Rwanda’s House of Sand: Brutality, Lies and Complicity

July 26, 2018

Rwanda’s much-vaunted development success has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. First, a series of papers and blogs have questioned claims by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR) that poverty decreased by 6 percentage points between 2010 and 2014 (see Filip Reyntjens’ blogpost on African Arguments; a 2016 ROAPE paper and several blogpost on roape.net Exposing the Donor Darling and The Evidence Mounts). Second, inconsistencies have been found between Rwandan household survey data (HHS) and National Accounts Statistics (NAS), raising the prospect that Rwanda’s GDP growth figures may have been overestimated over the past decade (see Faking it: Rwandan GDP Growth Myth).

Knowing whether Rwanda’s success claims are real is crucial at a time when the government’s political legitimacy is being eroded by mounting human rights abuses, deteriorating political freedom, and new challenges to the official genocide history promoted by the Rwandan government. In view of this, we would like to thank Dónal Ring for contributing to this important debate, and we would also like to respond to some of the specific claims made in his blog. It is through scrutiny and critical interactions of this kind, that we will hopefully be able to resolve some of these questions.

On poverty, Dónal Ring suggests that the increase in poverty might be an artefact of the chosen price index (Laspeyre) and suggests that ‘releasing the results for other indices would strengthen [the] argument.’ The Laspeyre index was chosen because it yielded results that were closest to the original poverty estimates, so we assumed that this was the index that was used in the original study. Even though the Laspeyre index tends to over-estimate inflation, it was not used to update the poverty line from 2010 to 2014, but to estimate intra-year inflation, as well as regional price differences within each survey. Consequently, the price index cannot account for the increase in poverty between the two surveys.

The requested results for other price indices are posted in the table below. While these results were not reported in the original blogpost, they were contained in the syntax files that were provided with that post. As the table shows, the increases in poverty using the Paasche and Fisher price indices range between +7.2 and +11.5 for all poverty lines that were presented in the original blogpost. In other words, they strengthen the conclusions of that earlier blogpost.

	Average Basket		Updated Basket		Minimum Basket		Reyntjen’s Basket		Survey-specific basket
	2010	2014	2010	2014	2010	2014	2010	2014	2010	2014
Poverty rate Paasche Index)	42.3	52.2	46.6	57.5	32.4	43.9	29.6	38.7	44.2	52.5
Change (Paasche)		+9.9*		+10.9*		+11.5*		+9.1*		+8.3*
Poverty rate (Fisher Index)	43.8	51.1	47.8	56.5	33.8	43.2	30.9	38.1	45.6	51.3
Change (Fisher)		+7.3*		+8.6*		+9.4*		+7.2*		+5.7*

*Change is statistically significant at 5%

Poverty estimates using Paasche and Fisher Index, as well as a ‘non-constant’ poverty line

As rightly noted by Sam Desiere, the question of which inflation rate we consider (not which price index) is crucial to answering the question on poverty. This is not a trivial technical detail, but a real question about how much food Rwandan farmers were actually able to purchase with their income over this period. Further research into this question would therefore be desirable. At the moment, the best estimates presented by Sam Desiere and others indicate the inflation faced by the rural poor was significantly higher than the stated national inflation rate. The reasons for the higher prices faced by rural poor have been explored by An Ansoms, Neil Dawson and others, and have to do with, amongst other things, forced mono-cropping, and local market failures.

Dónal Ring’s second claim on the comparison of ‘constant’ poverty lines is not valid in this case, as it builds on a misunderstanding of the World Banks’s position on this issue. The cited paper makes a general conceptual point about the fact that poverty is a changing concept over time (you cannot assess poverty in the UK by the same standard you assess poverty in Rwanda, or by the same standard you assessed poverty in the UK 50 years ago). This sensible conceptual point does not in any way translate into a methodological endorsement of the types of changes in the poverty line that NISR undertook between EICV 3 and 4. NISR did not only update the poverty line to account for new consumption patterns, they changed the type of poverty line from an average consumption basket (reflecting people’s actual consumption patterns) to a minimum consumption basket (reflecting the minimum consumption required to meet 2100kcal/day). While updating the poverty line to account for changes in consumption patterns is sometimes acceptable and advisable, it is never legitimate to estimate a poverty trend by comparing different types of poverty lines. Even if there is not change in the type of poverty line used, any updating of the consumption basket should be accompanied by serious robustness checks to ensure that the updating itself is not driving the observed changes in poverty, as happened in Rwanda.

The World Bank’s argument about updating the poverty line over time is typically used in the context of growing economies with rapid poverty reduction, and usually has the effect of reducing poverty reduction. The argument is that, as economies grow and people become richer, their tastes and needs will become more expensive, as they turn towards higher quality foods. Consequently, the cost of the basket needed to meet the minimum standard increases, and thus the poverty line should increase. The argument does not apply in reverse: if poverty increases, people will tend to turn towards lower quality foods. This means that the food basket becomes cheaper. But it does not necessarily mean that we should lower the poverty line. The reason is that this reduction in the cost of the food basket reflects negative coping strategies and a deterioration of living standards, rather than a voluntary change in consumption patterns.

For full transparency, we nonetheless present the results for the updated food basket, reflecting changes in consumption patterns between 2010 and 2014. The poverty line is called the ‘survey-specific poverty line’ and shows an increase in poverty of between 5.7 and 8.3 between 2010 and 2014. The increase in poverty is slightly less pronounced than for the other poverty lines due to the fact that people have shifted to lower quality foods between 2010 and 2014, which in itself is further evidence of deteriorating living standards. This result was already available in the previously published syntax files (poverty line called: acttotpoor) but had not been included in the original blogpost for the reasons explained above.

Secondly, we turn to the issue of GDP growth. Here, we need to distinguish between (1) past growth performance, (2) current growth performance, and (3) future growth performance.

Starting with the question of past growth performance, Ring claims that that we had used the findings of a discrepancy between the NAS (National Agricultural Survey) and HHS to claim that NISR had manipulated growth figures. What the paper actually said was that: ‘This [discrepancy between NAS and HHS figures] does not constitute incontrovertible proof that GDP growth rates have been overestimated in Rwanda, since there are different factors listed above that could explain such discrepancies.’ The ‘reasons listed above’ included all the points mentioned by Ring, and even included references to the papers cited by Ring. Furthermore, in the follow-up comments to the blogpost, which are available below the original post, we proposed the following three hypotheses to explain the discrepancy. All of these hypotheses raise serious questions about the quality and sustainability of Rwandan growth:

“– Hypothesis 1: Both NAS and HHS figures are correct. In this scenario, the discrepancies between NAS and HHS figures would be due to differences in definition, coverage, etc. between the two measures. For instance, GDP figures include government spending and investments, which may not be reflected in household consumption. This hypothesis would seem plausible, given the type of investments identified above (debt-financed, loss-making prestige and luxury projects), which would not typically be expected to benefit average households. As such, it would strengthen concerns about the regressive and unsustainable nature of government expenditures in Rwanda. However, if this hypothesis were correct, we should expect to find a decrease in final household consumption estimated from the NAS, which is not the case (Household final consumption expenditure grew by 6.5% per year according to the WDI – World Development Indicators – databank).

– Hypothesis 2: NAS figures are correct but HHS figures under-estimate household consumption. This might for instance be the case if, as it often happens, rich households systematically under-report income/consumption or refuse to take part in the survey. In this scenario, GDP per capita would indeed have grown at 4.5%, but this growth has disproportionately benefitted rich urban households that are not adequately captured by the HHS. Such an explanation would be good news for growth but very bad news for inequality, since it would mean that the totality of Rwanda’s economic growth in recent years has gone to rich households, while average incomes for the rest of the population would have deteriorated. This hypothesis, however, seems to be incompatible with the claimed increase in agricultural value added (+3.9% annually between 2010 and 2013), since this is the sector that is known to have experienced serious problems in recent years. Furthermore, NAS figures also claim an increase in manufacturing (+6.4%/ year) and services (+8.3%/ year), which doesn’t leave much room to explain the decreasing consumption levels. This leaves us with a third hypothesis.

– Hypothesis 3: HHS figures are correct but NAS figures over-estimate GDP per capita growth. This is the so-called ‘manipulation’ hypothesis. This is obviously the most controversial and difficult to prove hypothesis, so we leave it open for other researchers to explore through more robust methods, if possible. Given what we now know about poverty numbers, as well as recent reports of possible manipulation in the health sector, this is a hypothesis that should be taken seriously.”

It should have been easy for NISR to settle this discussion long ago by simply explaining the source of the discrepancy between NAS and HHS figures, as has been done in Botswana and elsewhere where such discrepancies have been found. NISR’s failure to provide an explanation until now does not strengthen their credibility. Unfortunately, Ring does not provide any new evidence to help solve this puzzle. This would have been a valuable research contribution, and we hope that Ring or others will take it up to help understand what why Rwanda’s seemingly spectacular growth performance does not appear to translate into improved wellbeing for Rwandan households.

Regarding current growth performance, Ring claims that the blogpost presented an excessively negative picture of the Rwandan economy, because it presented data at the lowest point of an economic downturn, and that the economy has since improved. First, it is important to point out that those figures were the most recent available at the time of publication. Consequently, the blog presented an accurate and up-to-date picture of the Rwandan economy at the time it was posted.

The second problem with this argument is that it uses NISR data to show that the situation has improved. Ring, like Lee Crawfurd, also makes ample use of NISR’s own statistics, to disprove the claims of increasing poverty and stalling growth. The problem with this line of argument is its circularity: if what is in question is the credibility of NISR statistics, then it does not help to present more NISR statistics to prove the credibility of the first set of NISR statistics. If NISR has intentionally or unintentionally produced misleading poverty and potentially also GDP statistics, then why should we believe the statistics that they produce on investments, inflation, etc.?

