Structural Hegemony in Sub-Sahara Africa: Implications for Readjustment of Polarized Economic Regions

Abstract

Uneven development in space in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) has been attributed to inequalities in comparative advantage within the neoclassical framework of free and competitive markets. The role of structural hegemony, centered in primate cities with controls on allocation and mobilization of development resources throughout the post-colonial state in SSA, has been largely ignored in the literature. Policies and plans for development that were based on the assumption of free and competitive markets in Africa have been frustrated because they did not take into account the role of structural hegemony and associated biases in determining the spatial pattern of costs and benefits of production within incorporated state economic systems. This paper develops a framework which would characterize uneven development in SSA as a function of competitive (or neoclassical) forces of spatial inequality, and hegemonic (structural) forces of spatial inequity. The increasing dominance of hegemonic forces, which have progressively submerged competitive forces of production and distribution, are blamed for slowing down progress in SSA and are seen as the principal constraint in structural readjustment. A brief illustrative case study of Ethiopia and Zimbabwe is provided to verify the hegemonic process and to demonstrate its two dominant forms of spatial polarity in SSA.

Key Words:

• structural hegemony
• competitive forces
• hegemonic forces
• social returns
• social outlays
• structural readjustment
• equity front
• occlusive front
• redressive front
• depressive front
• refraction
• truncation
• unicentric fronts
• polycentric fronts