Public sector ethics

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ethics in the public sector is a broad topic that is usually considered a branch of political ethics. In the public sector, ethics addresses the fundamental premise of a public administrator's duty as a "steward" to the public. In other words, it is the moral justification and consideration for decisions and actions made during the completion of daily duties when working to provide the general services of government and nonprofit organizations. Ethics is defined as, among others, the entirety of rules of proper moral conduct corresponding to the ideology of a particular society or organization (Eduard). Public sector ethics is a broad topic because values and morals vary between cultures. Despite the differences in ethical values, there is a growing common ground of what is considered good conduct and correct conduct with ethics. Ethics are an accountability standard by which the public will scrutinize the work being conducted by the members of these organizations. The question of ethics emerges in the public sector on account of its subordinate character.

Decisions are based upon ethical principles, which are the perception of what the general public would view as correct. Ensuring the ethical behavior in the public sector requires a permanent reflection on the decisions taken and their impact from a moral point of view on citizens. Having such a distinction ensures that public administrators are not acting on an internal set of ethical principles without first questioning whether those principles would hold to public scrutiny. It also has placed an additional burden upon public administrators regarding the conduct of their personal lives. Public sector ethics is an attempt to create a more open atmosphere within governmental operations.

Government ethics

Government ethics constitutes the application of ethical rules to government. It is that part of practical jurisprudence, or the philosophy of law, that governs the operation of government and its relationship with the people that it governs. It covers issues of honesty and transparency in government, dealing with matters such as bribery, political corruption, police corruption, legislative ethics, regulatory ethics, conflict of interest, avoiding the appearance of impropriety, open government, and legal ethics.

The US office of government ethics was initiated by the Ethics in Government Act of 1978 to provide overall leadership and policy direction for an ethics program in the Executive branch of government. This same picture is mirrored, albeit in a patchy way, across US state administrations. Altogether the US model of Public sector ethics has become highly regulated and, some would say, cumbersome.

Government officials serve the people, managing the resources of others. Along with this stewardship, there is an expectation from the public that in conducting daily activities, the officials will practice fairness and equality. They are also expected to maintain openness in their workings to ensure that they are operating within the public's perception of what is "right." This concept of ethics, a branch of philosophy which seeks to address morality, is not a relatively new idea within government. Niccolò Machiavelli wrote The Prince, which serves as a manual to illustrate what a monarchy should do to maintain power. This treatise is often viewed as a tool of how a public official should not act in modern society, as it is an enumeration of the specific steps one should take to maintain control and power. This idea of control and power conflicts with the underlying principle of being a steward to the general public. As such, this treatise is a springboard for ethical issues in modern-day times.

Paul Douglas, a former United States Senator from Illinois, argues that while many may secretly follow Machiavelli in their heart, most do not. “Instead, most men want a life of integrity and goodwill in which public officials are stewards rather than masters and treat their jobs as a means of helping people rather than dominating them”.

Douglas further argues why ethical practices are needed. “Our government is now so huge and affects our lives so directly that we cannot be content with merely a moderately decent level of behavior on the part of our public officials. For even a small percentage of misbehavior on the part of these officials can do a vast amount of harm”.

Regulatory ethics is a body of law and practical political philosophy that governs the conduct of civil servants and the members of regulatory agencies. It addresses issues such as bribery and the relationship of civil servants with the businesses in the industries they regulate, as well as concerns about transparency, freedom of information and sunshine laws, and conflict of interest rules.

While Machiavelli and Douglas are distant in time, the two opposing viewpoints of the types of public administrators, and the ethical stance of the decisions they make, are very relevant today. Further illustrating the bifurcation of thought on ethics in government, Cody and Lynn discuss the two opposing factors: utilitarian's and deontologists.

Utilitarians: Believe that the end sought justifies the means to that end. In other words, if an ethical solution is more costly, a utilitarian will argue from a standpoint of efficiency or effectiveness to justify a less ethical solution.

Deontologists: Believe that certain absolute principles should be obeyed, regardless of the consequences. An example of an absolute principle would be honesty.

The definition of these two behavioral models is not necessarily exclusive. It is possible for a person to make a decision based upon a utilitarian stance and then follow a deontological stance for a separate decision. This is because the concept of ethics is vague and ultimately is based upon principles and values, which will differ among situations and people.

Public Sector Ethics vs. Government Ethics

Public sector ethics deals with ethics for those who serve in the public sector- primarily governmental and elected officials focusing on the public, whom they serve. While public sector ethics overlaps in part with government ethics, it can be considered a separate branch in that government ethics is only focused on moral issues relating to governments, including bribery and corruption, whilst public sector ethics also encompasses any position included in the public administration field. Public administration ethics does cover relations among politicians, but it also covers politicians and the concerned parties in the outside world: elected public servants, the media, public sector entities, and individuals.

Ethical standards

John Rohr, in defining bureaucrats as public administrators, approaches ethic standards in government as a requirement due to the nature of the work of administrators. He writes, “because bureaucrats govern through authority that is discretionary, and because they are not elected, the ordinary means of popular control are inapplicable”. Rohr assumes that public administrators are working to benefit the general public's needs. When an elected official does not act in line with the public's expectations, they can be removed from office. However, public administrators are protected with due process rights as government employees, and ethical violations can be difficult to justify the removal of a person from an office.

Many questions about how ethics should be addressed in government exist. According to Cody and Lynn, the debate centers on the extent to which one would like to detail ethical standards. For example, they cite the general litmus test for administrators regarding whether or not they would like to hear about their actions on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. That is, public officials should gauge their decisions through the lens of the public reading about the decision on the front page of a newspaper. If it would be viewed as a problem by the public, then the administrator should refrain from the action in question.

The Honest Person Rule: Unless there is an underlying honesty within people, a set of ethical rules is meaningless. This supporting argument for the general guidelines maintains that for ethical standards to be practical an individual must be ethically sound from the beginning. As Cody and Lynn point out, it is possible for a public official to act unethically, but not be personally dishonest.

The litmus test example and the Honest Person Rule are broad standards without much definition. As a consequence, broadly defined ethical standards are difficult to assess regarding concerns of ethical violations. In order to have greater accountability, more specific standards are needed, or a statement of applied ethics.

To further provide some definition, Rohr classifies ethics in government with some of the approaches that have been taken. The USDA devised a system where employees were asked questions and then asked to rank the actions as permissible, not permissible, and permissible with prior written approval. Rohr argues that this type of approach, known as the Low Road merely places an understanding of what not to do in order to steer clear of trouble (1978, pp. 53–54). This approach does not assist an employee in providing a standard for what is truly ethical behavior.

The High Road, according to Rohr, is the basis of decisions upon a pursuit for social equity, which is based upon political philosophy and humanistic psychology.

Rohr finds problems with both the Low Road and High Road approaches and bases his argument on regime values, or “the values of that political entity that was brought into being by the ratification of the Constitution that created the present American republic” (1978, p. 59). He contends that regime values are built upon three considerations:

1. Ethical norms should be derived from the salient values of the regime;
2. These values are normative for bureaucrats because they have taken an oath to uphold the regime; and
3. These values can be discovered in the public law of the regime.

The basic contention upon which Rohr builds his argument is that rulings by the Supreme Court are sufficient measures upon which an ethical framework can be constructed. Rohr argues that this framework for ethical standards is strong because it relies upon a system of checks and balances in the judicial system and because it is built upon the interpretation of framers' intents of how and why government exists.

Levels of ethical decision-making

Terry Cooper is an often-cited author in the field of public administration ethics. His book, The Responsible Administrator, is an in-depth attempt to bridge the philosophical points of ethics and the complex workings of public administration. While not revolutionary, his work has become a focal point around which ethical decision-making in the public sector are made. In The Responsible Administrator, he states that public administrators make decisions daily according to a distinctive four-level process. The four levels are:

The Expressive Level: At this stage, a person responds to a situation with "spontaneous, reflective expressions of emotion ... which neither invite a reply nor attempt to persuade others".

