DEPENDENCY AND SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA UNDERDEVELOPMENT: THE NIGERIAN EXPERIENCE
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.0 INTRODUCTION
Our focus in this chapter is to critically examine relevant literature that would assist in explaining the research problem and furthermore recognize the efforts of scholars who had previously contributed immensely to similar research. The chapter intends to deepen the understanding of the study and close the perceived gaps.
2.1 CONCEPTUAL REVIEW
Concept of Development
In the context of a nation’s development, the conceptualization of development becomes difficult if not impossible unless discussed in tandem with the concept of underdevelopment. In fact, many scholars have argued that the understanding of these concepts is enhanced when it is hinged on a theory. For the purpose of our topic, such theory that suffices here is dependency theory. Therefore, the concept of development; underdevelopment and dependency theory are x-rayed, chronologically. The concept of development has been variously discussed in literature especially in the social sciences such that its definition has negated a single generally accepted definition. Development in human society is a many-sided process. At the level of the individual, it implies increased skill and capacity, greater freedom, creativity, selfdiscipline, responsibility and material wellbeing (Rodney, 1972).
Okoli and Onah (2002) had asserted that development involves progression, movement and advancement towards something better. Hence it is improvement on the material and non-material aspects of life involving actions, reactions and motions. They also observed that development goes beyond economic and social indicators to include the improvement of human resources and positive changes in their behaviour. For us, development includes increase in citizens’ access to: food, water and shelter; information and means of communication; healthcare delivery; good motorable road; good education, and justice. Whenever these are obtainable, there will be increase in the individual’s dignity, happiness and patriotic values and quality of life. This is probably why Todaro (1982) defined development as a “multi-dimensional process involving the reorganization and re-orientation of the entire economic and social system. This involves in addition to improvement of income and output, radical changes in institutional, social and administrative structures as well as in popular attitudes, customs and beliefs”.
The main contention according to Ujo (1994) is that development is both a physical process and a state of mind. The transformation of institution is just one aspect. The other aspect is that the thinking of the people must change. Hence according to Emezi (1979), the actions, reactions and interactions which qualify for inclusion as elements of development’ are products of rational thinking, conscious planning, and genuine citizens’ involvement. They are not chance events or chance phenomena, as observed by Okoli and Onah. They relate first and foremost, to the economic system because they seek to raise living standards, widen extensively the scope of productive work; create and strengthen the necessary foundational infrastructure for higher, larger and more beneficial changes in the economy. Secondly, they relate to the social system because they affect education, health, housing, social ethic and justice and these are matters of both the body and the mind which jointly facilitate individual growths and development in the society. Thirdly, they relate to the political system because they seek to create better patterns of legitimacy patterns that create conditions which enable all or the most significant groups in the population to participate in the political process of making decisions and allocating scarce resources and values of their communities. According to Onah (2007), the most fundamental feature of what we may, for want of better term, call the ‘new’ concepts of development, is their concern with mankind as development is conceived as a state of human wellbeing rather than as the state of national economy (Eme & Emeh, 2012).
The conceptualization of development in the aspect of the state of national economy is referred to as the economic development but when it is mixed with another like socio-economic, it definitely should be looking at the totality of the well being of man hence the social or societal progression of man alongside his economic wellbeing completely defined a developed man. This concern was expressed in a statement known as the Cocoyoc Declaration, which was adopted by participants at a seminar organized by the United Nations Council on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Cocoyoc, Mexico, in 1974.
