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Faking it: The Rwandan GDP Growth Myth

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This is a follow up to the blog-post, which was published on roape.net on 31 May, 2017, in which we showed that poverty increased by between 5 and 7 percentage points between 2010 and 2014 in Rwanda, even as the government claims it decreased by 6 percentage points. The blogpost concluded that the information emerging from the household survey data appeared to be incompatible with the official figures on economic growth, and invited researchers to more closely scrutinize the data coming out of the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR). Indeed, with agriculture accounting for more than one third of GDP and two thirds of the workforce, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which total GDP growth could average between 6% and 8% annual growth, while incomes in the agricultural sector appear to be decreasing for a substantial proportion of farmers. This blogpost tries to substantiate those claims using the NISR’s Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey (EICV) data as well as looking at more recent trends in relevant macroeconomic variables.

According to economic theory, per capita household consumption measured from National Account Statistics (NAS) should be equivalent to average income or consumption measured from Household Surveys (HHS). In practice, this is rarely the case because of measurement errors. For instance, households tend to deliberately under-report earnings, while NAS have trouble capturing illicit and informal economic activity (read Ken Simler’s 2008 paper on this theme). Even when there are differences in levels of income estimated by the two methods, however, Martin Ravallion (2003) concludes that, “NAS consumption growth rate is an unbiased predictor of the HHS consumption growth rate.” Furthermore, he finds that NAS/HHS estimates should converge over time as the economy develops and becomes more formalized.[1] In Rwanda, household final consumption represents around 80% of total GDP (varying from 79.8% in 2005 to 79.6% in 2015, down from 86.3% in 2000), meaning that growth in average consumption measured from NAS or HHS should be a good proxy for growth in GDP per capita.

In figure 1 below, we show the evolution of average household consumption between 2000 and 2013 in Rwanda, as estimated from the EICV datasets and nominal GDP per capita in local currency units, as reported in the World Bank’s World Development Indicators databank. [2] As the graph shows, estimates of average income/consumption from the EICV and national accounts were almost identical in 2000 and 2005, and started to grow apart thereafter. By 2013, the national account estimate was more than 50% higher than the average consumption estimated from the EICV. This does not constitute incontrovertible proof that GDP growth rates have been over-estimated in Rwanda, since there are different factors listed above that could explain such discrepancies. But it does strongly suggest that something is amiss in Rwanda’s GDP growth figures. At the very least, it does raise serious questions about the reliability of national account statistics, which the government and donors rely on to claim the success of their policies. As mentioned in our previous blogpost, GDP figures are easier to manipulate than household survey data, as the Greek case famously showed a few years back.

Figure 1: GDP per capita vs. Average EICV consumption

Source: EICV1-4, World Bank WDI

Even if we were to conclude that growth data have not been manipulated in the past, there are reasons to be concerned about the current performance of the Rwandan economy. The most recent growth data coming out of Rwanda shows that economic growth slowed to its lowest level since 2002 (1.7%) in the first quarter of 2017. With a population growth rate of 3% per year, this means that Rwanda’s GDP per capita growth rate is now effectively negative, even according to the NISR’s own estimates (see figure 2 below).

Figure 2: GDP Annual Growth Rate

Source: tradingeconomics.com

This should come as no surprise to those who have paid attention to the facts behind the dazzling numbers that Rwanda and its donors like to boast about. While there has been undeniable progress since the war, much of the improvements we see in Kigali today are cosmetic and driven by the government’s obsession to portray an image of success rather than to lay the foundations of lasting economic growth. As we mentioned in the previous blogpost, much of the investments have been financed with public debt, leading to a surge in external debt levels (see figure 3 – remember that actual debt to GDP ratios may be even higher, if GDP has been overestimated as our analysis suggests).

Figure 3: Debt to GDP

Source: tradingeconomics.com

This would all be fine, if the investments had been strategically targeted at growth areas aimed at leapfrogging development Korean style. But to date, the vast majority of investments have gone into cosmetic – and crucially loss-making – prestige projects, such as the Kigali Convention Centre, Rwanda Air, Kigali skyscrapers and luxury housing units for the non-existent Rwandan upper-middle class. Even if these investments were not making a loss, this would arguably be a questionable use of public resources, since they are all highly regressive and aimed at subsidizing the super-rich or foreign clients.  Rather than enabling economic development, these projects cost the Rwandan taxpayer dearly in running costs and take away precious resources from more pressing areas of development, such as the agricultural sector. The result of these irresponsible investments is beginning to  be felt. For the first time in recent years, capital account flows to Rwanda were negative by a large margin in 2016, indicating that investors may be starting to put their assets abroad (see figure 4 below).

Figure 4: Capital Flows

Source: tradingeconomics.com

At the same time, Rwanda’s current account deficit reached a whopping 16.6% of GDP, even as the government put in place draconian measures to restrict imports (see figure 5)

Figure 5: Current Account

Source: tradingeconomics.com

With such economic fundamentals, it is not surprising that the value of the Rwandan franc has almost been halved in the past few years (see figure 6 below):

Figure 6: Rwf/ USD exchange rate

Source: tradingeconomics.com

The situation is likely to get worse, not better, over the coming years as even larger prestige projects come online and existing ones start accumulating more losses. The East African reported on 3 July that “Rwanda’s foreign reserves are expected to fall below the East African Community’s convergence criterion of four months [of imports] in the coming year” and may fall below IMF’s critical threshold of three months of imports.

The conclusion of this brief analysis is that if there ever was a Rwandan economic miracle it has probably fizzled out some time ago and is likely to come crashing down very soon. At the very least, the data shows that the development strategy adopted by the Rwandan government is risky in the extreme, bordering on reckless. The closest example we can find in recent history of similar policies is Mobutu’s Zaire that squandered the country’s resources on space projects, nuclear power plants and a Concord airplane. As outlandish as they seem today, these projects also helped to give Mobutu an image of success up until the 1970s (remember the Rumble in the Jungle?) But Rwanda’s PR machine has even surpassed Mobutu’s, having managed to keep the narrative of success going for all these years even as evidence to the contrary has been in plain sight, or just below the surface waiting to be scratched. Even today, there is not a single article in the press (even the critical ones) that does not mention Rwanda’s alleged economic success, and its low levels of corruption – forgetting to mention that close associates of Kagame appeared in the Panama Papers last year and a transparency international coordinator was assassinated.

The authors of this article have asked for anonymity. 

Featured Photograph: Kigali Convention Centre dome (2014)

Notes

[1] Ravallion, M. 2003. “Measuring Aggregate Welfare in Developing Countries: How Well do National Accounts and Surveys Agree?” Review of Economics and Statistics 85(3): 645–652

[2] The do-files required to estimate average household consumption are the same ones that were published in the previous blogpost. Once the do-file has run its course, you simply need to run the following command to obtain average household consumption: svy: mean adtot. For EICV2 use this do-file (click here to download the file). For EICV1, we used the figures in Table 2, page 13 in: McKay, A. (2015). The recent evolution of consumption poverty in Rwanda (No. 2015/125). WIDER Working Paper.

How the West Came to Rule

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By Salvador Ousmane

Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu, How the West Came to Rule: The Geopolitical Origins of Capitalism (London: Pluto, 2015)

Karl Marx outlined how capitalism came to dominate the world, replacing the feudal and tributary modes of production in his great work Capital. For Marx, this was an international process of geopolitics, combining slavery and colonialism with class struggle.  This book defends and develops this approach and so argues against the ideas of both Political Marxism (especially Robert Benner) and World Systems Theory (developed by Immanuel Wallerstein).  The book is still only the beginnings of a truly global history of the origins of capitalism, but one that has the advantage of undermining racist and Islamophobic views by showing the vital roles played by Africans and Muslims in the ‘rise of the west’.

Alexander Anievas and Kerem Nisancioglu use Leon Trotsky’s theory of uneven and combined development to chart the origins of capitalism initially in England and then across Western Europe and North America. Far from being an internal European development, capitalism began in what was then one of the most backward corners of the Eurasian land mass (north west Europe).  So the history of capitalism becomes part of a global history which removes Europe from the centre of world history and highlights its dependence and success on technological and political economic developments in what were more developed parts of the world.

From empirical observation, Trotsky – one of the leaders of the Bolshevik socialist revolution, one hundred years ago in 1917 – was able to determine that unevenness was the ‘most general law’ of human history.  “As with unevenness, combination has a strong empirical referent: multiple societies do not simply exist hermetically side by side, but interactively co-exist, which by necessity (and to varying degrees) determines their collective social and geographical development and reproduction.”

Trotsky also asserted that for “Russia to reap a certain ‘privilege of historical backwardness’, [it was compelled to continue] adopting and potentially innovating on the most cutting-edge technologies, institutions and material practices ‘pioneered’ by the leading states of the international system.”

Trotsky pointed out that traditional societies “throw away their bows and arrows for rifles all at once, without travelling the road which lay between these two weapons in the past.” He also said that, “historical backwardness does not imply a simple reproduction of the development of advanced countries, England or France, with a delay of one, two, or three centuries.”  Europe may have passed through the stages of tribal, slave, feudal and capitalist modes of production, but Africa had no need to travel the same road since ‘combined development’ provides at least the potential for faster development (and is now, for example, provided with the potential of moving directly to a post-carbon society).

So uneven and combined development, Anievas and Nisancioglu argue, can be understood in three related, yet distinct ways.  First as an ontology, reconstituting the materialist conception of history.  Second, the theory insists on the need to study across time and space different societies and their dialectical influences on each other. And finally, we should study their respective modes of production in concrete historical circumstances. Using this framework of uneven and combined development, the authors chart the global historic rise of capitalism.

Until at least the 13th century, Western Europe had been one of the least developed parts of the world, “the principles of mathematics, navigational inventions, arts of war and significant military technologies [including gunpowder] all originated in the more scientific and militarily advanced Asian societies, only to then eventually pass to the more ‘backward’ European societies.”

During the long 13th century, the peace of the Islamic Mongolian Empire facilitated trade with Western Europe providing access to more advanced technologies, but it also enabled the transmission of the Black Death to Europe which led to the feudal crisis. The “plague-induced demographic crisis spread from the Mongol expansion into Europe, leading to a dramatic rise in peasant revolts and processes of class struggle more generally.” This encouraged the process of peasant differentiation and the development of rich peasants with capital and more land at one extreme and landless labourers at the other.

Anievas and Nisancioglu write that the tributary mode of production of the Ottoman Empire had a central tax-collecting class opposed to the peasantry.  But also the central state controlled the nobility and formally owned all the land.  The peasants had an inalienable right to land, were legally considered free and suffered a lower level of exploitation than the European serfs.  As a result, rural rebellions were not so common. The tributary Ottoman Empire was widely admired and feared, as being more advanced than feudal Christian Europe.

This ‘whip of external necessity’ and the European ‘privilege of historical backwardness’ “were crucial preconditions for the eventual emergence of capitalism in Europe.” As Anievas and Nisancioglu explain, “Ottoman attempts at empire building curtailed the imperial threat of the Hapsburgs, giving Northwestern European states the structural geopolitical space in which modern state-building practices and the formation of capitalism could take place.” The Ottoman Empire also blocked European trade with the East and led to the search for alternatives, ’compelling’ the development of contacts with America and the West Coast of Africa.

The limits of English agrarian capitalism, the authors argue, were overcome with American land, African slave labour and English capital. It also allowed the industrial revolution and the organisation and management of labour in huge factories.

