Gideon Were Publications

HISTORICAL ROOTS OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION IN

AFRICA
Author(s): Eric Masinde Aseka
Source: Transafrican Journal of History, Vol. 22 (1993), pp. 193-205
Published by: Gideon Were Publications
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24328645
Accessed: 18-08-2017 20:20 UTC

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

Gideon Were Publications is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Transafrican Journal of History

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 HISTORICAL ROOTS OF UNDERDEVELOPMENT AND
ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION IN AFRICA

Eric Masuide Aseka

Accepted April 9 1993

Abstract
Across the panorama of Africa's history of underdevelopment
very little attention has been paid to the conceptualization of
theories informing the full range of environmental quality
problems, issues of appropriate technology and programmes
of development. Theories of development and underdevelop
ment have been posed in rigid and stereo-typed terms. The
growing concern with the environmental agenda militates
against the reformulation of theories explaining development
and underdevelopment as historical processes. Theorists of
development and underdevelopment must provide a lucid
accounting of the place of resource management and policy
within a larger planning and development context. While
environmental specialists and other physical scientists struggle
to explain how the physical processes of the environment
operate, social scientists have a role to highlight the nature and
complexity of the relationship between the physical environ
ment and its human elements. A more integrated theoretical
approach would offer practical frameworks within which
resource policies could be co-ordinated and warrant the con
ception of improved methods of ecological surveillance of
resource trends. Thus, faced with deepening underdevelop
ment as a conglomerate of historical events whose dimensions
are horrendous, the question of imperialist exploitation and
technological abuse of the environment occupies a paramount
position in the politics of policy formulation and environmen
tal management. That is why it is necessary to examine the
underdevelopment theorists, their perspectives and demon
strate the environmental lacuna in these perspectives. Yet
environmental degradation is of great antiquity and the rela
tionship between underdevelopment and environmental degra
dation calls for an articulate explanation.

Introduction
Development is a process that involves changes and these changes include increase
in population and incomes, greater mobility, occupationally and geographically,
changes in life-styles, including eating habits, urbanization, industrialization and so

Transafrican Journal of History, Vol. 22, 1993 193 -205

193

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Underdevelopment and Environmental Degradation

on. However, these are changes which in a way or another tax the physical
environment. The physical environment may be understood to be the set of natural
conditions that define the humàn living space. This includes the regional and
systematic patterning of the earth and its features of landscape and water. This paper
therefore discusses the concepts of development and underdevelopment and exam
ines the historical roots of the former in relation to the environment.

If development means and necessitates changes, therefore, carrying connotations

such as the unfolding stages of growth, evolution or growth that leave their
permanent imprint on the physical environment, it increasingly becomes important
for environmentalists to recast the question of development and its twin process of
underdevelopment in new terms. This is because many development strategies
radically alter people's way of life without great emphasis being placed on the
understanding of the cultural and environmental factors which condition the lives of
people.
Whereas it is important to understand how the physical processes of the
environment operate, it is equally germane to perceive the nature and complexity of
relationship between the inanimate and human elements of the physical world. This
need has become more apparent with the growing and undoubtedly justified concern
about environmental destruction, disruption and pollution. As much as develop
ment and underdevelopment are historical processes, the question of environmental
degradation equally is.
The physical environment has always been and will always be among the factors
which always affect the human society's day-to-day decisions and activities. These
decisions and activities may be either detrimental to the environment or may
contribute to its preservation or renewal. However, there is generally great
difficulty in-isolating environmental factors from the maze of cultural forces with
which they are intertwined. But if development action has contributed to the
worsening of environmental and human conditions, then the whole question of
sustainable development requires to be discussed alongside the issue of environmen
tal degradation and underdevelopment.

