6 - Economic Growth

Summary

This chapter shows that the re-imaging of Africa in growth terms is not only a reflection of Africa’s growth record but also creating "confidence in the market" by confirming that Africa is ripe and ready to host investment and to open up markets in areas where they did not exist or existed but were not capitalist in form. Either way, however, the "Africa on the rise" narrative – indeed all growth praises showered on Africa – achieve a major political and economic goal. Neglecting ethical questions about sustainable jobs, inequality, and ecological crisis, while extolling the virtues of capital accumulation, it extends a particular neoliberal ideology which favors people with market power, not the majority with precarious positions or their relationship with nature. Economic growth, then, must also be regarded as a problematic explanation. Like its tools of commodifying land (Chapters 2 and 3), labourlabor (Chapter 4), and the environment (Chapter 5), mainstream approaches to economic growth must be fundamentally rejected.