Anievas and Nisancioglu cite Marx, who recognised the role that Africa, America and India played in the development of capitalism in England. The “Atlantic colonies and India provided Britain with the raw materials, mass consumption commodities, capital and external markets crucial to its industrial success”. In contrast, Robert Brenner and Ellen Wood “argued that primitive accumulation was an entirely domestic process.”

Africa was barely less developed economically than Europe until the 17th century. But then from the mid-17th century, African states became involved in the transatlantic slave trade and the associated trade in fire arms. “Plundered of its source of power, wealth and international ‘comparative advantage’ – human labour – Africa was left prone to an emergent relation of subjugation and dependence vis-à-vis Europe, which would come to characterise the later ravages of colonialism on the continent.”

The ‘international’ was also vital for maintaining the rate of profit of early capitalism in England.  This included the ‘New World’ plantations reducing the organic composition of capital and increasing both the absolute and relative surplus value, in addition colonial trade provided much needed demand for manufactured products whilst simultaneously reducing the cost of labour. The plantations also allowed the development of ‘modern’ management techniques needed to mobilise and manage mass industrial labour. Despite this, by the mid-18th century, Indian cotton textiles “still held a leading position in world markets.” “In 1750, India produced approximately 25% of the worlds manufacturing output… by 1880 [this had reduced] to under 3%.”

The unusually competitive and war prone character of the European feudal states system provided the background that enabled the British state to militarily conquer the Bengal Empire in India in 1757.  This invasion allowed the British state to manage the deindustrialisation of India. India in turn provided the material imports for Britain’s industrialisation and a relatively cheap military force which could then be used to extend the British Empire and so open up other markets throughout the world to the products of British capital.

The authors argue that the “origins and history of capitalism can only be properly understood in international or geopolitical terms.” As we have seen they contrast this claim with the two broadly Marxist Schools, including Robert Brenner who locates the rise of capitalism in the internal contradictions of feudal Europe and Paul Sweezy and others who view capitalism as having developed from the growth of markets, commerce and trade across Europe. The authors argue that both of these schools suffer from Eurocentrism and that this has three main problems.

Firstly, “it conceives of the origins and sources of capitalist modernity as a product of developments primarily internal to Europe.” Whereas history shows the coexistence of a multiplicity of societies and their mutual interactions have been important throughout history and particularly for the development of capitalism in Europe. Secondly, “while non-Europe is relegated to an exploited and passive periphery”, “Europe is conceived as the permanent ‘core’ and ‘prime mover’ of history.” This, Anievas and Nisancioglu term, as the presumed historical priority of Europe.

It also assumes, thirdly, that “the European experience of modernity is a universal stage of development through which all societies must pass.” The authors term this linear developmentalism. They strongly reject these approaches.

 Anievas and Nisancioglu argue that there is no single linear development of economies as can be read from Marx.  Europe followed a certain number of phases in its politico-economic development. But other regions do not have to follow the same route – and are unlikely to do so. 

A fundamental point made throughout the book is that “capitalism could only emerge, take root and reproduce itself – both domestically and internationally – through a violent, coercive, and often war-assistant process subjugating, dominating, and often annihilating many of those social forces that stood in its way – processes that continued to this day.” As they argue, “The invisible hand of the market has always been undergirded by the iron fist of the state.” The authors conclude with the argument that the global origins of capitalism also remind us that “anticapitalism can only be global in scope.”

The book indicates the usefulness of Trotsky’s historical theory of uneven and combined development.  It also usefully indicates that the rise of capitalism in Western Europe was due to a series of historically contingent factors which depended significantly on the more advanced Islamic Ottoman Empire and other Eurasian civilisations (and, I would argue, African societies) Europe may currently be one of the most economically developed areas of the world, but this has not always been the case – and may not always continue to be so.  The origins of capitalism in Western Europe was not related to the more advanced cultures or other, so-called ‘natural attributes’ of its inhabitants.

Anievas and Nisancioglu recognise that more work is needed to provide a fully rounded global history of the origins of capitalism.  In particular, they recognise the need to include a fuller exposition of the roles of China and Africa then they currently provide in this book.  Capitalism has clearly had a revolutionary global impact, especially over the last 150 years, with its internal motor of competition, but what was the motor of pre-capitalist societies or alternatively why did some civilisations last for thousands of years?  It seems more plausible to imagine that invention and innovation were reactions to political-economic developments rather than their cause. There is much more work to be done, but this book provides an important introduction to a truly global history of the origins of capitalism which recognises the vital inputs and roles of a range of non-European societies.

Salvador Ousmane is a Senior Lecturer and writer.

Featured Photograph: Theater District, New York, USA (2013).

What is the Point of African Studies?

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A Report on ECAS 7, 29 June-1 July, 2017

By Heike Becker

Is another knowledge production of Africa possible? The recent European Conference on African Studies (ECAS) in Basel, Switzerland, the 7th of the now well-established bi-annual gatherings of the European African Studies network AEGIS, raised important questions about how knowledge of the continent is produced.

Epistemological queries were key to ECAS 2017, in any case in my experience of the event, and the many informal conversations I had with colleagues from Europe, Africa, and North America during the event.

ECAS 2017 was an epic affair with about 1,500 registered participants, including a large number from the continent. Packed into the programme were four keynotes, 200+ panels, numerous Round Table discussions, film sessions, and a vibrant, fascinating cultural programme of music, performances, and exhibitions. 

Political economy, popular movements and protests

It is in the nature of such massive events that any report will be exceptionally partial.  The conference theme, ‘Urban Africa – Urban Africans: New encounters of the urban and the rural’ was explored from a vast array of perspectives.

Of special interest for ROAPE perhaps, several panels explored issues of political economy, social and political movements, ranging from ‘mining and urbanization in rural Africa’ and ‘changing spaces for rural and urban civil society movements in Africa’ through to ‘Ideology and Armed Struggle in Contemporary Africa’. Political movements and protest were prominent concerns; some focused-on youth-led leadership and participation, others investigated in historical perspective how the concept of insurgent citizenship was related to laying claim to urban spaces. Discussions on capitalism, class formation, and social distinction focused on indigenous capitalist entrepreneurship on the continent, on rural-urban mobilities and the (re)production of class, but also considered the everyday minutiae of urban and rural lives as categories of social distinction.

Keynote: What is the point of African Studies?

Central to ECAS 2017’s opening session was the keynote address, entitled ‘Urbane Scholarship: Studying Africa, Understanding the World’, delivered powerfully and with much graceful humour by Elisio Macamo of Basel’s Centre of African Studies (see Macamo’s ROAPE blog). Elisio’s lecture was a tour de force of questions addressing the pressing question: “What is the point of African Studies?” What indeed?

In characteristic honesty Elisio started by telling the packed audience about the vibrant critique he had received from “younger colleagues” who had admonished him for giving a keynote that doubled up as the International Africa Institute’s (IAI) Lugard lecture. How on earth they had queried him, could a leading critical scholar from the continent speak in the name of that despicable colonialist, Lord Lugard? How could this possibly be compromised with the calls to decolonize the mind, academic institutions, indeed, knowledge itself? “#LugardMustFall”, one critic tweeted, referencing the vibrant ‘fallist’ decolonization movements in South Africa.

The IAI instituted the ‘Lugard Lecture’ in 1948 in memory of Lord Lugard, its founding chairman, as “an award for meritorious work in the field of African studies”. On the IAI website it says that, it is “aiming to open up new perspectives on Africa in a constantly changing world”.

Elisio’s lecture responded, directly and implicitly to key issues that have been raised over the past few years robustly in classrooms and in the streets: How to go about decolonising the mind? How do we relate to the intellectual traditions that scholars of Africa have to negotiate? What is the meaning of the colonial origins of African studies? How do we go about imagining new ways of “doing things” in African Studies, on the continent, and beyond?

Is there a possibility for ‘urbane scholarship’, Elisio asked, as a sophisticated way of living in and engaging with the world; can we, at once, move forward and accept the responsibility of intellectual traditions that include an ‘ancestor’ like Lugard? His take was, yes, we have to accept the responsibility to do this in our endeavour of ‘world-making’ from the continent.

Technologies, connectivities, and the everyday: panels and themes

If any theme stood out, the conference made clear that the connections between technology, politics and the everyday have found increased attention in African Studies. Many questions were raised about how technological infrastructure projects and connectivities are reshaping social change and the urban-rural divide. Social media and the political sphere were looked into on different panels, some focused on ‘textual’ and technical analysis, others taking an ethnographic – people-centred – perspective. At the intersection of aesthetics and politics, art, popular culture, and memorialisation as social, spatial practices and politics took up considerable space, together with discussions of the political economy of art, literature and performance in urban African spaces.

A remarkable feature of ECAS 2017 was the emphasis on the everyday of social life. Exploring urban life through the lens of the ordinary included, among others, thinking through bus stations as central social spaces, or contemplating the significance of leisure in the making of the African City.  The everyday-ness of politics and entangled citizenship was stressed as well. A number of panels explored urbanity and religiosity. Interestingly, sexuality and especially sexual diversity emerged as a prominent theme, connecting again popular culture and the organisation and dynamics of LGBTI activism. Rather absent, on the other hand, especially when compared with the prominence such themes occupied a few years ago, were issues of reproductive health. Panels on urban health seemed primarily interested in the political economy of healthcare; a particularly interesting panel explored the recent ‘wellness craze’ in African cities, and how this phenomenon articulates the intersection of anxieties and aspirations with religious and therapeutic practices.  

While a few panels had a decided local or national focus, many had a regional or continent-wide reach. Some explicitly challenged long-standing (and indeed colonial) intellectual divisions of labour; a panel on political cultures on the central African copperbelt, for instance, combined the Anglophone research focus on the Zambian side, and the – quite disparate – historical trajectories of Belgian-based research on the Congolese section of the region.  

Africa’s connections to the global world, and how the African city and its inhabitants are part of and co-shape global formations, emerged as another new theme, while some panels also engaged explorations of African research and publishing in the global knowledge economy. These themes again took up the urgent political and epistemological questions that were raised at the conference opening: What is the point of African Studies? Answers differed, but the vibrant discussions, and the challenging interventions by African scholars based on and off the continent give much hope that something new is fermenting in African Studies.

Heike Becker is a regular contributor to the www.roape.net. As a writer and scholar. she directs research and teaching on multiculturalism and diversity as Professor of Anthropology at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.

Peter Waterman, an Internationalist to the End

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By Peter Cole

On 16 June 2017, Peter Waterman died in his sleep, his wife by his side. From his teens into his thirties, he dedicated himself to communism though abandoned that cause after Soviet tanks crushed the Prague Spring in 1968. He transitioned to an academic, his graduate studies on the history of dockworkers in post-WWII Lagos, Nigeria. For the next forty-five years, he wrote, taught, and spoke about—and for—working class people, mostly in the Global South. He remained, always, firmly on the Left as a historian, theoretician, and ally of working class people and struggles, in the labour movement and outside of it. His most important scholarly and theoretical contributions are on the vital matters of labour internationalism and solidarity.

Peter was born in 1936 in London’s East End to East European Jewish immigrants. His father was a Communist Party member and, later, managed the UK’s largest communist bookstore; his mother wrote several novels. Peter became involved in politics at a young age in postwar England, a time—it should not be forgotten—of deprivation as the country sought to rebuild after the victory over the fascists. But postwar England also was a time of positive change in Britain as the Labour government nationalized several key institutions—most importantly the railroads, coalmines, and medical institutions, the latter called the National Health Service (NHS). For a young Communist, heady times indeed. In 1955, already involved in Communist youth activities, he set off for Prague to work as an English language editor of World Student News, the magazine of the International Union of Students; originally created to connect university students from countries that had fought fascism during World War II, it increasingly became a Soviet-allied organization—no problem for Peter.