The African Environment in a Historical Perspective

From remote periods of historical antiquity, most of the hazards and resources of the
physical environment in Africa have been subject to alteration by human actions.
Whether the changes carried out by human communities have contributed to the
development or underdevelopment of the region in question has also depended on
a host of other internal and external factors. Over the years, whether the changes
carried out by human communities in Africa have been beneficial or harmful depend
partly on the knowledge and values possessed by the communities who made the
decision to effect changes.

194

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Transafrican Journal of History

Historically speaking, it is important to point out that there has been a constant
interaction between human communities in Africa and their physical environment.
This interaction is between given sizes of population and the socio-economic
activities which these people have pursued on the one hand, and the resources of the
environment available to them on the other. This interaction is highly dynamic and
it has varied from region to region. This is not only because natural environmental
resources vary, but also because the activities of people are themselves influenced
by history and by their cultural outlook.
The question of history and culture therefore makes development carry connota
tions of social transformation. Thus, it is extremely foolhardy to regard develop
ment as a purely economic subject. To understand this complex process, one must
pay attention to other disciplines like politics, sociology, history and environmental
science. Development must involve how man organizes his society and the values
he wants to promote in it. It therefore goes beyond sheer economic growth that is
characterized by growing efficiency in production. Development goes beyond this
to imply changes in the composition of output and in the allocation of inputs by
various socio-economic sectors. Thus, development is an innovative process
leading to the structural transformation of social and economic systems unlike
growth which entails an expansion of the systems in one or more dimensions without
fostering a change in their structure. But do these guarantee sustainability? The
concept of sustainable development focuses on the need to eliminate poverty and
deprivation. It underscores the need to conserve and enhance the resource base and
calls for the broadening of development so as to encompass the social and cultural
components. Again it sees the sense in the integration of economics with the
environmental science in decision-making. Discussion about development ought to
encapsulate these issues and not only in terms of economic backwardness character
ized by poverty, ignorance or disease, the maldistribution of the social and political
disorganization in an economy.
Underdevelopment must be seen against a background of Western exploitation of
the human and natural resources in Africa. It must be conceived as a historical
process deriving from the way in which the African environments were incorporated
into the global economy and how decisions were made which undermined prospects
of sustainable development. Of course, the richly endowed African environment in
terms of mineral and forest resources was an obvious target of resource transfer using
imprudent technologies and insufficiently remunerative pay-packages for the
African human labour.
The Western colonial and neo-colonial intervention led to the evolution of subtle
economic mechanisms that were to prove inimical to Africa's environment and in
general to economic development. They were inhibitive and retrogressive in
character and therefore suffocated, distorted and relocated African economies and

195

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Underdevelopment and Environmental Degradation

militated against the environment as to create conditions of perpetual economic

dependence and socio-cultural breakdown. The introduction of the money economy
dilapidated much of Africa's viable resource base. This has left Africans with an
environment socially shaped by colonialism and neo-colonialism (Otiende and
Ezaza, 1991:3).
Through mechanisms of unequal exchange and imprudent technology, the global
economy constantly engenders and safeguards a framework dominated by the West
in which the wealth of Africa in the form of minerals, agricultural raw materials and
products of African labour are siphoned to the West. Thus, while the African
environment has suffered because these activities led to the modification of Africa's
physical environment, mining, mechanized agriculture, lumbering and develop
ment of administrative and transport infrastructure have had their destructive toll
that has adversely affected Africa's eco-system. These activities begun to take place
with great intensity during the colonial era in an international economic order
characterized by environmental plunder, an unequal partnership between Africa and
the industrialized nations of the West.
This unequal partnership of exploitation and dependence persists today and
continues to destroy Africa's environment and distort local economies while
reproducing poverty on the continent. Perhaps a coherent politico-ethical ideology
underwriting the profusion of ecological-based development theories and environ
mental policy needs to be emphasized more than before. This is because the moral
and political implications of an ever widening gap between the Northern rich states
and the Southern poor states are profound.
It then appears that Africa's plight of underdevelopment is a conglomerate of
historical events. While the social dimension of these events is immense, the
physical dimensions are equally horrendous. Colonialism arrived on the African
scene with technological fury unsurpassed. Natural resources were extracted with
growing intensity without due consideration of the long-run effects on the life
supporting systems of the environment or the potential losses to future generations.
Thus, of all the problems confronting man in Africa, the question of imperialist
exploitation and technological abuse of the environment occupies an ever increasing
place in the politics of environmental preservation.

