What Next for the Political Economy of Development in Africa? Facing Up to the Challenge of Economic Transformation

Abstract

Sub-Saharan Africa faces an alarming long-term outlook. With a massive demographic dividend in prospect, few countries have the means to turn this to their advantage by rapidly expanding employment-intensive economic sectors. Economic analysis is facing up to this challenge, with new attention to structural change, technology absorption and the capabilities of firms. However, this article argues, it has not got to the nub of the problem. Two connected issues have been under-examined: the productivity breakthrough in agriculture without which employment-intensive manufacturing will not take off; and the weak producer incentives generated by prevailing rural social-property relations. While most economists are ‘Smithian’ in their neglect of property relations, political science research has done less than it might to help. Responding energetically to ‘bringing the state back in’, it has generated a rich body of evidence on the configurations of power that make regimes effectively developmental. But these findings remain crucially incomplete. In future, the focus should be on the political economy of bringing productivity-enhancing social disciplines to the countryside.