George Coulter Africa in Transition – The Journey from Traditional to Modern

Africa's trials and tribulations on the road to sustainable development have been many. Miracles have turned to mirages. The main challenge has been, and still remains, maintaining momentum of economic growth and creating the structures and processes that can ensure progress. George Coulter's book Africa in Transition – The Journey from Traditional to Modern provides interesting perspectives on this challenge. It is well written and has a clear storyline. He narrates the story of his own journey through Africa over five decades in a highly refreshing language carrying the reader's mind along to experience the places that provided him with his knowledge. His narratives are laced with vivid descriptions of the personal challenges and adventures of a reflective traveller on non‐existing roads through captivating natural sceneries. He invites the reader to travel with him and experience the buoyant welcoming morning in Cape Town, a city with “the spectacular mountain background draped in white cloud, crystal light, warmth and gracious buildings” (p. 68). He describes Lake Tanganyika in the 1950s as an “epitome of natural beauty in a sunny clime” (p. 111). It is also a story of a concerned expatriate, meeting with fascinating persons, each with remarkable individual traits and listening to gossip and witnessing challenges that other European expatriates in Africa faced about half a century ago.

The book has 17 chapters, organized into three parts with a common structure guiding the contents of each chapter. The first six chapters constitute part one. In each chapter the author describes specific projects in which he was involved. These projects took him to the Gold Coast (later Ghana) in 1955 and to North Rhodesia (later Zambia) in 1959. Each project was concerned with research and development within the fishery sectors of the different communities. As we travel with him on his assignments among the local communities in Ghana to introduce them to improved fishing methods which he describes as “simple stuff, but possibly a big step if the fishermen adopted it in practice” (p. 42), we also join him in his reflections about how these technology transfer initiatives should have been done to achieve the desired impact. For example, he observes that “the fishing communities must not only be introduced to new technologies and be trained to use them; they must also be introduced to credit schemes to buy them” (p. 42). He informed that the planners of these projects reasoned that the fishermen would switch smoothly to motorized vessels and new gear. They would then be able to make bigger catches and benefit from extensive marketing systems. He then reflects on the wisdom of the approach adopted in the following words: “We are thinking like Europeans, of course […] our minds ran simply along the lines of increasing fish landings by improving efficiency and introducing mechanical methods” (p. 42). His conclusion was that “if the experience of 50 years is anything to go by, money and technology from abroad are not by themselves solutions leading to a better life for the fisherfolk” (p. 62).

Part 2 of the book also comprises six chapters and in them the author provides us with his reflections on Central and East Africa's colonial past based on dialogues he had with people close to aspects of administrative life and politics in the region. He discusses slavery, Christian evangelism and politics and their implications for the development and life of the local people. He reminds us of the wars in East Africa, the history of slave trade, anti‐slavery and attempts to “modernize” Africa through evangelization. This part of the story draws on the rich memory bank of the author and the many Africans that he spoke with through nearly half a century's interaction. The chapters also portray the paradoxes in life where people with irreconcilable values can carve out and sustain friendships over decades (e.g. the friendship between the sultan and Kirk – p. 204). The accounts also remind us of how capricious individuals can bring personal sufferings to societies. His links to major historical events remind us that Africa has been (and still is) part of a global world order and served as a canvas for non‐African stakeholders.

Part 3 has five chapters in which the author pulls together his reflections and viewpoints on Africa's developmental experiments and results. He reflects on the complex and uneven process of change in Africa – a change from traditional and subsistence forms of living to different shades of modernity characterized by soaring populations, urbanization and economic stagnation. In his view, the Western‐sponsored developmental model that has been fashioned to guide policies and projects during the last six decades or so does not adequately reflect the dominant cultural mindsets of the Africans:

But, as he notes at the end of his reflections, “concepts of ‘development’ have changed over the past half‐century” (p. 299). In his view, development or modernization can be viewed as a project that can be engineered using state/institutional support systems. The error of the past was that it was expected to occur through radical transformation without regard to the culture and traditions of those to be developed. What needs to be done is to scale up successful modern improvements gradually (p. 291).

Put together, these memoires present and enrich readers' understanding of some of the social, economic and political challenges that African countries face. In my own assessment, the semblance of a human‐centred community way of life that the author might have observed in pre‐independence Africa has now been replaced by a striving for individualistic self‐fulfilment. Thus, it is also conceivable that what appeared to be harmony to the outside eyes of the Western expatriate can be an illusion.

In my assessment, the book makes an interesting reading as recollections and reflections on Africa's past. It provides a rich reservoir of knowledge that can help make sense of the present. Its shortcoming is that it does not move the continent forward. Some African countries are making noticeable economic progress registering growth rates between 6 and 12 per cent. A recent McKinsey Global Institute report concludes that global business cannot afford to ignore the business potential provided by these growth trends (McKinsey Global Institute, 2010). It appears something positive is happening in some countries. We need to know why and how and whether this can be sustainable and bring these countries to the “take‐off stage” of growth, to borrow Rostow's (1960) terminology.

This observation must, in no way, discount the contribution of the book to our understanding of development initiatives in Africa. I enjoyed reading it and unreservedly recommend it to anyone who would like to think and reflect with Mr Coulter about the failures of Africa's development initiatives of the past half a century based on “rational exploitation, commercialism and the creation of wealth” as an end‐goal of Western economic paradigm (p. 241).