Culture or Development: The Tradeoff

 In Africa the essence of capitalism is that “Africa” does not become Africa in the sense of culture because money changes most of the cultural dynamics that previously where conspicuous.    The never ending battle between city and country, expressed in Marxist forms is a giant presence and often times people marvel at the disparities. However, since I always think in zero-sum frameworks; what exactly is the tradeoff between development in Africa and the maintaining of the cultures found on the continent. Or is there a tradeoff, because as an Economist there is a tendency for us to polarize realties that would otherwise co-exist.

             On this one I do not think that it is mere skepticism and distrust economist have that is working. In Africa, cultural practices that  objectively hinder development are in  opposition to any form of stcutural development. In one case,  the institution of marriage in Africa is so primitive that  seeing it as an economic union is not something that many people would rightly attribute. There is no sense of realism in so far as a woman or a husband can divorce the husband. How does this lead to development? Well, if dirvorce is given as an option then the parties involved in the marriage would know that they are not economically tied to each other; this forces both parties to be economically independent.

            In addition, business practices of “trusting your neighbor” though morally admirable are inefficient and create a stain in the market. In most cases, merchants buy cloths and lend them out hoping to get money as time goes by; usually at the end of the month when most people, in a country like Zambia, get paid. However, these people don’t always pay and the merchant is culturally obligated to wait for next month, under the assumption that they are  very much aware of economic hardships. As a cultural practice of doing business, this is admirable for the trust it has between seller and buyer but overall it is an inefficient way of doing business; which obviously does not help  when it some s to development.

            In Africa, like most continents, there is also an absurdly high concentration of ‘scratch my back and I will scratch yours.” What this in turn does is that it prevents innovations as defined as being sacred that you will loose the competition because you are fully aware of what other people are capable of doing. Like on wall street, often called the all ‘gentlemen’s club” the fact that most  of these “closed” clubs remain closed does not in shape or form allow room for development or innovation. The immediate parties might benefit but in the long-run their short run benefit is at the peril of the overall growth of that particular industry.  

These are some of the cultural practices if let go would facilitate development---obviously there many more but the purpose here was to show that there is a tradeoff between development as seen through accommodating practices that objectively develop a country and practices that make economic life inefficient. So, parts of African culture as a whole will either yield to development or they will not; and for my more optimistic friends ‘ it might be in between.”