Transcript
Rob Johnson:
I’m here today with Camilla Toulmin, who’s the former Director and an Associate of the International Institute for Environment and Development, and she’s also affiliated, I am very grateful to say, with the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and a Professor at Lancaster University. She has a new book out, Oxford University Press, Land, Investment and Migration: Thirty-five Years of Village Life in Mali. Camilla also serves as the real leader and director of our work pertaining to Africa on the INET Commission on Global Economic Transformation. Camilla, thanks for joining me today.
Camilla Toulmin:
Pleasure.
Rob Johnson:
I look at the world right now, obviously, here we are, 13th of May in the middle of the pandemic, the lock downs, how would I say it? Everybody can turn inward and look just at themselves, but you have so much experience. Being in and living in Africa, from reading your book, I know you spent two years there over 20 years ago, and you spent a lot of time looking deeply at Mali, deeply at other places, the structural changes, you’ve written a book about climate change. But it almost feels like the pandemic is unmasking so many things in so many places. It’s almost like we’re back to the drawing board, it’s daunting, but it might be an opportunity. How do you see what’s unfolding, well, any place in the world, but particularly as it pertains to Africa in light of the pandemic right now?
Camilla Toulmin:
Well, thanks very much Rob. And I should just start by saying I’m very ably accompanied on the work for the commission on the Africa work by Folashadé Soulé who I think you have also interviewed.
Rob Johnson:
Yeah, I’ve made a podcast with her a couple of days ago, and I’m sure we’ll pair them up so that people get the 1,2 punch-
Camilla Toulmin:
Well, that will be great. And I’ll just-
Rob Johnson:
… of both of your insights. But I have to give you double credit because you’ve recruited her and brought her to my attention. So you get double credit.
Camilla Toulmin:
… Well, all I can say is that in all of the work which I’ve done around African development issues, I think a critical part of that has always been in partnership with colleagues and organizations from the continent, who open your eyes to see things very often in new ways. I was very struck last week. I was on a online seminar with a number of African colleagues. And pretty much every single person said, “This crisis, whole crisis must be seized by us. Let’s grasp it with both hands and make sure that we come out of this crisis going in a different direction, taking a new strategic path that allows us to be less vulnerable, more resilient, but able as a continent to not only deal with these sorts of crisis in future of which there will be many, but also much better able to build that inclusive and more productive economic pathway that we’ve been talking about for so long, but not really reaching.”
I find that very encouraging in the same way as people in the European space. And I’d like to think that Great Britain is still very much part of that European space even though we unfortunately seem to be leaving the European union. In the same way, I think a lot of people here in Europe are saying to themselves, “Surely, the impact of this crisis should allow us to see that our current pattern of growth and development has got the balance wrong. We should be privileging social and environmental wellbeing more highly than economic.” And so for the first time in a long time, people have noticed that actually when there’s no traffic, there’s fantastically clean air in cities. So problems of asthma and respiratory diseases and things like have become much less.
Once we restart the economy, why don’t we try and make sure that that’s an economic recovery that builds in that recognition of needing to move to low emissions, low carbon, and also putting people’s health and wellbeing much more firmly center stage, including paying the people who look after us in our hospitals and care homes a decent wage. So yeah, lots of food for thought. What we need to make sure is that the political choices that are made now for our future recovery are ones that are taking us in the right direction rather than just rebuilding as we were before. And I think that’s as true for many African countries as it is for Europe and North America as well.
Rob Johnson:
Yeah, it sounds like there was an awakening in terms of… in the essence to what matters, what matters to life, what matters to quality. And also you mentioned, and I think this is a very important thing to underscore, what my poet friend, Ed Pavlik has called the labor in the shadows. We’ve shed light on the importance of these courageous people, whether in hospitals or food preparation to be the people who help us when we’re ill and the people who help the underpinnings of life and health be perpetuated. And let’s go backward a little bit in time and explore, we’ll come back to this as we talk about the Global Commission. But your book, Land, Investment and Migration, it uses things… I mean, obviously, scientific information data, but even satellite photography.
