issues related of the bulletin in the four languages. In the end, the English to how we understand the place from which we emerge, the edition was always printed first, followed thereafter by the destination the process of emergence is supposed to take us to, French edition, and sometimes by the Portuguese, while and the process through which emergence is achieved. It is a there were always regular translations into Arabic. The notion that has come to dominate the political and economic consequences of these are diverse. Apart from ensuring that lives of a number of countries on the continent seen to be the at every given moment every member of the community is frontiers of growth, investment and therefore development. informed about and participates in particular debates and This is best illustrated in the now cliché examples of the conversations going on in the council, delayed translations covers of The Economist magazine between 2000 in which also created delayed participation in debates, given that by the the continent was portrayed as a “The Hopeless Continent”, time these were translated into one language, the others would through to 2011 in which the continent was depicted as have moved on, meaning that speakers of one language were “Africa Rising”, and then 2013 in which the continent was always in a situation of catching up. It is for this reason that represented as “Aspiring Africa”. Reports talk of economies in this special issue, we elected to publish the articles in their sprouting opportunities, engendered by a growing educated original languages, hoping to reactivate critical reflections and entrepreneurial class, which is supposedly reducing the on how to operationalise Pan-Africanism within a context poverty rates by creating new busines opportunities. This of multilingualism. We believe this conversation is now group is said to constitute part of the growing middle class absolutely necessary given the resurgence of the decolonisation that is redefining the African continent as a place of hope and decoloniality debates. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 3

and investment – a place of the future, or futuristic if you and struggles. This has led to the delegitimisation and de facto prefer to be cool: a place of emergence. Yet, the resilience irrelevance of rights instruments, pertaining to an increase of poverty, the stubbornness of diseases such as malaria, the in declarations of states of exceptions, especially in places slow pace of progressive reforms on gender and sexuality, where people imagine themselves as free of routine precarity. For a rise in fundamentalist violence, an upsurge in African these people, precarity is now inescapable pertaining to political migrant deaths in the Mediterranean Sea, and civil struggles radicalisation, financial instability, surging unemployment, against tenacious dictatorial regimes are grim reminders of disease outbreaks, and ecological collapse. To compound this, the divergence, contradictions, and, some argue, near false science is facing obfuscation in a phenomenon that is described assumptions about an emerging Africa unsubstantiated by by many as ‘the end of truth’, also made possible by the empirical research. The austerity programmes which were diminution of the academy and the loss of the university as rolled out to recompose struggling post-independence states repository of knowledge. In an era of temporality where one continue to entrench many african countries into deeper hundred and forty characters of a tweet attracts more attention cycles of chronic credit with no signs of solvency or financial and influences policy more that hundreds of pages of scientific stability. The inequality margin has expanded even further. evidence produced through years of laborious research, basic An Oxfam report released in January 2017 demonstrates that research is under threat, as also demonstrated in the increasing by the end of 2016, eight of the world’s richest men owned demand amongst funders for direct policy impacting research. the same wealth value as 3.6 billion people, that is half of the world, with plans for even greater accumulation. How should What are the implications for knowledge production, especially research enter these conversations? How should scholars of for the continent? How should we as an organisation respond African tackle a concept that like development starts off by to these challenges? How do we remain relevant without infantilising and contraining the continent within a matrix seeming maladjusted? How do we uphold our mandate and in which they are coceived of as being entrapped in a never protect our brand? Is it necessary to and how do we define ending permanent dream of coming of age – that is, emerging? a longer-term goal for CODESRIA’s activities? How do we How do we as African researchers and research organisations ensure continuity while renewing? Do we need to and how locate ourselves within these debates? should we clearly differentiate our future from the past? Do we need to rebrand and how should it happen? What are We must recognise and acknowledge the critical context we, who should we serve and what have we become? What in which we find ourselves – the human is under threat. should our product be, how should it be packaged, what is our We are facing extinction. And this is not just about the currency, and what are our terms of engagement? Fortunately, ecological challenges that are driving the sustainability and as Ebrima Sall indicated in an interview with Africa Business in Anthropocene movement, but also particularly about the core January 2017 discussing the reasons for CODESRIA’s ranking values that frame and underpin human society and relations as Africa’s top think tank, the council regularly undertakes such as interdependency and mutual respect. Modernity and its wide-ranging processes of self-introspection and reform to accompanying projects such as development and democracy leverage, improve and cement its position as the leading social are no longer as tenable as promised and have not successfully science research organization in Africa, as well as a leading created wealth, stability, harmony and equality. The last contributor to the broad visions for national, continental and several years has seen an increase in right wing political and global transformations currently undertaken in the continent. religious fundamentalism, leading to an increase in overt CODESRIA’s regular five-year programme cycle provides the bigotry and hate-motivated violence worldwide. Our era is opportunity for continues consolidation and renewal through characterised by the resilience and further entrenchment of collective reflection. dictatorship, as well as the liberation and democratisation of tyranny. Evidence of this can be seen in the constitutional changes that certain governments are undertaking to eliminate Divine Fuh presidential term limits, power hoarding in particular families and elite groups, and the normalisation of precarity as seen in Head of Publications and Dissemination the ‘international communities’’ neglect of certain sufferings CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 4

“I speak, I lie!”

“I speak, I lie!” via the deformed mirror whenever he speaks, he also lies Tekletsadik Belachew and listening to the power of falsity Concordia Seminary always monotonic and violent erasing memory, discarding the past Addis Ababa, Ethiopia trashing the ancient, constructing brand millions don’t count new lies we are just percent tormenting us by fear, ruling us by terror numbers, nameless “100 years is enough!” teary of no tear gas but sniper colorless, faceless, voiceless prior to Min-yilik, Ethiopia was not! stateless, rootless under the façade of the colonizer [fast forward ...] emerges, the new nation-state’s order i lament not because we are landlocked the balager is the resident-alien, the stranger but mentally-shackled, here I am! once his umbilical cord buried and not because we are geographically the sender and the sent – connects him with the land dispersed, exiled the apostolate! as a signifier of life but culturally displaced now alienated – cut off from “mother- historically uprooted. anointer, anointed, anointment earth”, utterly disconnected he is our name, our face, our voice I AM ... let alone feeding family from the fruit our representation and our the electing (voter), of his tilling the soil representative as if we are like him or I AM no chance to rest his body for the final he is just like us the elected (self)! Sabbath I AM double displacement – both in life and death he (single handedly) colonized us the gazing other (the observer) as if there were no empires and kingdoms ‘the wretched of the earth’ he divided us into “tribes” “no end for my rule” the peasant, (85 %), in the name of ethnic-federalism/s no boundary of time no heroic father, no ancient history or we happily perform our “tribal” dances for your sake, they shoulder me no motherland; has he in ecstasy, our body spins “patience!” we are state-orphans for the ‘unknown’ spirits seeking for adoptions. they are awaiting for blood, not before I, ‘Ethiopia proper’ never exist! satisfied with ashes i am the maker, the marker, the yay, it is ‘free-market’ inventor. yet, the “native” is utterly estranged sucked by the empire of the vampire the elite and the ex-pat with the dollar donating our money-blood my weapon is terror, my weapon is media are the ‘balager’ my weapon is the constitution, the the owner, the land grabber – the monger. for the sake of his belly justice court and the par-lama he makes us a-h-ungry my weapon is the LAW resources belong to the rich (angry, hungry and pacify us from both) i write, i interpret, i judge “bourgeois” with the aid of invest-exploiters he spoke those “wicked” words mimicking a colonial narration? with the loaners of the worldly bankers: of “democracy,” “development” and “a continent without history and World Bank, IMF “renaissanceeeeee” civilization...” for the sake of the “West” we echo and re-echo prior to the advent of explorers and the loaners and donors ... the rest is a “waste” “renaissanceeeeee”, “renaissanceeeeee” ‘discoverers’, we were not! too generous in giving out lands and its fruits in slathering lives for senseless wars again we are just numbers then, in the name of civilizing mission, singing, ‘a resounding gong or a now, in the name of developing a nation. uprooting what is indigenous: clanging cymbals’ the seed, the plant, the forest, the farmer they (the colonizers & the dictators) the crypt, the monasteries, the professor behold: the demi-god! made roads re-activating the ... emperor-cult for this, we are obliged to offer homages spirit of the living and the dead, once more, listen to the lie but we knew in our hearts, it is for tormented, tortured, mutilated to the one who acts as if he is Omni ... more exploitations he lynched us publicly with insulting tongues again, listen to his speech-acts; we are fond of gazing at our artificial images “i am immortal!’ CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 5

Who is Setting Africa’s intellectual Agenda?

frican scholars such as Kwesi the continent, a debate is growing on Prah (1997), Ifi Amadiume Patience Mususa what it does to a society to valorise (2005) and Valentin-Yves The Nordic Africa Institute the images and symbols of colonial A Sweden Mudimbe (1994) have argued that oppressors and persons with racist Africa’s intellectual agenda has largely views. This is reflected in debates on been set by Euro-American interests the removal from public view of statues and that this reflects former colonial Mahmood Mamdani’s (2011) critique on of Cecil Rhodes in South Africa and relationships and geopolitical power. Few the reliance and pursuit of consultancy Mahatma Gandhi in Ghana. There is would disagree with this. More recently work in the African academy, rather also concern over what it means to have emergent economic powerhouses like than insistence on basic independent one’s history written through the prism China, India and Brazil are also muscling research has not as yet significantly of imperial historiography? Historians in on the production of knowledge on shifted and the production of knowledge are challenging some of the dominant Africa, for example, commissioning in the African university remains firmly views of the past. For example, Walima studies that explore long-running and tethered to corporate and international Kalusa (2015) questions the ‘heroic’ new relationships with the continent. development aid interests. In the status of David Livingstone in British These are sometimes framed as south- growing student activism around the history, highlighting the role of Sekeletu south research projects, reflecting African university, in addition to calls a young African monarch, without historical collaborations and solidarity of for a free and affordable education, whose aid, Livingstone’s travels would developing countries that could be traced students are also highlighting the have been severely curtailed. Taking to the Bandung conference of 1955. incompleteness of the decolonisation the dominant account of Africa always struggle. Political independence they having been poor and disenfranchised, At the same time, Africans scholars are say is not enough; they want economic, Emmanuel Akyeampong and Hippolyte worried that they are being crowded cultural and symbolic independence. Fofack (2015) challenge this view out of framing their own intellectual by taking a longer, 500-year frame Economic relations with old imperial agenda, aided by the fact that their of Africa’s history. They write on powers continue to dominate. Jean state governments do little to support Africa’s history of successful trade and Nanga (2015) actually argues that the local research and researchers. Also of commerce and highlight the continent’s continent is at present experiencing concern is that little is being done to present predicament to the recent wave another intense wave of neo-imperial engage seriously with the production of colonialism. African archaeologists and colonial domination. It is in this of knowledge falling outside the also point to the destruction of the context that calls for African ownership formal academy and this, Thandika continent’s rich material culture by of resources are not only emerging Mkandawire (2000), says has led to a colonising forces (for example, the as a link to the past incomplete wide distinction between what African Benin punitive expedition) and to decolonisation, but as a contemporary scholars know and experience of their processes of cultural appropriation (see struggle against the ‘development’ – worlds and what they learn in the debates on the Great Zimbabwe). academy and its applicability to their related dispossession that came with societies. Such disparity has led to the Africa ‘rising’ narrative. Calls Also, taking a critical eye to the past the view that formal education orients for African ownership of resources are scholars contesting the patriarchal African scholars to serve the interests remain, and are unlikely to diminish. account of history. Mutumba Mainga of dominant geopolitical powers rather For example, in South Africa, one of the (2010) and Ruth Iyob (2005), for example, than their own societies. largest economies on the continent, one in their works on a history of leadership of its most vocal opposition parties, the in Barotseland (a kingdom in central Calls for decolonised free higher Economic Freedom Fighters, has been Africa) and on Eritrea’s independence education in South Africa reflect this. calling for the nationalisation of key struggle, respectively, highlight the role As do questions raised by historian, resources like land and minerals. Other of women in leadership and struggle. Sishuwa Sishuwa (2015), about the African countries are considering re- These works point to intersecting building of Confucian centres in Africa nationalising their key assets. themes of gender, race and power. by China, seeing these as another form It is these intersections that African However, it is not only concern over of cultural and economic imperialism. feminist scholars have been struggling ownership of what is being mined The silence of much of the African to have foregrounded. They argue that in the ground, but also what is being academy, however, on the withdrawal of any emancipatory politics that does not cultivated in the minds of young the state from the provision of education confront other forms of repression, be Africans that has spurred a wave of and the relegation of its responsibility it gender, race or economic relations, protests on decolonisation. This is to the growing multinational private limits the scope of an encompassing symbolic as well as intellectual. Across franchises is unlikely to shift this trend. liberation. They are critical of the ways CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 6

in which African women, in particular, dominant forms of knowledge making They argue that despite increasing calls have been written out of liberation is made visible. Scholars such as Francis for academic collaboration, there is still efforts and portrayed as passive subjects Nyamnjoh (2016) have been sustaining a dominant tendency to ‘think on’, rather to be saved or empowered. this critique. So too the highly influential than ‘think with’ African scholars. The works of Steve Biko and Franz Fanon. failings of cooperation, they say, lie in African scholars are also pointing the inability of many Euro-American to the dynamics and nuances of On how liberation would re-socialise scholars to break away from Darwinian, African feminism, and masculinity. a colonised people and materialise a Cartesian perspectives that create an For example, Ifi Amadiume (2005) new way of life, the prolific writings ‘other’ as a subject of inquiry. This, and Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí (2002) have of national independence struggle they say, implicates everyone, including challenged the biological determinism leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, African scholars themselves into, at that underlies much of the projection Julius Nyerere, Abdel Gamal Nasser heart, a racially charged intellectual of Western feminism in Africa. Divine and Kenneth Kaunda read more as enterprise. How to do away with this? Fuh (2012), Kopano Ratele (2008) and aspirations and unrealised dreams. At Robert Morrell (1998) are doing similar the heart of the failure for some post- Rene Devisch and Francis Nyamnjoh for understanding African masculinities. independence scholars were continued (2011) have made a case for the co- As have Zethu Matebeni (2013) and colonial economic dependency and a production of knowledge, seeing it as the late Elaine Salo et al. (2010) done failure to create truly redistributive important to understanding a shared much to foreground queer scholarship economies. For example, Guy Mhone world. This shared space is made in Africa. These works for African (2000) on the enclave economy in possible, they say, by reconceptualising scholars pursuing a decolonising Africa and Samir Amin’s (2002) work a notion of personhood that is not intellectual agenda are important, on imperial capitalism have been characterised, as is presently dominated highlighting a nuanced picture of influential in critiques of the continent’s in liberal thinking, as a dualism of body personhood and relations in Africa, and continued status as an extractive locale. and mind, but rather as relational – avoiding the narrow stereotypes that The plans for pan-Africanism as dreamt linking persons, environment and their have characterised a colonial view of the by Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah waned experiences as mutually constituting continent. It is these nuances that African by the early 1980s with the advent a shared world. It is a view that starts novelists such as Chimamanda Ngozi of neoliberalism, a radical liberal from the perspective of showing how Adichie (2014), Taiye Selasi (2013) and agenda that has been reshaping local we are related, rather than how we are NoViolet Bulawayo (2013) are fleshing understandings of personhood, society, different. It goes against the ‘us’ and out in their works, not only to show the state, moral values and exchange ‘them’ categories that have underpinned ‘multiple stories’ of African experience, relations in Africa. South Africa’s the so-called objective science, and the but also the varied experiences of former president Thabo Mbeki’s dream evolutionary perspectives that have cosmopolitanism, that calls to thinking of an African renaissance ended up being made it difficult to see as co-equivalent of ‘Africa’ not in isolation, but as part of swallowed by the logics of the neoliberal other forms of conceptualising the a wider system of global relations. agenda he ended up embracing that, world. Taking relationality seriously his critics effectively say, expanded the would mean also examining the This wider view has been part of a reach of South Africa’s white oligarchs economic, social, cultural, political and pan-Africanist orientation. Influencing across the continent. Other leaders such symbolic ways in which the continent this has been Trinidadian, Cyril Lionel as Paul Kagame have taken a pragmatic, and its peoples are being related to. Robert James, an internationalist bureaucratic route for the continent to set As a thought experiment, this would socialist whose works linked African its own agenda and run its own affairs, mean thinking through whether we diasporic struggles to those on the as he seeks to make the African Union would be comfortable with, within the continent. More recently the works of independent. How inclusive Kagame’s current frame of knowledge production African American intellectual, Faye agenda will be, is yet to be seen, as of ‘us’ and ‘them’, for our societies V. Harrison (2008), has been doing accusations of authoritarian tendencies and ourselves to be studied with the this, taking an intersectional approach plague his reputation as one of the same thesis, analytical frameworks to decolonising knowledge. Other continent’s most influential leaders. and methods as is applied to studies of Africanist scholars such as Maurice Africa and its people? Would the same Vambe (2010), Bawa Yamba (1997) and Beyond an inclusive process of policy recommendations and agendas Ernest Wamba-dia-Wamba (1991) are knowledge making, is the critique sit comfortably with the places we taking nearer theoretical steps to the that the methodologies and analytical call our own societies and the people continent, looking to local understanding frameworks that currently dominate with whom we identify? If not, and if and philosophical thinking before tend to dehumanise African experiences. we are to take relationality seriously, drawing on far-placed analytical As such the present debates on the then in collaborating with Africans on frameworks. In addition to this, has also production of knowledge on the an intellectual agenda, we should be been a sustained critique on the imperial continent seek to place humanity and its attentive to impulses that place a lower underpinnings of knowledge production. intersecting experiences at the heart of a value on certain bodies and ways of This critique has been driving the point decolonising intellectual agenda. They thinking. For then, hopefully, there that an emancipatory intellectual agenda are asking, what it means to study Africa can be the emergence of solidarity to will only be realised when the interests without acknowledgement of the pain of understand the world we share. and power relations underlying the ongoing colonial and racist oppression. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 7

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What if Democracy Itself were the Problem?

Elísio Macamo o development policy recommen- University of Basel economics and a gullible global public dation is worth the paper it is Switzerland sphere which invests a lot of emotional Nwritten on if it does not end energy in the idea that development is with an acknowledgement of the role a matter of finding the right kinds of of democracy in making development algorithms (Macamo 2013). academics, civil society activists, happen. This is part of a general belief in international development bureaucrats, the correlation between democracy and So it is that conventional wisdom over philanthropists, academic Marxists, development. The belief is held by the the past quarter of a century since the neo-liberal denizens of the world of most unlikely alliance of individuals: end of the Cold War, especially within CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 8

the development policy world, has come term, i.e. as universal suffrage and participation and the elites’ fear that the to cherish the idea that one of the main citizenship rights and legal protection people might not be mature enough to reasons why the African continent lags of social rights is, historically, a very govern themselves (Hoppe 2001). behind has to do with the failure of recent phenomenon (Chang 2007). The democracy. When the Berlin Wall came main problem with this account is that it To be sure, democracy has an intrinsic tumbling down, the continent got off to extols the virtues of an accomplishment, value and that alone gives us enough a good start with national conferences i.e., successful democracy. It does not do reasons to strive for it. What is at issue almost all over the place. It went down the more relevant thing, i.e., look into in this discussion, however, is whether the path of democratisation only to spoil the process which led to the outcome. democracy has the instrumental value everything along the way with the old If one looks at democracy as process, which it is ascribed in its relationship habits of “African” politics: presidents and not as outcome, one is likely to to African development. My claim for life, lack of accountability, liberation be less impatient towards Africa, for is that the pride of place given to the movements in power syndrome and, of what the continent experiences as it instrumental value of democracy has course, neo-patrimonial politics to name strives to consolidate democracy is undermined social scientists’ ability to but a few. exactly what Europe on its way to account for social, political and economic democracy also experienced. Seen this phenomena in Africa. There are two While it is true that more and more way, it makes very little sense to blame main reasons for this. First, by stressing countries in Africa have embraced Africans for failing to be democratic, this instrumental value, researchers democracy and the level of intolerance for the experience of those who are now have tended to look at democracy as an towards autocracies is very low, we still successfully democratic tells us that they explanation, rather than as something need to ask, as social scientists, a vitally went through similar difficulties. There which needs to be explained. It is easy important question: ‘Is democracy the is nothing intrinsically ‘African’ about to claim that countries do not develop solution to Africa’s problems?’ The the failure of democracy, just as, by the because they are not democratic enough, question may seem at first trivial. After same token, there is nothing intrinsically but what that exactly means is a mystery all, most of the evidence seems to suggest ‘Greek’ about the success of democracy because clearly failure to democratise that most successful economies practise in Europe. is what needs to be accounted for. Most one or another form of liberal democracy. attempts at explaining the failure of Exceptions here are, of course, Asian The other road from the crossroads democracy are tautological in the sense autocracies run by benevolent and would take us down a journey that of merely describing the problem. A development-oriented dictators, China ironically asks whether the terms of the country or people does not become in our days, oil-rich oligarchies in the equation have been adequately stated. democratic simply by virtue of wishing Middle East and, last but not least, Perhaps it is not democracy that leads to be democratic. It is not automatic Western European countries themselves to development, but rather development and, for this reason, it is analytically before they became economically which eases the way for democracy. unhelpful to say democracy failed successful and politically stable. It is not There is nothing new in this insight. because politicians conduct fraudulent uncommon for economists like Daron The experience of countries like South elections, do not accept good governance Acemoglu and James Robinson (2013) Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia, and violate human rights. to use Botswana’s economic success and not to say much about Western Europe apparent political stability to describe itself, seems to suggest that there is a Secondly, the instrumental value of what the continent is lacking. stronger correlation between economic democracy blunts interest in the political growth and subsequent demands for and social processes unleashed by The social sciences in Africa stand at an democracy. In fact, Charles Tilly (2004) democratisation and how they may, analytical crossroads. One road invites has convincingly shown that democracy in turn, undermine democracy itself. us to explore the standard account upon in Europe was a contingent outcome Freedom of expression, to take just which the narrative of development as of protest and contention which did one example, enhances the potential of it is made relevant to Africa is based. not necessarily aim at democracy. The public scrutiny. This may be good for According to this account, democracy difficulties experienced by African governance and accountability. But what was not only prior to development, but countries in securing the approval of freedom of expression does first and also a sine qua non condition for it. colonial powers for their demands for foremost is not to enable society to reap its History, however, tells us a different independence underline this point. The benefits. It poses a problem to be tackled. story, unless, of course, only the time arguments used to delay independence This right must be protected, also against after World War II counts. It is easy to Africans were basically the same as the reaction of those who may feel to be 1 to forget that up until just before the those which were deployed by European above it. This right might be misused to First World War only three countries political elites to delay universal insult, slander or simply gain political in Europe were republics: France, suffrage, including female suffrage. As a advantage. The problem here is to think Switzerland and Portugal, the latter only matter of fact, representative democracy that democracy is only democracy when from 1911 onwards (see Hoppe 2001:ix). was a compromise solution that sought to it is successful. Such an understanding of Democracy in the modern sense of the accommodate popular demands for more the notion makes it analytically useless. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 9

