In the last edition of the journal, we examined the recently concluded Ghanaian presidential elections, noting that the 2008 elections tested the institutional character of the electoral process in Ghana to its limit. We noted that while Ghana deserved every commendation for yet another successful democratic power transfer, the rave reviews of the elections, were rather too extravagant and masked events which nearly turned Ghana to another Kenya or Zimbabwe’ in Africa.
In this issue, we look at the impact of the current global economic crisis on Africa. We posed questions on the roots of the crisis; its possible impacts on Africa, and the ways Africa could wriggle itself out of the logjam.
Patrick Bond discusses the various reasons offered for the crisis in the US – from deregulation, corruption, greed, feckless borrowing by debt-addicted consumers and Alan Greenspan – to Conservative Ann Coulter blaming it on the banks “giving your mortgage to a less qualified minority”. Bond disagrees with these ‘mainstream’ discourses and locates the roots of the crisis in “overaccumulation, financialisation and ‘global apartheid’. He calls for financial democratisation, arguing that the basic barrier to global reform is that “too many neoconservatives and neoliberals populate the multilateral institutions, so that not since perhaps 1996 when the Montreal Protocol agreed upon chlorofluorocarbon emission reductions, have we seen a serious global governance reform.” Miles Donohoe discusses the implications of the financial crisis for South Africa, noting that economy, “which is already facing a slowdown due to high inflation and interest rates, is likely to slow even further as a result of the weak global growth, which is expected to result in a decline in demand for South Africa’s exports from developed nations”.
Akin Oyebode believes that the impact of the crisis on Nigeria has been devastating, arguing that not only has it “led to a near total collapse of the stock market, the Naira has taken a free-fall while we are in the grip of capital flight, de-industrialization, retrenchment and sky-rocketing lending rates and an escalating inflation rate.” He calls on the country’s leaders to seize the opportunity of the current crisis to overhaul the modalities of the country’s political economy.
For Hakeem Babalola, the Nigerian government is not in control of the global financial meltdown and may not even fully understand what it means. He argues that since the Nigerian government was “unable to manage or control economic, religious, political and social crises before the advent of the global one, then it is impossible for such government to control the situation now”
Besides the articles in the lead theme, we also bring other interesting articles – from reflections on Obama’s visit to Ghana to Japan’s role in peace building in Africa.
AJSTID Debuts
The African Journal of Science, Technology, Innovation and Development, (AJSTID) a peer reviewed international journal, debuts this September. A combined numbers 2& 3 will also come out in November. For enquires about the journal contact:
