Drs. Camillus D. N. Kassala:
The recent tenth edition of the 2011 *African Economic Outlook* claims to
find that the African continent is on the rebound and expects its growth
performance in the next years to resume at pre-crisis levels. The focus of
this 2011 Outlook is Africa’s Emerging Economic Partnerships, presenting a
comprehensive review of Africa’s expanding economic relations with outside
the continent that until very recently did not belong to the club of
traditional “donors”, the OECD Development Assistance Committee. Africa, it
claims, benefits not only from the visible direct interactions with large
emerging countries – investment, trade, aid – but also from the
macroeconomic, political and strategic advantages that their rise has
produced. These claims raise one fundamental and critical question: Why is
it that development initiatives specifically intended for the African
countries, whether by Africans or non-Africans, have yet to deliver? For
example, since 1980, several strategies have emerged to put Africa on the
right footing with regard to development. Examples of notable initiatives
are:
· The 1980 Lagos Plan of Action for the period 1980-2000
· The 1986 Africa’s Priority Programme for Economic Recovery for the
period 1986-1990
· The 1989 African Alternative Framework to SAP for Socio-economic
Recovery and Transformation
· The 1989 World Bank’s SSA : From Crisis to Sustainable Growth
· The 1990 African Charter for Popular Participation for Development
· The 1991 UN New Agenda for Development of Africa
Despite these efforts, by 2002 Africa still fell short of the Millennium
Development Goals and the targeted 7% annual GDP growth! For that reason two
more initiatives came in to advance development in Africa, namely the
African Renaissance and NEPAD. While the former stresses the need to revive
all the good values that made Africa great in the past, the latter has quite
ambitious goals, which – interestingly – would help to make Africa happy:
accelerated growth and sustainable development, eradication of widespread
and severe poverty, and halting marginalization of Africa in the
globalisation process; and all this by 2015! Will these initiatives
contribute towards making Africa happy, i.e. in terms of peace,
belongingness, better living conditions for all, sharing convictions of
justice and fairness? But how will Africa develop the necessary conditions
for this kind of happiness?
Does the answer lie in the newly introduced concept of ‘market social
economy’ now being proposed? The answer is ‘yes, but…’. The ‘but’ part of
the answer qualifies the understanding and application of the concept of
‘social market economy’ in an African context. During a conference on “An
African Perspective on the Social Market Economy”, September 2010 in Berlin,
H.E. John A. Kufuor, former President of Ghana, described the Social Market
Economy “as promoting the values of competitiveness and profitability while
at the same time advocating the moderating influences of state regulatory
authority to ensure that the interests of the ordinary citizen within it are
not overwhelmed by the profit-seeking tendencies of the former”. The
qualifying phrase in that statement is ‘the interests of the ordinary
citizen’.
Ordinary citizens in Africa, it can be argued, have not yet developed enough
competitiveness and profitability acumen to be able to live a reasonable
economic life. So much so, that one wonders whether Africa is at that stage
of history, culture and development to benefit from the *international
social market economy *arrangement. Certain crucial questions need to be
addressed: ‘What kind of hermeneutic key of interpretation and strategy for
the implementation of the concept of ‘social market economy’ does Africa
need? Are African nations given the necessary international structural
space in order to balance state and society, public policy and private
enterprise, state power and individuals freedom, the public good and the
private good?”
As inhabitants of the poorest continent on the earth, Africans cannot rely
on the logic of an economic theory which is based purely on empiricism and
positivism. As a theoretical category ‘poverty’ has now taken on ethical or
moral dimensions. This ‘poverty status’ in Africa makes economics in Africa
very much a matter of ethics, and as long as socio-economic and ecological
injustice prevails in Africa, any attempt to deal with them have to use
ethical or moral categories of both socio-economic justice and ecological
justice.
