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Paper short abstract:

The paper highlights how black capitalism originates in the ancient African chiefless states in which the pre-colonial African constitution and other institutional arrangements including lineage and age-grade systems engineered social wealth.

Paper long abstract:

Several black scholars such as Walter Rodney, Kwame Nkrumah, and Chancellor Williams, among others, have highlighted how major historical events such as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, colonization, and neo-colonialism have contributed significantly to the development of Western states and underdevelopment of modern African states. Widespread unemployment, corruption, mass migrations, military coups, resource-based conflicts, and insurgency movements, among other ills, demonstrate the extent of underdevelopment in modern African states. In turn, racism and discrimination across different fields including police brutalities targeted at blacks and black communities outside Africa underline the unequal power relations between the African diaspora and the societies in which they live. Against this backdrop, the idea of black capitalism has been questioned as the existential threats facing Africans at home and abroad have partly fuelled the thought that capitalism is a Western phenomenon, which was brought into black communities by Europeans. In contrast, the paper argues that black capitalism originates in the ancient African chiefless states in which the pre-colonial African constitution and other institutional arrangements including lineage and age-grade systems engineered social wealth. The analysis also shows how ancient black capitalism in which social wealth was emphasised is in stark contrast to the current capitalist ideas in black societies that mostly celebrate individual wealth. The policy implication is that modern African states and black communities in general need to revisit the capitalist ideals that governed the pre-colonial chiefless states to effectively address contemporary problems.