This is not to say that all statistics are false, and no progress has been realized. But to date we simply don’t know what share of Rwanda’s much vaunted success is real, what part is cosmetic, and what part is down to fake statistics. The only way to restore the credibility of NISR statistics would be to have them independently verified by independent institutions or academics. The fact that the World Bank and IMF repeat NISR’s numbers does not constitute sufficient proof of accuracy, since those institutions do not have a mandate to approve official national statistics. This is why we have repeatedly called on NISR to release their raw data and syntax files, so that their calculations can be subjected to the same scrutiny that we have invited for our own estimates.

Ring also tries to shore up the credibility of NISR statistics by pointing to the fact that Rwanda has been ranked as having the fifth statistical capacity on the continent. The problem with this argument is that NISR’s statistical capacity has never been in question. The problem is its independence. NISR, like virtually all institutions in Rwanda, are subservient to the executive power, rather than serving as a counterweight. It is well-known that Rwanda’s judiciary lacks independence, and that its legislative authority never contradicts the president. The same can be presumed to be true for NISR. In fact, since our blogs were posted, a number of different sources have, independently of each other, come out to claim that health statistics, foreign investment, etc. have been manipulated (see Mail on Sunday article cited above). So, the credibility of NISR statistics has, if anything, been further eroded since the time we posted our first blog.

Finally, we turn to the issue of future growth prospects. Here, we share much of Ring’s analysis, both when it comes to the past success of some of the neo-patrimonial ventures undertaken in Rwanda, and as regards the future risks of this development model. However, we would argue that Ring’s assessment underestimates the weaknesses of the current regime on several points:

Doing business: it is true that Rwanda ranks well on the doing business ranking. But, as the recent Rwigara case shows (and earlier Rujigiro case) serious problems remain with regards to enforcement of property rights. This is a major component of a healthy investment climate, and explains why Rwanda still attracts surprisingly little FDI, despite it’s very positive Doing Business ranking.
Corruption: It is undeniable that progress has been made on stamping out petty corruption. But again, this rosy assessment should be nuanced: First, the Transparency International ranking builds on self-reported perceptions of corruption. Given the authorities’ control, self-reported indicators should always be treated with caution in Rwanda. In fact, the Rwandan coordinator of Transparency International was assassinated while investigating high level corruption. Secondly, recent revelations in the Panama Papers about high ranking officials’ secret bank accounts, reveal that high-level corruption is still thriving in Rwanda.
Discipline and good management: There have undoubtedly been elements of good technocratic management in Rwanda, as indeed there were under the previous regime up until 1990. However, the rapid accumulation of public debt for unprofitable vanity projects, such as RwandAir, the Kigali Convention Centre, and more recently, the controversial Arsenal deal, show that the regime is taking exceedingly high risk and spending vast sums of money on questionable ventures. Time will tell if these are visionary developmental gambles, or just another case of neo-patrimonial hubris.

In conclusion, we can say that there is overwhelming and publicly verifiable evidence that poverty increased by a substantial amount between 2010 and 2014 in Rwanda, and that NISR’s poverty statistics were grossly misleading. This conclusion stands for all reasonable assumptions regarding the choice of poverty line, price index, and methods used to estimate the trend. Furthermore, there is increasing evidence from different sources that this and other statistical errors were intentional and aimed at misleading the public and covering up serious policy failures.

The discrepancies between NAS and HHS growth figures remain unexplained, as no new evidence has been provided by NISR or Ring to explain the discrepancies we noted in our original blogpost. Therefore, all the conclusions in that blogpost with regards to Rwanda’s growth statistics still stand. We reiterate our invitation to interested researchers to use more sophisticated methods to try to estimate Rwanda’s real GDP growth rates and to explain the discrepancies between NAS and HHS figures.

The authors of this article have asked for anonymity.

Featured Photograph: President Paul Kagame speaking at the London Summit on Family Planning, Department for International Development (11 July, 2012).

Ruth First Prize

ROAPE

July 24, 2018

The Editorial Working Group of Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) is pleased to announce the 2017 winner of the Ruth First prize. The prize is awarded for the best article published by an African author in the journal in a publication year. This year, the prize was awarded to Papa Faye for his article The Politics of Recognition, and the Manufacturing of Citizenship and Identity in Senegal’s Decentralised Charcoal Market.

The ROAPE Prize Committee commented on Faye’s article: ‘the fieldwork contribution was impressive, as was the broader engagement with literature on identity politics and recognition. The paper’s discussion of how national policies (however they were conceived) were shaped within the local political economy was sensitively done, and very interesting.’

The article shows how state politics of (re)allocation of rights and resources to social groups within a society (recognition) are constructive of distinct abilities to shape the fate of the political economy of natural resources (citizenship) and of specific images of self (identities). It was published in ROAPE Volume 44, Issue 151 in Spring 2017 and can be read for free by clicking here.

Papa Faye holds PhDs in Sociology from Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar and in Social Anthropology from University of Bern in Switzerland. His research focuses on decentralized forestry, agricultural land management, and agribusiness and human rights in Africa. He is research associate to many institutions including the Council for the Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Initiative Prospective Agricole et Rurale (IPAR) and the Social Dimensions to Environmental Policy (SDEP) at the Geography Department of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Papa has been awarded in 2017 a research grant by the Open Society Foundations Fellowship Program in New York. He is currently co-founder and Executive Secretary of a new Action-Research center based in Dakar, known as Centre d’Action pour le Développement et la Recherche.

Again, Is Imperialism Still Imperialism? A Reply to Esteban Mora

ROAPE

July 24, 2018

By Walter Daum

Esteban Mora begins his contribution to the roape.net discussion of the David Harvey-John Smith debate by asserting that the whole debate over who drains value from whom is misguided. While Smith says the West continues to drain the East and Harvey holds that the direction has been reversed, Mora believes that both claims rest on the ‘misconception’ arising from dependency theory that the imperialist North drains value from the imperialized South. [1] This, he says, is ‘not entirely accurate,’ and he goes on to make further claims which, as I see it, amount to arguing that imperialism as classically defined by Marxists does not exist – and for that matter never did.

Mora’s argument goes through several steps. He first points out that Northern and Southern capitalists both exploit the South, which is undeniably true. The rate of profit is higher in the South, he says, because of Southern industry’s less developed organic composition of capital, and both Northern and Southern capitalists benefit from it. But this reasoning is off-target. Mora overlooks the enormous super-exploitation of Southern labor (in fact, he never mentions any kind of exploitation), the main reason that profit rates from production in the South are higher. Moreover, the organic composition need not be much lower in the South; many Southern factories use up-to-date technology.

Second, Mora rejects the dependency-theory notion of a ‘correlative movement between rising profits and diminishing profits.’ It is not clear whether the rising profits are meant to be those produced in the North or those captured by Northern capitalists wherever produced, and likewise for the diminishing profits of the South. But since he is aiming to refute the ‘drain’ of profits, we have to assume that he is denying that Northern capitalists capture greater profits than Southern capitalists. On this, John Smith has shown in his book and in this online discussion that, Apple, for example, makes a much higher rate of profit than the contractors who produce its devices in China. And I gave evidence in my contribution to the debate that ‘the surplus-value flow from the U.S. to China does not match that extracted from China by the West.’

Mora seems to disagree:

If we go to the data for world corporate profits or FDI, etc … we realize the South or ‘emerging’ economies are not only profiting at almost the same level as the North in absolute terms (for example, the 10 biggest Chinese companies in the Fortune 500 have revenues for 2,11 trillion dollars, while the 10 biggest US companies in the same list have revenues for 2,22 trillion), but that this means a superior dominance in portfolio investments or dividends than the North in relative terms.

By ‘relative terms’ Mora presumably means the rate, not just the mass, of profits, since his numbers suggest that the mass of profits in South and North are comparable. His data derive from the Emerging Market Multinationals Report by Lourdes Casanova and Anne Miroux, published in 2016 by Cornell University. But this report’s conclusions do not back up the idea that Southern profit rates are higher than Northern. For example, they state:

Overall, the average profit margins of eMNCs [emerging market multinational corporations] lag behind that of their US and Japanese counterparts for instance. Emerging Multinationals appear to be looking for growth in revenues rather than profit margins for the moment. The differences are relatively significant, whether one considers the E20 firms as a whole (27% of the eMNCs in the Fortune Global 500 achieve a profit margin above 5% versus 39% if one considers the whole Fortune Global 500) or at the industry level…

This means that while 27% of Southern (emerging market) multinationals make a profit rate over 5%, a notably greater proportion – 44% – of Northern multinationals do so. There are other ways to measure the rates of profits of firms from different countries, but this is the source Mora chose to cite, and it does not justify his conclusion that the Southern economies achieve a ‘superior dominance’ in rates of return.

As a third step in his argument, Mora invokes Lenin to back up his claim that Southern and Northern capitalists are comparably profitable. He writes, ‘We have to go back to the notion from Lenin’s Imperialism where ‘central’ states and ‘peripheral’ states are all ‘agents of financial capital’, and not simply the ‘central’ ones that operate against the ‘peripheral’ ones.’

This is a very strange assertion. First of all, the words that Mora seems to quote – ‘central states, ‘peripheral states, and ‘agents of financial capital’ – do not appear in Lenin’s book at all. Not even the term ‘financial capital’ appears, because Lenin’s well known thesis about the predominant capitals in the imperialist countries refers not to the financial firms as such but to ‘finance capital,’ the term he borrowed from Hilferding signifying the combination of bank and industrial capital. And on that, Lenin produces data to show that in the early twentieth century four countries – Britain, France, Germany and the United States – owned nearly 80% of all finance capital. Lenin sums up: ‘In one way or another, nearly the whole of the rest of the world is more or less the debtor to and tributary of these international banker countries, these four ‘pillars’ of world finance capital’ (see Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest Stage of Capitalism, Chapter 3). That is, for Lenin and contrary to Mora, not all states are dominant agents of finance capital; only the imperialist states are. Others are tributaries.