In his speech, Kufuor urged the African states to develop an African Model
of the Social Market Economy. This article, previously presented as a paper
at an international colloquium on cooperation and solidarity between
Tanzania and Germany’s Konrad Adenaur Stiftung, attempts to propose a
people-centered African Model of the Social Market economy. This model is
hinged on the following ‘African-life’ centered criteria. These criteria
emanate from the logic of the Ubuntu/ujamaa (Afro-centric) perspective. The
perspective consists of that mentality and way of relating which are
manifested by the human and African people’s characteristics of generosity,
consideration and humane-ness towards others in the community/extended
family; i.e. a person becomes a person *through the people* or community. As
Archbishop Desmond Tutu once put it:
“ *A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of
others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or
she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs
in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or
diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.*
The criteria are as follows:
· Equity as basic fairness that also extends to other life forms.
· Accountability as the structuring of responsibility towards one
another, the community and the earth itself.
· Participation as the optimal inclusion of all involved.
· Sufficiency as a commitment to meet the basic needs of all life.
· Subsidiarity as determining the most appropriate level for
decision making while supporting a downward distribution of power.
A careful reading of these criteria will show that these criteria reflect
and are pinned upon the very African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
The Charter recognizes most of what are regarded universally accepted civil
and political rights. The civil and political rights recognised in the
Charter include the right to freedom from
discrimination
2 and 18(3)), equality (Article 3), life and personal integrity
(Article 4), dignity (Article 5), freedom from slavery (Article 5), freedom
from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Article 5), rights
to due process concerning arrest and detention (Article 6), the right to a
fair trial
and 25), freedom of
religion
freedom
of information and
expression
freedom
of association
10), freedom to assembly (Article 11), freedom
of movement
freedom to political
participation
13), and the right
to property
Of more significance, however, the Charter also recognizes certain economic,
social and cultural rights. The Charter recognizes right to
work
right
to health
the right to education
a decision by the African Commission on Human and
Peoples’ Rights, SERAC v Nigeria (2001), the Charter is also understood to
include a right to housing
to food
In addition to recognising the individual rights mentioned above the Charter
also recognizes collective (communitarian) or group
rights
or peoples’ rights
As such the Charter recognizes group rights to a degree not matched by the
European or Inter-American regional human rights instruments. The Charter
awards the family protection by the state (Article 18), while “peoples” have
the right to equality (Article 19), the right to
self-determination
20), to freely dispose of their wealth and national resources
(Article 21), the right to
development
22), the right to peace and security (Article 23) and “a generally
satisfactory environment” (Article 24).
On the other hand, the Charter not only awards rights to individuals and
peoples, but also includes duties
recognize include those towards the family
and state security, the duties to pay taxes, and to promote the achievement
of African unity (Article 29). Article 27(2), which is included under the
heading “duties”, provides “The rights and freedoms of each individual shall
be exercised with due regards to the rights of others, collective security,
morality and common interest”.
Therefore, in the light of the argument put forward above, if the social
market economy is to work in Africa, it really has to be democratic
(=people-centred) in all the classical aspects of the concept of *democracy.
*Economically speaking, this would mean* -* all the resources of the economy
are *of *the people (legally belonging to the people), the economy investing
and producing wealth *with *the people, and the economy serving and caring*for
* the people. For this to happen, the following preconditions or
conditionalities have to be fulfilled:
1. The *objective of any economy* is the *creation of material and
cultural prerequisites which have to enable individuals and social groups to
develop consistently with human dignity*, since human beings are the
source, the center and the purpose of all socio-economic life.
2. The *social market economy should avoid certain temptations* to make
it caring and liberative. These temptations are: *(i) exaggerated
economic rationality;* *(ii) blind obedience to technocratic efficiency;*
*(iii) unrestrained profit making* for a maximal material happiness; (iv)
*excessively suggestive advertisements *which mislead human imagination *at
the expense of* the cultivation of *intellectual and spiritual values.*
3. While respecting the autonomy of technical processes and economic
laws, the social market economy should take its *proper position* in the
sequence of African human life objectives. *Above economic objectives
there are the following African life objectives:-*
1. *Freedom and dignity of the African person and his/her community;*
2. *Authentic values of marriage and of the extended family;*
3. *African traditional religion and morality;*
4. *African cultural and intellectual values.*
* *
1. Any economic system, including *the social market economy, should not
strive at technical or technological progress and economic or scientific
rationalization, at the expense of the African values regarding the person
and the family. *Striving at scientific or economic progress in that
manner will plunge our African society into a moral chaos because of the
resultant clash between African *humanity *and* Western technology.*
2. The Western form of *social market economy is neither completely
self-sufficient nor sufficiently capable to solve basic African human
problems*; this is because its mechanism is not culturally capable of
regulating the underlying economic affairs, e.g. *spreading justly and
widely the national wealth, ensuring economic growth undisturbed by global
and regional cyclical crises, overcoming unemployment, integral development
and protection of the African eco-system, *and* the resolution of
political conflicts*. This means there is a need for clearly defined
policy or rationale of necessary *state involvement* in African economic
affairs.
