Taking into consideration the broader sub-Saharan region, which is less industrialized, in the first instance it is necessary for peasants, who constitute the core of the private sector, to become the real owners of their primary asset - land. (Pictured: Moletsi Mbeki)
Until this happens there will be no change in the trend towards rampant deforestation and accelerating desertification. In order to reverse this process, freehold land tenure must be introduced and the so-called communal land-tenure system, which is, in reality, state land ownership, must be abolished. Secondly, peasant producers must gain direct access to world markets without the political elite, through state corporations, acting as the go-between.
This means that internationally traded cash crops – coffee, tea, cotton, sugar, cocoa, rubber, and so on – must be auctioned by the producers themselves rather than being sold first to state-controlled marketing boards. Another important and necessary innovation is new financial institutions independent of the political elite that will address the financial needs not
only of peasants but also of other small-to medium-scale producers. These institutions could be co-operatives, credit unions or savings banks. Besides providing financial services they would undertake technical services, which are currently not being provided by the political elite, such as crop research, extension services, livestock improvement, storage, transportation and distribution, all of which would contribute to making agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa more productive.
It is in this area that foreign donors could play a constructive role – supporting these independent institutions by providing the expertise to manage them and, to some extent, helping to shield them from predators. Such changes would, for the first time, bring into being in Africa a capitalist market economy that is responsive to the real needs of African producers and consumers. Before independence capitalism in Africa promoted the interests of colonialist; since independence it has promoted those ofthe parasitic political elites that control the state and believe that their survival is threatened by the emergence of an independent middle and professional class.
If Nepad is to contribute to Africa’s economic development it should help to redesign the continent’s political economy so that it promotes the interests of producers instead of those of the rent-seeking elites. Sub-Saharan Africa could draw an important lesson from the agricultural reforms that have taken place in China in the past 25 years or so, which have made it possible for that country to embark on its current breakneck industrialization process. The breakthrough came with the recognition by the Chinese communists that the state alone could not industrialise the country. The government therefore opened the space for the emergence of an independent private sector driven by the middle and professional classes.
Excerpt from Architects of Poverty: Why Africas Capitalism needs Changing by Moeletsi Mbeki.?EAN: 9781770101616
Post published in: Opinions