I did an interview with a young man named Benjamin Grant maybe a week or so ago, and he has a book called Overview on the Instagram System, Daily Overview, using satellite pictures to show the dynamic evolution of what’s happening to the oceans and climate and the earth and what have you. But I think your book is telling us a story over time about Mali, and it was completed before this pandemic started. But what are the dynamics? What are the structural changes that have been in motion in Mali that you cover and illuminate in the book?
Camilla Toulmin:
Well, there are a number of things there. One is the process of urbanization, very rapid growth in urban populations, particularly in the capital city because in Mali, like a whole number of other countries, essentially, everybody goes to the capital because power and resources are highly centralized. And despite various kind of policies that are meant to decentralize power and resources, Bamako the capital is very much the honeypot for people. And that leads to all sorts of neglect of particularly outlying areas, smaller towns, and much of the agricultural sector. So there’s been a pattern of economic and agricultural modernization, which has very much privileged things like irrigation schemes, the cotton farming sector down in the south, but done nothing for the vast majority of people who live in rainfed cereal growing systems like the one that I described in this book. So very patchy patterns of development.
Quite a lot of people getting rich from the aid process and from the development of land in and around cities, but very little really going to the vast majority of the population. And that imbalance, I think in the distribution of benefits from economic patterns, one hesitates to call it economic development, are part of the reason why there’s been increasing resentment and grievance from different populations that’s helped generate the civil conflict that you see today, which has been greatly aggravated by the arrival of various jihadist groups from elsewhere. So we’ve had that happening on the economic and political front, we’ve had a series of big droughts, and although rainfall has now returned in part, it’s much more uncertain than it was and very concentrated in two or three months of the rainy season. So farmers are having to adapt to that and also suffering from these extraordinary large rainstorms.
A couple of times, over the last three or four years, the farmers in this particular village have received more than 100 millimeters of rainfall. And that’s really a lot. It means that water is standing on the fields day after day, and it means that the rainfall is so intense that houses start to fall down. And people are sloshing about in water up to their knees. So climate, that’s not been… the sorts of changes to climate haven’t been helping, particularly for rainfed farming systems. And at the same time, you’ve had increasing pressure on land. Partly from population growth, but also from government taking very often the most valuable land and allocating it to either domestic or foreign investors for modern agricultural schemes, big commercial farms, irrigated sugarcane and so on.
And so the village that I’ve been studying, you see in that community a sort of microcosm of all of these forces, population growth, climate fluctuation, increasing number of people going to town often for a few months, sometimes for a few years, and some definitively leaving their village behind, and also suffering this big increasing pressure on land and increasingly being caught up in the civil conflict. So a lot of that context is a bit sombre, I suppose what I’m particularly impressed by is that despite that sombre landscape, you find highly intelligent, very energetic people trying to do their best, going out, earning money, investing in a lot of the new tech, lots of people got solar panels, many people have got mobile phones trying to understand the world which is changing around them and to position themselves over time in a way that makes sure that they and their families can profit from those changes. So, it’s a mixed picture. Some of it’s quite sombre, but a lot of it’s very positive in terms of the capacity and approach that people have to making the best of what are often challenging circumstances.
Rob Johnson:
Tell me a little bit about education. With the advent of the possibility of technical change, which I know everybody from Jack Miles, Luohan Academy and others are exploring at some depth in ways to facilitate development in Africa that I would say are unprecedented. What is African society, what is the Malian society doing to help people, which you might call, gain the confidence in the imagination to work with these new technologies?
Camilla Toulmin:
Well, I think there’s been a huge boost to the idea of online education. Obviously, particularly in urban areas where you’ve got reasonable broadband and Wi-Fi. In more rural areas, I think that’s a massively… there’s massive potential there that could be opened up, where you’ve got access to sufficient network that allows you to access online educational tools for schools across the region. Because one of the big problems is that you may be able to build a school, but very often, there’s money to pay for a teacher or maybe there’s only one teacher. And so if you had ways of putting together online education for some of these more remote areas, which are always going to struggle to find the teaching staff, I think that would make a very big difference.
I know that there are a few initiatives of this sort underway across West Africa, but I think there’s far more potential there that could happen. But obviously you need both a good source of power, which thankfully because of PV cells is very easy, but you also need to make sure that you’ve got the high speed connectivity in terms of that telephone network, which isn’t always so readily available once you’re away from some of the main roads. But great potential there. And I’d love to see in five years time, every single school out in the bush being able to access a whole range of educational tools for their kids. I think it would make a massive difference.
