Review of African Political Economy

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Dependency redux: why Africa is not rising

Ian Taylor

To cite this article: Ian Taylor (2016) Dependency redux: why Africa is not rising, Review of
African Political Economy, 43:147, 8-25, DOI: 10.1080/03056244.2015.1084911

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Review of African Political Economy, 2016
Vol. 43, No. 147, 8 –25, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2015.1084911

Dependency redux: why Africa is not rising

∗
Ian Taylora,b
a
School of International Relations, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK; bDepartment of
Political Science, University of Stellenbosch, Stellenbosch, South Africa

Whilst numerous accounts claim that the continent is on the rise, driven by high growth
rates and supposed better governance and economic policies, Africa’s dependent
position in the global economy is being reified. This article seeks to analyse the
dynamics which are accompanying a notional ‘rise’ of Africa but which are actually
contributing to the continent being pushed further and further into underdevelopment
and dependency. It calls into question the superficial accounts of a continent on the
move or that declare that the continent has somehow turned a definitive page in its
history. A ‘rise’ based on an intensification of resource extraction whilst dependency
deepens, inequality increases and de-industrialisation continues apace, cannot be
taken seriously. A model based on growth-for-growth’s sake has replaced
development and the agenda of industrialisation and moving Africa up the global
production chain has been discarded. Instead, Africa’s current ‘comparative
advantage’ as a primary commodity exporter is celebrated and reinforced. History
repeats itself.
Keywords: Africa; growth; development

[« Le retour de la dépendance » : pourquoi l’Afrique ne croı̂t pas.] Alors que de

nombreux récits affirment que le continent est en croissance, tiré par des taux de
croissance élevés ainsi qu’une gouvernance et des politiques économiques supposées
plus efficaces, la position de dépendance de l’Afrique vis-à-vis de l’économie
mondiale est réifiée. Cet article tente d’analyser les dynamiques qui accompagnent
une « croissance » notionnelle de l’Afrique mais qui poussent en fait le continent
vers plus de sous-développement et de dépendance. Ceci remet en question les récits
superficiels d’un continent en mouvement ou qui déclare que le continent a tourné en
quelque sorte une page définitive de son histoire. Une « croissance » basée sur
l’intensification de l’extraction des ressources alors que la dépendance se renforce, les
inégalités augmentent et la désindustrialisation se poursuit rapidement, ne peut pas
être prise au sérieux. Un modèle basé sur l’intérêt de la croissance pour la croissance
a remplacé le développement, et le programme d’industrialisation et d’intégration aux
chaines de production mondiales a été abandonné. Au lieu de cela, « l’avantage
comparatif » actuel de l’Afrique en tant qu’exportateur de produits de base primaires
est célébré et renforcé. L’histoire se répète.
Mots-clés : Afrique ; croissance ; développement

Barely a week passes without some new official report, media article or conference eulogis-
ing the continent and its growth figures: Africa is now the ‘rising star’ (The Economist,
December 3, 2011). We are living in ‘Africa’s moment’ (Severino and Ray 2010), where
it is ‘Africa’s turn’ (Miguel 2009). In this new world, ‘Africa emerges’ (Rotberg 2013),

∗
Email: ict@st-and.ac.uk

# 2015 ROAPE Publications Ltd

 Review of African Political Economy 9

moving from ‘darkness to destiny’ (Clarke 2012), ‘leading the way’ (Radelet 2010) to a
situation where ‘Africa will rule the twenty-first century’ (African Business, January
2013), or at a minimum ‘is likely to make the twenty-first century its own’ (Economic Com-
mission on Africa 2012, 1). ‘The Next Asia Is Africa’ (French 2012) as it is ‘The Ultimate
Frontier Market’ (Matean 2012) because it is based on an ‘African Growth Miracle’ (Young
2012). Consequently, ‘Business conferences are filled with frothy talk of African lions over-
taking Asian tigers’ (The Economist, March 2, 2013). With a recent book on ‘the story
behind Africa’s economic revolution’ having a quasi-Superman springing from the conti-
nent on its front cover (Robertson 2012), ‘It’s time for Africa’ (Ernst and Young 2011).
All of this is hinged on Africa’s gross domestic product (GDP) figures, which saw an
average continental growth of 5.6% between 2002 and 2008, making Africa the second
fastest-growing continent in the world (Economic Commission on Africa 2012, 11 – 14).
Mainstream analysts seem to be satisfied with GDP as the marker to measure progress, dis-
missive of even notions about the quality of growth.
However, beyond the growth figures, ongoing dynamics are actually deepening Africa’s
dependent position in the global economy (Sylla 2014). This article seeks to analyse the
dynamics which are accompanying a notional ‘rise’ of Africa but which are actually con-
tributing to the continent being pushed further and further into underdevelopment and
dependency (Rodney 2012). It calls into question the superficial accounts of a continent
on the move or that declare that the continent has somehow turned a definitive page in
its history. As such, it is not interested in the breathless accounts of new shopping malls,
mobile phones and the consumption of imported products (all paid for by credit) that
some think indicate a rising Africa. Instead, this article insists on the importance of exam-
ining Africa’s ‘structural location within the world economy, export commodity depen-
dence and . . . de-industrialisation, unemployment and agricultural stagnation’ (Bush
2013, 53). In doing so, it insists that the productive potential of Africa, its development
and structural transformation are inhibited by the present configurations of global and dom-
estic economies and societies (Saul 2009, 45).