After three years in Prague, in 1958 he returned to London, where he did a year of compulsory military service and then attended the union-affiliated Ruskin College. He earned a Diploma in Social Studies and then a bachelor’s degree from Oxford University through Ruskin. He also met his first wife, Ruthie Kupferschmidt, a Dutch Jewish woman and fellow Communist. Appropriately, they met on an Aldermaston march, a legendary annual event begun in 1958 by the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in which opponents of nuclear weapons marched 53 miles (from Adlermaston, the center of the British nuclear weapons industry to London) to protest the dangers of nuclear war. Peter and Ruthie lived in Oxford where they had two children, Daniel (“Danny”) and Tamara.

In 1966, he returned to Prague to work at the headquarters of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WTFU), the Soviet-dominated federation of labour unions and rival of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)—the latter being born out of a Cold War split in 1949. It was during this stint in Prague that he first became interested in African unions and politics as he worked at the Africa desk of the WTFU information department. In his duties, he got to know the representative of the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) and other African trade union activists.

Of course, his time at the WTFU overlapped with the Prague Spring which deeply affected him (and countless others). Subsequently, he forever left the Communist Party and, more generally, Soviet-style communist politics.

From 1970 to 1972, he lived in Nigeria where he conducted research on Lagos dockworkers and the Nigerian trade union movement as he taught History at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria. His thesis on dockers earned him a M.A. at the University of Birmingham in West African Studies. He lived in Nigeria during chaotic and important times, in the aftermath of the Biafran (or Nigerian Civil) War. Demonstrating his modest, humorous demeanor, I asked about the dangers of living in Nigeria during this era and he replied that the fighting was in another region of the country, the Southeast, while he mostly lived in the North. His thesis examined dockworkers in the port of Lagos from the 1940s through the 1960s and took a very critical position towards the union leadership.

Master’s thesis and degree in hand, he found a position in the Labour Studies program of the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in Den Haag (The Hague), Netherlands where he worked for twenty-six years. ISS is a stand-alone research institute with a relatively small number of students and heavy research agenda. Along the way, he earned his Ph.D. from the ISS, which expanded on his M.A. research and published as Division and Unity amongst Nigerian Workers: Lagos Port unionism, 1940s-60s (The Hague: Institute of Social Studies, 1982). The book, which he referred to as “socialist labour history,” criticized the union’s leaders for being far too “moderate,” a bad word to Peter, who preferred the “radicals”; that is, the union’s leaders seemed content with minor improvements while allowing the division of workers along craft lines—as always, to the benefit of the more skilled (and, hence, better-paid) port workers and to the detriment of lesser skilled, casual dockworkers.

The 1980s involved multiple transitions. Peter transferred to the Politics of Alternative Development program at ISS. Meanwhile, he and Ruthie, who worked as a teacher and then artist, divorced. For many years at ISS, he edited the Newsletter of International Labour Studies. He wrote about the dockworkers in Barcelona, who belonged to an organization the Coordinadora that possessed a long tradition of militancy, internationalism, and rank-and-file power. In keeping with his teaching agenda and politics, he researched and wrote about Filipino, South African, Indian, Peruvian, and other nations’ labour and social movements and, more generally, global social movements.

He returned to Africa, literally, when he accepted a visiting teaching position at the University of Natal-Durban (now University of KwaZulu-Natal) Westville campus in 1993-4. Although the apartheid era was nearly over, the Westville campus remained predominantly Indian. Peter was present during as tumultuous a year as any in modern South African history. Although he collected materials on trade unions including dockworkers in Durban, he never wrote much about that subject.

In the 1990s, he also met Virginia Vargas who held a position at the ISS for some years. Gina, as she goes by, hails from Lima, Peru and is a long-standing, influential activist and writer. In the 1970s, she helped build the Peruvian women’s movement, founding the Flora Tristán Center. She helped organize the very first World Social Forum (WSF), in 2001 in Puerto Alegre, Brazil, and remains on the governing council. Peter also became active in the WSF. Thanks to Gina, he spent several months in Lima every year as Gina did in Den Haag. After being together for about twenty years, they married in 2012.

In the 2000s, Peter continued to research, talk, email, and write. In fact, his formal retirement did not seem to slow him down. He worked with the Network Institute for Global Democracy (Helsinki), Programa Democracia y Transformacion Global (Lima), and India Institute for Critical Action-Centre in Movement (New Delhi). He also served on the board of the online journals, Interface: A Journal for and about Social Movements and the Global Labour Journal. A great many of his papers, correspondence, and notes are archived online and in the Peter Waterman Papers at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.

Waterman remained committed until the very last to internationalism and the key role that labour must play in any transformation to a post-capitalist order. What that looked like, of course, remains to be determined. He appreciated, better than most, the failures of Marxism and the Soviet Union. In addition to the collapse of the Soviet Union and most of its allies, neoliberal globalization has weakened workers and unions across the Global South during the past several decades. That does not mean, however, that workers and unions are to be ignored—far from it. However, Peter firmly believed that any movement of workers must ally with other social movements including women’s organizations, environmental groups, and others that promote social justice. That is, class analysis alone could not explain the historical moment we currently live in, nor could it—alone—advance humanity beyond capitalism. He also called upon scholars to evolve. Writing in 2005 about the ongoing retreat of labour unions, in the face of “globalized networked capitalism,” Waterman contended that “labour history [also] has to start again.” To do so, Waterman relentlessly promoted international solidarity, as a force, a movement, and a theory. He wrote a great deal, over the past few decades, to more fully theorize what, in fact, “solidarity” meant. In short, if neoliberalism is to be slain workers must practice labour internationalism, joining with other social movements in solidarity.

Peter demonstrated a willingness to see the world anew through fresh eyes, not a trait often associated with 70-something people. (Currently, the world’s most dangerous septuagenarian, Donald Trump, dreams of winding the clock back to the 1950s.) Of late, Peter wrote an autobiography entitled From Coldwar Communism to the Global Emancipatory Movement: Itinerary of a Long-Distance Internationalist; no doubt, it sits on the bedside table of the President of the United States.

In his later years, Peter maintained communication with several generations of younger scholars who found his work and, then, him. One of those is Katy Fox-Hodess, a Ph.D. student at the University of California at Berkeley. She praised Peter for conducting “research on union democracy and labour internationalism. I also appreciated his rejection of orthodoxies and interest in, for example, feminist perspectives, which I would say really put him ahead of his time.”

I also found Peter late in his life. When I emailed him a few months ago, in advance of a visit to nearby Amsterdam to conduct research at the wonderful archives of the International Institute of Social History, Peter quickly invited me to stay with him and Gina. He said that he could offer me “drinks, good food, conversation, and his shelf of books on dockworkers.” I gladly accepted his offer though he warned me that he might have to cancel as he needed to undergo some medical tests for an issue with his heart.

As it so happened, just one week before he passed away, I spent a lovely and illuminating evening, night, and morning with Peter, Gina, and his son Danny. Sure enough, it began with Jameson’s, included a lovely vegetarian meal, and several long sessions talking dockworkers, politics, anarcho-syndicalism, Africa, and the like. I came away energized. Of course, I was shocked when I received word—just seven days later—that he had passed away.

Peter is survived by his wife, two children, two grandchildren, and countless friends, colleagues, and comrades. Tributes have poured in from across the globe. Peter lived an exemplary life of a scholar-activist. Though I barely knew him, I am confident that he would be pleased that this remembrance ends as follows: Peter Waterman presente!

Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University (USA). Currently, he is revising Dockworker Power: Race, Technology & Unions in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois, forthcoming). He is a co-editor of Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW (Pluto Books, forthcoming) and, previously, authored Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia (University of Illinois, 2007). Cole also is a Research Associate in the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

 

Popular Protest & Class Struggle in Africa – Part 9

By
ROAPE
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Cows wade across a river beneath the skyline of Niamey, the capital of Niger, July 17, 2007. Niger, one of the world's leading producers of uranium, aims to more than double its output within the next four years as two new Chinese- and French-run mines come on line, a senior mining official said. REUTERS/Samuel De Jaegere (NIGER)

By David Seddon

In the last issue of the project, I reviewed the most recent developments in four countries I have recently discussed – Gambia, Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe and the DRC – in all of which long-standing ‘elected dictators’ have refused to stand down, in some cases against growing internal opposition and external pressure, but with significantly differing outcomes. In this issue, I review the recent political history of Niger, where President Mahamadou Issoufou has – by contrast – recently announced that he would not amend the constitution to allow him to seek a third term after his second and final mandate ends in 2021.

Understanding Niger

The Republic of Niger became independent from France in 1960. It is one of the UN’s Least Developed Countries with an average per capita income of less than $2 a day (just under $400 a year in 2015) and is consistently one of the lowest-ranked countries in the world according to the UN Human Development Index (HDI): it was ranked last at 188th in 2014. Most (80 per cent) of Niger – the largest country in West Africa in terms of territory (almost 1.27 million sq kms) – is desert, and even the non-desert regions are constantly threatened by periodic drought. The majority of the 20 million or so inhabitants rely on dry-land farming and pastoralism, with some export agriculture clustered in the more fertile south. The country also exports minerals, especially uranium ore, and is the world’s fourth largest uranium producer. Since 2011, it has also started producing, refining and exporting oil. Output is currently around 20,000 barrels a day, which is about the same as its refining capacity. The country also exports minerals, especially uranium ore, and is the world’s fourth largest uranium producer. Since 2011, it has also started producing, refining and exporting oil. Output is currently around 20,000 barrels a day, which is about the same as its refining capacity. 

Independence and the First Republic

Following the Overseas Reform Act (Loi Cadre) of 23 July 1956 and the establishment of the Fifth French Republic on 4 December 1958, Niger became an autonomous state within the French Community. Having organised a powerful coalition of Hausa, Fula, and (most prominently) Djerma leaders, including chiefs and traditionalists, in support of Niger’s independence referendum, Hamani Diori, leader of the Nigerien Progressive Party (PPN), gained French favour; and on 18 December 1958, after the referendum, when the Republic of Niger was officially created, Diori was appointed Head of the Council of Ministers (the provisional government) of the Republic of Niger. He became Prime Minister of the republic in 1959. During this period, the French government banned all political parties except the PPN, effectively making Niger a one-party state.

On 11 July 1960, Niger decided to leave the French Community and it acquired full independence on 3 August 1960 with Diori as its first president. Shortly after independence, Diori made the PPN the only legally permitted party. His government favoured the maintenance of traditional social structures and the retention of close economic ties with France. From the early 1960s, he ruled through a small number of pre-independence notables who sat on the PPN Politburo and largely by-passed even the cabinet. In addition to being both president of the republic and president of the PPN, Diori also directly headed a number of Ministries. From 1960 to 1963 he served as his own Defence Minister and Foreign Minister and again took over the Foreign Ministry from 1965 to 1967. The National Assembly of Niger met in largely ceremonial annual sittings to ratify government policies. Traditional notables, elected as parliamentary representatives, often unanimously endorsed government proposals. As president of the PPN, Diori was the only candidate for president of the republic, and as such was re-elected unopposed in 1965 and 1970 – an early ‘elected dictator’.

