THE STATE, TECHNOLOGY AND INDUSTRIALIZATION IN AFRICA
Also by Jeffrey James CONSUMER CHOICE IN THE THIRD WORLD CONSUMPTION AND DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS OF NEW TECHNOLOGY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES {with F Stewart) IMPROVING TRADITIONAL RURAL TECHNOLOGIES TECHNOLOGY, INSTITUTIONS AND GOVERNMENT POLICIES (with S. Watanabe) THE IMPACT OF WORLD EMPLOYMENT PROGRAM RESEARCH ON TECHNOLOGY (with F Stewart, A. Bhalla and others) THE TECHNOLOGICAL BEHAVIOUR OF PUBLIC ENTERPRISES IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES THE TRANSITION TO EGALITARIAN DEVELOPMENT (with K. Griffin)
The State, Technology and Industrialization in Africa Jeffrey James Professor of Development Economics Director of the Center Graduate Schools in Economics and Management Til burg University, The Netherlands M St. Martin's Press
Jeffrey James 1995 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WIP 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published in Great Britain 1995 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-349-39147-9 DOI 10.1057/9780230377196 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 95 ISBN 978-0-230-37719-6 (ebook) First published in the United States of America 1995 by Scholarly and Reference Division, ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data James, Jeffrey. The state, technology and industrialization in Africa I Jeffrey James. p. em. Includes index. 1. Technology and state-africa. I. Title. T28.A I J36 1995 338'.06--<lc20 2. Industrialization-Africa. 94--31256 CIP
To the memory of Maurice Ross James
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Contents List of Tables Ack~zowledgernents Introduction PART I THE BUREAUCRATIC CHOICE OF TECHNIQUES 1 The Growth and Technological Performance of Public Sector Institutions 2 The Bureaucratic Choice of Techniques: Textiles in Tanzania 3 The Irrelevance of Ideology in the Public Sector: A Comparison of Kenya and Tanzania 4 Bureaucratic versus Economic Man: A Note on Power Alcohol Production in Kenya and Zimbabwe 5 Appropriate Technology in the Public Sector 6 Foreign Aid and the Bureaucratic Choice of Techniques PART I1 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF BUREAUCRACY 7 The Political Economy of Bureaucracy: A Public Choice Perspective 8 The Centralized African State and its Implications for Technological Behaviour in the Public Sector Index
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List of Tables 1.1 Public enterprise expansion in the manufacturing sector 16 1.2 The growth in capacity of selected manufacturing industries in Tanzania 16 1.3 Net disbursements of ODA from bilateral and multilateral sources to Sub-Saharan Africa, 1973-83 18 1.4 Foreign aid and domestic investment, 1984: IDA eligible countries 19 1.5 Public enterprise and the choice of technology, selected African countries 22 1.6 Technology choice in public vs. private enterprises, selected African countries 23 1.7 Employment and output implications of alternative techniques at the macro-economic level 24 1.8 Public enterprise in industry and the acquisition of indigenous technological capabilities, selected African countries 27 1.9 Trends in the formation of science and technology policy-making bodies in Africa, 1973-86 29 2.1 Friendship and Mwanza textile mills in Tanzania 36 3.1 A comparative summary of the technological characteristics of public enterprises in manufacturing, Tanzania and Kenya 50 3.2 The industrial objectives of 'government' in the 1970s and early 1980s, Tanzania and Kenya 56 3.3 The macro-environment and pressures for cost-consciousness in the choice of technology, Tanzania and Kenya 60 3.4 Managing agents/minority partners and the source of technology in Kenyan parastatals 63 3.5 Scale, products and technology: Kenya 64 3.6 Managerial discretion and the failings of the parastatal control system 74 3.7 A matrix of gaining and losing interests 79 4.1 The financial structure of two power alcohol projects in Kenya 86 4.2 Decision-making for technology: power alcohol in Kenya and Zimbabwe 92 ix
X List of Tables 5.1 Appropriate technology at Pan-African Paper (Kenya) 104 7.1 How bureaucratic objectives are served by budget maximization 151 7.2 Current expenditure on wages and salaries as a percentage of total government expenditure and lending minus repayments 156 7.3 Non-financial public enterprises' share of non-agricultural employment 156 7.4 Earnings as a multiple of per capita GDP: Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia 157 8.1 Share of government in non-agricultural employment, by developing region 180 8.2 Outcomes of decentralisation policies: selected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa 181 8.3 Numbers of plants required under alternative methods of producing a given increase in output in selected manufacturing industries 183
Acknowledgements Part of the research on which this book is based began while I was a staff member of the Technology and Employment Branch of the International Labour Office, Geneva. That research formed part of a larger project on public enterprises in a range of different developing countries and was published in a book under my editorship entitled The Technological Behaviour of Public Enterprises in Developing Countries (Routledge, 1989). In a slightly amended (and retitled) version, Chapter 3 is reproduced from an article in Macro-Policies for Appropriate Technology in Developing Countries, edited by Frances Stewart (Westview, 1987). I am grateful to Professor Stewart for allowing me to reproduce that article. Parts of Chapters 1, 4 and 8 draw on a paper prepared in 1989 for the Africa Region of the World Bank, entitled 'the Institutional Environment for Industrial Technology in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Study of Large-Scale Investment Projects'. The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for the use of copyright material: Longman Information and Reference for Table 3.3 from J. Forge, Science and Technology in Africa, copyright 1989; Lynne Rienner Publishers for Table 8.5 from Africa's Development Challenges and the World Bank: Hard Questions, Costly Choices, edited by Stephen K. Commins, copyright 1988 by Lynne Rienner Publishers. Used with permission of the publisher, the OECD for table on p. 183 of DAC, Development Co-operation, OECD, Paris, 1986; Elsevier Science BV for Table 3 from H. Pack, 'Aggregate Implications of Factor Substitution in Developing Countries', Journal of Development Economics, vol. 11, 1982 and for Table 1 from M. Roemer, G. Tidrick and D. Williams, 'The Range of Strategic Choice in Tanzanian Industry', Journal of Development Economics, vol. 3, 1976; Oxford University Press for table on p. 287 of Tanzania: A Political Economy, 1982, by permission of the publisher; The World Bank for Table 16 in W. Steel and J. Evans, Industrialization in Sub-Saharan Africa, Technical Paper No. 25, 1984, Table 2.1 in Financing Adjustment with Growth in Sub- Saharan Africa, 1986 and table on p. 102 of World Development Report, 1983; International Monetary Fund for table on p. 2 of P. Heller and A. Tait, 'Government Employment and Pay: Some International Comparisons', IMF Occasional Paper No. 62, Washington, DC, 1984; James Currey Limited and the editors for table on p. 249 of 'The Role of Government Institutions in Kenya's Industrialization' by G. Ikiara in Kenya's XI
Xll Acknowledgements Industrialization Dilemma edited by P. Coughlin and G. Ikiara, Heinemann and James Currey, 1991; Prof. S. Wang we for table on the growth of industrial capacity in Tanzania from his paper 'Industrialization in Tanzania', mimeo, 1983; Rwekaza Mukandala for Table 48 on p. 316 of his thesis on the 'Political Economy of Parastatal Enterprise in Tanzania and Botswana', University of California, Berkeley, 1988. I am grateful to T.M. Farmiloe of Macmillan for allowing me several extensions in the delivery date of the final typescript. Corina Maas typed the many revisions of the draft chapters with considerable patience and good humour, while Anne Rafique edited the volume skilfully and thoroughly.