Theorists of Underdevelopment and the Environmental Enigma

Underdevelopment therefore is a historical process although it has variously been
conceived by economists; those inspired by the classical school of political economy
or the modernization theory, and those derived from a neo-marxist critique of these.
Underdevelopment is therefore a historical process linked to the expansion of
developing capitalism (Bernstein, 1978). But these theorists did not conceive the
problem of underdevelopment in environmental terms. We must recognize that

196

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 TransaJrican Journal of History

ecology as a factor is primal in all forms of human development.

An indispensable component of underdevelopment is that it expresses a particular
relationship of exploitation, namely the exploitation of a country by another. In
many respects therefore, underdevelopment is a product of exploitation deeply
rooted in imperialist trade dating as early as the 15th century with its colonial and
neo-colonial exploitation. The environmental imperatives of these are equally old
if not older. Thus environmental problems are ponderables which ought to set
development scholars thinking in their analysis of underdevelopment.
The neo-marxist agenda of underdevelopment was first established by Paul Baran.
Baran is considered as the true father of neo-marxism. He coined the term neo
marxism. What concerned him was the irrelevance of Marxism, as laid down by
Marx and Engels in their Marxist political economy in America when he was writing
in the mid to late 1950's. As such, neo-marxism had its roots in the emerging critique
of classical economics but using the analytical methodology of Marxist political
economy. Neo-marxism then came to be dominated by an emphatic mistrust of
monopoly capital. So, from Baran onwards, neo-marxism was concerned with the
production and transfer of a physical surplus. Unfortunately, it ignored the question
of unequal partnership and environmental degradation. There is clearly need for a
massive campaign to restore high-quality environment to Africa. Theoreticians
should rethink and raise models of economic development in terms of the sustain
ability of that process in line with the realities of the ecology and the global resource
situation.
The underdevelopment theory sometimes termed as dependency theory began to
be developed prior to the rise of environmental pressure groups in the 1950's
following Baran's disapproval of the stipulations of the Economic Commission for
Latin America (ECLA) which was formed in 1948. Of course, a similar commission
was set up for Africa in 1958 called the United Nations Economic Commission for
Africa. They were set up by the United Nations to lay down prospects and
programmes for the economic development of these regions. The concept of
sustainable development was then not a heart-rending issue. None of these had an
immediate programme for the environment until the question of environmental
abuse was politicized in the 1970's by environmentalist pressure groups.
The Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) posed challenges against
conventional theories of international trade and economic development derived from
classical economics. It explained that international trade favoured the developed
countries at the expense of the less developed regions of the world. It termed the
industriajized and developed West as the centre or core and the less developed and
poor regions as the periphery. Noting that the centre or core derived greater benefits
from international trade than the periphery, it proposed the need to adopt a
structuralist artd historical perspective to devise solutions for its eradication.

197

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Underdevelopment and Environmental Conservation

In this approach, it did not conceive safeguards to uphold environmental quality.

