Development Hegemony and the Development Crisis in Africa: The Importance of

Indigenous Knowledges and Practices in the Making of Food Policy

Author(s): Andrew C. Okolie
Source: The Journal of African American History , Autumn, 2003, Vol. 88, No. 4,
Africa and Globalization (Autumn, 2003), pp. 429-448
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Association for the Study
of African American Life and History

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3559090

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 DEVELOPMENT HEGEMONY AND
THE DEVELOPMENT CRISIS IN
AFRICA: THE IMPORTANCE OF
INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGES AND
PRACTICES IN THE MAKING OF
FOOD POLICY

by Andrew C. Okolie*

The dominant theme in development discourse and practice in t

that African and other "Third World" countries facing severe econ
the fruits of import substitution policies, which they initiated an
1960s and 1970s.1 This has been used to justify current developme
which have been imposed on African societies since the early 198
Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank, the International
and the G-7 countries. The expressed and implied conclusion is th
recommended to them since the mid-1980s differ from the earlier po
origins and logic and are not connected to the policies and ac
development "missionaries." That is, the failures of the past are A
current policy recommendations presented as solutions are exter
come from institutions and organizations concerned about the wel
This line of argument is sometimes contradicted by some African g
claim that current adjustment policies are remedies internally genera
to deteriorating domestic and international economic conditions, w
their national economies.2 But couching it either way is misleadin
these agencies to deny and avoid responsibility for the failur
programs and helps to ensure their continued involvement in Africa'
the benefit of forces outside Africa. The policies of the 1960s an
with the ideas of development actively promoted by the domina
economy at the time, themselves products of some contingent econ
(and forms of resistance against them). The current adjustment
follow logically (but not inevitably) from the import substitution
1970s, and the same forces that were responsible for those earlier
for the current ones.3
What seems to be at stake currently is the battle for the contr
debate, which ensures the continued flow of the rewards of "develo

Andrew C. Okolie is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Trent University

Canada.

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 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

argue that the greater significance of the role of the international development agencies,
especially the World Bank, in African development is their domination of the development
discourse rather than the money they provide or fail to provide for development (although
both are related). One measure of this greater significance is that the agricultural projects
supported by the World Bank and the loans it provides sometimes pale into insignificance
relative to the size of Africa's agricultural production and the long-term expenditures to
support it. Nigeria, one of the major recipients of the Bank's agricultural loans in the 1970s
and early 1980s, illustrates this point. Between 1976 and 1985 the Nigerian government's
expenditure on the Bank-sponsored Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) totaled
N445.8 million or 60 percent of the total amount, while loans from the Bank accounted for
N287.3 million or 32.2 percent.4 But the Bank's domination of the discourse, backed by its
money, ensures that the Nigerian government's overall food policies were largely tailored
to fit the Bank's prescriptions, thereby extending the Bank's influence beyond its financial
scope. And it helps that the Bank has powerful backers in the G-7 countries, especially the
U.S. So while the Bank's financial commitment is important, its significance is greater in
terms of its role as a powerful incentive to get governments to agree to the Bank's vision of
development. This vision usually outlives the Bank's financial commitment to the
agricultural sector, is often difficult to get away from, and helps shape thinking in other
sectors, as well.
The same process is at work in the current era of "Structural Adjustment." In real terms
many African countries are not getting any new lending from the World Bank and the IMF.
Net transfers have been negative for some time with the figures for many of these countries
rather staggering. For instance, in the last decade the region (excluding South Africa) paid
out $198 million more in debt service than it received in new loans. For Nigeria the figure
was $1.8 billion and has been negative since 1989, for Kenya $188 million (negative since
1991), Zambia $110 million (negative since 1989), and Botswana $38 million (negative
since 1988).5 Official aid and foreign direct investment (FDI) have further declined. Official
aid declined from $17.9 billion in 1992 to $10.8 billion in 1999. And most of the aid went to
a few countries that the IMF and World Bank deemed worthy, that is, those implementing
adjustment programs well, such as Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Ghana, Tanzania,
Mozambique, Senegal, Uganda, and Zambia. In 2000 the region paid $14.6 billion in debt
service but received only $10.4 billion in new loans.6 The little FDI that was received also
went to a few select countries, mainly those with mining and oil industries. For instance,
the meager $2.5 billion in FDI that came into Sub-Saharan Africa in the last decade mostly
went to three countries-Nigeria, Angola, and Lesotho-while the remaining 40 countries
competed for just $275 million.7 But African countries are being forced to tailor their
policies to suit the preferences of the rich countries and the international development
agencies.
There are ideologies and mechanisms that make this possible. The idea that external
finance is inevitable for development (part of the development discourse that emerged in the
1940s and 1950s) encourages development planning tailored to external borrowing, which
is often structured to produce particular policy choices in borrowing countries. It then
becomes almost self-reproducing since it creates more need for external borrowing and
creates domestic and external forces that seek to perpetuate it. Although multilateral
lending agencies are largely secretive and unaccountable, their practices are often taken for
430

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 DEVELOPMENT HEGEMONY AND THE DEVELOPMENT CRISIS

granted. Development discourses by many African political and intellectual

when seemingly critical, often mirror the core development ideas of these dom
Indeed, proponents and some critics of conventional development strategies ali
debt relief, the retrenchment of the state, and the removal of trade barrier
countries, as though these, while important, would necessarily lead t
development. R. Munck rightly employs Jacques Derrida's concept of "logoc
demonstrating, as Kate Manzo put it, "how even the most radically critical d
slips into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely wha
contest."8 Therefore, little is said of the constructed and partial character of
knowledges that inform this thinking or the relevance of the local knowledg
experiences, worldviews, and opinions of Africa's local peoples. They ar
thought of as irrelevant.
Agricultural policy-making in West Africa is a case in point. Sinc
independence it has largely been informed by the ideas of development con
dominant forces in European and American (or EuroAmerican) societie
particular reading of European economic transformations and conceptio
primarily to serve the interests of those forces. It has historically excluded
peoples' knowledges, worldviews, and lived experiences; how they produced
related to the land and other producers, consumers, and the environment; an
and practices that might help in the current trajectory. Rather, the emphasi
what Western development agencies think is good for Africa's agriculture, often
what Africa lacks and needs rather than what it has.
Indeed, the international development agencies and Western govern
achieved development hegemony in Africa. This hegemony includes the
development equals Westernization and that external finance is inevitable for
But it is a hegemony largely restricted to state managers rather than the pop
the vast majority of farmers. And, like all hegemonies, it is contested. Never
helped to ensure the perpetuation of the EuroAmerican model and th
involvement of international capital in Africa's development, especially
activities of the World Bank and other international development agencies. R
hegemony has included a conception of indigenous knowledge, which, howe
fundamentally critique the Bank's legacy or approach. Rather, the strat
incorporate indigenous knowledges into the pre-existing conception and str
agricultural development promoted by the Bank. Indeed, in response to its cri
currently devotes a considerable amount of resources to indigenous knowledg
hegemony is achieved in part through the production and dissemination of
knowledge about and in Africa. This knowledge production and disseminati
articulates with the rules guiding access to international finance, itself made
the belief in the inevitability of external financial credits.

KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION AND CONVENTIONAL

DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA

Development policies and programs are influenced by specific knowledge f

themselves shaped by specific ontological, epistemological, and axiomatic
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 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

This is why we must cast a closer gaze at the process of producing and disseminating
development knowledge globally, especially with regard to Africa and the international
system of credit with which it interacts, constraining the development choices for African
countries. As African countries emerged from colonialism in the 1950s and 1960s, they
were advised to divert resources from agriculture to the establishment of manufacturing
industries and the expansion and improvement of their physical infrastructure to help
hasten their industrialization. The focus was on what Africa lacked. Thus Africa would
not go it alone; external financial assistance was crucial. The notion of trusteeship, which
held that development in one country could be managed by another more developed one,
was still a powerful ideology.10 The post-World War II positive experience of the U.S.
with the Marshall Plan's aid to Europe and Keynesian ideas about state intervention to
increase money supply, helped to popularize the belief that external financing was required
for development.11 These notions fit well with the EuroAmerican construction of Africa as
backward, uncivilized, and in need of economic, social, political, and religious salvation.12
These ideas became popular and led to the emergence of the modernization theory, which
equated development with Westernization.
The World Bank assumed the role of providing development advice, prescriptions, and
loans for the emerging countries. The Bank is the single largest producer and disseminator
of development knowledge in the world. In addition, the advanced capitalist countries
unleashed their other international development agencies, such as the United States Agency
for International Development (USAID), Britain's Overseas Development Agency (ODA),
and Canada's International Development Agency (CIDA), as well as the numerous
departments of international or comparative development in their universities, to "help"
developing nations. The major philanthropic agencies, such as the Rockefeller Foundation
and the Ford Foundation, played critical roles in shaping development education by, among
other things, funding organizations and initiatives such as the International Council for
Educational Development (ICED). Combined, these knowledge-producing international
agencies dwarf any other producers of development knowledge in the world. And they
directly or indirectly influenced the establishment of other centers of development
knowledge production in Africa.13 The immense achievements of capitalism in the West and
the advancements and prestige of moder science and technology, coupled with colonial and
racial ideology and practices toward Africans, helped convince many Africans of the
"superiority" of the West's ways. A dominant development discourse it had emerged, and
like other discourses had its parameters and norms and was difficult to contest.14
Initially, these agencies, especially the World Bank, focused their loans on the
development of infrastructure, such as energy and transportation, which African leaders
were told was the foundation and catalyst for development. African governments, for the
most part, went along.15 For instance, in line with the recommendations of a World Bank
mission to Nigeria, 56 percent of the country's total planned expenditure in the 1955-1960
period was devoted to the development of transportation and communication facilities.16
Agriculture, the mainstay of the economies of Africa and the predominant employer of its
people, received little investment or other helpful attention. Rather, funding was targeted to
furnish resources for the industrial sector in line with the dominant development discourse
of the time.17 The little agricultural research that was done focused on improving cash
(export) crops, which were introduced under colonialism to serve European industries.
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 DEVELOPMENT HEGEMONY AND THE DEVELOPMENT CRISIS

That research led to some improvements in the development of hybrid oil palm
Cote d'Ivoire and Zaire; tea in Kenya; cocoa in Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, and N
coffee in Zaire.18 Some industrial enterprises were established with the help
firms, often with huge foreign capital investment.
But by the mid-1960s the problems with that strategy began to be obviou
few places was economic performance impressive. The record of industrializ
dismal.19 The exploitation and oppression of agricultural producers and worke
states' inability to meet people's basic needs, led to popular unrest. In some cas
military men capitalized on popular dissent and seized power, sometimes wit
from foreign (especially Western) governments, such as France, Britain, and the U
In the 1970s the World Bank led a shift toward agricultural development
food production. The shift was justified by the Bank's claim that it was strivin
world's poor, especially those in nations in the southern hemisphere. Agricultu
had to be transformed to resemble those in the West. Development experts foc
African agriculture lacked and needed, rather than what it had and wanted
their assessment, African agriculture and Africans in general lacked and nee
mechanization, rationality, modern bureaucratic management, effective and
markets in capital, land, and labor; the profit motive, and mono-croppin
capitalist agriculture was recommended over peasant agriculture.20
In practice these developments would include land alienation and concent
use of heavy, sophisticated agricultural machinery and equipment, the adopt
seeds, massive chemical use, production primarily for the market, and ratio
calculations in dealing with other people, including members of one's commun
peasants should be made to embrace rather than resist change, and Africa's
needed to be integrated into the world economy. In short, the strategy was aimed
African farmers focus on production for the market rather than for subsistence.
separate the producer from the consumer, as is the case in the West.
These approaches may be well suited to the dominant Western modernist
conception of nature as something to be dominated and the abiding faith in
motive" as the determinant of economic behavior. Land alienation may be con
the Western sense of commodification with all the attendant insecurities for
while the serfs in feudal Europe rented land from powerful landowners, this
case in most of Africa, where the peasants still owned their land. In this Wes
environmental protection and sustainability are hardly seen as an integ
procuring from and relating to nature. The World Bank provided the intelle
financial leadership, with its ideas articulated and presented in a number of p
such as The Assault on World Poverty, in which these positions are pres
products Of research (and therefore unassailable).21 But it is problemati
transplant to Africa, in an undiluted form, the type of mechanization pred
Europe and North America, which was rooted in labor shortages there. The
impact of this strategy on the African environment, and the varying ways in wh
affect different social groups and regions, was hardly assessed or discussed.
questions of affordability and the capacity of African countries to maintain t
and sophisticated equipment were not seriously posed. Foreign loans were an i
of the planning, and these agricultural technologies have become consumer goo
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 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

new markets. Apparently the loans would make them "affordable" to African countries. The
major beneficiaries were the World Bank, which found borrowers for its funds,
agribusiness (backed by the support of the G-7 governments), which found new avenues for
wealth accumulation, and local elites, who found new avenues for personal
aggrandizement through the state.
Agribusiness firms had from the 1960s moved in significant ways into the agrarian
sector of the underdeveloped countries to farm, to sell equipment, improved seeds, and
chemicals, including fertilizer, and to process agricultural products.22 The jobs these
activities created in the home countries of the transnational corporations (TNCs) were also
of interest to and supported by their governments. In order to be less suspect in the eyes of
Third World government officials, agribusiness employed the strategy of working through
multilateral agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United
Nations.23 They secured institutional support in the FAO by way of the Industry
Cooperative Program (ICP), which was set up in 1967 and consisted of leading agribusiness
firms.24 The ICP worked to promote the penetration of agricultural planning in Africa,
Asia, and Latin America in a manner that ensured that agricultural changes in these areas
would provide new export opportunities for agribusiness.25 Thus the increased interest of
the World Bank in African agriculture was part of a worldwide phenomenon and had little
to do with local farmers' desires and views.
The 1970s also witnessed the accumulation of funds in private banks in the rich
countries following the U.S. government's removal of restrictions on capital export, and the
huge OPEC deposits from oil sales accumulated when oil prices rose sharply on the world
market. An ongoing oil price-induced recession in the advanced capitalist countries led the
private banks to seek new borrowers for their funds. The IMF and World Bank encouraged
so-called middle-income countries to borrow these funds. The relative ease of access to
private bank credits enabled the borrowers to attempt to regulate their economie
nationally, while avoiding the conditions that came with most foreign aid (a move that
helped give rise to the notion of the "strong state" that was prominent in the 1970s and early
1980s).26 Before this period international lending was dominated by "aid" (concessional
lending) from bilateral sources or multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank. Aid ha
never been easily available to any country, even those that contributed to the resources of
the aid-giving nations and institutions. Aid is governed by norms that structure access to it,
which, in turn, help shape development choices in borrowing countries. According to
Robert E. Wood, the norms include the following: aid is usually unavailable when it is
deemed that private capital can be found, lenders rarely compete among themselves, and
borrowing countries are treated on an individual case-by-case basis while the lenders tend
to coordinate their activities.27 Although there were exceptions, the conditions attached to
the loans typically included deregulation and the orientation of production toward export
markets.