Africa’s political economy

Whilst the situation depends on national context, ‘[a]s a result of their colonial legacy, the
present-day economies of the African countries are characterised by a lop-sided dependence
on the export of raw materials, and the import of manufactured goods’ (Harris 1975, 12).
That this assessment was written nearly 40 years ago and there has not been any radical
departure from such a milieu for most countries reflect the failure of much of Africa’s
post-colonial states to transform their economies. Currently, of the 49 countries in sub-
Saharan Africa (SSA), 11 rely entirely on a single commodity for 50% of export earnings
and nearly three-quarters of countries rely on three commodities for 50% or more of export
earnings (World Bank 2013a, 9).
Commodity dependence is typically measured by the share of export earnings of the top
single commodity (or top three export commodities) in GDP, in total merchandise exports
and in total agriculture exports. The percentage of people occupied in commodity pro-
duction or the share in government revenue accruing from commodities are also important
measurements (South Centre 2005). Assessing tendencies in the share of primary commod-
ities in total exports for the period 1995 –2009, which coincides with the notion that Africa
was ‘rising’, demonstrates that the share of primary commodities in total exports rose pre-
cipitously between 2000 and 2009. The UNDP comments that during this period, ‘Africa –
the region most dependent on primary commodity exports throughout the period – became
10 I. Taylor

even more commodity-dependent’ (UNDP 2011, 60). The latest African Economic
Outlook notes that: ‘Fuels and mining products [dominate] African merchandise exports,
accounting for 69.5% of total exports’ (African Development Bank 2014, 75). Yet The
Economist insists that we are witnessing ‘The twilight of the resource curse’ for Africa
(January 10, 2015).
When discussing the narrative surrounding the idea of ‘Africa Rising’, it is fruitful to
note the difference between structural and superficial features of Africa’s economies. The
superficial features can be identified in the GDP figures, prices, debt levels and exchange
etc. ‘The structural features are, however, less apparent and more profound: Africa’s chan-
ging place in the effective international division of labour’ (Shaw 1985, 63, emphasis in
original). There is little indication to propose that Africa’s structural profile is rising or
that the continent is going through even the birth-pangs of any structural transformation.
As is quite apparent, most African economies are integrated into the global economy in
ways that are generally unfavourable to the continent and ensure structural dependence,
depending on two production systems which determine the continent’s structures and
define its place in the global system. These are, namely, the export of tropical agricultural
products: coffee, cocoa, cotton, peanuts, fruits, oil palm etc.; and oil and minerals such as
copper, gold, rare metals, diamonds etc. (Amin 2011, 30). Such a dependence on basic com-
modities has profound implications for household welfare (Lederman and Porto 2014). Yet
this is ignored and growth in GDP has been the central focus of commentaries that pre-
viously arrogantly wrote off a billion people as the ‘the hopeless continent’ (The Economist,
May 13, 2000) and now proclaim ‘A hopeful continent’ (The Economist, March 2, 2013).
Such a mood swing in some quarters is due, directly or indirectly, to the cumulative
global demand for the continent’s resources, notably oil, but also gas, minerals and other
energy sources. This was driven, above all, by the emergence of China and other emerging
economies whose late industrialisation powered a global commodity price boom (Taylor
2014). The flip-flop regarding the continent has, to a certain extent, refuted the familiar
media images of fly-blown children that so dominate many representations of Africa.
This is a good thing. Yet equally, the narrative has swung almost entirely in the opposite
direction, with little critical reflection. Growths in GDP and opportunities for investors
are the new intonations in a crude binary construction of Africa that has shifted almost over-
night from basket case to bonanza.
This of course is not to write off the recent growth as devoid of any value at all, although it
has tended to be concentrated in select countries. For instance, there is growing investment in
infrastructure (McKinsey Global Institute 2010). Given that there is a correlation ‘between
infrastructure and export diversification, and the current low levels and distorted compo-
sition of exports from SSA are partly due to poor trade infrastructure’, it can be stated that
the improvement in infrastructure ‘has per se a positive impact on SSA growth and trade
capacity’ (Sindzingre 2013, 44). Africa’s debts are at an historic low, partly thanks to the
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative and the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative,
although note that debt levels are again rising in Africa. ‘Long term domestic and inter-
national commercial borrowing was forecast to rise by about 50% in 2014’ and the World
Bank warns that the eight African countries to have borrowed fastest since receiving debt
relief could within a decade be back to pre-debt relief debt stock levels (Adams 2015, 4).1
In social sectors, performance is mixed but improvements in the years of schooling, life
expectancy at birth and other indicators have been recorded. These are all obviously to be
hailed.
However, it is a contention of this article that there is a desperate need to translate the
growth into structural change, expressed as an increase in the share of industry or services in
 Review of African Political Economy 11

the economy, or as the broadening and sophistication of exports or as the move of workers
from low labour productivity sectors to those with high labour productivity (Sindzingre
2013, 26). This is not happening. Instead, the historical process of underdevelopment is
being further ingrained.
Indeed, the ‘Africa Rising’ discourse neglects a most fundamental context:

only for nine of the forty three [Sub-Saharan] countries were growth rates during 1980–2008
high enough to double per capita income in less than thirty years, and only sixteen in less than
one hundred years. Performance would have been considerably worse had it not been for the
brief years of relatively rapid growth in the mid-2000s. (Weeks 2010, 3).

