The African Continental Free Trade Area Obeng‐Odoom, Franklin
The American journal of economics and sociology,
January 2020, 2020-01-00, 20200101, Volume:
79, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Monopolies continue to dominate world trade by controlling global production and distribution chains. Neither free trade nor fair trade has transformed this system; the recent rise in nativism and ...pseudo‐protectionism has not, and cannot, address these problems either. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), the largest free trade area in the world, promises to be different. AfCFTA rejects classical, neoclassical, and Marxist theories of trade, appealing, instead, to non‐aligned pan‐Africanism. It advocates continental free trade as a way to overcome the lingering effects of slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism. However, its exclusive focus on continental Africa, its disinterest in systemic redistribution, and encouragement of the private appropriation of socially created land rents prevents AfCFTA from achieving its goals. In fact, AfCFTA might actually foster inequality—progress alongside of poverty—and in so doing, undermine the very essence of this trade regime. What Henry George (1886) called “true free trade,” a theory based on making land common by socializing land rent, offers a more promising and powerful model through which to achieve the pan‐African agenda. Indeed, only true free trade can definitively decolonize global trade.
The ‘Scramble for Africa’ has historically been a concept used to describe the plunder of Africa by colonial powers, their subsequent economic capture of African resources, their political control ...and their racial domination of Africans. But, in recent times, many writers have pointed to Chinese ‘Scramble for Africa’. Of these depictions, The Economist’s has been both categorical and relentless. But is the set of relationships between China and African countries imperial? Does it amount to a Chinese ‘Scramble for Africa’? If so, what can be done; if not, why not? Neither content nor institutional analyses of 27 stories, sampled from 132 issues of The Economist from 2019 to 2021, show conclusive evidence that the relationship between China and Africa is imperial. Evidence of African indebtedness to China, Chinese opaque resource transactions in Africa, and the controlling effect of China’s Belt and Road Initiative typically emphasised by The Economist is serious. But it does not amount to economic plunder, political control, military destabilisation or racial domination. The Economist’s characterisation of China–Africa relations reflects wider processes of Westernisation. Its features include the use of mainstream economic analysis, (mis)representation of the Global South to maintain Western hegemony and inhibiting Southern struggle to break the Western chokehold on global development. As an elite newspaper, The Economist’s ‘frame analysis’ not only presents news, but also produces views that caricature Global South agendas, especially those that threaten Western liberalism and imperialism.
Progress in analysing the instrumental view of governance as an engine for growth, poverty reduction, and inclusive development has been held back by the difficulty in framing governance. This essay ...seeks to address this problem by 1) reframing urban governance 2) evaluating its aims, processes, and outcomes, and 3) explaining those outcomes on the basis of which some lessons are teased out. Using examples from Africa and an institutional political economy approach (based on institutional economics, Marxist political economics, Georgist political economics, and Polanyian political economy), I show that, overall, while urban economies are growing; both urban poverty and inequality levels have risen substantially. Urban governance has paved the way for new forms of urban development that only benefit the few. Not only are there differences in how urban services and resources are experienced, accessed, and controlled but the varieties are also socially differentiated. I argue that the underlying reasons for this disjuncture between “urban governance” in theory and “actually existing urban governance” are 1) difficulties in implementing urban governance theory consistently in practice, 2) problems arising because urban governance theory has been implemented in practice, 3) tensions that would entangle most policies which do not address historical and structural economic issues, 4) restrictive assumptions, and 5) incoherence among the different dimensions of urban governance. To resolve these contradictions, I put the case for major structural and institutional change involving: 1) the re‐ordering of the roles of the state, market, and society as institutions of change; 2) re‐working the relationships that bind together land, labour, capital, and the state, and 3) re‐organising the channels for keeping the attainment of the ends of urban governance in check.
ABSTRACT
Is mainstream economics only about growth, efficiency, and sustainability? Many critics contend so, but the recent state of the art in economics suggests not. Respectively drawing on ...reformist neoclassical economics, neoclassical microeconomics “proper,” and behavioral economics, major studies show that mainstream economics provides theories of inequality and unsustainability. However, the theories of causation utilized remain largely neoclassical. Similarly, the bases for repairing the harms are grounded in neoclassical reasoning, while the mechanisms for restoration—ranging from minimalist interventions and income and substitution effects to behavioral nudges—are still mainstream. Fundamentally, they say little or nothing substantial about ecological imperialism, at the heart of which are rent theft and ecological debt, two critical cornerstones of world ecological crises. Therefore, mainstream economists certainly have, use, and apply theories of inequality and unsustainability, but mainstream economists neither have, use, nor apply transformative theories of social stratification, nor ecological imperialism generally. The overall effect of this disconnect from real‐world ecological crises is not simply that conventional environmental policies are incomplete, but that mainstream economics and conventional policies deflect attention from ecological imperialism behind veils of rhetoric, prices, and behaviors.
