Economic faith, Social project and a misreading of African society: the travails of neoliberalism in Africa

Abstract

This article is interested in the nature of the neoliberal project's expansion in Africa. The starting point for this exploration is a need to reflect on how the concept of neoliberalism is defined, especially the way it signals an economic doctrine which can only be realised as a broader sociopolitical project. The article goes on to show how, inasmuch as neoliberalism has consolidated itself in African states, it has done so by expanding its boundaries from macroeconomic fundamentals into broader concerns of state reconstruction. Most profoundly the full realisation of neoliberal social transition relies on expectations about the way societies behave. Here neoliberal approaches reveal themselves as nothing so much as faith statements, or convictions about the market-like sociability of African communities. The article ends by reflecting on more historical and structuralist approaches to the way markets have evolved within societies, concluding with an entreaty to ‘bring accumulation back in’ as a way of understanding markets and their developmental possibilities.

Notes

Many thanks to Ian Taylor for comments on an earlier draft.

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