Mora makes his mistaken claim specific in a further appeal to the authority of Lenin. Citing the theories of Lenin and Bukharin, he writes, ‘For these writers all nation-states, whether bigger or smaller, were considered imperialists or agents of financial imperialist capital.’ No, Lenin did not regard all nations, big or small, powerful or weak, as imperialist. Lenin (and Bukharin, and likewise Luxemburg) explained to the contrary that the nations of the world were divided into two categories – the imperialists and those they dominated and exploited. Lenin said that ‘the division of nations into oppressor and oppressed … forms the essence of imperialism.’ Anyone is entitled to disagree with Lenin or Marx on this or any other question, even in a Marxist discussion. But to claim Lenin as a co-thinker, on a disputed question in which Lenin’s exact opposite view is well known, is unwise.

Mora summarizes his brief essay by observing that dependency theory has been refuted by the capitalist penetration of agriculture and industry in the South. Indeed, one claim by some dependency theorists was that imperialism doomed the South to underdevelopment, and there is no question that some formerly underdeveloped countries have undergone remarkable growth and development. But that isn’t all that dependency had to say: the most prominent dependency claim was that Northern capital extracted enormous amounts of value from the Southern countries. And that remains true today, even though some (a relative handful) of formerly underdeveloped countries now exhibit some features in common with the imperialist powers.

Mora concludes that there has been ‘an inversion of positions between North and South,’ but he is quick to add that this does not mean that the North has become the dependent part of the globe. What he appears to be saying is that North and South are now pretty much equal, and that if any countries are imperialist then all are. This too is an absolutely untenable claim.

The reality that Mora ignores was described vividly by Adam Mayer in his entry in this discussion:

It is beyond absurd to compare the status of the Western proletariat … in core Western countries and those outside those countries. Even if a Western unemployed person is materially poorer than a Southern or Eastern unemployed person, the former owns (in a very immediate sense) a passport that is worth literally dying for (as African migrants, and Asian migrants, demonstrate day to day, tragically). … When the wretched of the Earth die to reach the shores of the People’s Republic of China at sea, and not the shores of Australia as they currently do, that is precisely when I will be ready to follow Harvey’s take on imperialism to the extent that ‘reversing the roles has perhaps just advanced beyond its very inception’…[2]

The dependency theorists got a good deal wrong. But they were not wrong to call attention to the gross inequality that exists between global North and South, an inequality that has grown even more monstrous today. And their explanation, that the Northern imperialists exploit the labor and resources of the South, is all the more true today. The claim that this drain of value has been inverted, reversed, or merely leveled off flies in the face of reality.

Walter Daum is the author of The Life and Death of Stalinism: a Resurrection of Marxist Theory (1990) and articles on Marxist economic analysis. He taught mathematics at the City College of New York for 35 years.

Featured Photograph: Policing the Mediterranean. Refugees crossing the Mediterranean, heading to the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos (January 2016).

Notes

[1] Mora explicitly places Japan in the West, alongside Europe and the U.S. while Harvey put it in his East, alongside China. So, Mora’s West aligns with the more common ‘Global North.’

[2] As a resident of the U.S. I must add that the same desperate conditions drive migrants and refugees from Central America to the U.S.’s Southern border, on journeys that risk death to where they face imprisonment and now the kidnapping of their children by the imperialist state.

Senegal’s Street Fighting Years

ROAPE

July 19, 2018

ROAPE’s Remi Adekoya interviews the researcher and activist Pascal Bianchini. For years Bianchini has been researching and writing on protest, activism and the left in Senegal and Burkina Faso. He is widely recognized as an expert on student movements on the continent. Based in Dakar, he has undertaken important new research on the major events in Senegal in 1968, and the impact on the left in the years that followed. He sees the explosion of student and worker resistance that year as triggering the growth of radical left politics and organisations in the country and region. Ultimately, these movements led to a period of democratic transformation on the continent that overturned one-party states and dictatorships.

Remi Adekoya: So how did your story with Senegal start?

Pascal Bianchini: For me the story has been quite long, going back to the 1980s when I came here for my PhD fieldwork to investigate the social struggles within the school system as well as education policies connected with these struggles. Right now, I teach at a secondary school in Senegal and am still trying to gather information about the events of 1968 and their aftermath during the 1970’s, which was a very interesting period of what we could describe as ‘revolutionary politics.’ Of course, there are challenges to gathering this kind of information, as these events happened fifty years ago and many of those who actually witnessed them might not always remember so clearly what exactly happened in which month, week etc. Also, many of the political pamphlets being distributed during these events have disappeared as people were afraid to keep them after the government crackdown started soon after the events in 1968.

So, could you briefly recall for us the sequence of events that led to the mass strikes?

A very important event before the 1968 strikes was the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah in February 1966. This was a major incident in Dakar as well and students went to demonstrate in front of the American and British embassies who they blamed for the coup. Another major event that year in Senegal was the country’s hosting of the World Festival of Black Arts. These two combined events represented the moment when the student movement started to rebuild after being suppressed by president Léopold Senghor in the early 1960s. For instance, the Union générale des étudiants ouest-africains was banned in 1964, but in 1966, the government was forced to accept the existence of the Union des étudiants de Dakar and the Union démocratique des étudiants du Sénégal. They helped create an anti-imperialist atmosphere along, of course, with some other things going on outside Senegal such as the Vietnam War, the Portuguese colonial wars in Guinea Bissau and Angola and Mozambique etc.

The spark for the actual events of 1968 was the government’s decision to cut scholarships for university students, some by half, some by one third. This got students angry and they started a strike on 18 May. They were quickly joined by secondary school pupils who attended the campus strike meetings. On the 27 May, the students started an all-out strike yet two days later Senegalese police raided the campus, it was very violent with many injured and one person killed. Hundreds of students were arrested and sent to a military camp in Ouakam, a small place near to Dakar. This was a shock for the country and workers quickly joined the movement in solidarity. The government responded by arresting trade unionists who were sent to Dodji a military camp in the north of the country.

However, due to mass riots mainly in the capital city of Dakar, the government had to release the activists and start negotiations with them in June. Wages were increased and some other concessions made to reduce tensions. The same thing had to be done in September with the students – so the events of May 1968, in reality, spread across the rest of the year. In 1969, the following year, there was a virtual remake of the crisis, but the government was better prepared to deal with it and prevented the general strike from spreading.

Yet, the main consequence of the 1968 events was that people saw that the regime of Léopold Senghor was not as strong as they had thought it was. Prior to that, Senghor had been able to suppress all opposition to his government and silence his rivals including through the arrest and imprisonment of Prime Minister Mamadou Dia in 1962. But in 1968, the whole country saw that his regime had been weakened and destabilized. This gave young revolutionaries in their twenties the hope and inspiration to commence what I would call the street-fighting years which lasted from 1968 up to the mid-1970s. During this period, there was a lot of unrest and active opposition to a government considered by many to be neo-colonial. The radical left also believed Senghor’s government could be overthrown.

However, Senghor was a shrewd politician and his regime eventually adapted to the situation. He was conscious about his image abroad and did not want to appear as a dictator. By 1974-75, he started to realize he needed a legal opposition. At first, he tried to limit the number of parties that could participate in the political system, and in effect choose his opponents. For instance, Abdoulaye Wade, who in elected President in 2000, was allowed to launch his Parti Démocratique Sénégalais in 1974.

So, in the years 1974-75, the multiparty system was essentially limited to four parties, including one Marxist-Leninist party, the Parti africain de l’indépendance whose ‘historical’ leader Majhemout Diop was allowed to return from exile and to launch a ‘legal PAI’ whereas most of the PAI members continued to operate in secrecy. The system started to open up and many groups challenged the limited nature of the multiparty framework.

By the time Abdou Diouf succeeded Senghor in 1981 to the country had abandon this limited multi-partyism and accept a full multi-party system which at the time was not that common in Africa. We can see how an internal process, started in 1968 and driven by the left, led to major political changes in subsequent years.

What is the condition of the left today in Senegal?

It is in a state of confusion today unfortunately. One of the consequences of the multiparty system was that after one or two decades, various leftist movements and groups entered into alliances with neoliberal parties with all the ideological consequences of that alliance. Many of them also suffered internal splits, not necessarily because of ideological disputes but over personal struggles for leadership. In this complex web of alliances and counter-alliances, it is difficult to grasp what actually remains of the left today. So, to be honest I am not so optimistic about the left today in Senegal.

However, there is still a political culture of struggle that we could describe as a legacy of the 1968 years. The ideological atmosphere today is different, but that culture of social struggle is still very much alive, and the problems essentially remain the same. Just a few weeks ago, a student was killed by the police during a demonstration triggered by delays to payments of scholarships for students, so the exact same issue which led to the 1968 events. In fact, because of the tensions on university campuses, the organizing committee – maybe thanks to some of its members who are close to the government – decided to postpone commemorative events for the 1968 strike till July by which time they hope things will be calmer. So, we basically have an echo of the 1968 events though, of course, in an entirely different ideological atmosphere.