Rob Johnson:
Are these…? When I think about the kind of investments that you’re talking about, they seem to be large lump infrastructure, public goods rather than… How would I say? Particularly in the rural areas that need to be connected rather than something that a private sector internet network system would provide. And then I guess to follow on question two that is that you have a very large number of small countries on the African continent, do they need to create something like a federation to create a continent-wide integrated Wi-Fi and technological system or am I dreaming? Is that a step too far?
Camilla Toulmin:
Well, on the public infrastructure network front, I mean private telecoms companies have been installing big network masts across the continent where they can be fairly sure that that investment will get payback in terms of increased numbers of customers. So that’s why the network tends to be reasonably good when you’re in an area that’s well populated, but that’s good once you get out into more isolated parts of the countryside. And so I guess, yes, just like for energy access, governments need to think about what subsidy you provide to telecom providers to make sure that they offer coverage for 95% of the population rather than the smaller proportion of those for which there’s a guaranteed revenue payback for them. In terms of different countries working together, there’s a whole set of different regional groupings that are trying to aggregate their activity around a whole number of topics including telecoms.
And within the context of the African continent as a whole, recently agreed was the African Continental Free Trade agreement that has digital stuff on its agenda as well as a whole range of other activities in order to get policy and tariffs and things like that aligned in a way that pulls the countries of Africa together rather than them all looking outwards. So I think that’s another thing that people talk about post-COVID-19 that it’s really provided such a shock that African countries increasingly recognize the need to stick together and to build systems that work for them as a continent, including on the digital front.
Rob Johnson:
I guess the other dimension of this, you have climate, we have technology, and in technology, it seems to have two sides to it as I’ve learned from our work in the global commission. One is that we will not go back to the East Asian development model of labor-intensive manufacturing, learning by doing in what we call infant industry protection, because the advent of global supply chains, machine learning and automation and a drop in the relative price of manufacturers makes that a less vital and attractive development strategy.
And on the other side as we’ve been exploring this, potential from technology is very strong. I would imagine that I guess the other dimensions, the other parts of this challenge would include the loss of subsistence farming because of climate damage that you alluded to with the flooding and other things. But also there’s a huge demographic change on the horizon in Africa, which creates a great deal of, how would I say? Impetus to come up with a development strategy. How do you see the role of demographics and migration both within the continent and internationally influencing the trajectory that will be on?
Camilla Toulmin:
Well, I think that the very large number of kids under the age of 20 puts a new onus on governments, donors, civil society to think about what constitutes a labor-rich and employment-rich pattern of growth. As you said, the world has changed since the ’80s and ’90s when East Asia was able to follow, if you like, a sort of classic economic growth path starting with light manufacturing and moving into more capital-intensive patterns of production. But now, a lot of that space is occupied globally. And it’s difficult to see how African economies can become dominant in many of those sectors. However, if you look at most sectors of the economy, whether it’s agriculture, food processing, the retail sector, a whole number of parts of the informal sector to do with small scale production and repair, there are often significant job opportunities associated with that, but that will in the informal sector.
I think the big challenge is to see how you can help the informal sector become more productive, start to benefit from the protections that the state can potentially provide, and pay in return the taxes that the state needs in order to continue to play a positive role in allowing the growth and development of that sector. I think it means investment in education is pretty critical, but not any old education. I’m struck by how countries like Ethiopia and Rwanda have very much focused on the STEM subjects, so science, technology, engineering and maths. So that kids going through the schooling system come out from that with some very practical science-based skills that make them a lot more employable than they would be otherwise.
I think changes to the education system, recognition of the informal sector, and also encouraging families, that’s women and men, to think about the advantages of limiting family size and making that possible. That’s quite a touchy subject, I know, for a lot of people, but if your population is growing at 3%, then your economic growth rate has to be well, over 3% if you’re going to start making real inroads into levels of poverty. So I think that educating girls, getting them into school, providing them with opportunities to practice effective contraception, that’s all part of the picture as well.
