The relative rise in profile of the rising powers has gone hand in hand with internal developments within Africa where, under strong pressure from the international financial institutions and Western donors, many African states have opened up their economies through deregulation, privatisation etc. In a number of African countries, the elites have bought into the neoliberal message and now actively seek to attract foreign investment. These two factors have served to facilitate the expansion of foreign capital in Africa more broadly, and from emerging economies in particular.
Yet alongside some new developments, a lot of continuities remain the same. There has been a huge rise in commodity prices and this has contributed in a big way to Africa’s impressive growth figures, if taken as an increase in GDP per capita, but the benefit to African economies in terms of providing a sustained platform for development is far more muted. After all, growth is a quantitative process, involving principally the extension of an already established structure of production, whereas development suggests qualitative changes, the creation of new economic and non-economic structures.
This lecture investigates whether the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are intensifying Africa’s dependent position in the global political economy.