The Level of Moral Rules: This is the first level at which we begin to question actions and begin to look for alternatives and consequences. The responses at this level are often built upon "moral rules we acquire through the socialization process from our families, religious affiliations, education and personal experiences." Decisions on how to handle the situation are then whittled down based on what we feel is the most appropriate action within our own personal moral bank.

The Level of Ethical Analysis: There are times when a personal moral code will seem inadequate for the situation, or that the alternatives and consequences do not feel right. When this occurs, a person has entered this level and begins to examine their ethical principles, or "statements concerning the conduct or state of being that is required for the fulfillment of a value; it explicitly links a value with a general mode of action". Particularly, at this level, one begins to reexamine their personal values, and may eventually disagree with actions to such an extent that they will become "whistleblowers."

The Post-ethical Level: At this level, questions arise about one's view of the world and human nature, how we know anything to be true, and the meaning of life. Here there is a philosophical examination as to why ethical standards are important and relevant to the individual.

These levels are progressive and as an individual begins to move from level to the next, they will begin to question increasingly more the fundamental assumptions upon which the decision-making process is built. It is important to understand the level of thinking upon which a decision is made to ensure that a decision has been tested for strength and a public sense of validity.

Cooper's decision-making model

Cooper devised a method of moving from an ethical problem to appropriate alternatives and consequences. This model follows a sequential, rational approach to ethical decision-making. This method utilizes description and prescription, where public administrators begin to describe to themselves and others an objective state of affairs, and then begin to suggest steps to change the situation.

The steps to this process are as follows:

1. The Descriptive Task: A problem is often presented in a fragmented, distorted fashion coupled with judgmental language and inflections. Cooper contends that the administrator is in a position to have more complete knowledge when an issue is brought forward. Additionally, an administrator should attempt to describe questionable situations void of personal feelings (moving beyond the expressive level).
2. Defining the Ethical Issue: Often the most misinterpreted step, with defining the ethical issue, an administrator is not charged with defining the problem. Instead, there is an examination of what is the underlying ethical value that is being addressed. Often, there is a decision made because of a problem, without examination of the ethical issue. This is damaging to the process of decision-making because it harms one's ethical analysis skills and ethical identity. This is true because situations can differ, and practical decision-making may lead to inconsistencies without an ethical base (1990, p. 20).
3. Identifying Alternative Courses of Action: Using a rationalistic approach, an administrator, with as complete knowledge of the situation as possible and an assessment of the ethical issue at hand, identifies all the plausible courses of action in response to the situation.
4. Projecting the Possible Consequences: In this stage, all positive and negative results of each alternative are examined. When discovering the possible positive and negative outcomes of an action, administrators use their moral imagination, or the imagined enactment of how alternatives will play out. Ideally, as more consequences are enumerated, the ethical decision-making process will be strengthened.
5. Finding a Fit: The appropriate solution or alternative is a balance of four elements:
   1. Moral Rules: Those basic standards that can be attributed to the alternatives and their consequences.
   2. Rehearsal of Defenses: The assessment and alignment of alternatives with the accepted norms of the wider professional organization and political communities of which we are a part.
   3. Ethical Principles: In assessing the moral rules, it may become clear that certain moral values are competitive. Therefore, it becomes difficult to say that an alternative which support social justice is more correct than the security of an individual or the organization. Here, an administrator assesses alternatives and their moral values under the light of the level of ethical analysis - deciding how the hierarchy of moral rules is structured and ultimately influencing the final decision.
   4. Anticipatory Self-Appraisal: Simply put, this analysis of alternatives requires an internal reflection of whether an administrator feels that an alternative fits within what he or she perceives to be their own personality. This is an examination of whether an alternative will meet our need to feel satisfied with the decision.

By following Cooper's model of ethical decision-making, a public administrator is able to create a more concrete process by which to assess individual steps that were taken in reaching a decision. This ensures that at each point, an effort was made by the administrator to uphold ethical principles and that fairness and equality were the standard. An administrator's decision must be able to withstand scrutiny to ensure that there is a continued trust and respect for accountability among employees and the public in the administrator's ability to conduct his/her duties.

Politics and ethics

Public administrators act independently of legislators and most elected officials. This ensures that those on elections boards can operate independently of political influence. This is also true of law enforcement. Unfortunately, enforcing ethical violations can lead to consequences for the public administrator. While an officer can enforce a law against an elected official, the elected official can place pressure on others to force the officer to work a night shift or decrease the department.

Rohr would argue that politics and administration are not separate, but are present at the same time when a public administrator makes decisions. He states that the problem with public administrators “is not that bureaucrats are excessively involved in policy formulation but that they are involved at all. This is a problem for a democratic society because to influence public policy as a public official is to govern”. In other words, those officials who are influencing decisions are taking on the role of those elected by the public without a responsibility of having to answer to the public for decisions made.

However, because there can be large political obstacles, it can be difficult for an administrator to overcome ethical concerns within an organization. Sometimes, the culture of an organization is unethical, at which time, it would be useless to bring up ethical concerns within the organization. In the public sector and nonprofits, when this is the case, individuals will often attempt to bring outside scrutiny on to the organization. This is typically done by leaking the ethical concerns to the general media. Such an act is known as whistleblowing.

Whistleblowing: After using all available means for working within the system, an employee of a governmental agency reports a problem to other governmental agencies or to the general public directly. The problem for whistleblowing on all levels of government (federal, state, and local) is that there are very few protections for these individuals.

Ethics and the personal life of administrators

There are several factors of a person's private life that are often viewed as something that is not made available to the public. When a person enters into a public life, often, aspects of their private life are made public.

Health: It is important, in the public's eye, that a public official be physically sound when conducting the duties of their office. For example, when Ronald Reagan had an assassination attempt, he was often reporting how healthy he was. This may have been an attempt to prevent the transfer of power to his Vice President. However, because of the mandate of a transfer of power, it was necessary for the public to understand his overall condition.

Finances: A public official may be a strong steward of public funds, but may have personal financial issues (i.e. failure to pay taxes, etc.). Disclosure of finances is particularly important, ethically, for the public to decide an official's ability to properly manage public funds and to assess an individual's potential for giving into politically charged financial pressure. Opposing viewpoints to this argue that public officials should not have to disclose financial information because they are sometimes linked to personal contacts that prefer to remain anonymous.

Sexual Misconduct: The common view is that a public official's sexual life is subject to scrutiny. This is due to the assumption that any sexual misconduct may lead to the manipulation of the official's daily decisions. It is thereby often the subject of attention when sexual misconduct becomes known to the public.

Appearance of Impropriety: Officials should make public any possible conflicts of interest prior to their actions, in order to avoid public scrutiny when making decisions that could be construed in favor of a personal interest.

Ethical Climate in the Public Sector

Ethical climate in the public sector refers to the psychological conditions present in the public sector workplace and how those conditions influence a public sector employees ethical decision making. One way of interpreting public sector ethics from a theoretical perspective is to view a workers behavior as a function of their psychological field. It is theorized that understanding the ethical climate in which one works explains ones decisions making and can differentiate between and explain why one would make ethical or unethical choices. A study was done examining the ethical climate in the sector through analyzing surveys in which public sector employees responded to a variety of different scenarios where ethical decision making came into play. The researchers looked for correlations between ethical climate environments and the responses to this survey and found that certain ethical climates were linked to positive ethical decision making and some were linked to worse ethical decision making, supporting the researchers thesis.

Animal rights movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_rights_movement 

The animal rights (AR) movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries.

Terms and factions

All animal liberationists believe that the individual interests of non-human animals deserve recognition and protection, but the movement can be split into two broad camps.

Animal rights advocates believe that these basic interests confer moral rights of some kind on the animals, and/or ought to confer legal rights on them; see, for example, the work of Tom Regan. Utilitarian liberationists, on the other hand, do not believe that animals possess moral rights, but argue, on utilitarian grounds — utilitarianism in its simplest form advocating that we base moral decisions on the greatest happiness of the greatest number — that, because animals have the ability to suffer, their suffering must be taken into account in any moral philosophy. To exclude animals from that consideration, they argue, is a form of discrimination that they call speciesism; see, for example, the work of Peter Singer.