Oil Cities in Africa: Beyond Just Transition Obeng‐Odoom, Franklin
The American journal of economics and sociology,
March 2021, 2021-03-00, 20210301, Volume:
80, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Nations and NGOs are promoting the idea of a transition from a petroleum‐based civilization to one fueled by renewable energy. But there are many questions about how to proceed. The solution usually ...proposed is to develop “clean energy” as the underlying basis of a transition. Analysts tend to be concerned with climate change and land use change, with a focus on technical developments. Socio‐ecological issues receive scant attention, especially if they relate to oil cities. This article starts from the perspective that progress in saving the planet from destruction can only be achieved by taking seriously past and present injustices and taking measures to rectify them. I use the situation in Port Harcourt, Nigeria to illustrate this proposition. I focus on three interrelated concepts: rent theft, social costs, and just transition. The central problem is rent theft because it is at the root of the “crime of poverty” and the social costs of plundering the land for energy sources. Until they address problems arising from historical injustice, campaigns for a just transition that promote clean energy in a bioeconomy will merely reproduce the central problem. Thus, reparations and land equity must be an integral part of any solution.
Building communities is one way to limit inequality in the global development process. In Indonesia, that principle can best be illustrated in the Hindu Balinese compound. But does discrimination ...against women, especially those of lower class and caste, fundamentally undermine the community? Feminists contend so, but what is the nature of the pressure on Balinese women? Why is this experienced? How could this discrimination be resolved? Drawing on a wider intersectional feminism, primary data from 72 people and thematic analysis, it seems both the reproductive and property rights of Balinese women are constrained. But ordinary Balinese women, activists, and intellectuals do not share the Western feminist case of dismantling communities for individual human rights. Instead, Balinese people largely advocate Hindu community alternatives, at the heart of which is strengthening the institution of ‘nyentana’. This alternative helps to decolonize “gender,” and reproductive justice, while putting the case for studying social economics a bit more in development studies.
Economic Insanity Obeng‐Odoom, Franklin
The American journal of economics and sociology,
March 2021, 2021-03-00, 20210301, Volume:
80, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Richard Giles, a leading Australian Georgist political economist, suggests that criticisms of mainstream economics can be reduced to three: neglect of the Physiocrats, rejection of Georgist political ...economy, and the attempted revival of Georgist land economics with faulty variants of those principles. Yet, in defending Georgism, Giles fails to show it can resolve the legacies of chattel slavery, colonialism, and neocolonialism. Despite that limitation, Giles shows that the renewal of land economics is essential to achieving economic justice. Along the way, Giles provides original insights about the limitations of modern monetary theory, the Malthusian economics of global migration, and the rise of global nationalism.
Transnational corporations (TNCs) in Africa play significant roles in controlling utilities, privately appropriating common resources, and planning urban space. On the one hand, the extralegal powers ...of TNCs are legitimized with patronizing discourses about the incompetence of African nations in managing their own affairs and with the specter of a "resource curse" that supposedly immobilizes the self-governing capacities of Africans. On the other hand, TNCs arrogate to themselves statutory municipal power, ignore or manipulate various channels of accountability, and privately appropriate sociallycreated rents. Some critics of TNCs propose a withdrawal from globalization or greater regulation to limit the power of TNCs. But protectionist or isolationist approaches are entirely mistaken and further undermine the social management of the commons in Africa. Instead, Africans should seek directly to break the chains of monopoly and oligopoly, especially over natural resources. They should also strive to use land for the common good and to systematically build social states in Africa to overcome subservience to TNCs. While previous attempts at autonomous development in Africa have sometimes led to military action by former colonizers and current neo-colonial imperialists, recent evidence from Africa suggests that such a strategy might succeed now. This article proposes to extend the politics of urban reform in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era in the United States to contemporary Africa. In doing so, it shows how African cities today are working to create local capacity by municipalizing services that have been privatized, such as distribution of water. Despite many obstacles posed by TNCs and their home governments, Africans are making great strides to overcome the enduring legacies of colonialism.
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