The IMF acted to assist countries that had balance of payment problems. These
borrowers would be forced to restructure their economies in order to enable them to pay
for imports and service their debts. The availability of private bank credits in the 1970s
enabled borrowing countries to avoid the stringent conditions attached to IMF loans. With
the debt crisis that became officially acknowledged following Mexico's default in 1982,
access to private bank credits came to be conditional, as well. The IMF and the World Bank
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 DEVELOPMENT HEGEMONY AND THE DEVELOPMENT CRISIS

began to act as debt managers and collectors for the private banks and initiated
the credit regime alongside the more restrictive aid regime.
For their part African government officials were concerned about the ris
food in the urban centers and of food imports, especially when food prices
world market in the 1970s in the wake of huge Soviet purchases of U.S. gra
following their cold war detente. For instance, between 1972 and 1974 the wo
wheat tripled from $60 to $200 a ton and rice rose from $130 to $300 a ton.2
prices coincided with and reinforced the discourses of self-sufficiency and "no
prominent in the post-colonial societies at the time, as well as the Keynesia
model, which was seen as justifying state intervention to assist economies in
emerging sentiment was well captured by Nigeria's president Olusegun Obas
military government then (awash with oil wealth) was spearheading the pan-A
to assist the southern African nations to gain political independence: "A nat
cannot feed itself is at the mercy of others, and has a lot to lose."29
What we had then was a convergence of contingent factors that fed we
dominant development discourse, including Eurodollar loans in pr
transnational agribusiness in search of new avenues for profit, international
agencies willing to "help" (and armed with the ideology of ending poverty)
World governments seeking self-reliance and an end to poverty, with access to
loans to help them procure what they "lacked." The few countries, such as Ta
tried to push self-reliance further than rhetoric were largely marginalized
access to private credits. By the 1980s, however, the discourse of self-suffi
national regulation were arrested with the imposition of the Structural
Programs (SAPs).
African governments implemented a number of agricultural projects in t
collaboration with the World Bank and other international agencies. T
Operation Feed Yourself, the Upper Regional Agricultural Development Projec
Regional Agricultural Development Project in Ghana, the National Acce
Production Program, and Operation Feed the Nation and Agricultural Developm
in Nigeria.30 Their emphasis was on large-scale mechanized farming by the
men), although women constitute the majority of the farming population. And b
crops that had no immediate use-value for the local population, these cash c
projects mirrored those of the colonial era, such as the massive Gezira schem
production in the Sudan.31
The impact of these policies and projects has included the concentration
other resources in a few hands, the loss of lands by many peasants, environm
and the emergence of huge governmental bureaucracies. In addition, there was
and financial dependency, as well as increased unemployment since the
industries to absorb those displaced from the land. In the case of Nigeria and
food was produced while more was imported, leading to more dependence o
foods, seeds, and chemicals, especially fertilizers. There was more hunger and
which remain to this day, as well as increased class polarization, urban and
deepening debt crises, and increased numbers of young people trying to migr
and other wealthy industrialized countries. At the same time, indigenous m
bureaucrats, and other government officials benefited through inflated co
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 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

kickbacks. In many cases the projects served as a source of patronage in the hands of those
in power.32 In Nigeria's case, for instance, the major beneficiaries included the TNCs. They
acted as consultants, suppliers, and construction contractors for the projects and as seller
of seeds and chemicals. Some TNCs engaged in direct agricultural production and the direct
purchase of the crops produced. The management of these programs was often put in the
hands of European and American expatriates, such as the Bakolori and Kano irrigation
projects in Nigeria.33 Most Western development experts did not ask the indigenou
Africans themselves what they really needed or wanted. They did not ask the local farmer
how they solved their problems with a view to helping them, while allowing them to
maintain control over agricultural processes. However, indigenous knowledges and
practices were often seen as obstacles to commercial agricultural transformation. Some of
the major problems facing the food producers went unaddressed, such as inequities in
access to land and its resources, land shortage (for some), low returns, poor storage and
transportation infrastructure, inadequate market information, gender inequities, and
domestic social relations.
In the late 1970s the combination of the massive loans procured by African and other
developing countries, the oil crisis, recession, and high interest rates in the advanced
capitalist countries created an international debt crisis and Africa became the worst and
most enduring victim. In response to the debt crisis the prescriptions for development shifted
once more in the 1980s, but still focused on what Africa lacked-free markets; legislation
protecting investments; honest, incorruptible, democratic governments; and human rights
protection. The decades of collaboration with African states to bring about development
were conveniently forgotten. African governments that collaborated to pursue import
substitution policies favorable to Western capitalists were now seen as obstacles to
development. They were unwieldy, corrupt, meddling leviathans elbowing out private
enterprise through their ownership of businesses, over-taxation of agricultural producers,
profligate spending on the social sector, corruption, and ineptitude. The World Bank and
the IMF called for the state to be "rolled back" from directly participating in agricultural
activities. African government officials were told to cut spending (often in the social
sector), orient agricultural production to export markets, put an end to subsidies and price,
exchange rate, and export controls, and privatize state agricultural enterprises. According
to the World Bank, these policies would dramatically increase farm incomes, save foreign
exchange for debt servicing, and put African countries on the path to sustained growth.
These ideas were published soon after the African leaders themselves produced the Lagos
Plan of Action (LPA), which among other things proposed the establishment of an "African
Economic Community" that would create a "common market" for African manufactures and,
in turn, stimulate demand for African goods.34 However, the Bank through its various
publications indicated to the African leaders what it was prepared to support and in effect
undermined the LPA.