Nevertheless, appreciating the role industrialization had played in the development
of the centre (core), it proposed a model of development for Latin America based
on import-substitution industrialisation (Zeleza, 1982:11). What were the environ
mental imperatives of this model of industrialization? Of course, nobody bothered
with the question.
Paul Baran elaborating on the irrelevance of adopting Marxist ideas developed in
Europe on Latin America, because these analyses were essentially Europe-centred,
presented the first systematic study of underdevelopment using the Marxist
methodology of analysis. But any genuine materialist must insist that human beings
are absolutely continuous with the rest of the physical world. They harness the
resources of the environment and transform them using their technological capabili
ties. The history of production is therefore a sequel of interaction between man and
the environment. This interaction was not accounted for in the import-substitution
industrialization model proposed by ECLA and which was already proving a failure
and therefore prompting writers to seek for more radical analyses and solutions.
Baran was the first Marxist to focus largely on the problems of underdevelopment
when he exposed the inadequacies of the conventional theory of development. He
insisted that development was inevitably a revolutionary and not an evolutionary
process, and despite all illusions of "partnership", there were deep conflicts of
interest between Western capitalism and the progress of underdeveloped countries.
Many scholars drew an inspiration from Baran. While the reformulation of
ELCA 's environmentally insensitive analyses by its Secretaiy-General, Raul Prebisch
were going on, attempts were made by Latin American scholars led by Gunder Frank
to reconceptualize obstacles facing capitalist development in the region and relegated
environmental issues to the side-show when he attributed underdevelopment to
capitalism. He argued that Western development had taken place at the expense of
underdeveloped countries. This was through constant expropriation of surplus
capital from the periphery to generate economic development in the metropolitan
centres.

He saw this taking the spatial form of polarization of the capitalist system intô
metropolitan centre and peripheral satellites (Frank, 1967:3). Frank attacks
development theories especially their conservative nature of the idea of "develop
ment". This idea gives an evolutionary tinge to what everywhere has been and must
be a revolutionary process. Frank's focus was the roots of underdevelopment and
so it was essential for him to go into details of the origins and structure of capitalist
development itself (Brenner, 1977:28). All merchant-capital could do was to try and
increase its profits abroad through ever-more unequal exchange. As industrializa
tion gained momentum in Europe, merchant-capital had to rely increasingly on the
surplus it could extract abroad (Kay, 1975:123).
Therefore, the historical importance of trade as a mechanism of environmental

198

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Transafrican Journal of History

destruction must be noted. Trade as a vehicle of exploitation of the underdeveloped

world plays a central part in the theory of underdevelopment. Historically, a great
many of the economic ties between developed and underdeveloped countries are
mediated through merchant-capital. It discovered what became the underdeveloped
world more than 2.5 centuries before the rise of industrial capitalism in Europe at
the end of the 18th century. The vast commercial empires set up by the Spanish and
Portuguese and later by the British, French and Dutch were predecessors of modern
technological plunder of the environment in Africa. They established the basis of
the accumulation of wealth in the form of capital while overthrowing and pillaging
regional environmental resources. The creation of the world capitalist market, the
starting point of the modern history of capital, was also a process of destruction. It
drew the world into a new global division of labour that spurred men's increase of
their productive powers. At the same time, it turned this division of labour into a
grotesque structure of exploitation and oppression. So the foundations of modern
development and underdevelopment were laid at the same time by the same process
(Kay, 1975:96).
Unlike the modernization theory or the human capital theory, the underdevelop
ment perspective raised fundamental political issues of development in the Third
World. So many of the assumptions of Western Liberal theories were thoroughly
unrealistic. They were unrealistic owing to the general lack of experience of the
environmental rape that has taken place in the tropical world. They were old
fashioned, stereo-typed, western-biased and had over-generalized crudity and
conceptual falsity (Hill, 1986:xi).
Whereas underdevelopment created a whole series of metropolitan-satellite
relationships that were inter-linked, they were inter-linked in a surplus-appropria
tion chain and also in complicated constellatory arrangements.
Frank therefore moved beyond Baran when he declared that these monopolistic
surplus transfers had been characteristic of capitalism since the time of its birth in
the 15th century. According to him, these unequal global exchange relations became
the very essence of capitalism. This conception of the historical roots of underde
velopment as generated by the expansion and growth of capitalism led Frank into
arguing that development and underdevelopment have been produced as two
opposite sides of the same capitalist coin. This has been the case since the inception
of this global capitalist system in the later 15th century.
Frank alerted politicians in the Third World to the dangers of collaboration in an
unequally fettered inter-dependent world. More than Baran the man who inspired
him, he drew attention to impulses and demands operating at a global level. No
wonder, the Third World leaders began calling for a New International Economic
Order. They are yet to realize this demand. Again he put revolutionary socialism
on the immediate agenda when he stated that without liberation from this capitalist