The reasons for the resistance remain but as I said, the situation is different. For instance, today various Islamic religious movements are active on Senegalese university campuses whereas student unions no longer exist in the same form. Also, as I mentioned earlier, since the 1990’s many of the activists of the 1970s and 1980s have been or are now in government or close to government circles. Yet the fundamental issues that provoke opposition remain strikingly similar. For instance, there is the issue of a trade agreement between the EU and Senegal (and other African states) that will essentially see EU goods coming into Senegal without tariffs. There is strong opposition to that in Senegal and in other African countries where such moves are being considered. Also, there is the issue of the CFA currency, which is seen as a colonial currency. So, there are many anti-imperialist sentiments on the ground.

Driving around the streets of Senegal, you can see painted slogans saying, ‘France get out’ (‘France dégage!’) in reference to the many French companies and other French influences many people feel exists in their country. Recently, we have also witnessed the emergence of a movement called ‘Faidherbe Must Fall’ similar to ‘Rhodes Must Fall’ [Louis Léon César Faidherbe was a French colonial general and adminstrator, responsible for much brutality in Senegal] … Still, I would not describe today’s atmosphere as revolutionary, no.

So, what is the future for the left in Senegal?

For years there have been attempts to build a united left, but the reality is that in practice, you either accept the neo-colonial reality with heavy French influence or you stay away from government circles. There are still a few leftist groups with a clear political position, but they are in the minority. For now, the situation doesn’t look very promising but sadly, this is by no means peculiar to Senegal. However, the spirit of struggle and resistance lives on in the country.

Pascal Bianchini is an independent scholar, researcher and activist based in Senegal. He has written extensively on social movements, protest, class and schooling in Africa. His ground-breaking book, Ecole et politique en Afrique noire is published by Karthala.

Featured Photograph: Recent protests in Dakar earlier this year.

Power, Profit and Sport: The Real Legacy of the Football World Cup

ROAPE

July 16, 2018

By Sophie Nakueira

I watched the 2018 Football World Cup in four places. The first time was on a veranda of a pub with two friends in Halle, a small town in Germany that most people have not heard of or have heard of for all the wrong reasons. My friends were wary that they might be mistaken for Mexicans and this was something they desperately wanted to dispel (especially in a town renowned to be anti-foreigner) and more so as Germany suffered a 1-0 defeat in the end. The second time I watched Germany play was in Hamburg in a friend’s flat. It was a nail biting experience as Germany salvaged the game and beat Sweden in the very last minute. Nothing, however, prepared me for Germany’s defeat by South Korea. I was watching the match at work in a room that had been conveniently converted into a public viewing area in a work-place proudly known for the diversity of its workers.

Football in all its glory, brings out the sportsmanship or cheerleader in many of us. It’s the one time many people from different parts of the world convene and celebrate an imagined global community. Or like many of my friends whose countries did not participate in the World Cup, we adopt national teams based on a perceived belonging. Thus, for me it seemed only right that I would support Germany and perhaps any African country being that I am living in Germany and hail from Uganda. However, unlike other football fans, my interest in football and the World Cup has little to do with the sport itself. It has more to do with what takes place behind the scenes, away from the limelight and cameras. The rarely spoken about but much disdained aspects that come with organizing FIFA World Cups. I have researched the governance arrangements that enable FIFA to successfully run the World Cup. My research focused on the contractual arrangements that enabled FIFA to orchestrate security in the mega event zones of the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

The World Cup in Russia was the first World Cup to be staged under a new president and I do not mean Putin but FIFA president Gianni Infantino. The last two World Cups in South Africa and Brazil were held under the now suspended president, Sepp Blatter. Under his leadership, the football governing body had been plagued with allegations of corruption. In particular it was alleged that the process for awarding World Cup tournaments and sponsorship deals was fraught with bribery which he and a few of his cronies had been benefiting from.

Unless there is a complete overhaul of the process of awarding sponsorship deals or choosing the World Cup host, it is naïve to think that allegations of corruption will cease to exist under the new president. However, fear of corruption is only one of the issues that people should be concerned about. Often unreported is another issue of equal importance: the role of transnational non-state actors, their increasing power and the protection of private profits. The contractual agreements for mega events are not open to much negotiation and are mostly signed on a ‘take-it-or-leave-it-basis.’ Due to the stiff competition between countries that seek to host these events, any country that seeks to negotiate the terms before being awarded the rights risks losing out on being picked. As a result, emerging economies such as South Africa, promise to deliver the same way developed countries in the West do despite being at different stages of development. Emerging economies often bid for these events with the promise that these events will accelerate development plans. This was the case in South Africa’s motivation and justification for bidding for the 2010 FIFA world cup.

What is noteworthy about the governance arrangements of FIFA World Cups is the increasing power of private corporations. This was most notable when South Africa hosted the World Cup in 2010. It was the first World Cup in Africa and so understandably there was pressure to put on a good show. Remarkably, as is the case with all countries that seek to host this event, there was little room for negotiating the agreements that needed to be in place for the success of the competition. Indeed, it was during the implementation stage of these agreements that South Africa saw how arduous some of the terms were which in turn led to people who had been engaged in informal businesses around spaces designated as FIFA zones, to lose the means to make a living during the months leading up to the event. This is because mega event zones are governed by special laws. For the 2010 World Cup, these were consolidated into two Special Measures Acts that were to bring into effect the terms agreed to between FIFA and South Africa.

FIFA insists on the protection of the commercial rights of the sponsors of the World Cup. Interestingly, in marketing mega events to the public, countries often cite that they will bring a lot of investment and tourists to the countries. In South Africa’s case, the event was marketed as an African World Cup and that hosting the event would allow groups formerly marginalized during apartheid to benefit from the event. However, in reality fulfilling the terms of the Host Country Agreement and Host City Agreements meant that many of the imagined benefits would indeed remain imaginary at best. As South Africa claimed – amidst criticism that they were spending public funds on expensive stadiums – the FIFA World Cup was meant to fast track infrastructure and other developmental goals that had already been planned. Disappointingly, as the host city of Cape Town found out for example, they would have to build a brand new Stadium at their own cost and in a swanky neighbourhood called Green Point and not in the poor area of Athlone, thus limiting the benefits for poorer sections and contrary to what had been promised.

So, the organization of football World Cup tournaments is a game in itself. It’s a game in which FIFA has the upper hand because the terms of the agreement are always in its favour. It’s a game in which FIFA always wins because they call the shots. What is largely unknown to the public, is the lack of transparency in some of the contracts. For instance, the clauses within the Host Country Agreement are mostly broad and FIFA states that incase of any ambiguity, FIFA’s word is final. This would not be so problematic if all terms of the agreement are known before hand by the Host Country or Host City. Instead, FIFA cleverly inserts that by signing the Host Country Agreement, the Host Country is deemed to have agreed to any future clauses that it may introduce. Moreover, it is hard to hold FIFA accountable in any meaningful way as the Host Country Agreement stipulates that the Host Country agrees to indemnify FIFA for any costs that may arise out of a lawsuit against it, in relation to staging the World Cup. This means that whilst anyone is welcome to sue FIFA, any costs will be borne by the host country. Thus in essence, FIFA exists in a legal vacuum. It is non-profit organization that is successfully run like a profit organization but can hardly be pinned down legally because of the web of protection it has woven.

As a consequence, what is at stake is not who wins the World Cup but the protection of the sponsors. The FIFA World Cup and Olympic Games maybe about bringing people together and promoting a global community, but it is also about the expansion of power and profit of global corporate brands such as Adidas, Nike, Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch (the makers of Budweiser) and the like. The security of mega sporting events is just as much about the protection of these events from terrorist attacks and hooliganism as it is about the protection of the intellectual property rights of the sponsors of these tournaments. The policing of the latter is in evidence when you attempt to enter public viewing areas, or any space designated as a FIFA zone with a branded item that is a competitor to any of the sponsors of the World Cup.

I have read the bidding documents and Host Country Agreement for Russia 2018. These documents which are meant to be public but were not easily accessible and I only got a hold of them much later. So, I have a slight idea what lengths Russia went through to win the bid to host the World Cup. The secrecy surrounding these documents can be credited to FIFA’s request for non-disclosure in the Host Country Agreement – a document that many would categorise as being in the interest of the public. By now it might be clear to discerning readers that these events are about much more than sport. For countries in the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – the increasing interest in hosting mega sporting events is about self-promotion, profit and an attempt to attract investors and cement their status (politically and economically) on a global stage. Thus the exorbitant costs that goes into organizing these events, should not be measured in financial terms alone.

What will be the legacy of the Russia 2018 FIFA World Cup? Did Russia learn any lessons from South Africa or Brazil? Comparatively, Russia had a longer run in the tournament than South Africa did in 2010. However, like South Africa, the staging of the tournament will not only be remembered for the team’s performance. Will we still remember Russia in 2018 for the political fall-out with England over Novichok? Or will it be the feel-good atmosphere football fans around the world have experienced in the country? I suspect we will tell stories about white elephants and exorbitant costs used to erect masculine playgrounds for a global elite. However, are these the questions we should be asking or stories we should be telling? After a conversation with a friend, I was inspired to think differently. In our discussion about the purported patriotism that mega events promote, a friend expressed her discomfort in celebrating nationalism amidst a growing tide of anti-immigration sentiments. I think she is correct.

I hope that now the last whistle has been blown, we begin to ask questions that provoke new insights into what it really means to belong to a global community. My hope is that the questions that we ask will not hinge on age-old issues such as how much money was made or lost in staging the 2018 World Cup. Instead I hope we will interrogate the morality of spending such amounts to promote a supposed global community through sport extravaganzas whilst simultaneously building walls and reinstating borders around the world.

Sophie Nakueira is a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology in Germany. Her doctorate focused on the security governance of the FIFA World Cup and transnational private governance. Her current research is on migration and plural governance in refugee camps. She presented her latest research on the moral economy of informal governance in refugee camps in Uganda in Uppsala, Sweden at a workshop funded by ROAPE. She can be contacted at nakueira@eth.mpg.de.