Africa needs to grow at least 7% a year for the next 20 or 30 years if any serious tackling of
continental poverty is to be realised. However, growth induced by commodity prices
increases, new discoveries of natural resources or increase in sources of foreign capital
‘is simply not sustainable’ (Amoako 2011, 24).
What GDP growth that has occurred is overwhelmingly characterised by the deploy-
ment and inflow of capital-intensive investment for the extraction and exportation of
natural resources. There is a conspicuous lack of value added on the African side. In late
2012, the Deputy Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa noted
that the relatively good economic growth performance over the past decade had been
driven mostly by non-renewable natural resources and high commodity prices. Alongside
this, he noted, de-industrialisation had been a key feature (Addis Tribune, December 8,
2012). Figures show that since 1990, Africa has experienced a relative shift in the compo-
sition of employment toward sectors that create too few high-productivity jobs (McMillan
and Rodrik 2011). Manufacturing growth has been near the bottom in 12 growth sectors –
only public administration lagged behind.
Indeed, an important indicator of progress toward a more diversified production struc-
ture is the share of manufacturing value added (MVA) in GDP. MVA per capita itself is a
basic indicator of a country’s level of industrialisation. The figures for SSA in comparison
to the rest of the world (and specifically with other Majority World regions) is depressing
(Table 1):
This is where ‘Africa Rising’ proponents deploy arguments about telecommunications,
service sectors etc., but, as the African Transformation Index puts it,

It appears that Sub-Saharan countries are directly replacing agriculture with services as the
largest economic sector without passing through the intermediate phase of industrialization
and an expanding manufacturing sector, the experience of almost all successful economies.
Moreover, a large part of the services sector in many Sub-Saharan countries consists of low-
technology and low-value activities. These trends are of great concern, since manufacturing
has historically been the main source of technological learning. (African Center for Economic
Transformation 2014, 27)

Even the World Bank notes that Africa ‘is largely bypassing industrialisation as a major
source driver of growth and jobs, and the extent of reallocation of labour to high-pro-
ductivity, non-traditional activities has been limited’ (World Bank 2014, 2).

Again, this time louder

We have heard noise about Africa’s immanent renaissance before – on multiple occasions.
It is ironic that Time magazine’s late 2012 edition celebrated ‘Africa Rising’, given that 14
12 I. Taylor

Table 1. Manufacturing value added per capita at constant (2000) US$.

1990 1995 2000 2005 2010
World 827 848 948 1036 1052
Developed economies 3575 3722 4239 4548 4267
Developing economies 171 211 254 321 430
Region/country
China 100 199 303 480 820
LAC 591 608 656 680 711
CIS 397 200 232 330 358
Asia 130 159 177 221 270
MENA 157 163 193 206 242
SSA 30 26 28 30 35
Notes: LAC ¼ Latin America and Caribbean; MENA ¼ Middle East and North Africa; CIS ¼ Commonwealth of
Independent States.
Source: Figures taken from UNIDO Industrial Development Reports, cited in Rodionova (2014, 33).

years earlier (March 30, 1998, to be precise), Time ran a story with the exact same title!
Then, we were told that ‘Hope is Africa’s rarest commodity. Yet buried though it is amid
the despair that haunts the continent, there is more optimism today than in decades.’ Fast
forward a decade and a half and we are again on the cusp of better times. In fact, such
tropes on Africa have a long pedigree, as William Easterly notes, citing passages from
various World Bank reports:

From a 1981 World Bank report, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (p. 133):
‘Policy action and foreign assistance . . . will surely work together to build a continent that
shows real gains in both development and income in the near future.’ From a 1984 World
Bank report, Toward Sustained Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (p. 2): ‘This optimism
can be justified by recent experience in Africa . . . some countries are introducing policy and
institutional reforms.’ From a 1986 World Bank report, Financing Growth with Adjustment
in Sub-Saharan Africa (p. 15): ‘Progress is clearly under way. Especially in the past two
years, more countries have started to act, and the changes they are making go deeper than
before.’ From a 1989 World Bank report, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable
Growth (p. 35): ‘Since the mid-1980s Africa has seen important changes in policies and in
economic performance.’ From a 1994 World Bank report, Adjustment in Africa (p. 3):
‘African countries have made great strides in improving policies and restoring growth.’
From a 2000 World Bank report, Can Africa Claim the 21st Century?: ‘Since the mid-
1990s, there have been signs that better economic management has started to pay off.’ From
a 2002 World Bank press release on African Development Indicators, ‘Africa’s leaders . . .
have recognised the need to improve their policies, spelled out in the New Partnership for
African Development.’ (Easterly 2003, 35 –36)

In 2008 Africa was at a ‘Turning Point’ (World Bank 2008), restated in 2011 with the asser-
tion that the continent was ‘on the brink of . . . economic take-off, much like China was 30
years ago’ (World Bank 2011).

A different Africa
As part of the ‘Africa Rising’ narrative, we are now told confidently that ‘the Africa-pessi-
mists have got it wrong’ (presumably including The Economist a few years ago?) as ‘the
engines of development are still going strong. Democratic governance, political partici-
pation and economic management look set to improve further’ (The Economist, March
2, 2013). Indeed, advocates of the Africa Rising narrative argue that better governance
 Review of African Political Economy 13

