Saturday 28 February 2015

Africa, her natural resources and under-development

The abundance of natural resources in Africa has been at the heart of many debates, especially in relation to the level of development in the region compared with other parts of the world. Africa is endowed with both a great volume and variety of natural resources. Indeed, the variety of natural resources to be found in Africa is perhaps far greater than on any other continent. It ranks first in chromium, cobalt, diamond, gold and vanadium reserves and production, among others. In spite of this favorable context, most African mineral resource rich countries have so far failed to harness the full potential of the resource boom to spur their economic growth and development. The value of Africa’s natural resources – valued in the trillions of dollars – dwarf other sources of capital such as remittances and aid. From laptops to cell phones, cars to airplanes, all kinds of everyday products are made using minerals from Africa. It is not an exaggeration to say that the world depends on Africa's natural resources. Africa’s natural resources have been the bedrock of the world’s economy and continue to represent a significant development opportunity for the global market.  

Since the colonial period, African economies have either deteriorated or stagnated with detrimental efforts on the Africans.  In comparison to other continents the African economic development progression has been marginal relative to other resource-rich countries across the globe. The history of resource extraction in Africa and in particular during the colonial period and the subsequent governments highly informed by the fading colonial influences is substantially a history of plunder. Too often, African resources have become a burden for the countries that harbor them, a curse rather than a blessing, a blockage to development instead of a source of finance to foster sustainable development. In Africa, raw materials resources frequently go hand in hand with social and military conflicts, internal and international warfare, environmental degradation, evictions and weak or non-functioning state institutions.

The global economy in the manner of transnational raw materials corporations has played significant roles in plundering the economy of Africa. Often with the consent of host governments this corporations have managed to sign favorable agreements which reduce tax obligations and limit the royalties to the state at the same time having local corrupt elites transfer large sums abroad to tax havens and secret accounts. The corporations do not act in isolation; they are part and parcel of wide-ranging attempts to secure the flow of raw materials from Africa to the European Union and to the US.


The key concept in mobilization of resources for development within Africa lies with the shift in the balance in terms of the ownership and exploitation of resources and introduction of fair practices solely influenced by self centered African market policies to ensure the market and in particular the global economy does not take advantage of Africa to fuel its economy. Critique of the modes of accumulation of resources and exploitation for production should be a discipline for all Africa leaders with emphasize on strong African institutions not dependent on the international community which functions solely for the benefit of Africa. Delinking of the Africa economy from the international market is an impossible move and maybe unthinkable in certain quotas but may be the only way, Africa will mobilize its resources adequate enough to spur its stagnant economy. The challenge for the African continent is how to govern and harness the rich pool of natural resources to achieve a broad-based growth. African governments need to take strong action to implement concrete measures to ensure that their countries and their populations benefit from natural resource extraction.

Saturday 21 February 2015

PATRIARCHY, CAPITALISM AND GENDER OPPRESSION

Gender and Development
According to the United Nations Development Programme is denoted by long and healthy lives, been knowledgeable, having access to resources needed for a decent standard of living and to participate in the life of the community.

The food and agricultural organization defines gender as the relations between men and women both perceptual and material. Gender roles are the social definition of men and women and vary from one society to another society. Gender is not determined biologically but rather it’s socially constructed. Social category of gender has been and continues to be the most fundamental way in which distinctions are made among the people. Society itself has an objective existence and it thus strongly influences human behavior.

Gender and development connotes the improvement in the welfare state and the relations between men and women. There is no development where one gender and in particular males are benefiting through exploitation of the other gender. Although societal roles have historically been divided among the males and the females, but based on the rules of natural justice; development should focus on the equal participation of both genders in production resulting in cumulative and quantitative increase in productivity which is accompanied by fair distribution of the gains of production among the two genders.

Gender and exploitation – patriarchy and capitalism
Societies have historically been organized under specific modes such as feudalism, or capitalism. Social change occurs because of structural change. Economic structure itself contains dynamics that push history along. Such changes justify, legitimize and propagated gender disparity over subsequent years. Gender is a development issue especially with the advent of the private ownership of production and the disbandment of the communal lifestyles.

In hunter-gatherer and horticultural societies, there was a sexual division of labor with rigidly defined sets of responsibilities for women and men. Women in pre-class societies were able to combine motherhood and productive labor. In fact there was no strict demarcation between the reproductive and productive spheres. This was so because women were central to production and there were predetermined roles for both sexes in these pre-class societies, therefore systematic inequality between the sexes was non-existent. Furthermore, reproduction and production were not viewed in the context of labor and its commodification concept in the subsequent regimes and in particular capitalism.

