The Communal Challange in Africa's Economic Development

The African society is highly communal. This presents both an opportunity and a threat to economic development. Advantages of a highly communal society are many. Collective education and information sharing is possible by utilizing existing informal leadership structures. On the other hand, highly communal societies can become a liability especially where structural differentiation is not possible and community subunits are not organized for mutual benefit through functional specialization and interdependence.

The four factors of production as we know them, land, labor, capital and entrepreneurship, interact within a productive society to create wealth. In Africa, however, especially in rural Africa, some of the factors of production are not developed or there is just so much of one factor in relation to the others. To ensure economic development, the four factors of production need to be developed into meaningful production linkages. In order to do this, a few changes must take place. First there is need to increase differentiation of production units into patterns of functional specialization and interdependence. Second, new mechanisms of integration, coordination and control should be developed. Thirdly, there is need for structural changes to the key features of society such as cultural values, goals, and distribution.

Countless efforts are being made today to bring about economic change in Africa. One of the most popular ones is micro finance. Large amounts of funds are being pumped into small villages to improve food production, crop yields, and healthy living. What such interventions lack though is the facilitation of structural adjustments which must go with any financial or moral support. There is need to create inter-village linkages to foster productivity, differentiation and specialization. The economy needs to be looked at as a sum-total of individual specialized units. Eeconomic interventions should put the responsibility of, and resources for, development into the hands of villagers who manage their resources through collective responsibility. In order to create wealth, technical expertise using existing structural/cultural arrangements must be strengthenedThere is need to create economic activity through providing access to external market linkages between neighboring villages.Fostering cross-village communication by expanding general social norms, and creating functional and responsible democratic associations could be an added advantage as well.