Abstract
Mainstream analyses of contemporary democratization processes in sub-Saharan Africa have tended to explain their pitfalls and shortcomings by pointing to the lack of strong state institutions and the prevalence of neo-patrimonial practices. This chapter provides an alternative view by investigating the role of inequalities and social and economic deprivation in hampering democratic consolidation in sub-Saharan Africa in general and in Southern Africa in particular. After analysing the evolution of inequality and poverty on the continent during the last decades and discussing their causes, the chapter considers the short circuit between inequalities and democratization within the countries of Southern Africa, a region historically beset by racial discrimination and high poverty rates, whose governments today show a growing predisposition to authoritarian practices. In so doing, the chapter sheds new light on the multiple challenges democratic transitions currently face in (Southern) Africa and provides an original contribution to the theoretical debate on the relationship between inequality and democracy in Africa.
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Notes
- 1.
The Palma ratio is the inequality measure most often used in this chapter. It is defined by the ratio between the share of income going to the richest 10% of the population and the share of income going to the poorest 40%. The income shares provided by the World Inequality Database are defined in term of pre-tax national income.
- 2.
By using a principal component analysis, Chancel et al. (2019) show that the two components mostly correlated with inequality (measured by the income share of the richest 10%) are agricultural labor productivity (relative to non-agricultural labor productivity) and agricultural employment share.
- 3.
In the last 20 years or so, improvements were due to land expansion rather than to any rise in labor and land productivity (Odusola, 2017). According to Karshenas (2001), the poor performance of agriculture in SSA is explained by the high land/labor ratio and the limited availability of capital (for instance, irrigation infrastructures).
- 4.
Cornia (2017) suggests that this is what has been observed in the 1990s in Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, Cameroon, Angola and Senegal. On the contrary, countries with high land concentration recorded a slower increase of agricultural output per capita. Zambia and Liberia are two exceptions probably due to the medium land concentration.
- 5.
Nevertheless, agriculture remains an important contributor to GDP in Eastern, Central, and Western Africa.
- 6.
The manufacturing share of GDP was 14.7 in 1981 and 10.4 in 2015; see Odusola (2017).
- 7.
Since 2000, only 15 of the 50 countries analysed by Bhorat et al. (2017) have succeeded in increasing the share of manufacturing sector in GDP while the share of mining and utilities in GDP has increased in 35 of the considered countries.
- 8.
From 2000 onward, structural change contributed positively to growth for roughly half of the countries considered by McMillan et al. (2014), while for the remaining half no significant change occurred.
- 9.
The existence of a positive correlation between mineral rents and inequality has been shown by Cornia (2017). It can be explained by the high capital intensity of the mining sector which limits its capacity to generate employment prospects (in general, reserved to skilled labor only); other possible explanations of such positive correlation are the high entry costs (generating a monopolistic or oligopolistic market structure, leading to excess profits), the opportunities for political capture (granted by the process of licences granting) and the fact that profits are often exported to foreign countries since such industries are often under the control of foreign capital.
- 10.
In 2014, the share of national income going to the richest 10% was 48.7%, higher than the corresponding share in the USA (46%), while the share of the richest 1% was 17%, slightly smaller than that in the USA (21%).
- 11.
The share of informal employment increased from 72% in 2001 to 83% in 2017 while the share of regular wage employment declined from 21% in 2001 to 11% in 2017 (Kenya National Bureau of Statistics, 2020).
- 12.
CCM was established in 1977 through the merger of the Tanganyika African National Union, in power since in 1961 in Tanganyika, and the Afro-Shirazi Party, in power since the 1964 revolution in Zanzibar.
- 13.
From 1995–2007 also functional inequality increased, resulting in a drop of the labor share of GDP of about 10%, the same order of magnitude of the fall of the consumption shares of GDP. Since 2007, the labor share has been fluctuating around 43%.
- 14.
In Tanzania formal employment is very limited indeed: It only accounted for 9.4% of the labor force in 2015 and 10.5% in 2016 (Adams et al., 2013).
- 15.
From 1990 to 2018 industry contribution to GDP doubled from 15 to 30%, but its employment share remained very limited: 4% in 1990 and 6% in 2018.
- 16.
Although inequality increased from 1998 to 2008, so did the average per capita income of each income class. Inequality also increased from 2014 to 2017, but in this period the average per capita income of the middle 50% declined (−8.2%), that of the poorest 40% stagnated (−0.1%) while that of the richest 10% considerably increased (+19.6%).
- 17.
According to ZimStat (2019), in 2017, moderate rural poverty was prevalent among households on communal lands (79%), followed by those on resettlement areas (76%), and those on commercial farms (67% for small-scale commercial and 64% for large-scale commercial farms). Extreme poverty was also highest among households on communal lands (34%), followed by those on resettlement areas (30%) and those on commercial farms (27% for small scale and 22% for large scale).
- 18.
Mining share of total exports was 46.8% in 2000, it declined to 34.5% in 2014 and then reverted to 46.2% in 2020. Although the contribution of the mining sector to GDP slighted increased (15.2% in 1990 and 16.4% in 2018), its share of total employment declined (3.7% in 1990 and 1.7% in 2018). Thus, this sector remains an enclave within the Namibian economy.
- 19.
In 2018, total employment in agriculture was almost as in 1990.
- 20.
Poverty is here defined with respect to the upper-bound domestic poverty line of N$ 377.96 in 2009/10; see Namibia Statistics Agency (2017).
- 21.
Informal employment is another important aspect of the South Africa labor market (Pons-Vignon, 2014).
- 22.
The labor share slightly increased after 2008. However, this increase was entirely due to the significant drop of the manufacturing (real) profit share which, in turn, must be ascribed to the reduction of the manufacturing contribution to GDP, a fact intensified by the 2008 recession. Excluding the manufacturing sector, the labor share constantly declined since the end of apartheid (Burger, 2015).
- 23.
The consequences of this fact are further discussed in Bassier, Wooland (2018) and Diaz Pabòn, et Al. (2020).
- 24.
Social stratification has a precise and marked racial component with Black household dominant among chronic poor (94.4%), transient poor (86.4%) and vulnerable middle class (91.1%). The stable middle class is made for 66% by Black and 20% by White. The elite is made for 23% by Black and 65% by White (Zizzamia et al., 2019).
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Negroni, G., Pallotti, A. (2024). Inequality and Democracy in (Southern) Africa. In: Jodhka, S.S., Rehbein, B. (eds) Global Handbook of Inequality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97417-6_100-1
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