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Development Hegemony and the Development Crisis in Africa: The Importance of Indigenous Knowledges and Practices in the Making of Food Policy

The dominant theme in development discourse and practice in the last two decades is that African and other "Third World" countries facing severe economic crisis are reaping the fruits of import substitution policies, which they initiated and pursued between the 1960s and 1970s. (1) This has been used to justify current development policies and practices, which have been imposed on African societies since the early 1980s under the Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the G-7 countries. The expressed and implied conclusion is that the policies being recommended to them since the mid-1980s differ from the earlier policies in terms of their origins and logic and are not connected to the policies and actions of the current development "missionaries." That is, the failures of the past are Africa's making while the current policy recommendations presented as solutions are external to Africa since they come from institutions and organizations concerned about the welfare of Africa's peoples. This line of argument is sometimes contradicted by some African government officials who claim that current adjustment policies are remedies internally generated by them in response to deteriorating domestic and international economic conditions, which negatively affected their national economies. (2) But couching it either way is misleading. It also works to help these agencies to deny and avoid responsibility for the failure of earlier policies and programs and helps to ensure their continued involvement in Africa's development, often for the benefit of forces outside Africa. The policies of the 1960s and 1970s were consistent with the ideas of development actively promoted by the dominant forces in the world economy at the time, themselves products of some contingent economic and political factors (and forms of resistance against them). The current adjustment policies being promoted follow logically (but not inevitably) from the import substitution policies of the 1960s and 1970s, and the same forces that were responsible for those earlier policies are responsible for the current ones. (3) What seems to be at stake currently is the battle for the control of the development debate, which ensures the continued flow of the rewards of "development" to the winners. I argue that the greater significance of the role of the international development agencies, especially the World Bank, in African development is their domination of the development discourse rather than the money they provide or fail to provide for development (although both are related). One measure of this greater significance is that the agricultural projects supported by the World Bank and the loans it provides sometimes pale into insignificance relative to the size of Africa's agricultural production and the long-term expenditures to support it. Nigeria, one of the major recipients of the Bank's agricultural loans in the 1970s and early 1980s, illustrates this point. Between 1976 and 1985 the Nigerian government's expenditure on the Bank-sponsored Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) totaled N445.8 million or 60 percent of the total amount, while loans from the Bank accounted for N287.3 million or 32.2 percent. (4) But the Bank's domination of the discourse, backed by its money, ensures that the Nigerian government's overall food policies were largely tailored to fit the Bank's prescriptions, thereby extending the Bank's influence beyond its financial scope. And it helps that the Bank has powerful backers in the G-7 countries, especially the U.S. So while the Bank's financial commitment is important, its significance is greater in terms of its role as a powerful incentive to get governments to agree to the Bank's vision of development. This vision usually outlives the Bank's financial commitment to the agricultural sector, is often difficult to get away from, and helps shape thinking in other sectors, as well. …