Featured Photograph: Fans of Bafana Bafana, as the South African soccer team is known, watching the opening game of the World Cup on an open-air screen in Soweto (11 June, 2010).

Tariffs, Trade and Trump: Donald Trump’s Impact on Africa

ROAPE

July 12, 2018

Donald_Trump_greets_the_President_of_Egypt,_Abdel_Fattah_Al_Sisi,_May_2017 — President Donald Trump greets the President of Egypt, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, prior to their bilateral meeting, Sunday, May 21, 2017, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

By Dirk Kohnert

The international discussion on Trump’s dispute over import tariffs for steel, aluminum and even cars is currently focused on the big global players. However, African countries will suffer severely from these punitive tariffs. After years of talk of partnership for African economic development (AGOA, Cotonou Agreement, EPAs, etc.) Trump’s tariffs mean a severe blow to participatory African trade and sustainable industrialization. Egypt and South Africa for example, potentially the most affected countries in Africa, face massive job losses and diminishing earning opportunities, with all the consequences that this entails for their already fragile economies and populations in dire poverty.

General impact of Trump’s tariffs on African trade

At least since the derogatory comments in January 2018, in which Donald Trump described African states as ‘shitholes’, the importance he attached to Africa became clear beyond doubt. Evidently, from his point of view, America’s greatness is based on spheres of influence other than Africa. Even though Africa and the African diaspora contributed significantly to the making of the United States and contribute to its development today. Trump prefers to concentrate on global competitors, such as China, Canada, Russia and Europe in order to ‘put America first again’.

In absolute terms Trump may be right. The extent of imports of steel and aluminum from Africa might be negligible in relation to overall imports and its supposed negative effects on employment of US white working-class in Rust Belt states. Trump targets states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, which he regards as the clientele of his republican vote.

However, Africa is far more dependent on overseas trade than other economic regions and global players, such as the EU or North America that handle 63 percent and 40 percent respectively of their business with their regional neighbours. The major reasons of Africa’s dependency are the fragmented intra-African market, decades of stagnant regional and continental integration, high transaction costs, and corresponding tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade. Most of these barriers are at least partially due to rival neo-colonial foreign trade networks of anglo-, franco- and lusophone African countries, like the ‘closed shop’ of the notorious French business-network of the ‘Messieurs Afrique’.

Africa’s infant industries rely heavily on foreign trade in view of the continent’s limited local and regional markets. Intra-African trade accounts for far below 20 percent of total African foreign trade. The Pan-African Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) that was recently negotiated on a special African Union summit in Kigali (Rwanda, 21 March 2018) by 44 African states is not likely to change this situation in the foreseeable future. CFTA is supposed to liberalize intra-African services completely and 90 percent of trade in goods. Yet substantial problems remain, so the common external tariffs have not yet been negotiated because of existing agreements under the controversial EU-Africa trade agreements, and finally some major players, for example South Africa, Nigeria and Uganda, have not yet even joined the CFTA.

Importantly, unfair trade relations to the disadvantage of the continent have overshadowed African foreign trade since colonial times. Africa is still integrated asymmetrically into global trade. Raw material and agricultural exports on the one hand and capital goods imports on the other continue to dominate African foreign trade. One of the origins of Africa’s current inability to benefit fully from the expansion of world trade lies in the colonial division of labour, the consequences of which persist in economic structures far more than in other continents.

Under these conditions, the free trade ideology of the Bretton Woods Institutions, propagated for decades by the Structural Adjustment Programs of the IMF, conserved the status quo rather than generating sustainable African growth. These tendencies have been exacerbated in recent decades as Africa’s commodity prices have fallen in international markets since the 1970s, and consumer prices have risen. All this makes for the volatility of African foreign trade relations that will be further aggravated by Trump’s tariffs. Yet, Africa is mostly ignored in the international discussion about the effects of Trump’s protective tariffs on steel (25 percent), aluminum (10 percent), cars and other imports.

African countries like South Africa, Egypt and Rwanda have little power to retaliate, unlike the EU or China. Though Trump wants to enforce ‘good behavior’ on trading partners on the continent in order to ‘make America great again’. So, his administration took extreme steps against Rwanda this year for taxing second-hand American clothes in an effort to protect its infant textile industry – the country was suspended from duty-free access to US markets.

Steel production in the US and Africa in comparison

Steel production (in 1,000 tons) in the USA in January 2018 was 6,822, i.e. about ten times as high as in Egypt (660) or South Africa (577). Other major African steel exporters like Libya (48) and Morocco 45 (August 2017) were far behind in third and fourth place, respectively. Worldwide, South Africa and Egypt rank 22nd and 27th globally in steel production, that is, far, far behind China, the world’s largest steel producer, with 808.4 million metric tons or 50 percent of world production. Still, barely 2 percent of the steel imported into the US last year came from China (see S&P Global Platts, New York, 4 March, 2018). Levels in aluminum were a bit higher, but not particularly significant either. The vast majority of Chinese steel shipments went to other countries. Trade diversion as a result of Trump’s protective tariffs could lead to cut-throat competition with respect to the infant African steel industry.

However, compared to the US, China or Europe, the metalworking industry in African countries, such as South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria, has a significantly higher importance for its domestic economy and sustainable growth. In total, the manufacturing industry in South Africa had 1,213,560 employees in 2014, of which the largest share was in the metalworking industry, employing approximately 257,098 or 21 percent of the workforce. In Egypt, the total number employed in the industry in 2015 was 25 percent of all economic sectors, with its steel industry considered to embody the nation’s economic resilience.

Conclusion

African states still strive to cope with the legacy of the slave trade, colonialism, and the subsequent struggle for political and economic independence in a crisis prone world. Decades of development aid and well-intentioned though not necessarily altruistic treaties to promote development by trade, like AGOA and the ACP-EU Cotonou agreement which runs out in 2020, were regarded as steps in the right direction, though they actually had little impact and failed to accelerate development on the continent. The present move of the Trump administration to put ‘America first’ and to concentrate on the United States’ ‘real friends’, is a step backward. There is even a whiff of the period in the cold war, when, according to the maxim, if you’re not with us, you’re against us. The punitive tariffs introduced on imports from African countries is a harsh and blunt power without regard to the needs of developing countries on the continent, or elsewhere. Yet, unlike competing global players, targeted by Trump, African countries lack the power to retaliate. It is another slap in the face to those on the continent who thought there would be a more level playing field with the US, at least since the AGOA-treaty and the dashed hopes once aroused by the Obama-administration.

Dirk Kohnert is Associated Senior Expert at the Institute of African Affairs (IAA), German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany. He is also the retired deputy director of IAA (1991-2011) and former editor of the journal Africa Spectrum.

If you are interested in learning more on the impact of Trump’s tariffs on Africa, then we will be publishing a full Briefing by Dirk Kohnert in the next issue of ROAPE.

Featured Photograph: Donald Trump greets Egypt’s President, Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (21 May, 2017).

Egypt’s Indelible Link: Corporate Food, Frontiers, and Popular Revolt

ROAPE

July 10, 2018

By Marion W Dixon

The neoliberal project has led to the growth of corporate food in the Global South. Industrial animal agriculture has spread, spawning a global livestock complex. Industrial horticulture has developed in many Southern regions, giving Northern consumers the opportunity to consume fruits and vegetables year-round. Corporate service (e.g. McDonalds franchises) and corporate retail (e.g. supermarkets and hypermarkets) have unevenly been capturing a larger percentage of the consumer market throughout the global South.[1] At the same time, chronic rural poverty and food insecurity have persisted.[2]

In my research, Food and Revolt: Egypt, ecology, frontiers, I analyse the commodification of food, and the growing power of corporations in agriculture and food in Egypt. I argue that Egypt’s participation in the expanded world market during the two periods of so-called globalization depended on the development of new lands for commercial agriculture. During the long 19^th century (c. 1820s-WWI) and the neoliberal period (c. late 1970s-2011), the continual expansion of cultivatable lands enabled and limited the acceleration of cash crop production for distant markets. In the neoliberal period, this desert frontier has enabled the growth of a corporate agri-food system, and this growth has contributed to class-based vulnerabilities to global food prices, losses in smallholder livelihoods, and public health threats (e.g. Avian flu). This has, in turn, engendered popular revolt against the ruling political regime, culminating in the 2011 uprising.

Land reclamation refers to the development of lands for expanded commodity production that were either not cultivated until recently or not intensively cultivated and through the development of an irrigation infrastructure, transportation routes, labour force, and the other enablers of larger scales of production and of connections to markets. During the colonial period and the neoliberal period, waves of land reclamation in Egypt responded to global commodity booms. Throughout the 19^th century, global price increases in cash crops for export to industrializing Europe spread sites of production from settler states to colonial states and soon-to-be colonized territories, like the Ottoman province of Egypt. In the neoliberal period, growing food retail and food service for affluent consumers domestically and abroad spread industrial agriculture from temperate regions to Southern regions. In Egypt investors responded to the growing markets by expanding production of fruits and vegetables and animal protein and by expanding food processing. During both periods of expanded commodity production, the state would grant rights to investors to cultivate the land and investors with the help of the state would draw irrigation water, labourers, and other resources from existing agricultural areas to the new lands. The new lands would become the locus of large-scale investments in agriculture (and food processing). This expansion of commercial agriculture would eventually lead to the degradation of the ecological conditions of production (e.g. social erosion, multiplication of pests). The resulting rising costs of production then precipitated the development of new lands, farther from existing agricultural and residential areas.[3]

This double movement of commercial agriculture – from temperate to Southern regions on a world scale and from existing agricultural lands to reclaimed lands within Egypt – reflects the ecological foundations of agricultural industrialization and in the neoliberal period the accelerating crises of industrial agriculture. In the neoliberal period farm organization and on-farm practice have transformed toward an increasingly coercive and capital-intensive set of agritechnologies and practices to manage the volatility of industrial agriculture (from monocultures, perpetual genetic erosion, cropping intensification, and so on). And it is more capitalized firms that have been able to afford adopting these measures that govern industrial agricultural production and global agri-food trade.

