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Abstract
The main premise of this paper is that, until recently, African elites did not regulate or control financial flows moving across the continent. They were not financial gatekeepers. In Africa Since 1940, Cooper identified African elites as gatekeepers regulating access to resources and opportunities passing through strategic sites. This paper makes a case for revision of existing notions of the gatekeeper state in an ongoing effort to (re)negotiate the continent’s colonial past through two new arguments. The first is that financial power was never located at a ‘peripheral’ African gate, but resolutely held onto within leading financial centres, circumventing any opportunity for African elites to control financial flows. Failure to distinguish between types of flows distorts analysis of African political economic power under colonialism. It is only in the post-2000 period, that we see powerful African states driving the integration of African markets into the global financial system. The second argument is that these African goals to control financial flows correspond more to ‘gateway’ strategies than to gatekeeper. Drawing on the case of Lagos, I demonstrate how this ‘gateway’ concept better captures trans-scalar processes of new financial clustering in Africa’s emerging markets than a concept associated with ‘gates’ under Empire.
Notes
1. Cooper, Africa Since 1940.
2. Ingham, Capitalism Divided?
3. Cooper, “Africa Since 1940,” 161.
4. Cain and Hopkins, “Gentlemanly Capitalism”.
5. Ibid.
6. Strange, States and Markets.
7. Strange, “Finance, Information and Power”.
8. Ibid, 508.
9. Ibid, 510.
10. Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital.
11. Greaves, “The Colonial Sterling Balances”.
12. Gardner, “The Rise and Fall of Sterling in Liberia,” 2.
13. Terreblanche, A History of Inequality.
14. Houghton, “Economic Development”.
15. Ibid, 11.
16. Ally, Gold and Empire, 35.
17. Thompson, “Compromise of the Union”.
18. Ibid, 76.
19. Helleiner, “Southern Side of Embedded Liberalism”.
20. Ally, Gold and Empire, 84.
21. Rooth, “Britain, South African Gold, and the Sterling Area”.
22. Narsey, British Imperialism.
23. Williamson, “What Role for Currency Boards?”
24. Narsey, British Imperialism.
25. Cohen, “Seigniorage Gain,” 494.
26. Ibid, 496.
27. Treadgold, “Colonial Currency Boards”.
28. Ibid, 234.
29. Maxon, “Kenya Currency Crisis,” 324.
30. Mwangi, “Of Coins and Conquest,” 764.
31. Eliot, “East African Protectorate”.
32. Helleiner, “Monetary Dimensions”.
33. Mwangi, “Of Coins and Conquest,” 766.
34. This paper recognises the very different colonial financial legacies within Africa, for instance, Great Britain’s sterling zone, Portugal’s escudo zone, and France’s franc zone. The CFA franc zone continues as the West African CFA franc and the Central African CFA franc, two currencies that, even though separate, are in practice interchangeable, guaranteed by the French treasury and pegged to the euro. Countries within these two zones still do not have effective financial and monetary sovereignty.
35. Eichengreen, “Monetary Dimensions”.
36. Anderson, “Depression, Dust Bowl, Demography”.
37. Eichengreen and Irwin, “Trade Blocs, Currency Blocs”.
38. Ochonu, “Conjoined to Empire”.
39. Ibid, 119.
40. Krozewski, “Money and the End of Empire”.
41. Kindleberger, Financial History of Western Europe.
42. Krozewski, “Money and the End of Empire”; and Gaitskell, “Sterling Area”.
43. Strange, “Sterling and British Policy”.
44. Cole and Shanks, “Policy for the Sterling Area”.
45. Greaves, “The Colonial Sterling Balances,” 1.
46. Ibid, 2.
47. Copland, “Problems of the Sterling Area”.
48. Ruggie, “International Regimes, Transactions, and Change”.
49. Strange, “Sterling and British Policy”.
50. Eichengreen.
51. Helleiner, “States and the Reemergence of Global Finance”.
52. Helleiner, “Southern Side of Embedded Liberalism”.
53. Helleiner, “Africa and the International Monetary Fund”.
54. Cohen, “Phoenix Risen”.
55. Helleiner, “The Politics of Global Finance”.
56. Germain, “Financial Governance in Historical Perspective”.
57. Campbell, “Governance, Institutional Reform”.
58. Cobbett, “The South African Reserve Bank”.
59. Maxfield, “Gatekeepers of Growth”.
60. Lester et al. “South Africa’s Current Transition,” 145.
61. Gelb, “South Africa’s Economic Crisis”.
62. Padayachee and Sherbut, “Ideas and Power,” 30.
63. Bond, “Fighting Neo-liberalism,” 14.
64. Gray and Murphy, “Introduction”.
65. Quah, “The Global Economy’s Shifting Centre”.
66. Sidaway and Pryke, “Strange Geographies”.
67. Cohen, “International Monetary System,” 455; italics in original.
68. Ibid, 13.
69. Sy, “Private Capital Flows”.
70. Kenny and Moss, “Stock Markets in Africa”.
71. Office of Overseas Affairs and Investment, “Welcome to Lagos State”.
72. Germain, “Financial Governance in Historical Perspective”.
73. Evans, “The Asia Pacific Gateway”; and Montsion, “Softening Canada’s Gateway”.
74. Gipouloux, Gateways to Globalisation; and Young et al. Competition among Financial Centres.
75. Zhao and Karagoz, “Potential of Istanbul”.
76. Cobbett, “Johannesburg”.
77. Comtois and Wang, “Géopolitique et transport”.
78. Woo, “Building the Asia Pacific”.
79. Burghardt, “Hypothesis about Gateway Cities”.
80. Burghardt, “A Hypothesis about Gateway Cities”; Bird, “Gateways”; and Pain, “New Worlds’ for ‘Old’”.
81. Ley and Titchener, “Immigration, Globalisation”.
82. Braudel, Perspective of the World.
83. Andersson and Andersson, “Gateways to the Global Economy”; and Taylor, “World City Network”.
84. Tuathail and Luke, “Present at the (Dis)integration”.
85. Brenner, New State Spaces.
86. Office of Lagos State, “State Vision”.
87. Michael, “Lagos Shows How a City can Recover”.
88. Ikwuamaeze, “Lagos GDP”.
89. Matutu, “The Nigerian Stock Exchange”.
90. Ambode, “My Random Thoughts”.
91. Vanguard, “Nigeria”.
92. OECD, “Investment Policy Reviews,” 284.
93. Office of Overseas Affairs and Investment, “Welcome to Lagos State”.
94. Kendall et al., “Sub-Saharan Africa,” 53.
95. Smith, “Uneven Development”.
96. Lavelle, “Architecture of Equity Markets”.
97. Sy, “Financial Integration”.