Despite these differences, the terms "animal liberation" and "animal rights" are generally used interchangeably.

Factional division has also been characterized as that between the reformist or mainstream faction and the radical abolitionist and direct action factions. The mainstream faction is largely professionalized and focuses on soliciting donations and gaining media representation. Actors in the reformist movement believe that humans should stop abusing animals. They employ activities that include moral shocks. It has been noted that the power of the animal rights movement in the United States is centralized in professionalized nonprofit organizations that aim to improve animal welfare.

The abolitionist faction believes that humans should stop using animals altogether. Gary Francione, a leader in abolitionism, formed his approach in response to the traditional movement's focus on policy reform. Members of the abolitionist faction view policy reform as counterproductive and rely on nonviolent education and moral persuasion in their activities. They see the promotion of veganism as a means of creating an antispeciesist culture and abolishing animal agriculture.

The direct action or militant faction includes in its activities property damage, animal releases, intimidation, and direct violence, aiming to change society through force and fear. Animal rights actors often reject this faction, pointing to violence as a counterproductive tactic that invites repression (e.g., the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act) and does not economically or politically challenge extant systems.

Smaller factions include groups focused around faith-based animal rights theory and veganarchists, whose approach is characterized by a critique of capitalism on the grounds that it has led to mass nonhuman, human, and environmental exploitation.

Such factionalizing, researchers have pointed out, is common to social movements and plays a role in sustaining their health.

History

Further information: Animal rights § 20th century: Increase in animal use; animal rights movement, Gary Francione, Tom Regan, Richard D. Ryder, and Peter Singer

The modern Animal Rights Movement traces back to the animal protection movement in Victorian England, which was initiated by aristocratic moral crusaders in response to the poor treatment of urban workhorses and stray dogs. Other early influences include: Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle, which drew attention to slaughterhouse operations; Henry Stephens Salt's treatises on nonhuman animal rights, which drew from human abolitionist arguments for recognizing the personhood of people considered to be property; and the short-lived Fruitlands agrarian commune, which required its residents to eat a vegan diet.

Philosopher Peter Singer

The contemporary movement is regarded as having been founded in the UK in the early 1970s by a group of Oxford university post-graduate philosophy students, now known as the "Oxford Group". The group was led by Rosalind and Stanley Godlovitch, graduate students of philosophy who had recently become vegetarians. The Godlovitches met John Harris and David Wood, also philosophy graduates, who were soon persuaded of the arguments in favour of animal rights and themselves became vegetarian. The group began to actively raise the issue with pre-eminent Oxford moral philosophers, including Professor Richard Hare, both personally and in lectures. Their approach was based not on sentimentality ("kindness to dumb animals"), but on the moral rights of animals. They soon developed (and borrowed) a range of powerful arguments in support of their views, so that Oxford clinical psychologist Richard Ryder, who was shortly to become part of the group, writes that "rarely has a cause been so rationally argued and so intellectually well armed."

It was a 1965 article by novelist Brigid Brophy in The Sunday Times which was pivotal in helping to spark the movement. Brophy wrote:

The relationship of Homo sapiens to the other animals is one of unremitting exploitation. We employ their work; we eat and wear them. We exploit them to serve our superstitions: whereas we used to sacrifice them to our gods and tear out their entrails in order to foresee the future, we now sacrifice them to science, and experiment on their entrail in the hope—or on the mere offchance—that we might thereby see a little more clearly into the present.

The philosophers found this article and were inspired by its vigorous unsentimental polemic. At about the same time, Ryder wrote three letters to The Daily Telegraph in response to Brophy's arguments. Brophy read Ryder's letters and put him in touch with the Godlovitches and John Harris, who had begun to plan a book about the issue which was also partly inspired by Brophy's polemic. The philosophers had also been to see Brophy about the possibility of a book of essays on the subject. They initially thought that a book with contributions from Brophy, Ruth Harrison, Maureen Duffy, and other well-known writers might be of interest to publishers, but after an initial proposal was turned down by the first publisher they approached, Giles Gordon of Victor Gollancz suggested that the work would be more viable if it included their own writing. This was the idea that became "Animals, Men, and Morals' (see below).

Philosopher Tom Regan

In 1970, Ryder coined the phrase "speciesism," first using it in a privately printed pamphlet to describe the assignment of value to the interests of beings on the basis of their membership of a particular species. Ryder subsequently became a contributor to Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans (1972), edited by John Harris and the Godlovitches, a work that became highly influential, as did Rosalind Godlovitch's essay "Animal and Morals," published the same year.

It was in a review of Animals, Men and Morals for the New York Review of Books that Australian philosopher Peter Singer first put forward his basic arguments, based on utilitarianism and drawing an explicit comparison between women's liberation and animal liberation. Out of the review came Singer's Animal Liberation, published in 1975, now regarded by many as the "bible" of the movement.

Other books regarded as important include philosopher Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights (1983); Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism by James Rachels (1990); Animals, Property, and the Law (1995) by legal scholar Gary Francione, Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals by another legal scholar Steven M. Wise (2000); and Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy by Julian H. Franklin (2005).

Gender, class, and other factors

Another factor feeding the animal rights movement was revulsion to televised slaughters. In the United States, many public protest slaughters were held in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the National Farmers Organization. Protesting low prices for meat, farmers would kill their own animals in front of media representatives. The carcasses were wasted and not eaten. However, this effort backfired because it angered television audiences to see animals being needlessly and wastefully killed.

The movement predominately comprises upper-class and middle-class white female members, owing this to its associations with the Victorian English animal protection movement and American feminism and environmentalism movements. As such, the movement is widely associated in public spheres with women, femininity, and effeminacy. Public perception of the movement is influenced by gendered evaluations; movement outsiders tend to view activists as irrational by virtue of overly emotional sentiments. Aware of this, activists have strategically incorporated men into positions of leadership and theory production, in order to legitimize the movement and counter popular beliefs about the primacy of emotion in the animal rights movement. This tactic relies on the popular perception of men as rational and not given to emotion, and follows a trend in social movement activism that seeks to counter traditional associations with femininity and private spheres by emphasizing rationality, rights, and justice. In one case study, targets of anti-hunting activism used class and gender markers to evaluate activists' claims. Hunters' associations of irrationality with femininity and of inexperience in hunting and wilderness with white-collar positions constituted the reasons for their dismissal of activists' claims. In contrast, hunters framed hunting in logical, scientific, and altruistic terms, thus legitimating hunting, termed wildlife management, as a protective measure.

It has been noted that the composition of the movement may discourage the mobilization of particular demographics. A content analysis of magazine covers from highly visible animal rights organizations (PeTA and VegNews) revealed that most featured members were white, female, and thin. With this, and with the composition of the movement being mostly white, female, and thin, it has been suggested that animal rights media depict an activist ideal-type with such characteristics, and that this may mobilize thin white females while deterring others. Racialized, sexualized, and size-focused campaign tactics may also serve to deter potential members from joining the movement. Racialized tactics include the appropriation of African slavery and Holocaust language and imagery, and have been deemed insensitive and impugned by nonwhite communities. In addition, the movement has maintained racist stereotypes about nonwhite individuals' predisposition toward animal cruelty; these stereotypes arose in post-slavery U.S. and Britain, where nonwhites were deemed by law and by society to have a tendency toward animal cruelty. Sexualization of "ideal" women is used as a mobilization tactic, but reduces support for ethics-based campaigns and may be counterproductive, alienating women that do not have "ideal" body types. Sizeism is used as a tactic to frame veganism as a healthy and positive lifestyle, aligning with a popular association of fatness with moral failure. These tactics may contribute to gender inequality because unrealistic and sexualized representations of women are linked to their societal devaluation. Its lack of diverse membership may decrease the movement's legitimacy and ability to mobilize, as members of marginalized groups are more likely to mobilize when they are represented in the movement. An inclusive movement with strong group solidarity would decrease opportunity costs associated with participating (e.g., social stigmatization, lack of alternatives, legal persecution) and thus serve to increase and sustain participation in the movement.

