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A Behavioral Model of Pan-African Disintegration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 May 2014

Alan R. Waters
Alan R. Waters*
Affiliation:
Texas A and M University, College Station, Texas
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Extract

We see the failure of Pan-Africanism all across the continent in the face of crude nationalism. We see wide division between the mass of the poor and the high-consumption elites who are in control everywhere (Dumont 1969, pp. 80-83; Hunter 1967, p. 33). We see the continually expanding administrative structures. And we see the desperate passion for education at every level and in every country throughout sub-Saharan Africa (Ostheimer 1970, p. 103). Are these conditions not intimately linked in a single system which determines the common pattern? In this study we will suggest that they are, and we will set forth the chain of causality which leads inevitably from the last condition to the first.

In present-day Africa wealth consists primarily in the holding of the results of human investment. Those who have benefited from the largest amount of human investment, through the education system, for example, are the ones who derive the highest returns. The fact that we call their returns “salaries and perquisites” instead of something else is quite beside the point. The new elites who rule in Africa are usually identifiable as having had the largest amount of formal education in society. This high return on educational investment amounts to a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a system where education is state-financed on the basis of a regressive tax system.

Type
Research Article
Information
African Studies Review , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , December 1970 , pp. 415 - 433
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1970

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References

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