The declaration states: Our first concern is to redefine the whole purpose of development. This should not be to develop things but to develop man. Human beings have basic needs: food, shelter, clothing, health, education. Any process of growth that does not lead to their fulfillment-or even worse, disrupt them is a travesty of the idea of development. In line with the above declaration, Dudley seers (1969), wrote: The question to ask about a country’s development is therefore; what has been happening to poverty? What has been happening to unemployment? What has been happening to inequality? If all three of these have declined from high levels, then, beyond doubt, this has been a period of development for the country concerned. If one or two of these central problems have been growing worse, especially if all three have, it would be strange to call the result “development” even if per capita income doubled (Eme & Emeh, 2012). Dudley Seers’ definition has been so regarded because he is one of the first economists in the developed world to emphasize this aspect of development. One would assume that he was following Walter Rodney’s assertion that development is universal because conditions leading to economic expansion were universal; hence everywhere, man was faced with the onerous task of survival by meeting some fundamental material needs; and better tools for production. These tools are materials for the exploitation of man’s environment hence the Marxian notion of development is conceived as:the ability of the people to exploit, manipulate and control their physical environment, as well as themselves and other individuals outside of themselves and other individuals outside of themselves for the betterment of everybody and that of humanity.
As Nnadozie (2004) posited, Man is viewed as both the subject and object of development hence development is taken as the ability and capacity of man to adequately interact with his physical environment and other individuals to constantly improve himself and humanity. This idea was succinctly captured by Nnoli (1981) when he wrote: Development, first and foremost is a phenomenon associated with changes in mans humanity and creative energies, not in the capacity of the individual and society to control and manipulate the other individuals ad societies for their own benefits and that of humanity at large. It is a process of actualizing man’s inherent capacity to do things, greater freedom, responsibility and material wellbeing.
The above definition of development is all encompassing. Against the Marxist backdrop, it warned against the exploitation and manipulation of man by man and at the same time heed to the Cocoyoc declaration of new concept of development. Again, according to Nnadozie, development is also conceived by Marxist perspective as a dialectical process in which the contradictions between a society’s productive forces and relations of production are resolved in a dynamic manner, this contradictions in a society are regarded as the driving forces of development in that society. Obviously, underdevelopment is not the absence of development because from the societal point of view, every people have developed in one way or another and to a greater or lesser extent. However, underdevelopment makes sense only as a means of comparative analysis of societal development. This is very much tied to the fact that human social development has been uneven and from a strictly economic view-point, some human groups have advanced further by producing more and becoming more wealthy (Rodney, 1972). Underdevelopment is a term often used to refer to economic underdevelopment, symptoms of which include lack of access to job opportunities, health care, drinkable water, food, education and housing. It takes place when resources are not used to their full socio-economic potential, with the result that local or regional development is slower in most cases than it should be.
Furthermore, it results from the complex interplay of internal and external factors that allow less developed countries only a lop-sided development progression, hence underdeveloped nations are characterized by a wide disparity between their rich and poor populations, and an unhealthy balance of trade. Consequently, Rodney upheld that at all times, one of the ideas behind underdevelopment is a comparative one as it is possible to compare the economic conditions at two different periods for the same country and determine whether or not it had developed. Again, a second and even more indispensable component of modern underdevelopment is that it expresses a particular relationship of exploitation: namely, the exploitation of one country by another. All of the countries named as ‘’underdeveloped’’ in the world are exploited by others; and the underdevelopment with which the world is now preoccupied is a product of capitalist, imperialist, and colonialist exploitation. Since the end of World War II, we have been experiencing a worldwide struggle for the improvement of living conditions in the so-called developing countries.
At the beginning, there was little query as to the causes of underdevelopment; the newly independent countries as well as United Nations bodies and industrialized countries tried to promote development by applying measures like the introduction of know-how through the assignment of experts, the expansion of education, the development of infrastructure, etc., i.e., they followed the example of the industrialized countries. In the course of time it became obvious that this was more or less a treatment of symptoms instead of causes, and the gap gradually widened between the developed and less developed countries of this world. During the early period of these development efforts there was little discussion on the historical causes and the real nature of underdevelopment (Kuhnen, 1987).