199

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Underdevelopment and Environmental Degradation

structure or the dissolution of the world capitalist system, the capitalist satellite
countries, regions, localities and sectors were condemned to underdevelopment.
Clearly, the underdevelopment theories have not addressed the origin of under
development in relation to the question of escalating environmental degradation.
Yet environmentalists have begun to mount a massive campaign to restore a high
quality environment in Africa, and there is need to restore Africa's economic
systems into line with the realities of ecology and the global capitalist economy with
its myriad needs that sparked off wanton exploitation and destruction of resources
in Africa. Throughout the history and culture of Africa, the people relied on
indigenous science and technology which was applicable to their life-styles. They
had a good understanding of the nature of their ecology and developed a wide variety
of tools and equipment that were not massively destructive compared to Western
technology. But this technology was undermined and destroyed by the imposition
of superior technologies which were more environmentally hazardous. This way
Africa was dragged into a technological dependence and was unable to harness and
translate her technological innovation into a physical article of commercial and
political value to withstand the incursion of Western technology (see Libese, 1991).
Western technology was however proliferating in Africa on dependent terms. The
industrialized west devised specialized legal mechanisms to protect their technology
through, copyrights, industrial designs, trade-marks - etc., to prevent the surge of
a competitive African technological evolution. Thus, technology, the harbinger of
Africa's hopes to develop industrially and conceive ways of minimizing environ
mental abuse, is held back through the subtle operations of these legal mechanisms
which favour the industrialized West with its massive capital resources to invest in
technological research and realize the fruits of the application of science and
technology in industrial and agricultural development.
Apparently, the above specialized legal mechanisms provide protection of the
invention of new technology in the West. Therefore, they set a global environment
of technological dependence which facilitates the application of western technology
on African environmental resources in an institutional framework of foreign
investment that is inimical to environmental conservation. As development has
increasingly become politicized, the historical nature of environmental degradation
must be articulated within the locus of a more refined underdevelopment theoretical
construct.

Gunder Frank's explanation of underdevelopment and his concepts about the rol
of capitalism in the underdevelopment of Latin America was imported into Africa
by Immanuel Wallerstein, Walter Rodney and Samir Amin. These dependenc
scholars demonstrated that from the era of the Atlantic Slave Trade up to the tim
of formal colonization, Africa like Latin America had its development history
characterized by constant expropriation of its surplus value to the West (Zeleza,

200

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
1982:14). The underdevelopment theorists failed to recognize the environmental
question. Even when this model was imported into Africa, it merely restated the
earlier positions. Samir Amin and Walter Rodney among others showed that the lack
of development in African countries and the rest of the Third World in general can
be explained in terms of the operations of the capitalist system. That is, it is a
consequence of the development of the metropolitan countries based on the
continuous underdevelopment of the satellite dependent nations. This implies that
economic dependence is associated with economic underdevelopment (Ubogo,
1984:335). However, such underdevelopment has left irredeemable landmarks on
the face of Africa's physical environment.
Despite the political independence obtained, the present African and Third World
countries continue to exhibit strong features of dependency (Ubogu, 1984: 338).
Their dependent position as we have shown makes them ill-equipped to deal with
broad environmental questions.
Walter Rodney states that to understand underdevelopment in Africa one has to
go back to history in the 15th century. Before then, African and Asian societies were
developing independently until they were taken over directly or indirectly by the
capitalist powers. When that happened, exploitation increased and the export of
surplus began, depriving societies of the benefit of their natural resources and labour
(Rodney, 1976:221).
From the accounts of underdevelopment theories, it is clear that merchant-capital
acted as the agent of industrial capital in the shaping of underdevelopment. But was
there any impact on the environment? All merchant-capital could do was to try and
increase its profits abroad through unequal exchange. As industrialization gained
momentum in Europe, merchant-capital had to rely increasingly on the surplus it
could extract abroad (Kay, 1975:123).
Therefore, the historical importance of trade as a mechanism of environmental
destruction must be noted. Trade as a vehicle of exploitation of the underdeveloped
world plays a central part in the theory of underdevelopment. Historically, a great
many of the economic ties between developed and underdeveloped countries are
mediated through merchant-capital. Merchant-capital, as stated discovered what
became the underdeveloped world more than 2.5 centuries before the rise of
industrial capitalism in Europe at the end of the 18th century.
Whereas underdevelopment writers dismiss the assumed benevolence of metro
politan investment and are inspired by a moral indignation against the West and
radical pessimism about the prospects of capitalist development in the Third World,
but except for calls for a New International Economic Order, underdevelopment
writers are generally unclear as to how an environmentally abused and economically
dependent periphery may undergo the transition from underdevelopment to social
ism. Socialism is not seen to bear an environmental interpellation although it is