In a way the neoliberal agenda for resolving the economic crisis in the West, which
focused on supply-side economics and privatization, was being transplanted to Africa. As
economist Mansfield Bienefeld noted, the loss of faith in the state and an abiding faith in
the market cut across the ideological divide with many leftist scholars embracing it, albeit
for different reasons.35 Thirty-six African governments were forced to implement the
adjustment programs, and while some countries experienced growth initially, nearly twenty
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 DEVELOPMENT HEGEMONY AND THE DEVELOPMENT CRISIS

years later few were on a path of sustainable growth. Indeed, in many the
have deteriorated, as the World Bank's own data show. The Bank's Africa
Indicators 2001 stated that 300 million Africans were living on 65 cents
mortality averages 151 per 1000 children, although in many countries the
200 per 1000. This compares with 53 in East Asia and 9 in rich industrial
African nations also had the highest rate of rural out-migration with the
of Nigeria, Kenya, and Tanzania doubling in the last twenty years ju
conditions and infrastructure deteriorated. Life expectancy in Africa is th
world and has recently declined in some countries. Africa's illiteracy rate,
to 41 percent (49 percent for women) in the last decade, remains the lowest
Interestingly, statistics such as these are used by the Bank to justify further
Although the discourse on structural adjustment was couched in t
restructuring African and other debtor nations for the benefit of their c
objective was to resolve the widespread debt crisis that was threatening th
financial system. When critics pointed to the negative impact of these econ
the environment and on the poor, women, children, and other vulnerable g
tacked on "adjustment with a human face," "women in development," an
development" to its adjustment programs, but with little change to its core p
The Bank, the IMF, and the G-7 countries responded to critics' c
introducing the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative to reduce
highly indebted countries, but on the condition that they fully implement
New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), which a handful of
and the G-7 claim was initiated by African and Canadian leaders at the 200
at Kananaskas, Canada, is unlikely to make much difference. Western lead
implementation of the SAP and democratic reforms as conditions for rece
foreign aid. The G-7 nations not only refused to open their markets to man
from Africa, but also increased agricultural subsidies to their producers. N
to be stillborn since, like previous strategies, it leaves intact the asymmetr
development knowledges, practices, and outcomes.
Other factors have facilitated the achievement of this development he
from the structured access to international financial credits and knowle
Planning and budgeting for development in African countries was carrie
imperialist powers during the colonial period and subsequently by those
handed power at independence. Toward the end of the colonial era, Afric
bureaucratic leadership was gradually eased into the privileged positi
occupied by colonial officers and subscribed to policies and programs that
with those of the colonizing powers. The World Bank was critical in shapi
decisions because it had funds to lend. For example, the report of a World
Nigeria published in 1954 urged that Nigeria's "reserve funds" be used fo
under the direction of the elites who would soon assume power at i
Unfortunately, using up the country's reserve funds exposed it to the int
markets.

Oftentimes, the same lending institutions that provide credits also spo
and offer policy advice and management expertise. Although this represen
interest, they are not accountable to the borrowing countries. In fact th
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 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

which is largely unaccountable to anyone, is at once a development researcher, adviser,

policy-maker, creditor, manager, and disciplinarian to African governments.39 The Bank
actually tries to structure knowledge production to fit its vision of the world and to
buttress its lending at the same time.40 For example, the Bank makes clear what the lending
priorities are, publishes information on what it considers to be the development problems
facing borrowing countries, and, through what it calls "dialogues" with African
governments, makes these views known.41 In this way the Bank makes clear what it will
support, which acts to signal other lenders, including private banks, as to what the
preferred directions should be. In general bilateral (i.e., donor countries) and private
lenders rarely compete with the Bank.
Joel Samoff and Philip Jones have shown how the Bank's pronouncements, lending
objectives, and highly publicized "research findings," with their positivist bias, influence
what African governments "choose" as policy.42 Samoff and Jones showed how the Bank's
claims to science, backed by its financial clout, influence policy-making in borrowing
countries. Philip Jones pointed out that the key to the World Bank's views is not what the
officials say per se, but how they act to indicate to governments what policies the Bank
would be willing to support.43 The Bank's priorities and preferences also influence the
army of researchers, who act as consultants and whose findings are often treated as the
products of science, although they work with a clear understanding of the Bank's views
and are often hired on that basis.44 The Bank widely disseminates the knowledge that it
produces through a variety of avenues-books and journals, briefings, conferences, and the
"dialogues" with borrowing countries' political and financial leaders. In the process they
marginalize and denigrate other knowledges, including how people actually produce
specific goods, their motives for producing them, and how this ties in with their conceptions
of food security and sustainability, social relations, and family structure.
All considered, therefore, the Bank's role as producer and promoter of development
knowledge is perhaps more important than its role as lender, although both reinforce each
another. It is unlikely that the World Bank and other international development agencies
would continue to have the kind of influence that they are able to exert on Africa if they
relied solely on the loans or even the coercion or threats coming from the rich donor
nations. While the loans are important, getting Africa's political leaders to believe in (and
share the benefits of) the Bank's brand of development is critical. In addition to the profits
that they provide to the Bank and others, the loans also act as incentives to encourage
African countries to adopt the Bank's vision of development. Securing the open consent of
Africa's political and economic leaders helps to reduce the costs of enforcing that vision.
Also important for the maintenance of this hegemony are the Western and African
scholars, trained to be enamored of "modernization theory," who set up most of Africa's
universities and research institutes. There is little basic research carried out in Africa;
African researchers are dependent on Western sources for research funds, equipment, and
publishing outlets. Many also crave recognition from their Western counterparts, as well
as institutional affiliation with Western universities or research institutes. The result is
that African scholars often feel compelled to conduct the type of research that their Western
counterparts would consider to be "cutting edge" rather than what fits the needs and
realities of African societies. Indeed, African scholars often merely play the role of data
collectors for Western scholars who do the analyses and theory-building.45 This
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 DEVELOPMENT HEGEMONY AND THE DEVELOPMENT CRISIS

intellectual and scientific dependency has been an important source of the dom
Western view of Africa's problems and the possible solutions for them. But th
has always been contested.

CONTESTED HEGEMONY AND REPRESSIVE TOLERANCE

In order to obtain hegemony, dominant groups often construct their ide

and preferences to articulate with the expectations and preferences of the d
no surprise, therefore, that the World Bank has historically constructed
discourse in altruistic and difficult-to-oppose terms: more growth, more
more choice, and more freedom. Faced with the problem of demonstrating
benefit from a process from which they are largely excluded, the Bank
"trickle-down" theories used by Western economists to justify the extrem
in many EuroAmerican societies.
The World Bank is in the business of lending money and is a hu
interested in reproducing itself, with staff concerned with career advan
specific reward systems. Therefore, it is not surprising that policy prescr
staff members often involve some lending from the Bank and a long-term r
the borrowing country. Reward systems for staff are based on the amoun
than the success of the target programs or projects.47 In addition, the Bank
directors, and Board of Governors are immune from prosecution, and no
"bad" or un-repayable.48 Thus there is little incentive for the staff to ag
support projects that have a good chance of succeeding, nor is there m
support research highlighting successful programs. As a result, these poli
have come under attack from representatives of non-governmental age
many political and social activist organizations.
Political theorists Gramsci's notion of "hegemony" and Herbert Marcu
"repressive tolerance" are useful tools in analyzing the role of internatio
agencies in Africa's development discourse and practice. In his Prison N
defined hegemony as "the 'spontaneous' consent given by the great masses
to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundam
consent is 'historically' caused by the prestige (and consequent confiden
dominant group enjoys because of its position and function in the world
In the world of development, the international development agencies, esp
Bank, represent the "dominant fundamental group" with prestige, power
backing of the richest and most powerful nations. The governments and e
other Third World countries (and to a lesser extent their peoples) repre
masses of the population." For the Bank and other international developm
continue to play their economic roles in Africa and elsewhere, it is nec
borrowers comply or at least resist only minimally. That is in large part the
Bank in particular is engaged in more than just lending money. However, th
is achieved is more evident in the governments and bureaucracies than
majority of the people.
Herbert Marcuse's notion of repressive tolerance helps us to understa
of the World Bank and its backers to contestations of that hegemony, in
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 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