and ways of conducting business have expedited Africa’s growth and that it is not all about
oil and minerals. In a detailed study, it is claimed that a ‘hospitable’ climate for business has
been spurred by institutional change and political and economic reform (Taylor 2012). This
is one of the central arguments around which much of the new-found optimism about Africa
has been built, restated in the Oxford Companion to the Economics of Africa, which claims
that ‘improved macroeconomic frameworks and political governance in a majority of
countries were key drivers for the improved economic performance’ (Aryeety et al.
2012, 8).
There are claims that huge improvements in governance across Africa have transpired.
Representatively, Yvonne Mhango of Renaissance Capital assertively claims that: ‘Govern-
ments [in Africa] have got policy spectacularly right and created the low-debt, low-
inflation, much-improved macro conditions that have enabled growth to take off’ (cited
in African Business, January 2013, 18). Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia, has
joined in, stating that: ‘In ten years [a] rapidly transforming Africa will move into the indus-
trial age’ (New African, May 2013, 41). However, the empirical evidence on growth and
policy-related indicators is consistent with the null hypothesis that more than two
decades of externally imposed reforms had a muted effect on consolidating any capacity
for sustainable growth in SSA. The engine of ‘Africa Rising’ was in fact the commodity
boom, external debt relief and a reduction in intra-African conflicts (Weeks 2010, 10).
The years when SSA’s growth figures surpassed 1996 levels (2004 – 2008) can be demon-
strably linked to the period when emerging economies began to massively require commod-
ities for their own development. This actuality is unlike the ‘Africa Rising’ trope, where
‘spectacularly right’ (i.e. neoliberal) policies drove growth.
Indeed, despite the celebration of alleged improved governance across the continent and
the attempts to link this to Africa’s recent growth spurt, there is little evidence that overall
the quality of governance is on the up across the continent. The composite Mo Ibrahim
Index of African Governance had a continental average of 47/100 in 2000 – by 2014 it
had slightly increased to 51.5/100, but with less than half of all Africans living in a
country which had shown governance improvements since 2010 (Mo Ibrahim Foundation
2014, 24). Meanwhile, the World Bank’s own governance indicators for SSA disprove any
opinion regarding improved governance over the period linked to Africa’s ‘rise’. The Esti-
mate of Government Effectiveness captures the quality of public services, the quality of the
civil service (and the degree of its independence from political pressures), the quality of
policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government’s commit-
ment to such policies. Of the 49 SSA states, 30 had seen a worsening in government effec-
tiveness between 2000 and 2012. During the same time period, fully 35 out of the 49 had
seen a decline in the control of corruption (World Bank 2015a).

The natural resource corner

As noted above, commodity dependence is typically measured by the share of export earn-
ings of the top single commodity (or top three export commodities) in GDP, in total mer-
chandise exports and in total agriculture exports. The percentage of people occupied in
commodity production or the share in government revenue accruing from commodities
are also important measurements (South Centre 2005, 6). Using UNCTAD secretariat cal-
culations, themselves based on UNCTAD’s UNCTAD Stat, the Herfindahl – Hirschmann
index measures the degree of market concentration. The index ranges from 0 to 1 and
shows the extent of the differences between the structure of trade of a country or country
group and the world mean. In other words, are countries/groups of countries more or
14 I. Taylor

less diversified than the world average? The figures demonstrate that Africa continues to be
much less diversified than the rest of the world. SSA’s concentration index in 2000 was
0.32; by 2013 it was 0.42 and in fact, the continent’s export concentration increased by
72% between 1995 and 2011 (UNCTAD 2015). What diversification that has occurred
has been volatile, extremely problematic given that African economies have become
more concentrated (see UNCTAD 2012).
A working paper from the OECD claims that ‘China’s and India’s growing demand for
commodities has served to diversify export clients away from OECD countries’ (Avendaño,
Reisen, and Santiso 2008, 8). However, the diversification index produced by UNCTAD
shows that what has actually happened is that Africa has more or less remained undiversi-
fied in its exports, remaining dependent on primary commodities. Commodities make up
over 80% of Africa’s export revenues (UNCTAD 2012, 8).
With high commodity prices in the latter half of the 2000s, the ‘Africa Rising’ mantra
picked up speed. Yet it is surely obvious that:
By diverting resources from non-raw material sectors and contributing to real exchange-rate
appreciation, a price boom runs the risk of locking developing-country commodity exporters
into what Edward Leamer called the ‘raw-material corner’, with little scope for industrial pro-
gress or skills advancement. (UNECA 2012, 66)

Leamer’s corner came from his illustrating both relative factor endowments and relative
factor intensities with three factors and any number of goods (Leamer 1987).
Given Africa’s factor endowments being concentrated in commodities and the export
profile and sector concentration being in the same, the continent’s place in the raw material
corner has been reified. The result has been what Issa Shivji (2009, 59) terms ‘structural
disarticulation’, where Africa exhibits a ‘disarticulation between the structure of production
and the structure of consumption. What is produced is not consumed and what is consumed
is not produced’ (see also Thomas 1974). Current account balances across the continent
have widened. Dependent on imports and subject to external currency battles, SSA’s
current account balance (an indicator of the state of economies) is in decline, as the
World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects for 2015 report makes clear (Table 2):

The growth hymn

Current growth and governance models being pursued in SSA are based on facilitating
market-based actors’ profit-making and capital accumulation. Environments that may
develop production are largely ignored and the existing growth model is instead constructed
on a simple-minded raising of national GDPs (Hamilton 2003). Governments ‘focus their
attention heavily on the main tables, especially the gross domestic product (GDP), and the
international agencies reinforce this bias’ (Kpedekpo and Arya 1981, 208). GDP growth is
routinely used as the major benchmark against which ‘success’ is measured, despite Arthur
Lewis’ warning back in 1955 that ‘[i]t is possible that output may be growing, and yet that
the mass of the people may be becoming poorer’ (1955, 9).

Table 2. Current account balance (per cent of GDP).

