Eastern Europe: consequences for Africa

Concern over the diversion of aid and investment funds away from Africa to Eastern Europe is valid but there is a tendency to see those changes as significant for Africa only in so far as they affect its relationship with the West. Their primary significance should be sought in the implications for African‐Eastern European relations, which have been of such importance in shaping contemporary Africa. The most profound danger of political change in Eastern Europe is the implicit threat to an alternative moral vision – that of socialism. The shortcomings of ‘actually existing socialism’ require critical evaluation, but so too do the implications of the rapid transformation currently taking place, not only to understand better what has happened in Eastern Europe but also to appreciate the similarities and differences between Eastern Europe and Africa. In Africa, perestroika has preceded glasnost, raising the question as to whether regimes in which free markets are being promoted, often by repressive means, can open up politically; in Eastern Europe the issue seems to be whether the delicate, newly‐democratised regimes and their unruly civil societies will tolerate or survive austerity. But while Eastern Europe is part of Europe and will undoubtedly be further integrated into Western capitalism, Africa, already marginalised, may well suffer further marginalisation.