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2024 | Buch

Introduction: Entrapment of Africa in an Asymmetrical Global Economy Kapitel lesen Erstes Kapitel lesen

Africa in the Global Economy

Capital Flight, Enablers, and Decolonial Responses

verfasst von: Gorden Moyo

Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland

Buchreihe : Advances in African Economic, Social and Political Development

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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This book discusses the role played by powerful global institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, multinational corporations, and the international credit rating agencies in keeping Africa marginalised in the world economy. The book focuses on the intrusive roles of these institutions as enablers and beneficiaries of capital outflows and financial subordination in Africa. Diverging from the official narrative that touts China and the other emerging economies as global reformers that are poised to partner Africa in its fight against financial subjugation, the book instead argues that, like the Western powers, the emerging economies are benefiting prodigiously from a rigged global financial system that keeps Africa as a net creditor to the rest of the world. The book draws its theoretical framework from the repressed heterodox theories including dependency, core-periphery, world systems and Marxist theories as well as the decolonial approach. It concludes with a call for a decolonial African agency that should champion an epistemic rebellion against the neo-liberal and neo-classic economic traditions that have been historically deployed to justify Africa’s subordinated position in the global economic governance.

This book comes at moment in time when Africa is ready to become a Rule Maker not a Rule Taker. The analysis Dr. Moyo presents having been in the front line of public policy and international negotiations demonstrate the need for Africa to re-write the rules to foster our own Transformation.
Jason Rosario Braganza, Executive Director, African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFRODAD)