The Concept of Underdevelopment
(Walter Rodney 1972); "Africa in the fifteenth century was not just a rumble of different tribes. There was a pattern and there was historical movement. Societies such as feudal Ethiopia and Egypt were at the furthest point at the process of evolutionary development. Nigeria, Zimbabwe and other African countries were also clearly on the ascent away from communalism, but at a lower level than the feudal states and a few others that were not yet feudal such as those in Western Sudan" This above insight by Rodney shows that Africa had a particular pattern of development before interference from without the continent. As it was and still is with Africa (Nigeria), so has it been with the rest of the third world countries in Asia and Latin America. This is why we can say that the political and economic life of the so-called third world countries cannot be discussed or given a cursory glance without taking consideration of the developed or industrialized nations of the West and North America. However, the above submission remains what the Neo-Marxist scholars of the school of imperialism have come to contradict, because truly the politics of the third world countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, cannot be studied outside the imperialist incursion of the third world, which is an offshoot of the growth of advanced capitalism. This could be viewed from the perspective of territorial expansion by the industrial advanced countries of the world, thus, thereby bringing to light imperial conquest. Surplus value of the capitalist could not be fruitful in the metropolis thus bringing about imperialism. According to Parati (1995) "imperialism means the process whereby the dominant politicoeconomic interest of one nation expropriates for their enrichment, the land, labour, raw materials and markets of another people". This definition shows that imperialism is a high parasitic relationship between territories, because the so-called industrialized expropriated the resources of the third world to feed their own industrialization. These acts are usually done with impunity. In other words, the capitalist countries become developed to the detriment of the less developed or third world countries. Ake (1981) sees the concept as the economic control and exploitation of foreign lands, arising from the necessity of counteracting the impediments of the accumulation of capital engendered by the internal contradictions of the domestic capitalist economy. From the definition above, it is implied that imperialism is as a result of the growth of advanced capitalism. Given the expansionist nature of capitalism, it has the little inclination to stay at home. Almost 150 years ago, Marx and Engels described a bourgeoisie that chase over the world surface for the global accumulation and surplus value (Marx and Engels, 1977). After exploring the above definitions by these authorities in the field, it is now pertinent to see imperialism as the economic and political control of a geographical entity by another, whereby the former is dominated by the latter for the main purpose of plunder and extraction of material and surplus value in a relationship that ends up leading to dependence. This definition could be seen as appropriate in the context of this paper because,
- It establishes the relationship between capitalism and imperialism.
- It establishes the role of dependence in imperialism.
- Development and underdevelopment: indeed the twin concepts of development and underdevelopment have remained problematic in terms of conceptualizations in the field of political science.
In a comparative sense, Africa, Asia and Latin America are regarded as underdeveloped while Europe and. North America are developed nations. At all times, therefore, one of the ideas behind underdevelopment is a comparative one. It is possible to compare the country and determine whether or not it has developed; and (more importantly) it is possible to compare the economics of any two countries or sets of countries at any given period in time.
The third world countries are the economically underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa, Oceania, and Latin America, considered as an entity with common characteristics, such as poverty, high birthrates, and economic dependence on the advanced countries. The term therefore implies that the third world is exploited, and hat its destiny is a revolutionary one. Distinctively, the underdevelopment of the third world is marked by a number of common traits; distorted and highly dependent economies devoted to producing primary products for the developed world and to provide markets for their finished goods; traditional, rural social structures; high population growth; and widespread poverty. Despite the widespread poverty of the countryside and the urban shantytowns, the ruling elites of most third world countries are outrageously wealthy (Woldu, 2000). The wind of change of the late 50s and 60s had liberated all the third worlds, Africa and Nigeria, thus rendering whatever differences in the rate of development a peculiarity to the specific country concerned. In the Nigerian perspective, to answer correctly the question- is it environment; or is it in our nature; that we failed or refused to develop, is necessary as it has been rendered impossible by the current climate of pseudointellectualism fueled by some kind of pseudo-anti-colonialism; now turned into anti-imperialism, which forecloses all discussions by insisting that “we are our own”. This posturing had not only dissuaded us to ask this basic question but had indeed put thick blinkers into our eyes that we cannot see reality, even though we are living in the thick of our unpalatable reality- underdevelopment (Kyari, 2008).