In Egypt, during farm visits on reclaimed lands and in interviews with agribusiness executives and managers, attention and resources on farms and in business operations were devoted overwhelmingly to threatening situations due to the blurring of the inside and outside of the production zone. Recurrent threats to poultry from parasite populations provided an initial push and pull from the Delta into semi-arid areas, and this movement became especially pronounced following the 2005-06 Avian flu outbreak. Many of the first investors to move into the new lands in the 1970s, at the time of President Anwar Sadat’s infitah (opening) policy, were building industry poultry complexes. The containment of parasite populations was cited as a motivation: containment was (and is) understood to be better assured with distance between farms and from residential areas. In response to the Avian flu outbreak, corporate poultry, which dominates the breeding of broiler chicks, further consolidated their market share and built more ‘fortresses’, as one poultry executive called them, and farther into the desert.

While much revolutionary activism and commentary in recent years focused on the illicit ways the ruling class – the political elite and the business elite – accumulate wealth and privilege, through my own participant observation in a family business in the business district of Cairo (Mohandiseen) in 2009, I have seen that the reformulated ruling class created class cohesion within the Egyptian social structure through legal transnational networks of family, education, and investments. However, a tension lies in the constitution of their class power: the very means to cement their class position engendered a popular (and subversive) critique of their entitlement to accumulate wealth, to govern, and so on. Their attempt to cement their class position through the growth and consolidation of the agriculture and food sector further exacerbated this tension, given food’s material and symbolic functions that link nature, human survival, livelihoods, culture, and health.[4]

Popular critiques of growing inequality took many forms, including among smallholders and advocates who had been organizing against structural adjustments. Since the early 1990s, structural adjustment policies had accelerated the buying and selling of land in existing agricultural areas in the Delta and Nile Valley and in reclaimed lands and had led to millions of farmer tenants and smallholder land beneficiaries losing their rights to land.[5] These policy changes simultaneously eroded the social contract, which had made smallholder agriculture viable in the post-independence period, and bolstered the growth of corporate food. The continual reclamation of land depended on drawing Nile irrigation water from the Delta, the state agriculture and transportation budget, and labourers from nearby Delta provinces. Yet, the promise of greening the desert policies continued to gain an audience among this network. The promise of greening the desert to solve a host of societal problems emerged immediately after World War II. To diffuse the tension from the growing polarization between the wealth and power of the ruling class and the immiserated peasantry, land reclamation began to be used as a policy to distribute land to peasants. Beyond being a commodity frontier, land reclamation from the post-WWII period onward became a way to resolve the inherent tension of bourgeois society.[6]

Frontier making develops a unique character in the post-World War II, post-independence period. However, by the 1970s and 1980s the frontier again becomes a main site of commercial agriculture as it was in the long 19^th century. From the perspective of the frontier, the neoliberal moment represents not a rupture with the past nor a seamless continuity in historical time (e.g. colonial legacies).[7] Rather, the neoliberal period is a moment of a reconstituted world market – and society and polity in Egypt are shaped by the conditions through which the modern state participated in the world market of the colonial period.

Growing class polarization that marked the long 19^th century, especially the period of direct colonial rule beginning in the early 1880s, was marked by cross-class anti-colonial movements. Growing class polarization in the neoliberal period is reflected in part in the dual (formal/informal) character of the country’s corporate agri-food system. The commodity chain of key corporate foods reveals that smallholders have been both excluded from direct consumer markets with the growth of corporate food and included in corporate commodity chains (often on a non-contractual basis). More than this, in so far as smallholders have been able to hold on to plots of land with the systematic undermining of the agrarian reform institutions of the post-WWII, post-independence period, they have been changing what they grow – e.g. berseem or animal feed for dairy cows, dairy cows for raw milk. Much of these foods are corporate foods, or more precisely, basic ingredients that are re-combined and re-packaged to make durable food commodities. As such, a reconstituted peasantry has been ‘the domestic supply’ of a number of key corporate foods (raw milk, potatoes).

In turn, domestic diets have shifted toward food high in animal protein, fats, and sugar. As in the global food economy, there lies a space of dietary convergence – where the affluent and working classes alike consume industrial, processed foods. A reconstituted middle class was supposed to be born in the neoliberal project through an expanding private sector and rising private consumption and because the consumer market of corporate food is wide in Egypt, a disparate middle class was able to ‘buy in’ – whether it be the low-end supermarkets or the street kiosks of snack foods and soda drinks. However, this new national consumer, by definition, is one of uneven access to the corporate food market – a market skewed toward the global consumer class in Egypt and abroad, in effect revealing the hallowed structure of the middle class.

The success of the corporate agri-food system as a class project is the fact that across class Egyptians had been able to buy in to the neoliberal project. The space of dietary convergence provided a societal consensus that legitimized the project, at least temporarily. However, its failure – one of many – was that the growth of corporate food did little to reduce food costs as a percentage of income for the vast majority of Egyptians. This failure began to become apparent at the time of the 2007-2008 food crisis, during which a labour protest in the industrial town of Mahalla erupted and spread to other parts of the country. When food prices began to rise again in 2010, a government official confided in an interview that an undisclosed government study confirmed a direct relationship between food prices and revolt. If prices of a few key food staples rise above a certain percentage of income, eighty-three percent of the time Egyptians will revolt. Months later they did.

Marion W Dixon will be a faculty member at Point Park University in Pittsburgh, PA beginning this 2018-2019 academic year. Her research includes agriculture and food, with a focus on the Middle East and North Africa.

Featured Photograph: A boy carrying a tray of bread (Cairo, 22 July 2009)

References

[1] For overviews of the spread of corporate food around the world, see: Burch, D. and G. Lawrence, eds. 2007. Supermarkets and Agri-Food Supply Chains: Transformations in the Production and Consumption of Foods. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar; Wolf, S. A. and A. Bonanno, eds. 2014. The Neoliberal Regime in the Agri-food Sector: Crisis, Resilience, and Restructuring. London and New York: Routledge.

[2] The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) regularly keeps figures on rural poverty; see these 2011 figures worldwide, https://www.ifad.org/documents/10180/c1bbf5fa-bdc3-4ea6-9366-d163b95b1180. And the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) tabulates yearly statistics on food security and nutrition; check out the 2017 report on the status worldwide, http://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security-nutrition.

[3] Moore’s (2011) concept of relative exhaustion has been useful for capturing the relational character of frontier making in Egypt: Moore, J. W. 2011. “Transcending the metabolic rift: a theory of crises in the capitalist world-ecology.” Journal of Peasant Studies 38(1): 1-46.

[4] McMichael (2000) refers to these connections as ‘the power of food’; McMichael, P. 2000. “The power of food.” Agriculture and Human Values 17: 21-33.

[5] Bush, R. 2014. “Food security in Egypt.” In Food Security in the Middle East, edited by Z. Babar and S. Mirgani, pp. 89-114. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

[6] On outward/territorial expansion as a way to resolve the tensions of rising inequality, etc., see Hegel 1942 cited in Harvey 2001, p 286: Hegel, G.W.F. 1967. Philosophy of Right. Oxford: Clarendon Press; Harvey, D. 2001. Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography. New York: Routledge.

[7] Stoler, A.L. 2016. Duress: Imperial Durabilities in Our Times. Durham and London: Duke University Press, p 25.

‘For the Labouring People’

ROAPE

July 5, 2018

By David Seddon

One of the main objectives of the ROAPE website is to promote the critical analysis of African economies and societies in a global context from a radical left perspective and to link the contributions that are made to the ROAPE printed journal and the debates that take place within its pages with a wider activist community in Africa and elsewhere. It is important that this project does not become an ‘in-house’ dialogue but remains inclusive and effectively draws in contributions from all over the continent, as well as from Europe, from the Americas and from Asia. It is also important that, in the laudable focus on the present and the future, our current debates do not forget the past.

The experiences of the past and the debates of the past are often valuable in what they have to contribute to our analyses of the present and our visions of the future. But all too often, just as African intellectuals and political activists find it hard – even today when email and the internet facilitate valuable international interaction – to overcome the constraints of distance on meeting and debating face to face, so too it is often hard to be aware of and keep alive important experiences and debates of the past that may be very relevant to the issues facing us at present.

In this short piece, I want to remind readers of roape.net of the important contribution made by those who were involved with the Journal of African Marxists during the 1980s, and to express the hope that ROAPE can, in some way, ‘re-visit’ and ‘re-animate’ the work of those activist intellectuals who contributed to the Journal, many of whom have been major figures in debates on the left for decades.

The Journal of African Marxists was established in 1981 with seven main aims:

1) to provide a forum for the exposition of the fundamentals of Marxism in the conditions of Africa;

2) to encourage a thorough-going analysis of the problems of development from a Marxist perspective;

3) to discuss the various ‘socialisms’ in Africa and subject them to scientific and constructive criticism;

4) to facilitate the emergence of a systematic and coherent Marxist body of thought illuminating conditions in Africa;

5) to serve as an instrument for the creation of Marxist discussion groups which shall develop alternative policies for Africa based on socialism;

6) to highlight the gains of socialism where socialist policies have been adopted in Africa; and

7) to support the peoples’ struggles against imperialism and for socialism.

