Introduction
Walter Rodney (1972: xi) remarked in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa that the ‘phenomenon of neo-colonialism cries out for extensive investigation in order to formulate the strategy and tactics of African emancipation and development’. Unfortunately, in 2017, 60 years after Ghanaian independence (the first African state to liberate itself from formal Empire), the phenomenon of neo-colonialism still cries out for extensive investigation.
Neo-colonialism—a situation of infringed national sovereignty and intrusive influence by external elements—is now often regarded as an outmoded concept in International Relations (IR), and in Development Studies. Many scholars are decidedly squeamish when the term is invoked. 1 Additionally, many are squeamish about discussions of ‘Africa’ as a whole—rather than about individual African states. Of course, there is analytical danger when speaking bluntly of either ‘neo-colonialism’ or ‘Africa’. Equally, however, there is analytical danger when trends affecting a collection of states are ignored. Brown (2012: 1891), invoking Harrison, states that ‘there are at least three senses in which speaking of “Africa” as a whole might be justified… as a collective international actor; as a collection of states with (in the ‘broadest of sweeps’) a shared history; and as a discursive presence, used by both Africans and outsiders, in international politics and policy’. Moreover, from the pan-Africanist perspective of Nkrumah, speaking of Africa as a whole is not merely an analytical necessity, but a vital discursive move aimed at consciousness building and unity.
This book examines whether the concept does help us to analyse certain problems associated with current ‘development’ interventions by foreign actors in Africa. Engaging Kwame Nkrumah who fully developed the concept in his treatise Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965), the book argues that Nkrumah’s insights remain valid in many respects. 2 Several passages of Nkrumah’s (1963, 1965) work appear as pertinent today to an understanding of interventions in Africa as they were in the 1960s. That is not to say that Nkrumah’s work is beyond critique. His relative failure to contend with ideational aspects of external influence over African states is something which, for instance, requires redress in any modern application of the concept of neo-colonialism. From a critical constructivist standpoint concerned with the analysis of language and power, it is necessary to assess the interplay between material forces and ideas as it relates to donor/corporate power in Africa (Fairclough 2009; Van Djik 2009). 3 Namely, it is important to examine ‘development’ discourse and how interventions in the internal affairs of African countries by foreign elements is legitimised as a moral endeavour for ‘progress’. Many interventions are in fact undertaken on the basis of a donor (and at times, corporate) language of altruism, despite the fact that the tangible consequences of such action more often than not exacerbate conditions of ill-being and poverty.
This chapter examines Nkrumah’s contribution to critical understandings of North–South relations and his focus upon the difficulties facing nominally sovereign African countries in attaining industrialisation and development. It highlights the neo-Marxist contours of Nkrumah’s work before addressing his relative omission of ideational factors in the analysis of external influences. It also highlights the work of Fanon (1961) among other writers who expressed similar views on the neo-colonial situation in alignment with Nkrumah. The chapter then explores parallels between Nkrumah’s contributions (and these wider works on neo-colonialism) and the dependency school that gained intellectual traction in the 1960s and 1970s. It makes clear that there were overlaps in thought between the concept of neo-colonialism and the dependency school. This is not surprising given their mutual neo-Marxist heritage. The concept of neo-colonialism is seen as distinct, however, in that it places heavier emphasis on political agency, as opposed to the apparent economic determinism of many dependency theorists.
The chapter then acknowledges the contemporary influence of the neo-patrimonialism school as perhaps the most popular lens for examining Africa’s relations with donors today. It demonstrates how neo-patrimonialism has gained both academic and policy credibility in explaining the apparent failure of African ‘development’ when compared to former colonial states in other regions, particularly those of East Asia. The chapter explains that the neo-patrimonialism literature is in some ways the obverse of the literature on neo-colonialism, and it is certainly more popular in today’s academic circles. It argues, however, that the conclusions of the neo-patrimonialism literature are flawed, and fail to fully grasp how external forces bring about certain aspects of apparent ‘neo-patrimonial’ rule. The neo-patrimonialism school, moreover, is seen to make essentialist assumptions that sometimes denigrate African culture and African personhood. Nevertheless, Jean-Francois Bayart (within the neo-patrimonial literature) is deemed to hold certain weight in an understanding of African elite relations with external parties. Bayart’s (2010) concept of extraversion—when stripped of essentialism—is seen as a useful device for making sense of certain social relations between African elites and their benefactors within the neo-colonial situation. The chapter then concludes by reiterating the need to engage the concept of neo-colonialism in a modern understanding of African ‘development’.