3. *No economic system*, including the social market economy, *in Africa
can succeed without those social institutions* which are *necessary for
the care of all problems and hazards of life*, which even the social
market mechanism cannot remedy. Examples of such problems and hazards are
*wars, natural calamities, illness and diseases, invalidity, old age,
famine, etc.* There is, therefore, *the need for inclusive social
security and social protection schemes* that would ensure equitable and
fair distribution of the national wealth.
4. *No economic system is morally justifiable *if it encourages technical
or economic progress *at the expense of the bio-sphere or
eco-system,*i.e. by damaging the physico-chemical foundations of life
on earth. Hence,
African economists are morally responsible to arouse and strengthen the
feeling of responsibility among all individuals and African people about the
African natural environment. Both African economists and African
technological scientists are morally bound to answer the questions as to how
devastation and pollution of the environment can be curbed.
5. The *social market economy in Africa should, *by all intents and
purposes, *avoid the temptation of the creation of centers of power,
monopoly or cartels*. These are abominable because they harm the African
nations, they are an attack on universal freedoms, and because they are
usurpers since they illegitimately make themselves the originators of
commodity prices.
6. Because of the international or intraregional mobility of labour and
the spread of the multinational corporations, *the problem of
unemployment is no longer an intra-national phenomenon* because it has
already been internationalized. Hence, any policies arising from the social
market economy, which do not consider humane measures to combat unemployment
intra-regionally will be morally responsible for the consequences of the
critical policies of *the role of indirect (often international)
employer, i.e. the fabric or network of national and international agencies
or corporations which are responsible for the whole implementation of
national and international labour policies and regulations.*
7. Capital and labour should not be separated at all the stages of the
economic process, if the social market economic system is to be justified,
and if the logic of human rights is to be followed to its final conclusion.
The rationale for human rights is based on *the primacy of human beings
over capital.* Hence, there are two *ways to mitigate the contradictions
or conflicts between capital and labour* which are very common in Africa:
i. *African
management and trade unions should hold negotiations on the basis of
socio-economic justice* and on the basis of building African solidarity, and
not for the sake of group-interested confrontation.
ii. *African
employees should be encouraged and invited in the planning and formation of
capital,* this will enable a widespread of private wealth which would in
turn make it easy to spread widely both the capacity and propensity to save.
1. It is *an African principle that the order of things must serve the
order of persons. *We even say in Kiswahili “utu ni bora kuliko vitu”.
Literally this means “Humanity is better than material things”. The
implication of this principle is that *profitability and cost-savings
should not be valued more than those who participate in effecting those
economic values. *Why take more care in servicing the non-human economic
machinery than in servicing the African human person who operates that
machinery?
2. Today, globally speaking, no nation can speak of itself as
self-sufficient, least of all any African nation. But today, highly
industrialized countries of the West and the multinational corporations keep
down prices of African raw materials or commodities to exploit African weak
nations or to abuse their economic power. The most powerful sign for this
state of affairs is the *international debt situation.* *No international
economic or trade system is morally and politically justifiable if it is not
a system which guarantees for the marginal peoples a share of the global
economic assets*. According to the United Nations Charter, service to the
common good stretches to the entire planet by making sure that promotion of
international justice is through a preferential option for the poor
inhabitants of this global village.
*The author is a co-opted research fellow of the Interfaith
(BAKWATA/CCT/TEC) Standing Committee for Socioeconomic Justice and Integrity
of Creation. *