The Economist's Tale: A Consultant Encounters Hunger & the World Bank by Peter Griffiths (2003), London & New York: Zed Press. Reviewed by Barry Riddell.
Peter Griffiths has provided African scholars with an intriguing and insightful blend of fact and fiction. His book both illustrates the operations of the World Bank in African countries and the nefarious activities of Sierra Leone's supposed leaders, which resulted in such rural peasant disquiet that the outbreak of the civil war in Sierra Leone in 1991 was almost pre-ordained. The book explains two complementary themes. First, it indicates the activities of the World Bank driven by a mindset or a faith believing in the ‘magic of the market’ and the privatisation of enterprise which has been shown to have led to death and destruction throughout Africa. Second, it illustrates the base actions of the elite in corrupt activities and the manipulation of currency exchange in order to enrich themselves, while at the same time devastating the countryside.
Although the book was published in 2003, it recounts the story of an economic advisor to the Sierra Leone Ministry of Agriculture and his experiences with the operations of Sierra Leone's government and bureaucracy, and the Bank in 1986. The dates are important, as the book recounts events in Sierra Leone in the years leading up to the internal war which broke out a few years later. The date is also important because the former president and one-party ruler, Siaka Stevens, had just retired, taking a nest-egg reputed to be $1.5bn, drawn from one of the world's poorest countries (at the time having an annual per capita income of only $310 according to the WDR of 1988). Stevens isn't present in person in this account, but his legacy certainly is. He built, developed, and nurtured the ‘Shadow State’ that Reno has so ably depicted.1 The economic development of Sierra Leone was almost absent from a government agenda which had personal betterment as the driving force of state activity.
The tale is recounted in a compelling day-by-day set of diary entries during the author's four month sojourn in Sierra Leone, and it tells of people and policies (not the models, data, and equations suggested by the word ‘Economist’). At its heart is the issue of food supply and ‘silent violence’.2 The blending of reality and generalised/fictionalised accounts was made in order to avoid legal libel or retribution to his informants. This was vital to Griffiths' ‘Tale’ because many of the people (certainly, not all!) he met and canvassed tend to have been incompetent, corrupt, dishonest, or evil persons. These fictionalised accounts should not disturb the reader; they avoid naming names, but they indicate the general nature of the Bank's policies and the personalities of government officials in Sierra Leone. The former was involved in the privatisation process in the Third World, while the squalid actions of much of officialdom will be very familiar to those who have conducted research in the country.
The ‘Tale’ occurs as the role of the Sierra Leone Agricultural Marketing Board is being moved from its previous monopoly position in exporting cash crops and importing rice (the national food staple). The Board's history is one of corruption, inefficiency, and the removal of rural peasants' resources (a form of taxation); its role in exports began in the early 1940s, and its involvement in rice imports arose out of the foreign exchange difficulty facing most African countries. Griffiths is told (5) by the mythical Bank resident that he is to close down the Board: ‘They3 are to privatise and deregulate the market. They will then have a FREE MARKET [he said it in capitals] and the economy will start to work again.’ The implication is that there is no need for data or for an understanding of the working of the country's trade because the Bank knows that privatisation and the free market are the solutions to all of the world's economic problems.
The setting for the ‘Tale’ is one of stark difference – environmental beauty contrasting with poverty in a world which is falling apart again,4 foreign aid which has been given with lofty intentions only to have many aid projects riddled with corruption and failure, and the riches of diamonds whose value is expropriated. Upon such a landscape economic manipulation was employed by our actors. First, the country's exchange rate was overvalued for approximately the quarter-century following independence, meaning subsidised imports (mainly urban) and having the effect of undercutting any local production, and costlier exports (mainly rural) which lowered the world's demand for the country's agricultural cash crops. Second, the rural rice (the staple food) producer, the peasant farmer, was also undercut by both a subsidy and by imported rice which was far cheaper (due to this currency overvaluation) than Sierra Leone farmers could sell. This double debilitation led to either reduced production or to smuggling. It was no wonder that the peasantry had a sense of disquiet, and this unease was exacerbated by the bribery which pervaded the country. These attitudes didn't mask the nation's economic crisis – food supply was far less than demand; this deficit could only be solved by imports; and these imports quickly used up the nation's devalued currency.
Then the county's currency (the leone) ‘floated’ or devalued. Prices rose and purchasing power fell – poverty and hunger prevailed as a result. On top of this the World Bank imposed their mindset of privatisation and free markets, not recognising the vital importance of patronage and politics, alternative market channels, food entitlement, and social exchange in Sierra Leone and elsewhere in Africa. Their real world was not that of Sierra Leone – in fact, it could be argued that the bank simply ignores reality and sees the world in terms of macroeconomics, abstract models, and First World economies.
Within this collapsing economy, Griffiths was forever stymied by the lack of hard information for his analysis and report – on prices, imports, production – almost everything was unknown or unrecorded. He searched in Ministries, upcountry, the Bank, bars, the marketplace, restaurants, and clubs to overcome the lack of data, for pricing policy, for indicators of productivity, and for an understanding of the country's food crisis.