He gained a worldwide reputation for his role as a spokesman for African affairs and as a popular arbitrator in conflicts involving other African nations. Domestically, however, his administration was rife with corruption, and the government was unable (or perhaps unwilling) to implement much-needed reforms. Increasingly criticized at home for his negligence in domestic matters, Diori put down a coup in December 1963, which occurred concurrently with a border dispute with the Republic of Dahomey (now Benin). He also narrowly escaped assassination in 1965. Faced with an attempted military coup and attacks by members of Sawaba (an opposition movement that, from exile, attempted an abortive guerrilla campaign in the mid-1960s), he used French advisers and troops to strengthen his position. Close links with France led to student and trade union protests against what they described as ‘French neocolonialism’. However, his relationship with France suffered when his government voiced dissatisfaction with the low level of investment in uranium production on the occasion of a visit by Georges Pompidou to Niger in 1972.

In 1974, the combination of devastating drought and growing political unrest resulted in widespread civil disorder associated with allegations that a privileged few, including some government ministers and members of Diori’s family, were misappropriating stocks of food aid. On 15 April 1974, Lieutenant Colonel Seyni Kountché led a military coup that ended Diori’s rule. Diori was imprisoned for six years; after his release in 1980, he remained under house arrest until 1987. After being released from house arrest, he moved to Morocco, where he died on 23 April 1989 at the age of 72.

The new government led by Seyni Kountché declared itself to be the Supreme Military Council (CMS). Tandja Mamadou – who was later to become president himself – participated in the 1974 coup that brought Kountché to power and became a member of the CMS. In 1991, Tandja emerged as the head of one of two powerful factions in the ruling National Movement of the Development Society (Mouvement National pour la Societé de Développement, MNSD) and at a party congress held in November 1991, he was elected as MNSD President.

President Kountché ruled the country through the CMS until his death in 1987. The first action of the Kountché military government was to address the food crisis which was one of the catalysts of the military coup. While political prisoners of the Diori regime were released after the coup and the country was stabilized, political and individual freedoms were strictly limited. The Constitution was suspended, the National Assembly dissolved, and political parties were banned. On the other hand, a consultative National Council for Development (CND) replaced the National Assembly and, although political parties were outlawed, opposition activists who were exiled during Diori’s regime were allowed to return to Niger.

Despite the restrictions on civil and political liberties, the country enjoyed improved economic development with the creation of new companies, the construction of major infrastructure (building and new roads, schools, health centers) and minimal corruption in government agencies, which Kountché did not hesitate to punish severely. This economic development was helped by the uranium boom as well as strategic deployment of public funds. Generally amicable relations were maintained with France, and new links were formed with Arab states. Domestically, the country stabilized although personal and policy differences developed within the CMS.

Economic development was impeded by the recurrence of drought in 1984 and 1985 and by the closure of the land border with Nigeria from 1984 to 1986. Niger’s dependence on external financial assistance increased. Relations with the United States (by now the country’s principal source of food aid) assumed considerable importance. Meanwhile, a period of renewed tension between Niger and Libya had fueled Libyan accusations of the persecution of the light-skinned, nomadic Tuareg population by the Kountché regime. In May 1985, following an armed incident near the Niger-Libya border, all non-Nigerien Tuaregs were expelled from the country.

The Second Republic

Seyni Kountché’s health deteriorated in late 1986 and continued to worsen during 1987. He died at a Paris hospital of a brain tumor on 10 November 1987. He was succeeded by his Chief of Staff, Col. Ali Saibou, who was confirmed as Chief of the CMS on 14 November 1987, four days after Kountché’s death. Saibou introduced political reforms and drafted a new constitution, with the creation of a single party. A referendum in 1989 led to the adoption of the new constitution and the creation of the Second Republic of Niger. General Saibou became the first president of the Second Republic after winning the presidential election on 10 December 1989.

Saibou efforts to manage political reforms from the centre were opposed by trade unions and student groups which demanded the introduction of a multi-party democratic system. On 9 February 1990, a violently repressed student march led to the death of three students, which led to increased national and international pressure for a National Conference. The Saibou regime acquiesced to these demands by the end of 1990. There were other pressures on the regime as well, including Toubou and Tuareg rebellions in the north, as these groups demanded greater political recognition and a more substantial effective share of the country’s resources.

From 29 July to 3 November 1991, a National Conference gathered a wide range of different interest groups to examine the political, economic and social situation of the country and make recommendations for its future direction and development. A transitional government was installed in November 1991 to manage the affairs of state until the institutions of the Third Republic were put into place in April 1993.

After the National Sovereign Conference, the transitional government drafted a new constitution that eliminated the previous single-party system of the 1989 Constitution and guaranteed more freedom. While the economy deteriorated over the course of the transition, there were certain notable political accomplishments, including the successful conduct of a constitutional referendum; the adoption of key legislation such as the electoral and rural codes; and the holding of several free, fair, and non-violent nationwide elections. Freedom of the press flourished, with the appearance of several new independent newspapers.

The Third Republic

Mahamane Ousmane won elections in 1993. One achievement of the Ousmane government was the signing of peace agreements with the Toubou and Tuareg groups that had been in rebellion since 1990. This was in effect the outcome of an initiative started under the National Sovereign Conference. These groups claimed they lacked attention and resources from the central government. The government agreed to absorb some of the former rebels into the military and, with French assistance, to help others return to a productive civilian life. The Ousmane presidency was, however, characterised by exceptional political turbulence, with four changes of government and early legislative elections in 1995. The parliamentary election led to a forced cohabitation between a rival president and prime minister and ultimately to governmental paralysis

Government paralysis and the prevailing political uncertainty were used as justification for a second military coup. On 27 January 1996, Col. Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara led a military coup that deposed President Ousmane and ended the Third Republic. Col. Maïnassara created a National Salvation Council, composed of military officials, which he headed. The Council supervised what it defined as a six-month transition process, during which a new constitution was drafted and presidential elections were held – on July 7–8, 1996 – in which Mamadou Tandja ran again, as did Ousmane. On the second day of polling, however, both Tandja and Ousmane were placed under house arrest along with the other opposition candidates and held for two weeks. When the results of the election were announced, Tandja took third place (with 16 per cent of the vote) behind Maïnassara (with about 52 per cent) and Ousmane (with about 20 per cent).

The Fourth Republic

The elections were viewed nationally and internationally as irregular since the electoral commission was replaced during the campaign (not to mention the house arrest of several candidates). Despite this, Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara became the first president of the Fourth Republic. His efforts to justify what were undoubtedly questionable elections failed to convince donors to restore multilateral and bilateral economic assistance; as a result, a desperate Maïnassara ignored the international embargo against Libya and sought Libyan funds to aid Niger’s economy. In repeated violations of basic civil liberties by the regime, opposition leaders were imprisoned and journalists often arrested, and deported by an unofficial militia composed of police and military.

In January 1997, following a pro-democracy demonstration, Tandja was arrested along with former President Ousmane and former Prime Minister Mahamadou Issoufou and held until 23 January. On 9 April 1999, Maïnassara was assassinated during a military coup led by Maj. Daouda Malam Wanké, who established a transitional National Reconciliation Council to oversee the drafting of a constitution for the Fifth Republic with a French-style semi-presidential system.

A new constitution was adopted on 9 August 1999 and was followed by presidential and legislative elections in October and November of the same year. The elections were generally found to be free and fair by international observers. Significantly, and unusually, Wanké withdrew himself from government affairs after the new and democratically elected president was sworn in office.

The Fifth Republic

After winning the election in November 1999, President Tandja Mamadou was sworn in office on 22 December 1999 as the first president of the Fifth Republic. Tandja was of mixed Fula and Kanuri ancestry and was the first President of Niger who was not ethnically Hausa or Djerma. He immediately introduced a number of administrative and economic reforms that had been halted due to the military coups since the Third Republic. Niger was heavily in debt and was not receiving any foreign aid due to the 1996 coup and subsequent suspension of democratic institutions. Tandja focused on economic development, negotiating with the civil service unions and with foreign donors.

Many did not approve of Tandja’s measures in reducing government spending. In 2001, students at the University of Niamey staged violent protests against the reduction of their government grants. On 31 July 2002, some soldiers in Diffa started a mutiny demanding pay and improved living conditions; this briefly spread to Nguigmi and the capital Niamey a few days later. Loyalists defeated the mutineers and restored peace by 9 August, but Tandja came under political fire for his decrees blocking communication about the rebellion.

President Tandja Mamadou was re-elected for a second term in 2004, thus becoming the first president of the republic to win consecutive elections without being deposed by military coups.  

From 2007 to 2008, the Second Tuareg Rebellion took place in northern Niger, worsening economic prospects at a time of political limited progress. The political environment actually worsened during 2008 as Tandja and his supporters sought to extend his presidency by modifying the constitution, which limited presidential terms in Niger. Proponents of the extended presidency rallied behind the Tazartche (a Hausa word meaning ‘continuity’) movement, were confronted by opponents (anti-Tazartche) composed of opposition party militants and civil society activists.

Food Price Crisis: 2007 to 2008

From the beginning of 2007 to early 2008, the prices of some of the most basic international food commodities increased dramatically on international markets. The international market price of wheat doubled from February 2007 to February 2008, hitting a record high of over $10 a bushel. Rice prices also reached ten-year highs. In some nations, milk and meat prices more than doubled, while soy – which hit a 34-year high price in December 2007 – and maize prices have increased dramatically. Total food import bills rose by an estimated 25 per cent for developing countries in 2007. This inevitably had an impact on food aid: as food aid is programmed by budget rather than volume, rising food prices meant that the World Food Programme (WFP), for example, needed an extra $500 million just to sustain current operations.

To ensure that food remained available for their domestic populations and to combat dramatic price inflation, major rice exporters, such as China, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Egypt, imposed strict export bans on rice. Conversely, several other nations, including Argentina, Ukraine, Russia, and Serbia either imposed high tariffs or blocked the export of wheat and other foodstuffs altogether, driving up prices still further for net food importing nations while trying to isolate their internal markets

This created a global crisis and resulted in widespread political and economic instability and social unrest across the developing world in particular. In the period from February to April 2008, there were popular protests in a number of countries across Africa – including Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Gabon, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal and Tunisia – and Niger.

On 30 April 2008, Thailand announced the creation of the Organization of Rice Exporting Countries (OREC) with the potential to develop a price-fixing cartel for rice. This was seen by some as an action to capitalise on the crisis. The prospect of the release of Japan’s rice reserves onto the market had already lowered prices by mid-May.

December 2008 saw sharp decreases in the price of staple crops from their earlier highs. Corn prices on the Chicago Board of Trade dropped from US$7.99 per bushel in June to US$3.74 per bushel in mid-December; wheat and rice prices experienced similar decreases. The FAO, however, noting that food prices remained high in developing countries and that the global food security situation had worsened, warned against ‘a false sense of security’, noting that the credit crisis could cause farmers to reduce plantings. By early 2011 food prices had risen again to surpass the record highs of 2008. Some commentators saw this as the resumption of the price spike seen in 2007–08.

In Niger, the government weathered the food price crisis and the popular response to it. But the President was about to throw a spanner in the works In March 2008, during meetings with French President Sarkozy, Tandja had explicitly stated that he would not seek a third term. In early 2009, however, he announced his plan to organize a constitutional referendum on the extension of his presidency in order to remain in power at the end of his two legal five-year terms. He claimed that he was responding to the desire of the people of Niger. Despite opposition from political parties and against the decision of the Constitutional Court which ruled in June that the referendum would be unconstitutional, Tandja went ahead with his plans.