As production shifted away from the household, the role of reproduction changed substantially. The shift toward agricultural production sharply increased the productivity of labor. This, in turn, increased the demand for labor with resulting increase in the number of workers and higher surplus. Thus, unlike hunter-gatherer societies, which sought to limit the number of offspring, agricultural societies sought to maximize women’s reproductive potential, so that the family would have more children to help out in the fields. Therefore, at the same time that men were playing an increasingly exclusive role in production, women were required to play a much more central role in reproduction.
The advent of the private property transformed the relations between men and women within the household because it radically changed the political and economic relations in the larger society. According to Engels the new wealth in domesticated animals meant that there was a surplus of goods available for exchange between productive units. With time, production by men specifically for exchange purposes developed, expanded, and came to overshadow the household’s production for use. As production of exchange eclipsed production for use, it changed the nature of the household, the significance of women’s work within it, and consequently women’s position in society.

Patriarchy and capitalism work together to maintain the oppression of women. Capitalism requires a group that controls the means of production as well as a group that is exploited. This basic social relationship is what allows capitalist to create profit. It is in the best interest of both public and private institutions to exploit the labor of women as an inexpensive method of supporting a work force. For the producers, this means higher profits. Patriarchy on the other hand, consists of both men who control the means of production and profit; and women who provide cheap and often free labor. Much of what women do often is done for free for example no wages are paid for the wife’s domestic labor constituting the unpaid labor force in capitalism. Paying women for carrying children and domestic work would significantly reduce profit margins and the capitalist’s ability to accumulate capital. Man’s ability to devote his time entirely to a job or career is dependent upon the woman’s exploitation. When women are allowed in the work force, they tend to be kept in menial positions or given lower wages for the same work as men because of the importance of women’s cheap and free labor to the capitalist system, elite formulate and preach a patriarchic ideology that gives a society a basis for believing in the rightness of women’s primary call to child bearing and domestic labor. Elite men also use their structural and legislatives power to disadvantage women’s fair work force participation. The greater the workforce participation of women particularly in high paying jobs, the less the structure of inequality is able to be maintained.

Resources are critical for development and the people controlling the allocation and utilization of resources control to a bigger extend the output of production. According to Engels (1884), the shift from feudalism to private ownership of land had a huge effect on the status of women. In a private ownership system, individuals who do not own land or other means of production are in a situation that Engels compares to enslavement - they must work for the owners of the land in order to be able to live within the system of private ownership. Much of land as the chief factor of production in Africa is under the control of men thereby disadvantaging women.  

Women's subordination is not a result of her biological disposition but of social relations, and man’s efforts to achieve their demands for control of women's labor and sexual faculties. Women's subordination is a function of class oppression, maintained because it serves the interests of capital and the ruling class; it divides men against women, privileges working class men relatively within the capitalist system in order to secure their support; and legitimates the capitalist class's refusal to pay for the domestic labor assigned, unpaid, to women. Every structural system is sustained through legitimization and in the context of women, oppression has been legitimized though cultural practices and laws in the modern society and institutionalized in the nuclear family. 

Measured in the dimensions of improving the welfare state of the people through sustained quantitative growth in the economy, development should result in better working conditions and fair distribution of the gains of production to both genders. The concept of gender disparity has found its way into Africa through the ‘exporting of capitalism’ and leveraging on the existing ‘innocent’ African socio-cultural customs. According to Engels describe the bourgeois sees in his wife a mere instrument of production and this is a fairly accurate portrayal of how capitalism, often through colonialism, has managed to successfully exploit the female workforce. Through colonialism, capitalism has managed to spread to indigenous and previously autonomous societies and inflict a capitalist mode of production upon the men and women living in these regions. Before the arrival of the colonialists and subsequent arrival of capitalism, women and men often had set traditional roles to play in society, but the significant economic change has led in many circumstances to a dramatic shift in gender roles and relations. While men are often expected to contribute more significantly to the economy at large, women have been given the responsibility to directly provide for the family, thereby contributing both financially and domestically. Women in these societies’ indigenous societies begin to be seen as a source labor for production. Besides women labor is more appealing to capitalism because; the labor is cheaper to employ compared to the male counterparts, women have greater patient when it comes to tedious work, work under poor working conditions and are less likely to agitate for unionization.

Further capitalism has innovated ways of increasing accessibility to women labor through adoption of various measures including; inadequate childcare and increased cost of living, demanding domestic and financial responsibilities, dependency on employers and husbands. These factors contribute to the vulnerability of women putting them in a situation where they must provide labor to the market. Technology on the other hand has advanced so that the time spent on household chores, like laundry, has been reduced, fast-food restaurants have made it possible for women to spend less time cooking, public schooling means that the time women spend on childrearing is greatly reduced from the days when they barely left the home

Conclusion

Since the gains of development are not a preserve of men and the capitalist in the society, for the realization of equality in the achievement of development goals; radical restructuring of the current capitalist economy and patriarchal systems, in which participation of women in production is highly regulated and much of women's labor is uncompensated must be enforced in the society and particularly in Africa to liberate women and have them equally contributing to the development process and fairly sharing in the gains of production in order to improve their living standards both at the work place and also in the nuclear family.