But I think that with Europe on Africa’s doorstep, I think we also need to be a bit cleverer in terms of finding a pattern of migration which can offer real benefit and opportunities to young Africans while at the same time doing it in a way that does not generate the kind of xenophobic responses that we’ve had in a whole number of European countries who felt rightly or wrongly that migration is something that’s happening to them and over which they have no effective control. So it’s a complicated picture, but one where I think we’ve got a whole number of elements that could make a big difference.
Rob Johnson:
And I guess the question I also want to add to this is, what role is there for international support or assistance? I know many countries now are quite consumed using their public resources and fiscal capacity to combat the pandemic in the short run. But in the medium term, is there something which I might call the equivalent of a Marshall Plan for Africa that Europe, China, and possibly the United States and Canada through the multilateral institutions could, I would say, bring to bear to help this experience be resolved in a positive direction?
Camilla Toulmin:
I think that’s always part of it. And substantial resources are already put through the overseas development assistance, put through those channels, I think you’ve got to balance public assistance if that’s going particularly into sectors like health and education with investment by mixture both of donors, but also by investors in productive assets. Because revenues, incomes, productivity are only going to grow if you’ve got a more productive set of assets right at the heart of each African economy. And that’s probably a question of roads and other infrastructure, but it’s also about the fundamental productivity of people’s land, people’s buildings, the cities and how they’re developed and so on.
I think a better balance between public assistance through donor aid flows and properly targeted private investment… I think private investment has often had a bit of a bad name because multinational companies certainly in the past have tried to get special deals from African governments in order to set up in that country and say they want a special tax-free zone in order to set up their activity… and all they want to be able to bring all of their stuff in without any kind of import duties. So you begin to wonder after they’ve got all these exemptions, what the real benefit to the nation state and the public sector and to incomes and livelihoods might be. When you talk to private investors, they say, “Well, we need all of these exemptions because it’s very risky investing in these countries.” So I think there’s something to be done on trying to mitigate the high level of risk that investors feel, but also to get a better deal from that investment for local people.
If I take the example around the village that I’ve been studying for the last close on 40 years, there’s a big irrigation scheme just next door, which belongs to a Chinese sugar company. Best practice would have meant that people when they were evicted from their land, would have been given some kind of compensation for the loss of this fundamental asset on which they grew their crops. They would have had access to a whole number of jobs and other services associated with the investment, but none of that happened. So investment is good as long as it is gone about in the right way, and deals with the costs and impacts of that investment in a way which is fair to people living around that particular site. And also providing sufficient revenue back to the state to make sure that that was an investment that brings real benefit to the nation. So getting more of the right kind of investment. And that’s where I think that both the EU and the US potentially could show the importance of following the right environmental and social practices.
At the moment, Europe is… particularly, the EU are thinking about, “How do we form a stronger partnership with African countries so that over time we build that really special relationship which is respectful and offers mutual benefits?” I think many Africans feel that Europe is very good at lecturing them, but not so good at understanding and listening to their particular priorities. So I think ways in which Europe could offer helpful public investments through aid, but also private investment that provides for the buildup of productive assets, but in a way that’s respectful of local people and the environment. That would be a really helpful way of developing a better Europe-Africa relationship in future.
Rob Johnson:
When we look at the lyric in the United States currently, I feel a very intense shutter as I see what I guess was already a contentious relationship between the United States and China deteriorating further. Even this morning, there are stories about how hackers from Iran and China according to senior government officials in the United States may be trying to inhibit American institutions from forming a vaccine, which is a threat obviously to public health. And these kind of, which I might call, hugely aggressive accusations surrounding, at least in my mind, the ability of our world to react to things like climate change.
If the United… Or even the search for a vaccine or collectively fighting in a pandemic. The global commission talks about how the… particularly Danny Roderick and Joe Stiglitz talk about how the notion of the integrity of the nation state has been brought into question in the era of globalization, and how many of the phenomenon that we have to address for the wellbeing of people within any country require international cooperation because, which you might say, the scope of the market is much larger than the domain of the sovereign. But the place… I guess this context frightens me, but where I look at the urgency of dealing with things in Africa and that China has played a very assertive and enthusiastic role in recent years, you and Folashadé helped me along with Justin Lin hold a conference in, I believe it was, December of 2018 on these very questions. How does that [inaudible 00:38:55] related to you as China relations affect how Europe will respond and how Africa will, how would I say it? Experience their development strategy in the context of all this US-China turbulence?
