Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 November 2008
The growth of business classes in Africa has attracted much interest since the 1980s when, in the context of severe economic malaise, the impact of the state on development was subjected to critical reappraisal.1 Out of this emerged a consensus that the abysmal economic record of the 1960s and 1970s could, to a large degree, be ascribed to the debilitating effect of an overstretched and swollen state. Official development thinking took this argument the furthest: at the core of the problem, it was asserted, was the expansion of the state's rôle from the preferred minimalist function of providing the legal and macro-economic regulatory framework for capital accumulation, to a more profound intervention in the productive process. As a remedy, the state would have to be restrained from usurping the primary rôle which the market's invisible hand ought to be playing.2
1 See Lubeck, Paul M. (ed.), The African Bourgeoisie: capitalist development in Nigeria, Kenya, and the Ivory Coast (Boulder, CO, 1987);Google ScholarMacGaffey, Janet, Entrepreneurs and Parasites: the struggle for indigenous capitalism in Zaire (Cambridge, 1987);Google ScholarBiersteker, Thomas J., Multinationals, the State, and Control of the Nigerian Economy (Princeton, 1987);CrossRefGoogle ScholarKennedy, Paul, African Capitalism: the struggle for ascendency (Cambridge, 1988);Google ScholarBerman, Bruce and Leys, Colin (eds.), African Capitalists in African Development (Boulder and London, 1994);Google ScholarHimbara, David, Kenyan Capitalists, the State and Development (Boulder and London, 1994);Google Scholar and Forrest, Tom, The Advance of African Capital: the growth of Nigerian private enterprise (Edinburgh, 1994).Google Scholar
2 See World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa. From Crisis to Sustainable Growth: a long-term perspective study (Washington, DC, 1989), pp. 9–10, where it is argued that ‘highly inefficient industrialization’ in Africa has been the result of earlier efforts ‘focused on state-led creation of capacity without adequate regard to cost or markets’, and what is therefore needed is the ‘fostering [of] African entrepreneurship’ because ‘The private sector holds the key to future industrial growth’.Google Scholar
3 Greenblo, Allan, ‘Expedient Structures: black investors achieve control with use of establishment funds’, in Finance Week (Johannesburg), 21–27 07 1994.Google Scholar
4 According to Mamela, Sandile, in The Sunday Independent (Johannesburg), 23 07 1995, p. 25, ‘The so-called new establishment of black entrepreneurs is just a tool of the old establishment and a danger to us all’.Google Scholar See also, ‘Black Business Empowerment a Sham’, in African Business (Johannesburg), 06 1995, p. 10,Google Scholar and ‘The Unbearable Brightness of Being Black’, in Die Suid Afrikaan (Cape Town), 53, 05—06 1995, p. 20.Google Scholar
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9 From a satirical piece by three consultants using the nom de plume John, Cecil, ‘How We Whites have had You for Suckers’, in Business Day, 26 July 1995.Google Scholar
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12 Hoogvelt, Ankie, ‘Indigenisation and Foreign Capital: industrialisation in Nigeria’, in Review of African Political Economy, 14, 01—04 1979, p. 62.Google Scholar
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18 Portfolio of Black Business (Johannesburg, 1993), p. 50.Google Scholar
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70 ‘Cellular Phone Industry: special report’, in The Financial Mail (Johannesburg), 8 10 1993;Google Scholar Maureen Sullivan, ‘Cellular Phones dividing the spoils’, in ibid. 29 October 1993; Maura Bidoll, ‘Cellular Telephones: free to shop around’, in ibid. 26 November 1993; Lisa Thornton, ‘Who'll Benefit from the Cellular Phone Fracas?’, in The Weekly Mail and Guardian, 8–14 October 1993; and Allan Greenbic, ‘Cellular Phones: a compromise for one is…’, in Finance Week, 26 October–3 November 1993.
71 Interview with Egan, 5 December 1995.
72 Davis, Gaye, ‘Politicians Opt to Police Themselves’, in The Weekly Mail and Guardian, 29 09–5 10 1995,Google Scholar and ‘How Good is Our Code of Conduct?’, in ibid. 31 May–6 June 1996.
73 Interview with Njeke, 11 December 1995.
74 Interview with du Chenne, 13 December 1995.
75 See MacGaffey, Jane, ‘How to Survive and Become Rich Amidst Devastation: the second economy in Zaire’, in African Affairs, 82, 328, 07 1983, pp. 351–66,CrossRefGoogle ScholarEntrepreneurs and Parasites: the struggle for indigenous capitalism in Zaire (Cambridge, 1987),Google Scholar and ‘State Deterioration and Capitalist Development: the case of Zaire’, in Berman, Bruce J. and Leys, Cohn (eds.), African Capitalists in African Development (Boulder and London, 1994), pp. 189–204.Google Scholar
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77 Himbara, Kenyan Capitalists, the State, and Development, p. 6.