Release Date: June 2, 2014
Publisher: SA Penguin [Kindle Edition]
Africa has experienced two liberations: the first from colonial and racist regimes, and the second from the autocrats who often followed foreign rule. African countries now have the potential to undertake a third liberation - from political economies characterised by graft, crony capitalism, rents-seeking, elitism and social inequality. This third liberation will open up the economic space in which business can compete - a necessary condition for expanding employment. During the 2000s, the continent had its best growth decade on record since independence. High commodity prices offer a launch pad for sustained growth and employment creation. Now is the moment for African countries to act. This book asks how Africa's political leaders and interest groups can promote economic growth in their countries. Drawing on studies of countries outside Africa, Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills identify the factors separating the performers from the laggards worldwide. Aside from the need to create an enabling environment for business through good governance, provision of infrastructure and improvements in education, most critical is the need for a laser-like development focus by governments. In Africa's Third Liberation, Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills show why a new African political debate is necessary to make progress in accelerating growth and creating jobs.
Jeffrey Herbst, president of Colgate University, is author of The Politics of Reform in Ghana, 1982-1991 (1993), The Future of Africa: A New Order in Sight (2005), and States and Power in Africa: Comparative Lessons in Authority and Control (2000). Greg Mills, director of the Brenthurst Foundation, is author of Why Africa is Poor: And What Africans Can Do About It (2011).
For postcolonial Africa, modernization was seen as a necessary outcome of the struggle for independence and as crucial to the success of its newly established states. Since then, the rhetoric of modernization has pervaded policy, culture, and development, lending a kind of political theatricality to nationalist framings of modernization and Africans’ perceptions of their place in the global economy. These 15 essays address governance, production, and social life; the role of media; and the discourse surrounding large-scale development projects, revealing modernization's deep effects on the expressive culture of Africa.
Oil, Democracy, and Development in Africa presents an optimistic analysis of the continent's oil-producing states. With attention to the complex histories, the interactions of key industry actors and policy makers, and the goals of diverse groups in society, this contribution fills a gap in the literature on resource-abundant countries. John R. Heilbrunn presents a positive assessment of circumstances in contemporary African oil exporters. The book demonstrates that even those leaders who are among the least accountable use oil revenues to improve their citizens' living standards, if only a little bit. As a consequence, African oil producers are growing economically and their people are living under increasingly democratic polities. Heilbrunn thus calls for a long-overdue reassessment of the impact of hydrocarbons on developing economies.