Foreign Aid and the Future of Africa

246 Pages·2018·2.17 MB·English

by  Kenneth Kalu

AFRICAN HISTORIES AND MODERNITIES
FOREIGN AID
AND THE FUTURE
OF AFRICA
Kenneth Kalu
African Histories and Modernities
Series Editors
Toyin Falola
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, TX, USA
Matthew M. Heaton
Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, USA
This book series serves as a scholarly forum on African contributions to and
negotiations of diverse modernities over time and space, with a particular
emphasis on historical developments. Specifically, it aims to refute the
hegemonic conception of a singular modernity, Western in origin, spreading
out to encompass the globe over the last several decades. Indeed, rather than
reinforcing conceptual boundaries or parameters, the series instead looks to
receive and respond to changing perspectives on an important but inherently
nebulous idea, deliberately creating a space in which multiple modernities
can interact, overlap, and conflict. While privileging works that emphasize
historical change over time, the series will also feature scholarship that blurs
the lines between the historical and the contemporary, recognizing the ways
in which our changing understandings of modernity in the present have the
capacity to affect the way we think about African and global histories.
Editorial Board
Aderonke Adesanya, Art History, James Madison University
Kwabena Akurang- Parry, History, Shippensburg University
Samuel O. Oloruntoba, History, University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Tyler Fleming, History, University of Louisville
Barbara Harlow, English and Comparative Literature, University of Texas
at Austin
Emmanuel Mbah, History, College of Staten Island
Akin Ogundiran, Africana Studies, University of North Carolina, Charlotte
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14758
Kenneth Kalu
Foreign Aid and the
Future of Africa
Kenneth Kalu
Ted Rogers School of Management
Ryerson University
Toronto, ON, Canada
African Histories and Modernities
ISBN 978-3-319-78986-6 ISBN 978-3-319-78987-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78987-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018941818
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and i nformation
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the
publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to
the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and
institutional affiliations.
Cover credit: robertharding / Alamy Stock Photo
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer
International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
To the love of my life, Ifeyinwa Kalu, and our children: Chidinma,
Chinenye, Ogechi, and Tobechi.
P
reface
It is pertinent to acknowledge that foreign aid to Africa has been help-
ful in ameliorating some of the debilitating consequences of poverty
and underdevelopment in the continent. In the public health arena, for
example, donor interventions have been especially helpful in managing
some of the preventable diseases that often ravage some communities in
African states. However, besides its role as a palliative for some of the
pains of poverty, foreign aid does not have the capacity to eradicate
poverty. This is because poverty is not caused by a lack of financial
resources. Rather, lack of financial resources is a consequence of pov-
erty. In effect, the observed financial constraint of majority of Africans –
a gap which donors would like to fill with foreign aid – is not the cause
of poverty and underdevelopment in the continent. By working on the
erroneous assumption that giving more money and materials to African
countries would help to eradicate poverty, donors and others who share
in this belief are erroneously mixing up causality and consequence.
Consequently, donors and development analysts who evaluate the
effectiveness of foreign aid in eradicating or curbing poverty, are
engaged in the wrong enterprise. In its present design, foreign aid can-
not, and indeed does not have the capacity to eradicate poverty in Africa
or elsewhere in the developing world.
In order to fight poverty, the most appropriate approach is to target the
root causes of poverty. A thorough analysis of Africa’s political economy
reveals that the biggest challenge to Africa’s development is the structure
of the African state, and the nature of the political and economic institutions
vii
viii PREFACE
prevalent in the region. What obtains in most of Africa are predatory states
and extractive institutions that are neither developmental nor inclusive. It
is the preponderance of these extractive institutions that has perpetually
blocked the opportunities of majority of Africans from meaningful partici-
pation in the economy. It is also extractive political and economic institu-
tions that support corruption, divert energies and resources to
non- productive ventures, and provide incentives for agents (including
political leaders) to embrace choices that destroy, instead of enhance soci-
ety’s welfare. The future of Africa therefore rests, not on advocating for
more foreign aid, but on confronting the structural impediments that have
made the African state an inhibitor instead of a facilitator of growth and
development.
Given the predatory structure of the average African state, it is highly
unlikely that the transfer of cash and other materials to the continent in
the form of aid would change the poverty levels among the general popu-
lation. To become an effective instrument in the fight against poverty,
foreign aid and other forms of development assistance should focus prin-
cipally on restructuring and transforming the African states into agents of
development. It is important to emphasize that external assistance is
required to create developmental states in Africa, because domestic actors
on the continent may not have the capacity to effectively confront the tiny
elites who have selfishly dominated the politics and economies of African
states over the course of most of the continent’s postcolonial history.
Toronto, ON, Canada Kenneth Kalu
c
ontents
1 Introduction: Foreign Aid and Poverty in Africa 1
2 The Postcolonial African State Revisited 23
3 Africa in the Global Community 43
4 The Structure of Foreign Aid to Africa Since the 1960s 59
5 Foreign Aid to Africa: How Far and How Well? 83
6 Targeting the Fundamentals: Towards a New Form
of Development Assistance to Africa 109
7 Development Assistance Redesigned 145
8 The State and Economic Development 167
9 Explaining Africa’s Underdevelopment 193
10 Conclusion 215
Index 229
ix
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Foreign Aid
and Poverty in Africa
Foreign aid has been a major feature of the political economy of postcolo-
nial Africa.1 Through several multilateral and bilateral initiatives, the
industrialized nations have supported Africa’s development effort in vari-
ous ways. Foreign aid2 has included direct cash transfers, grants, gifts of
materials, and technical support among others, from overseas charitable
organizations, industrialized countries and multilateral institutions. The
principal aim of these forms of support has been to help African states to
deal with the perennial development challenges that have spelt poverty,
diseases and misery for the majority of Africans. Although African states
have received a huge volume of aid over the past few years, most of the
continent’s development challenges persist, and poverty continues to tor-
ment majority of the citizens.3
It is important to acknowledge at the beginning that Africa is made up
of 54 different countries which vary widely in terms of the systems of
government, cultures, histories and economic arrangements. Such differ-
ences exist even within Sub-Saharan Africa – the main focus of this book.
However, despite these differences, there are a number of commonalities
across these countries, making them readily amenable to similar broad cat-
egorizations. While acknowledging the unique features of the respective
countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, our views are largely consistent with those
of Crawford Young,4 who asserted that Africa is a region of the world that
can rightly be subjected to common analysis largely due to the conti-
nent’s similar, even unique histories and their mode of state formation.
© The Author(s) 2018 1
K. Kalu, Foreign Aid and the Future of Africa, African Histories
and Modernities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78987-3_1