The referendum would vote on the dissolution of the Fifth Republic and the creation of the Sixth Republic under a fully presidential system of government, offering a yes or no vote on the suspension of the constitution and granting President Mamadou Tandja a three-year interim government, during which the constitution of the Sixth Republic would be formulated. On 20 June, the Constitutional Court declared the plan illegal, but Tandja subsequently assumed emergency powers and dissolved the Court. The opposition boycotted the referendum but a referendum was held in Niger on 4 August 2009; and a new Constitution was adopted with a 68 per cent turnout and 92.5 per cent of voters, according to official results.

The (Brief) Sixth Republic

This resulted in the overturning of the 1999 Constitution, and created a Sixth Republic with a presidential system, as well as a three-year interim government with Tandja Mamadou as president. The new Constitution was declared illegal by the Constitutional Court; but the President dissolved the Court and assumed emergency powers. Political and social unrest grew, however, before, during and after the referendum project, and ultimately led to a military coup in February 2010 that ended the brief existence of the 6th Republic.

A military junta led by Captain Salou Djibo was established specifically in response to Tandja’s extension of his presidency by the adoption of a new constitution. The Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy, under Djibo (now a General) carried out a one-year transition plan, drafted a new Constitution and held elections in 2011. These were judged internationally as free and fair. In these elections, Mahamadou Issoufou was elected as the first president of the Seventh Republic.

The Issoufou Era

Issoufou had been Prime Minister of Niger from 1993 to 1994, President of the National Assembly from 1995 to 1996, and he had been a candidate in each presidential election since 1993. He led the Nigerien Party for Democracy and Socialism (PNDS-Tarayya), a social democratic party, from its foundation in 1990 until his election as President of Niger in 2011. During the Presidency of Mamadou Tandja (1999–2010), Issoufou was the main opposition leader.

 In 2009, the PNDS and Issoufou strongly opposed Tandja’s efforts to hold a referendum on the creation of a new constitution that would allow him to run for re-election indefinitely. At an opposition rally in Niamey on 9 May 2009, Issoufou accused Tandja of seeking ‘a new constitution to stay in power forever’ and the establishment of ‘a dictatorship and a monarchy’. As leader of the opposition coalition – the Front for the Defence of Democracy (FDD) – he said on 4 June 2009 that a planned anti-referendum protest would be held on 7 June despite an official ban. On 27 June, Tandja assumed emergency powers on 27 June. Accusing Tandja of undertaking a coup d’état, ‘violating the constitution and … forfeit[ing] all political and moral legitimacy’, Issoufou called on the armed forces to ignore his orders and urged the international community to intervene. He was detained at his home by the army’s paramilitary police on 30 June; he was questioned and released after about an hour. A nationwide strike called by the FDD, held on 1 July, was deemed partially successful by the press.

The referendum was held on 4 August 2009, despite the opposition’s furious objections and calls for a boycott, and it was successful. Speaking on 8 August, shortly after the announcement of results, Issoufou vowed that the opposition would ‘resist and fight against this coup d’etat enacted by President Tandja and against his aim of installing a dictatorship in our country’. On 14 September 2009, Issoufou was charged with misappropriation of funds and then released on bail. He said that he was actually charged for political reasons. He left the country. On 29 October 2009, international warrants for the arrest of Issoufou and Hama Amadou were issued by the Nigerien government, and Issoufou returned to Niamey from Nigeria late on 30 October in order ‘to cooperate with the judiciary’.

In February 2010, Tandja was ousted in a military coup, and the new transitional junta enabled the opposition leaders to return to active politics in Niger while preparing for elections in 2011. At a meeting in early November 2010, the PNDS designated Issoufou as the party’s candidate for the January 2011 presidential election. Issoufou said on the occasion that ‘the moment has come, the conditions are right’; and he called on party members to ‘turn these conditions into votes at the ballot box’.

The Issoufou Republic

Issoufou won the January–March 2011 presidential election in a second round of voting against MNSD candidate Seyni Oumarou and was inaugurated as President on 7 April 2011In July 2011, a plot to assassinate Issoufou was allegedly uncovered; a major, lieutenant, and three other military personnel were arrested. In April 2013, a court lifted a government ban on opposition marches.

On 10 May 2013, it was reported that thousands of opposition supporters staged a protest rally against what they said was the failure of President Issoufou to improve living standards in Niger, one of the world’s poorest countries. The rally, in the capital Niamey, was the largest in Niger since pro-democracy protests against then-President Mamadou Tandja that helped to block his bid to serve a third term and ushered in a military coup that toppled him in February 2010. It was the first public show of strength by the Alliance for the Republic, Democracy and Reconciliation in Niger (ARDR), a coalition of 15 opposition parties formed in October. The ARDR was formed in response to the creation of a national unity government by Issoufou, including breakaway members of MODEN and former president Tandja’s National Movement for the Development of Society (MNSD).

Police sources, who asked not to identified, said some 20,000 people attended the rally, while organizers put the figure at 30,000. The National Police said in an official statement around 5,000 demonstrators took part. ‘Mahamadou Issoufou promised an end to food insecurity but the population continues to be decimated by hunger and thirst’ said Amadou Hama, president of the National Assembly whose Nigerien Democratic Movement (MODEN) who had broken away from the ruling coalition that year. Hama and MNSD leader Oumarou Seyni were widely regarded as the main challengers to Issoufou for the 2016 presidential election.

On 7 November 2015, the PNDS designated Issoufou as its candidate for the 2016 presidential election. In February 2016, Issoufou won 48 per cent of the votes in the first round of the elections. As no candidate obtained a majority, a second round was needed. A coalition of opposition parties boycotted the second round. Issoufou subsequently won with 92.5 per cent of the votes. The Constitution of Niger currently limits the president to two terms of five years. Issoufou, 65, was re-elected in March 2016, following the end of his first term, albeit in elections boycotted by the opposition.

On 2 April 2017, Issoufou announced – in an interview on state television on the occasion of the first anniversary of his inauguration for his second mandate – that he did not intend to seek re-election in 2021. ‘One of my greatest ambitions is to organise free and transparent elections in 2021 and pass the baton to another Nigerien whom the Nigeriens will have chosen’, he said. ‘I am a democrat at heart (…) I don’t have the arrogance to think that I am an irreplaceable providential man’, he added. If he keeps his word, then he will be the first democratically elected president of Niger to ensure a peaceful transition of power to a new head of state.

We shall have to wait and see. For, as The Economist remarked on 26 November 2016, in an article on the US military presence in Niger: ‘though a staunch ally of the West, Niger’s president, Mahamadou Issoufou, is no exemplary democrat. He was re-elected in February, but only after the opposition boycotted the second round of the vote. His main opponent was locked up and then fled the country for exile abroad’.  

David Seddon (criticalfaculty1@hotmail.co.uk) is a researcher and political activist who has written extensively on social movements, class struggles and political transitions across the developing world.

Featured Photograph: the skyline of Niamey, the capital of Niger, July 17, 2007.

Voices of the Next Generation

By
ROAPE
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My students make me much more optimistic about the future of Africa’s political economies. Unwilling to accept the criticism with which academics attack almost every actor involved in African development including politicians, businesspeople, international organisations and multilateral institutions, my students don’t just want to stand on the side-lines and analyse the problems, rather they want to get onto the pitch and find ways to change the world. This mission is particularly strong among my students from African countries, who see development, not as an abstract concept, but as a concrete and tangible future they want for their societies.

Inspired by our students, this year, Thandika Mkandawire and I decided to ask our African Development course students at the LSE to write critical and thoughtful blog-posts about the most pressing issues concerning economic and social development within African countries. We then asked students to vote on the best submission from each week. The results are now being published on ROAPE.net, Africa@LSE and ID@LSE. They represent the views of an emerging body of critical young scholars interested in structural economic transformation and development within African societies.

Their posts are cutting edge, both at the forefront of academic debates and current affairs. They tackle the pressing issues of today’s world such as UK-Africa trade after Brexit and the impact of the election of Trump having on ideological battlefields within development. They also bring fresh eyes to long-standing challenges such as driving agricultural diversification, tackling youth unemployment and mobilising domestic resource mobilisation.

Together, these blogposts grapple with the twin challenge of development: how can African economies transform themselves within a competitive world in which their development ‘partners’ are actively competing with them over the real spoils of development – knowledge and ‘dynamic rents’ – WHILST STILL dealing with the instabilities that economic growth brings with it, such as rising economic inequality, political rivalry and the often coercive means with which states and capitalists reshape land, property and relations of labour. Our course tries to engage with development on its own terms; it’s extremely hard (something that is often taken for granted). It’s often unfair (not all boats rise with the tide). And that it destroys as much as it creates. Yet, we come into the classroom with the core belief that development contains the seeds of a better world. To me, I study, teach and research development because I believe it is the greatest tale on Earth and like all great tales, there is no simple morality and the characters are fully fleshed and complex.

We hope these contributions will make our readers both more cognisant of the immense challenges facing African economies but perhaps more hopeful about the future as well. As our students make clear, there are real opportunities in 2017 for African development, both with the ideological shifts happening around us as well as the opportunities that new technology and growing domestic and regional markets offer up. Determining how and for whose benefits these opportunities will be realised will ultimately be a political challenge for each society. Development cannot be administered or delivered through best practice guidelines. It has to be fought over and improvised from day to day and from place to place. For this reason, it is crucially important for scholars and teachers to bring new voices into the discussion and to engage with young African scholars and activists who will take part in these struggles first-hand.

Laura Mann is a member of ROAPE’s Editorial Working Group and a sociologist whose research focuses on the political economy of markets and new information and communication technologies in Africa. She is Assistant Professor in the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

These are the posts so far but watch this space for more:

The Rise of Trump: An Opportunity for African Industrialisation?

Tinhinan El Kadi and Avelino Chimbulo

Call for more Diversification in AGRA’s vision of Agriculture Modernisation

Denise Ntonta

A New Vision for Addressing Youth Unemployment in Africa

Marta Santoboni and Alexandra Karlsson

Benefits for all? How the UK can shape trade relations to promote African development and economic transformation

Elsa Makouezi and Tom Brady

Domestic Resource Mobilisation in Africa: A Need for Intervention

Gretta Digbeu

Are Developmental States Accidents of History?

Fadekemi Abiru

 

 

The Evidence Mounts: Poverty, Inflation and Rwanda

By
ROAPE
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By Sam Desiere

In a recent blogpost an anonymous researcher on roape.net showed that poverty in Rwanda has increased from 2011 to 2014 by 5 percentage points. This contradicts the official poverty statistics and narrative, which claim that poverty decreased by 5.8 percentage points, namely from 44.9% in 2011 to 39.1% in 2014 (NISR, 2015). Importantly, the author published the Stata-files used to analyse the data of the EICV 3 and EICV 4 household surveys, enabling other researchers to verify his claims.

Recently, I also calculated trends in poverty using the same datasets. Although I used a slightly different (and, arguably, less sophisticated) methodology, the results confirm that poverty did not decrease. In addition, I show that the poverty trends are very sensitive to the inflation rate used. With an inflation of 16.7% (as reported by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda, NISR), poverty indeed decreased by at least 5 percentage points. With an inflation rate of 30% – which is in my view more in line with the ‘real’ inflation rate – my estimates show that poverty increased by 1.2 percentage points.