The idea was that the Journal would involve a number of local committees, in Africa and in Europe, and a permanent editorial board constituted by representatives from these local committees. Local committees were identified in Lusaka (Zambia) and London (UK), in Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Nigeria, Paris, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Three ‘sponsors’ of the Journal were Samir Amin, ‘Ben’ Magubane and Ikenna Nzimiro (see Adam Mayer’s blogpost on Nigerian Marxists), and the provisional editorial board (initially based in Lusaka) included Eli Mwanangonze, Derek Chitala and Gilbert Mudenda, representing the Lusaka local committee.

Others on the provisional editorial board included Ben Turok (from South Africa), Strike Mkandla (from Zimbabwe, but representing the London local committee), Paul Mukwedi (from Cameroon, but representing the Paris local committee), Mike Sefali (from Lesotho, representing the Lesotho local committee) and T M Aidoo (from Ghana, representing the Ghana local committee). Others were being elected as representatives of Nigeria and Tanzania local committees.

The contents of the first issue included a statement of policy (in English, Portuguese and French) asking: ‘why the Journal for African Marxists?’ It answered this by referring to the ‘uselessness’ of most of the prevailing theories of African development and comments that ‘the rapid exposure of the hollowness of ‘African socialism’ and other African ‘isms makes it now possible to advance the only alternative which has proven its validity in practice, the ideology of scientific socialism.’ The Journal of African Marxists would provide a forum for debate for those wishing to pursue the implications of adopting this perspective.

The second question asked is: ‘which way Africa – socialism or capitalism’. The response was clear – most African states have taken the capitalist road and have failed to improve significantly the condition of the massesm only ‘a genuinely socialist option can deliver our continent from the crushing burden of underdevelopment and dependency.’ The task of African Marxist-Leninists, it is suggested, is ‘to stimulate the debate on the correct socialist path appropriate to the conditions of Africa, recognising the specific characteristics of individual countries, while yet seeking to discover what is common to our continent.’

In this debate, it is emphasised, ‘we must base ourselves on the common experience of struggling peoples the world over.’ In this regard, ‘the nature of class structures must therefore be analysed and exposed.’ ‘In our societies, there are the exploiters and the exploited. Standing over and above all is monopoly capital which persistently tries to win over local allies to uphold its interests.’ Marxist-Leninist theory upholds the centrality of the working class and was argued that ‘nothing has happened in Africa to disprove this notion.’

Concern was expressed regarding the role of trades unions since independence, but the important role of revolutionary intellectuals in providing the leadership and awakening the class consciousness of the working masses was also stressed. The peasantry may be backward and conservative, but it is not inherently ‘tribalistic’ – ‘tribalism’ is a product of colonialism but continues to be a scourge even after independence. ‘Racism’ is also seen as a social evil inherited from the colonial period and still alive today. Only a successful struggle for socialism will see ‘tribalism’ and ‘racism’ defeated and destroyed.

The Journal made a promising start, with local committees and clearly a committed set of followers and well-wishers. The Journal was based in Lusaka in Zambia, but it was managed by Zed Press from its offices in London and published by the Russell Press in Nottingham, both British publishers with strong leftist credentials. Significantly, from issue 3 (January 1983) onwards, the Editorial Collective (as it was now called) included Robert Molteno, the key figure at Zed Press, as well as a strong group in Lusaka.

Eleven issues were published in all, and I have found no explanation yet as to why this initiative foundered. But perhaps it is significant that the last issue (Issue 11) was published late and the Editorial Collective apologised for ‘the late publication’, blaming ‘the foreign exchange difficulty in Africa’ for the delay in publication schedules, and promising that future editions would be published on time. As far as I can determine, however, no more issues were published after this.

In ROAPE (Vol. 14/ No. 38) we published the statement from the conference held by the Journal of African Marxists in Accra, Ghana on 11-13 August 1986, stating that it was ‘a journal with whom we have collaborated over the years. Their emphasis on the struggle for democratisation echoes one of the strong messages coming from the 1986 ROAPE Conference.’ Roape.net readers can access the statement by clicking on the link here.

David Seddon is a researcher and political activist who has written extensively on social movements, class struggles and political transitions across the developing world. He studied ‘food riots’ and protest in a ground-breaking study on North Africa and the Middle East Free Markets and Food Riots: the politics of global adjustment with his co-editor John Walton.

On Filling Voids

ROAPE

July 3, 2018

From the editorial to Issue no. 155 of ROAPE, Reginald Cline-Cole discusses how roape.net and the print journal are becoming increasingly important to the task of promoting radical political economy analyses and debates – of filling intellectual, academic and revolutionary voids. The issue contains four research articles and, exceptionally, an extended Debates Special Issue on the Egyptian revolution. Readers can access these debates for free from our website by registering and logging in here.

By Reginald Cline-Cole

In January this year Donald Trump reportedly described various South American, Caribbean and (apparently all) African countries as ‘shitholes’ (or, according to some, ‘shithouses’) during a meeting on immigration with senators in the White House – eliciting widespread, often ‘forceful’, protest. Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, likens Trump’s stand on immigration to ‘fight[ing] for the American people [rather than] fight[ing] for foreign countries’ and explains the main thrust of his immigration policy thus: ‘Like other nations that have merit-based immigration, President Trump is fighting for permanent solutions that make our country stronger by welcoming those who can contribute to our society, grow our economy and assimilate into our great nation.’ Whether or not this represents racism, xenophobia, prejudice and bigotry is largely academic. But a list of Africa related questions directed at the State Department by Trump transition staff in January 2017 point to a questioning about the use of foreign aid, and even about American security interests, on the African continent. While after a whole year in office, the administration had still not outlined a clear Africa policy nor filled vacant senior diplomatic postings in both the US State Department and embassies on the continent.

For us at the Review of African Political Economy, the significance of this comment lies in its affirmation of the need for ROAPE to continue to provide ‘radical analyses of trends, issues and social processes’ in Africa, both in the pages of the journal and, increasingly, across diverse spaces of mobilisation and sites of resistance, including social media (see our posts on roape.net).

Twitter is Trump’s favoured means of communication, the one he resorted to with his denials and obfuscation when news of his alleged remarks broke. The comment was widely ridiculed, debated and contested in the blogosphere and online news sites, forcing Trump to send placatory letters to African leaders restating US commitment to their continent as the row threatened to overshadow Rex Tillerson’s planned first official visit to Africa as US Secretary of State. On the eve of his departure for Africa, Tillerson had contrasted ‘the U.S. approach of “incentivizing good governance”’ with China’s, ‘which encourages dependency, using opaque contracts, predatory loan practices and corrupt deals that mire nations in debt and undercut their sovereignty.’ However, his attempt to return to the subject in Addis Ababa apparently elicited the response from AU Commission Chairman Moussa Faki that, not only are Africans ‘mature enough to engage in partnerships of their own volition’, but that ‘[t]here is no monopoly, we have multifaceted, multifarious relations with [different] parts of the world’.

The United States, European Union and China all play competing, contradictory and, sometimes, complementary roles in aid, trade and investment relations with Africa. These roles are all integral to processes of transformation under capitalism and imperialism, and thus merit considerably closer and more critical attention than that offered by either Faki or Tillerson.

Entirely coincidentally, a debate on imperialism and capitalism between John Smith and David Harvey, which would subsequently include Adam Mayer, Patrick Bond, Walter Daum, Andy Higginbottom and Esteban Mora had started on the ROAPE Blog a few days prior to Trump’s outburst. This robust exchange includes among other things, the ‘changing landscapes of global capital’ (Mayer); the abandonment of ‘the concept of imperialism … in favour of a more open and fluid analysis of shifting hegemonies within the world system’ (Harvey); the ways in which ‘production outsourcing to low-wage countries … implies new and greatly increased flows of value and surplus value to US, European, and Japanese TNCs from Chinese, Bangladeshi, Mexican and other low-wage workers, [in a] transformation [which] marks a new stage in the development of imperialism’ (Smith); and how and why ‘[t]he missing links in contributions from both Smith and Harvey relate to processes of sub-imperial accumulation and class struggle, especially at a time that so-called global governance (multilateralism) has successfully assimilated the potential challenge by the main bloc of semi-peripheral countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (the BRICS)’ (Bond). These are ongoing debates over the interpretation of existing theories of, and the advancement of the beginnings of a possible new theory for imperialism.

Indeed, if Trump was truly interested in why America attracts far fewer immigrants from Norway than from ‘shithole countries’ in Africa and elsewhere, he could do a lot worse than start his quest for enlightenment by considering these debates. He would, we assume, recognise global capitalism’s implication in ‘differential geographical mobilities of capital, labour, money and finance’ (Harvey), if only from his business dealings and family history, including his ‘many friends going to [African] countries, trying to get rich.’ It would be equally safe to assume, too, that he is attendant to the existence of a ‘global-scale buffer elite…which the imperial powers generally find useful in terms of legitimation, financial subsidisation and deputy-sheriff duty – even when anti-imperial rhetoric becomes an irritant….’ (Bond). Why else would he have allowed himself to be prevailed upon to write the letter of apology and reassurance mentioned earlier to the foremost African representatives of this elite? Alternatively, he would find Mayer’s preoccupation with ‘the fate of the subaltern and the excluded, the figure of the migrant who desires legal, social and cultural capital’ nothing short of bewildering, given his belief in the need for walls to police or control their movement and visa bans to deny them access outright. But it is the following extended excerpt from Smith’s Imperialist Realities blogpost in the series on roape.net which must possess the greatest potential for eliciting the infamous response of ‘fake news’:

the imperialist division of the world … has shaped the global working class, central to which is the violent suppression of international labour mobility. Just as the infamous pass-laws epitomized apartheid in South Africa, so do immigration controls form the lynchpin of an apartheid-like global economic system that systematically denies citizenship and basic human rights to the workers of the South and which, as in apartheid-era South Africa, is a necessary condition for their super-exploitation.