Democracy can only be useful as a democracy yields development gains References concept if it not only describes what is or fails to do so. These conditions are positive about it, but also everything else the pieces of the puzzle still missing in Acemoglu, D., and Robinson, J.A., 2013, Why that becomes possible when democracy social scientific accounts of political Nations Fail – The Origins of Power, Prosperity becomes the only game in town. The processes in our continent to enable us and Poverty, London: Profile Books. analytically interesting problem in this to begin to develop a truly vernacular Berg-Schlosser, D., and Mitchell, J., eds, 2002, connection is that some, if not most, conceptual vocabulary that can help us Authoritarianism and Democracy in Europe of the problems confronting African gain a better understanding of our own 1919–39 – Comparative Analyses, London: states are the result of the presence of reality. The assumption that democracy Palgrave Macmillan. democracy. Our understanding of this has an instrumental value forces us to Chang, H.-J., 2007, The Myth of Free Trade and notion, therefore, must be sensitive to take for granted an idealised account of the Secret History of Capitalism, New York: both sides of the coin. Europe’s own development. Positing Bloomsbury Press.. the possibility that democracy might be Hoppe, H.-H. Democracy, 2001: the God that The sense in which democracy might the problem frees us from that idealised Failed – The Economics and Politics of be the problem in Africa is, therefore, account. Moreover, it holds out the Monarchy, Democracy, and the Natural an analytical one. The African(ist) promise of a more fruitful engagement Order, London: Transaction Publishers. social scientific community needs to with Africa’s problems. Macamo, E.,2013, ‘The compulsion to do the free itself from the normative content right thing: Development knowledge and its of concepts brought to Africa on the limits’,. in: U. Engel and M. J. Ramos, eds, back of what Mahmood Mamdani Note African Dynamics in a Multipolar World, once described as ‘history by analogy’ 1. There is nothing specifically ‘African’ about Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers. (Mamdani 1996). The crucial question intolerance towards such freedoms. Richard Mamdani, M.,1996, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary we need to work on is neither whether Nixon’s impeachment in the USA should Africa needs democracy to develop, Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism, serve as useful reminder if any were required Princeton: Princeton University Press. nor which kind of democracy. Rather, in times when ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative Tilly, C., 2004, Contention and Demo-cracy we need to accept that democracy’s facts’ have entered our political vocabulary. positive attributes in themselves are in Europe – 1650–2000, Cambridge: not sufficient to ensure its success. For Cambridge University Press. this reason, the crucial question must concern the conditions under which

Africa Rising, Afro-pessimism or Racial Capitalism?

frica Rising’ has emerged as to describe: structural exclusion from the Jordanna Matlon a predominant narrative for global economy. School of International Service continent in the the twenty- ‘A American University Unfortunately, the Africa Rising first century. It offers a refreshing Washington D.C., USA narrative is flawed. Africa Rising perspective from the dark days of the reproduces the dominant global African ‘crisis’ literature, particularly discourse that reifies economies, thus among urbanists. This documented opportunities (e.g., Davis 2006). Africa perpetuating an economic reductionism a quarter century of economic and Rising describes a continent with some of that collapses the interests of capital into social decline following the failed the world’s fastest growing economies, those of the greater good. Economic experiment of structural adjustment that a rising middle class and a booming growth in Africa, as with the rest of effectively eradicated the pull factors entrepreneurial culture spawning an the neoliberalised world – and here for urban migration but not the push obscenely rich ‘Afropolitan’ elite I echo the Comaroffs’ (2012) call to factors of restless ambition for Africa’s (Hassan 2012). As a discursive frame it begin theorising from the South – is village youth, thereby swelling cities offers a corrective to the Afro-pessimism increasingly concentrated, and good jobs with surplus populations devoid of that threatens to reproduce what it seeks CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 10

are disappearing. Take for example my (Roitman 2004), the ‘quiet encroachment 23 and 20 per cent, respectively (www. research site, Côte d’Ivoire. Following of the ordinary’ (Bayat 2000), or ‘people trading-economies.com), to sub-Saharan a decade-long war that ended with as infrastructure’ (Simone 2004). James Africa’s aforementioned average of 73 President Alassane Ouattara’s election Ferguson’s (2015) latest tour de force per cent informality – another way to in 2010, its economy has received looks to southern Africa to explore the describe unemployment in states lacking international acclaim. In 2016 it was ‘politics of distribution’, through which social safety nets. the world’s second fastest-growing we might reimagine a distributive state Just as ‘colonial projects of conquest economy, with 8.5 per cent GDP growth in a time when full employment is a commanded “race” into existence, (Myers 2016). However, Côte d’Ivoire’s dream of the past. creating worlds for hyper-exploitation’, Human Development Index fell to a My scholarship on the livelihoods and McIntyre and Nast (2011:1473, 1472) dismal 171 of 187 ranked countries lifestyles of men in the informal economy argue that ‘race has become the final and 79 per cent of its workers are in of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire has taken me on arbiter of waste and wastage’. Proponents vulnerable employment.1 (UNDP 2016). a journey from colonial conquest to crisis of an Africa Rising narrative are certainly Drawing on World Bank data, Jacques and from Africa to its diaspora and back correct to emphasise the consequences Morriset (2015) notes that, although Côte again. The destination at which I have of framing. But we must also speak d’Ivoire has seen a 50 per cent growth arrived: racial capitalism. Central to truth to power. Perhaps doing so means in GDP in the four years since 2012, this concept are the co-constitution, and moving past both Africa Rising and Afro- the majority of job creation is in self- indivisibility, of capitalism and racialism pessimism narratives to a new framework employment and household enterprise, (Robinson 1983). Following in the black altogether, one that centralises how race which are ‘unlikely to provide decent political economy tradition, I recognise has, since capitalism’s inception, placed incomes on a sustainable basis’. He the particular, devalued location of more or less value on some bodies over observes: ‘Today there are already many blackness in capitalism from its inception others. In so doing it has justified varying unsettled youths in the streets of Ivoirian (Cox 1948; Fanon [1961] 1963; Rodney levels of exploitation and disregard by cities, selling goods and services, mostly 1972, Williams 1944). Racial capitalism imagined hierarchies of human evolution, in informal or illegal trade. In spite of the has of late emerged as a central frame with dire consequences for opportunity, rapid economic recovery, the average for describing conditions of marginality access, distribution, dignity and well- revenue associated with informal trade and exclusion among African diaspora being. It is an uncomfortable truth, but one has declined by 15 per cent in the last populations as well as those on the that is becoming increasingly urgent in a three years.’ African continent (Clarno 2017; Matlon moment of proliferating dispossessions. A closer look at Africa’s expanding 2016; Melamed 2011; Pulido 2016). middle class – ‘a fraught, even political I have argued that while the black Notes expression’ – reveals a classification body’s integration in the capitalist world of incomes US$2 and higher (Kulish 1. The United Nations derives its economy ever since the twin projects 2014). The unbounded, globetrotting definition of vulnerable employment of slavery and colonialism has been Afropolitan elite, many of whom from the International Labor Organi- characterised by deep exploitation, in emerged from the latest economic boom, zation. Similar to informal employ-ment in the neoliberal economy the black body starkly contrast with the continent’s the lack of regulation and insecurity it entails, is overwhelmingly excluded (Matlon economic refugees who face deadly vulnerable employment denotes those indivi- 2016). Ours is a world in which more crossings and closed borders (Hassan duals and their family members who ‘hold and more bodies are being rendered 2012). Moreover, a view to all that the type of jobs defined as a self-employment ‘permanent surplus,’ vividly described by glitters in the contemporary African city jobs (i.e. remune-ration is directly dependent Yates (2011:1680) as ‘human-as-waste, risks celebrating the ‘commodity fetish’ upon the profits derived from the goods and excreted from the capitalist system’. over ‘commodity production’ (Watts services produced), and have not engaged on Yet despite the fears and malaise of 2005:189). 73 per cent of sub-Saharan a continuous basis any employees to work for disproportionately white Trump, Le Pen Africa’s labour force is involved in them during the reference period’ (UN Millen- and Brexit supporters, to name a few of informal, non-agricultural work and nium Development Goals Indicators n.d.). the many autochthonous movements over 90 per cent in parts of West Africa springing up across Euro-America, 2. Taking the example of the United States, Desil- (Meagher and Lindell 2013). We may black bodies first felt the brunt of these ver (2013) shows that black unemployment is invoke Achille Mbembe’s (2001:55l) exclusions, and continue to feel them at consistently twice that for whites, while Couch ominous prediction for Africa’s new much higher rates.2 This is true for both and Fairlie (2010) find that black men are century: ‘If a neo-liberal way out of the in- and across-country comparisons, the first fired during economic downturns. If crisis has – so far – led to any renewal of so while post-2008 austerity measures prison populations, disproportionately African growth, it is growth with unemployment and their social consequences are American, were included, their unemployment …. it is quite reasonable to hypothesize undoubtedly devastating, they pale next figures would certainly be higher. an end to a wage-employed African labor to the conditionalities that global finance force.’ No wonder that some of the most institutions imposed on sub-Saharan theoretically rich work to emerge from References African countries in the 1980s and 1990s. twenty-first century urbanism globally Compare Greece and Spain, Europe’s Bayat, A., 2000, ‘From “Dangerous Classes” to is that which explores the strategies hardest hit economies with 2016 “Quiet Rebels”’, International Sociology, of African informal actors, be it to unemployment rates hovering around Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 533–557. understand their ‘fiscal disobedience’ CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 11

Clarno, A., 2017, Neoliberal Apartheid, Chicago: Matlon, J., 2016, ‘Racial Capitalism and the Crisis Roitman, J., 2004, Fiscal Disobedience, Princeton: University of Chicago Press. of Black Masculinity’, American Sociological Princeton University Press. Comaroff, J., and Comaroff, J., 2012, Theory Review, Vol. 81, No. 5, pp. 1014–38. Simone, A., 2004, ‘People as Infras-tructure’, from the South, or, How Euro-America is Mbembe, A., 2001, On the Postcolony. Berkeley: Public Culture, Vol. 16, No. 3, pp. 407–429. Evolving toward Africa, Boulder: Paradigm University of California Press. Trading Economies. N.d., ‘Spain Unemployment Publishers. McIntyre, M., and Nast, H. J. 2011, ‘Bio(necro) Rate 1976–2017’ and ‘Greece Unemployment Couch, K. A,. and Fairlie. R., 2010, ‘Last Hired, polis’, Antipode, Vol. 43, No. 5, pp.1465–1488. Rate 1998–2017’. Available online at www. First Fired?’, Demography,Vol. 47, No. 1, Meagher, K., and Lindell, I., 2013, ‘Enga- tradingeconomies.com. pp. 227–247. ging with African Informal Econo-mies’, African United Nations Development Program-me Cox, O. C., 1948, Caste, Class and Race, Garden Studies Review, Vol. 56, No. 3, pp.57–76. (UNDP), 2016, ‘Income Gini Coefficient’, City, NY: Doubleday. Melamed, J., 2011, Represent and Destroy, in UNDP Human Development Report 2016: Davis, M., 2006, Planet of Slums, New York: Verso. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Human Development for Everyone, Availa- ble online at http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/ Desilver, D., 2013, ‘Black Unemploy-ment Rate Morisset, J., 17 December 2015, ‘The income-gini-coefficient. is Consistently Twice that of Whites’, Pew Challenge of Creating Quality Jobs in Côte Research Center. Available online at http://www. d’Ivoire’, Brookings. Availale online at United National Millennium Develop-ment Goals pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2013/08/21/through- https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future- Indicators, N.d. Availa-ble online at https:// good-times-and-bad-black-unemployment-is- development/2015/12/17/the-challenge-of- mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Metadata.aspx?Indic consistently-double-that-of-whites/. creating-quality-jobs-in-cote-divoire/. atorId=0&SeriesId=772. Fanon, F. [1961] 1963, The Wretched of the Earth, Myers, J., 18 April 2016, ‘Which Are the World’s Watts, M., 2005, ‘Baudelaire over Berea, translated by C. Farrington, New York: Fastest Growing Econo-mies?’, World Simmel over Sandton?’, Public Grove Press. Economic Forum. Available online at Culture, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 181–92. Williams, E., 1944, Capitalism and Slavery, Ferguson, J., 2015, Give a Man a Fish, Durham, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/ Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina NC: Duke University Press. worlds-fastest-growing-economies/. Press. Hassan, S. M., 2012, ‘Rethinking Cosmo- Pulido, L., 2016, ‘Flint, Environmental Racism, Yates, M., 2011, ‘The Human-As-Waste, the politanism’, Reflections, Vol. 5, pp. 1–32. and Racial Capitalism’, Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 1–16. Labor Theory of Value and Disposability in Kulish, N., 2014, ‘Africans Open Fuller Wallets to Contemporary Capitalism’, Antipode, Vol. the Future’, New York Times. Available online Robinson, C. J., 1983, Black Marxism. London: 43, No. 5, pp. 1679–1695. at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/21/ Zed Press. world/africa/economy- improves-as-middle- Rodney, W., 1972, How Europe Underdeveloped class-africans-open-wallets-to-the-future. Africa, London: Bogle L’Ouverture html. Acces-sed on 20 July 2014. Publications.

La renaissance africaine ? Épître pour redonner son sens à un mot chargé d’histoire et porteur des enseignements du passé1

Le remplacement du concept Bouteflika de l’Algérie, Wade du Sénégal de « renaissance africaine » par et Mbeki de l’Afrique du Sud, est appelé Fatou Kiné Camara ceux de « développement » et par ses promoteurs « Projet pour la Université Cheikh Anta Diop d’« émergence » renaissance africaine ». Le lien est ainsi Dakar, Sénégal fait entre renaissance et développement, Le concept de « renaissance africaine », une sorte de transition en douceur, voire je l’ai rencontré pour la première fois renaissance africaine », un monument du en catimini, d’un concept à un autre. sous la plume de Cheikh Anta Diop, dans « machisme à ciel ouvert » très éloigné Même le président français, Nico-las « Quand pourra-t-on parler d’une dans l’esprit et la forme de l’art et de la Sarkozy, après son infamant « discours renaissance africaine ? », un arti-cle pensée de l’Afrique impériale, à comparer de Dakar », se trouve obligé d’utiliser le publié en novembre 1948 et repris avec la majestueuse et sobre sculpture de terme de « renaissance africaine » dans dans le recueil d’articles intitulé Alerte la femme et de l’homme, mains jointes et son discours du 28 février 2008 en Afrique sous les tropiques (1990:33-44). Des de taille égale, qui trône, place Soweto, du Sud. années après sa mort, le concept a été en face de l’Assemblée nationale du repris par le président Abdoulaye Wade, Sénégal). Abdoulaye Wade et Thabo Mbeki panafricaniste convaincu (bien qu’il ne sont plus présidents et depuis, ait très malencontreusement baptisé la Le NEPAD (the New Partnership comme par hasard, les concepts de sculpture érigée sur une des collines des for Africa’s Development), un projet « développement » puis, pour faire Mamelles du nom de « monument de la développé en 2001 par les présidents neuf peut-être, d’« émergence » CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 12

l’ont remplacé. Le choix du con- Euclide, Ptolémée ou Cicéron, étaient du développement fondé sur la misère et cept à vulgariser auprès des popula- des « païens » qui, de plus, avaient vécu l’exploitation du plus grand nombre, un tions africaines n’est pas innocent. plus d’un millier d’années auparavant. développement économique insoucieux Tandis que l’un des concepts est Ils ne se sont pas non plus laissé opposer du développement humain ? S’agit-il porteur d’une Afrique prospère, le fameux, pour ne pas dire fumeux, plutôt, pour paraphraser le président autonome, scientifiquement à la « À quoi sert le retour au passé ? ». Ils Senghor, de mettre l’humain au coeur du pointe, technologiquement avancée, ont refusé les dogmes religieux de leur développement ? spirituellement forte, l’autre ou les deux époque (avec des limites ou un certain Par conséquent, et pour en revenir au autres nous engluent dans l’obscurantisme degré de clandestinité pour s’éviter le concept de « renaissance », si les Africain- meurtrier, les famines dévastatrices, bûcher de l’inquisition). e-s veulent l’utiliser correctement, elles les guerres génocidaires, les épidémies C’est grâce à ces savants tournés vers et ils doivent comprendre que cela veut endémiques, et l’illettrisme de masse. Il l’étude du savoir emmagasiné dans les dire aller à la redécouverte des trésors y a donc bien un concept qui libère et un temps passés que l’Europe a maîtrisé artistiques, philosophiques, techno- concept ou des concepts fabriqués pour les sciences et la technologie qui lui logiques et scientifiques de l’âge d’or perpétuer la tragédie africaine. ont permis de se lancer en conquérante africain. Un âge d’or se dit d’un temps à la découverte des continents d’où associé à une période de paix et de Le sens, la portée et la valeur du provenaient les richesses qui lui faisaient prospérité inégalée dans la mémoire des concept de « renaissance » tant défaut. Citons le poète José Maria hommes. Toutefois, même si le concept L’étude et l’exploitation des textes de Heredia qui exprime la réalité dans sa « d’âge d’or » peut être contesté, il n’en et du savoir anciens poignante et cruelle vérité : reste pas moins que certaines périodes dans l’histoire d’une région ont été plus Renaissance est un terme qui a été inventé Comme un vol de gerfauts hors du e prospères que d’autres, moins caractérisées par des historiens du XIX siècle pour charnier natal, décrire la période allant, suivant les par les guerres, les famines et l’obscu- Fatigués de porter leurs misères auteurs, du XIVe–XVe au XVIe–XVIIe siè- rantisme meurtrier. Les Pyramides et les hautaines, cles en Europe. L’époque est qualifiée de Textes des Pyramides (les plus anciens « renaissance », car elle est caractérisée De Palos, de Moguer, routiers et textes religieux du monde), ainsi que la par l’étude et l’imitation de la littérature et capitaines Charte de Kurukan Fuga, Constitution des arts de l’Antiquité grecque et romaine. Partaient, ivres d’un rêve héroïque et de l’empire du Mali (1235-1645) sont Le terme renaissance servait ainsi à désigner brutal. autant de repères marquant les différents un renouveau de l’âge d’or européen en Ils allaient conquérir le fabuleux métal « âges d’or » du continent. Maintes études historiques et maints ouvrages savants opposition à l’obscurantisme qui aurait Que Cipango mûrit dans ses mines fournissent la preuve de l’existence dominé le Moyen Âge européen (appelé en lointaines, anglais the Dark Ages). Quoi que l’on pense dans le passé africain de telles époques Et les vents alizés inclinaient leurs de cette opposition faite entre le Moyen de développement humain et des droits antennes Âge et la Renaissance, le fait est que les humains, ainsi que des arts, de la science, « hommes de la Renaissance », peintres, Aux bords mystérieux du monde de la médecine et de la technologie. Pour sculpteurs, architectes, philosophes, occidental. n’en citer que quelques-uns : Voyages, hommes de lettres, juristes, astronomes, Armée, grâce aux « hommes de la III. Inde, Extrême-Orient, Espagne et mathématiciens, médecins : Érasme, Renaissance », de technologie jusqu’aux Soudan, Ibn Battuta, La Découverte/ Pétrarque, Dante, Da Vinci, Botticelli, dents, l’Europe devient une grande Poche, Paris 1997, p. 393-442 ; Histoire Michel Ange, Le Tintoret, Thomas More, puissance maritime et militaire. Cela universelle, livre I Diodore ; La Charte du Machiavel, Cervantès, Shakespeare, lui permet de vaincre et de soumettre Mandé et autres traditions du Mali, Y. T. Rabelais, Ronsard, Montaigne, La tous les peuples et territoires qu’elle Cissé & J.-L. Sagot-Dufau-vroux, Albin Fontaine, Galilée, Copernic, Tycho découvre et qu’elle exploite sans merci. Michel, Paris, 2003 ; L’unité culturelle Brahe, Kepler, Newton, Ambroise Paré, Là se trouve la source du développement de l’Afrique noire, Présence africaine, Paracelse, Christophe Colomb… ont économique, scientifique et techno- Cheikh Anta DIOP ; Afrique noire, eu l’humilité (pas toujours, il y a eu des logique de l’Europe. C’est donc la démographie, sol et histoire, Louise- plagiaires éhontés tels que La Fontaine, Renaissance qui est à la source de leur Marie Diop-Maes, Présence africaine/ qui s’est approprié sans vergogne les développement – vous remarquerez que Khepera, Paris 1996 ; Des droits de la fables de l’Africain Ésope) et surtout je n’ai pas mis développement humain femme africaine, d’hier à demain, Saaliu la sagesse, l’intelligence, d’étudier les dans la liste car, sur le plan humain, ce Saamba Malaado Kanji, Xamal, Saint- œuvres des maîtres de la philosophie, des qui se développe, c’est ce que l’Europe Louis, 1997 ; La philosophie africaine sciences (mathématiques, astronomie, a de pire : la mise en esclavage des êtres de la période pharaonique, 2780-330 chimie, médecine ), de la technologie humains au nom de la religion, mais avant notre ère, Théophile Obenga, et des arts de l’antiquité gréco-latine aussi de la raison (n’oublions pas tous L’Harmattan, Paris, 1990. (eux-mêmes ayant tout appris de leurs les discours et études « scientifiques » et Citons Diodore, parmi les précurseurs dans maîtres négro-égyptiens, v. Cheikh « philosophiques » qui ont accom- cette voie de l’étude de l’Afrique ancienne Anta DIOP, Civilisation ou Barbarie, pagné la hiérarchisation des races et et les promoteurs de ses bienfaits : Présence Africaine, Paris). Ils ne se sont l’esclavagisation). Ainsi, même lorsque pas laissé détourner de cette tâche par le l’on parle de développement, il faut faire Nous allons placer ici un abrégé des fait que ces maîtres, tels Platon, Aristote, attention à ce que l’on y met. S’agit-il lois et des mœurs des Égyptiens qui CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 13

