Pan “Africa” Rising: The Paradox of Culture, Third Ways, and Coproducing Global Development

Abstract

This chapter concludes the book with a final analysis and interpretation of the encounters that have been engaged by Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu business formulated throughout the book as new Pan Africanisms. The chapter responds to the opening chapter’s book thesis questions: How do Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu Business enhance, contradict, undermine, or complicate the pan-African project? How do Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu Business engage with neoliberal Africa Rising and Pan Africanist worldviews, and are Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu Business models viable alternative routes to African development? To this end, concluding the book’s thesis, “Pan Africa Rising” reveals how Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu business models are presenting the aspirations of new African political economies that unfold viable Third Way Pan Africanist economic worldviews to direct more authentic and meaningful growth prospects for Africans. Significantly, with this concluding chapter, we demonstrate how it is that both Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu Business models encounter limitations to Africa Rising narratives—their policy failures, their notional Western-gaze rhetoric, and their reinforcement of African global economic dependency and marginalization. By revealing how it is that as new Pan Africanists Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu business models push back against Africa-Rising type externalist, neoliberal constructions of African international political economy, the chapter proposes the alternative theorization of African international political economy—“Pan Africa Rising”. Pan Africa Rising therefore underscores the significance of Afri-capitalism and Ubuntu Business’ models as culturally driven responses to the global political economy that infuses African identities and self-determined economic imaginaries and aspirations into global development discourses.