Yet while most of this is unlikely to even register directly with Trump in his pursuit of his America First policy, much of it remains central to an understanding of – and probably contains the elements for fashioning forms and strategies of resistance to – the types of capitalism and imperialism, which appear central to Making America Great Again. In a sense, then, roape.net and the ROAPE Blog are becoming increasingly important to the task of promoting radical political economy analyses and debates – of filling intellectual, academic and revolutionary voids.

Nonetheless, our articles and debates in the print and online journal, sister to roape.net in our endeavour, remain central to this task. Issue no. 155 contains four research articles and, exceptionally, an extended Debates Special Issue on the Egyptian revolution. Readers can access these debates articles for free from our website by registering and logging here. The issue as a whole also has a distinctly North African focus, with a particular interest in class dynamics and social movements, the meaning of capitalism and, finally, revolution and counter-revolution. Our hope is that it will be read as a demonstration of the continued vitality of Marxist analysis.

Reginald Cline-Cole is a member of ROAPE’s Editorial Working Group and teaches Africa studies at the Centre of West African Studies, Department of African Studies and Anthropology, School of History and Cultures, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.

Featured Photograph: Demonstrators protesting the election of Donald Trump marched near the White House in Washington (November, 2016).

Development Aid for Investors: Germany’s new Africa Policy

ROAPE

June 28, 2018

By Arndt Hopfmann

This blog analyses the German government’s most recent Africa initiatives. Soon after Germany took over the G20-Presidency in November 2016 the Merkel government almost immediately announced that was an opportunity to launch a new Africa initiative. What followed than gave birth not only to three policy concepts but also went along with a number of unexpected insights. Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, on the 19 June 2017 openly admitted that there are trade agreements between the EU and African States that are ‘not right’ and ‘even unfair.’ Then, more recently, she explained in an interview, published on the 24 February 2018, that ‘(w)e [still] have to learn how to use our development policy to create economic development’ in Africa.’

What a (verbal) turn-around. After more than 60 years of ‘Development Co-operation’ and almost 15 years of grim trade negotiations under the mantra of ‘Economic Partnership’ between the EU and the African Caribbean Pacific-Countries, and in particular sub-Saharan African states, the government has finally grasped the ongoing public criticism of the official development policy.

The notion that ’Development Policy’ was just a kind of all-round positive charity that benefits the poor would have continued to inform Germany’s Africa policy if 2015 had not happened. This was when the so-called refugee-crisis broke loose and about one million refugees mostly from Syria and Central Asia but also from Africa came to Germany. Since then it has become obvious – now apparently also to some government officials – that migratory movements of people from Africa (and other war-zones all over the world) will continue to increase, as long as young people have no incentive to stay. The ‘2015-refugee-shock’ deeply influenced the political aims and objectives that the government sought to achieve during its presidency of the G20-Group in 2017. This was seen as an excellent opportunity to put in place a joint international initiative that would help to keep thousands of refugees out of Europe.

The initiative Pro!Africa launched by the Federal Ministry of Economic and Energy Policy (headed by Brigitte Zypries of the SPD) might by the one with the shortest lived. Pro!Africa at its core is a programme to promote German private investment in Africa. These investments are expected to create additional employment opportunities. In order to foster the engagement of German investors, the programme promises improved government credit guarantees and the support of the Chambers of Commerce as well as a scheme to promote local skills development through vocational training activities. In short, Pro!Africa follows the old arrangements simply repackaged. Furthermore, as much as it was meant to spend €100 Million annually from 2018 onwards there are no allocations for this programme so far in the state budget.

The far more prominent programme that was launched under the title A Marshall Plan with Africa by the Federal Ministry of Economic Co-operation and Development (headed by Gerd Müller of the CSU) attracted remarkable attention not only in Germany but also abroad. The core idea of the new Marshall Plan is to ‘…mobilise the private sector to a greater extent’ and ‘…to boost private investment in Africa.’ But the programme is much broader and more comprehensive than Pro!Africa. So, despite that it has not been developed in true cooperation with African Partners and still contains certain paternalistic attitudes it does refer to Africa’s own vision in the African Union Agenda 2063 and tries to coordinate policies on foreign affairs, development, trade, economics, security, agriculture, climate environment and migration. What is more, it openly admits that that ‘Europe’s policy on Africa was for decades often guided by its own short-term economic and trade interests.’

This confession ties in with Chancellor Merkel’s own comment on the ‘unfair’ nature of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). However, the Marshall Plan with Africa does not take into account either the challenge of the UN’s Global Sustainability Goals nor the differentiation and diversity between African countries. The programme might in one way or the other continue since the CSU’s Gerd Müller the former Minister of International Co-operation and Development will stay in office. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen to what extent the original plan will be implemented in the light of the declining importance of the department of development inside the new government.

The third initiative is called Compact with Africa and the Marshall Plan with Africa share the astonishing fact that they do not have a specific budget. In fact, no additional funds are allocated to these initiatives. This is particularly strange since the Compact has been launched under the guidance of the Federal Ministry of Finance, then headed by Wolfgang Schäuble of the CDU, during the Conference of the G20 Ministers of Finance on the 30 March 2017 in Baden-Baden. So, the Compact with Africa is the only document that has been prepared in cooperation with IMF, World Bank and African Development Bank prior to the G20 summit which took place on the 7-8 July in Hamburg. The commitment of the G20 as well as the involvement of international financial institutions makes the Compact the most likely that the three initiative, to survive the post-election confusion in Germany.

The Compact aims – like its two ‘sister programmes’ – to support private and infrastructure investment in Africa. Based on a macro-economic framework that is evocative of the infamous structural adjustment programmes the Compact ‘…is meant to mobilise governments and international partners to implement concrete measures to boost investment in Africa. … (T)he Compact with Africa initiative has three building blocks: (i) a macroeconomic framework, (ii) a business framework, and (iii) a financing framework. The macroeconomic framework stresses resilient macroeconomic policies with a focus on debt sustainability, investor-friendly domestic revenue mobilisation, and sound public investment management. The business framework highlights the reduction of risk through more reliable institutions and regulation, investor protection, insurance against political risk, better project preparation and standardised contracts. The financing framework emphasizes reducing the costs and risks of providing financing, particularly through efficient risk-mitigation instruments and domestic improvements in the areas of debt and institutional investor finance. Further, restrictions on international investments in Africa, particular those on institutional investors, ought to be loosened.’

In other words, within the framework of the Compact’s selected African countries – the first five are Côte d’Ivoire, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, and Tunisia, followed by Ghana and Ethiopia – commit themselves to assiduously follow the prescriptions of the G20 and the international finance institutions in order to improve their investment climate and to reduce the costs of doing business. Only then can they hope that private investors will acknowledge these improvements and start to invest. But these are just hopes, there are no guaranties at all.

Altogether, the three German Africa initiatives have one common denominator: the role that Germany wants to play in Africa’s development is no longer left to the traditional tools of development co-operation. The common understanding that ‘migration dynamics’ can only be successfully controlled if the economies of African societies provides enough incentives for the young. These efforts have now been shifted into the hands of the core government departments of Economics and Finance. Consequently, the role of the Ministry of Development has shrunk.

However, the Compact not only has a number of serious omissions, it ignores the importance of education and does not discuss the G20’s responsibility in creating a trade and investment environment, it is also silent on social and environmental risks associated with private investment and fails to take seriously a comprehensive sustainable development agenda. Above all it builds on highly questionable assumptions.

The most serious assumption is the conviction that private investment simply depends on the correct frameworks but ignores the importance of profit for private entrepreneurs. But where should the profits from infrastructure investments come from? Moreover, since the initiative is obviously aiming to build up industrialization which can only take place with domestic consumption and local demand, how will the required purchasing power be generated that will render private manufacturing in Africa profitable?

Interestingly these questions are not addressed in any of the new German and G20 Africa programmes. This deepens the suspicion that these profits shall be generated by converting official development aid, which is essentially taxpayer’s money, into private gains for multinational investors. So, these initiatives might end-up serving public-private-partnerships where the state (in Africa) receives ‘development aid’, then pays with this aid-money the profits of institutional investors (pension funds, banks, insurance groups etc.) who are seeking compensation for currently low interest rates in Europe and North America. It seems that Germany’s recent turn to Africa is another false dawn.

Arndt Hopfmann studied Economics and African Studies at Karl Marx University in Leipzig between 1977 and 1982. He holds a PhD in development economics. After his academic career he took up various positions in the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung (a political foundation/think-tank close to the Left Party in Germany) with which he worked as head of its regional office in Southern Africa (2003–2006). Currently he is researcher and senior advisor on economic and trade issues to the Foundation.

Featured Photograph: German Chancellor Angela Merkel celebrates during the 2010 World Cup quarterfinal between Argentina and Germany in Cape Town, South Africa.

1...757677...101 Page 76 of 101

ROAPEJournal

ROAPEJournal

Rwanda’s House of Sand: Brutality, Lies and Complicity

Again, Is Imperialism Still Imperialism? A Reply to Esteban Mora

Senegal’s Street Fighting Years

Power, Profit and Sport: The Real Legacy of the Football World Cup

Tariffs, Trade and Trump: Donald Trump’s Impact on Africa

Egypt’s Indelible Link: Corporate Food, Frontiers, and Popular Revolt

‘For the Labouring People’

Development Aid for Investors: Germany’s new Africa Policy

Decarbonization reproduces colonial inequalities

Oligarchy and the subversion of democracy – warnings from South Africa

The Day Rhodes Fell: Ten Years After

News

The Journal

Activities

Activities