The great shock of the ‘Tale’ arrives just past the two-thirds mark, when the World Bank's ‘Reform’ is announced. National food policy is to be dramatically altered and food supply is to be privatised. Government's role is dramatically reduced, and the food subsidy is to be eliminated. As Griffiths writes (168–9):
what on earth does the World Bank think it is going to achieve by this? Answer: God knows. It has not done any analysis and there are no stated objectives. It seems to be motivated by a dogmatic belief that the Free Market will solve all the world's problems.
This is a first-rate account. Its strength is that it translates often unreal world economics and abstraction into layman's terms. The reader shouldn't be put off by the title, The Economist's Tale, for its contents are important and deal with concrete reality. The text shows that food supply is not simply an economic issue; it is a very political matter as well. Even though it is set in the concrete location of Sierra Leone, its appeal is far more general as similar issues confront all African countries. It illustrates that Africa's poverty is the result of both internal and external actors, and it explains why Africa's development agenda of the early years of independence is now one of underdevelopment. Further, it provides a partial understanding of the preconditions of the nation's (forthcoming) civil war.
Taking Power in the Economy: Gains & Directions: Economic Transformation Audit 2004 , An Annual Publication of the Institute for Justice and Transformation, South Africa. Reviewed by Martin Nicol.
Ten democratic years in South Africa have been the excuse for a library of studies, festivals of speeches and much back-slapping. But here is a study with a difference. It measures what has been achieved in key areas of the economy and lays out the ground for a measuring project that will last for the next ten years.
The Transformation Audit is a planned annual review of what is changing in the South African economy and how it is changing. It raises questions about what transformation is important, and how it should be measured.
Its four sections deal respectively with economic change and empowerment; education; the dynamics of employment and unemployment; and poverty and inequality. They are held together by a series of case studies that illuminate the analysis in the main chapters, and by a unique set of scorecards
The scorecards aim to measure and to track transformation. Naturally this is a complex task – even if there is agreement as to what should be measured, the issue of the data and its serious imperfections, if available at all, rears its head.
Measuring social change by numbers is never a neutral task. You can select just the right variables and starting-points to illustrate almost any shade of meaning. The TA has taken a particular route. It has chosen five ‘understandable’ measures in each area and pulled each set together into a representative graphic showing change between 1994 and 2004.
The editors are totally open about problems with the data – even to the extent of publishing detailed sources and calculations on the TA website, www.transformationaudit.org.za. They are at pains to be up-front about the data choices they made. They hope that this will allow people to engage better with the indicators and to interpret what they mean.
All the indicators of the ‘direction of change’ in the education scorecard are positive. It is the only scorecard to display so many positive trends – through though close scrutiny shows the gains are in fact tiny. Still, some good news is welcome, because low levels of education are noted as a fundamental problem in all the sections of the Audit. But this does not mean that the education authorities get off lightly. The education chapter is the most strongly argued in the book.
The overall performance of SA students is near the worst in the world in numeracy and mathematics, and is not much better in others (p.29).
The TA is critical, but it is positive. It makes some controversial choices on which indicators to use, but they are used to illustrate policy choices.
The Transformation Audit is already preparing for the recognition of South Afri-ca's 20th year of democracy, scheduled for 2014. It does not start off with a back slap – and it's more than a slap on the wrist.
Martin Nicol is an economist working as a consultant with ODA in Cape Town.
Books received
If you would like to review books for ROAPE please get in touch with Carolyne Dennis, cjdennis@123456dennis22.wanadoo.co.uk
1. No Peace, No War: An Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflicts by Paul Richards (ed.)(2005), James Currey, £16.95.
2. White Lies: Cannon Collis & the Secret War Against Apartheid by Denis Herbstein (2004), James Currey, £14.95.
3. Securing Land & Resource Rights in Africa: Pan-African Perspectives by Munyaradzi Saruchera (ed.) (2004), PLAAS, University of the Western Cape.
4. The Political Economy of Financial Crises, Vols. 1 & 2 by Roy E. Allen (ed.) (2004), Elgar Reference Collection.
5. For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities by AbdouMaliq Simone (2004) , Duke University Press, £16.95.
6. The Politics of the New International Financial Architecture: Reimposing Neoliberal Domination in the Global South by Susanne Soederberg (2005), ZED Books, £17.95.
7. Histories of Namibia: Living Through the Liberation Struggle (Life histories told to Colin Leys and Susan Brown) (2005), Merlin Press, £14.95.
8. The Horn of Africa as Common Homeland: The State & Self-determination in the Era of Heightened Globalization by Leenco Lata (2004), Wilfrid Laurier University Press, $24.95.
9. Ghana's New Christianity: Pentecostalism in a Globalising African Economy by Paul Gifford (2004), Hurst & Co Publishers, £16.50.
10. US Policy in Postcolonial Africa: Four Case Studies in Conflict Resolution by F.Ugboaja Ohaegbulam (2004), Lang Publishing, $32.50.
11. Globalization & the Environment: Greening Global Political Economy by Gabriela Kutting (2004), SUNY (Albany), $40.
12. Debt Relief for Poor Countries by Tony Addison (2004), Henrik Hansen & Finn Tarp (eds.), UN University/WIDER, Palgrave.
13. Behind the Scenes at the WTO: the lessons of Cancun by Fatoumata Jawara & Aileen Kwa (2004), ZED Books, £12.99.
14. Twenty Years of Independence in Zimbabawe: From Liberation to Authoritarianism by Staffan Darnolf & Liisa Laakso (eds.) (2004), Macmillan, $55.