Current status of the movement

The movement is no longer viewed as hovering on the fringe. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was joined by a wide variety of academics and professionals, including lawyers, physicians, psychologists, veterinarians, and former vivisectionists, and is now a common subject of study in philosophy departments in Europe and North America. Animal law courses are taught in 92 out of 180 law schools in the United States, and the movement has gained the support of senior legal scholars, including Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School. Chapters of animal rights law have been created in several state bar associations, and resolutions related to animal rights are regularly proposed within the American Bar Association.

In the 1980s, the movement became associated with punk subculture and ideologies, particularly straight edge hardcore punk in the United States and anarcho-punk in the United Kingdom. This association continues on into the 21st century, as evidenced by the prominence of vegan punk events such as Fluff Fest in Europe.

Michael Socarras of Greenberg Traurig told the Association of American Medical Colleges: "There is a very important shift under way in the manner in which many people in law schools and in the legal profession think about animals. This shift has not yet reached popular opinion. However, in [the U.S.], social change has and can occur through the courts, which in many instances do not operate as democratic institutions. Therefore, the evolution in elite legal opinion is extremely significant ..."

Philosophical and legal aims

Further information: Animal rights § Main philosophical approaches, and Veganarchism

The movement aims to include animals in the moral community by putting the basic interests of non-human animals on an equal footing with the basic interests of human beings. A basic interest would be, for example, not being made to suffer pain on behalf of other individual human or non-human animals. The aim is to remove animals from the sphere of property and to award them personhood; that is, to see them awarded legal rights to protect their basic interests.

Who are we that we have set ourselves up on this pedestal and we believe that we have a right to take from others everything—including their life—simply because we want to do it? Shouldn't we stop and think for a second that maybe they are just others like us? Other nations, other individuals, other cultures. Just others. Not sub-human, but just different from being human.

Liberationists argue that animals appear to have value in law only in relation to their usefulness or benefit to their owners, and are awarded no intrinsic value whatsoever. In the United States, for example, state and federal laws formulate the rules for the treatment of animals in terms of their status as property. Liberationists point out that Texas Animal Cruelty Laws apply only to pets living under the custody of human beings and exclude birds, deer, rabbits, squirrels, and other wild animals not owned by humans, ignoring that jurisdiction for such creatures comes under the domain of state wildlife officers. The U.S. Animal Welfare Act excludes "pet stores ... state and country fairs, livestock shows, rodeos, purebred dog and cat shows, and any fairs or exhibitions intended to advance agricultural arts and sciences." There is no mention in the law that such activities already fall under the jurisdiction of state agriculture departments. The Department of Agriculture interprets the Act as also excluding cold-blooded animals, and warm-blooded animals not "used for research, teaching, testing, experimentation ... exhibition purposes, or as a pet, [and] farm animals used for food, fiber, or production purposes".

The Seattle-based Great Ape Project (GAP), founded by Peter Singer, is campaigning for the United Nations to adopt its Declaration on Great Apes, which would see chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans included in a "community of equals" with human beings. The declaration wants to extend to the non-human apes the protection of three basic interests: the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture.

Legal changes influenced by the movement

See also: Great ape personhood

Regarding the campaign to change the status of animals as property, the animal liberation movement has seen success in several countries. In 1992, Switzerland amended its constitution to recognize animals as beings and not things. However, in 1999 the Swiss constitution was completely rewritten. A decade later, Germany guaranteed rights to animals in a 2002 amendment to its constitution, becoming the first European Union member to do so. The German Civil Code had been amended correspondingly in 1997.

Perhaps the greatest success of the animal liberation movement has been the granting of basic rights to five great ape species in New Zealand in 1999. Their use is now forbidden in research, testing or teaching. Other governments had also previously implemented a ban on these experiments, such as the UK government in 1986. Some other countries have also banned or severely restricted the use of non-human great apes in research. Also, on 17 May 2013, India declared that all cetaceans have the status of "nonhuman persons."

In the United States, there is an Animal Welfare Act that was produced in 1966. This law protects animals in acts of research, transportation, and sale. Generally, animals are protected from any torture, neglect, or killing. There have been many amendments made towards this act to keep it updated. While there is only one act covering the entire United States, there are more current laws surrounding animal rights, which vary by state.

Strategy and tactics

Anarchists and anti fascists protesting for animal liberation.

Use of new information communication technologies (ICTs)

New media, such as the Internet and email, have been used by Animal Rights Movement actors and countermovement actors in a variety of capacities. Radical factions in the movement rely on websites, blogs, podcasts, videos, and online forums to engage in vegan outreach and other mobilization efforts and build alliances, thus overcoming exclusion by dominant factions. The use of Internet has allowed the animal rights movement to spread transnationally. For example, the Istanbul Animal Rights Movement's theory and activities draw from those of various countries that have spread through the use of Internet. The Internet is also used by activists to build community and avoid stigmatization, and may be a preferred means of activism for marginalized members, such as individuals who are fat.

In 2001, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), an animal rights group founded in the UK with the aim of ending vivisection practices by Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), published the names of targets associated with HLS on its website. SHAC.net listed targets for "naming and shaming," emphasized and sent email action alerts, and facilitated written and digital communication between activists and targets. When the UK government later prevented SHAC from publishing reports from the ALF on its website, an activist created the Bite Back website, which was registered in the US and thus allowed the ALF to publish reports without reprisal. Countermovement actors have also used ICTs; law enforcement officers have tracked SHAC activists and admitted electronic communications as evidence in criminal trials. Dylan Barr, who jammed email inboxes at Washington Mutual Bank with 5,000 emails, caused $5,000 in losses and was convicted for extortion.

ICTs have facilitated undercover surveillance efforts by activists who use video cameras, Internet, and television to collect and disseminate evidence of cruelty to animals, in order to attract publicity to and mobilize support for the movement.

Undercover surveillance

In 1981, animal rights activists exposed supposedly unhealthy and cruel conditions of monkeys in a research laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland. Police raided the research facility, and because the activists had (illegally) notified media of the raid, it was televised, attracting publicity to the activists' cause. In the UK in 1990, Mike Huskisson and Melody McDonald videotaped Wilhelm Feldberg performing illegal research; the video evidence was made public and Feldberg's lab was summarily closed down. SHAC was founded after Zoe Broughton conducted undercover surveillance of vivisectionists and discovered evidence of nonhuman animal abuse. Footage and images from undercover surveillance activity are often circulated offline and on the Internet and used to deliver a moral shock that will mobilize viewers to participate in the movement. Members in the abolitionist faction, specifically those in Francione's camp, argue that the graphic depictions of suffering discovered in undercover work result in a focus on treatment, as opposed to use, and that this focus, while useful in securing welfare reform, is counterproductive to abolishing animal exploitation.

Boycott

Further information: Factory farming, Live export, Veganism, Vegetarianism, and Veganarchism

Animal liberationists usually boycott industries that use animals. Foremost among these is factory farming, which produces the majority of meat, dairy products, and eggs in industrialized nations. The transportation of farm animals for slaughter, which often involves their live export, has in recent years been a major issue for animal rights groups, particularly in the UK and Scandinavia.

The vast majority of animal rights advocates adopt vegetarian or vegan diets. They may also avoid clothes made of animal skins, such as leather shoes, and will not use products known to contain animal byproducts. Goods containing ingredients that have been tested on animals are also avoided where possible. Company-wide boycotts are common. The Procter & Gamble corporation, for example, tests many of its products on animals, leading many animal rights advocates to boycott the company's products entirely, whether tested on animals or not.

There is a growing trend in the American movement towards devoting all resources to vegetarian outreach. The 9.8 billion animals killed there for food every year far exceeds the number of animals used in other ways. Groups such as Vegan Outreach and Compassion Over Killing devote their time to exposing factory-farming practices by publishing information for consumers and by organizing undercover investigations.

