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SUMMARY:‘From Oil Shocks to Structural Adjustment in Two African Beverag
 e-Crop Economies: Ghana and Kenya Compared\, 1973-1983’ - Gareth Austin\
 , King's College\, Cambridge
DTSTART:20210126T170000Z
DTEND:20210126T190000Z
UID:TALK155953@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Gareth Austin
DESCRIPTION:This paper offers a bilateral comparative approach to understa
 nding the marked inter-country variations within the history of economic g
 rowth in post-independence Africa. It focusses on the critical period from
  the OPEC oil-price shocks to the adoption of Structural Adjustment\; the 
 former has often been seen as a cause of the latter. Rather than the now c
 ustomary cross-country-regression approach to comparison\, the paper aims 
 to examine in more depth\, using both quantitative and qualitative sources
 \, two former British colonies which shared enough to make their differenc
 es analytically significant. Among their similarities\, Ghana and Kenya sp
 ecialized in exporting beverage crops\, whose world prices boomed in 1976-
 1978\, offsetting the first oil shock. Yet\, within the range of “Afro-p
 essimistic” stories\, their trajectories contrasted. Kenyan income p.c.\
 , up a third over 1963-1972\, stagnated during 1973-1983 overall\; much wo
 rse\, Ghanaian income had stagnated in 1963-1972\; and fell a third by 198
 3. During these economic transitions\, respectively\, from expansion to st
 agnation\, and from stagnation to decline\, Kenya had one change of govern
 ment\, Ghana four\, including two junior-ranks “revolutions”.\nThe pap
 er argues\, first\, that the proximate cause of the contrast in growth per
 formance was not government intervention in general\, but a specific diffe
 rence in the extent and form of state intervention. Second\, it explores t
 he reasons for this policy difference\, in the process testing two theoret
 ical approaches which paid particular attention to Kenya and/or Ghana in t
 he period under review: the Dependency-Marxist controversy about the natur
 e of African capitalisms in the 1970s\, and Batesian rational-choice analy
 sis. It is argued that\, while both ‘structural’ explanations take us 
 part of the way\, a full explanation has to take seriously both ideology a
 nd contingency.
LOCATION:Zoom: to receive link please register at https://www.hist.cam.ac.
 uk/event-series/african-economic-history
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