The fact that two researchers arrive – independently from each other – at the same conclusion, strengthens my belief that the EICV surveys show that poverty in Rwanda has increased. This has important implications for the current debate about (rural) policies in Rwanda, but I leave a discussion of these implications to researchers and policy makers more familiar with the reality on the ground and focus in this blogpost on the technical aspects of estimating poverty trends.

In this this post, I briefly describe my methodology and key findings and discuss (food) price inflation, which turns out to be a critical parameter. The Stata do-files required to replicate my findings can be found here.

Methodology

Rwanda’s poverty estimates are based on the Integrated Household Living Conditions Survey (EICV by their French acronym), which are conducted every three years. I used data from EICV 3, conducted in 2010/11 and EICV 4, conducted in 2013/14, which are made publicly available by the NISR. More specifically, I used the modules on food consumption purchased on the market and food consumption from own production. In both waves, the questionnaire of both modules is nearly identical. Food consumption is reported for more than 100 food items.

Unlike the anonymous researcher, I did not use the modules on non-food expenditure. I did so for two reasons. First, the NISR reports that most households spend over 60% of their budget on food. Hence, food expenditure is a good proxy of poverty. Second, non-food expenditure would require some additional data cleaning, which requires additional assumptions. Hence, I simply calculated food expenditure in both waves.

The meta-data of EICV 4 (available on NISR’s website) clearly stipulates that each sampled household in Kigali was visited 11 times over a period of 33 days. The modules on food consumption were administered during every visit. Rural households were visited 8 times over a period of 16 days. The meta-data of EICV 3, however, does not provide information on the number of times a household was visited. I simply assumed that the same methodology, for both rural and urban households, was followed in wave 3 as in wave 4. If this assumption is wrong – something I could not check – the results presented below will be erroneous.

In both waves, households reported how much they had spent on food purchased on the market by food item since the previous visit of the enumerator. I simply added up expenditure on all food items. Households also reported how much they had consumed from own production. Converting the consumption from own production in monetary values was more challenging. Households typically reported consumption from own production in kg. Some households also reported in the same module how much they would have paid on the market for this food item. I used this information to calculate the median, national price for each food item and used this price to convert consumption from own production in its monetary value. Since relatively few households reported prices, I did not attempt to calculate region specific prices nor did I correct for price seasonality. On this point my methodology differs from the anonymous researcher, who calculated a Laspeyres price index to account for spatial and temporal price variation.

To verify my assumptions, I checked whether my estimates of food expenditure are correlated with the household poverty status as reported by the NISR and included as a separate variable in the datasets. In both waves, food expenditure was lower for households classified by the NISR as extremely poor compared to household classified as poor, and the expenditure of this group was in turn lower than the expenditure of non-poor households. These results, available upon request, confirm that my assumptions are at least partially similar to the assumptions of the NISR.

Food expenditure can only be compared between the waves if the food inflation rate between 2010/11 and 2013/14 is known. I used two different inflation rates. First, I used an inflation rate of 16.7%, which is reported by the NISR (NISR, 2016, p. 43). Second, I estimated inflation based on food prices reported by the respondents, which I also used to convert food consumption from own production in monetary values. Inflation is then defined as a weighted average of the price increase of nine important crops. I used the same weights as those used by NISR to construct the 2013/14 adjusted food poverty line (NISR, 2015, table B4, p. 38). These estimates of inflation will be discussed in greater detail below.

Since I did not calculate total expenditure, but only food expenditure, I could not use the poverty lines proposed by the NISR. I therefore followed the ‘inverse’ methodology. First, I assumed that the NISR correctly estimated poverty in 2010/11 (44.9%) and used this information to determine the food expenditure threshold in 2010/11 prices that corresponds with this poverty rate. Second, I deflated food expenditure in 2013/14 using two different inflation rates, namely 16.7% and 30%. The first inflation rate corresponds with the inflation rate used by the NISR and thus allows me to replicate the findings of the NISR. The second inflation rate corresponds with my own estimate of inflation using the price data from EICV 3 and EICV 4. Third, I used the food expenditure threshold as an alternative to a poverty line to estimate the poverty rate in 2013/14. This approach is valid because I am not interested in ‘absolute’ poverty figures, but only in poverty trends.

In all analyses, I used the population weights to make the results nationally representative.

Results

Poverty trends

Using the EICV 3 and EICV 4 datasets, I calculated food expenditure per adult equivalent, respectively in 2010/11 prices and 2013/2014 prices. In order to estimate poverty trends, food expenditure in 2013/14 has to be deflated to express it 2010/11 prices. Poverty trends are very sensitive to the inflation rate used to deflate food expenditure. Results are presented for two inflation rates: (1) an inflation rate of 16.7% as reported by NISR and (2) an inflation rate of 30%, which is at the lower end of my inflation estimates based on ESOKO price data or EICV price data (see below for a discussion of inflation).

Figure 1 shows cumulative frequency distributions of food expenditure for these two situations, while table 1 summarizes poverty trends

With an inflation rate of 16.7% (left panel, figure 1), real food expenditure per adult equivalent increased for all households from 2010/11 to 2013/14 and, as a result, poverty decreased. Assuming a poverty rate of 44.9% in 2010/11 (which corresponds to a food poverty line of 100,232 RWF per adult equivalent), poverty decreased by 7.9 percentage points. This poverty reduction is even more pronounced than reported by official statistics, which states than poverty decreased by 5.8 percentage points.

With an inflation rate of 30% (right panel, figure 1), food expenditure does no longer increase between 2011 and 2014 for all households. Again assuming that poverty is 44.9% in 2010/11, poverty even increased by 1.2 percentage points.

Figure 1: Cumulative distribution of food expenditure per adult equivalent for EICV 3 and EICV 4 for an inflation rate of 16.7% and 30%

Table 1: Poverty trends in function of the inflation rate

  Inflation: 16.7% Inflation: 30%
Poor HH EICV 3 (official statistics) 44.9% 44.9%
Poor HH EICV 4 (own estimates) 37.4% 46.1%
Trends in poverty (percentage points) -7.5 +1.2

In sum, the poverty trends are very sensitive to the inflation rate. With an inflation of 16.7% from 2011-2014, poverty decreased by at least 5 percentage points, which is in line with the official reports. With an inflation rate of 30%, poverty does not decrease. The question thus boils down to an accurate estimation of the inflation rate between 2011 and 2014.

Inflation rate

The EICV survey is not an ideal dataset to estimate inflation, because it does not contain much information on food prices. As explained earlier, some households report prices for those food items consumed from own production. This does not only mean that the number of observations is relatively limited, but also that households report prices of those items they did not buy on the market. I nevertheless used this information to calculate mean and median average prices by food item. I calculated national averages without taking into account price seasonality or regional price differences. In order to estimate ‘average’ inflation, a weighted average is taken over nine crops. The weights are proportional to the weights used for the construction of the 2013/14 adjusted food poverty line (NISR, 2015, table B4, p. 38). These nine crops account for 86% of the total calorific intake of the food basket. Two crops dominate this index: cassava (fermented) (weight: 38%) and dry beans (weight: 25%).

Figure 2 shows the increase in mean and median prices between 2010/11 and 2013/14 for nine crops, while the horizontal lines indicate the weighted average. The increase in median prices ranges from 10% for sorghum to 50% for cassava (both flour and roots). Median and mean inflation are 33% and 42%, respectively. This corresponds to an annual inflation of 9.5% and 12.5%, respectively.

Figure 2: Price increase for nine crops from 2010/11 to 3013/14 (mean and median prices)

 

These inflation estimates are substantially higher than the ones reported by NISR, which states that food prices increased by 16.7% between Jan 2011 and Jan 2014 (NISR, 2016, p. 43). Moreover, the estimates based on the EICV surveys are remarkably similar to the estimates based on detailed ESOKO price data, where I estimated inflation at 30.5% over the 2011-2014 period (details not reported here).

In sum, I believe that the ‘real’ food inflation rate is substantially higher than the one used by NISR to estimate poverty trends. This probably explains why I find that poverty increased, while the NISR reported that poverty decreased. These findings raise concerns, not only for Rwanda’s (rural) policies, but also for international donors that have presented Rwanda as a model for development because of the supposedly strong poverty reductions.

Sam Desiere is currently a senior researcher at HIVA, the research institute for work and society of the University of Leuven, Belgium. In 2015 he obtained a PhD in agricultural economics from Ghent University, Belgium, which focused on data quality of household surveys in developing countries.

Featured Photograph: As part of the DFID funded Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP), Rwanda’s flagship Social Protection Programme, women and men in northern Rwanda work on a public works site in 2012, building terraces to prevent soil erosion.  

ROAPE Workshops: Structural Transformation in Africa

By
ROAPE
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Editorial Working Group

The Review of African Political Economy (with the support of the Journal of Southern African Studies) is convening a series of three workshops in Africa in the 2017-18 period to explore Structural Transformations in Africa today: interventions from the Left. The workshops will help link analysis and activism in contemporary Africa from the perspective of radical political economy; consider whether a new politics is emerging from sites of contestation in Africa and reflect on lessons which might be drawn for the continent from revolutionary historical transitions. The workshops will include analysis of state formation following popular uprisings; the opportunity for socio-economic transformation and the frequent betrayals of revolutionary promise.  There will be an examination for example of continuity and change between colonial and post-colonial development in Africa, and in the year of the Bolshevik revolutions centenary opportunity to revisit the Soviet Union’s dealings with Africa and potential for revolutionary action and international solidarity in the 21st century. Each workshop will be organised around the themes of structural transformation and will be looked at through three linked topics of: (i) Economic strategy and industrialisation; (ii) Africa in a neoliberal world; and (iii) Resistance and social movements in Africa. All three topics will be examined in all three workshops but there will also be a local focus at each meeting after an initial recap on the overall themes.  There will be one key note speaker for each meeting and one speaker to summarise and provide context for the meetings ensuring continuity from previous meeting and rationale for each meeting. The first part of first the day of each workshop will be on this common theme ensuring continuity and connectivity with the previous meeting.  The rest of the time in each workshop will relate general themes to local circumstances and conditions and in doing so will bring together key speakers from Africa and Europe, combined with a call for local contributions and interventions. The three interlinked workshops each of two days will take place in Ghana (November 2017), Tanzania (April 2018) and South Africa (September 2018). We plan to have about 50 participants at each meeting; and three/four sessions for each workshop day.

The historical context of the initiative include: the centenary of the Russian Revolution (that indicated the need for a cool and critical appraisal of its betrayal of revolutionary promise, the state-sponsored models it delivered of industrialisation and economic development and its interventions in Africa); 50 years since the Arusha Declaration in Tanzania; 60 years since independence, reassessing the legacy of ujamaa and so on. These anniversaries are all acknowledged within the remit of our conference themes and questions.

The aspiration of the workshop series idea is also to reaffirm ROAPE’s political and intellectual project and to return it to its base in Africa by way of direct engagement on the ground; to decentralise its activist agenda and promote outreach in Africa; to create and recreate networks of debate and solidarity; to link critical theory with practice and the potential for popular resistance; and to imagine a new vision of development.

The meeting in Ghana will detail analysis on economic strategy and industrialisation. This debate will take note of the example and character of Soviet industrialisation compared to the puny efforts to date in Africa. The meeting will discuss the history and consequences of industrial strategy in Africa as well as possible development options for industrial and non-industrial struggles for alternatives to existing globalisation.  What is the discussion regarding alternative strategies for trade and aid, investment and relations between agriculture, industry and services in Africa? And what are the important debates about labour and employment opportunities with a re-evaluation of neo-liberal African development and the emergence of capitalist social relations and challenges to them?

