If the world sees Africa as a continent with resources to be exploited, economist Kako Nubukpo would like to see a Pan-Africanism that prioritises agriculture, investment and governance.
How would you sum up your time as Commissioner of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, which you have just left?
I’m returning to university life after spending three and a half very exciting years at the Commission, in charge of agriculture, water resources and the environment. Because to feed ourselves, we need to produce and consume agricultural goods. For the planet to survive, we need to protect natural ecosystems. So, the environment – water and air – is essential to life.
Do you feel that you have been useful and effective?
I have spent two periods at the Commission. The first was between 2009 and 2012, when I was Head of Economic Analysis and Research. We had already worked on the UEMOA-2020 Vision in key areas. I came back to implement some of this groundwork. I was already aware of the fundamental issues, in particular what I had set in motion, which will continue, notably the review of the Commission’s agricultural policy, a strategic subject in the context of the return of the blocs.
As a great connoisseur of the continent, have we really entered the ‘African Century’?
I would call it Africa’s Moment. Because I see a double injunction: an external one, with the return of the blocs, which are asking Africa to position itself. The first sentence of the introduction to my book refers to the Bandung conference held from 18 to 24 April 1955 in Indonesia, which brought together for the first time representatives of 29 African and Asian countries, including Nasser and Nehru, Zhou Enlai and others. This conference later gave rise to the Non-Aligned Movement.
The second is internal, in the face of a billion young people with a strong demand for everything: sovereignty, training, education, employment, participation in collective and democratic life. In demographic terms, young people are the majority, and in social terms they are a social minority.
The concomitance of these two injunctions creates tension at the level of governance and those in power. This is why, at times of crisis, we are obliged to innovate so that Africa can make its own mark on the destiny of nations.
What are the key issues that will shape the future?
I see three issues that will determine Africa’s success or failure. The first is agriculture, and particularly the agro-ecological intensification of production systems. The Russian Ukrainian crisis has shown us that governments cannot afford to subsidise chemical fertilisers when the price of a tonne of potash has risen fourfold in six months.
With 500 million hectares of arable land and a billion young people, we can see that by putting them to work through agriculture, we can solve many of the problems linked to food security, job creation and reducing the import bill. Just look at Senegal: the country imports a huge amount of rice even though it grows it in Casamance!
The second theme is major investment in ecological transition. Africa is the planet’s second ‘lung’, with the Congo Basin forest. We cannot allow this forest to deteriorate. International efforts must be mobilised to finance the ecological transition in Africa. This is not charity, but investments in solidarity or environmental solidarity.
Finally, the third theme is governance. The crises are teaching us that we have reached the end of the independence consensus, i.e. the principle of the intangibility of borders resulting from colonisation. Today, the response to the jihadist movement is territorial reconfiguration. This will call for a new vision and new governance, and a more endogenous way of constructing responses. We can all see that formal democracies are collapsing everywhere.
Your ideas are very popular with pan-Africanists and sovereigntists. How can they be made operational?
It’s a cultural battle. It’s no mean feat to explain to a billion young Africans that they have the capacity to transform their world. To do this, the first element of success is confidence. We must never forget that the greatest achievement of colonisation was to ‘ inferiorise ’ the African.
Basically, the complex that we still have is to think that we are not capable of fully assuming our sovereignty in all areas. I’ve gone to great lengths to explain the problems of the CFA currency , to show that we can escape from voluntary servitude by remembering that there was a pre-colonial monetary history.
So Africa is not out of this ‘servitude’?
It’s a daily battle. You always need to have three things in mind when waging a cultural battle of this kind. The vision, the methods of governance and the capacity to set up monitoring and evaluation systems. These are essential. Things happen through processes. They are not static.
We see the strong demand for emancipation from Africa’s youth. What they are asking us, as leaders, is to preserve the common good, and to have the general interest in mind. That’s where the problem lies. Because we don’t always have the capacity to explain the reforms. The imperative is to have leaders who aim for the general interest and the common good. The other imperative is to have leaders who teach the reforms to explain to young people what is happening.
That’s why, in the book, I talk about a ‘ Pan-Africanism of withdrawal ’. Challenging the established order can be the first phase. We need to propose and co-construct with others. Africa is not isolated. It is in interdependence – built and assumed – that it will find its way. And not in the dependence illustrated by the primary integration of African economies into international trade.
Africa has globalised, and is of interest to the major powers, but is facing internal problems such as jihadism and trafficking. How can it be tackled without major resources?
There are two fundamental factors that explain what you are saying. The failure of the African state, particularly in West Africa – in the Sahel. Political scientist Bertrand Badie talks of an ‘imported state ’. Let’s not forget that our states are barely 75 years old! They are not products of Nations.
As a result, you have states that are going to incur enormous transaction costs because they contain many populations that did not choose to be together. This absorbs time and energy and, faced with the threat of jihadism, these small nation states – even when they are large in surface area – have only a small monetary space.
They do not have the means to deal with these threats. The triptych of state, territory and society needs to be reconfigured. Hence the question of regional integration by the driving forces, the military, civilians and leaders. This is the priority.
