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Economic and Political Reform in Africa: Anthropological Perspectives by Peter D. Little (review)

Peter Little, director of the Program in Development Studies at Emory University, is an anthropologist who has worked extensively in rural Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, and elsewhere in Africa for the past thirty years. As both a researcher and consultant with international development organizations, Little has a developed critique of international development efforts in rural Africa; indeed a more accurate title for this book would be “Neoliberalism in Africa: The Effects from Below . ” The book’s seven chapters explore issues of contract farming in Gambia and Ghana; the informal economy in periurban Mozambique; conservation, multiparty elections, and pastoralist poverty assessments in Kenya; food aid dependencies in rural Ethiopia; and transactional livestock trade in Somalia, all areas he has researched directly. The major theme of this book is that the neoliberal agenda of international donors, including the World Bank and USAID, has led to a variety of development projects aimed at rural farmers and herders in Africa that have produced profoundly negative effects. These projects replaced statesponsored development efforts and “privileged nonstate groups, free trade, and market-led development,” with an ideological conviction that “the market was ‘in’ and the state was ‘out’ . . .” (2). These programs did not lead to a reduction of poverty or improvement of the lives of millions of rural producers; rather, they overshadowed and ignored local knowledge and productive strategies while they were eagerly embraced by national governments receiving the aid. Little writes, “most low income Africans still experience heighted hardship and risk even when demonstrating phenomenal ingenuity and resilience” (9). Little’s book illustrates this theme through specific case studies of a variety of local situations. While it focuses mainly on pastoral and agropastoral societies that the author knows so well, it also includes several examples from West African farmers and southern African urban areas.