The Last Emerging Market: From Asian Tigers to African Lions? The Ghana File. Nathaniel H. Bowditch. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. 1999. 201 pp.
Nathaniel
H. Bowditch,
a self-described “public entrepreneur”, went to Thailand as a Peace Corps Volunteer in
1966 and subsequently worked in Malaysia and Sri Lanka, as well as New England, in a variety of economic and
community development positions (p. xiv). In 1990, he went to Ghana as a United Nations project
advisor. He writes that “none of [my previous experiences] prepared me for Ghana”
(p. xiii). Nevertheless, he predicts that “an ‘African Miracle’ will become the global economic story in the first
decades of the next millennium” (p. xv). This book is a successful attempt “to
penetrate Ghana’s deceptively complex culture and, in so doing, to entertain,
inform, and raise some of the issues, questions, opportunities, and dilemmas
that must be faced by Ghana and a world increasingly ready – perhaps even
eager – for the emergence of Africa” (p. xii).
Part One is about
Ghanaian culture, the significance of money within it. For Ghanaian
businesspersons, “religion, family, and the rest of life all intermingle with
the business” (p. 151). Bowditch
shows how behavior regarding time and money that might appear to Westerners
to be unethical or irresponsible can be viewed in a more favorable light from
the perspective of the traditional cultures of what is now Ghana. Ghanaians frequently “borrow”
money from obroni (Caucasians), without
considering themselves obligated to repay the “loans.” But this is in a
culture where people who have more money than they need traditionally share
with those who have less than they need: “I also came to understand that I,
as a relatively well-to-do father, shouldn’t necessarily ask for the money
even though it was a loan, because I didn’t really need it” (pp. 47-48).
Failure to prepare business plans can be explained by an environment of great
uncertainty, in which what is needed is cunning or cleverness in dealing with
whatever situations arise: “In an uncertain world, planning doesn’t seem to
work well because there are just too many unknown and unforeseen,
moment-to-moment contingencies to plan for” (p. 58). And many cases of what
Westerners call bribery or corruption differ little from gift-giving in
traditional Ghanaian cultures.
After
working in several administrative positions, Bowditch extended his time in Ghana with a research grant “to study
Ghanaian culture and traditional West African business practices vis-ŕ-vis
Ghanaian business development and management practices” (p. xiv). He
interviewed fifty-three Ghanaian and obroni business
owners, managers, and economic-development professionals and discusses these
interviews in Part Two. Part Three includes citations of a wide range of
sources – “perspectives and perceptions of individuals with little or no
relationship to Ghana”
– followed by Bowditch’s
own conclusions, with numerous comparisons between “Asian tigers” and “African
lions” (p. 160).
Bowditch’s thesis is that “today’s young lion cubs (Ghana, Uganda, Namibia, Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire, and many more) are just
like their tiger-cub predecessors of twenty-five to thirty years ago” (p.
171). But, though there exists the potential for rapid economic growth in
sub-Saharan African, there is much work to be done if the lion cubs are to
follow in the tigers’ footsteps: “Africans are clearly watching and lusting
after the prosperity that has emerged in Asia. However, they seem more interested in finding an
easy way to get there than in learning from the tough decisions and hard work
demonstrated in Asia” (p. 179).
A
more important question than Bowditch’s – whether African nations can attain the
economic prosperity of the Asian tigers – is whether they can do so without
destroying the non-material wealth of their own traditional cultures. Bowditch uses the
Western categories of “capitalism” and “socialism” in analyzing Ghanaian
business culture and how it needs to change. As he sees it, the challenge is
for African nations to participate in the “global free-enterprise system” or “worldwide
capitalism” (pp. 126, 173). In contrast, there is “the family-based African
socialism that governs traditional family and village life” (p. 95). He
states that “African socialism” is “not a political movement but a
sociological phenomenon” and writes of “the challenges to capital
accumulation by a fierce African, family-based socialist tradition” (p. 152,
181). But traditional African cultures do not fit into the categories of the
contemporary West. The fact that the family is important has nothing to do
with state ownership of the means of production. Both capitalism and socialism, as
well as all compromises between them, are incompatible with traditional
African cultures, because they are materialistic.
Bowditch writes of “a one-world philosophy, called free-enterprise democracy”, and
maintains that “Ghana
will have to develop both a competitive national economy and a free-enterprise management culture” (pp. xvii, 70). The
challenge for Ghana and other African nations,
however, is to develop a philosophy of business management that will enable
them to increase productivity and reduce poverty without destroying the
traditional family and religious faith. Such a philosophy of management must
be rooted in neither Adam Smith nor Karl Marx, but in traditional African
philosophy.
While
not distinguishing African from Western philosophical traditions, Bowditch does
provide insightful suggestions concerning what a theory of business
management appropriate for Ghana and other African nations might
look like. Because the family is so important, “every responsible and
respected business in Ghana will have to care for the life,
village, and families in its orbit” (p. 160). Religious faith is also
inseparable from business: “Divinities simply cannot be ignored when
undertaking anything of importance in one’s life, and business is no
exception” (p. 165). What Ghana needs is a theory of business
management, unlike anything the contemporary West can offer, consistent with
these truths. Although Bowditch’s
book is written primarily for business and development practitioners, it
contains citations of scholarly works and insights that could be incorporated
into a philosophical theory of Ghanaian or African business management.
David W. Lutz
Strathmore University, Nairobi, Kenya
