Introduction.
What is neoliberalism? Despite diverse lenses people use to look at it, its fundamental idea is about political and economic approaches that favour free-market capitalism, deregulation, and reduction in government spending. Essentially, for a good portion of the past 50 years this ideology has been driving most of the Western development policies in the Global South and particularly in Africa. Africans have received from the West different recipes for development, with each came an underlying idea of neoliberalism. Now the question is, has the policy of neoliberalism succeeded to develop and bring prosperity in Africa?
The answer is negative, and through this essay the negative impacts of neoliberalism on African development will be discussed. The essay will start by explaining how the change of development concept influenced the views of development and public policy in Africa, and different meanings of development that were created under the umbrella of neoliberalism and their effects on Africa will be discussed.
How did changes in development meanings influence public policy in Africa?
Firstly, every strategy people invent is for their own gain and satisfaction. If we look in the past 200 years, most predominant ideas and policies that have ruled the world, its politics and economy came out of the Western Europe, and they have mostly advocated for capitalism and neoliberalism (which are two sides of the same coin) to be the path that every nation must follow in order to develop (Stewart 2019:5). Now, to understand whether these policies have had a positive or negative influence over African population, one must know whose strongest ideology is in geopolitical interactions. For instance, Pieterse (2010:7) argues that for a development theory to be significant, social forces must carry it, to be carried by social forces it must match their worldview and articulate their interests. Simply put, it is easy to say that every meaning of development brought to Africa by the West served as tool for Western interest and worldview, and Africa has been serving Western interest by embracing development ideas produced in Europe. In fact, Pieterse (2010:2) had the following to say about development ideas, the major development theories are also policies frameworks. Consequently, every change in the meanings of development concept produced in the West has been able to influence development views and public policies in Africa, and this transformation that Africa had gone through had little to do with community development and wellbeing. For example, when considering the education system and its curriculum produced in Europe and used in Africa, we see that it produced African intellectuals inclined to work for European interest rather than African’s. In order words, it is an education that has succeeded in transforming Africans into little British, little Frenches and little Portuguese. Presently, the current state of the African society is the product of the education we have received, and the education itself being engineered by European thinkers. It is evident enough that we cannot construct our world with foreign thoughts.
Economic growth
Let begin with neoliberalism which principally advocates for free market economy. When properly analysed, it is easy to conclude that whenever the West talks about free market, it implies merely the freedom for Western corporations to have control over the market free of competitions. For instance, when considering the ongoing trade war between China and the US, both being capitalist economies it shows that Europe did not push the free market economy in the South to develop it, but rather for its own benefit, otherwise the US could have embraced China as a good student of capitalism. We can take it back to the post WWII when the South was dragged into, or force to embrace economic growth as the policy for development. The economic policy for instance did not address questions related to social wellbeing such as: raising income and productivity of the poor or promoting the equal redistribution of the economy; poor people were told to wait for the economy to trickle down after riche people are satisfied (Du Plessis & Kotze 2016:3). Soon after it was observed that the trickle down did not happen, instead, the rich got more richer by taking from the poor in the society, equally the West got more richer by impoverishing the South through debts and plundering its resources, which led to the dependency theory (Du Plessis & Kotze 2016:4). Consequently, ideas of economic growth engineered in Europe cannot genuinely intend to a significant development in the Third World which might undermine the prosperity of the West that depends on exploitation of the South.
The basic needs
Furthermore, in the 1970s, there was a new approach and development policy namely, the basic needs approach (Du Plessis & Kotze 2016:5). Certainly, the basic needs approach, looked critically it was a way to alleviate the negative impacts of neoliberalism nature of the economic growth policy. Prior to that, development was centrally planned by the central governments with their Western donors, and development projects were mostly formulated by experts from the West without involvement of the targeted communities for intended projects (Du Plessis 2017:4). This practice undermined the ability of the local communities to learn and participate in the process of their own development, in other words, the centrally planned development focused more on developing things instead of people. With the basic needs approach to development, projects were shifted towards the promotion of human dignity, the increase of people’s freedom of choice and the raising of the material standard of the poor (Du Plessis & Kotze 2016:5). This implies that people as individuals and their self-development became the centre of development projects, and education and participation became relevant for people to rise in dignity and be able to constructively choose the right patterns of their development.
The Washington Consensus
In 1981 came another blow from the West to undo all the progress accomplished with the basic needs approach to development. According to Du Plessis and Kotze (2016:6) neoliberalism took another aspect through the Washington Consensus. The Washington Consensus reaffirmed the fundamental objective of neoliberalism which is solely about Europe development at any cost, and this came in the context of undoing some previous important process of the basic needs approach including the Lagos Plan of Action. The Washington Consensus did more than dragging Africa into the global market; talking about global market, it should mean an environment where all participants have the capacity of production so that they can add values with their products. However, a post-colonial Africa without the means of production had no products to bring in the global market except the natural resources for which values and prices are controlled not by Africans, but by WTO. This policy exposed Africa and its resources to the exploitation of those competitive forces in the global market, it also facilitated industrialised nations to pour their agricultural products into poor nations and undermined the local production. As result, local farmers had to abandon their non-rentable agricultural activities to work in the mines or cutting down the trees for commercial purposes, which creates a circle of poverty and environmental degradation (Du Plessis & Kotze 2016:6). Moreover, according to Du Plessis and Kotze (2016:6) the Washington consensus policy was turned into conditionality called “Structural Adjustment Program” by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund for debt grant to African nations, which left them with not many alternatives as they needed credits.
The factors influencing current development policy
Finally, different views have emerged, and different policy formulated after the Washington Consensus in order to create an alternative development. For instance, Mkandawire cited in Du Plessis and Kotze (2016:10) states that currently the view on development policy is eclectic one, encompassing different issues such as democracy, empowerment of women and minority groups, education, justice, and equality etc. for example, today poverty is acknowledged to be a result of various factors, hence there is a need for a holistic approach toward eradication of poverty and development initiatives. Perhaps, the dominant idea about development today is the sustainable development, which emphasises the natural resources management and the environment protection (Du Plessis & Kotze 2016:8). The important argument about sustainable development is that people should ensure that the level of their activities and their interactions with the environment should be done within the capacity of the environment to meet the needs of the present and future generations.
Conclusion
Development and its different meanings have changed over time according to various expectations held by those defining the concept. What should be remembered is that development theories are sometimes turned into policies for social change. However, if our interests are not at the heart of those giving meanings to development, we are likely to revisit the tragic past we are running away from. Africa and Africans must ascribe their own meanings to the concept of development and pursue their realisation.
List of reference
Pieterse, J. 2010. Development theory. California: Sage.
Du Plessis, G & Kotze, D. 2016. Development policy and strategies: only a study guide for DVA3703. Pretoria: UNISA.
Du Plessis, G. 2017. Development policy and strategies: reader for DVA3703. Pretoria: UNISA
Stewart, P. 2019. Development theories: only study guide for DVA3701. Pretoria: UNISA.