Xu, Chenggang’s The Fundamental Institutions of China’s Reforms and Development and Mkandawire, Thandika’s Thinking About Developmental States in Africa’s most instructive lesson for me was that reforms can be unconventional and achieve results. Furthermore, Countries owe it to themselves to adopt home grown solutions to their developmental peculiarities. In instance where countries must receive guidance from experts, such guidance must be implemented in line with political and economic realities.
While exploring Chenggang’s work, I found China’s economic advancement remarkable considering the speed with which the successes were recorded, and the fact that the successes were achieved with structures traditional economists may have disagreed with at that period. This factor was what led to an absence of China’s economic perspective from the conventional discuss. A strong feature of the Chinese economy is a heavy involvement in factors of production by the central government through the Regional decentralized authoritarian regimes (RDA). The RDA which ensured accountability to the objectives of the central powers and served as subnational governments was additionally used to encourage regional competition and innovation.
I appreciated the means of incentivizing government officials because I believe these methods of attaching promotion to performance aided the development of state capacity. Hiring entrepreneurial minded officials who understood local peculiarities and could take decisions based on this was also a good approach. Also, because various regions are experimenting individually and building separate competencies, there was a diversification of political and economic risks which ultimately resulted in a form of overall stability for the country.
One of the issues explored by Thandika was the role the government through the civil service now plays in Africa. As a Nigerian, I believe that our civil service is challenged in several ways, and I agree that some of these challenges stem from some civil service reforms we have adopted in the past, based on the advice of some multilateral economic institutions. I believe this links to the conversations around the political history of nations and how it affects the developmental process. China was able to utilize its 2000 years history in its economic development, but for most African countries, that process interrupted by slavery, colonialism, absence of indigenous capitalists/ organizational skills and neo colonialism which recently comes in form of expert advice.
I partially agree with Thandika’s explanation of the existence of nationalist-cum-developmentalist ideologies among African leaders based on my observation of the strategy of energy concentration in the political history of my country. While the independence leaders focused on stabilizing the country and promoting unity, the post-independence leaders despite the challenges, sought to focus on economic growth and achieved some measure of success.
However, these attempts were in my opinion incoherent, as several African countries struggled with some forms of conflicts such as civil war and political instability within the first few years of independence. Conflicts and allied uncertainties can negatively impact investment and economic growth pre, during and post conflict, thereby making it difficult to escape the conflict trap[1]. I see the prevalence and intensity of conflicts within the continent as a key challenge the AfCFTA will face during implementation.
Considering the possibility of failure of reforms, both articles are instructive with regards to the futility of categorizing a country’s approach and its effect on development. Numerous reasons exist for the success or failure of policies. Swiftly moving to adopt new policies may negatively impact on current capacities, coupled with the fact that we are uncertain as to whether these recommendations will lead to development in African states, these expert reforms sometimes fail because contexts are different.
China’s system, despite its imperfections which Chenggang recommended solutions to holds several lessons for the rest of the world, especially Africa but as deduced from Thandika’s position, the best strategies are not those imported from China, or strongly recommended by the World Bank but those which countries socially engineered by adopting a participatory approach which integrates all stakeholders.
[1] Xiangming Fang et al, The Economic Consequences of Conflict in Sub-Saharan Africa (2020): “Conflict trap” refers to the vicious cycle between conflicts and economic performance, whereby conflicts retard economic growth and development, in turn raising the likelihood of a conflict (Collier and Sambanis 2002).
Comments