Taking Sides: Clashing Views on African Issues

This Third Edition of TAKING SIDES: CLASHING VIEWS ON AFRICAN ISSUES presents current controversial issues in a debate-style format designed to stimulate student interest and develop critical thinking skills. Each issue is thoughtfully framed with an issue summary, an issue introduction, and a postscript. An instructor’s manual with testing material is available for each volume. USING TAKING SIDES IN THE CLASSROOM, ISBN 0073343900 is also an excellent instructor resource with practical suggestions on incorporating this effective approach in the classroom. Each TAKING SIDES reader features an annotated listing of selected World Wide Web sites and is supported by our student website, www.mhcls.com/online.

UNIT 1

HISTORY

Issue 1. Did the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Underdevelop Africa?

YES: Paul E. Lovejoy, from “The Impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade on Africa: A Review of the Literature,” Journal of American History (1989)

NO: John Thornton, from Africa and the Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World (Cambridge University Press, 1992)

Paul E. Lovejoy, professor of history at York University, argues that the trans-Atlantic slave trade significantly transformed African society. It led to an absolute loss of population on the continent and a large increase in the enslaved population that was retained in Africa. The economic advantages of exporting slaves did not offset the social and political costs of participation, there were disastrous demographic impacts, and Africa’s relative position in world trade declined. John Thornton is a professor of history at Boston University. He notes that slavery was widespread and indigenous in African society. Europeans simply worked with this existing market and African merchants, who were not dominated by Europeans, responded by providing more slaves. African leaders who allowed the slave trade to continue were neither forced to do so against their will, nor did they make irrational decisions. As such, the preexisting institution of slavery in Africa is as much responsible as any external force for the development of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Issue 2. Have the Contributions of Africans Been Recognized for Developing New World Agriculture?

YES: Duncan Clinch Heyward, from Seed from Madagascar (University of North Carolina Press, 1937)

NO: Judith Carney, from “Agroenvironments and Slave Strategies in the Diffusion of Rice Culture to the Americas,” in Karl S. Zimmerer and Thomas J. Bassett, eds., Political Ecology: An Integrative Approach to Geography and Environment–Development Studies (Guilford Press, 2003)

Duncan Clinch Heyward, a former Carolina rice planter writing in the middle of the last century, represents the mainstream view that Europeans were primarily responsible for developing South Carolina’s remarkable rice plantations in the eighteenth century. In his own accounting of the rise of rice cultivation in the Carolinas, Duncan suggests that the techniques and approaches must have been derived from those observed in China. Judith Carney, a professor of geography at UCLA, explains that slaves from rice-producing areas in West Africa have only recently been recognized for their intellectual contributions to the development of rice cultivation in the New World. Carney describes how her work, and that of others, challenged the view that slaves were mere field hands, “showing that they contributed agronomic expertise as well as skilled labor to the emergent plantation economy.”

Issue 3. Is European Subjugation of Africans Ultimately Explained by Differences in Land, Plant, and Animal Resources?

YES: Jared Diamond, from “Why Europeans Were the Ones to Colonize Sub-Saharan Africa,” Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (W.W. Norton, 1999)

NO: Lucy Jarosz, from “A Human Geographer’s Response to Guns, Germs and Steel: The Case of Agrarian Development and Change in Madagascar,” Antipode (2003)

Jared Diamond, professor of physiology and biogeography at UCLA, argues that Europeans were able to colonize Africa (rather than vice versa) because of the advantages of guns, widespread literacy, and political organization. These advantages stem ultimately from different historical trajectories that are linked to “differences in real estate” (or differences in physical geography). Lucy Jarosz, associate professor of geography at the University of Washington, is troubled by Diamond’s narrow conception of geography and asserts that explaining differences in wealth and power between regions must also take account of social, political, and economic connections. She focuses on the specific case of Madagascar and argues that the intentions of the colonizer are as or more important than their military power for determining the nature of the colonial relationship.

Issue 4. Did Colonialism Distort Contemporary African Development?