paraîtront sans doute merveilleuses écrits dans les langues parlées par le Conclusion et d’une grande instruction pour le peuple et vendus à des tarifs abordables, lecteur. Elles n’ont pas été révérées par l’alphabétisation dans les langues Il est temps de revenir au concept de les Égyptiens seuls, les Grecs mêmes vernaculaires se développe en même renaissance africaine et de ne plus accepter les ont admirées, de sorte que les plus temps que l’édition, chacune nourrissant, qu’il se fasse encore remplacer par celui de habiles d’entre eux se sont fait honneur ou se nourrissant de l’autre. Joachim du « développement », ou d’« émergence ». de venir jusqu’en Égypte pour y Bellay publie en 1549 un ouvrage au titre L’analyse de la vision qui soustend ces apprendre les maximes et les coutumes éloquent, Deffense et illustration de la concepts est fort bien résumée dans les er de cette fameuse nation. Car bien langue françoise ; moins d’un siècle plus TDR du CODESRIA Day, 1 février que l’entrée de l’Égypte fût autrefois tard, en 1635, l’Académie française est 2017: « Le développement renvoie plus difficile aux étrangers, comme nous créée par le cardinal de Richelieu. ou moins aux mêmes situations que l’on l’avons dit plus haut, cependant évoque en parlant d’émergence. Les deux Les discours et projets relatifs à la Orphée et le poète Homère entre les (émergence et développement) impliquent renaissance africaine ne sauraient donc plus anciens, Pythagore de Samos et le une transformation socio-économique, occulter la dimension linguistique législateur des Athéniens, Solon, entre politique et culturelle, et servent de de l’entreprise. Parler de renaissance plusieurs autres plus récents n’ont pas justification à des stratégies, à des africaine implique d’aborder la question laissé d’en entreprendre le voyage. politiques, et à certains types d’interventions de la réhabilitation des langues africaines (Diodore 1744:L.1er, sec. 2, XXII) dont les effets sur les populations sont comme instruments de diffusion du savoir loin d’être toujours en concordance avec Telle est la voie vers la renaissance dans tous les domaines, littéraires comme les objectifs déclarés, encore moins avec africaine, aller puiser à la source du scientifiques. les attentes. » Arrêtons donc de parler de savoir africain, à l’origine du fameux Pour illustrer la faisabilité de cette développement de l’Afrique. Embrtassons « miracle » grec. Un voyage décomplexé entreprise, en 1975, Cheikh Anta DIOP le concept de renaissance africaine, ainsi vers les lois et autres « merveilles » de publie dans le Bulletin de l’IFAN, un article que la méthodologie détaillée par les notre passé ancien. Cependant, l’effort bilingue de 80 pages intitulé « Comment auteur-e-s panafricanistes qui en ont fait la vers la connaissance du savoir des sages enraciner la science en Afrique : exemple promotion depuis tant de décennies. de l’Afrique ancienne doit aussi tendre à wolof (Sénégal) » la démocratisation de ce savoir retrouvé, ainsi que de tous les autres savoirs de par Louise Marie Diop-Maes publie, en Note le monde. annexe des Actes du Colloque de Bamako, 23 au 25 janvier 2007, Entre tradition 1. Article préalablement publié dans les La démocratisation des savoirs et modernité : quelle gouvernance pour quotidiens : Wal Fadjri, du mardi 5 janvier par l’alphabétisation en langues l’Afrique ?, un texte intitulé « Stratégie pour 2010 ; et Le Matin, du mardi 5 janvier 2010, « vulgaires » l’utilisation dans l’enseignement et dans n° 3862, p. 7. Le concept d’émergence a quelque peu éclipsé La Renaissance n’a pas seulement été l’administration des principales langues celui de « renaissance africaine ». Article nourrie par l’étude des textes et du savoir parlées ou comprises par les habitants – relu et réécrit pour les 44 ans du CODESRIA anciens, elle a aussi été marquée par la instauration d’un système éducatif rationnel (conférence du 1er février 2017). démocratisation des savoirs du fait de et fonctionnel », un article plus tard résumé et rebaptisé « Langues et enseignement. l’utilisation des langues « vulgaires », Bibliographie ou langues vernaculaires européennes, Quelques mesures fondamentales à prendre comme langues d’écriture et de diffusion sans lesquelles la « renaissance africaine » Diodore de Sicile, Histoire univer-selle traduite en des textes religieux et profanes. ne pourra se produire ». français par l’abbé Terrasson, Paris 1744, er Le député Samba Diouldé Thiam a publié Livre 1 , section 2, XXII, « Lois de l’Égypte La renaissance repose ainsi sur la fin de – Mœurs des Égyptiens et premièrement l’hégémonie du latin, la langue léguée dans le quotidien WalFadjri du jeudi 25 juin 2009 une importante contribution des rois » disponible sur http://remacle.org/ par le colonisateur romain. Le latin, bloodwolf/historiens/diodore/livre1a.htm. langue savante, langue de l’Église et des intitulée « Diversité linguistique et système scolaire : le temps d’agir est venu ». http://remaCLe.org/bloodwolf/historiens/diodore/ universités est bousculé par les langues livre1.pdf du peuple, les dialectes du français, de Les travaux qui prouvent l’importance des Diop, Cheikh Anta, 1990, Alerte sous les tropiques, l’italien, de l’anglais… La langue est un langues africaines pour le développement Paris, Présence africaine. enjeu de développement humain et d’essor de l’éducation et des sciences en Afrique Diop, Cheikh Anta, 1981, Civilisation ou Barbarie, économique. L’imprimerie, introduite en sont légion, cependant, faute pour la Paris, Présence africaine. Europe par Gutenberg, rend possible une majorité du personnel politique africain Diop-Maes Louise Marie, 1996, Afrique noire, industrie du livre rentable, offrant des d’en prendre connaissance et d’agir en démographie, sol, histoire, Khepera et livres à la portée de toutes les bourses. conséquence, la renaissance africaine Présence africaine. Les livres étant devenus accessibles au demeure une illusion et le développement plus grand nombre par le fait qu’ils sont – ou l’émergence – des chimères. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 14

Africa and Industrialisation: What Role for the Research Community?

Introduction Critical issues for research ndustrialisation is on the agenda Theresa Moyo Research on Africa’s industrialisation of many African countries. University of Limpopo could focus on a number of issues. IIndustrialisation has been defined as South Africa Firstly, because there is much concern ‘the rise of the manufacturing sector’, a about the failure of past efforts, a means for achieving structural economic number of scholars now speak of frameworks for industrialisation. For change and development which results ‘new industrialisation’, a term that example, in 2015, the Southern African from the higher productivity growth emphasises that this current wave of Development Community (SADC) and per capita incomes that it generates industrialisation has to be ideologically, approved the SADC Industrialization (Naudé, Szirmai and Lavopa 2013:3). technologically and qualitatively diffe- Framework and Roadmap. The region In the last few years, it appears that rent from past experiments. The history is currently developing an Action there is more seriousness in terms of of industrialisation in Africa conjures Plan for the implementation of that implementation of that agenda than ever up memories of transnational capitalist Roadmap. The Economic Community before. A major reason could be the exploitation. These corporations of West African States (ECOWAS) realisation of the vulnerability associated were part of the colonial machinery has developed a Common Indus-trial with overdependence on production and became an instrument for the Policy (WACIP 2015–2020). At their and export of commodities. This was exploitation of Africa’s resources for the meeting in April 2015, leaders of the particularly so in the wake of the global benefit of what Walter Rodney and others region agreed on four regional priority and financial crisis of 2007–2009 which, referred to as the ‘centre’ – the capitalist sectors, namely, agro-industry and agribu- in the case of commodity producing economies of the North. Even after siness, pharmaceutical industry, countries, led to a significant decline in achievement of political independence, construction industry and automotive output, export revenues and employment MNCs were associated with payment and machinery industries. In its (Moyo 2016:36–37). Indicators such of low wages and repatriation of most Industrialization Strategy 2012–2032, as Manufacturing Value Added (MVA) profits to an extent that benefits to local the East African Community (EAC), share in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), economies were very limited. Amin has identified as priority, six strategic Competitive Industrial Performance strongly argues against what he refers sectors have been identified for priority (CIP) index, among others, show that to as ‘accumulation by dispossession’ development and these are the iron-ore Africa’s performance on industrialisation which was and continues to exploit and other mineral processing, fertilisers has been poor as compared to the rest Africa’s natural resources and people. and agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, of the world, according to the United He observes that: Nations Development Organization petro-chemicals and gas processing, (UNIDO 2016) and the World Bank agro-processing and energy and bio- Accumulation by dispossession (2017). That is despite the continent’s fuels (TradeMark Southern Africa 2017). continues in front of our eyes. rich endowment in natural resources such The Board of the African Development In the late modern capitalism of as oil, minerals and land. Bank recently approved the Bank’s the contemporary oligopolies. Industrialisation Strategy for Africa In the centres, monopoly rents 2016–2025 (African Development – the beneficiaries of which are Renewed interest in Bank 2017). All these are indicators that industrialisation the oligopolistic plutocracies show some seriousness in embarking – are synonymous with the At continental level, the growing on industrialisation. But clearly, the dispossession of the entire importance of the industrialisation agenda poor performance in terms of Africa’s productive basis of society. In seems evident in long-term visions and Manufacturing Value Added (MVA) the peripheries, this pauperizing strategies such as the African Union relative to other regions in the world, dispossession manifests itself in the Commission’s (AUC) Agenda 2063 and demonstrates that much more has to be expro-priation of the peasantry and the Mining Vision, and also in interna- accomplished. As most of the ongoing the plundering of natural resources tional development frameworks such initiatives are fairly recent, there is room of the regions in question. These as Sustainable Development Goals for the research community to make practices constitute essential (SDGs) under Agenda 2030. The AUC a significant contribution in terms of pillars for the expansion of the late is also implementing the Accelerated imagining, conceptualising and shaping capitalism of the oligopolies (Amin Industrialisation Development for the policy and strategic direction for a as quoted in Moyo (2016:40)). Africa (AIDA). Regional Economic new industrialisation approach for the Communities (RECs) have also developed African continent. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 15

A number of research issues can be Mercedes Benz, Toyota, Hyundai, Ford, Conclusion considered. Firstly, as a resource-rich Chrysler, to name a few, locate in South The re-emergence of industriali-sation continent, it almost seems sensible to Africa and produce for the domestic as as a development priority in Africa adopt a resource-based industrialisation well as export market in and out of Africa, is a phenomenon that has become a approach. Yet critics argue that it is too with claims that thousands of jobs have reality as evidence shows. The research expensive and would not be feasible for been created. community can play a very important Africa particularly because of the limited Research has to interrogate the question as role in contributing to the discourse technological and skills base. Yet it is to whether or not the FDI-route is the way on what kind of industrialisation also possible to start off with low-cost for Africa to industrialize and if not, what framework, how to engage FDI, how technology light manufacturing, which a are the feasible options? What lessons to ensure that industrialisation is number of countries are already engaged could be drawn from all these and other transformative and inclusive politically, in. In that case, processing may be viable experiences regarding the role of FDI economically and socially. in some lines of production, for example in the new industrialisation? Is it really agro-processing, food and beverages, possible for African countries to enter wood and furniture, chemicals and References into win-win agreements in the context of pharmaceuticals, all of which utilise local South-South, North-South cooperation, African Development Bank, 2016, ‘Board resources. So research could focus on (including MNCs) in their pursuit of approves Bank’s Industrialisation Strategy identifying sectoral priorities that could GVCs? Who drives the industrialisation for Africa 2016–2025’: A road map for constitute the basis for industrialisation. agenda? For whose benefit? What is or scaling up Africa’s economic transformation. Secondly, given the deficit that faces what should be the role of the state? How 25/07/2016. Available online at http://www. many countries in regard to technology do citizens participate? On what terms? afdb.org/. Accessed on 27 April 2017. and the resources required, there appears What kind of agreements or deals should Channel News Asia, 2017, ‘Morocco’s Tangiers to be a new wave of mobilising Foreign African governments enter into in order to launch Chinese Industrial City’. Available Direct Investment (FDI) whereby a to avoid the exploitation of the past? The online at http://www. Channelnewsasia. number of countries have embarked on a academic and research community could com/. Accessed on 8 April 2017. drive to attract Chinese and other foreign contribute towards development of the Economic Community of West African States investors to support them in their efforts. practical modalities and approaches that (ECOWAS), 2017, ‘ECOWAS Ministers For example, Morocco is reported to have can result in ‘win-win’ partnerships. back quick implementation of West Africa signed an agreement with the Haite Group Thirdly, issues of inclusivity, equity and common industrial policy’. Available online from China where the company will economic empowerment are pertinent in at www.ecowas.int/ecowas/. Accessed on 10 launch an industrial park near Tangiers. this debate. What kind of industrialisation April 2017. Two hundred Chinese companies are framework will lead to not just structural Moyo, T., 2016, ‘Africa and Global Recessions. expected to participate and they will transformation of African economies Options for Reducing Vulnerability’, Future create tens of thousands of jobs. Over the but political, economic and social Africa Insight, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp. 33–44. next ten years, investments of ten billion transformation? What approach ensures US dollars (Channel News Asia 2017) Naudé, W., Szirmai, A., and Lavopa, A., 2013, inclusive and equitable development? are planned. Tanzania is also reported to ‘Industrialization Lessons from BRICS: A How can industrialisation be used as a have invited Chinese and Singaporean Comparative Analysis’, Discussion Paper tool to empower the rural poor, peasant clothing firms. An industrial park is under No. 7543, Bonn: Institute for the Study of farmers, women, the youth, Small and construction as well as a megaport to Labour (IZA). Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) and facilitate trade with the two countries. TradeMark Southern Africa, 2017, ‘East Afri- the informal economy where small- The Ethiopian government, under its can Industrialization Strategy 2012–2032’. scale manufacturing is taking place? Is Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) I Available online at http://www.trademarksa. the African Development Bank’s agro- and II, has involved Chinese companies org/publica-tions/. Accessed on 9 April 2017. allied industrialisation strategy likely to in building rail and road infrastructure transform rural economies and to benefit United Nations Industrial Organisation (UNIDO), and also in supporting its agro-based women and the youth? 2016, ‘Industrial Perfor-mance Report 2016’, industrialisation, with a focus on the Vienna,World Bank Development Indicators leather and shoe manufacturing industries. Finally, how does Africa achieve 2017, Washington DC: World Bank. South Africa is cited as one of the few a skills revolution in the field of World Bank. World Development Indica-tors. African countries to have ‘successfully’ Science, Engineering, Technology Available at www.worldbank.org/ Accessed experimented with participating in Global and Mathematics (STEM) and in 16 April 2017. Value Chains (GVCs). Its auto assembly developing the entrepreneurial capa- and auto components manufacturing city that is so fundamental to the vision has seen multinational companies like for industrialisation ? CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 16

The Cheetah Generation: The Birth of the Captains of Industry in Africa?

Introduction There has never been a more Horman Chitonge inspired generation of young Centre for African Studies Africans. These builders, he debates about African University of Cape Town innovators and risk takers entrepreneurs is not new. There South Africa are fervent in their resolve to have been scholarly efforts T transform the continent. They are in the past to describe and analyse solving critical socio-economic African entrepreneurs. But “much of crisis, the opposite of what many experts problems, exporting African what has been written about African were predicting – a prolonged recession. culture to the world, creating entrepreneurship views it unfavourably” This caught many ‘conventional’ job opportunities for Africans, (Elkan 1988:172). At some point, we analysts by surprise, and since then, re-telling Africa’s stories, and got used to the narrative that the reason there have been many narratives offered writing the future (Nsehe 2014). why Africa has failed to make progress to explain this. One of the narratives that in terms of social and economic have become popular in global media development is precisely because the houses is the ‘Africa Rising Narrative The Kenyan Minister of Industrialisation continent lacked a class of entrepreneurs (ARN)’. The Economist magazine’s and Enterprise Development, Adam who can play a critical role in driving story in 2011 that seven of the ten fastest Mohammed, talks about a ‘mind- this process. It was suggested that what growing economies in the world were in set’ shift among young Africans who emerged in post-colonial Africa was a Africa sparked some kind of media hype are now increasingly thinking not as class of ‘bureaucratic bourgeoisie’ that which popularised ARN. The ARN, for prospective employees but as employers relied mainly on access to state power, a change, confidently affirms an Africa (Obonyo 2016:17). Creation of jobs, resources and influence to support their that is resolutely rising from the ruins in the form of self-employment, but private business undertakings (see of civil wars, poverty, hopelessness, also jobs for others in the context Arrighi and Saul 1968). While there are diseases and the ravage of the ‘big men’. where unemployment among the youth questions about whether the people who While the ARN identifies several factors in Africa is high is seen as one of the own food and clothing business ventures to have played an important role in this greatest potentials that entrepreneurship on the streets of African towns and cities turn of events, it strongly associates the offers: ‘Today, entrepreneurship is should be recognised as entrepreneurs or positive momentum to the emergence of a seen as one of the most sustainable job as survivalists, there seem to be a change new generation of African entrepreneurs generation in Africa’ argues Obonyo in the views about entrepreneurship in – the ‘Cheetah Generation’. This new (ibid 16). Africa today. The more recent stories generation of African entrepreneurs But at this stage, we know very little about African entrepreneurs assert that is said to be an independent class not about this group of Africans, whether there is a new generation of Africans relying on privileged access to state it is new and different from the African (The Cheetah Generation) which is power and resources (Rotberg 2013); entrepreneur we have encountered in doing things differently. In this piece, they are ‘making it’ on their own, as the past, its size, how this group sees I would like to reflect on this group of it were. There is the view that this itself in relation to the rest of society Africans, focusing on whether it is at all generation is different from what we and what motivates members of this different from African entreprenuers we have seen before. group. In other words, there is need for have seen in the past. Although in the past the debate was about a sociology of African entrepreneurs, to whether African entrepreneurs existed or understand, not only their role in society, The Cheetah Generation in Africa not, the current discourse, riding on the but their potential as an instrument for Rising Narrative Africa Rising hype, has brushed aside social, economic and political change doubts about their existence. The debates on the continent. Just how much hope If there is a good thing one can cite from have focused more on trying to describe should Africa place on this group and the 2008/09 financial crisis, it is that and understand the key features of what why now? Africa began to attract the attention of is sometimes referred to as the ‘new Although there have been a number of global media, not for the usual stories generation of African entrepreneurs’ studies done in the last decade about of starvation, diseases, civil wars, (McDade and Spring 2005) or more African entrepreneurs (Brixiova et al. bad governance and despair. In the generally, the ‘Cheetah Generation’ 2013; Baumol 1968 Gelb et al. 2009 aftermath of the 2008/09 financial and (Ayitteh 2005). For example, an online Ncube 2005), this area of study remains economic crisis the world woke up to Forbes publication, which profiles under-theorised with scarce scholarly the ‘surprising’ fact that most African young African entrepreneurs, states that, literature that provides deep insights into economies rebound quickly from the CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 17