201

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
Underdevelopment and Environmental Degradation

merely posed as an ideological alternative to capitalism which has failed to develop

underdeveloped societies. Dependency tends to be conceived in a reductionist and
economic fashion. Political processes are perceived as simple epiphenomena of
economic conditions of underdevelopment (Zeleza, 1985:145-142). Consequently,
underdevelopment studies have so far failed to make the most of the potential for
critical analysis of domestic policies and environmental problems in Africa.
The theory holds that the relationships between foreign interests and the local
bourgeoisie have a strong influence on domestic class formation and presumably
upon domestic politics as well. But in practice, the dependency studies stop at that
without tracing the problem of underdevelopment as far as the local bourgeoisie,
without the concern of the physical environment. They concentrate on the operations
of multi-national firms and wealthy nations and the relations between these and the
comprador elites. But there is less solid description and analysis of the domestic
economic classes, of the historical process which shape these classes or the domestic
politics of underdevelopment (Leo, 1970:20). There is no doubt that these relations
were also influenced by the location and environment in which African Societies
have historically evolved.
Although the underdevelopment theory as represented by Baran, Frank Wallerstein
and Amin, and popularized by Rodney was reinforced by Frantz Fanon's earlier
exposure of a subservient, imitative, corrupt, parasitic and unproductive national
bourgeoisie (Beckman, 1981:6), bourgeoisie politics is a crucial political force in
the Third World including the politics of environmental conservation or degrada
tion. It plays a central role in the structuring of the global economy including the
development of environmentally depleting or regenerating productive forces in the
periphery. Thus, the notion of comprador, agent or lackey leadership is obscurantist
in that it disguises the independent sources of power and strength of the national
bourgeoisie including ability to address questions such as policies related to
environmental pressure groups and expert advice from their technical wings. It is
therefore not only important to undérstand the class character of this social force but
be cognizant of its relationship to imperialism as well as the nature of national
development it generates (Beckman, 1981:6-7). This may help us assess the effects
of these on environmental quality in Africa.
In effect, the underdevelopment perspective denies the possibility of any signifi
cant indigenous capital accumulation or ability to transform the environment for
productive use to foster development. In turn, this perspective produces an
instrumental version of the neo-colonial state as a mere mechanism of domination
by international capital (Benstein and Campbell, 1985:9). It conceives the essence
of imperialism as being political and therefore links imperialism to the territorial
monopoly through political or military means in our contemporary African neo
colonial setting. State power is merely seen to be used to protect the monopoly