role as critic of its own policies. These critiques have often been cited as evidence that the
Bank and its backers are changing for the better. The situation in advanced capitalist
democracies in which oppositional views, attitudes, and behaviors are tolerated as long as
they stay within limits that do not threaten the established order is illustrative of the
"repressive tolerance."50 The success of the development hegemony ensures that critics who
question the dominant model, and the programs and projects that it engenders, often do so
within the parameters set by its sponsors. Critics are often incorporated, ignored,
marginalized, delegitimized, or repressively tolerated.
This is a helpful way to understand the role of dominant development agencies as
critics of their own policies and programs. Their critique is often carried out in a way that
does not question their basic assumptions. While some staff may express mild critical
opinions of the Bank's policies, they really should be understood as examples of strategic
non-critique. A recent sophisticated example is The Elusive Quest for Growth by William
Easterly of the World Bank. The book criticizes some development theories, policies, and
practices pursued in the poor countries. But it then goes on to "show" not only that growth
in the developing nations is essential and that it benefits all segments of these societies,
including the poor, but also that growth is better at improving the lives of the poor than
redistribution of the wealth and resources. As a result, Easterly argues that the quest for
growth must continue in order to help the poor, despite past failures and without regard to
environmental consequences.51 This kind of strategic non-critique helps the Bank and other
agencies to maintain their development hegemony; alternative models are labeled
untenable.52 This strategic non-critique partly explains why African countries continue
their relationship with development agencies like the World Bank.
The result is that the EuroAmerican model has become so pervasive that it is intrinsic
in the ways we think, conceptualize, and organize knowledge about development.53 The
superiority of the Western notion of development is considered a given, the advantages of
unregulated market relations are taken for granted, the inevitability of external capital for
development is taken as axiomatic, playing by "international" rules (in reality the G-7's
rules) is largely unquestioned, and production for the market is assumed to motivate every
producer. While the development hegemony has been contested, it has been effective because
the discourse of development in and on Africa is being carried out within the parameters set
by this hegemony.
Given the inadequacy of the loans and grants provided by the international
development agencies, we need to also look at the impact of the production and
dissemination of development knowledge to explain why the recipients continue to tailor
their economic policies to the development vision put forward by the donors.54 Most critics
of the development regime have focused on piecemeal policies and programs in terms of their
failure to realize stated objectives, their viability, the contradictions inherent in them, the
effects on specific social groups, and other human and material costs.55 As already
indicated, the critique from an indigenous knowledges perspective has had some effect, with
the Bank and other development agencies currently committing resources to the analysis of
indigenous knowledge; however, this is largely intended to incorporate and marginalize the
radical critique of its policies and practices.

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 DEVELOPMENT HEGEMONY AND THE DEVELOPMENT CRISIS

RECLAIMING THE DISCOURSE AND PRACTICE: DEVELOPMENT THAT

COUNTS LOCAL PEOPLE IN

Despite protestations, the debt trap for many developing nations ha

further. The acceptance of the dominant development model, the risks
unilateral abandonment of that model (or default on debt), the difficultie
and collectivist responses, and the emergence of a unipolar world (with t
pre-emptive military strikes) greatly limit the prospects for improveme
would help ameliorate Africa's conditions will have to include reforms to
financial system, including the reclaiming, or at least continued contes
development discourse emerging from the international development agen
the rupturing and destabilization of the dominant EuroAmerican model
development in order to allow the incorporation of local knowledges, inc
mechanisms that the various groups have employed since the worsening
political conditions that began in the 1980s.
Some of the dominant myths about African development need to be c
include:

i. That foreign aid is a requirement for development. Foreign aid may

increase growth in the past, but the price has been too steep. It helps gove
confronting their people to explain their development choices, includin
thereby reducing the likelihood of increased transparency and accountab
is also suspect; it enriches the local elites, while everyone in the country
repayment, especially the poor. This is not an argument against every for
But foreign assistance should be sought only after development needs of t
well as different revenue options have been assessed by the people themse
sources of revenue have been exhausted.
ii. That exports to the advanced capitalist countries are required for t
First, African producers are not meeting the needs of their local mark
Africans go hungry, in the midst of cultivable land, suggests the exist
regional markets for food. Second, while external markets are a fact of l
requires that Africans producing for export try to produce what the We
prices for, and buy from the West only what Africans need but do not have
should be expended trying to improve trade relations with neighb
employing more collective strategies, than with reluctant EuroAmerica
farm subsidies continue to squeeze out African imports.
iii. That the profit motive drives all producers and should shape pol
development is just about markets and market relations, with rationalit
principle. Gender, class, race, and political ideologies also influenc
discourses and practices. Ideas and stereotypes about countries, peoples,
shape policies about them, as do choices about with whom capitalists for
hire, and promote; what aspects of their operations they locate where; and
is "transferred."

iv. That the African states themselves can be relied upon to bring about d
state is not a homogenous entity.56 Often there are elements within the s

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 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

necessarily interested in such genuine agricultural development or uplifting the people.

Indeed, the state is often a stabilizing force, typically maintaining inequities.
v. That debt cancellation by itself will lead to Africa's socio-economic transformation.
There is no reason to believe that this will be the case, especially when some countries
incurred the original debts when their own revenues were increasing dramatically, such as
Nigeria in the 1970s.
Dispelling these myths will enable Africans to begin to clearly examine what
development options are available, and what the consequences of each option would be, so
that they can make informed choices rooted in the lived experiences and worldviews of
their people and local communities. More importantly, this would encourage a focus on
domestic sources of revenue rather than external ones that carry costly conditions and
which, so far, have yielded little benefit.
In his expose of the "myth of development," V. Tucker argued that "the model of
development now widely pursued is part of the problem rather than the solution." This
Western conception of development "distorts our imagination, limits our vision, [and blinds
us] to the alternatives that human ingenuity is capable of imagining and implementing."57
Armed with local and indigenous cultural knowledges and ways of knowing, African
peoples must demystify development and arrive at meaningful alternatives. Removing the
EuroAmerican veil will enable Africans to rethink development, beginning with their local
communities, their peoples' lived experiences, and the current challenges as they see them.
But it must be done in a way that recognizes the heterogeneity of these communities. Social
differences within communities and families need to be acknowledged and problematized.
Social inequities that inhibit the full participation of members of societies in productive
and consumptive activities need to be removed or reduced, not only because it is the moral
thing to do, but because it will help people to confront collectively their problems.
While important, Africa's development will not result from a policy of debt
cancellation that leaves intact the rules guiding access to international credits. A reform of
the international financial system must include greater accountability and transparency.
Lenders who dictate how their funds are used must also accept responsibility for failures
of the policies and programs that they dictate and control. It is immoral to dictate policies
and then walk away with both the principal and interest. There must be financial
incentives for success and penalties for failure.
The history of EuroAmerican transformations and four decades of conventional
approaches to development in Africa show that there is no set formula. Rather, the
development of each country often results from conjunctural factors that may not be
reproduced elsewhere. Those genuinely interested in Africa's transformation must seek to
strengthen the hands of those within the state who represent interests that are committed to
the privileging of local peoples' ideas and knowledges in efforts to help them improve their
lives while seeking ways to interrogate them and integrate them into strategies and
programs for social change.
Development practitioners should work from the perspective of multiple knowledges in
which local knowings are seen as important and worthy of interrogation. They should
reject the arrangement of knowledges into hierarchies of superior and inferior. To have
served people for so long even in trying times must mean that some elements of indigenous
knowledges and forms of resistance are useful and can be harnessed to deal with
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 DEVELOPMENT HEGEMONY AND THE DEVELOPMENT CRISIS

