The State and the Question of Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

A common view of the developmental prospects of sub-Saharan Africa is that the crucial obstacle is political. Stronger states and representative institutions are a necessary precondition for development. This is a common view in both the media and in academe. The paper argues that this is to get things the wrong way round. Rather it is development, specifically the capitalist form of development, which is the necessary condition for strong states and democratic institutions. This is something which theorists of the state in Africa have got consistently wrong. Strong states require in the first instance neither the overthrow of patrimonialism nor of the bifurcated state. What they require is a radical change in the property relations that tend to prevail over most of the sub-continent: a change that would instantiate a process of capital accumulation but which is unlikely to be forthcoming.