YES: Marcus Colchester, from “Slave and Enclave: Towards a Political Ecology of Equatorial Africa,” The Ecologist (September/October 1993)

NO: Robin M. Grier, from “Colonial Legacies and Economic Growth,” Public Choice (March 1999)

Marcus Colchester, director of the Forest Peoples Programme of the World Rainforest Movement, argues that rural communities in equatorial Africa are today on the point of collapse because they have been weakened by centuries of outside intervention. In Gabon, the Congo, and the Central African Republic, an enduring colonial legacy of the French are lands and forests controlled by state institutions that operate as patron-client networks to enrich indigenous elite and outside commercial interests. Robin M. Grier, associate professor of economics at the University of Oklahoma, contends that African colonies that were held for longer periods of time tend to have performed better, on average, after independence.

UNIT 2

DEVELOPMENT

Issue 5. Have Free-Market Policies Worked for Africa?

YES: Gerald Scott, from “Who Has Failed Africa? IMF Measures or the African Leadership?” Journal of Asian and African Studies (August 1998)

NO: Thandika Mkandawire, from “The Global Economic Context,” in B. Wisner, C. Toulmin, and R. Chitiga, eds., Towards a New Map of Africa (Earthscan, 2005)

Gerald Scott, an economist at Florida Atlantic University, argues that structural adjustment programs are the most promising option for promoting economic growth in Africa. He disputes the evidence used to suggest that these programs have a deleterious effect on economic growth in Africa. Thandika Mkandawire, director of the UN Research Institute for Social Development, counters that, even though African governments have reshaped domestic policies to make their economies more open, growth has faltered. Mkandawire assesses structural adjustment from a developmental perspective, judging its effects on economic development and the eradication of poverty. He suggests that structural adjustment policies designed to integrate Africa into the global economy have failed because “they have completely sidestepped the developmental needs of the continent and the strategic questions on the form of integration appropriate to addressing these needs.”

Issue 6. Are Abundant Mineral and Energy Resources a Catalyst for African Development?

YES: Oliver Maponga and Philip Maxwell, from “The Fall and Rise of African Mining,” Minerals and Energy (2001)

NO: Sunday Dare, from “A Continent in Crisis: Africa and Globalization,” Dollars and Sense (July/August 2001)

Oliver Maponga, Economic Affairs Officer in the Southern Africa Office of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and Philip Maxwell, professor at the Western Australian School of Mines at Curtin University of Technology, describe a resurgence in the African mining industry in the 1990s after several lackluster decades. They assert that mineral and energy mining can make a positive contribution to economic development in Africa. Sunday Dare, a Nigerian journalist, describes how “much sorrow has flowed” from Africa’s resource blessing. While Dare blames African leaders for corruption and resource mismanagement, he also implicates transnational corporations (TNCs) as key contributors to this problem. He states that TNCs have acted as economic predators that support repressive African leaders in order to garner uninterrupted access to resources. The result, Dare suggests, is that Africa’s “raw materials are still being depleted without general development.”

Issue 7. Is Increasing Chinese Investment Good for African Development?

YES: Ali Zafar, from “The Growing Relationship Between China and Sub-Saharan Africa: Macroeconomic, Trade, Investment and Aid Links,” World Bank Research Observer (Spring 2007)119

NO: Padraig R. Carmody and Francis Y. Owusu, from “Competing Hegemons? Chinese versus American Geo-Economic Strategies in Africa,” Political Geography (2007)

Ali Zafar, a macroeconomist with the World Bank, acknowledges the downside of increasing Chinese economic interests in Africa, but foresees more potential winners than losers. Among the big winners of increasing Chinese trade are oil exporters (Angola, Gabon, and Sudan) and resource-rich countries (Mauritania, South Africa, Mozambique, and Zambia). Chinese foreign direct investment is also increasing rapidly in those countries where it has trade interests. Padraig R. Carmody of Trinity College Dublin and Francis Y. Owusu of Iowa State University are less sanguine about Chinese involvement in Africa. Even though they also perceive potential benefits from increasing trade with China, they describe how increasing resource flows are strengthening authoritarian states and fuelling conflict.

UNIT 3

AGRICULTURE, FOOD, AND THE ENVIRONMENT

Issue 8. Does the Conflict in the Darfur Region of Sudan Have Environmental Causes?

YES: UN Environment Programme, from “Conflict and the Environment,” Sudan: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment (June 2007)

NO: Lydia Polgreen, from “A Godsend for Darfur, or a Curse?” New York Times (July 22, 2007)

The UN Environment Programme argues that there is a strong link between land degradation, desertific ation, and conflict in Darfur, Sudan. It suggests that declining rainfall in Darfur, ecological collapse, and population growth have triggered social...