contemporary problems. The Enlightenment-inspired distrust of traditi

which has been popularized through the universalization of the EuroAme
experience, is not helpful for Africa's rural communities. Europe its
abandoned all its traditions.58
An African-centered food policy, for instance, should take into accoun
about production and relations to nature. The vast majority of Africans w
land for their very existence often see land as more than a factor of produ
and delicate and needs to be revered, cared for, and sustained. As a resul
communities do not see nature merely as something to be exploited and d
something that needs renewal, as well.59 Also, because most African farm
communities with face-to-face interactions, they see labor as more than jus
of production; laborers are human beings and often are people's relatives. T
of African farmers still cultivate primarily for personal use and would the
be swayed by the pressure to rely on markets, especially when the local a
markets are unreliable. This calls into question the reliance of developme
local elites and their desire not to undermine the existing social hierarchies
In the past the local people rarely participated in decision-making an
agricultural development. Absent in most discussions of "participatory dev
discourse on power and domination. Participation must involve powe
experts must be conscious of the unequal power relations between them
people, among the local people themselves (including class, gender, ethnici
and the dominant development discourses on people's perceptions. Simply
what kind of development they want ignores the power of dominant disc
they may have influenced the people's beliefs and attitudes.
Historically, local farmers from all over Sub-Saharan Africa have bee
sometimes violently, the imposition of external food policies. Some have co
to cultivate the imposed cash crops, while others who adopted them later
and reverted to their staple crops.60 Others have tried to undermine
sponsored projects by applying chemical fertilizers and irrigation water at
and in quantities that violate the prescriptions for the project off
particularly, who realized that these chemicals also fertilize the weeds, thu
work for them, refused to apply them or did so in quantities smaller th
prescribed.61 In eastern Nigeria, I found that many women simply throw
around the crops, rather than opening the ground, putting in the fertilizer
with soil as directed by officials. The women told me that it was too much
do it the prescribed way, "unless you want to sleep in one farm," as one o
Unable to afford the expense, others in eastern Nigeria have abandoned
chemical fertilizers and have reverted to composting in order to produce m
farms. Other farmers have put in their staple crops alongside the prescribe
to ensure their food security. Others, frustrated at their inability to secu
seeds and chemical fertilizers, have organized sometimes violent prot
blocked roads and chased away, seized, or injured officials.62 Others, for f
landless laborers, have resisted the seizure of their lands by wealthy and
who are often favored by most of the projects.63 There has also been a rev
local foods because the deepening economic crisis and austerity have made
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 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

overly expensive. And people are going to traditional healers in increasing numbers
response to the high (and rising) costs of modem medical care.
These cases of resistance are important not just because they show farme
disapproval of projects imposed on them, but because they indicate some directions
could be pursued in fashioning policies that they would support. These events point to
need to engage the farmers in dialogue that would lead to policies and programs tha
incorporate their lived experiences, what they have, their creativity, hopes, desires, a
challenges. Development research should focus on crops and strategies that farmers
consumers revert to when they reject or cannot afford to implement the progr
development brings them. More efforts should be made to build regional agricultur
collectives, not just at the governmental level but within civil society, as well. It is
critical to work across national boundaries, not only to help one another but to be bet
positioned to negotiate with major players in the global economy.

CONCLUSION

I have argued that the development policies promoted in the 1960s

linked to wider shifts in the global economy and were actively prom
Bank and other international development agencies, as is the case
"structural adjustment policies." At the heart of the persistent failures of
universalization of the EuroAmerican notion of development. T
international development, especially the structured access to financial
development choices in Africa and ensures that the major players rea
regardless of the impact of the policies and programs on the vast majo
They do this while neglecting or marginalizing African experien
international development agencies, governments of the advanced ind
and Africa's state managers and their local allies help structure develo
practices in Africa. The financial, ideological, diplomatic, and military
advanced capitalist countries support development hegemony in Africa
that African political leaders take the inevitability of external
universalization of Western notions of development as articles of fait
continue to tailor their policies in a manner generally consistent with th
even when they do not receive loans from these agencies or when suc
insignificance relative to the long-term total cost of the programs or
greater significance of the role of the international development agenc
World Bank, in African development is their domination of the deve
Focusing mainly on the money that they provide (or fail to provide)
however important, misses this crucial point.
These policies and programs have not only failed to deliver the stated
have also been destructive to the local communities, increasing poverty,
hopelessness, rural out-migration, unemployment, and indebtedness of
International development discourse is structured in a way that does n
of accountability on the part of international development agencies,
interest, or their moral responsibilities and obligations. Rather, these

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 DEVELOPMENT HEGEMONY AND THE DEVELOPMENT CRISIS

their way because governments formulate their policies and projects in

agencies, the TNCs, and private banks prefer.
Therefore, overcoming the largely disastrous development consequen
requires a rupturing of the development hegemony, including the credi
articulating a new development vision that interrogates and incorporate
lived experiences of ordinary Africans as well as useful elements of Wes
technology. This will involve action-oriented researchers and other activ
politically intervene to give voice and prominence to those experiences an

NOTES

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the "Africa in

Globalization Conference" held at Teachers College, Columbia University, N
12 April 2002, and at the "Sociology and Equity Studies in Education Semi
Institute for Studies in Education, 28 October 2002. This revised version has
the comments of the participants at these fora as well as from colleagues, incl
M. Anderson of Columbia University's Teachers College, Kari Dehli and Al
the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education of OISE
Toronto, Ifeanyi Ezeonu of the Department of Sociology, University of Tor
outside reviewers.