2000–2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
SSA 20.3 21.3 22.4 22.8 22.9 23.9 24.0 23.8
Source: World Bank (2015b, 6).
 Review of African Political Economy 15

This obsession on economic growth stems from developments within the dismal
science. ‘From the 1960s on, GDP conquered the political scene and affirmed itself as
the supreme indicator of modernity and progress. Everything else (e.g. environmental sus-
tainability, social justice, poverty eradication) were sacrificed on the altar of economic
growth’ (Fioramonti 2013, 51). This measurement of one indicator of the economy as
being the yardstick to measure progress and enable pundits to pronounce on the spectacular
trajectories of, for example, emerging markets or Africa, was bolstered by events in the
early 1990s:
In 1992, the GNP [gross national product] was superseded by GDP . . . . Traditional GNP
referred to all goods and services produced by the resident of a given country, regardless of
whether the ‘income’ was generated within or outside its borders. This meant that, for instance,
the earnings of multinational corporations were attributed to the country where the firm was
owned and where the profits would eventually return. With the introduction of the gross ‘dom-
estic’ product, this calculation changed completely. GDP is indeed territorially defined, which
means that the income generated by foreign companies is ‘formally’ attributed to the country
where it is generated, even though the profits may very well not remain there. This conceptual
evolution . . . was by and large responsible for the economic boom of many developing nations.
Yet, it is obvious that the gains it revealed were more than apparent than real. (Ibid., 41)

Given the capital-intensive nature of much investment in Africa by foreign corporations

involved in extraction, the distortionary effect when reporting Africa’s growth based on
GDP rather than GNP is obvious. Yet it is exactly the GDP figures that are deployed to con-
struct the ‘Africa Rising’ discourse.
Additionally, no thought is given to the long-term repercussions of how such growth
rates have been realised. Extraction is, by definition, non-renewable and non-sustainable.
In the current situation of dependent relations, Africa’s wealth is being dug out of the
ground at an alarming rate. This is celebrated as Africa’s gain, even whilst ‘the continent
is actually losing a net 6% of the gross national income each year, thanks to the Resource
Curse writ large’ (Bond 2014, 237). ‘GDP calculates such exports as a solely positive
process (a credit) without a corresponding debit on the books of a country’s natural
capital’ (Bond 2011, 39), despite the fact that there is an actual ‘decline in “natural
capital” that occurs because the minerals and petroleum are non-renewable and lost
forever’ (Bond 2014, 237, emphasis in original).
The World Bank itself recommends that deducting the value of non-renewable
resources through extraction gives a superior indicator of actual gains made through
trade. The Bank first published cross-country estimates of what is called ‘genuine
savings’ (GS) in 1997 and began including them in the World Development Indicators in
1999 (World Bank 1997). Mysteriously, the ‘Africa Rising’ proponents neglect to factor
in such measurements.
The idea of GS traces its roots back to the work of economists such as Solow (1974) and
Hartwick (1974), whose work sought to model a development path where social welfare did
not deteriorate in economies based on the exploitation of non-renewable resources. GS are
thus equal to Gross Savings (GDP minus consumption) minus the depreciation of produced
capital, minus the net resource rental rate times the variation of the stock of exhaustible
resources, minus the marginal cost of social pollution times plus investment in human
capital (Hanley, Dupuy, and McLaughlin 2014, 20. The indicator measures the true rate
of savings in an economy and is a measure of net investment in produced, natural and
human capital, producing ‘a much broader indicator of sustainability by valuing changes
in natural resources, environmental quality, and human capital, in addition to the traditional
measure of changes in produced assets’ (Bolt, Matete, and Clemens 2002, 35).
16 I. Taylor

This has huge implications for the ‘Africa Rising’ story, because the majority of this
‘rising’ has been built on non-renewable extraction – and resource-rich countries are his-
torically the poorest genuine savers (Atkinson and Hamilton 2003). In fact, setting aside
Algeria and Guinea, for whom GS was just above zero for the period 1970 – 2001, every
country with an average share of fuel and mineral exports in total exports of over 60%
had a negative GS rate (Dietz, Neumayer, and de Soysa 2007, 35).
Obviously, GDP is not calculated making deductions for the depreciation of fabricated
assets or for the depletion and degradation of natural resources. Thus a country can have
very high GDP growth rates whilst pursuing an unsustainable exploitation of its finite
natural resources. Persistently low or negative GS are indicators that a country’s trajectory
is untenable, whilst negative adjusted net saving rates in themselves demonstrate that the
total wealth of a country is in decline (World Bank 2006, 66). Below is an illustration of
both GDP growth rates and the GS rates, including particulate emission damage, for
SSA. The year 2000 is the start date, for comparison with the latest available data
(2012). Of interest is the contrast between the two different indicators, which shows the
unsustainability of many African countries’ current growth models (Table 3):
The above scenario is all missed in standard GDP measurements and is certainly over-
looked in the ‘Africa Rising’ account.

