Cover Story Africa
compelled to leave the most profitable ‘high tech’ industries in the hands of Britain – which ensured that Britain would enjoy the benefits of being on the cutting edge of world development.” But Britain was not alone in this. All the countries that got
rich after 1485 have followed the British example of “kicking away the ladder”. Here, Africa should take special note: “Don’t do as the British and the Americans tell you, do as the British and the Americans did.” As simple as that. Reinert provides incontestable evidence showing that after
England, the rest of Europe and the overseas territories with large populations of European emigrants – the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa – followed the same policy England itself had followed since the end of the 15th century: a relatively high tariff protection to encourage industrialisation. “Te main difference between rich and poor countries,” Reinert
cares to point out, “is that rich countries have all moved through a stage without free trade, which – when successful – subsequently made free trade desirable. Te mandatory passage point in the history of all presently developed countries – allowing poor countries to emulate the economic structures of rich countries – is currently outlawed. But markets will not magically eradicate poverty any more than they will magically address the problems posed by global warming and environmental degradation. If you want to understand the causes of American and European pros- perity, study the policies of those who created it, not the advice of their forgetful successors.” Chang has a word here too: “Today the history of capitalism,”
he says, “has been so totally rewritten that many people in the rich world do not perceive the historical double standards involved in recommending free trade and [the] free market to developing countries... Britain and the US are not the homes of free trade; in fact, for a long time they were the most protectionist countries in the world... In other words, Britain adopted free trade only when it had acquired a technological lead over its competitors behind high and long-lasting tariff barriers. Not all countries have succeeded through protection and subsidies, but few with- out them... Te best-performing economies [in the world] have been those that opened up their economies selectively and gradu- ally [because] free trade reduces freedom of choice for poor countries.” Again, this is a lesson Africa should learn fast. “Traditionally,”
Reinert adds, “colonies have always been barred from establishing manufacturing in order to concentrate on supplying raw materials, but while the term itself may have become politically incorrect, the practice definitely continues. Industrialisation is at the core of capitalism itself, so barring colonies from industrialisation is tantamount to condemning them to poverty.” Which brings into sharp focus what Ghana’s first president,
Kwame Nkrumah, said and tried to do. He was, by far, the African leader who really tried to emulate the toolbox that had developed Europe, America and the others. In his pursuit of “economic in- dependence”, he was determined to industrialise Ghana in one generation. In his book, Africa Must Unite (published in 1963) Nkrumah recounted why he so desperately needed abundant electricity to power his industrialisation project. “Foremost of all would be economic independence, without which our politi- cal independence would be valueless,” he said. “Under colonial rule, a country has very restricted economic links with other
16 | April 2011 New African
“ If you want to understand the
causes of American and European prosperity, study the policies of those who created it, not the advice of their forgetful successors.”
countries. Its natural resources are developed only insofar as they serve the interests of the colonial power… In planning national development, the constant, fundamental guide is the need for economic independence.” Nkrumah’s aim was to encourage the establishment of factories where Ghana had a natural advantage in local resources and labour, or where it could produce essential commodities required for development. By 1961, in just four years after independence, Nkrumah’s gov-
ernment had indeed opened 60 huge factories throughout Ghana, manufacturing goods to satisfy most of the country’s needs. Reading Reinert and Chang, it becomes clear why Nkrumah
was overthrown by the combined might of the Americans and the British, after which a delegation arrived in Accra from Wash- ington to advise the soldiers who had been used to overthrow Nkrumah to abandon his development plans. Today, 45 years after Nkrumah’s overthrow, Ghana has been
returned to the colonial era of little or no industrialisation, and as such the country currently imports virtually everything it needs, except husbands and wives, of course! Te parallel in Africa and beyond is telling. Today, developing
countries without industries are tempted, wooed, and cajoled with the free export of agricultural products and other raw materials – all aimed at making them forget the desire to industrialise. Yet, as Reinert and Chang have amply shown, no country has ever
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