Samir Amin: Industrialization & Agricultural Revolution

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

*****   Industrialization and the agricultural revolution

If the African continent as a whole has not yet embarked upon the
agricultural revolution, neither has it yet entered the industrial
age. Agricultural stagnation is not the consequence of forced
industrialization, as the World Bank argues against all the evidence,
but the corollary of a no less marked industrial stagnation.12...

...The World Bank report entitled 'accelerated Development in
Sub-Saharan Africa' is a fine example of this substitution of
Technical prescriptions' for analysis of the causes and roots of the
failure of African development.13

After the initial acknowledgement of the fact of the severe economic
backwardness of Africa in recent decades, the World Bank might have
been expected to offer an in-depth critique of the local social and
economic systems and world system of division of labour responsible
for the failure. Some kind of self-criticism too might have been
expected of the World Bank, which for 20 years has supported most of
the fundamental guidelines of the development under challenge. Not in
the least; the World Bank blames the failure entirely on the African
governments that had spurned agriculture and given industry too high
a priority! As if a rate of growth of 3.3% on a virtually nil base in
1960, and equaling only half the urban growth rate and only just
above the demographic growth rate, indicated some madcap
industrialization (especially as Africa's share in world industry
declined). Oddly enough and against all expectation, the World Bank
attributed this 'bias against agriculture' to a prejudice on the part
of foreign aid and the 'development theory'. We are on the contrary
conscious of the colonial prejudice of the 'exclusively agricultural
and mining role' of the African continent.

The strategy proposed by the Bank is perfectly summarized in page 4
of the report:

The internal 'structural' problems and the external factors impeding
African economic growth have been exacerbated by domestic policy
inadequacies... trade and exchange-rate policies have overprotected
industry, held back agriculture... public sectors frequently become
overextended...

After which the Bank suggests a strategy of readjustment to the
demands of the world system based on priority for agricultural and
mining exports, by the principal method of devaluation and the
restoration of a greater liberalism, combined with greater openness
to private enterprise. The carrot of doubling foreign aid in real
terms in the 1980s is held out to make these principles acceptable.
As is known nowadays, the 'readjustments' is imposed but foreign aid
declines!

If the words have any meaning this is an extraverted strategy of
adjustment to the demands of transnationalization, a strategy of
renouncing the construction of a diversified national and regional
economy capable through its dynamism of becoming a genuine partner in
the interdependent world system.

The analysis of the internal and external constraints is especially
disturbing. The chapter on basic constraints notes: underdeveloped
human resources, low productivity of agriculture and rapid
urbanization.

The rationale for underdevelopment of human resources is trivialized
to inadequate education. Infantile illusions are taken up in the
chapter on human resources, treated as an area of substantial
returns, without the authors of the report realizing that they are
measuring these returns by the tautological indicator based on a
comparison of rewards between graduates and illiterate! Education (in
its present form) is not necessarily the best investment, but is
definitely a means of differentiating classes and incomes... With no
consideration of the society's problems, with no changes to suggest,
the report is satisfied with proposing some minor tinkering to reduce
(very slightly) the costs of education in its present form.

The low productivity of agriculture in Africa is a platitude. What
the Bank report neglects to point out is that this low productivity
accompanying the extensive pattern of this agriculture has been and
is profitable from the point of view of the world system's division
of labour. In effect it allows the West to acquire raw materials
without having to invest. Transition to intensive agriculture, a
necessity of today, entails a rise in the world prices of these raw
materials if they are to be exported: land, along with oil or water,
is no longer 'limitless' but becoming a scarce resource.

The growth of urbanization is likewise a platitude. What the Bank
does not point out is that the rural exodus is the result of the
impoverishment of the countryside and that it cannot be held back
unless there is a transition to intensive agriculture requiring, in
turn, industrial backing and fair prices (not only the internal
prices but the world prices too if the output of this agriculture is
to be exported). What the Bank further fails to point out is that an
inadequate industrial growth (of 3.3% a year) can obviously not
absorb the urban growth. The Bank's talk of deterioration in the
services essential to urban life and the proposals for tinkering to
reduce costs here are in these circumstances nothing but empty talk
of pie in the sky.

The external factors are also treated superficially without analysis
as to their causes. Noting the worsening in the balance of payments
of the oil-importing countries in the region is no analysis of the
problem but only a proclamation. The Bank's analysis stops short at
the observation that the growth in quantity of exports has been
insufficient and low: from 7.2% annual growth in the 1960s to 2% for
the following decade in respect of mining output (excluding oil) and
from 4.6 to 0.7% in respect of agricultural output. It offers no
information as to the causes of these low figures: the world crisis
in demand, the encouragement of over-production in the Third World
(the Bank itself advises each country to diversify by producing what
it advises for the neighbour), the aims and strategies of the
multinationals in the mining sector ('shelving' of reserves) the
crisis in expansion of extensive agriculture....

12. Amin, Samir, Faire, Alexandre, and Malkin, Daniel, L'avenir
industrial de l'Afrique, Paris. Harmattan. 1981; various authors for
UNU, Crise des politiques d'industrialisation en Afrique. (in
preparation): Amin. Samir. 'L'économie politique de l'Afrique dans la
crise contemporaine' in Bourges, H, and Wauthier. C.. Les 50
Afriques, Paris, Seuil, 1979; Yachir, Faysal, Mining in Africa Today:
Strategies and Prospects, London, Zed Books, 1988; The World Steel
Industry Today, London, Zed Books. 1988.

13. Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for
Action, Washington D.C., World Bank, 1981. Cf. Amin, Samir, 'Critique
du rapport de la Banque Mondiale pour l'Afrique', Africa Development,
No. 1-2, 1982; 'Un développement autocentré est-il possible en
Afrique?' in Ahooja-Patel, Krishna, Drabek, Anne Gordon, and Nerfin,
Marc, World Economy in Transition: essays presented to Surendra Patel
on his 60th birthday. Oxford, Pergamon. 1986.

After this book was written, the World Bank produced a new report on
adjustment in Africa. This report is a little less arrogant than the
Berg report commented upon here; it pays lip service to the issue of
the 'social negative aspects' of adjustment. Yet it proceeds from the
same methodology and basically unscientific assumptions, which
disregard the polarizing dimension of actually existing capitalism,
ignoring therefore that these 'social negative aspects' are,
precisely, pan and parcel of the political rationale of the targets
of the adjustment.

<http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu32me/uu32me04.htm#industrialization
and the agricultural revolution>   *****

Yoshie