Moral shocks

Moral shock is a tactic that involves drawing targets' attention to a particular depiction of a situation in order to cause outrage and catalyze targets to support a movement or claim. In the Animal Rights Movement, moral shocks are often used in the form of graphic depictions that detail the brutalization of nonhuman animals. Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), a popular animal rights organization, has used moral shocks in its pay-per-view campaign, in which passersby were paid a dollar to watch a graphic video of nonhuman animal suffering. Nonhuman animals depicted in moral shocks often display characteristics similar to those of human infants (e.g., large heads and eyes, crying or whimpering, small, mammalian). There is an ongoing debate within the Movement about the effectiveness of moral shocks. It has been found that many animal rights activists join after being exposed to moral shocks, and that moral shocks given to strangers are more likely to mobilize potential participants than are preexisting social networks; there is research that has found the opposite, however. Conversely, moral shocks that target the public at large (e.g., those used in vegan outreach) are less likely to be effective than those that have targets more distant from and less visible to the public (e.g., vivisectors).

Non-violent action

Non-violent resistance or civil disobedience consists of breaking the law without using violence. This may include the blocking of public roads or entrances, sometimes by chaining or gluing oneself to the ground or to doors. The animal rights movement has espoused these tactics during the 2019 Animal Rebellion protests in London, leading to several dozen arrests.

Direct action

Further information: Direct action, Animal Liberation Front, SPEAK campaign, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, List of animal rights groups, Leaderless resistance, Anarchism and animal rights, and Timeline of Animal Liberation Front actions

 

A fire, claimed by the Oxford Arson Squad, caused £500,000 damage to Londbridges boathouse, Oxfordshire on 4 July 2005.

The movement espouses a number of approaches, and is bitterly divided on the issue of direct action and violence, with very few activists or writers publicly advocating the latter tactic as a justified method to use. Most groups reject violence against persons, intimidation, threats, and the destruction of property: for example, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) and Animal Aid. These groups concentrate on education and research, including carrying out undercover investigations of animal-testing facilities. There is some evidence of cooperation between the BUAV and the ALF: for example, the BUAV used to donate office space for the use of the ALF in London in the early 1980s.

Other groups concentrate on education, research, media campaigns, and undercover investigations. See, for example, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

A third category of activists operates using the leaderless resistance model, working in covert cells consisting of small numbers of trusted friends, or of one individual acting alone. These cells engage in direct action: for example by carrying out raids to release animals from laboratories and farms, using names like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF); or by boycotting and targeting anyone or any business associated with the controversial animal testing lab, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), using a campaign name like Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Some arson, property destruction and vandalism has been linked to various animal rights groups.

Activists who have carried out or threatened acts of physical violence have operated using the names; Animal Rights Militia (ARM), Justice Department, Revolutionary Cells—Animal Liberation brigade (RCALB), Hunt Retribution Squad (HRS) and the Militant Forces Against Huntingdon Life Sciences (MFAH).

Some activists have attempted blackmail and other illegal activities, such as the intimidation campaign to close Darley Oaks farm, which involved hate mail, malicious phonecalls, bomb threats, arson attacks and property destruction, climaxing in the theft of the corpse of Gladys Hammond, the owners' mother-in-law, from a Staffordshire grave. Over a thousand ALF attacks in one year in the UK alone caused £2.6M of damage to property, prompting some experts to state that animal rights now tops the list of causes that prompt violence in the UK.

There are also a growing number of "open rescues," in which liberationists enter businesses to remove animals without trying to hide their identities. Open rescues tend to be carried out by committed individuals willing to go to jail if prosecuted, but so far no farmer has been willing to press charges.

Targeting researchers

Activists have targeted individual researchers and have shown up at homes in the middle of the night, threatening their families and children. Nevertheless, the animal rights movement claims to be overwhelmingly peaceful, and that such instances of violence have been used in efforts to try to tarnish the entire movement.

Criminalization of direct action methods

The U.S. Justice Department labels underground groups the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front as terrorist organizations.

A 13 November 2003 edition of CBS News' 60 Minutes charged that "eco-terrorists," a term used by the United States government to refer to the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, are considered by the FBI to be "the country's biggest domestic terrorist threat." John Lewis, a Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism at the FBI, stated in a 60 Minutes interview that these groups "have caused over $100 million worth of damage nationwide", and that "there are more than 150 investigations of eco-terrorist crimes underway".

"Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act", the legislation which allows federal authorities to "help prevent, better investigate, and prosecute individuals who seek to halt biomedical research through acts of intimidation, harassment, and violence" was adopted in the USA in 2006. It has also been described as having 'a chilling effect' on free speech.

Inter-movement activity

Animal rights factions address injustices against a variety of groups, therein emphasizing a connection between discrimination against humans and discrimination against nonhuman animals. An intersectional orientation is seen online, on websites and social media, and also in offline activity. In Turkey, animal rights groups commonly join other social movements by aligning with online and offline campaigns. In Istanbul's 2013 Gezi Park protests, which began as an environmental movement against urban development efforts, various social movement groups participated. Among them were animal rights activists that saw the protests as an opportunity to raise concerns about speciesism. Animal rights activists' involvement in the protests changed the opinions of animal rights movement outsiders who had previously viewed vegan animal rights activists as elitist. This allowed for increased legitimacy and network expansion; the animal rights movement in Istanbul is composed of multi-movement actors from the feminist movement, LGBT+ movement, and antimilitarist movement, and such inter-movement interaction has led to increased coverage of veganism and animal rights by leftist news sites in Turkey.

Countermovement

Opposition to the animal rights movement comes from corporate and state actors. Mass media, agribusiness, and biomedicine industries often portray activists in a negative light, characterizing the movement as misanthropic, sensationalist, and dangerous to scientific endeavors and human well-being because of activists' high levels of expressed empathy for nonhuman animals. Mass media also frequently portray nonhuman animals as objects. Major pharmaceutical companies have taken legal measures to disallow protestors from targeting their companies.

The abolitionist faction of the Animal Rights Movement often faces counterframing by dominant reformist organizations of the movement that frame radical advocacy as idealistic and schismatic. These reform-oriented nonhuman rights organizations direct resources to countering abolitionist claims and blocking abolitionists' access to discursive spheres. Another example of counterframing from opposition movement actors is found in Switzerland's 1998 referendum cycle, in which antivivisectionists' claims that animal research should be abolished were contested with claims that mobilized the public more. Antivivisection claims, which framed animal research as facilitating the genetic engineering of foods in hopes of seizing on public fear of genetic engineering, were countered by scientists and animal researchers, who framed vivisection as medically necessary to ensure human well-being.

Economic history of Africa

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_history_of_Africa 

 

Ancient Egyptian units of measurement also served as units of currency.

The earliest humans were hunter gatherers who were living in small, family groupings. Even then there was considerable trade that could cover long distances. Archaeologists have found that evidence of trade in luxury items like precious metals and shells across the entirety of the continent.

African economic history often focuses on explanations of poverty and obscures other aspects such as the achievements of African farmers, traders and states, including improvements in food security, and episodes of economic growth.

Farms in Malawi, 2010.

Ancient history

Africa has the longest and oldest economic history. As soon as human societies came into existence, so did economic activity. Earliest humans were hunter gatherers living in small, family groups. Even then there was considerable trade that could cover long distances. Archaeologists have found that evidence of trade in luxury items like metals and shells across the entirety of the continent were the main trades of the Berber people, lived in dry areas and became nomadic herders, while in the savannah grasslands, cultivated crops and thus permanent settlement were possible. Agriculture supported large towns, and eventually large trade networks developed between the towns.

Origins of agriculture

The first agriculture in Africa began around the Sahel and the south of the Sahara Desert, which in 5200 BC was far more moist and densely populated than today. Several native species were domesticated, most importantly pearl millet, sorghum and cowpeas, which spread through West Africa and the Sahel. The Sahara at this time was like the Sahel today. Its wide open fields made cultivation easy, but the poor soil and limited rain made intensive farming impossible. The local crops were also not ideal and produced fewer calories than those of other regions. These factors limited surpluses and kept populations sparse and scattered.