202

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Transafrican Journal of History

interests of international capital. Thus the relationship between imperialism and

underdevelopment is defined as the extent to which the state protection holds back
the development of the productive forces. The domestic bourgeoisie through its
control over the state power plays a strategic role in providing territorial monopoly
conditions for imperialism. It is therefore pivotal in the maintenance of imperialist
generated aspects of underdevelopment. Moreover, the political monopoly of this
domestic bourgeoisie is also reinforced and protected internationally by imperial
ism. This enhances the reactionary features of this class at the expense of its
progressive one (Beckman, 1981:18). Equally, the state through its statutory organs
either protects the environment or enters into partnership with international capital
to undermine its ecological balance. Without considering these issues, there are
dangers of giving a simple model of neo-colonial dependence which focuses on
determinism by external forces and thereby deny the dynamics of the indigenous
social forces (Beinstein and Campbell, 1985:9). Of course, there isadeepening neo
colonial dependence in many African countries, but this goes hand in hand with a
dynamic process of capitalist transformation and social differentiation on the one
hand and on the other, the generation of forces apposed to further environmental
degradation.

Conclusion

The underdevelopment theory is as we have demonstrated one-sidedly obsessed with

determination of Africa's economic problems by external forces. In sum it denies
Africans any role as effective agents of social change including environmental
conservation. There is need to fill this environmental hiatus in the underdevelop
ment theoretical construct.
In its early formulation, the theory exhibited a major weakness in the sense that
it emphasized too heavily the casual factors external to Third World societies and
ignored the internal structures of underdevelopment or the environmental impact of
these factors. Moreover, the theory lacks historical aptness and bears considerable
relative conceptual ambiguity. In its formative stages it was argued that underde
velopment is generated through participation in a world capitalist system. Yet it is
clear that no economic system rests in a vacuum. As shown in this paper, these are
historical determinants of which the environment is a preponderant index. Conse
quently, there is need to transcend the confusion in the theory concerning the two
concepts, the capitalist mode of production, participation in a world capitalist
economic system and their relationship to the environment. Moreover, questions
of environmental degradation are of greater historical antiquity than the capitalist
mode of production. The latter merely aggravated the intensity of environmental
dislocation with use of advanced technology. Of course technology has been
employed in both destructive and conservatory efforts. Therefore, the emphasis in

203

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Underdevelopment and Environmental Degradation

this paper is that environmental conditions are a necessary index of analyzing the
historical development or underdevelopment of any community in Africa. Unlike
those early theorists who have traditionally stuck at the spring of labour-capital
relationships, for environmentalists, ecological questions suggest a more widened
paradigm of analysis of underdevelopment in Africa. The ecological theory which
suggests that environmental limitations determine production is not therefore
repugnant to the concept of underdevelopment and should be fused with underde
velopment perspectives for more analytical utility in the study of this syndrome in
African history of development.
Clearly then, the underdevelopment theory must seek to provide a viable strategy
for development without creating some degree of environmental hazards. To sever
trade relations, to refuse international companies, are simplistic policies which are
not likely to eliminate environmental damage, dependency, nor promote economic
growth in Africa. The goals of complete self-sufficiency and autonomy by a nation
are unrealistic in the presenkday world condition. Therefore, the important question
is what kind of dependency and what kind of development should be pursued in any
given context (Fingerlind and Saha, 1983:24). Presently, the world economy is
going through the worst economic crisis in history. Africa's economic and political
problems are expressions of these crises. As explained earlier in this paper, there
are environmental dimensions of these problems and so Africa's underdevelopment
is not merely of her own regional making. The exacerbation of her environmental
problem bears its roots in the systematic incorporation of the African environments
and their local economies in the capitalist global economy. Thus, the global
dimensions of this economy were to render these economies open to resource
exploitation and environmental degradation and make extremely complex prospects
and problems of environmental conservation. Locations of resource extraction over
the years as a result are littered all over like scars of mutilation on Africa's-physical
environment. They are the environmental testimony to the historical process of
plunder, exploitation, unequal exchange and uneven development which character
ize much of Africa's underdevelopment problems.

About the Author

Eric Masinde Aseka, Ph.D. is Lecturer in History, Kenyatta University, P.O. Box 43844, Nairobi,
Kenya.

