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The Impact of Nationalisation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

Leslie L. Rood
Leslie L. Rood
Affiliation:
Professor of Law, Georgia State University, Atlanta
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Extract

One of the most important developments in the last decade has been the movement by Africans to recover control of their own economy. A recent article in this Journal, XVI, 3, September 1976, gave a factual account of the extent to which foreign-owned industry in black Africa has been nationalised and indigenised, and discussed the inability of international law to provide guidelines for the settlement of this ongoing struggle between alien owners and host countries. Predictably, it was written by a lawyer because this field has been captured by lawyers almost to the exclusion of all others. But there is much that economists, sociologists, and political scientists could contribute concerning nationalisation, particularly in analysing its causes and effects, although up to now they have had little to say.1 This note makes a start on the question of the impact of nationalisation upon Africa and Africans, in the hope that the tentative conclusions reached here will lead to treatment of the subject by those with the tools for a deeper appraisal.

Type
Africana
Information
The Journal of Modern African Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 3 , September 1977 , pp. 489 - 494
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

page 489 note 1 Cf. Weston, Burns H., ‘International Law and the Deprivation of Foreign Wealth: a framework for future inquiry’, in Falk, Richard A. and Black, Cyril E. (eds.), The Future of the International Legal Order (Princeton, 1970), p. 170.Google Scholar Among the other writers who have discussed the economic and political impact of nationalisation, even briefly, are: Ghai, Dharam P., ‘Concepts and Strategies of Economic Independence’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies (Cambridge), XI, 1, 03 1973, pp. 21–42Google Scholar; Robert L. Curry, ‘Global Market Forces and the Nationalisation of Foreign-Based Export Companies’, in ibid. XIV, 1, March 1976, pp. 137–43; Collins, Paul, ‘The Political Economy of Indigenization: the case of the Nigerian Enterprises Promotion Decree’, in The African Review (Dar es Salaam), IV, 4, 1974, pp. 491–508Google Scholar; Beveridge, Andrew A., ‘Economic Independence, Indigenization and the African Businessman: some effects of Zambia's economic reforms’, in African Studies Review (Syracuse), XVII, 3, 12 1974, pp. 477–90Google Scholar; Bronfenbrenner, M., ‘The Appeal of Confiscation in Economic Development’, in Economic Development and Cultural Change (Chicago), III, 04 1955, pp. 201–18Google Scholar; and Mints, Norman H., ‘An Economic Analysis of International Expropriation of Property’, in Lillich, Richard B. (ed.), The Valuation of Nationalized Property in International Law, Vol. II (Charlottesville, 1973) p. 32.Google Scholar

page 490 note 1 Ghai, loc. cit. p. 38.

page 490 note 2 Curry, loc. cit. p. 137.

page 490 note 3 Beveridge, loc. cit. p. 487; Collins, loc. cit. p. 501.

page 490 note 4 See Ghai, loc. cit. pp. 33–40.

page 491 note 1 For a discussion of this possibility, see Collins, loc. cit. p. 502; Ghai, loc. cit. p. 36; and Sklar, Richard L., Corporate Power in an African State: the political impact of multinational mining companies in Zambia (Berkeley, 1975), p. 210.Google Scholar African authorities even encouraged Asian merchants at one time in order to thwart the rise of a local class of entrepreneurs which might have challenged them. O'Brien, Rita Cruise, ‘Lebanese Entrepreneurs in Senegal: economic integration and the politics of protection’, in Cahiers d'études africaines (Paris), XV, 1, 1975, p. 112.Google Scholar

page 491 note 2 See Gould, David J., ‘Local Administration in Zaïre and Underdevelopment’, in The Journal of Modern African Studies, XV, 3, 09 1977, p. 377Google Scholar, and the New York Times, 21 April 1977, p. A7.

page 491 note 3 Ghai, loc. cit. pp. 36 and 41; and Collins, loc. cit. p. 503.

page 492 note 1 Kamarck, Andrew M., The Economics of African Development (New York, 1971 edn.), p. 247Google Scholar; Kamanu, Onyeonoro S., ‘Compensation for Expropriation in the Third World’, in Studies in Comparative International Development (New Brunswick), X, 2, Summer 1975, pp. 3–21Google Scholar; Ngango, Georges, Les investissement d'origine extérieur en Afrique noire francophone: statut et incidence sur le développement (Paris, 1973)Google Scholar; Amin, Samir, Neo-Colonialism in West Africa (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 80Google Scholar; and Sklar, op. cit.

page 492 note 2 National Industrial Conference Board, Obstacles and Incentives to Private Foreign Investment, 1967–1968, Vol. 1, Obstacles (New York, 1969), p. 9Google Scholar; Root, Franklin R., ‘The Expropriation Experience of American Companies’, in Business Horizons (Bloomington), 04 1968, pp. 69–74Google Scholar; Mintz, loc. cit. p. 32; Weston, loc. cit. p. 173; and Rohwer, James A., ‘Nationalization’, in Harvard International Law Journal (Cambridge, Mass), XIV, 2, Spring 1973, pp. 378–91.Google Scholar

page 493 note 1 Armstrong, Winifred, ‘The Future for Mining Investment in Africa’, in African Development (London), 06 1976, p. 581.Google Scholar

page 493 note 2 Ghai, loc. cit. p. 38.

page 493 note 3 Meier, Gerald M., The International Economics of Development (New York, 1968), p. 141Google Scholar; United Nations, Multinational Corporations in World Development (New York), p. 49Google Scholar; and Reuber, Grant L., Private Foreign Investment in Development (Oxford, 1973), p. 185.Google Scholar

page 494 note 1 See Weston, loc. cit. p. 176.