North Africa took a very different route from the southern regions. Climatically it is linked to the Middle East and the Fertile Crescent, and the agricultural techniques of that region were adopted wholesale. This included a different set of crops, such as wheat, barley, and grapes. North Africa was also blessed by one of the richest agricultural regions in the world in the Nile River valley. With the arrival of agriculture, the Nile region became one of the most densely populated areas in the world, and Egypt home to one of the first civilizations.

The drying of the Sahara created a formidable barrier between the northern and southern portions of the continent. Two important exceptions were Nubian Sudan, which was linked to Egypt by the Nile and Ethiopia, which could trade with the northern regions over the Red Sea. Powerful states grew up in these regions such as Kush in Nubia (modern day Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt) and Aksum in Ethiopia. Especially from Nubia, ideas and technologies from the Middle East and Europe reached the rest of Africa.

Historians believe that iron working developed independently in Africa. Unlike other continents Africa did not have a period of copper and bronze working before their Iron Age. Copper is quite rare in Africa while iron is quite common. In Nubia and Ethiopia, iron, trade, and agricultural surpluses lead to the establishment of cities and civilizations.

The Bantu expansion

Further information: Bantu expansion

Ordinarily, in the sparsely populated areas, this same period saw the expansion of the Bantu speaking peoples. The Bantu expansion began in Southern Cameroon around 4000 years ago. Bantu languages are spoken there today and there is archaeological evidence for incoming Neolithic farmers in Northern Gabon c. 3800 BC. It is known that Bantu expansion was extremely rapid and massive, but its exact engine remains controversial. This period predated iron, which appears in the archaeological record by 2500 BC.

One of the early expansions of Bantu was the migration of the Bubi to Fernando Po (Bioko). They were still using stone technology at first. The difficulties of cutting down the equatorial forest for farming have led to the suggestion that the primary expansion was along river valleys, a hypothesis supported by studies of fish names. Another factor may have been the arrival of southeast-Asian food crops, notably the AAB plantain, the cocoyam and the water-yam. Linguistic reconstructions suggest that the only livestock possessed by the proto-Bantu was the goat. Over the centuries the entire southern half of Africa was covered with the group, excluding only the Kalahari desert. Their expansion only ended relatively recently. In the year 1000, Arab traders described that the Bantu had not reached as far as Mozambique, and European settlers observed the Bantu expansion into South Africa under the Zulu and others, yet there's no archaeological evidence that supports their claims instead on the contrary the evidence indicates Bantu speakers's presence very much earlier by over 1800 years and over 1400 years before the first European settlement in the South African regions of Mozambique and South Africa respectively.

The importation Bantu pastoralism reshaped the continent's economy. Sometime in the first millennium, an equally important change began as crops began to arrive from Southeast Asia. The Indian Ocean has always been far more open to trade than the turbulent Atlantic and Pacific. Traders could ride the monsoon winds west early in the year and return east on them later. It is guessed that these crops first arrived in Madagascar, which also adopted Southeast Asian languages, sometime between AD 300 and 800. From the island, the crops crossed to African Great Lakes region. They included many crops, the most important being the banana.

The banana and other crops allowed for more intensive cultivation in the tropical regions of Africa, this was most notable in the Great Lakes region, an area with excellent soil, that saw many cities and states form, their populations being fed largely

Trade routes

Aksumite gold coin of Endubis.

 

Early trans-Saharan trade routes.

While some level of trade had been ongoing, the rise of cities and empires made it far more central to the African economy. North Africa was central to the trade of the entire Mediterranean region. Outside of Egypt, this trade was mostly controlled by the Phoenicians who came to dominate North Africa, with Carthage becoming their most important city. The Greeks controlled much of the eastern trade, including along the Red Sea with Ethiopia. In this region a number of Greek trading cities that were established acted as a conduit for their civilization and learning.

The Egyptian (and later, Roman) city of Alexandria (founded by Alexander the Great in 334 BC), was one of the hubs for Mediterranean trade for many centuries. Well into the 19th century Egypt remained one of the most developed parts of the world.

Nubia in Sudan likewise traded with interior African countries such as Chad and Libya, as well as with Egypt, China, India and the Arabian peninsula.

For most of the 1st millennium AD, the Axumite Kingdom in Ethiopia and Eritrea had a powerful navy and trading links reaching as far as the Byzantine Empire and India. Between the 14th and 17th centuries, the Ajuran Sultanate centered in modern-day Somalia practiced hydraulic engineering and developed new systems for agriculture and taxation, which continued to be used in parts of the Horn of Africa as late as the 19th century.

On the east coast of the continent Swahili traders linked the region into an Indian Ocean trading network, bringing imports of Chinese pottery and Indian fabrics in exchange for gold, ivory, and slaves. Swahili Kingdoms created a prosperous trade empire, where occupied the territory of modern-day Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Swahili cities were important trading ports for trade with the Middle East and Far East.

In the interior of Africa, trade was far more limited. Low population densities made profitable commerce difficult. The massive barrier of the Congo rainforests were more imposing than the Sahara, blocking trade through the center of the continent.

It was the arrival of the Islamic armies that transformed the economies of much of Africa. Though Islam had comparatively little impact on North Africa where large cities, literacy, and centralized states had been the norm, Muslims were far more effective at penetrating the Sahara than Christians had been. This was largely due to the camel, which had carried the Arab expansion and would soon after carry large amounts of trade across the desert.

A series of states developed in the Sahel on the southern edge of the Sahara which made immense profits from trading across the Sahara. The first of these was the Kingdom of Ghana, reaching it peak in the 12th century. Soon, others such as the Mali Empire and Kanem-Bornu, also arose in the region. The main trade of these states was gold, which was plentiful in Guinea. Also important was the trans-Saharan slave trade that shipped large numbers of slaves to North Africa.

600–1600 AD

An Okpoho variety of Manilla from the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria.

Many wealthy empires grew around coastal areas or large rivers that served as part of important trade routes. The kingdoms of Mali and Songhai Empire grew along the Niger River between 1200 and 1590. Berber traders from the Sahel—a region south of the Sahara Desert—traded dates, copper, horses, weapons and cloth that they brought from north Africa in Camel trains. Trade with the Berber people, and other groups, drove the growth of the Ghana empire, which traded its gold, kola nuts, and slaves. West Africans created a demand for salt, which was collected at desert oases, and which they used to preserve food as well as for seasoning it.

In 1324, Mansa Musa, the king of Mali, made a historically famous Hajj (pilgrimage) to Mecca. There was an enormous group organized to undertake the Hajj with the king. It included "60,000 men, including 1200 servants" and records show that Mansa Musa gave out so much gold in Egypt, that its economy became depressed.

Between 1000 and 1500, the forests of West Africa also became part of trade networks, particularly under the reigns of the Yoruba kings. Ifé was a vital trade town, along the route from the tropical forests to Djenné, a major trade centre in Sudan, near other large trade cities such as Timbuktu and Gao. Ifé's location also placed it near Benin and the Atlantic Ocean. Yoruba civilization was supported by cities surrounded by farmed land, but extensive trade development made it wealthy.

Mural from Old Dongola, the former capital of Makuria, depicting a financial deal

By 1000, the Bantu language-speaking people of Zimbabwe and Southern Africa developed extensive overseas trade with lands as far away as China and India, from which they received porcelain, beads, and Persian and Arab pots. They traded domesticated beef (rather than meat from game animals), iron, and ivory and gold. The city of Great Zimbabwe, founded around 1100, was the centre of the Shona kingdom until around 1400.

Much trade in the forest kingdoms was done at the local level, typically by ordinary Yoruba people at local markets. In some towns these were held every 3 or 4 days. Cloth, vegetables, meat, and other goods were traded, and paid for using small seashells called cowries which were imported from East Africa. Bars of copper and iron, called manilas, were produced in standard shapes to be used as currency. Other items used in trade as a form of currency included salt, cloth, and bars of gold.

