The Unfinished Business of Decolonizing African Economies: An Institutionalist Perspective

The article argues that political decolonization in Africa did not dismantle the deeper economic and institutional architecture of the colonial system. Drawing on original institutional economics—especially Thorstein Veblen’s dichotomy between ceremonial and instrumental institutions, John R. Commons’ theory of working rules, William Dugger’s analysis of predatory institutions, and John Kenneth Galbraith’s framework of countervailing power—the article shows how colonial habits of thought, rules of governance, and structures of accumulation continue to shape African economic outcomes. These institutional legacies reproduce extractive patterns described by dependency theorists, constrain productive capacity, limit monetary sovereignty, and entrench vulnerability to external shocks. Building on earlier contributions to the theory of institutional adjustment, the article explains why Africa’s structural transformation has been systematically blocked and how a new institutional architecture can enable what might be called a “real-life Wakanda”—a sovereign, resilient, and justice-centered development model. Incorporating a contemporary reading of Veblen’s Engineers and the Price System, the article concludes with a solutions-oriented framework emphasizing the transformation of working rules, state capacity, monetary and industrial sovereignty, and the creation of new forms of countervailing power at domestic, regional, and transnational levels.