Camilla Toulmin:
Well, it’s a fascinating question that, and one which one of your other speakers also, Rohinton Medhora talked a bit about global public goods and the need for greater working together and investment in global public action. I mean to my mind, it’s crucial that the European Union plays a middle of the road third party role in relation to this and avoids itself getting sucked into being too much of an ally of the US, or being seen as too much of a stooge in relation to China. So staying strong, staying united, carving out a new promising relationship with the African continent seems to me to be a really good policy and way forward. And I know that that’s very much envisaged as a new platform for trying to develop those relationships, particularly around questions of energy, agriculture, digital and broader transport connectivity. And seeing how the EU can help in the economic recovery process that we’ll need to lead many African economies out of a rather difficult place at present.
And the EU of course, is a prime example of a supranational entity that works on behalf of a whole number of different nation states. I mean, I’d completely buy this argument of Rodrik and Stiglitz that the nation state is trying to hang on to a whole set of powers and prerogative, some of which have drifted upwards into broader international global processes. And some of which have been pulled downwards to sub-national levels, particularly around in and around cities. Because many cities have become far more assertive and great sources of innovation, of energy, and of activity where you seem to be able to get far more done than at that national level, I suppose partly because you’ve got a much closer relationship between city governors and electors and where possibly there’s a little bit less in the way of interests tying up the legislature.
I think moving away from the nation state into supra and sub, national entities has to be an important way forward. I very much hope that Europe hangs together firmly despite some of the difficulties that individual countries have faced. And despite the very disruptive departure of Great Britain. And I’m always hoping that maybe Brexit won’t happen in quite the way that Boris Johnson and his gang wanted to happen. But we also have to find the language and the story that helps people understand why that working together for a broader global good is absolutely critical. I think a lot of people have got it for climate change, because they understand that the global atmosphere doesn’t respect national boundaries.
There’s a whole number of problems like that as they call them, problems without passports, which have to be addressed by a group of nations working together or in the case of climate change, the entire world needs to work together in order to make progress on climate change. And I’m hoping that the politics that the US over time will lead the country in a direction that’s more supportive of that global action. An awful lot of the economics has already gone in that direction. So it doesn’t make any sense to rely on coal for purely economic reasons for generating energy. But somehow that needs to typically be a more rapid process of de-carbonization of the whole economy. So I’ve got a lot of time for Europe.
Rob Johnson:
Yeah, that may be particularly interesting. It may be particularly interesting in the current circumstance because we have, well, prices down close to zero again, which might call the relative price of non-carbon burning renewables is put into under pressure that had been, how would I say? Not eliminated, but had narrowed quite markedly in recent years as the innovations in the scale of renewables was picking up. Let’s talk about our particular project, the Commission on Global Economic Transformation.
We’ve been covering issues, but what I would say is, how would I say? As I say way analogy, which I’m always fond of, you and Folashadé are navigating for the CGET ship of INET, what kind of things do you want to illuminate with the help of scholars and writers and public officials in Africa? And what do you envision a report looking like and addressing that becomes a beacon of hopefulness? That, how would I say? In essence, we can provide and challenge the world governments within the continent and beyond to rise to? I remember reading, I think it was in the summary of your book, a very poignant quote or kind of almost a epigraph, a single finger can pick up nothing. It was the English translation. And it does seem to me like a whole lot of coordination or a whole lot of different actions have to take place. But I’m curious, what do you see on the horizon? Where is the commission searching and heading toward?
Camilla Toulmin:
The work that Folashadé and I are trying to support, basically, is trying to open up and provide space for, as you say, scholars, writers, public officials who have something important to say about the big questions that Africa faces. Some of those relate to ways to spur the structural transformation that will help a given country diversify its economic activity and improve incomes, revenues, livelihoods in a much more inclusive fashion. And we’re hoping very much to get started with the first of those papers shortly. There’s a lot of experience, some of it positive, some of it less positive from across the continent, which should help answer that question that you asked me earlier about East Asian development models. I think it’s good to get voices from those countries themselves in Africa to say how they see things and what they think some of the options are for that stronger, more resilient diversified pattern of economic growth. So that’s one really important area.
