Driving into the Ethiopian countryside is like entering a time capsule. Acres of green pastureland extend for miles on either side of the interstate that cuts through the plains, marred only by the occasional farmer’s house. Men till the soil with handheld scythes accompanied by their plow horses and cattle that trudge along weighed down by heavy yolks and linen supply bags strapped securely to their backs. Absent are the tokens of industrialized farming — tractors, pesticide planes, fertilizer sprinklers — that have become commonplace in the farming economies of developed countries. Indeed, 60 percent of the African population continues to engage in subsistence farming despite expanding urbanization, and with volatile yet plateauing growth rates, long-term economic development remains a distant aspiration. Such dismal trends beg the question: why has Africa fallen so far behind?
It would be easy to answer this inquiry internally, pegging blame on contemporary dictatorial governments, ongoing infighting, or the continent’s history as the object of colonialism, with little regard for the continued role developed nations play in perpetuating Africa’s inability to catch up. Indeed, the continent remains plagued with internal disputes that may have thwarted development efforts, from the Tigray region of Ethiopia in the East, which has been embroiled in bitter warfare since November 2020, to Nigeria in the West, where intermittent protests and unrest have resulted in rampant violence. In reality, though, many authoritarian countries and previous Western colonies—the Middle East, India, Singapore—have developed or achieved more sustained growth than Africa despite similar colonial and governmental contexts. Africa’s colonial past and authoritarian present, then, cannot be sufficient explanations for its current economic condition.
Toxic dynamics between high-income advanced economies and underdeveloped countries, the “core” and “periphery” respectively, were once regarded by Dependency theorists of the 20th century as lost causes: peripheral nations were doomed to eternal subjugation at the hands of the economic center. The model, however, has since declined in popularity and with it the notion that Western nations may have a heavy hand in determining the economic fate of the Global South. But this deemphasis of the “Global North’s” often exploitative agency in dictating economic conditions is misguided at best: core-periphery relationships continue to exist today. Indeed, advanced economies’ protraction of extractive and counter-developmental economic policies, deceptively generous extensions of aid, and Western maneuverings in African politics have kept and continue to keep the region in economic subjugation.
To begin, Africa’s resource richness, housing some 24% of the world’s agricultural land, 30% of the world’s remaining mineral resources, and vast reservoirs of oil, has made it a prime target for continued Western extraction even in the post-colonial era. Whether it be Algerian petroleum or Angolan iron ore, African raw materials are almost always processed elsewhere and few of the continent’s nations manage the allocation of their own resources. Moreover, African assets held by multinational companies headquartered throughout the developed world lock-in most resources and yield very few returns for African governments as they either reside in tax havens, areas with especially low tax rates, or worse, fraudulently engage in “illicit financial flows” by misreporting resources and wealth as having been generated in tax-free areas. Such practices conducted by economic agents in advanced economies, including the dodging of African taxes, the repatriation of profits earned on African soil, and the absence of climate reparations for environment-degrading business practices have, by essentially stealing African wealth, made Africa a net creditor, with $41 billion more leaving the continent than coming in.
With such heavy resource and monetary extraction draining Africa of its potential wealth, it’s no surprise that much of the continent has had difficulty allocating its vast natural resources. Indeed, a Brookings paper finds that sub-Saharan African countries are among the lowest in the utilization of their natural resources and are home to almost half of the world’s uncultivated agricultural land. An acceleration of resource extraction projects would be necessary in order to kickstart growth, but such self-initiated African resource employment projects have encountered numerous obstacles from Western nations and their satellites. For instance, 2016 saw the World Bank halt its financing of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s Grand Inga Dam, citing the DRC’s “different strategic direction” and divergence from the international community’s initial plan as the reason for the suspension. If African nations will be blocked when attempting to exercise sovereignty over their own initiatives, then, it is unclear whether long-term development can ever be achieved.
Working in tandem with the developed world’s tendency to withhold necessary aid is its incognizant provision of superficially altruistic foreign assistance to African countries. Most notable is the debt forgiveness campaign of the early 2000s which garnered much publicity and popular acclaim. In reality, though, debt cancellation agreements often required African governments to cede jurisdiction on some public services to private organizations. In a move that some have called a “debt-for-equity swap,” the initiative allowed corporations to carve out a stake in government directives, ultimately undermining African sovereignty and economic independence and facilitating future extraction at Africa’s expense. Some countries did not qualify for cancellation and remain trapped spending some ⅔ of their GDP on interest on existing debts. Even the countries whose debt burden declined are again in need of relief, and rising rates due to excess spending in other areas may be complicating and crowding out future ventures.
More recently, developed nations outside of the West have also weaponized similar ‘debt-trap’ diplomacy tactics against low-income African countries, awarding colossal loans to vulnerable and often insolvent economies and using the resultant debt as leverage for extortion. China is the most prolific perpetrator of such practices, lending some $147 billion to African nations from 2000 to 2018 and pledging another $60 billion to the continent in recent years, especially for infrastructure projects through the Belt and Road Initiative. But Beijing’s intentions are far from altruistic. A majority of China’s debtors today are considered “high-risk,” and only 50% of Chinese investments abroad have been reported to the IMF: monetary returns on their investments are, thus, clearly not Beijing’s objective. Instead, they’ve accounted for potential losses by seizing their debtors’ assets and undermining their sovereignty. China is not alone, and its actions are but one link in a long chain of extractive global economic policies that stymie Africa’s growth.
In addition to economic concerns, the politics of Africa is certainly not exogenous to its economic development; current African leaders traffic in despotism and kleptocracy and also bear the onus of their nations’ low standards of living. Even so, democracy and decent principles of governance have never been the West’s priority in the region, often overshadowed by business prospects. Idi Amin of Uganda, for example, was installed due to British “covert action”; Nigerian generals were empowered and have since been enabled by British oil interests; and the DRC’s history of dictatorship has only been exacerbated by Western statesmen refusing assistance to its democratically elected leader.
Considering overwhelming historical and current realities, just as evident as Africa’s economic subordination is the developed world’s indubitable role in perpetuating it. Critiques of extraction and ill-intended Western policies, then, cannot remain relegated to the colonial era. To rectify their ongoing role in preventing Africa’s economic growth, developed countries should empower rather than entrap African financial systems, encourage independent processing of African resources rather than enabling uncompensated outflows of the continent’s precious resources, and they should discipline multinational firms for tax evasion and business corruption rather than turning a blind eye to extraction and abuse of political and economic power. Modernity requires the same accountability as the past, and without it, the lives of over a billion Africans may never improve.
Image Credit: Ghana Gold Mine by Resource World is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
