Are Africans culturally hindered in enterprise and commercial creativity?
Full text of an article from The Courier ACP-EU
No. 157, May-June 1996: pages 62-64
With Africa lagging behind in almost every sphere of economic development, this rather unpleasing question in the title is not entirely impertinent so long as it is not misconstrued as calling into question the intellect and industriousness of Africans.
Culture is undeniably a crucial factor in economic development, but the issue raised by this question is not so much African culture, the vibrancy of which continues to enrich the world, as the culture of enterprise, about which we must look to history for an explanation. In doing so, we must first avoid generalisation on a continent as immense and diverse as Africa, where environment, experiences and varied animist traditions have combined to shape the characteristics of communities, their ways of life and their vision of the world. We must also limit our ambition to sub-Saharan Africa and admit that some communities here, as elsewhere in the world, are relatively more dynamic, enterprising and creative than others - the Ibos in Nigeria and the Bamilekes in Cameroon, are just two examples. All, however, have suffered the misfortunes of history.
Archaeological evidence
If there is anything archaeological discoveries have taught us in recent years, it is that several ancient African societies were as technologically advanced as any of their time. The Ugbo-Uku works of art in metal, which date back to between the 9th and 10th centuries, and which were the subjects of acclaimed exhibitions in the United States and Europe in the first half of the 1980s, provide incontrovertible evidence to that effect. They radically changed Western perception of African civilisation during these periods. The continent's arts had been labelled 'primitive' because they consisted essentially of wooden sculptures and terracottas. Most of the works of arts in bronze in museums across Europe (some of which were looted) date back to the15th century.
The Igbo-Ukwu discoveries proved that, although the appearance of the Portuguese on the western coast of Africa at that time gave a boost to works of art in bronze, some African societies had already mastered the technology of metal - how to mine and cast it. The bronzes of Igbo-Ukwu were made from an alloy of locally available copper, lead and tin. They are widely acknowledged to be of very high technical quality and artistic refinement. Although most of the arts were court art and often had religious significance or utility, the extent to which the knowledge of metal casting would have formed the basis of a technological revolution in agriculture and industry in these societies will never be known, since history took a different turn.
Arab and European intrusion
Africans are often accused of blaming their misfortunes on colonialism, but such criticism stems from a total lack of understanding of the extent to which Arab and European intrusion into Africa disrupted traditional societies.
In pre-colonial times, societies, from the Sahel down to Southern Africa, were well organised in kingdoms, chiefdoms, clans and villages and were governed by a series of laws or 'taboos' handed down from generation to generation. The societies were either nomadic or sedentary. Although the individual existed only in a group, his or her status in society was determined by birth. One was born into a family of nobles, freemen or slaves. The socio-professional structure was equally well-defined in the sense that one was also born a herdsman, a farmer, a blacksmith, etc, with little or no possibility of changing profession (European societies during these periods were structured along similar lines as family names across generations show).
Communities were self-sufficient. Production was entirely family-based. While grazing was done in wide open spaces, extensive farming was practised because of the abundance of arable lands. There was thus no need for the technologies of intensive production. Ancient Africa was largely rural and sparsely populated. Trade was minimal and unprofitable.
The earliest recorded contact between sub-Saharan Africa and the outside world was around the 10th century. It started with Arabs from North Africa who came south to trade salt and crafts for gold and slaves. This trade led to the founding of great commercial centres such as Koumbi Saleh, Walata, Gao and Timbuktu. It also facilitated the penetration of Islam in the region1. However, the real beneficiaries of the trade were not the local communities (salt and crafts were hardly wealth-creating commodities), but Arab merchants who had exclusive control over it. There were no possibilities for a Sahelian business class to emerge.
The Portuguese, who appeared along the West African coast in the 15th century traded in much the same commmodities as the Arabs in the north, but on a much smaller scale. This lasted until the 17th century when Portugal lost its trade monopoly to other European powers. This marked the beginning of Africa's nightmare.
Gold decisively took second place to slaves as the most sought-after 'merchandise'. Slave hunting, which was being practised on a small scale by the belligerent aristocracy, intensified. Insecurity increased and the resulting anarchy wreaked havoc on the social fabrics of the coastal kingdoms.
