ABSTRACT
In trying to understand and explain the economic growth and development experience in Africa, while the market-oriented approach (MOA) emphasises markets as the key to its understanding, and state-oriented approaches (SOA) take the state as pivotal to understanding Africa’s growth experience, the political economy approach (PEA) takes a global focus, homing in on structures and relations between countries within the global economic system. Whereas MOA and SOA focus mainly on the internal conditions in which markets and states operate, PEA looks at power relations and the accompanying geopolitical structures emanating from the interaction of states and markets at a global level. In this sense, PEA’s starting point is that there is a global system (predominantly economic in nature, much less political or social), which shapes the relations and actions between states, as well as the relations between markets and states. Therefore, PEA locates the state-market-development dynamics in the global arena, and the internal factors within a particular state are seen as largely outcomes of the global system. PEA does not regard the local states or markets as inconsequential for economic growth and development, but they are considered within the larger context of the international networks of economic and political relations.