lImport substitution is a strategy that encouraged the domestic production of imported consumer
and later agricultural goods. It often involved tle financial and technological dependence of the
poor countries on the rich ones.
Nigerian and Ghanaian governments, for example, often claim that their economic policies,
including the SAP, are homemade, thereby deflecting attention from connections between them and
outside agencies.
3Stung by persistent bad publicity and failures, the Bank claims that structural adjustment is dead,
but it still promotes structural "reforms" that mean the same with the same zeal.
4Uma Lele, A. Oyedeji, Viva Bindlish, and Balu Bumb, Nigeria's Economic Development, Agriculture's
Role and World Bank's Assistance, 1961-88: Lessonsfor the Future (Managing Agricultural Development
in Africa, Special Studies Division, Country Economics Department, World Bank, 1989). In this period
the naira was roughly equal to the U.S. dollar.
5World Bank, African Development Indicators (Washington, DC, 2000).
6World Bank, Global Development Finance (Washington, DC, 2001).
7World Bank, African Development Indicators (Washington, DC, 2001).
8R. Munck, "Deconstructing Development Discourses: Of Impasses, Alternatives and Politics," in
Critical Development Theory: Contributions to the New Paradigm, ed. R. Munck and D. O'Heam (London,
1999), 195-209; Kate Manzo, "Modernist Discourse and the Crisis of Development Theory," Studies in
Comparative International Development 26, no. 2 (1991): 3-26.
9Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago, IL, 1970); Alvin Gouldner, The Coming
Crisis of Western Sociology (New York, 1970); P. Scheurich and M. Young, "Coloring Epistemologies:
Are Our Research Epistemologies Racially Biased?" Educational Researcher 26, no. 4 (1997): 4-16.
10Michael Cowen and Robert Shenton, Doctrines of Development (London and New York, 1996).
11Fred Block, The Origins of the International Economic Disorder (Berkeley, CA, 1977); Robert E. Wood,
From Marshall Plan to Debt Crisis: Foreign Aid and Development Choices in the World Economy (Berkeley,
CA, 1986); Joyce Kolko, Restructuring the World Economy (New York, 1988); Andrew C. Okolie, "Oil
Rents, International Loans and Agrarian Policies in Nigeria, 1970-1972," Review of African Political
Economy 22, no. 64 (1995): 199-212.

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 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

12V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: Gnosis, Philosophy, and the Order of Knowledge (Bloomington,
IN, 1988); Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World
(Princeton, NJ, 1995).
13Paulin J. Hountondji, "Producing Knowledge in Africa Today: The Second Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola
Distinguished Lecture," African Studies Review 38, no. 3 (1995): 1-10.
14Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development.
15John P. Olinger, "The World Bank and Nigeria," Review of African Political Economy 5, no. 13 (1978):
101-7; Cheryl Payer, The Debt Trap: The IMF and the Third World (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1974);
Gerald K. Helleiner, Peasant Agriculture, Government and Economic Growth in Nigeria (Homewood, IL,
1966).
16Helleiner, Peasant Agriculture, 333.
17John Rapley, Understanding Development: Theory and Practice in the Third World (Boulder, CO, 1996).
18J. K. Thisen, "The Development and Utilization of Science and Technology in Productive Sectors:
Case of Developing Africa," Africa Development 18, no. 4 (1993): 5-35.
19Rapley, Understanding Development; Claude Ake, A Political Economy of Africa (Essex, Eng., 1981).
20Gavin Williams, State and Society in Nigeria (Idanre, Nigeria, 1981).
21World Bank, The Assault on World Poverty (Baltimore, MD, 1975).
22Barbara Dinham and Colin Hines, Agribusiness in Africa (Trenton, NJ, 1984); Olinger, "The World
Bank and Nigeria," 101-7; Ernest Feder, 'The World Bank and the Expansion of Industrial Monopoly
Capital into Underdeveloped Agricultures," Journal of Contemporary Asia 12, no. 1 (1982): 34-60;
Ernest Feder, "The New Colonial Office," Economic and Political Weekly, 18, no. 8 (1983): 262-66.
23Okello Oculi, "Dependent Food Policy in Nigeria, 1975-79," Review of African Political Economy 6, no.
15/16 (1986): 63-74.
24Agribusiness Council, Agricultural Initiative in the Third World (Lexington, MA, 1974).
25In February 1974 the ICP organized a conference in London on "Science and Agribusiness in the
Seventies." It set up a task force that "would work to improve communications within the
international agribusiness and scientific communities, government and the international
organizations." Members of the task force included heads of major transnational agribusiness firms,
international banks, and major foundations. For the list see Agribusiness Council, Agricultural
Initiative, 4.
26Funds are fungible so that securing private bank credit frees up funds that can be used elsewhere.
27Wood, From Marshall Plan.
28World Bank, Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action (Washington, DC,
1982), 89.
29See James 0. Ojiako, Thirteen Years of Military Rule, 1966-79 (Lagos, Nigeria, n.d.), 162.
30Emmanuel Hansen, "National Food Policies and Organizations in Ghana," in The State and
Agriculture in Africa, ed. Thandika Mkandawire and Naceur Bourenane (London, 1987), 26-58.
31T. Barnett, "The Gezira Scheme: Production of Cotton and the Reproduction of
Underdevelopment," in Beyond the Sociology of Development, ed. Ivar Oxaal, Tony Barnett, and David
Booth (London, 1975), 183-207; T. Barnett, "Evaluating the Gezira Scheme: Black Box or Pandora's
Box?" in Rural Development in Tropical Africa, ed. Judith Heyer, Pape Roberts, and Gavin Williams
(New York, 1981), 306-24. Here local population was diverted from the production of its staple foods
to the production of cotton (under strict central management) for export to Britain.
32Richard Palmer-Jones, "Irrigation and the Politics of Agricultural Development in Nigeria," in State,
Oil and Agriculture in Nigeria, ed. Michael J. Watts (Berkeley, CA, 1987); Alkassum Abba et al. The
Nigerian Economic Crisis: Causes and Solutions (Zaria, Nigeria, 1985); Andrew C. Okolie, "Economic
Crisis, Structural Adjustment, and Prospects for Political Stability in Nigeria's Third Republic,"
Ufahamu 19, no. 1 (1991): 44-63; Andrew C. Okolie, "Against Theoretical Dualism: Ralph Miliband and
the Question of the Autonomy of the Nigerian State," Coexistence 29 (1992): 305-18; and Andrew
Okolie, "Oil Rents."
330culi, "Dependent Food Policy"; Brian C. D'Silva and M. Rafique Raza, "Integrated Agricultural
Development in Nigeria: The Funtua Project," Food Policy 5, no. 4 (1980): 282-97.
34See the Organization of African Unity, Lagos Plan of Action for the Economic Development of Africa,
1980-2000 (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1980).