what constitutes this group, the different responding to all the different stimuli in Baumol, W., 1968, ‘Entrepreneurship in Economic sub-groups, and how they operate in the the environment where they live. From Theory’, American Economic Review, Vol. 58, African socioeconomic and political my recent work among agro-processing No. 2, pp. 64–71. milieu. Most of the studies which have enterprises in South Africa and Zambia, Brixovia, Z. and Ncube, M., 2013, ‘Entrepreneurship been conducted so far have focused on it has become apparent that the broader and the Business Environment in Africa: An the role they (can) play in promoting context has an immense impact on Application to Ethiopia’, IZA Discussion Paper job creation, sustainable and inclusive shaping the entrepreneur. No. 7553. growth and development in Africa, with In this regard, the African entre- Elkan, W. 1988. “Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurship less attention given to understanding the preneurship scholarship urgently needs in Africa.” Research Observer, 3, No. 2, social context which shapes what they a reorientation of the research approach 171-188. do and who they are. If the claim is that to understand this allegedly nascent Gelb, A., Mengistae, T., Ramachandran, V., and this class of entrepreneurs is different class of captains of industry in Africa. Shah, M. K., 2009, ‘To formalize or not to from the past generations (for sure, The resurgence of interest in African formalize? Comparisons of microenterprise Africa has not lacked entrepreneurs in entrepreneurs is obviously highlighting data from Southern and East Africa’, Center for the past), we then need to know what the need to develop a ‘sociology Global Development Working Paper No. 175. makes this group different. of African entrepreneurs’, which Ligthelm, A., 2010, ‘Entrepreneurship and Small Further, there is a growing need to study not locates this group of Africans in the Business Sustainability’, Southern Africa just the personal traits of entrepreneurs, but broader African society. For instance, Business Review, Vol. 14, No. 3. pp. 131–153. also the broader context that shapes their we have to ask, who is an African McDade, B., and Spring, A., 2005, ‘The “New activities and their business orientation. entrepreneur? How is he/she different Generation of African Entrepreneurs”: In this regard, there is still a huge gap in from a European, Asian or American Networking to Change the Climate the scholarship, especially on the African entrepreneur? What characteristics for Business and Private Sector-led entrepreneurs as a distinct group shaped does the African entrepreneur have Development’, Entrepreneurship and by the specific social, political, economic, in common with entrepreneurs from Regional Development No. 17, pp. 17–42 cultural and religious context on the other parts of the world? How does the Ncube, M., 2005, ‘Economic Growth, continent. Given the different context in African entrepreneur relate to African Entrepreneurship and the Business which the African entrepreneur operates, society broadly? What shapes the Environment in Africa’, University of we should not expect him or her to behave African entrepreneurs’ world view? Witwatersrand, Graduate School of Business in the same way as a Brazilian, Russian, How does the African society perceive Working Paper, No. 30. Japanese or European entrepreneur. As and relate to the African entrepreneur? Reivera-Santos and others have observed, These are important questions which Nsehe, M., 2014, ‘30 Most Promising Young ‘characteristics of the environment are need to be explored systematically in Entrepreneurs in Africa 2014’. Available likely to affect not only the possible order to properly understand the African online at http://www.forbes.com/sites/ emergence of social enterprises, but entrepreneurs and what sets them apart mfonobongnsehe/2014/02/04/30-most-promising- also many of the characteristics of these from the rest. young-entrepreneur-in-africa-2014. ventures’ (Rivera-Santos et al. 2015:73). Accessed on 28 May 2016. Adrich and Martinez (2007:294) make References Obonyo, R., 2016. Africa looks to its entrepreneurs. a similar observation arguing that Africa Renewal, 30(1), pp.16-17. Adrich, H., and Martinez, M., 2007, ‘Many ‘understanding entrepreneurial success Rivera-Santos, M., Holt, D., Littlewood, D. and are Called, but Few are Choosen: An requires that we consider the societal Kolk, A., 2015. Social entrepreneurship Evolutionary Perspective for the Study context in which entrepreneurs develop in sub-Saharan Africa. The Academy of of Entrepreneurship’, in A. Cuervo, D. their efforts’. Management Perspectives, 29(1), pp.72-91. Ribeiro, and S. Roig, eds, Entrepreneurship: To develop a richer understanding Rotberg, R., 2013, Africa Emerges: Consummate Concepts, Theory and Perspectives, pp. 294– of entrepreneurs, the ‘individual, the Challenges, Abundant Opportunities, 311, Berlin: Springer. organisation and the development Cambridge: Polity Press. context need to be studied’ Arrighi, G. and Saul, J. 1968. “Socialism and Economic (Lighthelm 2010:133). In this sense, Development in Tropical Africa.” Journal of entrepreneurship has to be seen as a Modern African Studies, Vol.6, No.2. 141-169. product of the broader social, political, Ayitteh, G., 2005, ‘The Cheetah Generation: economic and cultural environment. It Africa’s New Hope’. Available online at https:// is not merely an economic phenomenon freeafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/ to which individuals or group actors The-Cheetah-Generation.pdf. are responding; entrepreneurs are CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 18

Urban Studies: A View from the Continent’s Southern Tip

his is an important moment to Sophie Oldfield Wanjiku Kihato, the third panellist and engage in urban debate and African Centre for Cities a scholar of urbanism and migration, to reflect on urban studies in T University of Cape Town challenged us conceptually. She Southern Africa and across the continent. South Africa suggested that the urban theory produced African cities are deeply divided, in our region represents ‘models and hotbeds of discontent and protest, as spare parts scavenged from elsewhere’ well as sites of dynamism and change, urbanisation, which are substantively (2016), found in and referenced from contexts in which socio-economic and complex and contested. Our theories and cities elsewhere. She asked: Can we political inequalities reproduce and positions, and our research strategies break out of these habitual taken-for- shift. For universities, the contemporary and navigations, need to embrace and granted ways of knowing that rely on moment is fraught and creative, a context interrogate the complex ways in which ideas from afar? In asking this question, of dissent and mobilisation one in which practice, policy, and politics interplay. she challenges us to develop a sensibility we are challenged, in South African in These contexts shape what and how we that is curious, a form of questioning particular, to become more accessible know, the methods of our research, as that seeks new ways to see, new and democratic, to decolonise. This mix well as with whom we know, the publics partnerships to know and work together of mobilisation grounds and inspires and debates which inspire and demand that brings new voices into our urban thinking on knowledge production research. Can we embrace this messiness? African conversations. In doing this in urban studies and the substantive Can we navigate pathways through it? work, she suggested, our goal should readings of cities that we produce These questions and challenges arose be an epistemological reorientation, a (Parnell and Oldfield 2014). in the Southern African City Studies frightening but also freeing objective. In this short piece, I share some of the Network conference agenda, a biennial This bold agenda is essential I think to contention and excitement that infuses opportunity to share urban studies grapple with the complexity, contention this field and its position in African and research, hosted in March 2016 at the and creativity found in African cities. global southern debate. Kate Derickson’s Urban Futures Centre at the Durban This epistemological and political (2015) thinking is a useful starting point. University of Technology in South challenge reflects a drive to open up She delineates the ways we approach cities Africa. The conference opened with urban studies to the worlds that inspire as ‘Urbanisation 1’ and ‘Urbanisation a keynote panel on urban theory and and shape our cities, aligning with 2’ (borrowing from Chakrabarty’s the place and contribution of African Derickson’s framing of Urbanisation concept of History 1 and History 2). scholarship in urban studies. Three 2. Both assert a critique, and a need to Urbanisation 1 is exemplified by the panellists kicked off the discussion. The build theory as a motivation and anchor planetary urbanisation thesis that posits first, Bill Freund, a leading scholar on for knowing and engaging our cities. the complete urbanisation of society, a African cities situated his commentary This is the sensibility that I think, in difficult argument to deploy in African in the complexities and messiness of large part, shapes urban studies research contexts. In contrast, Urbanisation 2 African urbanism, pithily suggesting in our region. We have a commitment research is characterised by diverse that ‘every African city is a gemors, a to a scholarly agenda that embraces interventions, united by a political complex mess’ (2016). Our need as a innovation and experimentation, and epistemological strategy to refuse field, therefore, is theory and practice through, for instance, diverse forms Eurocentrism and to ‘provincialise’ that reflects this reality, engages it, of writing and research practice. Our urban theory (Derickson:648). In unravels and untangles it. Molemo research partnerships and collaborations articulating this distinction, her approach Moiloa, an artist and architect and the bring universities into conversation makes clear differences in intellectual, second panellist, shared her work on with the state, and with civil society, political and geographical genea-logies poetics and aesthetics in African public and community organisations, with, that shape these approaches to urban art, practices that cut against the grain for instance art projects and theatre studies. In this schema, African urban of normal languages and assertions producers, with artists and architects, studies fits readily into Urbanisation 2, on African cities as dysfunctional and with colleagues elsewhere on the contexts in which many urban stories developmental nightmare. She spoke continent and across the globe. Our demand attention and where urban life to the politics of knowledge production work spans micro-scale ways of reading cannot be reduced to a singular ‘urban and its circulations, describing her cities and requires large-scale data- story’ or theory. frustrations with asserting arguments driven approaches, both essential to about African cities and public art in Necessarily then, in African urban engage the realities of the rapid growth global forums as ‘throwing stones at of African cities (see, for instance, contexts our work must be diverse, bullet-proof, supposedly transparent- messy even, reflecting modes of Parnell and Pieterse 2014; Parnell and glass cases’ (2016). And, Caroline Oldfield 2014). CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 19

This mix of questions, scales, impe- In ‘marking our location’ and in ‘tracing University of Technology, Thursday 17 ratives and collaborations, stretches its place in history’, the projects of urban March 2016. and challenges our expertise and studies on the African continent are Kihato, C. W., 2016, ‘Presentation, Key- capacities, as well as our theories and plural, shaped by multiple thematics and note Panel African Cities: Contem- our methods. It also inspires us to analytical objects, spanning questions porary, Changing and Future Refle- work boldly, drawing on on multiple of development and infrastructure ctions’, South African City Studies methods, from large-scale data and its in cities, art and politics, access to Network Conference, Durban Univer- modelling and trends, to the intimacies essential services, as well as justice and sity of Technology, Thursday 17 March 2016. of ethnography, bringing together a democracy. This is a collective analytical mix of new approaches, with the rigour and political, one that is substantive and Moiloa, M., 2016, ‘Presentation, Keynote Panel of more established social scientific urgent. It is also an opportunity to build African Cities: Contemporary, Changing and approaches. This requires a commitment richer more inclusive conversations Future Reflections’, South African City Studies to and capacity to listen, to democratise that embrace theory and practice, Network Conference, Durban University of our research and scholarship, to and collaborative work and writing, Technology, Thursday 17 March 2016. collaborate and embrace multiple conversations that can be deepened and Nagar, R., 2014, Muddying the Waters: voices, and expertise in our cities. This enriched in networks and conversations Coauthoriing Feminisms Across Scholarship is a challenge to mark our location, that engage in and across the continent. and Activism Urbana-Champaign: University to challenge what Roy describes as of Illinois Press. urban theory’s ‘disembodied voice and References unmarked location’ (2015:6). Inspired Parnell, S., and Oldfield, S., 2014, The Routledge by Adrienne Rich, she suggests that: ‘To Derickson, K., 2015, ‘Urban Geography 1: Handbook on Cities of the Global South, speak is to speak from a place on the Locating Urban Theory in the “Urban Age”’, London: Routledge. Progress in Human Geography, Vol. 39, map, which, is also a place in history … Parnell, S., and Pieterse, E., 2014, Africa’s Urban No. 5, pp. 647–657. [and] to embody urban theory, to mark Revolution, London: Zed Books. its location, to trace its biography, is a Freund, B., 2016, ‘Presentation, Keynote Panel Roy, A., 2015, ‘Who’s Afraid of Postco-lonial Theory?’, crucial step in acknowledging the project African Cities: Contemporary, Changing International Journal of Urban and Regional of power that is academic knowledge’ and Future Reflections’, South African Research, DOI:10.1111/1468-2427.12274. (Roy 2015:6). City Studies Network Conference, Durban

L’Afrique et son potentiel rural mondial

e continent africain est en train de plus. Et n’a peut-être jamais existé se diriger au pas de course vers la puisqu’il n’est pas fait pour s’inscrire gestion de ses villes où cinquante Carl Manlan dans la durée. L Ecobank Foundation pour cent de sa population devraient Nous savons que la croissance habiter en 2035. Cet engouement pour Accra, Ghana de la population mondiale, plus les villes reflète notre difficulté à planifier particulièrement dans les villes, est un notre gestion d’une population qui Nous nous devons de repenser notre défi sans précédent. Les 9 milliards continue de s’accroître et qui augmentera espace rural pour créer des mécanismes d’habitants de la planète en 2050 de 1,3 milliards de personnes. Cette qui transforment des résidus en intrants requièrent un accroissement de la relation entre nos villes et nos villages pour une autre finalité. Nos zones rurales production agricole de 70 pour cent qui ne s’est pas inscrite dans une économie continuent d'abriter cinquante pour cent devra venir de l’Afrique et des autres circulaire, laquelle aurait pu non seulement de nos citoyens à travers nos pays. pays dits pauvres. Sans une révolution continuer à développer des pôles multiples Nous ne pouvons imaginer un futur des mentalités qui engendre un meilleur dans nos pays respectifs, mais aussi aider urbain sans intégrer des solutions qui investissement dans l’agriculture à imaginer des modes de développements transforment cet exode rural en un flux africaine, il n’y aura pas de sécurité au-delà des frontières respectives. économique qui ne stagne pas en zone alimentaire mondiale. L’économie circulaire induit la notion urbaine. L’objectif en lui-même n’est Pour changer notre perception de ce de récupération et de regénération. C’est pas de contraindre le mouvement, il est monde que nous devons réinventer, un système économique d’échange plutôt de maintenir un équilibre entre les nous nous devons de mettre en place et de production visant à optimiser villes et les villages pour que le choix des fondamentaux empruntés à l’idée l’utilisation des ressources et réduire des individus ne se limite plus à cette d’une économie circulaire. Dans ce notre impact sur l’environnement. quête d’un eldorado citadin qui n’existe CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 20

modèle, nous intégrons les différentes structurelle. La continuité implique la l’Afrique, nous nous devons de mettre composantes de l’économie pour que conception de cycles ne s’arrêtant pas en place des mécanismes pour extraire chaque étape tienne compte de nos brusquement avec le départ des fèves, les iniquités de notre système actuel. Ce compétences respectives le long de la mais intégrant emplois et opportunités clivage sans lendemain entre les pôles chaîne de valeur de nos produits, issus dans une chaîne de valeurs qui n’éjecte complémentaires que sont nos villes de nos zones rurales. Ainsi, nous nous pas l’agriculteur une fois sa production et nos villages a favorisé un rejet de efforcerons de lier notre quête pour la vendue. la valorisation des ressources mêmes transformation socio-économique de Le vrai potentiel rural consiste à coupler qui ont permis de construire nos villes. notre continent aux besoins réels de nos notre croissance démographique avec Ainsi, nous avons traduit nos politiques populations, qui ne devront pas juste des emplois pour les 15 millions de dans les termes d’un mouvement faire le chemin en sens unique dans jeunes Africains qui arrivent sur le marchand, comme ces fèves, fruits, ou l’espoir de trouver une aubaine pour marché du travail chaque année. Notre légumes qui partent à l’exportation, subvenir à leurs besoins ou de vivoter, promesse de progrès et de changement sans pour autant redistribuer la valeur sans pouvoir contribuer au grand s’est heurtée à une myopie accentuée ajoutée, quasi inexistante en zone rurale. chantier de transformation structurelle par les cours des matières premières. Cet exode humain et financier empêche de nos économies. Nous sommes embarqués sur une ligne la majorité d’imaginer ce que nos villes deviendront sans nos villages. Créer une organisation circulaire continue vers l’exportation de nos pour engendrer une plus grande ressources minières et agricoles sans Nous avons investi massivement dans la contribution de tous est un défi auquel pour autant mettre un accent particulier santé et l’éducation, avec des résultats nous devons apporter des réponses. Si sur le pilier qui permettrait de conserver qui donnent à réfléchir. Que serait nous voulons rester compétitifs dans la une indépendance alimentaire. Nos devenue l’Afrique rurale et urbaine si transformation de nos pays, la solution campagnes regorgent de millions de nous avions favorisé des investissements peut venir de l’industrialisation et la petits agriculteurs qui survivent. Les massifs pour l’industrialisation de création d’emploi, afin de trouver un riches terres africaines continuent l’Afrique dans une vision régionale, juste équilibre entre les villes et les de produire à la sueur du front des puis continentale ? Les infrastructures campagnes. Trier et traiter les déchets agriculteurs dans un monde qui est passé auraient suivi cette marche effrénée vers engendrés dans les villes, traiter l’eau de la simple mécanique à une croissance le progrès humain. Il n’est pas trop tard, usée peut servir de matière première technologique exponentielle. La houe car nous pouvons insérer notre vision pour de l’engrais. Nous ne pourrons pas devrait être dans nos musées et plus dans africaine de ce que l’Afrique sera dans le résoudre nos problèmes en ne créant nos champs. concert harmonieux de ses populations, pas de mécanismes permettant aux Repenser l’intégration de nos zones dans un monde qui a besoin d’une productions agricoles de nos campagnes rurales dans un mode de production Afrique forte qui utilise ses propres de fournir des revenus continus et non circulaire est possible. Aucune alter- ressources pour bâtir son présent. Nous cycliques. Ainsi, avoir de nouvelles native n’est viable, car nous concen-trons ne pouvons y arriver sans transformer exigences pour répondre aux besoins des nos ressources dans nos villes. Nous notre agriculture en permettant à une individus implique une transformation avons le devoir pour nos générations et agricultrice de ne plus utiliser ses économique fondée sur une chaîne de celles à venir de cesser de faire partie du mains ou la houe pour atteler la terre valeur inclusive. problème. Une manière de le gérer est de quand le processus de mécanisation remédier au manque d’investissement n’est plus une innovation. Se nourrir Il est possible d’imaginer que la dans l’agriculture sur un continent dominé convenablement est un investisse- production de cacao de la Côte d’Ivoire par le secteur informel, ce qui pourrait ment de base que nous avons sacrifié et du Ghana se base sur le modèle d’une limiter la migration sans option réelle aux importations sans résoudre les économie circulaire. Tout le long de vers les villes. Cependant, nos politiques problèmes de chômage massif qui la chaîne de valeur de cette fève, nous ne se sont pas adaptées pour créer des tuent notre développement. L’Afri- développerons des mécanismes pour emplois le long de la chaîne de valeur que ne peut faillir à la nécessité d’une récolter, créer de la valeur ajoutée, de nos produits nationaux ou régionaux. autosuffisance alimentaire. recycler et développer les compétences Ainsi, nous nous sommes cantonnés nécessaires pour créer des emplois sur L’Afrique n’a pas encore pleinement dans des modèles qui ne donnent pas les toute la longueur de sa chaîne de valeur exploité son potentiel rural. Le continent moyens financiers aux communautés de en réduisant les déchets tout au long ne peut plus se résumer en contrastes sortir de cet engouement pour les villes. du cycle de vie du produit. La valeur entre ses villes et ses villages, sa La vision du mieux-être et des possibilités ajoutée et les emplois se trouvent dans le jeunesse et ses vieillards, car nous avons accentue l’échec à cause de l’incapacité stockage, la vente au détail de chocolat, tous une partition à jouer dans cette à gérer un exode ou une démographie la production et l’emballage ainsi que la harmonie. Cependant, il se peut que galopante concentrée autour de villes logistique mais pas dans l’exportation nous soyons en constante divergence inadaptées aux besoins de populations. pour un continent qui produit 73 pour au vu de notre incapacité à générer Leurs compétences inexploitées dans cent de la production mondiale en un dialogue intergénérationnel sur la l’agriculture ne peuvent se traduire en zone rurale. Repenser notre mode de nécessité de coexister dans un monde métiers potentiels dans nos villes. fonctionnement et de vie sans intégrer qui nous appartient. Il est temps, grand une solution environnementale met à mal Si nous voulons changer cette temps de mettre notre énergie au service la pérennisation de toute transformation dynamique pour la transformation de de notre continent. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 21

African Auxiliaries, Cultural Translation and Vernacularising Missionary Medicine in Colonial North-western Zambia

ost European medical through which their local workers could missionaries on the colonial Walima T. Kalusa translate modern medicine. Indeed, periphery in the twentieth University of Zambia as demonstrated at length elsewhere, M Lunda-speaking auxiliaries employed at century were convinced that training Lusaka, Zambia Africans in scientific medicine was an Kalene Hill Hospital between 1923 and effective way of transforming them int.o 1964 came to draw heavily on local, as useful allies in the crusade to annihilate evangelists hoped that such graduates opposed to scientific medical terms, to local medical belief systems and would come to perceive affliction as translate medical concepts and terms knowledge. Missionaries held that once a function of microbial invasion of the associated with mission medicine. trained in biomedicine with its microbial human body rather than the consequence understandings of disease, African of disruptions in social relations, as Strong evidence suggests that to express auxiliaries would no less appreciate most African societies believed. As biomedical concepts in ways that the efficacy of the Christian version of missionaries’ allies, auxiliaries were to were meaningful to patients, African modern medicine than assist them to assist their European masters to persuade auxiliaries at Kalene Hill Hospital disseminate beyond mission enclaves patients who sought medicine at mission- appropriated pre-existing secular and scientific comprehension of disease controlled hospitals that disease was a ritual terms, idioms and grammar and medicine. From this perspective, function of bacteriological invasion and through which ‘traditional’ healers Christian missionaries hoped that local could thus best be treated in isolation in north-western Zambia practised medical auxiliaries would play a pivotal from social relationships within which their own medicine and their patients part in converting fellow Africans to most Africans located human affliction understood or used it. Two examples microbial explanations of disease and or managed it. will suffice. From the secular and sacred thus in emasculating ‘pagan’ beliefs vocabulary through which ‘traditional’ Clearly, then, European healers at medicine was practised, local auxiliaries around disease, medicine and death, Kalene Hill saw the African auxiliary which missionaries perceived as a major appropriated the vernacular terms as as indispensable to their crusade to yitumbu (pl. nyitumbu) and kusolola obstacle to winning Africans souls for decontextualise African illness from its Christ. to gloss the Western ‘medicine’ and social space, to undermine local medical ‘diagnosis’, respectively. The expression To transform auxiliaries into effective knowledge and praxis and to draw of ‘medicine’, ‘diagnosis’ and related agents of cultural destruction, British Africans to Christianity. In this discourse, terms through these local concepts missionaries who had opened a hospital at therefore, African medical workers at certainly assisted missionaries to Kalene Hill in present-day north-western Kalene Hill Hospital were to be active construct a communicative bridge across Zambia as early as 1906 began training agents of cultural annihilation. In that which they interacted with their African Africans in modern medicine in 1923, capacity, they would contribute to the interlocutors. However, the uses and with fiscal support from the colonial Christian evangelical efforts to obliterate meanings Africans read into yitumbu, state. Christian Missions in Many Lands the existing medical practices and beliefs kusolola and other local medical (CMML) missionaries and colonial and to supplant them with microbial concepts were far from identical to officials were convinced that auxiliaries paradigms of disease and healing. those that CMML evangelists associated with ‘medicine’ and ‘diagnosis’. trained in allopathic medicine would The notion that indigenous medical Thus, whereas missionaries perceived internalise bacteriological theories of employees would serve as agents of ‘medicine’ as the science of treating disease causation. As a result, they would cultural suppression in Africa was or preventing illness through the use come to appreciate the ‘superiority’, premised on the assumption that they of drugs, surgery or diet, yitumbu was ‘rationality’ and ‘objectivity’ of the could practise and, more crucially, devoid of the scientific connotations new medicine. The medical training translate the new system of healing in missionaries invested in their medicine. programme for auxiliaries at Kalene ways that conformed and meshed with Yitumbu, to the contrary, consisted was, therefore, designed to demonstrate their employers’ expectations. Yet how of substances, incantations and any to them the power of modern medicine. auxiliaries were to accomplish this ritualised activity believed to have This programme was intended to feat was more assumed than proved. power (ngovu) capable of neutralising church out graduates who were well- At Kalene Hill and elsewhere in physical and spiritual affliction from the steeped in biomedical knowledge imperial Africa, European missionaries patient (muyeji). without, however, enjoying the medical themselves lacked a ready-made language authority of their employers. CMML CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 22

