Africa through Blair’s Commission and the Eritrean Story: Development beyond Neoliberal Deadlock and the Embattled Postcolonial-State A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Abderahim Ibrahim Gime MA RMIT, BA Edith Cowan University School of Global, Urban and Social Studies College of Design and Social Context RMIT University December 2018 i Declaration I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author alone; the work has not been submitted previously, in whole or in part, to qualify for any other academic award; the content of the project is the result of work which has been carried out since the official commencement date of the approved research program; any editorial work, paid or unpaid, carried out by a third party is acknowledged; and, ethics procedures and guidelines have been followed. I acknowledge the support I have received for my research through the provision of an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship. ABDERAHIM IBRAHIM GIME Abderahim Ibrahim Gime December 2018 ii Acknowledgment I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisors, Associate Professor Hariz Halilovich and Doctor Peter Phipps, for their support and guidance. Also, I would like to thank those who have been helpful to me in other ways along the course of this research, including Professor Jock McCulloch and Associate Professor Jonathan Makuwira. Going back a long way to my school years in Kassala, Sudan, I also wish to salute the teaching staff at the United Nations School I attended for their care and dedication; without the passion, solicitude and wisdom of Mikael Ghaber and Saleh Hamde and their colleagues to make education accessible for refugees, this study wouldn’t have been possible. Last, but not least, I am particularly appreciative of my family for the love and encouragement and my sister Sofia for her positive role in my life from early on. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................... 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 3 1. THE COMMISSION FOR AFRICA AND ERITREA’S SELF-DEVELOPMENT APPROACH: THE LITERATURE AND ITS SCOPE............................................................ 21 1.1 Mainstream deliberations on the Commission for Africa .......................................... 22 1.2 Counter-hegemonic discourses and the Commission for Africa ............................ 33 1.3 The case of Eritrea: voices from the margins ........................................................ 40 1.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 41 2. METHODOLOGY AND METHODS .......................................................................... 43 2.1 Reality, Social Inquiry, Africa ................................................................................ 43 2.2 The Commission, Eritrea, development: an imperative for a composite methodological policy ...................................................................................................... 53 2.3 The research process ........................................................................................... 61 2.4 Reflexivity ............................................................................................................. 63 3. CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT .................................................................................. 67 3.1 Commissioning an ‘ultimate’ commission on African development ........................ 67 3.2 The Commission for Africa’s moot openings ......................................................... 72 3.3 Eritrea: society, political history, culture ................................................................ 86 3.4 Historicity and the post-independence setting: continuity, misperception or total diversion? ........................................................................................................................ 91 3.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 97 4. ERITREA, HISTORICAL EXPERIENCE, ENDOGENOUS DEVELOPMENT ............... 99 4.1 Researching Eritrea: preliminary note ................................................................... 99 4.2 The world, its basic operating rules, social history, Eritrean development ........... 103 4.3 Struggle, culture, everyday development activity by contradiction ....................... 115 4.4 Eritrean development: drawing together the past, the living and posterity ........... 121 4.5 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 131 iv 5. THE COMMISSION AND THE NEOLIBERAL CONSTRUCTION OF ‘AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT’ .............................................................................................................. 133 5.1 In search of a comprehensive theoretical approach ............................................ 134 5.2 The Commission, ‘rare’ vista into the continent, devising potential solutions ....... 136 5.3 Conformist ideological overture or levelling the development playing field? ........ 142 5.4 Development in the modern era, origin in West’s socio-cultural and historical experience ..................................................................................................................... 144 5.5 The reified discourse of development and really existing world capitalism .......... 151 5.6 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 163 6. THE BROAD DESIGN OF A ‘HETERODOX’ DEVELOPMENT THEORY .................. 165 6.1 Recapturing the spirit of the Commission for Africa and the Eritrean experiment 165 6.2 Peering into the Commission for Africa through the lens of Eritrea ...................... 167 6.3 Beyond past and present actualities: towards a realistic African development framework ..................................................................................................................... 171 6.4 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 189 7. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 192 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................... 198 v ABSTRACT Against the backdrop of a contested neoliberal global regime, this thesis inquires into the theoretical and practical underpinnings of ‘African development’ using Blair’s Commission for Africa and Eritrea as case studies. The thesis critically reviews the British Government sponsored enquiry Our Common Interest: Report of the Commission for Africa (2005) as an embodiment of the belief that neoliberal economic policies and liberal democratic reform can offset adverse developmental conditions across sub-Saharan Africa. The thesis contrasts how African states, socialist Eritrea as a specific example, get around the neoliberal global order heralded by the Blair Commission. ‘Development’ holds different meaning for specific actors because of underlying and often contradictory interests; dominant and subaltern groups rationalise development differently through their respective discourses. To map a consistent approach to African development, the thesis weighs specific questions about the basic character of development. The thesis therefore interrogates the link between the particular type of development discourse, social reality and practical change insofar as external prescriptive and internal voluntaristic approaches to development go. Understanding the politics of development through the dichotomous examples of the Blair Commission and Eritrean State policies is important to consider a kind of development congruent with the African realities. Dominant discourses of development like Blair’s proposal for Africa engender powerful narratives that don’t necessarily reflect how the subjects of development perceive themselves, their conditions and their future. The thesis utilises a comparative historical analysis to explain how different groups account for development according to particular historical experience and political interests and objectives. The thesis argues that the monolithic approach defining the Blair Commission’s development blueprint has a tendency to contradict any popular organic quality that the (African) development process may have. The thesis takes issue with the Blair Commission’s presentation of its development paradigm as of universal validity while unmasking its underlying ideological underpinnings. It argues that the Commission’s mix of assumptions, methods and conclusions endorse a free market development model and representative democracy for the region. The initiative could be perceived largely as a vehicle for the cultivation of material interests on behalf of a very tiny minority of transnational elites, not the African masses. Despite its problems, Eritrea’s historical materialist conception of development through struggle reflects an alternative way of thinking about and practicing 1 development in the region. The Eritrean experiment of independent national development is examined as a contrasting model of sub-Saharan