Conceptualizers of African Futures
This section deliberates on post-colonial constructions of African futures and their antecedents from the aftermath of the Second World War. Specifically, I discuss two kinds of questions: one factual and the other, normative. The discussion of the former involves delineating dominant agents of future-making in these periods, and the latter considers the question of whose voices ought to shape those futures. There is good reason to distinguish two categories of actors that have almost exclusively conceived, planned and overseen the implementation of futures in Africa: African and non-African actors.
1 I take the question of what characterizes an African actor as being ‘African’ to be sufficiently discussed, and a position taken on it, in the introductory section of this chapter. Of the latter group, the Bretton Woods institutions have been most influential in envisioning and formulating goals for a desirable life in since the end of WW2. Bretton Woods’ conceptions have steadfastly promoted economic progress and idealized forms of the achievements of Western societies as models for Africa’s emulation, even though the structural-functionalist theoretical background of their models (So 1990: 18) implies that cherished values of Africa’s cultures are eliminable on the path to development (Tipps 1976: 81). The ideals of the Modernization school
2 A post-WW 2 social scientific perspective which promoted the conception of development as a phased process modeled on the social transformational paths of North America and Western Europe. and neoliberalism pervade the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed on Africa by Bretton Woods institutions in the 1980s as conditions for concessionary loans and debt-repayment arrangements (Preston 1997: 255); and the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRSs) introduced by the same institutions in sequel to the SAPs. The failure of these strategies to improve living conditions and free the continent from its age-old debt trap has been retold over and again.
Other models of futures envisioned by external agents and avidly adopted by African countries also deserve mention. These are the Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals, largely designed and propagated by UN agencies. The MDGs and SDGs exhibit no difference in
kind from the Bretton Woods SAPs and PRSs, as they also emanate from structural-functionalist theoretical tenets and orientations of modernization theory. Accordingly, they, like the SAPs ad PRSs, adopt a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to constructing African futures that displaces African cultural values.
3 I mean by this that the substance of five of the eight goals (a) are wrongfully assumed to be accessible to universal meaning, and (b) are easily measured by some economic index or the other. The MDGs establish ‘universally agreed objectives’ for tackling human needs (UNDP 2021). The SDGs, likewise, adopt this structural-universalist approach. Further, it is arguable that representation of African thought in formulating the SDGs is negligible, as African representation in the Open Working Groups (OWG) that drafted the Goals cannot, in itself, be taken to translate into inclusion of substantive African content in the Goals.
It is possible to conjecture an innocent arrogation of paternalistic intent in the visions of the above-discussed foreign actors, i.e. their assumption of the role of knowing better the needs of African futures than Africans themselves and believing honestly but wrongly that their conceptions and practices would actually benefit Africa. But enough time has elapsed, since the SAPs PRSs, to subject such an erroneous mindset to reappraisal given the overwhelming evidence of the damage these actors have visited on progressive African visions of social organization and self-determination. The fact that current visions of Bretton Woods and UN agencies continue their ‘one-size-fits-all’ neoliberal pathways on the continent strengthens the view that these agents may be interested essentially in shaping Africa not for Africans but for other purposes.
Conversely, two groups of African voices can be delineated among leaders in African-future-making: pan-African institutions, and scholars and politicians.
4 Although the scholars and politicians overlap at several points, (e.g. Kwame Nkrumah), there is good reason in a nuanced analysis to distinguish them. From the beginning of the 20
th century, proposals and justifications of future directions of these groups have been premised on retrieval of possessions lost to historical injustices, and sovereignty over that retrieved. The objects of retrieval in the first half of the century tended to be territory and social institutions retrieved from colonial domination, spearheaded by intellectuals-turned-politicians with the backing of wealthy Africans and traditional rulers. This emphasis on ‘seeking first the political kingdom’ in anticipation of ‘all else to be added unto it’ (Nkrumah 2002: 164) has, post-independence, been directed at shaking off continuing foreign economic exploitation, political interference, and cultural dominance. Since the mid-20
th century, however, the quest to control the construction of African futures has been expressed in visions of pan-African self-determination. Thus, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) was established in 1963 to eradicate colonialism and neo-colonialism from the continent. It was replaced by the African Union (AU), which adopted the decolonizational aims of its predecessor. Both the OAU and AU initiated policy frameworks with extensive implementation apparatus to promote futuristic and self-determinative visions. An example of this is the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), established in 2001 as the OAU’s main policy framework for an ‘African-owned and African-led’ program of development (NEPAD Secretariat 2001) and the foremost expression in public policy of the ideals and values of an ‘African Renaissance’.
5 This notion, signified recognition by African several leaders of the need for a coherent continental agenda for addressing Africa’s development challenges at the turn of the millennium. Prominent among these agendas is the synthesis of President Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal’s OMEGA Plan and the Millennium Action Plan of President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, into the New African Initiative (NAI), which was inaugurated in July 2001 and re-named NEPAD in October 2001. Likewise, the AU inaugurated Agenda 2063 in 2013 as a vehicle for implementing the visions of NEPAD and a blueprint for transforming Africa for the next 50 years (African Union 2013).
Aside from these pan-African institutional frameworks, futuristic proposals have been extensively discussed by African scholars. Long before Mbeki’s talk of an African Renaissance, Diop envisioned a renascent Africa premised on retrieving the intellectual heritage of Africa. Such retrieval will serve to integrate heritage into contemporary thought and practice and provide inspiration for self-development (Diop 1987: 118). Nkrumah’s vision coincides with Diop’s and Mbeki’s at multiple points. In Consciencism, he emphasizes the integrity of a self-written history for ‘the new African renaissance’, and for such history to ‘become a pointer at the ideology which should guide and direct African reconstruction’ (Nkrumah 1970: 63). One feature of heritage that Nkrumah distinguishes, unambiguously, as useful for progressive future-making is the communalist values of traditional society, ‘crystallized in its humanism and in its reconciliation of individual advancement with group welfare’ (Nkrumah 1967).
As sequel to the foregoing discussion, I wish to now pursue the question of voices that ought to shape African futures. It is difficult to find moral justification for the future-making of the Bretton Woods institutions in Africa. I have indicated elsewhere that it is reasonable to question the authenticity of their intention to serve Africa’s progress. This is not only because the visions they espouse are not African-defined (Ajei 2022: 4–5); their strategies, sustained as they are by Modernization and neoliberal theoretic foundations, have failed to improve living conditions and free the continent from dependency. And proceeding from the assumption that self-defined ideals of an entity must be necessarily involved in envisaging possible futures for that entity, it can be argued that the neoliberal African institutions fare worse, morally, as future-making voices. NEPAD fails this test woefully: of its 15 ‘flagship programs’ only one highlights African cultural values as a resource for mobilizing human energies toward achieving its goals. I have argued elsewhere that the negligible uptake in policy of substantive African knowledge and values by NEPAD and Agenda 2063 disregards a core orientation of African reconstructive ideals (Ajei 2022: 5–6). These considerations raise questions about their status as dependable voices for constructing African futures.