Conclusion
The current model of growth so far has been ineffective in engendering sustainable devel-
opmental outcomes and has made things worse vis-à-vis equality, the environment and
Africa’s dependent status within the global political economy. As Morten Jerven notes:
‘The most recent period of economic growth did not entail the large improvements in
human development that were the case from 1950 – 1975 . . . Furthermore, the latest
period of economic growth has not been associated with much industrial growth’ (Jerven
2010, 146). The Africa Progress Panel, which is habitually upbeat in its appraisals of
Africa, concedes that:

After a decade of buoyant growth, almost half of Africans still live on less than $1.25 a day.
Wealth disparities are increasingly visible. The current pattern of trickle-down growth is
leaving too many people in poverty, too many children hungry and too many young people
without jobs. Governments are failing to convert the rising tide of wealth into opportunities
for their most marginalised citizens. Unequal access to health, education, water and
sanitation is reinforcing wider inequalities. Smallholder agriculture has not been part of the
growth surge, leaving rural populations trapped in poverty and vulnerability. (Africa Progress
Panel 2012, 8)

Such a milieu stands in contrast to the wild claims about Africa’s middle class, with asser-
tions that it now amounts to over a third of Africa’s population being trundled out to back up
the ‘Africa Rising’ meme. It emerges that this figure was arrived at by calculating the
number of people estimated (using dubious statistics) to have a per capita consumption
between $2 and $20 (African Development Bank 2011). This criteria itself sets the bar at
an incredibly low level, but of course then allows the African Development Bank to add
its voice to the narrative that the dawn has arrived and that the corner has been turned
etc. In fact, currently only 4% of Africans have an income in excess of $10 a day
(Africa Progress Panel 2013, 17).
This perhaps explains why amongst normal African people there does not seem much
optimism within Africa about its putative ‘rise’.2 A recent Afrobarometer survey revealed
 Review of African Political Economy 17

Table 3. GDP growth rate (%) versus genuine savings rates.

GDP GDP GS
growth GS growth 2012
2000 2000 2012 unless indicated
Angola 3.0 239.5 6.8 225.2
Benin 4.9 6.8 5.4 25.2 (2011)
Botswana 2.0 34.4 4.2 33.2
Burkina Faso 1.8 0.7 9.5 8.5 (2010)
Burundi 20.9 221.5 4.0 213.7
Cameroon 4.2 24.4 4.6 21.6
Cape Verde 14.3 2.5
CAR 22.5 6.9 24.59
Chad 20.7 8.9 249.89 (2008)
Comoros 1.9 3.0 7.04
Congo, DR 24.3 220.1 7.2 229.9 (2007)
Congo-B 22.6 243.4 3.8 256.1 (2007)
Côte d’Ivoire 23.7 4.8 9.5 23.4 (2008)
Eq. Guinea 12.5 2.5 238.45 (2008)
Eritrea 23.1 3.1 7.0
Ethiopia 6.1 24.5 8.7 6.1
Gabon 21.9 0.1 5.6 22.2 (2005)
Gambia 5.5 5.3 0.9
Ghana 3.7 20.2 7.9 2.7
Guinea 2.5 25.2 3.9 242.8 (2011)
Guinea-B 3.6 26.7 222.4 (2010)
Kenya 0.6 5.6 4.6 4.7
Lesotho 5.1 4.0 11.5
Liberia 25.7 10.2 26.0 (2011)
Madagascar 4.8 22.0 3.1 22.5 (2005)
Malawi 1.6 25.5 1.9 22.7 (2011)
Mali 3.2 4.8 20.4 210.8 (2010)
Mauritius 9.0 17.1 3.2 4.5
Mozambique 1.1 1.4 7.4 0.4
Namibia 3.5 21.7 5.0 12.0 (2011)
Niger 21.4 25.3 10.8 10.0 (2010)
Nigeria 5.3 23.2 6.7 210.2 (2011)
Rwanda 8.3 27.9 8.0 23.7
Senegal 3.2 3.5 3.5 15.9 (2011)
Sierra Leone 6.7 221.3 15.2 222.7 (2010)
South Africa 4.2 5.3 2.5 20.9
Sudan 6.3 3.3 210.1 26.7
Swaziland 1.8 5.2 21.5 1.4 (2011)
Tanzania 4.9 2.1 6.9 8.7
Togo 20.8 211.7 5.6 221.3 (2010)
Uganda 3.1 26.2 3.4 211.2
Zambia 3.5 211.7 7.2 1.8
Zimbabwe 23.1 4.4
Notes: Djibouti, Mauritania, São Tomé and Prı́ncipe, Seychelles and Somalia omitted owing to insufficient data.
Source: World Bank (2015c).

that, despite a decade of strong GDP growth and the Africa Rising narrative, there is ‘a wide
gap in perceptions between ordinary Africans and the global economic community’, where
‘a majority (53%) rate the current condition of their national economy as “fairly” or “very
bad”’ and only ‘one in three Africans (31%) think the condition of their national economies
18 I. Taylor

has improved in the past year, compared to 38% who say things have gotten worse.’
Notably, when it came to their own elites,

Africans give their governments failing marks for economic management (56% say they are
doing ‘fairly’ or ‘very badly’), improving the living standards of the poor (69% fairly/very
badly), creating jobs (71% fairly/very badly), and narrowing income gaps (76% fairly/very
badly). (Afrobarometer 2013, 2)

Consequently, ‘popular opinion is thus increasingly out of sync with the “Africa Rising”
narrative that has been gaining traction among government officials and international inves-
tors’ (Hofmeyr 2013, 1).
It is clear that the idea of ‘Africa Rising’ has gone hand in hand with no serious struc-
tural change in the continent’s economies; indeed, they are linked, with de-industrialisation,
alongside the entrenchment of dependency on primary products (Table 4):
With the exception of a few individual countries, manufacturing is mostly in decline
across SSA whilst the share of mining and utilities has hugely increased over the last
few decades. Even within the manufacturing sector, resource-based manufacturing accounts
for about 49% of total MVA in Africa (UNCTAD 2011, 15). Table 5 indicates the parlous
state of manufacturing value added as a percentage of GDP in those SSA countries where
data is known. As demonstrated, the majority of countries have fallen during the ostensible
‘Africa Rising’ period (Table 5):
This fact of manufacturing underdevelopment in Africa is particularly problematic as it
is in low-technology manufacturing where labour-intensive job-creating opportunities are
found. A look at the figures where data is available reveals that this sector of manufacturing
is relatively small (to very small), as the key contributor to the MVA in Africa (Ibid., 27–
28). In fact, ‘fewer than 10% of African workers are currently in manufacturing of any kind
and only about 1% in modern companies with advanced technology’ (Africa Confidential
2014, 1).
In short, the much-vaunted recent economic growth in Africa, which is what the ‘Africa
Rising’ narrative is fundamentally predicated upon, is based on trade in resources, not pro-
duction. As Robert Bates notes, it ‘is [the] demand for the stuff underneath it – Africa’s
mineral and oil wealth – that is driving the economic growth behind all these “Africa
Rising” narratives’ (Bates 2012). This is a crisis for Africa, as ‘production is the key to