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter
Chapter 1. Introduction: Entrapment of Africa in an Asymmetrical Global Economy
Abstract
In this introductory chapter, Gorden Moyo locates Africa in the global financial system. He provides historical, theoretical, and contemporary contexts to unequal global financial relations. Firstly, he discusses the connections between capital flight and the rigged global financial system which he argues was designed to keep Africa as a provider of primary commodities, finance capital, and labour to the Global North countries and companies. Secondly, he re-examines the often ignored paradox that Africa is “a net creditor to the rest of the world” while it remains poor and a marginal player in global affairs. What is concerning here is that Africa has been a vital cog of the global financial system since colonial times, but it serves not its own interests but those of the powerful global capitalist corporations. Thirdly, Moyo implicates some of the key global institutions including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, Multinational Corporations, the International Credit Rating Agencies, and the World Economic Forum as enablers and beneficiaries of capital flight and global financial subordination. He argues that these global institutions are jointly and individually responsible for Africa’s poor economic show. Finally, Moyo privileges Afro-decolonial agency as the potential antidote against a rigged global financial architecture.
Gorden Moyo
Chapter 2. Multinational Corporations and Tax Havens as Beneficiaries of a Shadow Financial System
Abstract
In this chapter, Moyo discusses the intricate relationship between multinational corporations, tax havens, and the global elites as agents and beneficiaries of a rigged global financial system. He argues that the interactions between and among these agents have been responsible for bleeding Africa through a combination of financial engineering techniques including aggressive taxation, illegal tax evasion, mispricing, and imperial profit shifting among the other illicit financial flows from the continent. Moyo notes that, in fact, the massive capital outflows from Africa are not a recent phenomenon. It was most glaring at the time of independence in the 1960s when the departing colonialists squirreled away large sums of money and assets which they stashed in tax havens away from the reach of the newly independent states. He concludes that shadow networks of experts, savvy lawyers, bankers, and accountants that were established during the early years of independence to enable the movement of funds to the secrecy jurisdictions are still active in Africa today.
Gorden Moyo
Chapter 3. World Bank, IMF, and WTO as Agents of Financial Imperialism
Abstract
This chapter examines the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) as sustainers of international financial subordination (IFS) in Africa and the rest of the Global South countries. The trio is criticised for championing neo-liberal programmes such as privatisation of the public sector, trade liberalisation, and deregulation, all of which have paved the way for the multinational corporations, transnational capitalist class, and their African collaborators to export finance capital to offshore financial centres and tax havens across the globe. Drawing from the theoretical traditions of dependency, core periphery, and world system as well as the decolonial perspectives, Moyo surfaces the contradictions in which the IMF and the World Bank are presented as the providers of finance to contain poverty and advance the values of accountability and inclusive participation, while, at the same time being the chief architects of financial imperialism that generates debt slavery, poverty, and inequality in Africa. Moyo also argues that contrary to the narrative which claims that the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries are global reformers that are disrupting the Bretton Woods system, in practice, these Global South actors are merely seeking to be accommodated by the current neo-liberal world system rather than transforming it.
Gorden Moyo
Chapter 4. The Tyranny of International Credit Rating Agencies (ICRAs)
Abstract
This chapter focuses on the biases and contradictions associated with the operations of the international credit rating agencies in Africa. It argues that the Big Three rating agencies, namely, Fitch Investment, Moody’s, and Standard & Poor’s are not neutral arbiters of financial, political, and economic risks on the continent as they claim to be. On the contrary, the three are part of the global financial infrastructure that is responsible for the exploitation and marginalisation of the African countries in the global economy. Their bias qualifies them as enablers of financial imperialism and sustainers of international financial subordination (IFS) rather than professional bodies that promote investment and trade in Africa. For Moyo, the rating agencies are driven by the global elite whose interests are well-served when Africa remains the Lilliputian of the world. He concludes this chapter by stressing that the African Union (AU) should lead the process of establishing a reputable Pan-African Credit Rating Agency that will professionally serve the interest of African economies and the rest of the Global South clients that are currently short-changed by imperial rating agencies.
Gorden Moyo
Chapter 5. Global Financial Subordination and the Pathologies of Sovereign Debt
Abstract
In this chapter Moyo posits that debt crisis is a symptom of the larger problem of asymmetric integration of Africa into the global financial system than a consequent of policy missteps as often argued by the Bretton Woods Institutions. In this chapter, Moyo broaches a number of questions including the following: Will African countries ever be able to pay their debts? Are the debts payable in the first place? What is preventing African governments from addressing the debt conundrum? Are the creditors willing to have their debts cleared? Is the global financial architecture neutral and or innocent in all this? How come some of the funds that are offered by international financial institutions (IFIs) as bailouts for debt-distressed countries are also squandered by the political elites and the IFIs have not come up with actions against such practices? In grappling with these questions, Moyo singles out predatory lending as a tool in the hands of global capital that is perennially deployed to subjugate African economies. He concludes that unless there is a radical reworlding and transformation in the workings of the global financial architecture, the debt burden will continue to wreck the African economies and those of the Global South aground.
Gorden Moyo
Chapter 6. Imperial Ecocide and the Bane of Global Climate Finance
Abstract
In this chapter Moyo addresses an important subject of ecological debt which he argues is owed by both the Global North and the Global East to Africa. Arguing from a capitalogenic perspective, Moyo advances the notion that the ecological debt is a result of the operations of the global agents and beneficiaries of Africa’s resources who have been involved in ecological destruction of the continent for more than 500 years of slavery, colonialism, apartheidism, neo-imperialism, globalisation, and globalism. This critique does not spare the emerging and re-emerging economies of the Global East which are viewed as sub-imperialist not dissimilar to the Western extractivists. Moyo also draws the attention of the reader to the contradictions that are associated with global climate finance which is provided by the Euro-Western states in the form of loans thereby reproducing debt colonialism amid ecological destruction. Moyo stresses that the proposed solutions to climate financing such as green bonds, nature swaps, blue bonds, catastrophe bonds, and nature performance bonds are predominantly techno-managerial and they are pursued within the neo-liberal system which is itself guilty of perpetuating the marginalisation, pauperisation, and subalternisation of Africa and its peoples from the global geoeconomic governance.
Gorden Moyo
Chapter 7. Africa and the Age of Global Elite: The Davos Class
Abstract
In this chapter Moyo provides a critical analysis of the role of the World Economic Forum as a critical cog in the transnational capitalist class consisting of the global elites. He argues that these elites have over the years been working with various neo-liberal epistemic agencies including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, the Group of Seven (G7), the Group of Twenty (G20), multinational corporations (MNCs), and other global institutions to amass wealth, power, and global influence. More crucially, Moyo discusses how big businesses and high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) lobby governments for policies that facilitate capital mobility for the benefit of the global capitalist class at the expense of the countries of the Global South. Most of these men keep their funds in the offshore accounts in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Cyprus, and Monaco that combine fiscal attractiveness with an important financial sector benefiting from it. As such, Moyo argues that exposing this class is part of the process of delinking Africa from the trap of global capitalism and global coloniality.
Gorden Moyo
Chapter 8. African Elites as Clients of the Offshore World
Abstract
In this chapter, Moyo discusses the African elites that are connected to the global capitalist class. He argues that these culpable elites are useful to the global transnational capitalist class in that they create conducive political conditions for the global economic and financial institutions as well as for the multinational corporations to thrive in Africa. Moyo argues that some local elites are not only complicit in Africa’s asymmetrical incorporation into the global economy, but they have ironically become active recruits and “altar boys” of the processes that have drained the continent’s resources. More precisely, he sees political elites as facilitators and beneficiaries of illicit financial outflows. Moyo concludes that finding a solution to the problem of elite corruption requires, among other things, addressing the complicity of foreign parties, especially resource exploitation companies that connive with corrupt African elites in decapitalising the continent. It should also involve attention paid to the entire ecosystem of the offshore world economy, including banks that facilitate the illicit transfer of funds and regulators in advanced countries who turn a blind eye on illicit transactions involving African political and economic elites.
Gorden Moyo
Chapter 9. Conclusion: A Canvass for a Decolonial African Agency
Abstract
In the concluding chapter, the book returns full circle to the purpose of its inquiry. Instead of closing out the inquiry by returning to the main chapters and repeating the same arguments made, the conclusion reflects on what needs to be done in order to break the colonial chains that keep Africa operating on the fringes of global affairs. In this way, the concluding chapter is a canvass for a new type of African agency that is required to advance an alternative vision for the continent. In particular, Moyo argues that an Afro-decolonial agency is the most relevant and appropriate form of agency that is required to reverse the years of looting of Africa’s wealth by external actors – both new and old. He contends that this decolonial African agency will need to adopt a raft of radical policies in its relations with the rest of the world. Importantly, Moyo counsels that Africa should stop outsourcing its development responsibility to external epistemic institutions, global powers, and corporations. Instead, it should use its internal resources for itself.
Gorden Moyo
Backmatter
Metadaten
Titel
Africa in the Global Economy
verfasst von
Gorden Moyo
Copyright-Jahr
2024
Electronic ISBN
978-3-031-51000-7
Print ISBN
978-3-031-50999-5
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-51000-7

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