Evaluate the extent to which newly independent African countries succeeded in achieving economic independence from the West in the second half of the twentieth century. For hundreds of years, our fellow countrymen suffered political oppressions and social injustice. But now [with nationalization] they have found a way to regain their rights. Farmers have been turned into landowners. Factory workers have also been turned into owners, for now they take part in the administration of their companies.
Source: Jerry Rawlings, President of Ghana, excerpt from a government document adopting the recommendations of the World Bank regarding restructuring of Ghana’s economy, 1983.
We will welcome and actively encourage foreign investment in petroleum exploration and production, mining and mineral processing, timber logging, wood processing, etc. To achieve this, we will pass new laws to streamline and remove bureaucratic obstacles and delays in processing foreign investors’ applications for prospecting and resource exploitation. We will draft new financial and accounting regulations to guarantee the free transfer of funds and dividends across the border and to ensure the uninterrupted availability of foreign investment funds deposited in Ghanaian banks. We assure existing foreign investors that they will be allowed to operate freely within the confines of our laws. The [national] Bank of Ghana will make endeavors to assist such investors in clearing their backlog of missed payments.
Source: Albert Adu Boahen, historian and member of Ghana’s main opposition party, excerpt from a public lecture series.
The trouble with us in Ghana and, indeed, in the whole of our continent is not lack of ideas, plans, and programs for the solution of our problems but the resolve and integrity to implement them. . . .
My solution is to advise that we give priority attention to agriculture and domestic cottage industries—and make these much more lucrative than the selling of dog chains, hair products, and all sorts of other imported goods that so many of our people are currently engaged in. And may I be permitted to caution this and all African and Third World governments that if we do not put an end to our reckless accumulation of foreign debts, we stand a great risk of being recolonized by the industrialized countries and their agencies in the near future. Already Liberia has now been virtually recolonized and its economy has been taken over by the United States. And how many IMF, and World Bank experts do we have in both advisory and managerial positions in this country at this very moment? Too many! Unless we change course, we are headed for trouble!
Source: Robert Cooper, British diplomat and foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Tony Blair, “The New Liberal Imperialism,” essay published in the British newspaper The Guardian, 2002.
In many former colonies, the state has almost ceased to exist. In this premodern world of failed states, governments have either lost their legitimacy or they have lost the monopoly of the use of force, or both. Examples of total collapse are relatively rare, but the number of countries at risk grows all the time. All over Africa countries are at risk, but really no area of the world is without its dangerous cases. In such areas chaos is the norm and war is a way of life. These premodern states may be too weak even to secure their home territory, let alone pose a threat internationally, but they can provide a base for non-state actors who may represent a danger to the Western world. If non-state actors, notably drug, crime, or terrorist groups, take to using bases in such states for attacks on the more orderly parts of the world, then the organized states may eventually have to respond.
What form should our response take? The most logical way to deal with chaos, and the one most employed in the past, is colonization. But colonization is unacceptable in the modern world. And yet the weak still need the strong and the strong still need an orderly world. A world in which the efficient and well governed export stability and liberty and which is open for investment and growth—all of this seems highly desirable. What is needed then is a new kind of imperialism, one acceptable to a world of human rights and universal values. Such postmodern imperialism is primarily the voluntary imperialism of the global economy. This is usually operated by international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. These institutions provide help to states wishing to find their way back into the global economy and into the virtuous circle of investment and prosperity. In return they make demands which, they hope, address the political and economic failures that have contributed to the original need for assistance.