Table 4. Commodity composition of Africa’s total exports (by %, 2000–2013).

Commodity Years North Africa SSA
Food, live animals, beverages and tobacco 2000 4.5 11.1
2013 5.5 9.2
Crude materials (fuels excluded) 2000 2.8 7.9
2013 2.6 10.5
Mineral fuels, lubricants 2000 68.2 47.9
2013 66.9 49.6
Chemicals 2000 4.7 3.0
2013 6.0 2.9
Machinery and transport equipment 2000 3.5 5.6
2013 7.1 7.7
Other manufactured goods 2000 16.0 18.9
2013 10.8 15.0
Source: UNSD (2014), Table F.
 Review of African Political Economy 19

Table 5. Manufacturing, value added (% of GDP).

2000 2013
Angola 2.9 7.2
Benin 8.2 8.1
Botswana 6.1 5.6
Burundi 11.8 9.4
Cameroon 20.8 14.3
Chad 8.9 2.7
Comoros 4.5 7.0
Congo, DR 10.0 16.5
Congo-B 3.4 4.2
Côte d’Ivoire 17.7 12.7
Ethiopia 5.9 4.0
Guinea 4.0 6.4
Kenya 11.6 11.7
Malawi 12.8 10.7
Mauritania 8.9 4.1
Mauritius 23.4 17.0
Mozambique 12.2 10.8
Namibia 12.8 13.1
Niger 6.7 6.1
Nigeria 3.6 9.0
Rwanda 6.9 5.4
Senegal 14.6 13.5
Seychelles 19.2 6.2
Sierra Leone 3.5 2.0
South Africa 18.9 11.5
Sudan 8.6 8.1
Tanzania 9.3 9.2
Uganda 7.5 8.7
Zambia 10.6 8.1
Zimbabwe 15.6 12.8
Source: World Bank (2015c).

accumulation since the profits of all capital, even merchant capital that operates exclusively
in the sphere of circulation, originate in the sphere of production’ (Kay 1975, 71). Yet it
should be noted that the surpluses that could lead to industrial investments are not forthcom-
ing. ‘The economic landscape then is weak industrial development, chronic balance of
payment problems all under the management of a neocolonial comprador class’ (Amaizo
2012, 127).
It hardly needs restating that a development project which has not broken with the very
clear and continuous pattern in terms of commodity structures, consistent with Africa’s
Ricardian advantage, is short-sighted in the extreme. This is becoming ever clearer with
all commodities predicted by the World Bank to fall in value in the next 10 years. It is
now predicted that the fall in oil prices alone will translate into a decline in annual
exports equivalent to 1.3% of GDP for Nigeria, 3.5% of GDP for Gabon, 4.2% of GDP
for Angola and 7% of GDP for Congo-Brazzaville (Standard Chartered Bank 2014).
Whither ‘Africa Rising’ in this scenario? (Table 6).
When GDP growth was good, the economic advantages accrued to the accumulation
centres outside of Africa.3 The result was that the role of Africa as a source of cheap
raw materials, exported to feed external economies and/or processed up the value chain
20 I. Taylor

into finished products, was reified. This has been a habitual problem for Africa and the
‘classical dependency-periphery theory that still holds today for a balkanised and economi-
cally exploited Africa must be confronted head-on’ (Amin 2014a, 36). Indeed, the insights
that radical political economy presents are remarkably prescient in discussing the entire
‘Africa Rising’ narrative. This is an unfashionable but vital point to make.
Economic development typically denotes sustainable economic growth along with
important structural changes in production patterns and wide-ranging improvements in
living standards (Whitfield 2012, 241).

Emergence is not measured by a rising rate of GDP growth (or exports) . . . nor the fact that the
society in question has obtained a higher level of GDP per capita, as defined by the World
Bank, aid institutions controlled by Western powers, and conventional economists. (Amin
2014b, 139)

Indeed, Tamás Szentes’ (1971, 163) objection to such quantitative indices is apposite here.
Underdevelopment is a much too multifaceted phenomenon, irreducible to showy statistics
about GDP growth or mobile phone usage. Instead:

there are two aspects, two sides of underdevelopment: the basically external, international
aspect, which, from the historical point of view of the emergence of the present state, is the
primary aspect; and the internal aspect, which from the point of view of future development,
is increasingly important.