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 DEVELOPMENT HEGEMONY AND THE DEVELOPMENT CRISIS

35While the EuroAmerican Left was "spoiled" by prosperity, the African Left was
brutal repression, corruption, incompetence, and inefficiencies of the "strong" sta
Bienefeld, "Dependency Theory and the Political Economy of Africa's Crisis," R
Political Economy 15, no. 43 (1988): 68-87.
36World Bank, "Less Foreign Aid and Poor Trade Terms Hurt Africa's Econ
Countries Register Solid Growth," News Release No. 2001/230/S, http://wbln00
/news...52633852569f40055f8bc?OpenDocument, 2001. Accessed 29 March 2002.
37This is the latest in the series of ineffective debt reduction initiatives enunc
countries in concert with the international financial institutions. Others include th
and Trinidad terms.
38World Bank, The Economic Development of Nigeria (Baltimore, MD, 1955).
39For example, in spite of the conflicts of interest embedded in the Bank's role, unlike other banks,
the World Bank is not liable in any way for the failures of policies and projects that it prescribes,
funds, and controls. The Bank's structure ensures that it is not subject to the discipline of the
marketplace as are other banks and is not accountable to anyone. And there is no independent
political overseer of the Bank's role and no independent arbiter in case of disputes between the Bank
and its debtors. Ute Pieper and Lance Taylor, "The Revival of the Liberal Creed: The IMF, the World
Bank, and Inequality in a Globalized Economy," Working Paper No. 4 (Center for Economic Policy
Analysis, New School for Social Research, New York, 1998); and Payer, The Debt Trap.
40Mbaya Kankwenda, "'Marabouts' and Merchants of Development in Africa," CODESRIA Bulletin 3
(1994): 9-15; Joel Samoff, "The Reconstruction of Schooling in Africa," Comparative Education 37, no. 2
(1993): 181-222.
41The dialogues should more appropriately be called "reading of riot acts" to the borrowing countries
because they are meetings where the World Bank essentially tells these countries what they should
do. The latter have little input in the chosen policies and programs, although they would have to
cough up counterpart funds, which are often more than the Bank's lending. See the Bank's
numerous publications on African development, especially its various country studies and special
reports (many of them confidential).
42Samoff, "The Reconstruction of Schooling in Africa," 181-222; Philip W. Jones, "On World Bank
Education Financing," Comparative Education 33, no. 1 (1997): 117-29; Philip W. Jones, "The World
Bank and the Literacy Question: Orthodoxy, Heresy and Ideology," International Review of Education
43, no. 4 (1997): 367-75.
43Jones, "On World Bank Education Financing."
44A case in point is the work of the consultants for the Bakolori irrigation project in Nigeria in the
1970s. See Gunilla Andrae and Bjorn Beckman, The Wheat Trap: Bread and Underdevelopment in Nigeria
(London, 1985).
45Hountondji, "Producing Knowledge in Africa."
46Ibid.; Antonio Gramsci, Prison Notebooks (New York, 1980); Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal:
Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left (London, 1988); David Halpin, Sally Power, and John Fitz, "In the
Grip of the Past? Tradition, Traditionalism and Contemporary Schooling," International Studies in
Sociology of Education 7, no. 1 (1977): 1-20.
47William Easterly, The Elusive Questfor Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics
(Cambridge, MA, 2001).
48payer, The Debt Trap.
49Hegemony is more than economic; it is also a politics of moral and intellectual leadership. Gramsci
also used the concept "hegemonic" to designate a historical phase in which a group moves beyond a
position of corporate existence and the defense of its economic position and aspires to a position of
leadership in the social and political arena. In the case of the ruling class, it means that it must ensure
that its interests "become the interests of other subordinate groups too" (181 and xiv).
50Herbert Marcuse, "Repressive Tolerance," in Critical Sociology, ed. P. Connerton (Harmondsworth,
Eng., 1976), 301-29.
51Just make the cost of environmental damage too high and corporations won't engage in it, he
claims. Easterly says nothing about the World Bank's own role in environmental destruction. It shows
how deliberately uninformed he is about the links between growth and the environment.
52Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

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 JOURNAL OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY

53Z. Sardar, "Development and the Location of Eurocentrism," in Critical Development Theory:
Contributions to the New Paradigm, ed. R. Munck and D. O'Hearn (London, 1999), 52.
54It is not necessary that rhetoric match the practice: both parties understand that this is not and is
unlikely to be the case, despite the occasional and, sometimes, persistent protestations to tle contrary
by the lenders. For example, both know that current debt levels are unsustainable but they keep
pretending otherwise. Also, both know that African states cannot provide essential social services
while at the same time cutting their meager budgets and spending more on security but lenders keep
pretending otherwise.
5Gavin Williams, State and Society in Nigeria; John Loxley, "Structural Adjustment in Africa:
Reflections on Ghana and Zambia," Review of African Political Economy 17, no. 47 (1990): 8-27; Pieper
and Taylor, "The Revival of the Liberal Creed"; Gerald K. Helleiner, Trade, Trade Policy, and
Industrialization Reconsidered (Helsinki, 1995); Charles A. Anyinam, "The Social Costs of the
International Monetary Fund's Adjustment Programs for Poverty: The Case of Health Care
Development in Ghana," International Journal of Health Services 19, no. 3 (1989): 531-47; Ifeanyi C.
Ezeonu, "Ghana and Nigeria: A Reappraisal of the 'Success Story' of Market-led Development
Strategy," Africa Quarterly 40, no. 4 (2000): 77-118; Okolie, "Oil Rents"; Adebayo Olukoshi, "Impact of
IMF-World Bank Programs on Nigeria," in The IMF, the World Bank and the African Debt, vol. 2: The
Social and Political Impact, ed. Bade Onimode (London, 1989), 219-34; Ogoh S. Alubo, "Debt Crisis,
Health and Health Services in Africa," Social Science and Medicine 31, no. 6 (1990): 639-48; and Ogoh S.
Alubo, "State Violence and Health Service in Nigeria," Social Science and Medicine 31, no. 10 (1990):
1073-84.

56Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, A.D. 990-1990 (Cambridge, MA, 1990); Richard
Bryan, "The State and the Internationalization of Capital: An Approach to Analysis," Journal o
Contemporary Asia 17, no. 3 (1987): 253-75.
57V. Tucker, "The Myth of Development: A Critique of Eurocentric Discourse," in Munck and
O'Hearn, Critical Development Theory, 1-26. See also R. Munck, "Deconstructing Developmen
Discourses," 195-209; Z. Sardar, "Development and the Location of Eurocentrism."
58Kate Manzo, "Modernist Discourse."
59John S. Mbiti, "African Views of the Universe," in African History and Culture, ed. R. Olaniyan
(Lagos, Nigeria, 1982), 193-99; John Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (Oxford, Eng., and
Portsmouth, NH, 1990); Benjamin Ray, African Religions: Symbol, Ritual and Community (Englewood
Cliffs, NJ, 1976); Robin Horton, "African Traditional Thought and Western Science," Africa 37, no. 1
(1967): 50-71; George J. S. Dei, "African Development: The Relevance and Implications of
Indigenousness," in Indigenous Knowledges in Global Contexts: Multiple Readings of Our World, ed. George
J. Sefa Dei, L. Hall, and Dorothy G. Rosenberg (Toronto, 2000): 70-86.
60Njoki N. Wane, "Narratives of Embu Rural Women: Gender Roles and Indigenous Knowledges,"
Gender, Technology and Development 5, no. 3 (2001): 383-408.
61Christopher Beer, The Politics of Peasant Groups in Western Nigeria (Ibadan, Nigeria, 1976); H. O.
Sano, The Political Economy of Food in Nigeria, 1960-1982: A Discussion of Peasants, State and Worl
Economy (Uppsala, Sweden, 1982); G. J. van Apeldoorn, Perspectives on Drought and Farming in Nigeria
(London, 1981); Olufemi A. Adelaktm, "Social Structure and Rural Development in Nigeria: A Study
of Plateau State," Ph.D. diss., University of Cardiff, Wales, 1984.
62Beer, The Politics of Peasant Groups; Adelakun, "Social Structure and Rural Development"; Andrew
C. Okolie, Rural Development and the Nigerian Peasantry: A Study of the Imo State Agricultura
Project," master's thesis, University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, 1987.
630kolie, "Oil Rents"; and "Chieftaincy in Igboland," The Analyst 2, no. 5 (1987): 15-16; Alkassum
Abba, "Peasant Revolts Against Chiefs," The Analyst 2, no. 5 (1987): 31, 34.

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