If the term yitumbu carried deeper implications. For one thing, auxiliaries’ Social Healing in Colonial Mwinilunga, practical and symbolic meanings than imaginative work of cultural translation Northern Rhodesia (Zambia), 1945-1964,” in its English counterpart, so did the term infused into Christian medicine the Ryan Johnson and Amna Khalis (eds.), Public kusolola which auxiliaries borrowed same meanings (and uses) Africans Health in the British Empire: Intermediaries, from local sacred medical vocabulary perceived in their own medicine that Subordinates, and the Practice of Public to translate the English ‘diagnosis’. To missionaries sought to suppress. Health (New York and London: Routeledge, medical missionaries, ‘diagnosis’ was Consequently, African patients came 2012), pp. 154-170. no less than an art of tracking down to understand Christian therapeutics 2. Walima T. Kalusa, “Language, Medical pathogens located in the human body not as a superior system of healing but Auxiliaries, and the Re-interpretation of by using such modern technologies as a variation of local healing systems. Missionary Medicine in Colonial Mwinilunga, the microscope. But kusolola connoted Thus, through translating mission- Zambia, 1922-1951,” Journal of Eastern more than identifying disease-causing based medicine using indigenous terms African Studies 1, 1 (2007), pp. 57-78. For organisms. Derived from the root and concepts, auxiliaries wittingly or contrary views, see Johannes Fabian, “Mission ‘solola’ or ‘make visible’, kusolola was unwittingly subverted their employers’ and the Colonization of African Languages: a process of unearthing hidden social dream to wean Africans from pre- Developments in the former Belgian Congo,” tensions, grudges and ill-feelings in existing medical knowledge and praxis. Canadian Journal of African Studies 17, 2 which the Lunda and other Africans In spite of their training in biomedicine, (1983), pp. 165-187. located the causes of disease (musongo, medical auxiliaries, therefore, refused to 3. For fascinating studies on this topic, see pl. nyisongu) and other forms of human be simple agents of cultural suppression. Victor Turner, “Lunda Medicine and suffering. Treatment,” The Occasional Papers of the Though inadequate, these examples of Notes Livingstone-Rhodes Museum 1-16 (1974), vernacular translations serve to show pp. 652-719; Drums of Affliction: A Study that in crafting the language through 1. See Harriet Bell, “Midwifery Training of the Religious Process of the Ndembu of which missionaries plied their trade and Female Circumcision in the Inter-War Zambia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968) and in Africa, local auxiliaries relied on Egyptian Sudan,” Journal of African History The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu existing medical terms to translate 39 (1998), pp. 293-312; Walima T. Kalusa, Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 19). modern medicine. This had far-reaching “Medical Training, African Auxiliaries, and

La sociologie africaine : un paradigme de rêve

Introduction sur le rétablissement d’un paradigme Nfally Diémé typiquement africain pour correspondre usqu’à une période récente, Université Cheikh Anta Diop à une sociologie typiquement africaine. l’Afrique a été considérée comme un Dakar, Sénégal continent sans paradigme. Ce qui est Depuis le temps qu’existe la sociologie, J particulièrement en Occident, sa un problème phare pour l’Afrique dans la mesure où l’histoire de la sociologie Les sciences classiques furent volonté de répandre cette discipline africaine est en rapport avec l’histoire partagées entre les deux à travers le monde devrait être coloniale. L’Afrique, terre d’apparition obsessions, celle de l’unité et abordée dans les règles de l’art et sans de l’homme et des premières civilisations celle de la variété, chacune arbitraire. Il est grand temps que nos étatiques attestées, est mal connue ; d’où correspondant à un certain chercheurs, nos penseurs décident de l’impérieuse nécessité d’une bonne type d’esprit, et du reste leur rompre avec tous les paradigmes et les utilisation des ressources historiques antagonisme fut productif en démarches scientifiques qu’utilisent les (documents écrits, tradition orale, permettant de développer en Occidentaux, et tentent d’éviter de faire archéologie, linguistique, anthropologie). même temps la diversification des recherches mendiantes, c’est-à-dire et l’unification du savoir, sans pour plaire à ces derniers. On ne peut pas accepter que nous puissions faire À mon avis, nous sommes à toutefois pouvoir aboutir à la traîner davantage la naissance d’un une époque de changement de conception de l’unitas multiplex. enfant qui devrait voir le jour depuis très paradigme : les paradigmes, ce Ces citations que j’ai tirées d’un article longtemps. Est-ce que la domination des sont les principes des principes, les publié par Mbombog Mbog Bassong, Occidentaux qui existait dans le temps quelques notions maîtresses, qui rendant hommage au penseur de la passé règne jusqu’à présent, ou bien contrôlent les esprits, qui comman- complexité Edgar Morin et intitulé avons-nous peur de nous faire bloquer dent les théories, sans qu’on en soit « Paradigme, valeur et communication » sur le plan financier ou publicitaire ? conscient nous-mêmes. m’ont poussé à donner mon opinion CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 23

L’Africain néglige toujours ses capacités démontrait comment la sociologie trouver notre propre paradigme. Il est et son savoir-faire pour adopter le génie s’appuie sur le sens commun : aussi important de noter un manque de européen, on dirait que la bataille de soutien de la part de nos États. Cette - LES SOCIOLOGUES s’appuient la couleur de la peau n’est pas encore discipline est vue comme « un poison sur les concepts que les individus achevée. dans un repas » par les gouvernements, ont du monde dans lequel ils vivent. car son sens vrai est de révéler toujours Nous ne pouvons pas être totalement - LES SOCIOLOGUES s’intéres- l’exacte vérité accompagnée de preuves parfaits, donc on a toujours besoin de sent aux opinions que les individus palpables, après avoir emprunté la bonne secouristes pour nous épauler, ainsi va la (ou groupes) émettent sur eux- démarche scientifique. Il est important vie. Cependant, si on se laisse dominer mêmes et sur la société et aussi de faire un parallèle entre l’histoire par autrui, c’est parce qu’on doute de aux raisons qu’ils donnent pour de la sociologie dite « africaine » et nos capacités, de nos savoir-faire. Dans expliquer leur parcours social et l’histoire (coloniale) proprement dite une équipe de football, on a toujours des la société. de l’Afrique. Nous remarquons ici une remplaçants pour remplacer ceux qui coïncidence entre ces deux événements sont au bout de l’effort ; faisons donc La rupture avec l’objet est plus difficile qui ont une trame de passé étroitement de même pour nos maisons éditoriales que dans les sciences de la nature : reliée. Cette coïncidence devrait susciter ou associations, pour lutter contre la - Le chercheur qui observe un des débats au sein de la population et dévalorisation. Comme disait Mbombog phénomène intervient avec des chercheurs. Elle a fait un jour l’objet Mbog Bassong dans son projet de sa culture, ce qu’il est, ce qui d’appellations désobligeantes de la part sociologie africaine : « Cela peut en l’influence, ses désirs et ses de l’Occident. Ces derniers considéraient chagriner beaucoup de reconnaître que caractéristiques sociales. l’Afrique comme un continent sans s’il existe des sociologues, la sociologie espoir, c’est-à-dire un continent noir ! Le n’existe pas encore. Mais d’autres, dont - Il peut être influencé par les problème de l’existence d’un paradigme moi-même, puisent de l’ardeur à l’idée financeurs des recherches. africain a des causes lointaines, ce que la sociologie doit naître. » - Il est influencé par l’air du temps phénomène de blocage se situe au cœur Mais la question que nous devions et le fait que certaines théories même de l’histoire coloniale. À vrai nous poser est la suivante : quelle est sont plus ou moins dominantes à dire, le combat ne se focalisera pas sur la la stratégie que nous devons adopter un moment donné. recherche de ce paradigme, mais plutôt pour faire naître une bonne fois cette Donc, quel intérêt de mener des sur le combat contre le système, installé sociologie africaine tant attendue depuis enquêtes sur des faits et problèmes de par les Occidentaux, que nous utilisons des siècles ? Le chemin est très long et société, puisqu’on peut en connaître le pour étudier. Je me demande à quoi piquant, avec ses pièges mis en œuvre sens instantanément ? sert de trouver un paradigme or qu’il par autrui. Notre patience devient une y a toujours un système établi par les arme au profit de l’adversaire et qu’il Ceci révèle que dans une enquête, il colons. Voyez-vous ce paradoxe ? Il y utilisera pour nous détourner à nouveau faut toujours opter pour le chemin de la aura toujours une opposition totale entre du bon chemin. Tout ce dont nous avons logique et ne pas se laisser influencer par ces deux systèmes. La réponse peut être besoin pour construire notre AFRIQUE les opinions communes. Le chercheur renvoyée aux pratiques évoquées plus FUTURE est avec nous, donc il ne reste doit se démarquer du commun pour haut du financement des recherches pour que l’engagement et la détermination. mieux distinguer et faire la part des nous imposer de continuer à utiliser Les prédécesseurs ont entamé le combat choses. Ces bonnes raisons pour faire leurs systèmes. C’est aux maisons et il ne manque qu’une finalisation pour une bonne recherche peuvent être éditoriales de bloquer les recherches qu’on devienne autonome dans nos détournées par un contrat personnel. Je commanditées, pour favoriser ceux démarches scientifiques. Je ne peux m’explique : un chercheur, après avoir qui sont motivés par la bonne volonté. comprendre une telle lenteur, car en reçu un sujet de recherche, peut, durant On ne peut pas dire que tous les Afrique nous avons de grands penseurs sa recherche, faire dévier les normes de Occidentaux et les ONG sont animés de renommée internationale et jusqu’ici la recherche pour ses propres ambitions. de mauvaise foi, certes il y en a qui on a du mal à régler ce problème, est-ce Il s’agit pour nous, chercheurs africains, travaillent avec loyauté. Il ne s’agit pas que ce n’est pas de l’« HYPOCRISIE » ? de faire preuve de notre capacité seulement des Occidentaux, l’Afrique d’arbitrer entre le vrai et le faux, car aussi a sa part de responsabilité, c’est Est-ce qu’on forme des chercheurs on ne peut pas condamner toute une nous-mêmes qui sommes les dirigeants pour qu’ils finissent par avoir tout population en impliquant les innocents, antiévolutionnistes, ce que j’appelle simplement un diplôme et gagnent de et ceci peut se traduire aussi au niveau communément « les Européens noirs ». l’argent à n’importe quel prix, ou plutôt des chercheurs. Lutter contre l’injustice On sent une complexité du social et pour rendre service à leur pays ? qui règne au niveau de la manipulation de l’économie, comme l’a si bien dit Ce qu’il faut éviter ce sont les de la recherche, c’est valoriser « un Mbombog Mbog Bassong : recherches commanditées et financées travail noble » (Durkheim). par les ONG de l’Occident qui veulent Cette pensée de Durkheim mérite Il est bon de rappeler que le rendre la situation favorable pour se d’être soutenue avec honneur, mais le système de l’équilibre général faire une place. problème se trouve plutôt au niveau du cher à l’économie mathématique est abandonné avec la montée Norbert Elias, lorsqu’il s’est posé la choix de paradigme. Nous Africains, en puissance de la complexité question : qu’est-ce que la sociologie ? ce qui nous intéresse le plus, c’est de CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 24

dans les années 1970. Celle-ci la plus avancée, est la science La restauration tant attendue de a déjà fait le lit d’une longue socialement et humainement l’histoire africaine devrait nous servir hibernation de l’approche la plus arriérée, car elle s’est de piste. C’est par rapport à cette axiomatique, qui entrevoyait abstraite des conditions sociales, falsification de l’histoire qu’on peut dans une mathématisation historiques, politiques, psycho- parler d’un rôle spécifique de l’histoire avancée de la réalité économique logiques, écologiques insépara- et de l’historien en Afrique. Ainsi, selon le ressort des vérités toutes bles des activités économiques. Cheikh Anta Diop, ce rôle consistera faites. Ceux-là mêmes qui C’est pourquoi ses experts sont de à rétablir la vérité historique pour avaient fait de l’économie une plus en plus incapables de prévoir réconcilier l’Africain avec lui-même. théorie mathématique dans les et de prédire le cours économique Cette réconciliation permettra d’éviter années 1959, en commençant même à court terme. certains détournements spirituels, par Gérard Debreu, lauréat du fonctionnels, financiers. Les auteurs Ce sont juste des éclaircissements sur le prix Nobel en 1983 et Maurice pourront effectuer correctement des fin fond du problème. Il ne s’agit pas tout Allais, son maître, lauréat recherches sans pression. Il faut simplement de chanter chaque jour la en 1988, ou encore Kenneth aussi impliquer la tradition orale, car même chanson, finalement personne ne Arrow et Franck Hahn, ont fini elle joue un rôle fondamental dans vous écoutera et ne prendra vos paroles au par entrevoir l’existence d’un l’histoire africaine et cela montre sérieux. D’après Jean Copans, l’histoire principe d’incertitude au cœur que l’Afrique a connu tardivement de l’anthropologie et de la sociologie de la rationalité économique. Le l’écriture, donc impliquons davanta- dont nous disposons est décevante. En système de l’équilibre général est ge le savoir ancestral. Comme l’affirmait effet, elles se limitent à un exposé des alors abandonné. l’historien malien et homme politique doctrines théoriques, de leur succession Alpha Oumar Konaré, né en 1946 : « Si L’économie joue un rôle très important et de leur critique réciproque. Elles l’Afrique perd sa mémoire sonore, elle au sein des populations. C’est un facteur répondent rarement à l’un des principes perd sa mémoire tout court. » à ne pas négliger. L’économie constitue fondamentaux issus de ces disciplines l’un des pieds qui fondent la stabilité d’un elles-mêmes, à savoir la possibilité d’une En résumé, l’Afrique ne manque pas pays. Le revirement de Mbombog Mbog sociologie de la connaissance et d’une d’outil et d’inspiration pour concrétiser Bassong concernant les enjeux d’une explication sociale (au sens large) des l’existence d’un paradigme pour une mondialisation libérale et financière, productions intellectuelles de l’humanité. sociologie africaine. De sociologues responsable selon lui de l’abaissement on n’en manque pas, de cultures, de Grosso modo, on trouve deux positions du taux de croissance, est connu. Nous transmetteurs idem. Après analyse, nous inverses et symétriques : ou bien la n’insisterons pas davantage sur le sujet. pouvons dire que c’est plutôt un problème théorie scientifique est à elle-même Revenons à Edgar Morin qui va plus d’engagement, de détermination et de sa propre explication et la situation loin. Le verdict du savant est encore leadership pour nos dirigeants, qui se historique et sociale n’est qu’un arrière- plus sévère, voire cinglant, s’agissant laissent emporter par le vent qui cherche fond, ou bien l’on établit des corrélations précisément des limites actuelles de la toujours des failles pour faire tomber les mécaniques entre productions intel- science économique : « pieds de l’Afrique ». lectuelles et relations sociales, sous le signe d’une analogie de la forme par Un article écrit par Nfally Diémé, Un Ainsi l’économie, qui est la exemple (Lucien Goldmann). constat choisi, publié en avril 2016. science sociale mathématiquement

Emerging Trends for Psychology in Africa

ver the past few years, changes in the cultures of our institutions universities in South Africa Shose Kessi putting into question what type of Ohave been grappling with the University of Cape Town knowledges and skills are valued, call to decolonise the university. This South Africa taught and investigated. In doing so, the is a reoccurring trend for universities question of decolonisation highlights the in South Africa and across the link between the knowledge that emerges continent but one that has taken on a forms of activism have been driving from institutions of higher learning and particular significance in the context the call for decolonisation with students the imperative to transform the contexts of a free and democratic South Africa playing a central role through the Fees in which we live; in other words, in which academic institutions remain Must Fall (FMF) and Rhodes Must Fall how does what we research and write predominantly Western in terms of (RMF) movements. These movements about in university spaces inform the their institutional cultures. Various are advocating free education and development trajectory of our societies? CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 25

Historically, universities have been key or any person who does not fit into the play themselves out in the macro- sites for the production of intellectuals norm of a white, male, middle-class and social, political, economic and historical and knowledge projects that served to heterosexual figure (Shefer, Boonzaier context. It involves questioning the institutionalise and legitimise colonial and Kiguwa 2006). power effects of psychology and the policies and practices (Mazrui 2005). power dynamics in society. It involves These types of studies have produced Not much has changed in the post- questioning the motivation underlying knowledge that has far-reaching colonial era. Following nationalist psychological research and practice: impacts in people’s minds and global struggles for independence, African who does it benefit and in what ways? perspectives. Ideas about Africans as states embarked on a developmentalist Who does it marginalise and in what helpless, passive victims of disease, strategy to re-build their nations dented ways? Who has the power to assign destitution, violence and corruption by the impact of colonialism. The meaning to people’s experiences? Who are widespread (Dogra 2012) and are two models that dominated the field has the power to represent the lives and coupled with the notion that knowledge of development post-independence the minds of others? What behaviours and intellectual expertise to solve these were modernisation and dependency/ are considered acceptable and normal problems must come from the West welfarism (Ake 1996; Jomo and Fine and which ones are not? (Jovechelovtich 2007). This has largely 2006; Campbell and Jovchelovitch, been the case in mainstream media In a recent article about ethical practices 2000). These models present underlying and in the discourses of international in academia, the author questions how assumptions that arguably contradict our aid, charitable organisations and many academics use poverty, oppression project of decolonisation. First of all, the academic projects that trivialise and and pain for their academic pursuits assumption that less developed contexts sanitise complex issues that affect the and ‘claim to have expertise on the are catching up with more developed African continent (Dogra 2012, 2007). topic of social activism but have never ones with the state being representative We are often told that the problem is experienced any form of intervention’ and benevolent (of pluralistic or class money and food rather than structural (Rodriguez 2017). These questions are interest) (Ake 1996; Jomo and Fine and cultural oppression and exploitation. central to the more recent debates on the 2006; Campbell and Jovchelovitch role of academia in the decolonisation 2000; Mkandawire 2004). Secondly, In contemporary psychological work, process and the emergence of African the assumption that macro-economic the brain is still used as an index of scholarship. How do we make research indicators determine the level of difference. The focus on neurological relevant and ethical in spaces that are development with associated ‘trickle- differences between men and women inherently saturated by colonial relations down’ benefits to lower income groups or understanding the mental health of power? (Jomo and Fine 2000, p. 22). Both these or brain types of substance abusers, assumptions have created conditions in criminals, homosexuals, obese people, If we are to speak of emerging trends which people in lower income groups HIV positive people, etc. is problematic for psychological research in Africa, become peripheral to the development when it translates into research findings we must locate ourselves in a national project, which is imposed on them by that link obesity with low intelligence, and regional context that centres the ‘more knowledgeable’ development women with irrationality, young people African and African knowledges and experts and institutions, often from with deviance, the poor with lack of practices as vital to human relationships the outside and whereby expertise is empathy and so on. When such findings and growth. For psychology to have symbolised by levels of economic from our research projects come into the an important role in social change and wealth (Campbell and Jovchelovitch public sphere, they can reproduce forms social justice, in particular in improving 2000; Jovchelovitch 2007; Kothari of discrimination and oppression that the lives of the most oppressed in 2006a, 2006b; Escobar 1995; Baaz are most often racialised, classed and society, it requires a ‘deideologisation’ 2005). The effect of this is to exacerbate gendered. Such research also reproduces (Freire 1970) or indigenisation (Owusu- social exclusion by undermining the ideas about who is considered ‘normal’ Bempah and Howitt 2000; Smith knowledge and capabilities of social and therefore who requires ‘intervention’ 1999; Long 2014) of the discipline groups who are viewed as passive as well as the type of intervention. – meaning an acknowledgement that recipients of development interventions. psychologists, like all scientists, work Doing psychological work in this within a political perspective and The discipline of psychology is an way also makes the assumption that ideological agenda (Montero and Sonn important player in this conundrum. the individual is the central unit of 2009); and a recognition that what, in Given its dubious past associated analysis and overlooks the social, contemporary times, has come to be seen with scientific racism, in particular IQ economic and political contexts that as ‘the psychological’ has been shaped and other psychometric studies that individuals find themselves in. Such historically, politically and ideologically produced ideas about Africans as the approaches often fall into the trap of (Hook et al. 2004). least intelligent race (Howitt and Owusu- simply pathologising individuals and Bempah 1994), much can be said about therefore further marginalising certain For psychologists in South Africa, the the role of psychology in legitimising groups of people who find themselves debate about relevance began in the colonial and apartheid practices in particular contexts. A decolonisation 1980s. Since then, more politicised across the continent and beyond. project for psychology in Africa means forms of psychology have emerged in Psychologists have also been involved that we have to school ourselves and South Africa and elsewhere, to challenge in the pathologisation of women and other psychologists in how broader the fundamental assumptions of the the pathologisation of LGBT people, relations of domination and subjugation field, such as feminist psychologies, CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 26

