The Objective of this book is to help the reader understand the nature of Africa’s current political economy in relation to the broad debate on how economic globalization affects development prospects. To analyze the Africa-globalization-development nexus, it is first necessary to understand some of the central trends and processes that characterize what we call “the age of global capitalism.” This implies, at least initially, a focus mainly on Northern countries and changes in their economies. Within this broad framework, this chapter mainly discusses ongoing processes of financial and industrial restructuring and their underlying causes.

This focus reflects our central assumption...

Global Value Chains (GVCs) are subject to exogenous regulation as well as to endogenous processes of governance. Exogenous regulation has a number of dimensions, of which the most important are regulation of markets in producing and consuming countries and international trade regulation. Markets in different producing countries, and in different consuming ones, may all be regulated according to distinct principles. Furthermore, the principles according to which domestic markets are regulated may differ strongly from the ones in which international market regulation occurs. Recently, however, a relatively high level of convergence has emerged, with trends toward deregulation in producing and consuming...

The Approach known as global value chain (GVC) analysis first appeared in the literature under the term global commodity chain (GCC) analysis. The notion of a commodity chain, “a network of labor and production processes whose end result is a finished commodity” comes from Hopkins and Wallerstein (1986, 1994), where it is used to discuss a variety of international chains for agricultural (and timber) products, from the beginning of the early modern era. Hopkins and Wallerstein (1994) see all firms (and specific processes, referred to as boxes) as being involved in commodity chains as either producers of inputs to others...

This Chapter addresses in detail some of the conceptual issues arising in GVC analysis that were outlined in the last chapter. It does so through an examination of fieldwork material collected during the study of specific value chains by the authors and their colleagues in the Globalization and Economic Restructuring in Africa (GLAF) research group during 1999–2003.¹ Each of these studies was based on extensive fieldwork in Africa and (for all chains but one) also in Northern countries. The salient characteristics of the studies focusing on specific products are summarized in Table 4.1.²

In the next three chapters, we...

In this chapter, we continue the empirical investigation of the GVCs for coffee, cocoa, fresh vegetables, citrus, clothing, and cotton through an analysis of how the restructuring of relations between lead firms and first-tier suppliers (described in the last chapter) affects second-tier suppliers. Because of the general absence of African enterprises from first-tier status, turning our attention to second-tier suppliers enables a clearer focus on Africa. In other words, the structural differentiation of roles within these GVCs is broadly (though not uniformly) paralleled by a geographical differentiation.

Particular attention will be paid to two aspects of second-tier suppliers’ changing conditions...

Convention Theory, like GVC analysis, provides key elements for understanding changes in the global economy and the role of Africa in it. In this chapter,we return to the discussion on governance in GVCs initiated in Chapter 3, through an analysis of standards as elements of governance. We focus in particular on quality standards and related quality conventions in relation to the GVCs described in Chapters 4 and 5. The aim is to use some of the insights of convention theory, especially its cognitive and normative aspects, to advance the broader theoretical discussion of (private and public) forms of governance in...

Has Africa become more peripheral in the global economy? The analysis carried out in this book suggests uneven trajectories within the continent—depending on which global value chain (GVC) is considered. The increased integration of some African industries in the global economy goes hand-in-hand with a greater marginalization of others. In some chains, new opportunities are materializing but have high costs and often come with benefits that are generally low, unpredictable, and nontransparent.

Africa participates in the global economy on the basis of specific investments, exchanges, and contracts that express the calculations (and miscalculations) of specific enterprises and individuals. These...