The second relates to the ‘trafficking’ you mentioned. Africa has remained a continent of rents and predation. What we have to offer the world are our raw materials. We have gone from an initial extractivism to a neo-extractivism; strategic raw materials are practically only to be found in Africa. Everyone needs them for mobile phones and electric vehicle batteries. Like nickel, lithium, cobalt, copper, coltan, gallium, silicon, rare earths…
The rest of the world thinks that Africa is a global public good, that we must go and take what we need to develop! I often use this joke when I see how the predatory neoliberal international system works: I have the impression that we’d be so happy if we could have Africa without the Africans!
This means that Africans are problematic. When they immigrate, they are problematic because we don’t want them anywhere else but Africa. And when they stay in Africa, they are problematic because we are in a process of land grabbing. And in a process of exclusion from social life. And, ultimately, we wonder where we would like Africans to be…
Which countries do you see as offering hope of transformation?
We are in the concrete. The problem is this leaden blanket, which is a kind of legal constraint, linked to the major international institutions that promote neo-liberalism. The International Monetary Fund has been applying structural adjustment programmes for 40 years! The paradox is that the failure of these programmes justifies their continuation. What’s more, I see the intellectual dishonesty of failing to recognise the two logical consequences of applying the neo-liberal system.
These are price flexibility, which absorbs the entire collective surplus, and the mobility of the factors of production, capital and labour. Capital travels around the planet several times a day, but labour doesn’t move. You have the Schengen visas you must get, the ‘blockades’ on labour mobility.
The system we are in can only work if we accept the mobility of the factors of production. And the developed countries refuse this mobility. This is why I say that there is intellectual dishonesty on the part of those who are forcing us to liberalise, to privatise, to dismantle tariffs on our products. What’s more, they refuse to accept that, in return, the jobs they give us cannot be filled by our own people, who would normally have to migrate. Basically, the basis of economics is that individuals are rational!
Are things about to change with the BRICS and the geopolitical upheaval underway?
We have no choice. In other words, if we don’t manage to organise ourselves around the fundamentals, we will perish. And unfortunately, what I’m seeing now is that we’re not necessarily taking that route. The path of a return to African fundamentals, the path of endogenous governance, of the promotion of common goods and the general interest.
We still have a class of leaders who are too extroverted and who only have legitimacy in terms of what the international system grants them. As a result, we have a problem. African leaders are living their stories, and the people are living their stories. But it’s not the same story! So, we need to encourage the emergence of young African leaders to bring about real change.
We talk about African youth, but it seems to be absent from debates and decision-making…
Those who talk about them don’t have the right glasses to see African youth. The young people we see in our countries, in rural areas and in the urban belts, are enterprising. They are on the rise, and we need to support them if we want to structurally transform African economies and societies.
Our generation is in the process of leaving, but it can serve as a transmission belt between our elders, who tried to embrace the dream of the fathers of independence, and these young people, some of whom unfortunately feel that the fault always lies with others.
That’s why we need to get away from the Pan-Africanism of withdrawal and face up to the problems, get away from the dictatorship of emergencies and realise that development is first and foremost about having a vision, implementation methods and systems for monitoring and evaluating the work done.
What levers do we need to rely on to make the ‘African dream’ a reality?
There are five: labour, capital, technical progress, the quality of governance and the quality of institutions.
According to the World Bank’s latest Business Ready report, published in October, Rwanda is Africa’s leading reformer. Togo ranks first in West Africa and fifth on the continent in economic terms. On the other hand, the record is much more mixed according to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. There are countries that are making much greater efforts.
These include economic success, but also the redistribution of wealth so that not too many people are left by the wayside. It’s from this point of view that I think there is currently a form of standardisation of issues at global level.
In this respect, the neo-liberal globalisation system is increasingly creating exclusion. In Britain, we saw it with the Brexit, in the United States, we saw it under Donald Trump I, the phenomenon of poor whites, and we are seeing it in Africa.
For a long time, the welfare state compensated for these exclusions in the rich world, but increasingly we are seeing a system of ‘unravelling’ the welfare state in the North. Since Africa has never had a welfare state, now is the time for it to build systems that will enable it to cope with the shocks that affect its society, and to act as a buffer…
What areas should be prioritised to achieve this?
I propose three: the first is agriculture. We have the land and the youth. There’s no reason why we can’t develop agriculture. In terms of agricultural productivity for crops such as cotton, we had a yield of one tonne in 1960. Today, there are areas where we have gone to 600g per hectare. This is unacceptable. Especially as our competitors, such as China and Brazil, have gone up to 3 tonnes per hectare.
The second project is a Marshal Plan for Africa. Massive investment in transition, particularly ecological transition.
And the third is to ensure that the triptych of State, territory and society is consistent. Our governance needs to be more inclusive and put accountability at its heart. We need to explain to society what we are doing with public money, where we are taking them, and let society know that there are not those who know and those who must follow. We need to co-construct in a symmetrical way the paths to what I call shared prosperity. I would like to quote Professor Joseph Ki-Zerbo at the beginning of my book: ‘ If we lie down, we are dead ’
Kako Nubupko is a former Togolese Minister for Forward Planning and Public Policy Evaluation and the author of several books, including the acclaimed Sortir l’Afrique de la servitude monétaire : à qui profite le franc CFA ? He has just published L’Afrique et le reste du monde, de la dépendance à la souveraineté(Odile Jacob).
‘We need to co-construct, in a symmetrical way, the paths to what I call shared prosperity.
‘When I see how the neoliberal and predatory international system works, I have the impression that we would be so happy if we could have Africa without the Africans!