postcolonial psychology and liberation that people make based on their lived Jomo, K. S., and Fine, B., 2006, The New psychology. These strands of the experiences. Development Economics After the discipline have a more social and critical Washington Consensus, London and New focus. They investigate relations of References York: Zed Books. power between groups in society; they Jovchelovitch, S., 2007, Knowledge in Context: treat people’s identities as diverse, fluid Ake, C., 1996, Democracy and Development in Representation, community and culture, and intersecting. They view people as Africa, Washington D.C.: The Brookings London: Routledge. Institution. historical beings whose minds have been Long, W., 2014, ‘Understanding “relevance” in constructed by and through their social, Baaz, M. E., 2005, The Paternalism of Partnership: psychology’, New Ideas in Psychology, Vol. 35, economic and political environment. A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in pp. 28–35. They also propose new methods that Development Aid, New York: Zed Books. Mazrui, A.A., 2005. Pan-Africanism and the question traditional relationships Campbell, C., and Jovchelovitch, S., 2000, intellectuals: Rise, decline and revival. between researchers and the participants ‘Health, Community and Development: African intellectuals: Rethinking politics, in research projects. Towards a Social Psychology of language, gender and development, pp.56-77. Development’, Journal of Community Psychologists cannot deliver solutions Mkandawire, T., 2004, The Spread of Economic and Applied Social Psychology Vol. 10, to the developmental challenges facing Doctrines in Postcolonial Africa, Geneva: pp. 255–270. the African continent, but we can point UNRISD. Dogra, N., 2012, Representations of Global to the manifestations of these problems Montero, M., and Sonn, C., 2009, Psychology of Poverty: Aid, Development and International and assist people in seeking the Liberation: Theory and Applications. New NGOs, London and New-York: I. B. Tauris. changes that they wish to achieve. The York: Springer. psychologist should act as a facilitator Dogra, N., 2007, ‘Reading NGOs Visually: O’Connor, C., Rees, G. and Joffe, H. (2012) of social change (Jimenez-Domingue, Implications of visual images for NGO Neuroscience in the public sphere. Neutron, 1999). This means, for example, making Management’, Journal of International 74, 220-226. the linkages between people’s daily Development, Vol. 19, pp. 161–171. Owusu-Bempah, J. and Howitt, D., 2000, realities and the broader and globalised Escobar, A., 1995, Encountering Development: Psychology Beyond Western Perspectives, institutional precepts and ideologies that The Making And Unmaking Of The Third Leicester: BPS Books. perpetuate developmental challenges. World, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Psychological research then becomes Rodriguez, C., 2017, ‘How academia uses Freire, P., 1970, Pedagogy Of The Oppressed, a dialogical process of consciousness poverty, oppression, and pain for intellectual London: Penguin. and action in which people participate masturbation’. Available online at http:// in imagining and creating solutions to Hook, D (ed) with Mkhize, N, Kiguwa, P, Collins, racebaitr.com/2017/04/06/how-academia- improve their lives, and psychologists use A (Section eds), Burman, E & Parker, I uses-poverty-oppression/#. (Consulting eds) (2004) Critical Psychology their knowledge to encourage, assist and Shefer, T., Boonzaier, F., and Kiguwa, P., 2006, Cape Town: UCT Press. support that process. It is the daily lives, The Gender of Psychology, Cape Town: UCT experiences and activities of people which Howitt, D., and Owusu-Bempah, J., 1994, The Press. Racism of Psychology: Time for Change, are contextual that inform researchers on Smith, L. T., 1999, Decolonizing Methodologies: New-York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. what action can be effective in disrupting Research and Indigenous Peoples, London: Zed. oppressive power relations and building Jimenez-Dominguez, B., 1999, ‘Ignacio Martin- healthier futures. New trends in psychology Baro’s social psychology of liberation: must emerge as an evolving practice of Situated knowledge and critical commitment knowledge production that cannot be against objectivism’, in M. Montero, and C. separated from everyday life and that Sonn, eds, Psychology of Liberation: Theory constantly grow through the contribution and Applications, New York: Springer. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 27

African Social Sciences and the Study of the Economy: Building an Independent Pan-African Infrastructure

he African continent is at a critical cheap access to an infrastructure that juncture. In the last three decades, Vito Laterza can grow spontaneously, driven by Tthe World Bank, the IMF and University of Oslo the passion and motivations of those Western governments have imposed a Norway who use it. We should do more to regime of aggressive neoliberalism that build participatory networks that bring quashed any possibility for meaningful together communities and people across political and economic independence. usual, eager to please the new masters or different scales, and connect various The wealth produced in Africa remains simply scared for our comfortable jobs. localities horizontally, while scaling up squarely in the hands of Western capital Funding for African studies in the West knowledge to influence national and – but increasingly also Chinese and other is aligned with the interests of Northern international social movements and Asian investors – and a small number of governments and big capital, reflecting policy makers. African business people and politicians their needs to gather information in As global capitalism enters terminal co-opted by the system. key strategic areas to fuel the ongoing scramble for Africa. decline and the fight for dwindling As multinational companies and financial resources intensifies, it is important to capital have effectively alienated local Discourses of decolonisation and focus on alternative economic models resources from the people who rightly radical transformation of North-South that privilege human relations, social own them, the development sector inequalities in knowledge production value and sustainable engagement with routinely crafts narratives that obscure are spreading to Western universities as the environment, delinked from the the dynamics of neocolonial exploitation well, but so far the structures of academic abstract imperative of the profit motive – from “Corporate Social Responsibility” power seem largely unaffected. Western (Nyamnjoh 2015). Action research to “inclusive growth”, or more recent- research projects in Africa have little to networks should reflect this ethos, and ly the “Sustainable Development Goals”. no accountability to the host national foster grassroots democracy, egalitarian societies and local communities, and management structures, healthy But one thing is changing: the veil of are filled with foreign personnel. interpersonal relations, and decent respectability that these labels evoke Meanwhile, African public universities working and living conditions for all has been lifted. Powerful governments struggle to get funds from the state to those involved, breaking away from in North America and Europe have pay for their basic operational expenses, neoliberal hegemony. There are plenty been captured by xenophobic and and the lack of research funds pushes of experiences to learn from, as many racist populists. Unlike their liberal many academics to produce consultancy informal groups and social movements predecessors, Donald Trump and research for big business and the already work along these lines, from Theresa May have no qualms telling it development sector (Mamdani 2011). rotating savings schemes to landless like it is. They want to extract anything movements. they can from Africa to feed their The challenge is two-fold. Firstly, declining economies at home. Their African social sciences need to continue The second area of action concerns politics privileges Northern citizens the ongoing work of strengthening an the renegotiation of the political and at the expense of everybody else. The independent research infrastructure that economic relations of knowledge closing of borders disrupts one of the few is controlled and owned by Africans. production with the rest of the world. forms of North-South economic redress We need more critical studies of current African actors must come together available to Africans: international trends in the extractive industries and to develop effective ethical and migration. agribusiness, that throw light on the professional guidelines that are binding exploitative practices and inequalities for all foreign research conducted in the In recent years, Africa has already been at play, and produce knowledge that continent. This should not be merely a a playground for military intervention is framed and consumed by local bureaucratic exercise, as it is often the from Western powers and regional communities, national societies case with current national regulations. players. This recent political shift will and governments, and Pan-African only increase the ease with which armed institutions, including Africans in the There is a need for procedures that conflicts and rapacious trade deals will diaspora. Working closely with social compel European and American be used to expedite land grabbing and movements, community organisations universities doing research in Africa to the extraction of raw materials. and social justice actors will be helpful redistribute a large share of resources to African universities, researchers and Western academics have also been co- in finding synergies and reducing costs. local communities, including areas such opted in the process. On the whole, our Digital media and telecommuni- as project recruitment and research work has contributed to sanitise these cations offer opportunities for funds. trends. We are now even more silent than networking and collaboration, and CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 28

Even in cases where significant numbers and local white researchers occupy a collaborate in its implementation. They of African scholars are involved in prominent position. need to be reminded that they would projects funded from overseas, there find it unacceptable if the roles were Most high-quality research across is a rigid hierarchy that sees foreign reversed. Africa is already produced by Africans. researchers almost always in charge. Yet, Western scholars in African studies The trend is reminiscent of what continue to have a disproportionate References Michael Burawoy (1972) refers to as amount of visibility and influence, even the “upward floating colour bar”, a Burawoy, M., 1972 The Colour of Class on the though the quality of their outputs is often common situation in post-liberation Copper Mines: from African Advancement mediocre. They regularly appropriate the African economies where the lower and to Zambianization. Manchester: Manchester work of African scholars, while making middle management of companies were University Press. them invisible or, worse, turning them transformed, but expats retained control into objects of study (Nyamnjoh 2012). Henkeman, S., 2016 How Racism and Violence of the top tiers. As the late Archie These practices too need to end. There Are Related, and Why It All Matters. The Mafeje (2000) highlighted in his vision should be clear guidelines and sanctions Conversation, 21 September. Mafeje, A., of Africanity, the goal is for all research to make sure that African scholars’ 2000 Africanity: a Comba- tive Ontology. in Africa to be carried out under African contributions are properly acknow- CODESRIA Bulletin 1: 66-71. supervision. ledged in peer-reviewed publica- Mamdani, M., 2011 The Importance of Research in a Redressing North-South inequali- tions, public dissemination and University. Pambazuka News, 21 April. ties goes beyond the issue of material university curricula. These forms of Nyamnjoh, F.B., 2012 Blinded by Sight: Divining resources and personnel structures. It invisible violence (Henkeman 2016) the Future of Anthropology in Africa. Africa is also true that there are differences continue to characterise contemporary Spectrum 47(2-3): 63-92. across African contexts. For instance, racism in Euro-American academia. Nyamnjoh, F.B., 2015 « C’Est l’Homme Qui Fait West African countries have developed Western academics and funders will l’Homme » : Cul-de-Sac Ubuntu-ism in Cote a more independent knowledge base not be eager to embrace this agenda, or d’Ivoire. Cameroon: Langaa RPCIG. than Southern Africa, where Western

Rethinking Sexuality from Africa1

he study of sexuality in Africa ism. And the sexual and reproductive has come of age. Although Thomas Hendricks rights discourse, along with its underly- TCaldwell’s famous but reductive University of Oxford, UK ing premise of the self as a rights-bearing “African sexuality” thesis (cf. Ahlberg Rachel Spronk individual, is being appropriated and 1994) has shaped writing on sex in University of Amsterdam, Netherlands transformed by many actors in different Africa over the last decade or so, a new settings and with different results. interdisciplinary field of scholarship changing as economic hardships further But not only are African realities on the has emerged, incorporating resear-chers transform gender relations and blatant ground changing, so are scholarly prac- from history, epidemiology, literature, inequalities spark a diverse array of reli- tices. While the interdisciplinary field of sociology, biomedicine, anthropology gious programmes for moral renewal. De- sexuality studies has come to “Africa”, and political science. This scholarly viant sexual practices and dissident erotic African studies and many African schol- literature on African sexual realities and desires tend to become increasingly polit- ars have also found their way to sexual- erotic worlds has, to a certain extent, icized on a national and continental level ity studies. Whereas most feminists have managed to untie itself from the HIV, through misogynist and sexist reactions, been remarkably silent about sex for a health and development framework homophobic legislation and official dis- long time (focussing, instead, on gender, from which it sprang. Not only has this courses feeding an imaginary opposition female agency, matrifocal cultural logics literature become much more diverse between morally degrading “Western” in- and the huge debate on so-called “harm- – taking on board politics, economy, fluences and authentic “African” morali- ful traditional practices”), many are now religion, identity, activism and pleasure ties. Moreover, new processes of erotic explicitly preoccupied with erotics and – it also exploded, with sex and sexuality identification emerge at the interface of pleasure, taking into account issues of becoming increasingly popular topics global cultural flows and older matrices sexuality in ways that are meaningful for for research. of sex, gender and desire. Cosmopolitan African women themselves. Moreover, There are many reasons for the explosion aspirations are also expressed though new researchers from all over the continent and diversification of sexuality studies in erotic practices of self-making that feed are courageously confronting the heter- Africa. Sexual landscapes are profoundly off neoliberal ideologies of consumer- onormative regimes of knowledge in their CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 29

respective academic settings, unearth- moral. As such, sexuality is – as Michel er when endorsing certain ideas of gen- ing often-hidden queer lives, worlds and Foucault famously stated – an “espe- der, body and desire, while at the same stories, and aligning with broader politi- cially dense transfer point for relations of time producing a diverse array of erotic cal contestations that question the phallo- power” (1978). In this latter sense, sexu- dissidences. centric and heterosexist narratives of the ality is not only a specific power/knowl- This constructivist understanding of sex- powers that be. edge regime that regulates sex but also its uality as a modern European invention main product or outcome. In other words, In this brief essay, we argue that Af- rather than as a human capacity character- it produces subjects for whom “sexual- rican contemporary realities sug- ized by a universal or biological essence, ity” constitutes the essential core of their gest innovative analytical direc- raises interesting questions for scholars inner self. Sexuality thereby becomes tions that are of global heuristic value studying sex outside the recent West. If, something that one possesses and needs for sexuality studies. Whereas, in many indeed, sexuality is a relatively recent and to “know” in order to understand one’s Western contexts, “sexuality” is starting culture-specific form for thinking – and innermost drives and desires. For these to break down under its own conceptual experiencing – desire, how should one reasons, sexuality is a peculiarly sensitive weight (Halberstam 2012), scholars in study sex in situations where and when conductor of cultural ideologies, social in- and from Africa have long recognized its “sexuality” does not, or did not, exist as fluences and political divisions. limitations as an analytical frame for un- such? The question raises methodologi- derstanding various sexual and gendered Many scholars in the humanities and so- cal and epistemological challenges for subject positions. In Douglas Clarke’s cial sciences therefore understand sexual- researchers trying to make sense of differ- words: “Africa has a model for queer theo- ity as a social construction that arose at ent erotic realities with conceptual tools ry that is largely unexplored in the Western a particular time and place, and for very that have been forged relatively recently world” (2013: 175). specific reasons. Hence, before using in Western contexts. “sexuality” as a concept for understand- The rapprochement between African stud- Speaking as a historian of sexuality in Af- ing cultural practices of particular groups ies and sexuality studies is, however, in no rica, Marc Epprecht, for instance, argues in Africa, as much literature on the subject way consensual. It is generating frictions that “the word homosexuality, notably, does, we first need to turn our attention to and tensions of its own, not in the least suggests a clarity arising from a specific the cultural roots of how the idea of sexu- because both fields mutually question the history of scientific inquiry, social -rela ality came into being in the first place. terms upon which their engagement takes tions, and political struggle that did not place. In other words, whenever “Africa” In its narrow sense, sexuality is nothing but historically exist in Africa and still does and “sexuality” come together – as tropes, the invention of nineteenth century mod- not very accurately describe the majority constructs, imaginaries, heuristic devices ern European sexology. It denotes a very of men who have sex with men or women or activist rallying cries – they immedi- specific way of producing and organizing who have sex with women” (2008: 8). ately start to undermine one another’s knowledge about sex, which first gave Different authors and scholars therefore conceptual reach and trouble one an- rise to the supposedly deviant category of often prefer other terms as alternatives to other’s political unconscious. Any study, the “homosexual” and, only later, to its the monolithic concept of “sexuality”, in reflection, report or reading in sexualities supposedly normal mirror category of the order to avoid its essentializing tenden- in African societies must therefore start “heterosexual”. According to Foucault, cies and the problems to which it gives from a profound reflection on the termi- the scientific study of sex thus produced rise when used across cultures and soci- nology we use while writing and thinking sexuality when it transformed the (sinful) eties. At the very least, feminist scholar sex from Africa. erotic practice of “sodomy” into a sexual Sylvia Tamale argues, we should “speak identity: while “[t]he sodomite had been of sexualities in the plural in recognition Sexuality a temporary aberration; the homosexual of the complex structures within which was now a species” (Foucault, 1978: 43). sexuality is constructed and in recognition “Sexuality” is an ambiguous and slippery This distinction between sexual practices of its pluralist articulations” (2011: 2, our term. It can be used to refer to a biologi- and identities is a necessary – though not emphasis). Furthermore, scholars often cal drive or a human capacity to be sexu- always sufficient – condition for a criti- try to avoid the ideologically loaded term ally aroused and have erotic experiences. cal study of sex beyond the categorizing “homosexuality” by using words like It might also denote conscious or uncon- drive of early sexology. Indeed, as many “same-sex sexualities” or “non-normative scious impulses, desires and fantasies. It studies on diverse erotic realities con- sexualities”. Or, they shun “sexuality” al- often refers to one’s so-called sexual ori- vincingly demonstrate, sexual practices together by taking refuge behind words entation or object choice and, thus, comes are usually more fluid and ambiguous such as (same-sex) sexual “attractions”, in many forms – heterosexuality, homo- than what seemingly fixed sexual identi- “practices”, “desires”, “intimacies” or sexuality, bisexuality or asexuality – that ties might suggest. Particularly, the fixed “love”. Alternatively, some use rather might, or might not, give rise to so many relationship between biological sex – or technical terms like “men who have sex sexual identities. Or, it can be a seemingly genitals – and gender in Euro-American with men” (MSM) or “women who have straightforward way to describe sexual discourse is not – or, rather, was not - self- sex with women” (WSW), which have behaviour and/or sexual practices. Alter- evident in the majority of cultures around been coined in HIV prevention discourse natively, sexuality can be taken as a par- the globe. The hegemonic globalization to reach out to people who “do” it with- ticular discourse on sex or, rather, as the and presence of biomedical knowledge out identifying as such. For other writers effect of a set of intersecting discourses: (in tandem with Christian discourse) has, and scholars, still, “queer” is a catchall or medical, psychological, pedagogical, ironically, brought cultures more togeth- political term for all kinds of sexual and CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 30

gender dissidence, without therefore de- the site of rights, and of sexual identities and “the West” (Bakare-Yusuf 2004). On nying “the limitations of the terminology and categories as the self-evident starting the other hand, any critical analysis of the in relation to our African neo-colonial re- point for policy and programme interven- ideological construction of Africa needs alities” (Ekine and Abbas 2013: 3,4). tion” (ibid). to take into account its sexual connota- tions to lay bare how, historically speak- However, while the proliferation of such Scholars mount different strategies for ing, the sexualisation and racialization of terms, words and labels effectively points dealing with these complex methodologi- Africa operated together, as well as to un- at the underlying trouble of “sexuality” cal and epistemological issues. Although veil how current heterosexist ideologies in cross-cultural studies of sex, the real many of them still use the term “sexual- define supposedly true African subjects problem is more than merely a question ity” in one way or another, the current (Nyeck 2011). of terminology. Indeed, as anthropologist state of the art in the study of sexuality Serena Dankwa posits, what is the “it” in Africa suggests that a more sustained we indicate with sexuality? Analysing critique of the concept is needed. In the Africa the tacit knowledge that is constitutive of introduction to her ground-breaking 2004 While “Africa” might seem to be a merely informal circles of women “doing supi” volume, Signe Arnfred stated that “[t]he descriptive term that straightforwardly re- in southern Ghana, she states that “[i] is time ha[d] come for re-thinking sexuali- fers to a particular continent on our planet, established in context and expressed in ties in Africa” (2004: 7). Today, so we ar- it is the outcome of a historical process of a language of allusion. But since those gue, the time seems ripe for a more fun- construction that resulted in the some- who consider themselves practitioners damental un-thinking of sexualities from what arbitrary delineation of a particular and originators of this knowledge have no Africa. Whether or not we will eventually landmass and several islands as Africa. interest in pinning it down, its actual con- resort to the concept of sexuality, and in As a word of Greco-Roman (and possi- tent is in flux and remains elusive: Does what form, should depend on empirical bly Berber) origins, it initially denoted the ‘it’ allude to the awareness of the actual studies of the manifold erotic realities and Roman province of Africa and only com- possibility of sexual activity between two worlds that people create (and contest) on prised present-day Tunisia and eastern women? Does ‘it’ imply the knowledge of an everyday basis. But, at least at the pre- Algeria (Mazrui 2005: 69-70). Later, with how to approach and seduce a non-knowl- sent moment, a more radical un-thinking the expansion of Islam and the impact of edgeable lover, given the negative stereo- of “sexuality”, as an ethnocentric concept European imperialism and colonization, types attached to supi representations, or deeply entangled in European cultural Africa became the name for the continent the capacity of caring for and effectively logics, seems necessary. Not only to dis- that most of us know today. European initiating a woman in such a way that tance ourselves from the African sexuali- empire builders, explorers and colonial would continually attract her to women ty thesis and its many transformations but mapmakers thereby defined Africa as a and make her an insider herself? Does the also to open up conditions of possibility geographical unit that was artificially cut ‘it’ denote erotic and sexual competence for thinking sex otherwise, triggered by off from the Arab world, the Middle East or the skilful capacity of keeping secrets and dedicated to the many ways people and the Asian continent and came to stand discreet?”(2009: 2002). on the African continent themselves live, for an enormous area of great climatic, feel and think sex. In the introduction to the edited vol- geological, political and cultural diversity. ume Understanding Global Sexualities One cannot uncritically impose “sexual- Moreover, as Congolese philoso-pher (2012), social anthropologist Henrietta ity” as a heuristic device on past and pre- Valentin-Yves Mudimbe showed in The Moore pushes the question and probes sent African realities and expect it to do Invention of Africa (1994), the term “Af- sexuality’s “ontological status” as “more the same analytical work as it supposedly rica” is the product of a historical process, […] than a problem of nominalism [or] does in many Western contexts. in which it came to serve as the ultimate the argument that ‘they’ – whoever they But a similar critical attitude is also need- “paradigm of difference” for Western are – may not have a word for sexuality ed towards the second master trope that imaginations and practices. Long before (emic category), but that we can still de- is invariably present in contemporary the colonial conquest, European narra- ploy sexuality as a comparative, analytic sexuality studies on the African continent. tives already created a particular notion of term (etic category)”(ibid: 11-12). She ar- “Africa” is, indeed, just like “sexuality”, a Africa as Europe’s quintessential Other. gues that we cannot understand people’s loaded term with a specific genealogy that Africa thereby stood for all against which gendered and sexual experiences by im- needs to be taken into account if and when Europe could define itself: wild, exotic, posing analytic categories that would fun- one decides to use words like “Africa” or backwards, traditional, emotional and su- damentally misrepresent what is actually “African” in one’s description or analy- perstitious, rather than civilized, rational, happening in many settings. As social sci- sis. In fact, both critical moves have to be modern or scientific. “Africa,” so the Ni- entists, we therefore “need to rethink the undertaken simultaneously, insofar as a gerian novelist and critic Chinua Achebe nature of the sexual subject, and resituate critique of the ethnocentricity of sexuality argued, “is to Europe as the picture is to that subject within broader regimes of (from an African perspective) necessitates Dorian Gray – a carrier onto whom the power and affect that are not necessarily a parallel critique of Africa (from a sexual master unloads his physical and moral de- captured appropriately by the term sexu- perspective). When the deconstruction of formities so that he may go forward, erect ality” (ibid: 15). Such a re-conceptualiza- sexuality is not combined with a similar and immaculate” (1977: 792). This ide- tion “involve[s] not only a break with the deconstruction of Africa, well-founded ology of otherness not only justified and analytic category of sexuality and the pre- critiques of ethnocentricity might revive enabled imperial expansion and colonial theoretical commitments in which it is the troublesome divide between “Africa” projects of subjection and modernization, founded, but a radical rethinking of sex as but also characterized Western literary CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 31