The Dar es Salaam meeting will recap debates form the previous meeting and detail local responses and strategies that have critiqued the promise of decolonisation.  Africa remains a dependent cog in the globalising logic of world capitalism and one intention of this meeting is to explore the neoliberal environment in which Africa has been situated and the limitations this poses to alternative futures.  We will explore the dynamics of contemporary imperialism, trade and aid, and interrogate national, local and pan-Africa responses to modern day relations between the continent and northern and BRIC actors. What has been the impact of the dramatic ‘entrance’ of Chinese capital onto the continent, and subsequent debate about a role for the BRICS,  financialisation, the 2008 crash and strategy employed by the international financial institutions to reform  global financial and trade architecture?  African responses to the challenges of the post 2008 crisis for analysis include migration, regionalism and pan African and national strategies.

In South Africa, we will recap themes from previous meetings. The discussion then centres on resistance and social movements and will examine how neoliberal reconfiguring of African economies does not go without ‘kickback’.  Protest and social movements abound, but we need to assess their nature and prospects and consider which social forces they might consolidate.  Documentation of African struggles for justice and development can help reflection on trade union action and informal organisations in urban and rural settings. The meeting can explore the reasons behind protest, whether it is enough to see a link between spikes in food prices and protest or whether and to what extent other political, social and economic issue drive resistance to neo-liberalism. What are the dynamics of protest, the contributing factors that lead to full-scale (and occasionally ‘insurrectionary’) challenges to state power on the one hand and demobilisation and disintegration of popular protest on the other? What sort of viable, counter-hegemonic politics, is emerging, or could emerge, on the continent to challenge neoliberal and elite monopolisation of political and economic power? This workshop will focus not only on South African case-studies but other cases of African resistance. Activists and social movements are at the forefront of political and economic struggles from both rural and urban settings and the inter-relationships between these two spatial locations will also be explored.

Workshop format, organisation and speakers

Each workshop will include a group of local activists and scholars that are a key part of the gathering. This will be supplemented by elements of a core group from RoAPE which includes: Ray Bush, Janet Bujra, Peter Dwyer, Peter Lawrence, Gabrielle Lynch, Jörg Wiegratz, and Leo Zeilig. In Accra for the meeting in November 2017 the convenors are Third World Network (contact Yao Graham), in Dar es Salaam for the April 2018 the local organisers (contact Issa Shivji) and in Johannesburg for the the local organisers are The Society, Work and Development Institute, at Witwatersrand University (contact Karl von Holdt) and the Social Change Research Unit, at the University of Johannesburg (contact Peter Alexander)..Local organisers are also tasked with organising local venue, accommodation and other arrangements.  Additional key participants may also lead discussion in the workshops; already confirmed for this capacity are: Ben Fine., Samir Amin, Sarah Bracking,  Bayo Olukoshi, Yao Graham, Dzodzi Tsikata, Trevor Ngwane, Issa Shivji, Raymond Sango, Tafadwa Choto, Thandika Mkandawire, Jayati Ghosh, Tetteh Homeku, Omar Gueye, Chambi Chachage, Munyaradzi Gwisai, Qondi Moyo, Rudi Dicks, Hameeda Deedat, Hilma Shindondola-Mote, Femi Aborisade, Moussa Demba, Baba Aye, Amani Mhinda, Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Munyaradzi Gwisai, Ali Kadri, Max Ajl.

Keynote speakers: Currently we have Samir Amin, Ben Fine, Munyaradzi Gwisai and Sarah Bracking. Yao Graham will speak at all three workshops. Issa Shivji will be a key speaker in Dar. Peter Alexander and Karl von Holdt in South Africa are taking charge of the workshop in September 2018. For the workshops in Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg we can confirm the attendance of Tafadzwa Choto, Dzodzi Tsikata, Baba Aye and Ambreena Manji.

Funding is extremely limited, but if you are interested in finding out more about these workshops, or attending please contact: roape@outlook.com

‘Le Pain et la Liberté’: A Tribute to André Tibiri

By
ROAPE
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By Bettina Engels

Life is like a cord, as one speaker at his funeral said, some are long, others are short, but what counts is that it carries something. André Tibiri’s cord was short, but it carried so very much. A central figure in the last two decades of social struggles in Burkina Faso, a charismatic leader of the student and youth movements, an honest and dedicated militant for democracy and social justice, André passed away, aged 46, on 24 May 2017.

Student struggles in the 1990s

André began his studies at the University of Ouagadougou in the early 1990s, during the first years of the regime of Blaise Compaoré, who became President after the shooting of Thomas Sankara in 1987- a period characterised by the harsh repression of social movements in Burkina Faso, particularly the student movement. The death of Dabo Boukary, one of André’s comrades at the university, marked the starting point of his struggles. Dabo was killed in 1990 after the Presidential Guard had violently put down a student demonstration.

André rapidly became a key figure in the student struggle in Ouagadougou, the Burkinabè capital. From 1995 onwards, he was president of the Association Nationale des Étudiants du Burkina (ANEB, National Association of Burkinabè Students), the branch of the Union Générale des Etudiants Burkinabè (UGEB, General Union of Burkinabè Students) at the University of Ouagadougou, and from 1997-2001 he was president of UGEB. In 1996-1997, he led the massive protests to demand greater financial support for students, a wave of mobilization that would eventually lead to the creation of the Aide FONER (Fonds National pour l’Éducation et la Recherche, National Fund for Education and Research), a refundable grant for undergraduate, graduate and doctoral students, which until today, is one of the most important achievements of the student movement.

In 1997 André, together with three other activists, was arrested and accused of issuing “death threat[s], willing coups and injuries, and damage of public goods”. He was locked up in the Maison d’Arrêt et de Correction de Ouagadougou (MACO, the main prison of Ouagadougou) for 45 days. This was not the only price he had to pay for his commitments: The granting of his PhD in biology, focusing on the biochemistry of natural substances, was also delayed in response to his activism. Despite such hurdles, André had fond memories of the turbulent times in the late 1990s, which were characterized by great social and political upheaval.

In an interview in 2013 André reported that one day a student whom he did not know stopped and greeted him on the street. The student asked: “Tibiri, what about your thesis?” He replied: “I am still doing it, and I think I will complete it soon.” “You have to keep up your courage”, the student said. “We are praying for you all day.” As André emphasised, “It is an honour to me, and I am proud that I have benefitted from the confidence of thousands of youth traversing the campus.”

The student protests focused on conditions on campus, on the forced introduction of the BA/MA system, and on the unrelenting and repressive way the regime of Blaise Compaoré reacted to their claims. André’s keen analysis of the overarching context, in particular the impact of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) urged by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, was highly appreciated by his fellow students. “Most of these measures [inspired by the SAPs] are taken without considering the social situations of the students and lecturers”, André explained in the 2013 interview “After the measures of expulsion and intimidation of the population, [the regime] launched a charm offensive addressing the media, by announcing the investment of millions of CFA Francs for capacity building, infrastructure, and enhancement of the students’ social situation. But for me, the veritable Achilles’ heel of all this are the SAPs: We have to break through the SAPs if we wish to get out of this situation.”

Unity of the popular classes

The student union, UGEB, was also among the organisations leading the civil rights struggles after the murder of journalist Norbert Zongo on 13 December 1998. Zongo, the founder and editor of the independent newspaper L’Indépendant, had conducted research on the death of David Ouédraogo, a driver for Blaise Compaoré’s brother, François. The journalist was found shot dead in his burned-out car. The government declared his death an accident. The next day thousands took to the streets and demanded an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death and an end to impunity. André, together with trade union and human rights movement leaders, set up the Collectif d’Organisations Démocratiques de Masse et de Partis Politiques (Collective of the Democratic Mass Organisations and Political Parties, or ‘Collectif’) to gather the various protests together under one umbrella. On 1 December 1999, André, the Collectif’s president Halidou Ouédraogo, and the president of the trade union federation Confédération Générale du Travail du Burkina (CGT-B), Tolé Sagnon, were arrested after a protest march organised by the Collectif. On 3 December, they were accused by the judiciary of “incitement of military turmoil, incitement of civil disobedience, and endangering state security. The charges were finally dropped, and the accusation reduced to “sapping the morale of the troops.”

André consistently argued that the ‘popular classes’ – students, employees, small-scale farmers, self-employed informal workers, petty traders – share the same interests and should therefore unite in their struggles. “UGEB has always stated clearly […] that its militants must position themselves in the camp of the people”, André explained. “This builds the unity of the student struggles at the campus and the engagement in the activism after campus life.”

Based on these convictions, André was not only engaged in the student movement but also in human rights and labour movements. On 7 December 2000, together with fellow militants, he created the Organisation Démocratique de la Jeunesse du Burkina Faso (Democratic Mass Organisation of Burkinabè Youth, ODJ), a cross-class movement defending the democratic and social rights of and promoting solidarity among youth – where youth is understood as a social rather than an age category. “In the context of Burkina, which is essentially characterised by imperialist domination, and by the struggles of our people for social liberation”, André explained, “every youth, whatever his or her ethnic origin, philosophical or political conviction or religious beliefs, can be a member of ODJ.”

André never withdrew from his political engagement, neither when he completed his PhD or when he became a senior researcher at the Institut de Recherche en Sciences de la Santé (Institute of Health Sciences Research, IRSS), one of four state research institutes that form the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique et Technologique (National Centre for Science and Technology Research, CNRST). He was president of ODJ until his death. As such, he played an important role in the struggles of the popular classes against the high cost of living resulting from the global food and fuel price crises in 2008; in the insurrection that finally overthrew Blaise Compaoré after 27 years in the presidency on 30-31 October 2014; in the popular resistance against the Presidential Guard’s coup d’état in September 2015; and in the mobilization related to the presidential elections of 29 November 2015. ODJ called for a boycott of these elections: “What do promises count for if we know that the candidates are those who have helped Blaise Compaoré to seize power and to keep it for 27 years?” André questioned in 2015. For him, to boycott the election was a claim of citizenship. Militants should rather organise themselves to struggle to achieve substantial change, rejecting “the illusions of putschists and electoralists.”

A life dedicated to struggles for social justice and equality

André’s biography resembles a chronology of recent social struggles in Burkina Faso. It was only from mid-2016 onwards that his illness obliged him to limit his political activities. His engaged life was impressively reflected by the many speakers at his funeral, with moving discourses by leaders of trade unions and human rights, women’s and student organisations. André passed away in a hospital in Tunis, where he had been transferred the week before. When his body arrived at the airport of Ouagadougou at 4 am on 29 May 2017, hundreds awaited him, silently lining the streets and accompanying the funeral car, on foot, through the city to the Maison de Peuple, the hall where the ceremony was held. Later in the morning, hundreds again were there to greet him at the municipal Gounghin cemetery in Ouagadougou, where Norbert Zongo is also buried, shouting “Pain et liberté pour le peuple” (Bread and liberty for the people). One of his comrades posted on a social network site: “Those who leave us are considered in French to be buried, in Africa, we say that they are hidden. […] We have not buried André; we have rather hidden him. His ideas, courage, engagement and dedication cannot be buried. André now sleeps the sleep of the just.”

Bettina Engels is political scientist at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, www.land-conflicts.net.