Trade with the Middle East had begun as early as ancient Egypt. Islam was introduced to the Horn region early on from the Arabian peninsula, shortly after the hijra. Zeila's two-mihrab Masjid al-Qiblatayn dates to the 7th century. The spread of Islam brought Arab traders as far as Morocco. The Adal Sultanate in the Horn region also maintained bilateral relations with the Ottoman Empire. The institutional framework for long-distance trade across political and cultural boundaries had long been strengthened by the adoption of Islam as a cultural and moral foundation for trust among and with traders. On the Swahili Coast to the southeast, the Sultan of Malindi sent envoys to the Chinese imperial palace in Nanjing Yongle bearing a giraffe and other exotic gifts.

European influence

Early European colonization

Further information: European exploration of Africa and Colonisation of Africa

 

A map of Africa by John Thomson, 1813.

The earliest European colonists settled in North Africa in ancient times. These colonists included Phoenicians and Greeks. Settlers from ancient Athens and other parts of Greece established themselves along the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. They were later followed by colonists of the Roman Empire. Rome's colonies "served as a prototype" for later European colonial movement into the continent.

Portugal was the first European empire to penetrate deep into Sub-Saharan Africa to establish colonies. Portuguese prince Henry the Navigator advanced Portuguese exploration of Africa, driven by two desires: to spread Christianity, and to establish Africa as a bastion of Christianity against the Ottoman Empire, which was making many African converts to Islam. Africa was exploited for commercial purposes because of another Portuguese goal: to find a route to India, which would open the entire Indian Ocean region to direct trade with Portugal. Conquest of territory in Africa also meant that the Portuguese could use African gold to finance travel along this new trade route.

The Portuguese began significant trading with West Africa in the 15th century. This trade was primarily for the same commodities the Arabs had bought—gold, ivory, and slaves. The Portuguese sold the Africans Indian cloth and European manufactured goods but refused to sell them guns. Soon, however, other European powers such as France, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain were developing their own trade with Africa, and they had fewer restrictions. The major European imperial powers in Africa were Portugal, Great Britain, France, and to a lesser extent Germany, Belgium, Spain and Italy. Portugal's presence in Africa as an imperial power lasted until the 1970s, when the last of its former colonies declared independence after years of war.

The Atlantic Ocean had long been all but impenetrable to the galleys that plied the Mediterranean. That any ship needed to pass thousands of kilometers of waterless desert before reaching any populated regions also made trade impossible. These barriers were overcome by the development of the caravel in Europe. Previously, trade with Sub-Saharan Africa could only be conducted through North African middlemen. Now Europeans could trade directly with the Africans themselves.

This valuable trade lead to rapid change in West Africa. The region had long been agriculturally productive and, especially in western Nigeria, densely populated. The massive profits from trade and the arrival of guns lead to significant centralization and a number of states formed in the region such as the Ashanti Confederacy and Kingdom of Benin. These states became some of the wealthiest and most advanced in Africa. Wealthy merchants began to send their children to European universities and their well armed standing armies could challenge European forces.

Many West-African natives, such as Seedies and Kroomen, served on European ships, and received regular pay, which greatly enhanced their status back home.

Atlantic slave trade

Further information: Atlantic slave trade

Clearly, the slave trade enriched the segments of African society that traded in slaves. However, the modern historiography of slavery has swung between two poles on the question of its demographic and economic effects on Africa as a whole. Early historical accounts of the Atlantic slave trade were largely written for a popular audience by abolitionists and former slaves like Olaudah Equiano who emphasized its profoundly negative effects on African peoples. As the 19th century progressed, accounts of the negative impact of slavery were increasingly used to argue for European colonization of the continent. Conversely, there were those, like the British explorer and geographer William Winwood Reade, who drew on the accounts of slave traders to argue that the effects of slavery were positive.

By the early 20th century, the view of slavery as a negative influence on Africa prevailed among professional academic historians in Europe and the United States. During the decolonization period following World War II, an influential group of scholars, led by J.D. Fage, argued that the negative effects of slavery had been exaggerated, and that the export of slaves had been offset by population growth. Walter Rodney, a specialist on the Upper Guinea Coast, countered that European demand for slaves had vastly increased the economic importance of the slave trade in West Africa, with catastrophic effects. Rodney, who was active in Pan-African independence movements, accused Fage of whitewashing the role of Europeans in Africa; Fage responded by accusing Rodney of nationalist romanticism.

Debates on the economic impacts of the Atlantic trade were further stimulated by the publication of Philip Curtin's The Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (1969), which argued that 9.566 million slaves were exported from Africa through the Atlantic trade. In the 1970s, the debate on the economic impacts of the Atlantic trade increasingly turned on demographic estimates of slave exports in relation to continental birth rates. Most scholars now believe that Curtin was too conservative in his calculation, with most estimates ranging between 11.5 million to 15.4 million. More recently, John K. Thornton has presented an argument closer to that of Fage, while Joseph Inikori, Patrick Manning and Nathan Nunn have argued that the slave trade had a long-term debilitating impact on African economic development.

Manning, for example, arrived at the following conclusion, after accounting for regional variations in slave exports and assuming an annual African population growth rate of 0.5.%: the population of Africa would have been 100 million rather than 50 million in 1850, if not for the combined effects of the external and internal slave trades. Nunn, in a recent econometric analysis of slave-exporting regions in all parts of Africa, found "a robust negative relationship between the number of slaves taken from a country and its subsequent economic development." Nunn argues, moreover, that this cannot be explained by poverty prior to the slave trade, because more densely populated and economically developed parts of Africa regressed behind previously less developed, non-slave exporting areas during the course of the Atlantic, trans-Saharan, Red Sea and Indian Ocean slave trades.

Colonial era

Further information: Scramble for Africa

1884–1945

The Berlin Conference (German: Kongokonferenz or "Congo Conference") of 1884–85 regulated European colonization and trade in Africa during the Imperialism period, and coincided with Germany's sudden emergence as an imperial power. Called for by Portugal and organized by Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of Germany, its outcome, the General Act of the Berlin Conference, can be seen as the formalization of the Scramble for Africa. The conference ushered in a period of heightened colonial activity by European powers, while simultaneously eliminating most existing forms of African autonomy and self-governance. During this colonial time, the economy of Africa was re-arranged to serve Europe and Europeans, and the European industrial chain began in Africa and ended in European industrial warehouses.

All of Africa would ultimately fall under European colonial rule by 1914, with the exceptions of Ethiopia and Liberia. The partitioning of African territory among European regimes often violated existing boundaries recognized by local Africans. Some of the independent African states affected by the partitioning of the continent included:

• Al-Hajj Umar Ahmadu Sefu
• Ankole
• Asanti
• Bagirmi
• Barotse
• Basutoland
• Benin Kingdom
• Bornu
• Buganda
• Bunyoro
• Burundi
• Chokwe
• Dahomey
• Empire of Sokoto
• Jumbe
• Karagwe
• Matabele
• Merina
• Mirambo
• Mlozi
• Morocco
• Msiri
• Rwanda
• Samori
• (Mahdist State of the) Sudan
• Yao Chiefs
• Yoruba State
• Wadai
• (Sultanate of) Zanzibar
• Zulu Empire

Under colonial rule, the plantation system of farming was widely introduced in order to grow large quantities of cash crops, and employing cheap (often forced) African labor for export to European countries. Mining for gems and precious metals such as gold was developed in a similar way by wealthy European entrepreneurs such as Cecil Rhodes. The implementation and effects of these colonial policies could be brutal. One extreme example of exploitation of Africans during this period is the Congo Free State, administered under a form of "company rule". The Belgians, under Leopold II of Belgium, allowed businesses to use forced labour as they saw fit. The brutal conditions, famine and disease ended in the deaths of an estimated 10 million Congolese between 1885 and 1908.

