Charles Onyango-Obbo
5 October 2008
column
With the world credit crisis, and Wall Street, that ultimate global symbol of freewheeling capitalism having fallen into disgrace, there has never been a better time to be an anti-free market activist.
The evidence that capitalism is crap seems to be overwhelming.
Because I am an avid fan of the free-market, warts and all, my friends and critics have mocked me so much, if I were faint-hearted I would be hiding in the mountains.
It's true that World Bank/IMF-propelled economic liberalisation policies have hurt many countries, and led to job losses, but there is no evidence either that state-controlled economies would have done better. Uganda, one of the leaders in liberal economic reforms in Africa, has brought down poverty levels to under 35 per cent over the past 20 years.
Granted, countries like Uganda that have an abundance of food, are less likely to feel the pinch of the free market than nations like Egypt, where the soils are poor and a large amount of food is imported.
However, it is not in the economy that one finds the case for the free market in Africa, but in the politics.
African politics might have changed its form in most countries, but its substance is still largely oppressive.
The free market has allowed regime critics, dissident intellectuals, and tribes where the president gets miserly votes during elections, to find spaces where they can make a living.
Where land is owned by private citizens and traded freely, the opposition politicians are able to buy plots, make money, and build themselves homes.
Where there are private schools, a tribe that loathes the president can build its own school and educate its children there, and rivals of the ruling party can find a place to educate their children.
There was a time in Africa in the 1970s and 80s, where the state would have blocked their children from going to public schools, and they would have gone hungry because the only job they could have got was in government hands.
Economic liberalisation also accounts for quite a lot of what goes for independent media today, because there are many companies that see good value in advertising in media that is not government-controlled.
The economic crisis and political repression in Africa of the past 30 years also created a large class of emigrants.
These are in their millions, and many African governments are able to function because these emigrants in Europe, North America, Asia, and Middle East send home billions of dollars.
This money allows their relatives to pay for medical health, build shelter, educate the little ones --all things that they would not have had if they had relied on the government.
If foreign-exchange markets and the handling of remittances had not been liberalised, governments would have captured all this money from the Diaspora and "eaten" it.
Farmers who sell their produce in the open market, and don't have to hand it to the state-controlled marketing board that pays them a pittance, and even then years late, have proved less restless.
Because the free market regimes allow opposition politicians to still make a living outside the state sector and put food on their families' tables, they have contributed to a deradicalisation of our politics.
And if there were no free currency exchange, the millions of Africans whose livelihoods depend on money sent by their relatives in the Diaspora, would have been destitute and hungry and very easily revolted. Peasants who flog their own produce at the price they choose, have also shown reluctance to join rural-based insurgencies.
You still have strikes and demonstrations, but the free market in Africa has been the single greatest force for preventing mass revolts.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group's managing editor for convergence and new products.
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