Refereuces
Aseka, E. M. (1991), "Human Settlement", in Otiende, J.E. and Ezaza, R., An Introduction to
Environmental Education; Nairobi: Nairobi University Press.
Bartelmus, P. (1985), Environment and Development, London: Pergamon Press Ltd.
Beckman, B. (1981), "Imperialism and the National Bourgeoisie" Review of African Political Economy,
No. 22.

204

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Transafrican Journal of History

Bernstein, H. (1978), Underdevelopment and Development: The Third World Today, New York,
Penguin Books Ltd.
Bernstein, H. and Campbell, B. (1985), Contradictions of Accumulation in Africa: Studies in Economy
and State; Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Brenner, R. (1977), "The Origins of Capitalist Development: A Critique of New-Smilhian Marxism",
New Left Review, No. 104.
Brett, E.A. (1974), Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: The Politics of Economic
Change, 1919-1939; Nairobi: Heinemann.
Cooper, F. (1981), "Africa and the World Economy", paper commissioned by the Social Science
Research Council for presentation to the African Studies Association Annual Meeting, Canada,
Darkoh, M.B.K. (1990), Towards Sustainable Development of Kenya's Arid Lands, Nairobi, Kenyatta
University, Public Lecture 1.
De Silva, S.B.E. (1981), A Political Economy of Underdevelopment: Africa and Asia; London.
El-Hinnawi, E.E. (1981), Environmental Impact of Production and Use of Energy; Dublin: Tycooly
Press Ltd.
Frank, A.G. (1967), Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Brazil and Chile; New
York: Monthly Review Press.
Fingerlind, I.andSaha, L.J. (1983), Education and National Development: A Comparative Perspective,
New York: Pergon Press.
Ferries, R.N.T.W. (1976), Ecology and Earth History; London: Helm.
Hill, P. (1986), Development Economics on Trial; Cambridge University Press.
Otiende, J.E. and Ezaza, R. (eds.) (1991), An Introduction to Environmental Education; Nairobi:
Nairobi University Press.
Libese, L.I. (1991), "Technology and the Environment" in Otiende, J.E. and Ezaza, R. (eds.), An
Introtluction to Environmental Education; Nairobi: Nairobi University Press.
Kay, G. (1975), Development and Underdevelopment: A Marxist Analysis; London: Macmillan.
Rodney, W. (1976), How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Dares Salaam: Tanzania Publishing House.
Ubogo, R.E. (1984), "Economic Dependency and Economic Performance in Ecowas: Some Empirical
Evidence", A. Orimalade and R.E. Ubogo (eds.) in Trade and Development in Economic
Community of West African Stales (ECOWAS); New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, PUT Ltd.
UNEP (1982), The State of the Environment in 1972-1982-, Nairobi: UNEP.
UNEP (1984), The Environment in the Dialogue between and among Developed and Developing
Countries; Nairobi: UNEP.
Wallace, B. (1972), People, their Needs, Environment and Ecology; New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Wallerstein, I. (1974), The Origins of the Modem World System; New York: Academic Press.
White, L. (1974), "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis" - R.T. Reolofs et al (ed.) in
Environment and Society; New Jersey: Prentice-Hall Inc.
Weston, B.H. (1974), "Education for Human Survival: An Immediate World Priority", American
Division of the World Academy of Art and Science and the New York Academy of Science,
"Environment and Society in Transition", 2nd International Joint Conference, New York.
Zeleza, P.T. (1982), Dependent Capitalism and the Making of the Kenyan Working Class during the
Colonial Period", Ph.D. Dissertation, Dalhousie University, 1982.
Zeleza, P.T. (1985), "The Political Economy of the British Development and Welfare in Africa", in
Transafrican Journal of History, Vol. 15, 1985; Nairobi: Were Press.

205

This content downloaded from 94.64.153.61 on Fri, 18 Aug 2017 20:20:24 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms