Internal under-development in Africa and Amin’s delinking theory: Dangote, Dos Santos and Motsepe

ABSTRACT

In his theory on delinking, Amin shows how Africa is linked to global Capital. For Amin, it is in this link that Africa’s underdevelopment resides. An important element in this linking process is the role that the comprador bourgeoisie plays in its relationship with global Capital, which facilitates the continued underdevelopment of Africa. Amin raises the question of the role that the African comprador bourgeoisie played as agents of imperialism in keeping Africa linked to Europe. From this standpoint, Amin presents the possibility of approaching Africa’s underdevelopment from another dimension – the possibility of exploring Africa’s underdevelopment as an internally driven process initiated by home-grown African capitalists who accumulate for their own account. Extending the logic of the comprador bourgeoisie, this paper argues that Capital in Africa is responsible for internal under development. African Capital too, together with international Capital consciously participates in under developing Africa. We argue that internal underdevelopment is based on a capitalist logic that contains all the standard phenomena associated with Capital, namely, inequality, unemployment, and poverty. Furthermore, exploring the rise of our case studies, viz; the Dangotes, Motsepes, and the Dos Santos’, we show how instrumental each of them are in the internal underdevelopment of Africa.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Capital is spelt with a capital C throughout this paper deliberately. This is to distinguish the term from the loosely used jargon of mainstream economics, and clearly demarcate it as the central driving force of the law of value, otherwise known as capitalism.