Following on from this chapter, the book then explores the concept of neo-colonialism in terms of contemporary African relations with external ‘development’ actors. Specifically, the ensuing chapters examine neo-colonialism in terms of corporate activities (Chap. 2); Western aid programmes (Chap. 3); ‘new’ development aid actors (Chap. 4 ); Africa-EU free trade agreements (Chap. 5 ); security and development (Chap. 6); the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Chap. 7); and strategies for emancipatory forms of African agency (Chap. 8). In so doing, the book seeks to practically demonstrate the on-going utility of the concept of neo-colonialism in contemporary studies of Africa’s situation in the globalised economy, and within donor aid architectures.
Neo-Colonialism: The Continuing Relevance of Kwame Nkrumah
Kwame Nkrumah stands as a potent figurehead in African history, having led Ghana to independence in 1957—the first African colony to emerge as a ‘sovereign’ state from formal Empire. Nevertheless, his intellectual contribution to the analysis of North–South relations via the lens of neo-colonialism has lost currency in modern academic circles. As mentioned, many scholars are decidedly squeamish about discussions of the concept in academic conferences, and in leading journals. For many, it is associated with vulgar forms of Marxism, deemed unfashionable in the post-Cold War era. For some, it is seen to deny any form of meaningful African agency, reducing Africans to mere ‘victims’ in the global arena. For others, it is negatively associated with modern tyrants such as Robert Mugabe who have invoked the concept in their political discourse. And for many, it is seen as a brash polemical device that unduly blames ‘the West’ for the continuing mal-governance of certain African elites.
Nevertheless, a modern reading of Nkrumah’s (1965) Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism, and his earlier work Africa Must Unite (1963), is surprisingly relevant in terms of an analysis of certain aspects of development interventions in Africa by external elements, both corporate and donor. Whether assessing current donor budget support to African treasuries, the activities of the European Investment Bank, the impact of free trade arrangements, or the role of mining companies—Nkrumah’s analysis appears both relevant and emancipatory. His work, although controversial, deserves much closer scrutiny. It is therefore important to highlight the contours of Nkrumah’s thought, as well as that of scholars who expressed similar concerns about Africa’s external relations, notably Fanon (1961). Nkrumah himself defined neo-colonialism as the continuation of external control over African territories by newer and more subtle methods than that exercised under formal Empire. He viewed conditions of neo-colonialism as those in which African countries (which had attained legal independence) were penetrated by external influences to such a degree that they were not genuinely self-governing. Moreover, states under the sway of neo-colonialism could not attain meaningful economic or social development for their peoples, since policy was directed more towards the material interests of foreign elements than towards the needs of the local citizenry. African elites who took part in relations of neo-colonialism would govern on behalf of foreign benefactors and would in effect ‘betray’ the economic interests of their own people. This radical perspective is eloquently stated by Nkrumah in several passages of Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. In his main definition of the concept, he highlighted the economic influence of external forces and how this in turn diminished the political freedoms of African countries:
The essence of neo-colonialism is that the state which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed by outside. (Nkrumah 1965: ix)
African countries then might enjoy legal or juridical sovereignty in the international system after acceptance of their formal declarations of independence. However, they would not enjoy the fruits of a popular, empirical sovereignty, in terms of the ability to realise and to enact self-determination based upon the social and economic needs of the local citizenry (c.f. Ndlouv-Gatsheni 2013: 72). 4
In this vein, Nkrumah notably underscored the co-optive role of foreign governments as aid donors, as well as the role of foreign corporations investing capital into African economies. Aid payments made by foreign governments (for Nkrumah’s purposes— European countries and the USA) were not seen as altruistic endeavours aimed at the wellbeing of African societies. Rather, donors’ aid-giving was viewed as a means of ensuring the compliance of certain African elites and in lubricating forms of corporate economic penetration detrimental to African populations. 5 Aid in this sense was not a ‘gift’ but rather a short-term payment that would denude African empirical sovereignty:
Control over government policy in the neo-colonial state may be secured by payments towards the costs of running the state, by the provision of civil ser...