African socialism or Afrosocialism is a belief in sharing economic resources in a traditional African way, as distinct from classical socialism. Many African politicians of the 1950s and 1960s professed their support for African socialism, although definitions and interpretations of this term varied considerably. These politicians include Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and Modibo Keita of Mali, among others.
Origins and themes
As many African countries gained independence during the 1960s, some of these newly formed governments rejected the ideas of capitalism in favour of a more afrocentric economic model. Leaders of this period professed that they were practising "African socialism".
Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Modibo Keita of Mali, Léopold Senghor of Senegal, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Sékou Touré of Guinea, were the main architects of African Socialism according to William H. Friedland and Carl G. Rosberg Jr., editors of the book African Socialism.
Common principles of various versions of African socialism were: social development guided by a large public sector, incorporating the African identity and what it means to be African, and the avoidance of the development of social classes within society. Senghor claimed that "Africa’s social background of tribal community life not only makes socialism natural to Africa but excludes the validity of the theory of class struggle," thus making African socialism, in all of its variations, different from Marxism and European socialist theory.
African socialism became an important model of economic development for countries such as Ghana, Guinea, Senegal and Tanzania. While these countries used different models of African Socialism, a common thread of African Socialism emerged. This common thread was the desire for political and economic autonomy, self reliance, the Africanisation of business and civil service, Pan-Africanism and non-alignment.
History
The first influential publication of socialist thought tailored for application in Africa occurred in 1956 with the release of Senegalese intellectual Abdoulaye Ly's Les masses africaines et l'actuelle condition humaine.
Women and African Socialism
African Socialism proved to have mixed results for participating women. While some improvements were made from pre-developmental periods in the quality of life for women under African Socialism, setbacks and reflections of past gender hierarchies still persisted.
In Ghana, newfound independence did not create a restructuring of old gender roles. Households were the building blocks of agricultural production and were almost exclusively headed by male workers. Accrued resources were then disproportionately controlled by household heads, under the assumption that subordinate women did not have to do as much work.
However, economic crises in the 1980s saw the women of agricultural households adopt new strategies for reviving local welfare, such as replacing imported products with local goods and migrant male labor with their own. The increased presence of these women in the socialist workforce elevated their position in the community and granted them a say in rural production. Groups of working women began receiving their own plots of land from community leaders, and their contributions became recognized under the rural basis of Ghanaian socialism. Nonetheless, women who were not granted land often had to beg or receive permission from male landowners such as husbands or fathers. Without access to this land, local wives and daughters could not collect wild bush fruits or shea nuts, both crucial to financial welfare.
After the introduction of Ujamaa to Tanzanian life in the late 1960s, strict gender roles became commonplace and were celebrated as a pillar of nuclear family. Despite efforts of development policy to purge Tanzanian government of European influence, the reinforcement of nuclear family tradition and arrangement of women into the role of domestic house-maker reflected the practice of Christian colonizers before them.