The abolition of slave trade in the early 19th century did not significantly change the situation. The end of that trade resulted in the transformation, adaptation and expansion of international trade to the benefits of European traders. Hides, arabic gum, groundnuts, timber, rubber, cocoa, palm oil and so on were exported in return mainly for manufactured goods. Only a minority of the African aristocracy was involved: any who dared challenge the European monopoly was severely dealt with. Often the punishment was exile and several African potentates suffered that fate. The tragedy of King Ja Ja of Opodo was a case in point. Here was a monarch who had set up a monopoly in his territory and who made sure that the article which provided for free trade under the British Protectorate agreement in southern Nigeria was removed in the version he signed (he actually nursed the ambition to trade directly with England). In 1887, he was arrested and deported to Barbados for refusing to apply the terms of the 1885 Berlin Treaty in his territory. That treaty guaranteed freedom of navigation which, if applied, would have opened up his kingdom to free trade (see issue no. 133 of The Courier at page 102).
King Ja Ja's sense of business acumen was indisputable. It is easy to imagine what economic impact monarchs like him would have had on Africa had they had the opportunity to control trade in their kingdoms or to trade directly with the outside world.
Open to new but disruptive ideas
The slow but successful penetration of Islam and Christianity (both of which were initially fiercely resisted by Africans who clung desperately to their animist beliefs), illustrated the openness of those societies to new ideas and to change. Unfortunately the ideas which Islam and Christianity inculcated were more destructive than constructive as they led to the erosion of traditional African values in favour of foreign ones.
Although colonialism, which followed, brought stability and security of sorts, it upset the social order. 'Alongside traditional society, a new urban society, completely divorced from its rural roots, emerged. The schools set up by the colonial administration produced a new social class of ancillliary workers such as interpreters, clerks, teachers, nurses and post office employees. This class was relatively privileged but was often rejected by the population and treated with both fear and envy.'1
A class of technicians - mechanics and various other technical workers who were also products of the colonial school system - was born. Not belonging to the traditional castes of craftsmen, there was no continuity between pre-colonial African technical knowledge, which had suffered so much disruption, and the new technologies introduced by the Europeans. This category of educated technician was employed mainly in the nascent European-owned factories which were geared to import substitution in the aftermaths of the first and second world wars. This reduced further the possibility of cross-fertilisation of knowledge between the modern and the traditional.
Large-scale businesses were in the hands of colonial companies while newcomers - Syrians and Lebanese - had a virtual monopoly of the retail trade by virtue of their access to capital. Studies into the role of these newcomers in the Senegalese economy during the colonial era and immediately afterwards revealed the extent to which capital formation among the indigenous population was impeded by the systems of 'credit-sale' or 'hire-purchase' that they introduced. Under this system, the new class of African civil servants obtained supplies on credit against their monthly salaries. This not only translated into perpetual indebtedness and lack of savings, but also into the adoption of a consumption pattern that was both foreign and expensive.
A similar situation existed elsewhere. In the rest of West Africa, the retail trade was also dominated by Syrians and Lebanese and in East Africa by Indians. While the former shied away from reinvestment of profits into production, the latter did not, illustrating perhaps their degree of commitment to their adopted countries. 'The colonial era was thus no more favourable to the emergence of a local African business class than earlier periods had been.'1
In the late 1970s and 1980s the situation bred resentment and, in some countries, naked xenophobia. The attitude of African governments varied from inaction to expropriations. In Uganda, Idi Amin Dada confiscated Indian properties and expelled Asians from the country with devastating economic consequences. In Nigeria, where indigenous peoples did gain access to capital in the wake of the oil boom, the military government issued an indigenisation decree which, among other things, reserved the retail trade for Nigerians. The beneficiaries of that decree, as some studies show, were mainly women who had acquired commercial skills through the local market system. Indeed the increasing role of businesswomen in enterprises (the mama benzes, for example) not only in Nigeria, but throughout West Africa, has been a major phenomenon of the past two decades. Unfortunately there have not been enough of them and they have avoided risk-taking - recent studies in the West suggest that women are less inclined to take business risks. Most other governments have been more prudent in seeking greater commitment of the 'newcomers' to their host countries in terms of investments in production.
It is clear from the foregoing that foreign intrusion in Africa has been detrimental to the birth and growth of an entrepreneurial class. Nevertheless evidence of African ingenuity, creativity and entrepreneurship abound in the traditional sector which has continued to evolve despite being affected by that intrusion. Today, the informal sector (both urban and rural) provides the basis for the continent's survival in terms of both production and employment.
1. The Sahel facing the future (increasing dependence on structural transformation) prepared by the Club du Sahel and published by the OECD in 1988.
The Club du Sahel is made up of CILSS countries (Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal and OECD states that play an active part in the region (Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, USA and Germany). This book is the source of much of the information in this article, particularly as regards the pre-colonial and colonial periods.