Economic reform as a precursor to political reform for development – does China have a model for resource-rich African Muslim countries?

Having gone through colonial exploitation for centuries, most of the colonies after independence from the West were confronted with two models. Contrary to the free market capitalist system based on power-sharing, some of the newly independent countries opted for an authoritarian model and ended up with unjust/distorted development based on exclusivist institutions. Despite having rich-resource endowments with less pressure of population, these countries essentially failed to promote inclusive economic institutions to ensure private property and an unbiased system of law which, in turn, would unleash the immense potentials based on incentives, talent and skills highly required for enhancing productivity and prosperity. The authoritarian but good governance (GG) under state-led development of East Asian miracle economies, in general, and China, in particular, pursuing the goal of economic modernisation before political reform made spectacular achievements in less than quarter of a century. But some of the resource-rich African countries, being unable to remain immune from the vested interest/political lobby groups, failed to make economic reform being promoted by agriculture-led development to facilitate political reform subsequently. Based on the main research question of this paper, it will be argued that the massive economic reform as that of China in terms of agriculture-led development can gradually set the stage for subsequent political reform. Based on the historical evidence of successful authoritarian development model, this paper argues in favour of Chinese style of gradualist development using incentives through empowering the households as well as individuals in materialising their potentials. However, only the effective inclusive institutions as experienced by way of ensuring all sorts of public and private goods can help the resource-rich African Muslim countries to pursue economic prosperity with fair distribution of economic, political and socio-cultural power resources. This, in turn, can help restore a ‘feeling of togetherness’ or what one of the greatest scholars of Islam – Ibn Khaldun – terms as ‘Asabiya’ for achieving a comprehensive, inclusive and sustainable development made possible by GG as opposed to liberal democracy.