Belgian government commissions in the 1920s found that the population of Belgian Congo had fallen by as much as 50% under Congo Free State rule as a result of forced labor (largely for the purposes of rubber cultivation), massacre by colonial troops, famine and disease. In white settler colonies like Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South Africa and Southwest Africa (now Namibia), the most fertile lands were forcibly expropriated from the indigenous populations for use by white settlers. In these countries African farmers were pushed onto "native reserves," usually located on arid, marginal lands. Slavery was also widely abolished by colonial powers.

Economics

Railway map of Africa, including tracks proposed and under construction, The Statesman's Yearbook, 1899.

To some colonizers, such as the British, the ideal colony was based on an open economy, actively engaged in world trade through the export of raw materials and the import of finished goods. The British practiced a policy of light administration, enforcing relatively little regulation on their colonies, especially in non-economic matters. As long as British interests were achieved, native populations were given greater individual freedoms. A great example for this is the British colonial education system. It relied mainly on local resources and languages in education, many missionaries were run by Africans. This resulted in higher numeracy levels in areas that were influenced by British colonial education, and thus an increase in human capital. Other colonizers, such as the French, took a more active approach to governance, encouraging or even requiring their subjects to more fully assimilate into French culture.

Colonizers were under heavy political pressure to make their colonies immediately and continuously profitable. In almost all cases, this constraint led to a shortage of long-term investment from the mother countries into the economic development in their colonies. While these countries did finance some major infrastructure projects designed to facilitate trade, this was primarily to aid in the immediate extraction of valuable resources, and there was little to no investment into growing local business. Another reason colonial governments allowed local economies to lag behind was that competitive local industries would have reduced the colonies’ trade dependence on the central economies in Europe.

For the colonies to be integrated into the world economy and imperial trade network, the colonial governments needed the local citizens to engage in market activity, rather than simply subsistence agriculture. One method that colonial powers used to urge the native populations into participating in the larger economy was the requirement that taxes be paid in official currency. This made subsistence farming less feasible, as the producers then needed to sell at least some surplus in the market to obtain the currency needed for the payment of taxes.

Many times colonial powers collected these taxes through the assistance of local African chiefs, who were politically and financially supported by the colonial governments in exchange for their assistance in enforcing these governments’ policies, especially for policies that could be unpopular. Thus, the colonizers themselves avoided some degree of animosity from their subjects by using these established chiefs as proxies to enforce many of their coercive policies.

Today, many African economies are affected by the legacy of colonialism. In agriculture, the plantation systems that they introduced were highly unsustainable and caused severe environmental degradation. For example, cotton severely lowers soil fertility wherever it is grown, and areas of West Africa that are dominated by cotton plantations are now unable to switch to more profitable crops or even to produce food because of the depleted soil. Recently, more countries have initiated programs to change to traditional, sustainable forms of agriculture such as shifting cultivation and bush fallow in order to grow enough food to support the population while maintaining soil fertility which allows agriculture to continue in future generations. (Gyasi)

• 

  Ivory trade in the African Great Lakes region, 1880s.

• 

  Arab slave traders and their captives near the Ruvuma (Rovuma) river in today's Tanzania and Mozambique, then under Portuguese rule (1866).

• 

  Children in Cameroon weaving, 1919.

• 

  Essaouira in 1809.

• 

  Port of Zeila, 19th century.

• 

  Bridge over the Magech River near Gondar, 1883.

Independence and the Cold War

After World War II, European attitudes towards Africa began to change. In the aftermath of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, 'Western' powers were averse to the idea of using outright conquest to annex territory. At the same time, agitation against colonial rule was becoming persistent in Africa. Between 1945 and 1948 there was a series of strikes and protests, in Senegal, Tanzania, on the French West African railway system, and along West Africa's Gold Coast.

African countries gradually won their independence (with colonial-era boundaries intact), in most cases without prolonged violent conflict (exceptions include the Cameroon, Madagascar and Kenya). As the Cold War continued, African governments could count on support from either Western governments or Communist patrons, depending upon their ideology.

The early years of independence went relatively smoothly for most African countries. This economic resilience eroded for the most part over the next several decades. Many arguments have been made to identify factors to explain the economic decline of many African countries. The tendency towards single-party rule, outlawing political opposition, had the result of keeping dictators in power for many years, perpetuating failed policies. Loans from foreign governments became crippling burdens to some countries that had difficulty even paying the interest on the loans. The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) estimates that between 1970 and 2002 "sub-Saharan Africa received $294 billion in loans, paid out $268 billion in debt service, and yet still owes $300 billion".

Conflicts such as the Second Congo War, which alone killed an estimated 2.7–5.4 million people, have set African economies back.

At various points during the late 20th century, the following debts were incurred by African governments (amounts are in billions of US dollars):

• Nigeria (33)
• South Africa (22)
• Democratic Republic of the Congo (13)
• Sudan (9)
• Ethiopia (8)

By the 1980s, political conflict had erupted into civil war in some countries, and the political instability kept some economies mired for many years. Some African governments faced practical problems in implementing industrial change as they attempted rapid modernization of their economies; costing and mismanagement problems in agricultural, manufacturing, and other sectors meant the failure of many projects. One result was African countries becoming increasingly dependent upon foreign food imports.

A heavy blow to the economies of many African countries came from the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. Arab OPEC member countries opposed Israel during the Yom Kippur War of October 1973. OPEC embargoed oil exports to many Western governments as retaliation for their having supported Israel in the War. 40 African countries were dependent upon oil imports from OPEC, and when the price of oil rose rapidly from the embargo, African exports became too expensive for many foreign markets.

Poverty

Main article: Poverty in Africa

A major question in the economic history of Africa is focusing on explanations for the relative poverty of the continent. Economists today use different ways to explain this phenomenon usually either an external or internal approach.

External approach

External approaches usually focus on institutional patterns within economies. They try to explain Africa's economic development as subject to European institutional decisions of the past. European colonial governments had no incentive to create institutions fostering economic development in African colonies, but rather economic extraction of given resources. Even today, African institutions still depend on these early decisions. For example, in Africa, property rights are not established or enforced in a way promoting economic activity.

Internal approach

Here two distinct ways have to be differentiated: The first one, similar to the external approach, focuses on property right distributions in Africa. These usually emerge from the setup of the society, being more collective than individualist with tribes or families playing an important role in Africa. Thereby the distribution of property rights is an obstacle to economic development. Also, there are few incentives to change this setup into an economically more advantageous setting. For rulers it is often the rational choice to stick to this property rights setup, thereby being able to extract more from their dominion than by fostering economic development. The second internal approach focuses directly on resource endowments within the specific regions. Labor scarcity until the 20th century combined with a relatively low quality of soils lead to an extensive way of farming, largely relying on vast amounts of land rather than on intensive use of labor on the land. Combined with bad institutions from precolonial or colonial times this economic setup hinders the extensive use of technology and thereby slowing down or even preventing economic development.

Modern era

See also: Africa Rising

 

Port of Cape Town, South Africa.

The wealthy elite in Africa in the late 20th century was characterized by civil servants functioning as "gatekeepers", holding positions with authority to approve foreign aid, humanitarian assistance, and private investment (typically foreign). Bribery and corruption became entrenched in some countries. Environmental and political catastrophe combined in several famines during the 1970s and 1980s in Ethiopia, Mali, Mauritania and Mozambique. The impact of drought and desertification of a large part of the continent came to widespread public attention by the early 21st century.

Railway projects were important in mining districts from the late 19th century. Large railway and road projects characterize the late 19th century. Railroads were emphasized in the colonial era, and roads in ‘post-colonial’ times. Jedwab & Storeygard find that in 1960–2015 there were strong correlations between transportation investments and economic development. Influential political include pre-colonial centralization, ethnic fractionalization, European settlement, natural resource dependence, and democracy.

Africa's economy only began to take off in the early 2000s as the political situation improved, national governments began to crack down on corruption and patronage, macroeconomic growth plans aimed at improving living conditions began to be implemented, and millions of Africans continued to flock to the cities in search of jobs and other amenities.