10/12/2017
Shushu Economics
The economic history of the Afrikan continent needs to be defined and the current generation of Afrikans must use this history to project a future path for Afrikan wealth generation.
It therefore must be stated that the policies of Afrikan governments would in this manner better serve their citizens, as the creation and operation of uniquely Afrikan enterprises would be of great benefit as a result, as a thriving Afrikan business landscape would serve their treasuries well and enable Afrikan governments to grow their status amongst the family of nations.
Although not clearly defined by Afrikan historians, Afrika's economic history is indeed an ancient one with several ancient Afrikan empires being recorded as sophisticated in scope, a few examples of which would be the Chinese, Arabic, Greek and Roman accounts of their trade on the Afrikan continent.
There are existence historical accounts of trade on the Swahili Coast by the Portuguese before the slave trade and with even wider accounts of ancient Egyptian, Malian and trade with Southern Afrikan empires such as Great Zimbabwe and Mapungubwe empires as late as 500 years ago.
The importance of these accounts are of great importance, as their clearly illustrate a pattern of what has become known as Shushu Economics, that is related to Afrikans traditionally allocated capital in its various forms to enhance the strength of their trade and history shows that this indeed was an effective method as Arab chroniclers are recorded as describing superbially functioning settlements with high degrees of social organisation.
Shushu Economics could be likened to an approach whereby the natural advantages of large Afrikan families would be employed in a structured and hierarchial order, whereby the division of labour and resource allocation would follow our traditional order that follows a age and expertise order, whereby the Elders are afforded greater relevance than say the youth.
Although strictly speaking everyone in traditional Afrikan society is equally important, greater responsibility is placed on the Elders to allocate resources towards the survival of the society, due to their experience, this however did not preclude younger community members from adding their insights when it adds value.
Shushu Economics can thus be defined as a value added approach to Afrikan Economic Theory, as this approach focuses on how value is derived along an Afrikan traditional society and it is through such economic practices that even later Christian missionary accounts that they famously observed that poverty, orphanse, and prison systems were foreign concepts to those larger Afrikan societies they encountered.
Of great interests to me is how Shushu Economics used resource allocation towards economic endeavours. Similar to the Stokvel resource allocation model, Shushu Economic resource allocation carried with it a greater wealth generating imperative, as it concerned itself principly on using strenght in numbers to accumulate and pool resources.
Once this is achieved than an economic venture is undertaken, with all those who contributed being then rewarded with a share in the rewards. This model it can be argued is the precursor to the current shareholding model of the capitalist system.
Its benefits can also be likened to the current Scandiavian social security model, whereby greater emphasis is placed on the general welfare of the society than of the individual. This has often been described as the concept of uBuntu in the current epoch of Afrikan history.
It is my contention that this valued added communal economic approach still today must serve as a model by which Afrikans can employ to address localised, regional and inter-regional wealth creation in the context of Afrika's post colonial phase.