and scientific discourses, which reveal worlds into what became a modern Afri- and dynamic reality. Second, it is of- next to nothing about the supposed Afri- can identity and a unique contribution to ten exclusively apprehended through a can Other while telling a great deal about African modernity” (Ndletyana 2008: 5). paradigm of difference, which neglects the Africanists’ own imaginations and Debates about African nationalism also the many similarities and historical con- fantasies (Said 1978). evolved in close interaction with notions nections with the rest of the world (Mu- of Africanity as they were being outlined dimbe 1994). Third, being mobilized in In his analysis of the discursive by Pan-Africanist thinkers in the New partially contradicting discourses, Africa production of Africa in European and World (Falola 2001). In the latter sense, does different things for different people American nineteenth century intellectual Africa (as a common place of origin) at different times and can, therefore, not life, Ghanaian-American philo- and the notion of being African (as a be taken for granted (Witte and Spronk sopher Kwame Anthony Appiah characteristic one shares with people of 2014). Hence, as Stephan Palmié (2007) (1992) demonstrates how the similar descent) was a Pan-Africanist has argued, Africa and Africanness are modern notion of “race” was abso product: a transatlantic and diasporic re- not ontological givens but questions that lutely fundamental to Africa’s supposed invention of “Africa” through the com- need to be empirically investigated, with otherness. According to racial ideologies, mon experiences of slavery and racial regard to the historical forces and discur- black skin indeed became a signifier and violence. “The idea of one Africa unit- sive formations that lastingly Africanized explanation for dark morals and practices ing the thoughts and ideas of all native the continent and its people, and the vari- – but also, and very explicitly so, for a people of the dark continent,” W.E.B. ous strategies by which actors in Africa dark “sexuality”. Stereotypes of black Du Bois once wrote, indeed seems to and beyond employ specific notions of hypersexuality thus affected the libidinal “stem naturally from the West Indies Africanity. construction of Africa (Gilman 1985; and the United States” (1946: 7). Magubane 2001), which came to function Creating an “African” field of “sexuality as, what Anne McClintock calls, “a porno- The notion of being African was at the studies”, by bringing together the range tropics for the European imagination [or] centre of these redefinitions. People of of scholarship dealing with sexual intima- a fantastic magic lantern of the mind onto very distinct ethnic origins felt united in cies and erotic desires originating from a which Europe projected its forbidden their experiences and began to think of diverse array of African settings, inevita- sexual desires and fears” (1995: 22). The Africa as one land, and see themselves bly raises doubts about the heuristic and African was thereby created as a sexual as one people. In direct response to colo- political value of Africa as its organizing Other, a mirror image for the construction nial discourses on racial inferiority, Afri- trope. But notwithstanding such valid and maintenance of the European self. can intellectuals reclaimed their denied questions, we believe it remains produc- While, for some, this African was an humanity and revalorized the traditions, tive to use terms like “Africa” or “sexuali- innocent noble savage, for others (s)he customs and supposedly specific charac- ties” as a way to bring together scholars was an uncontrollable lustful primitive. In ter of the black “race”. African national- who, in many different ways, speak to both cases, “the” African was supposed to ism was thereby thus heavily indebted to each other about topics and issues they be closer to nature and therefore inherently racial ideologies that, although explic- seem to have in common. However, sexual: a racially fetishized object of fear itly contesting and reversing racial hier- rather than assuming the existence of a and desire for the white (male) colonizer archies, often understood Africa in essen- clearly defined field of African sexuality (Fanon 1952). Unfortunately, such deep- tially racial terms (Appiah 1992). While studies or simply researching sexualities seated stereotypes of inherently excessive the resulting discourses on Africanity in Africa, we propose to study sexualities black sexuality as are still very much with hold great political value in a globalizing from Africa, introducing a deceptively us today, quietly informing apparently world, characterized by old and new ra- small lexicological difference that reflects scientific accounts of “African sexuality” cialized inequalities, their postulations of a much broader epistemological and po- (Caldwell, Caldwell, and Quiggin 1989) sameness and timelessness can, however, litical stance. and present-day politics (Ratele 2004) result in their own exclusions. The reifi- or explicitly staged and performed in cation of African culture and tradition, Rethinking sexuality from Africa all kinds of interracial pornography and the identification of “authentic”- Af (Hendriks 2014). rican moralities and psyches, can lead to Despite its many pitfalls and difficul- the exclusion of people who are, for one ties, Africa is first and foremost a place “Africa” is, however, not only a product reason or another, supposed to be inau- from where to think, read, write, talk and of the European imagination. It is also a thentic or corrupted by outside influences, disturb. Taking up recent debates about notion that has been re-appropriated by and therefore not truly African. Basile Southern theory or Theory from the South intellectuals and politicians who came to Ndjio (2012), for instance, shows how the (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012; Connell identify themselves and their peoples as idea of an “African” virility, as a defence 2007, and Rosa’s critique on the former “African”, often as a political reaction against Euro-centrism and colonial emas- two), we propose to explore African con- against Western domination and coloni- culation, has violent consequences for temporary realities as innovative analyti- zation. Indeed, while the first African in- those perceived to be insufficiently Afri- cal directions of global heuristic value for tellectuals were often formally educated can, male and thus “heterosexual”. sexuality studies. As Rosa (2014: 865) by Western missionaries and, thus, often postulates, the South is, first and fore- Christian converts, “they refused to de- As a trope and political invention, “Af- most, a project that “forms part of a ‘new fine themselves in the image of their co- rica” is, thus, at least as problematic as spirit’ in which contemporary social sci- lonial benefactors. Rather they redefined “sexuality”. First, it imposes a fictional ence develops. [O]ne of the features of themselves, combining the best of the two and static unity on an extremely diverse this new spirit would be ‘encounters and CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 32

temporary, but reactivatable connections Africa as much as it is read from else- Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff. 2012. Theory with various groups, operated at poten- where. To think “from” Africa implies, from the South: Or, how Euro-America is tially considerable social, professional, therefore, not an (African) origin for its Evolving Toward Africa. Boulder: Paradigm. geographical and cultural distance. The object of thought but rather a place for Connell, Raewyn. 2007. “The Northern Theory of Glo- project is the occasion and reason for the thinking itself, as an always already situ- balization.” Sociolo-gical Theory 25 (4): 368-385. connection. [It posits] the need to bring ated process of knowledge production. Dankwa, Serena. 2009. ““It’s a Silent Trade”: the social processes taking place outside Refusing to understand “African” as a Female Same-Sex Intimacies in Postcolo- of Euro-America to the core of social the- racialized or otherwise essentalized trait nial Ghana.” Nordic Journal of Feminist and ory”. In other words, the so-called South or characteristic indeed implies that – in Gender Research 17 (3): 192-205. is the ground to theorize from. theory – everyone can occupy “Africa” as Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. 1946. The a place from where to think. One’s licence However, conceiving Africa as a place Future and the Function of the Private Negro to think from Africa does not, therefore, from where to think immediately begs College Crisis Publishing Company. the question of who is doing the thinking. depend on one’s being “African” but on a radical openness and willingness to be in- Ekine, Sokari and Hakima Abbas, eds. 2013. Queer Who, in other words, can think, write or African Reader. Oxford: Pambazuka Press. read “from” Africa? First of all, this ques- timately affected by multiple realities on Epprecht, Marc. 2008. Heterosexual Africa? the tion directly touches upon the structural the African continent today. Rather than History of an Idea from the Age of Explora- financial and institutional inequalities analysing African realities by using (and tion to the Age of Aids. Athens: Ohio Univer- between scholars working on the conti- exploring the limitations of) supposedly sity Press. nent and those working in, usually, more universal concepts – such as “sexuality” privileged academic contexts. For many – we therefore need to look for theory in Falola, Toyin. 2001. Nationalism and African In- scholars in African universities, chronic the same place where we might, other- tellectuals University Rochester Press. lack of funding for fundamental research wise, merely look for “data”: i.e. out there Fanon, Frantz. 1952. “The Fact of Blackness.” produces a vicious circle of enormous in everyday experiences, understandings Postcolonial Studies: An Anthology: 15-32. and imaginings on the African continent. teaching loads and a heavy reliance on Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History of Sexuality, consultancy work (which, in turn, re- Volume I. an Introduction. New York: Vin- quires explicitly framing one’s findings in Note tage Books (translator Robert Hurley). donor language). Moreover, many Afri- 1. This essay is based on the research conducted Gilman, Sander. 1985. Difference and Pathology: can researchers do not have sufficient ac- for the introduction writ-ten for the Readings Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race, and Madness. cess to academic journals and experience in Sexualities from Africa, International New York: Cornell University Press. great difficulties in attending international African Institute / Indiana University Press, Halberstam, Jack. 2012. Gaga Femi-nism.Sex, conferences. In addition, scholars on the forthcoming. Gender, and the End of Normal. Boston: continent are hindered by editorial gate- Beacon Press. keeping and a citation gap that often pre- vents their work from being published in References Hendriks, Thomas. 2014. “Race and Desire in the international journals (Briggs & Weather Porno-Tropics: Ethnographic Perspectives from Achebe, Chinua. 1977. “An Image of Africa.” The the Post-Colony.” Sexualities 17 (1-2): 213-229. 2016). This has resulted in a vicious circle Massachusetts Review 18 (4): 782-794. of the devaluation of African creativity, Magubane, Zine. 2001. “Which Bodies Matter? agency and value systems, and an inter- Ahlberg, Beth Maina. 1994. “Is there a Distinct Feminism, Poststructuralism, Race, and the nalized sense of inadequacy (Nyamnjoh African Sexuality? A Critical Response to Curious Theoretical Odyssey of the “Hot- 2012: 129). Nevertheless, despite such fi- Caldwell Et Al.” Africa 64 (2): 220-242. tentot Venus”.” Gender & Society 15 (6): nancial obstacles and structural inequali- Appiah, Kwame A. 1992. In My Father’s House. 816-834. ties, many scholars working from African Africa in the Philosophy of Culture. Oxford: Mazrui, Ali AlʼAmin. 2005. “The Re-Invention institutional settings today are doing high- Oxford University Press. of Africa: Edward Said, VY Mudimbe, and ly original work on sexualities. Arnfred, Signe, ed. 2004. Re-Thinking Sexualities in Beyond.” Research in African Literatures 36 Africa. Sweden: Almqvist and Wiksell Tryckeri. (3): 68-82. Scholars based in the global North and/ or white scholars working in Africa have Bakare-Yusuf, Bibi. 2004. “Yorubas Don‟ T do Mbembe, Achille. 2001. On the Postcolony. Stud- therefore a responsibility to acknowledge Gender: A Critical Review of Oyeronke ies on the History of Society and Culture. their privileged position as researchers. Oyewumi‟ S.” The Invention of Woman… Berkeley: University of California Press. For some of our colleagues, the call for re- African Gender Scholarship 61 81. McClintock, Anne. 1995. “Imperial Leather.” . thinking (or even un-thinking) sexuality Caldwell, John, Pat Caldwell, and Pat Quiggin. 1989. Mignolo, Walter. 2014. “Decolonial Aesthetics/ from Africa, coming from two well-paid Disaster in an Alternative Civilization. the So- Aesthesis has Become a Connector Across white European-based anthropologists cial Dimension of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. The continents.” Contemporary and: Plat- might perhaps sound disingenuous or Caberra: Australian National University. form from Contemporary Art from African even politically suspect. Yet, by building Chakrabarty, Dipesh. 1992. “Postcolo-niality and Perspectives (nterview with Walter Mignolo). on a long tradition of “provincializing” the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for ‘In- Moore, Henrietta L. 2012. «Sexuality Encore.» Europe (Chakrabarty 1992), postcolo- dian’ Pasts?” Representations 37 (1-26). In Understanding Global Sexualities: New nial critique (Mbembe 2001) and deco- Clarke, Douglas. 2013. “Twice Remo-ved: Afri- Frontiers, edited by Peter Aggleton, Paul lonial analysis (Mignolo 2014), we aim can Invisibility in Western Queer Theory.” In Boyce, Henrietta Moore and Richard Parker, to incorporate the North as merely one Queer African Reader, edited by S. Ekine and 1-17. New York: Routledge. of many sites in a world of plurality – a H. Abbas, 173-185. Oxford: Pabazuka Press. world that can be (and must be) read from CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 33

Mudimbe, V. Y. 1994. The Idea of Africa. Bloom- Nyamnjoh, Francis B. 2012. “‘Potted Plants in Rosa, Marcelo C. 2014. “Theories of the South: ington: Indiana University Press. Greenhouses’: A Critical Reflection on the Limits and Perspectives of an Emergent Ndjio, Basile. 2012. “Post-Colonial Histories of Resilience of Colonial Education in Africa.” Movement in Social Sciences.” Current So- Sexuality: The Political Invention of a Libidi- Journal of Asian and African Studies 47 (2): ciology 62 (6): 851-867. nal African Straight.” Africa 82 (4): 609-631. 129-154. Said, Edward W. 1978. Orientalism. Western Con- Ndletyana, Mcebisi. 2008. “John Tengo Jabavu.” Nyeck, SN. 2011. “Autobiography of Things Left ceptions of the Orient. London: Routlegde. In African Intellectuals in the 19th and Early Undone: Politics of Literature, Hyphenation Tamale, Sylvia, ed. 2011. African Sexualities. A 20th Century South Africa, edited by M. and Queered Friendship in Africa.” Trans- Reader. Oxford: Pambazuka Press. Ndletyana, 31-44. Pretoria: Human Sciences Scripts 1: 172-200. Witte, Marleen de and R. Spronk. 2014. Research Council Press. Palmié, Stephan. 2007. “
Introduction: Out “Introduction:’African’: A Contested Quali- Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J. “Decolonia-lity as the of Africa?” Africa 37 (2): 159 -173. fier in Global Africa.” African Diaspora 7 Future of Africa.” History Compass 13.10 Ratele, Kopano. 2004. “Kinky Politics.” (2): 165-176. (2015): 485-496. Re-Thinking Sexualities in Africa: 139-156.

Comment renouveler le débat sur le développement en Afrique ? Notes introductives au débat

ous tenons d’abord à féliciter l’échelle de leur propre pays : certains le CODESRIA et son secrétaire Moussa Mbaye l’ont fait au prix de leur vie (Patrice Nexécutif pour avoir organisé ce Enda Tiers-monde Lumumba, Kwame Nkruhma, Thomas débat, mais aussi parce qu’à la veille de Sénégal Sankara par exemple). son 44e anniversaire, le Conseil vient C’est dire que la discussion sur ce thème d’être classé comme « meilleur laboratoire ne peut avoir de sens véritablement d’idées en Afrique subsaharienne ». 3) Enfin, nous devons promouvoir une démarche ascendante de stratégique que si nous sommes d’accord Pour revenir au thème qui nous réunit changement plutôt que des que la transformation de l’Afrique cet après-midi, nous nous félicitons de velléités toujours avortées de est un chantier majeur auquel nous l’insistance sur le « COMMENT », car s’il traduire en réalité des théories devons participer personnellement et s’agit juste de la nécessité de « repenser le achevées et systématiques, très institutionnellement. En ne le faisant développement de l’Afrique », beaucoup souvent en porte-à-faux avec les pas, nous acceptons d’être complices des l’ont déjà fait à travers de nombreuses réalités sociales. dérives et des incohérences des modes de publications de très grande qualité. Le gouvernance de nos États et des systèmes gap existant porte plutôt sur : comment C’est avec cela à l’esprit que nous allons d’exclusion, d’étouffement de la pensée passer des préconisations à l’affirmation contribuer à ce débat, en nous appuyant et des potentiels des populations de concrète de ce désir ? sur les acquis Enda Tiers-Monde. nos pays. En tant qu’organisations, nous sommes appelés à veiller à une Concernant ce débat, nous avons identifié Est-il possible de repenser production et à une utilisation des savoirs au moins trois décalages à opérer de réellement le développement qui consolident un espace public de débat prime abord pour bien appréhender les d’un continent sans que cela se inclusif, sérieux et de qualité. Même enjeux pratiques de ce « comment » : limite à un exercice purement si c’est un travail de long terme, grâce 1) D’abord, nous devons nous intellectuel et théorique ? à ces processus, le citoyen africain a évertuer à élargir le cercle des N’est-ce pas le reproche qui est ici l’occasion de se positionner en tant acteurs et renouveler les « lieux » constamment fait aux intellectuels, aux qu’acteur construisant son devenir et où l’on débat ; écrivains, aux institutions de recherche, non pas le subissant. Cela permet aux acteurs de faire preuve de proactivité 2) Ensuite, nous devons opter et aux agences de développement ? La dans la définition des politiques de sur la base de critères propres transformation de l’Afrique par une développement et dans l’agir citoyen. et parler librement de notre véritable décolonisation intellectuelle et La recherche-action-formation et la développement, versus l’habituel politique de ses élites et de ses dirigeants prospective populaire se sont imposées alignement (sur les concepts, et par une démocratisation populaire est à nous comme approches adéquates d’un agendas et modèles d’ailleurs) que un rêve que quelques-uns de ses leaders tel décloisonnement. l’on découvre toujours derrière de politiques ont exprimé et ont tenté prétendues nouveautés ; d’amener à la réalité ne serait-ce qu’à CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 34