Propertied Proletarians? The Kenyan Cut-Flower Industry

By
ROAPE
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By Nungari Mwangi

The roape.net debate series has discussed capitalism in Africa through forward looking industrial policy and possibilities for structural transformation. Yet, the backbone of many African economies continues to be in agriculture. Nungari Mwangi contributes to ROAPE’s debate by looking into export horticulture in Kenya and its role in the expansion of capitalism in Africa. Using a case study based on her PhD research of marginalized small scale flower farmers, she challenges the orientation towards European export markets, and calls for a focus on local and regional markets for their survival. 

The expansion of capitalism in African agriculture developed through the systematic orientation of exports to Europe. This was part of a diversification approach fostered by the World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) through which the export of high value horticultural commodities such as flowers, fruits and vegetables propped up many African economies. For example, in Kenya, cut flowers have been grown for export since the 1970s. Providing approximately 38% of the total cut flower imports to the European Union, the country is the third largest exporter of cut flowers in the world after Colombia and Ecuador. The sub-sector is the second highest earner of foreign exchange in agriculture after tea, and is the driver of growth in horticulture providing for 70% of the total value of horticulture exports. Cut flower production has historically been dominated by large scale growers and exporters who produce up to 97% of flowers for export predominantly roses. 

What is interesting is that according to the literature, Kenya is the only country in the world that has smallholders growing cut flowers for export. They typically grow what are known as ‘fillers’ or summer flowers which are all the colourful varieties (such as Arabicum, Eryngium, Alstroemeria, Agapanthus and Craspedia among others) that make-up a bouquet of greenhouse varieties such as roses or chrysanthemums. These are grown in the open, in areas between a quarter acre to five acres of farmland. The farmers are scattered in the central highlands and Rift Valley areas and are few – not more than 10,000 in total. It is difficult to get exact numbers because there is no central database updating figures. The last estimate of their contribution in 2008 by N.M Muthoka and Alice Muriithi and placed it between 5-13% of the value of cut flower exports. The last comprehensive smallholder survey was done in 2010 by Fintrac and estimated their contribution at between $7-10 million. The earliest instance of involvement of smallholders in the Kenyan cut flower industry goes back to the 1970s when the government was trying to indigenize an industry largely seen as being dominated by foreigners.

The Nairobi Flower Market where smallholders bring their flowers to sell (Nungari Mwangi, 2016)

Today, smallholders grow cut flowers as a diversification strategy from other high value crops such as tea, green-beans, peas and potatoes, and so these smallholders are experienced farmers. In interviews for my research into export floriculture in Kenya, they often described cut flowers as ‘gold’ for them and argued that they were more financially secure and therefore food secure after venturing into flower production. Of the approximately 10,000 smallholder cut-flower farmers in Kenya, the vast majority operate as out-growers for export firms such as Wilmar Agro Ltd. These are networks of unorganized smallholder farmers who supply fillers to export companies which are responsible for the coordination of supply, logistics and marketing to the Dutch flower auction. Outgrower schemes are the only form of organization for smallholders in this sub-sector given that there is currently no flower farmers’ cooperative.

The Dutch auction has been the centre of the global flower trade for the last century and brings together thousands of varieties of flowers and hundreds of big buyers from all over Europe and arguably one of the world’s most sophisticated logistical supply machines. It is a buyers’ market in that prices are determined by buyers’ demand as regulated by the Dutch auction clock, which is unique as it begins the bid with the highest price per stem and descends. This system is meant to match the flowers which are in highest demand with the best possible price. Producers are therefore only price takers. The only bargaining power they have is to build a strong reputation based on high quality and consistency at the auction so that their flowers stand out. The auction works well for smallholders because it absorbs all supply irrespective of volumes and varieties and has minimal restrictions in terms of entry certifications. However, costs of doing business are high which encourages trade in large volumes.

The Dutch Auction in Aalsmeer (Nungari Mwangi, 2016)

It is often easier for smallholders to set out as out-growers working for an export company which navigates the complexities of temperature-sensitive supply and logistics, export handling and the politics of market access. In some cases, these export firms provide farmers with inputs and crop specific training as well as quality checks. However, as Maurice Bolo wrote about in 2010 export firms’ relationships with smallholders often limit the farmer’s ability to move beyond production into say, value addition or even to trade, where they might be in direct competition with the export firms. This situation renders them into what Lenin once described as “propertied proletarians, workers cultivating company crops on private allotments”.

Nevertheless, a few experienced farmers have evolved beyond these out-grower schemes to also operate as farmer-entrepreneurs exporting directly to the auction, while others have tried, with limited success, to consolidate varieties and form their own exporting companies. The idea of a farmer-entrepreneur here stands not as an idealized state of smallholder development but rather as a figure of resistance against becoming appendages to the interests of global capital.

Since the release of the World Bank Development Report, ‘Agriculture for Development’ in 2008 and a subsequent report in 2009 entitled ‘Awakening Africa’s Sleeping Giant’, there has been a revised interest on how best to integrate otherwise marginalised smallholders in the production of fruits, flowers and vegetables to European export markets and beyond. In 2004, Tanya Korovkin wrote that in Ecuador, where the flower industry is at a more advanced capitalist stage than in Kenya, the rise of large scale flower production led to increases in land prices and crises in peasant agriculture namely fragmentation, declining yields and reliance on off-farm income leading to the proletarianization of the rural labour force. This model of inclusion in development often assumes that deeper integration is always the better deal, rather than engaging them and thinking through the most strategic means for smallholders to engage with markets, both globally and locally, in such a way as to enable them to become entrepreneurs in their own right as opposed to labourers on plantations or out-growers. It tends to overlook the realities of “adverse incorporation”, so the many complex ways in which integration can be disempowering and exploitative to how people are able to earn a living over time. Andries Du Toit and Sam Hickey have written widely about the notion of adverse incorporation which they see as enacted by unequal power relations operating within imperfect markets in a globalizing world economy marked by transnational capital flows, and patriarchal norms.

I interviewed smallholders in Kenya who had broken away from export firms to form their own flower export company. They felt these export firms were paying them considerably less than their produce was worth based on the prices at the auction. Disillusioned, they described how their “hearts were broken” from failing to manage how seasons affected the dynamics of demand and the very high cost of doing business at the Dutch auction. Further they explained how they failed to appreciate the overwhelming cost and complexity of managing the high-tech, temperature sensitive processes of getting the flowers from farm to auction in a matter of hours. Brokers and consolidators nevertheless remain pivotal for farmers’ access due to their market knowledge and export networks that remain beyond reach for the average farmer.

In search of access to year-round markets which the traditional Dutch auction does not offer, farmers are increasingly seeking new trade relationships such as direct partnerships with supermarkets. The ability to negotiate the price in direct markets prior to supply provides precious bargaining power that is not available when selling to the auction. However, a different set of capabilities is required to branch into these ‘direct’ markets such as the ability to produce consistently and to meet increasingly stringent supermarket certification standards. Florists are much less policed by certification requirements but are much less directly accessible for smallholders. Some supermarkets such as ASDA – a major player in the UK –  have moved into direct sourcing where they partner with large farms that consolidate supply from smallholders, manage the quality checks and package the flowers into bouquets. However, this model is exclusive and its ability to involve a wide number of farmers is yet unclear.  

Farmer-entrepreneurs who grow niche varieties of summer flowers have greater autonomy to seek a relationship that allows them the option of taking on more value-added functions and/or to specialize in production. The survival of smallholders in the flower industry as entrepreneurs is dependent on them working together towards these more ‘relational’ terms of trade, which may not necessarily mean deeper integration into the seasonal, tightly policed buyer-driven European export markets. Indeed, it may well lie in exploring the potential in local markets.

Researcher with small-holder, Felista Thuo, in March 2016 on her five acre farm (Phinna Farm) in Njabini. The photograph was taken in a field of Agapanthus flowers. Felista has  been growing flowers since 1982 (Nungari Mwangi, 2016)

So, the expansion of local and regional supermarkets in Kenya such as Nakumatt and Game, as well as international players such as Carrefour which are considered ‘upmarket’, offer new opportunities for smallholders to supply their produce locally. Other local opportunities include the real estate boom that exhibits a demand in landscaping floriculture, as well as the prevalence of corporate events and weddings with demand for cut flowers.  However, more research is required into the size, dynamics and evolution of the local market. Farmer entrepreneurs might be better off exploring opportunities in local supermarkets and malls that have fewer or lower entry barriers and that might offer year-round consistency of demand and more opportunities for skills-based activities such as the creation of bouquets locally. In particular, targeting local markets could be a better option for newer less-organised farmers who struggle with production of large volumes and the complexities of export logistics. Smallholders currently trade the overflow of their high quality harvest at the Nairobi Flower market which is open from 4 am to 7 am daily and is an important source of cash flow for them. Large scale farms sell their rose “rejects” (whatever did not make it for export) at this market at a throw-away price and so the quality of produce sold at this market for local consumption is variable. 

Yet, access to local and regional markets comes with its own set of challenges – not least because not enough is known about these markets. The cost of transportation in East Africa is very high given poor quality of rural roads, lack of refrigerated trucks and cold chain infrastructure, inefficient taxation regimes and other bureaucratic hurdles. In terms of trade policy, tensions between Kenya and Tanzania have been high since Tanzania last year declined to sign the Economic Partnership Agreement which would guarantee duty free access of East African agricultural imports into the EU. Tanzania argues that it may lead the EU to dump cheap agricultural imports and in the long term jeopardize the country’s infant manufacturing industries. Looking towards West Africa, the government of Kenya has been working to overturn the ban on horticulture exports to Nigeria. Absurdly, Nigeria currently imports Kenyan flowers via a convoluted trade route from Holland or the UK – perpetuating the neocolonial hegemony of Europe as the hub of trade.

A strategic shift to exploring alternative opportunities in local and regional markets returns us to Samir Amin’s concept of delinking. In it he lays out a form of resistance to the dominant logic of capitalist globalisation by turning towards local and regional markets as an alternative from those developed in Northern countries. This is premised on Amin’s understanding that the centre develops at the expense of countries in the periphery through unequal exchange. In the large-scale export-led flower industry, this can be seen in the shift of production from Holland to the Global South to save on energy costs after the crisis of the early 1970’s, as well as benefiting from the suppression of wages and unions in the developing world after years of neoliberal policies. It can also be seen in  the monopolization of the international flower trade at the auction in Holland, as well as the practice of storing profits offshore (see, for example, Kenya government sues Sher Karuturi for transfer pricing). Amin discussed the establishment of monopolies in the north and the capture of super profits as part of the mechanisms of capitalist globalization that reinforce unequal exchange and ‘underdevelopment’ which is when countries undergo economic growth but in ways that do not contribute to long term development (see also Christopher Hope’s blogpost in this series).

Acknowledging the unequal power of the Dutch auction over the long-term bargaining power of Kenyan producers, the Kenyan government (in the draft national horticulture policy of 2012) highlighted the possibility of setting up a regional flower auction in a bid to shift power dynamics to producers in the value chain. Though noble, this is a complex proposition that should first investigate the value and efficiency of services provided by the Dutch auction as well as the trends in the nature of demand for cut flowers in Europe and beyond. More achievable perhaps is robustly exploring local and regional markets that could present smallholder, cut flower farmer entrepreneurs with less restrictive options and greater bargaining power over the long term. Though this, in turn, might require a radical reorientation of national, regional and continental political-economy.

Nungari Mwangi is a PhD researcher at the Centre of Development Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her PhD research is on shifting power dynamics in the Kenya – EU cut flower value chain.

Featured Photograph: Netherlands 2009, (Dutch Flower Auction).

 

 

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