Pan-African Developmentalism as a Resistance to Embedded Neoliberalism

The global order continues to be restructured, raising questions about its impact on Africa’s capacity to formulate and implement development strategies within a system that maintains and amplifies extraction from the continent through international power imbalances. Utilising empirical cases and meta-analysis, this article outlines that ‘independent’ development policy-making in Africa unfolds in three phases. It began with the African socialism(s) of first-generation post-independence leaders, which lasted for roughly two decades, before being replaced by the explicit policy prescriptions of the neoliberal adjustments of the 1980s and 1990s. Following the drastic failure of these adjustment programmes, so-called ‘home-grown development’ policies have become a trend in many African states. However, in what can be considered the second phase of home-grown initiatives (after the African socialisms), these implicit liberalisation reforms are disguised and promoted as home-grown in states such as Ethiopia, Ghana, and Nigeria. In this phase, the narrative is 'home-grown'; the practice is neoliberal. This misnomer can be termed embedded neoliberalism. Consequently, Africa still lacks the agency to shape its development trajectory and produce indigenous models that best suit its unique development challenges. The central argument of this paper is that, given Africa's current predicaments and the recurring disasters stemming from hegemonic neoliberal market fundamentalism, Pan-Africanism and its vision of African-led development merit a revisit, orienting it toward Pan-African developmentalism. The article proposes that Pan-African developmentalism should be based on state-led development, incorporating continental protectionist policies and home-grown industrialisation, as well as African integration through frameworks such as the AfCFTA, acting as a resistance against embedded neoliberalism.