Comment repenser le Ce qui est dit des individus s’applique surinvestissements et des spéculations développement de l’Afrique ? aussi à nos organisations, qui doivent financières ayant pour seul but de devenir des modèles de changement récolter le maximum de profit dans le Par quelles stratégies et à quel niveau dans leur propre gouvernance, leur plus court délai pour la minorité ; et la pouvons-nous réellement impulser des financement et leur communication, etc. crise alimentaire portée par un milliard de changements profonds, ou au moins personnes privées du minimum vital. participer à ceux qui sont déjà en cours ? Le changement à l’échelle du (trois niveaux : le niveau personnel, le continent Nous réalisons donc sans équivoque aucune que le paradigme du progrès niveau continental et le niveau national) Peut-on repenser le développement défini par les indicateurs internationaux de l’Afrique à l’échelle du continent ? Le changement au niveau de développement est structurellement personnel d’abord L’Union africaine a tenté l’exercice à inaccessible à tous, ou en d’autres termes, Dans un ouvrage publié en 2005 par travers l’élaboration du NEPAD, qui structurellement exclusif de la majorité. avait quelques chances d’être nourri des Enda Graf Sahel et intitulé « Changement En conséquence, nous devons repenser idées d’intellectuels africanistes. Mais politique et social : éléments pour la pensée l’avenir de l’Afrique sur la base d’autres avant même d’être achevé, le document et l’action », il est écrit et je cite : « il ressort paradigmes que ceux qui structurent du NEPAD perdait déjà toute chance donc que le changement ne concerne depuis plus d’un demi-siècle les d’être un instrument de changement pas que le monde des idées ou que des politiques de développement de nos pays. situations matérielles, le changement pour l’Afrique, puisqu’il était devenu interpelle l’homme et la femme dans toutes un instrument de mobilisation d’aide Malgré le sort peu enviable de leaders leurs dimensions, la pensée, l’affectif, le internationale, comme seule condition qui ont véritablement osé aller dans cette spirituel, le physique, etc. ». de sa mise en œuvre. direction, engageons-nous courageu- sement dans la recherche d’un nouveau Pour repenser le futur de l’Afrique à Nous ne pouvons pas être acteurs de paradigme et dans l’élaboration et la mise l’échelle du continent, il faudrait que le changement pour une transformation de en œuvre volontariste de nouveaux repères parlement de l’Union africaine devienne l’Afrique si, au niveau personnel, nous visant une transformation profonde des une véritable Assemblée des peuples à ne changeons pas notre propre pensée, conditions de vie de la majorité, par un laquelle l’Assemblée des chefs d’État doit nos propres repères, nos valeurs et changement de la structure du pouvoir soumettre ses idées et ses propositions nos comportements. Nous ne pouvons et des mentalités, pour faire de chaque politiques sur toute question touchant conduire aucune organisation sociale, citoyen un acteur politique, responsable la transformation de l’Afrique. Les aucune entreprise, aucune communauté, au niveau personnel et au niveau collectif. encore moins une nation et un continent, mouvements sociaux africains devraient vers le changement si nos propres idées revendiquer ce changement institutionnel Nous rappelons ci-après huit principes et 1 et propositions ne sont pas une réalité au niveau de l’Union africaine. choix sur la base desquels Thomas Sankara a tenté d’impulser la transformation de son dans notre propre vie. Le changement à l’échelle d’un pays pays : Nous ne pouvons pas dire que l’Afrique Sur quelle base un gouvernement 1. Chercher à construire sa pensée doit se décoloniser si nos propres choix peut-il impulser le changement à propre, la vision de son futur, ses de vie et nos comportements démontrent l’échelle de son pays ? le contraire. propres exigences et ses priorités ; La théorie du développement rime avec 2. Accepter de partir de nos réalités, Oui, « un autre monde est possible ». une certaine conception du progrès et de de notre histoire et de nos échecs Mais alors, est-ce nous qui sommes la modernisation, qui serait le résultat pour les assumer et en faire des « impossibles » ? Pour reprendre notre inéluctable de la croissance économique atouts pour réinventer notre futur ami Philippe De Leener « devenir un selon le modèle capitaliste. L’Afrique (d’où le changement du nom du acteur politique, c’est refuser de devenir et les autres continents du Sud ont été pays de Haute-Volta en Burkina ce que l’on combat ». Il poursuivait sur intégrés de diverses manières au système Faso, pays des hommes intègres) ; le fait que « combattre le capitalisme, économique mondial et les schémas de c’est d’abord le combattre en nous, c’est développement qui le sous-tendent sont 3. Accepter de questionner nos avant tout mener la lutte contre une censés transformer les conditions de vie systèmes sociaux pour dénoncer partie de nous-mêmes. Car il (le système de leurs populations. et briser tout ce qui entrave la capitaliste) est incrusté dans tout ce que dignité, la sécurité, la liberté et Si les impacts de ces schémas indiquent nous touchons et consommons, depuis la prise de parole des jeunes, des effectivement une création et une notre assiette jusque dans notre corps femmes et de toute autre catégorie accumulation de richesses sans et dans notre tête ». Ainsi l’ODD n° 12 sociale victime de discrimination précédent à l’échelle de la planète, « Établir des modes de consommation et ou d’exclusion ; de production durable » semble devoir nous avons vu en même temps que rester une chimère tant les acteurs du ce système a été à l’origine des trois 4. Renoncer aux institutions Nord refusent de sortir de leurs zones grandes dérives du développement démocratiques imposées de de confort tandis que de larges franges à l’échelle mondiale : la dérive l’extérieur pour construire un des sociétés du Sud cherchent à leur climatique engendrée par l’économie système démocratique fondé ressembler. de la surproduction et son corollaire de sur l’implication réelle de la pollution ; la dérive financière, fruit des majorité dans les mécanismes CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 35

de concertation, de décision, questions liées au développement, en être une nécessaire condition pour de mobilisation de ressources particulier la pauvreté et les inégalités. réaliser ses autres missions. et de planification (démocratie Ce faisant, Enda postulait que ce cercle C’est dans cette logique que nous avons effective et non pas formaliste ou vertueux se constituait en travaillant à la voulu tirer les leçons des expériences juste électoraliste) ; régulation de la société (dans ses volets multiples et multisectorielles conduites politique, économique, social, culturel, 5. Identifier et combattre toutes les par des acteurs au sein d’Enda et extérieurs environnemental, etc.) en y associant stigmatisations qui dénigrent et à Enda pour proposer ce que nous avons pleinement les personnes et groupes étouffent le génie, la créativité, appelé le Rapport alternatif sur l’Afrique. concernés. « On ne développe pas, on se les richesses et tous les potentiels Une initiative que nous développons développe » (Joseph Ki Zerbo). des populations, notamment les avec le CODESRIA et qui est partagée enfants et les catégories les plus La principale vocation d’Enda désormais par des institutions africaines vulnérables ; depuis sa création a donc été d’œu- comme l’Institut des futurs africains vrer pour la réhabilitation sociale et (IFA), le Forum du tiers-monde (FTM), 6. Informer et éduquer en per- économique ainsi que l’habilitation l’International Institute for Democracy manence les différents acteurs à politique des populations pauvres et and Electoral Assistance (IDEA). la base, sur tous les concepts, les exclues des espaces et des systèmes de instruments et les mécanismes en Le RASA est une des réponses au besoin, gestion et de décision à l’échelle de la vigueur dans les services publics : largement insatisfait, d’une affirmation communauté, de la nation et de la région. le budget, la loi, la dette, les autonome de notre protagonisme sans institutions, l’aide internationale, Pour ce faire, Enda s’engage avec ses complexe, et d’une centralité africaine etc. Aucun sujet n’est trop partenaires dans la recherche des leviers dans le discours sur l’Afrique. La valeur complexe, ni trop important, sociaux, techniques et institutionnels ajoutée de ce rapport sera de contribuer ou trop éloigné de la réalité par lesquels il pourra mettre en œuvre à renforcer cette autonomie et cette quotidienne des peuples pour ne les quatre voies stratégiques qu’il s’est capacité à penser l’avenir des sociétés et pas en parler avec eux ; choisies, à savoir : pays africains en définissant des principes et des instruments de mesure de leurs 7. Cultiver le sens des responsabilités • Promouvoir le protagonisme progrès, et de contribuer à renverser les (chacun est responsable à son social : Enda appuie les acteurs paradigmes paralysants ancrés dans les propre niveau de ses actes et sociaux les plus faibles dans leurs individus, les groupes et les institutions de ses choix), la transparence dynamiques pour se faire valoir, africaines. S’il faut traduire en initiative et la redevabilité à tous les afin d’impacter le cours des concrète les préconisations sur la niveaux (les fonctionnaires, les choses aux différents niveaux, et décolonisation complète (de nos esprits, chefs traditionnels, les élus, les prend parti à leurs côtés dans leurs de nos économies…) et recouvrer entreprises publiques et privées, combats, notamment au niveau notre souveraineté en acte, alors le etc.) ; international. Rapport alternatif sur l’Afrique sera une 8. Cultiver la confiance en soi et • Innover et promouvoir l’inno- initiative structurante pour de nouveaux savoir compter d’abord sur ses vation dans les domaines jalons. Alternatif, non par réaction, mais propres forces : les évaluer, les techniques, sociaux et politi- par l’affirmation et l’éclairage d’autres mobiliser et les utiliser. ques, mais également dans la voies de transformation positives pensée et les comportements ; déjà à l’œuvre dans les dynamiques Comment une organisation comme réelles ; alternatif aussi parce que • Crédibiliser et diffuser les la nôtre peut-elle contribuer à faire conjuguant savoirs experts et savoirs savoir-faire innovants et les bouger les esprits et les initiatives d’expérience et donnant la parole à des expérimentations populaires : vers la construction d’une autre acteurs authentiques habituellement ce faisant, Enda veut assumer Afrique ? « invisibles » et/ou disqualifiés. une forme de rupture – ou La dernière partie de ce papier va de prise de distance – avec Un autre chantier dans lequel s’appliquer à Enda. Cette organisation les systèmes dominants de nous nous sommes lancés porte est née dans les années soixante-dix production et de validation sur la promotion de véritables d’un long cheminement d’esprits des innovations techniques, transformations sociales, politi- complices constatant les blocages du sociales, et politiques, notam- ques, économiques, culturelles et développement d’un Sud déjà ancré ment l’hégémonie du « savoir environnementales. Enda t-m, qui a dans des logiques d’appauvrissement. d’expert ». voulu « sortir des sentiers battus » du En mettant en place Enda, Jacques cadre logique et de la gestion du cycle • Alimenter la réflexion criti- Bugnicourt et ses compagnons posaient de projet, vient de lancer un processus que, car seule une distance clairement le principe selon lequel on de recherche-action sur les stratégies critique permet de décons- ne saurait assurer le développement et méthodes de suivi-évaluation dites truire les modèles imposés et subis, sans une prise en charge adéquate des stratégiques. En effet, on peut constater de repérer les idées et pratiques questions environnementales et en même que plusieurs actions présentées émergentes, et de reconstruire temps, réciproquement, qu’on ne saurait comme refondatrices ou de rupture des alternatives. La capacité de réaliser les objectifs de préservation ne font que contribuer à reproduire le réflexion critique d’Enda se révèle de l’environnement en ignorant les système combattu en en éliminant les CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 36

aspérités les plus insoutenables, tandis • La différence entre changement Avec les entités du Réseau Enda, nous que les changements produits restent dans les situations vécues ou travaillons à l’échelle de territoires, non significatifs, les effets demeurant les problèmes, d’une part, et secteurs ou pays afin que le plus grand marginaux. d’autre part, changement dans nombre maîtrise effectivement les enjeux Pour clarifier les enjeux d’une démarche le fonctionnement de la société à de l’Agenda 2030 dans sa propre vie et orientée sur le changement dans l’origine des problèmes, c’est-à- dans ses activités tout comme dans les les sociétés, nous avons opéré deux dire changement dans la manière politiques publiques (aux différentes distinctions fondamentales : dont la société fonctionne pour échelles) ; ceci afin de favoriser une « fabriquer » les situations et les réelle contractualisation entre toutes les • La différence entre changement problèmes dont elle souffre. Dans parties prenantes des changements visés. de premier ordre (« la même chose le premier cas, on agit sur des Multiplier les initiatives d’appropriation autrement ») d’une part et, d’autre symptômes, dans le second cas on critique et les innovations, c’est ainsi part, changement de second ordre agit sur ce qui génère le mal et ses que nous voyons notre contribution (« tout autre chose »). Le premier symptômes. type de changement manifeste la à la concrétisation de l’Agenda 2030 continuité, mais sous des formes Si nous voulons sortir des impasses intitulé « Transformer notre monde : le ou dans des modalités différentes actuelles, nous devons approfondir les programme de développement durable à qui produisent l’illusion que réflexions sur les mécanismes qui bloquent l’horizon 2030 ». « ça change ». Le second type les changements à l’intérieur de nos sociétés signale une véritable rupture (il et institutions et aligner en face des réponses Note y a réellement un « avant » et un adéquates, pour bâtir des alternatives 1. Mais la liste n’est pas exhaustive. « après »). véritables, endogènes et durables.

C a p i t a l i n t h e Tw e n t y - fi r s t C e n t u r y : A Critical Engagement with Piketty

n 2015, 147 years after Marx wrote his are nearly perfect and hence governments need not intervene in the economy. This is path breaking book “Capital”, a French Alemayehu Geda the kind of economics thought in topnotch Ieconomist called Thomas Piketty Department of Economics universities in the US and Europe, and wrote a sensational book with the same Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia title. This book has created a shock wave through their influence, throughout the on what is called neoclassical or neoliberal/ world. The World Bank, the IMF and mainstream/ economics or in plain economics is the dominant economic WTO as well as the governments’ of English – the economics that worships discourse and offers justification for the the Western economies such as the US a free market economy. This branch of neoliberal ideology which says markets and Western Europe have pushed the CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 37

policy prescription of such free market their call fell on deaf ears. This seems audience and how to skilfully navigate economics to Africa. This is done through in line with the famous phrase of the through the profession that is dominated what is called “Structural Adjustment Italian political writer Anotonio Gramsci by neoliberal economists. First, he and Pro-grammes (SAPs)” and recently who noted [extending the idea of Marx his colleagues (including their doctoral “the Poverty Reduction Programmes/ & Engels], long time ago, “the ruling students) did a meticulous quantitative Papers [PRSPS]. I put the latter in the class idea is the ruling idea”. Ironically, and qualitative research about distribution same category as the former because in when the rich countries were hit by the of income (inequality) for the last 15 terms of macro policy the prescription global financial-cum-economic crisis in years. Then they presented the basic between SAPs and PRSPs are the same. 2008/09 it was the policy prescription findings, that later appeared in his book, That is, both subscribe to: liberalization from the economics of these progressive in top rated professional journals using of finance, trade, labour market; economists such as the Post-Keynesians sophisticated mathematical and related privatization, devaluation, no govern- (not the neoclassical economists) that techniques so that they will be accepted ment intervention; as well as conservative offered explanation about and a remedy by the profession (a profession dominated fiscal and monetary policy – what is called for the crisis – notice the “stimulus by the likes of top league US universities). the “Washington Consensus”. The impact package of the USA”. It is comforting After this acceptance, Piketty wrote the of these policies in Africa since the 1980s to hear that famous mainstream/ same basic ideas in plain English that has been devastating and led the famous neoclassical economists such as Paul can be read by any one, making the book Western magazine The Economist to Romer whose work and his colleagues accessible, and also a sensation. declare one of those decades of Africa as book (such as David Romer) everyone “the lost decade”. is using in economics department across The second important point is the the world and who currently holds the main message of the book: the world I think I have digressed a little from the chief economist and vice presidency is characterized by a shocking level of topic. However, it is a justifiable digression position of the World Bank is openly inequality and in the last 300 years; the because I am attempting to show the and sarcastically ridiculing mainstream rich are getting richer and the poor are policy implications of economic policies economics and their dominant economic getting poorer. He has captured this idea that are the brain child of neoclassical models. These models, called Dynamic by a simple formula which says r is greater economists and their institutions (such as Stochastic General Equilibrium Models, than g, r>g (r is the return to capital or the IMF, WB) and their dominant owners DSGE, are the tools of central banks of the income of capital owners such as the (the West – or the rich countries). What is the rich countries and currently being profit from investing; and g is the growth striking about this mainstream/neoliberal pushed by IMF into African central banks rate of the economy). In fact, the formula economics and ideology is that it doesn’t to espouse the free market ideology. is basically r is greater than w, r>w (w is talk about distribution of income or wage/salary or the income of workers). In inequality at all – thus endorsing the Be that as it may, I will not attempt to offer the rich countries, the worker’s income existing distribution of income as either a review or a summary of Thomas [w] is generally assumed to grow at least justifiable, making income distribution Piketty’s book in this short article. by the growth rate of the economy [g] so a none-issue – this is a betrayal by Lansana Keita has done that by relating w and g are equal. In Africa, for instance neoclassical economists to their claimed it to African condition in CODESRIA in Ethiopia, wage, w (for instance my intellectual ancestors, the classical Bulletin No 3&4, 2016. Although he salary at AAU) is not growing by 11 per economists. For the latter, distribution of noted that the capital-wage gap (I think cent annually for the last 10 years because income is not an afterthought but rather mistakenly Keita said Capital-Income the economy is officially claimed to be “the issue” as can be read from the works gap in that article to mean Capital Income growing by 11 per cent for the last 10 of Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Thus, and Wage Income gap – assuming he years. In our case, my salary is almost we economists in Africa teach that the takes capital related income as income) constant during this period – by the economy is efficient when the labourer in Africa is not as big as in the West, way this stagnant wage is in line with gets wage, the entrepreneur gets profit and as I will show at the end of this article, Marx’s book which differentiate it from the asset owner rent which corresponds to that may not be the case, either. Piketty’s Piketty’s. Over the 300 years investigated their contribution to production. Thomas book was the number one bestseller in by Piketty r is always greater than g [or Piketty’s book, contrary to the received 2015. It is the most talked about book w] and the gap between profit and wage wisdom, has squarely focused on the by people: from top entrepreneurs (such is widening (see the graph below). That nature of inequality or distribution of as Bill Gates who critically reviewed it is, the rich are getting richer and the income between capital (the income of recently) to top politicians (obviously poor are getting poorer. Thus, people capital owners) and wages & salaries the French president, and also Barack have begun to compare Piketty’s r>g (the income of the working class) in the Obama, among others). What I will do [or w] to Einstein’s famous equation last 300 years. I need to say in passing here is just to point out some points that of energy E=MC2. As you may see in here that progressive economists had impressed me most about the book and Figure 1.I, taken from Piketty’s book, the always been concerned about distribution then sufficiently motivate anyone to top rich 10 per cent of US citizens were of income – J.M. Keynes, M. Kalecki get hold of and read it. This is, thus, a controlling about 50 per cent of the US in the past and Lance Taylor today are rejoinder to Lansana Keita’s piece in the national income in the 1930’s and also cases in point. However, since, research, last issue of CODESERIA Bulletin. today. That share dropped to about 33 per publication and research funding are cent during the period 1940-1980 when dominated by mainstream economists The first important point that impressed it was the lowest. We can clearly see in and their institutions and governments, me most is that Piketty knows his Figure 1.1 that inequality has been rising CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 38

sharply since 1980. In addition, Figure 1.2 unlike the West’s growth history, Taiwan shows the share of profit in national shows that in the rich countries aggregate and South Korea grew with a sensible income in Ethiopia. This is about 80 to 90 private wealth was 6 to 7 years of the total distribution of income, and hence it is not per cent of the national income, leaving national income in each of the countries a universal truth that inequality should get the share of labour to be just 10 to 20 per from 1870 to 1910; 2 to 3 years of the worse as a country grows. cent. Household level data also shows national income in 1950; and 4 to 6 years that inequality, especially in urban areas of the national income in 2010. This takes The fourth point relates to the role of in Ethiopia is getting worse and hence the me to the third interesting point. “technological diffusion”, and “expansion rich are getting richer and the poor are of quality education for all” to address the getting poorer. Recent studies shows that The third point is the so called Kuznet problem of inequality which is discussed the poor in urban Ethiopia, who spend curve, named after a famous American at length in the book. For this to happen, over 70 per cent of their income on food, economist named Simon Kuznet who however, the role of well-informed are unable to properly feed themselves studied the pattern of inequality until policy (i.e. policy informed by rigorous because of rent, food and energy price the early 1940s. When you see Figure research) through conscious government hike - thus coping with this through cutting 1.1 this pattern, until 1940s, looked like intervention to abate inequality is of meals and through the generosity an inverted U. The optimistic scenario important. This is the opposite of the of friends and relatives. I wouldn’t be and conclusion Kuznet drew from this policy recommendation of neoliberal surprised if the picture is similar in other pattern is that as a country develops, economists and their backers who are African countries. Inequality is a major inequality initially will rise but eventually against the role of state (apart from a social problem in Kenya, for instance – will decline – has a shape of inverted U night-watch man stature) in development. a country that I know very closely. The (see the coloured picture that mimics the However, we need to be cautious here that problem of inequality in South Africa is trend of the data line). This has become if the government is not well-informed a common knowledge. The implication a Bible/Koran for neoliberal economists the government failure could be worse is that growth by itself is not enough for and their Western governments. Thus, than the market failure. poverty reduction. It could be anti-poor they began to advise us that “don’t worry when it is especially accompanied by Finally, before I conclude this brief article if inequality is worsening while you are inflation as the story in Ethiopia using the and advice anyone to get hold of the book growing today because it will eventually 2004-2009 household level data shows. and encourage researchers to do similar decline”. In fact, Kuznet even got a Nobel It doesn’t matter for the Ethiopian poor if studies across Africa, see the two figures Prize for it and related studies on national the economy grows by 10 per cent if food below that I have attempted to make in income and economic growth (Note who prices increase by more than 10 per cent at line with Piketty’s ideas for Ethiopia. It is gets the Nobel Prize!). He accepted the the same time (assuming very generously an interesting research to do, not only for award and the prestige that comes with that the poor's income will growth by any other particular country in Africa but it although he was aware that his thing is the growth rate of the economy – a also across Africa. As can be read from the a snap shot picture of a post-world war heroic assumption in Africa). This needs first figure the share of capital in Ethiopia phenomenon. As we can see from figure to be addressed squarely because such is on the average 10 times that of labour. 1.1 of Piketty’s long-time series data, in inequality (especially if it is accompanied If I had the latest data I am sure the trend fact the pattern of inequality over time by horizontal inequality) invariably leads would go up even further as the recent has rather U shape (not inverted U shape). to poverty of the mass, escalation of crime growth in Ethiopia is accompanied by an This in turn means inequality is getting level and political violence and instability alarming level of inequality that threatens worst over time. This is one of Piketty’s with dire consequences for the economy social cohesion. The second figure also key contributions. I should note here that and the country in question. CODESRIA Bulletin, Nos 1 & 2, 2017 Page 39 Publications Team / Équipe de la Publication The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Divine Fuh Africa (CODESRIA) is an independent organisation whose principal Osime Samuel objectives are to facilitate research, promote researchbased Mamadou Dramé publishing and create multiple forums geared towards the exchange Chifaou Amzat of views and information among African researchers. All these are Fatou Diagne aimed at reducing the fragmentation of research in the continent Yves Eric Elouga through the creation of thematic research networks that cut across Sériane Ajavon linguistic and regional boundaries. 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Select CODESRIA publications are also [email protected] accessible online at www.codesria.org Web Site: www.codesria.org CODESRIA would like to express its gratitude to the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Pour les contributions et informations, prière de Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY), the Norwegian s’adresser à : Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), the Rockefeller Conseil pour le développement de la recherche en Foundation, the Open Society Foundations (OSFs), The Open sciences sociales en Afrique Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), The Open Society Avenue Cheikh Anta Diop x Canal IV Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), Andrew Mellon Foundation, B.P. : 3304, Dakar, and the Government of Senegal for supporting its research, CP 18524, Sénégal training and publication programmes. Tél : +221 33 825 98 22 / 23 Fax : +221 33 824 12 89

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