The African Union and the UN Economic Commission for Africa itself recommend indus-
trialisation as the central strategy for Africa to address poverty, inequality and unemploy-
ment (Economic Commission for Africa 2013). Yet, as Julius Nyerere commented over
30 years ago:

we [Africa] are all, in relation to the developed world, dependent – not interdependent –
nations. Each of our economies has developed as a bi-product and a subsidiary of development
in the industrialised North, and is externally oriented. We are not the prime movers of our own
destiny. (Nyerere 1979, 58)

A redefinition of growth to include structural transformation is needed à la Simon Kuznets’

(1973) definition of a country’s economic growth being a long-term rise in capacity to
supply increasingly diverse economic goods to its population, this growing capacity
based on advancing technology and the institutional and ideological adjustments that it
demands. Such a definition puts to shame the crass celebration of Africa’s recent growth
rates as symbolising some sort of watershed event for the continent. Indeed, the ‘headline
figures circulated by the IFIs [International Financial Institutions] and apologists for global
capitalism obscure failures around structural transformation of African economies’ (Bush
2013, 63). It still remains that ‘[t]he root dilemma of Africa’s economic development has
been the asymmetry between the role of the continent in the world and the degree to
which that world . . . has penetrated Africa’ (Austen 1987, 271).
Of course, external conditions are not propitious to true development – the North makes
sure of that, pushing multiple agreements criminalising industrial policy instruments used
previously by the core to nurture domestic capacities (Cooper 2014).4 This is but a modern
version of Friedrich List’s ‘kicking away the ladder’ (List 1885). In such circumstances, a
‘rise’ based on an intensification of resource extraction whilst dependency deepens,
inequality increases and de-industrialisation continues apace, demolishes the ‘Africa
Table 6. Price indices in real 2010 US dollars.
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Energy 121.4 119.6 115.2 112.5 110.7 108.9 107.1 105.3 103.6 102.0 100.4 98.8 97.2
Non-energy commodities 94.9 92.6 91.4 90.2 89.0 87.8 86.6 85.4 84.1 82.9 81.6 80.4 79.2
Agriculture 99.7 96.8 95.0 93.6 92.2 90.8 89.5 88.1 86.7 85.3 83.8 82.4 81.0
Beverages 77.9 77.4 76.2 75.2 74.3 73.3 72.3 71.3 70.3 69.2 68.2 67.2 66.2
Food 108.7 103.3 100.1 98.2 96.3 94.4 92.4 90.5 88.6 86.7 84.8 83.0 81.2
Fats and oils 108.7 101.4 97.9 95.9 94.0 92.0 90.1 88.1 86.2 84.3 82.4 80.6 78.8
Grains 119.3 115.1 111.6 109.3 107.1 104.9 102.7 100.5 98.3 96.2 94.0 91.9 89.9

Review of African Political Economy

Other food 99.1 95.3 92.7 91.1 89.5 87.9 86.3 84.6 83.0 81.3 79.7 78.1 76.5
Raw materials 89.1 90.7 91.9 91.7 91.5 91.2 90.9 91.0 90.4 89.9 89.3 88.8 88.2
Timber 96.1 100.4 102.5 102.9 103.4 103.8 104.2 105.2 105.1 105.0 104.8 104.7 104.5
Other raw materials 81.4 80.1 80.4 79.4 78.4 77.4 76.4 75.4 74.4 73.4 72.4 71.4 70.4
Fertilisers 107.5 103.3 99.5 97.1 94.8 92.5 90.3 88.0 85.8 83.6 81.5 79.4 77.3
Metals and minerals (a) 83.5 82.9 83.1 82.4 81.7 81.0 80.2 79.5 78.7 77.9 77.1 76.3 75.5
Base metals (b) 82.8 82.3 82.5 81.8 81.1 80.4 79.6 78.8 78.1 77.3 76.5 75.7 74.9
Precious metals 105.6 102.2 100.6 98.9 97.3 95.6 93.9 92.2 90.5 88.8 87.2 85.5 83.9
Notes: (a) includes iron ore; (b) includes aluminium, copper, lead, nickel, tin and zinc.
Source: World Bank (2013b).

21
22 I. Taylor

Rising’ narrative. In this context, the story of ‘Africa Rising’ is just that, a story, where
growth-for-growth’s sake replaces development and the agenda of industrialisation and
moving Africa up the global production chain has been discarded. Instead, Africa’s
current ‘comparative advantage’ as a primary commodity exporter is reinforced, even
whilst such dynamics reproduce underdevelopment. This is celebrated as ‘progress’.

Note on contributor
Ian Taylor is Professor in International Relations and African Politics at St Andrews, Chair Professor
in the School of International Studies, Renmin University of China and Professor Extraordinary in
Political Science at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes
1. The eight countries are: Ghana, Uganda, Senegal, Niger, Malawi, Benin, Mozambique, and São
Tomé and Prı́ncipe.
2. Despite a flurry of reports talking about Africa being ‘the new Mecca for luxury brands’ (African
Business, September 19, 2013) and how the number of millionaires is set to rise on the continent,
one in three people living in SSA are undernourished, 589 million people live without electricity,
more than 50% of Africans have a water-related illness such as cholera, 62% of people living in
urban areas live in slum conditions and women in SSA are over 230 times more likely to die
during childbirth or pregnancy than women in North America (see United Nations 2014). Mean-
while, the percentage of people living on less than $2 a day in SSA is around 70% (in 1981 it was
72.2% – in other words, in over 30 years, poverty reduction in SSA has been negligible).
The absolute number of people on $2 a day or less has doubled (see World Bank 2013c, 542).
So much for ‘Africa Rising’.
3. This is apart from the $52.9 billion – roughly 5.5% of GDP – that SSA loses in illicit financial
outflows each year (Global Financial Integrity 2014). See also Boyce and Ndikumana (2012).
4. The classic example being the World Trade Organization, but there are plenty more.

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