Another is around, as we were discussing, how you build human capital particularly around health and education. What forms of education? How can you seize the opportunity of the shift online of a lot of resources and possibilities in a way that could create and expand people’s access to education, to learning, to skills development in a way that ready grounded that human capital across the nation. A third thing is obviously also around broader questions of climate and environment. A whole number of countries are wondering whether the fossil fuel sector is a good one to be so dependent on because the incomes and the revenues that export earnings have been so tightly linked to fossil fuels. So I think there’s a whole set of questions there around how you avoid being left with stranded assets and how you diversify your energy sector, but also your export revenues so that you’re less subject to these extraordinary up and down swings in oil prices.
And then there’s the broader question, which we’ve touched on, which is, what’s the relationship between the state and the citizen? And how do you rebuild low levels of confidence in the public administration and the operations of government? How do you rebuild that confidence in a way which makes public service, public investment, payment of taxes, good use of public resources shift up a gear and start developing a virtuous circle of contribution and reward? And I think that’s a very global problem. And it’s really interesting to see how the pandemic has shifted public action in a much more energetic direction. Even in countries like United Kingdom where government had been very much wanting to step back and let the market solve solutions.
The pandemic I think has very much demonstrated that markets can’t do big crisis. It’s not what they were made for. And that the public authorities have to step into that space and spend what they would have considered absurdly large amounts of money in order to keep the whole show on the road. So that issue of the public authorities relations with citizens and the cycle of responsibility, contributions, tax payments and accountability is a key part of rebuilding a state both in Africa and in parts of Europe and to other states, also in the United States, that would give people a renewed confidence and trust in what government should be doing and does well.
What we’ll be doing? What we have been doing is trying to listen to a lot of people to hold a number of events. What we’re doing now is starting to commission a number of papers from key writers and scholars in Africa so that we can put on the table for discussion with a subgroup of the Commission on Global Economic Transformation, with a subgroup of them to critique feedback, produce documents that are as strong as possible which we can put together into a single report. We also want to feed into the four subcommittee reports being developed by the global commission as a whole, but obviously paper documents are already part of the process. And so finding multiple opportunities for sitting down, listening, engaging, debating, feeding these ideas, the case study material, the evidence into a whole range of different audiences and circles of debate including the young scholars initiative, INET’s excellent network of students that has a large and active African component to its activities.
Those are all parts of how we hope to move forward. At the same time, Folashadé and I have identified a number of people who we’d very much like to interview on how COVID-19 reshapes their vision for Africa’s future. So we’ll be holding a number of interviews that we’ll probably transcribe and put up on INET’s website in written form that we’ll start to get the vision and ideas and sorts of a number of African scholars up there.
Rob Johnson:
Well, Camilla, the notion of your interviews obviously as a text could be distributed quite widely, but I’d often… I guess I would wonder if we might not add some of your interviews Folashade’s interviews to this podcast.
Camilla Toulmin:
Oh, that will be great.
Rob Johnson:
And allow people to hear more directly from those African experts. I think the listeners to this particular vehicle would find that fascinating. So keep that in mind, if you want to do an audio dimension, I’m very enthusiastic about that as well as about the work that you and Folashadé are doing altogether. I think it’s a very important dimension of the Global Commission. I think it’s very important to planet health, and I think the complexities and the many dimensions of the issues that you’ve explored with me here today really, how would I say? Are asking public officials, leaders, intellectuals and artists for that matter to illuminate the need and to rise to the challenge.
But I’m very very grateful to you for joining me today, for taking a tour through your own work, your wonderful new book, Land, Investment and Migration. Thirty-five years of Village Life in Mali, put out by Oxford University Press. But just, how would I say? The learning I get to do from working with you is quite inspiring. And I hope that in a couple of months we can come back to this podcast and have another talk as things unfold and as you work with Folashadé for the global commission proceeds.
Camilla Toulmin:
Well, thanks Rob.
Rob Johnson:
Thanks for joining me today.
Camilla Toulmin:
Thanks very much. I’ve very much enjoyed it, and I look forward to chatting again in a few weeks time. And I hope we’ll have lots of new stuff to tell you. Thanks. Bye.
Rob Johnson:
I’m confident too well. Thank you and bye-bye.