Colonised minds? Post-development theory and the desirability of development in Africa (original) (raw)
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The persistence of development and the legacy of post-development theory in 21 st Century Africa
This article examines the legacy of post-development theory, in particular its relevance and applicability to debates about Africa's future. It scrutinises post-development theory, and its claims about the end of development, through the prisms of Africa's continued pursuit of development and its political economy of energy. It considers the impact of these aspects of Africa's developmental efforts on the ability of post-development theory to remain relevant in light of recent developments. Revisiting basic claims of post-development theory provides insights into the enduring disconnect and incommensurability between Africa's twenty-first century socioeconomic trajectories and the core assumptions of post-development theory.
Thinking Beyond Development: The Future of Post-Development Theory in Southern Africa
This paper examines how post-development theory can inform current debates on development and the search for alternatives to the post-WWII development paradigm. With few exceptions, global economic growth and increasing exploitation of human and natural environments for profit has not produced broad-based socioeconomic development in post-colonial societies that is any way sustainable. The paper begins by outlining central tenets of post-development theory, how they have been rejected and marginalized by critics in the development community, and the difficulty of translating the post-development idea of moving away from development based on ever-increasing growth, accumulation and consumption into actual politics and policy. This is however an urgent task: what is perceived as the great failure of Africa to live up to its post-independence challenge in terms of development and emancipation has resulted in a debilitating 'Afro-pessimism' in both scholarly and popular commenta...
The drastic and manifold difficulties Africa faces suggest that something more than mere delay, unfavorable conditions or misguided policies is obstructing the goal of development. The suggestion calls for a serious reflection on the experience of colonialism, but in a way different from those studies tracing African predicaments back to colonial or imperialist misdeeds. This does not mean colonialism is not the real culprit, just that such a stance is necessary in light of the fact that many studies have not focused on the real source of Africa's ills: the phenomenon of mental colonization. Those scholars who bring out the detrimental impact of mental alienation either fail to totally emancipate their views from Western constructs, or cannot produce an alternative to Eurocentrism. This paper discusses the contributions of African philosophical debates to the elucidation of the negative impacts of colonial discourse on Africa's development effort. It draws attention to the limitations of the contributions and proposes an alternative conception vindicating the view that the great task of freeing the African mind from Eurocentric constructions takes priority over the design of development policies.
Replacing Development: An African Theoretical Alternative.pdf
In this article, I consider whether there are values intrinsic to development theory and practice that are dubious in light of a characteristically African ethic. In particular, I focus on what a certain philosophical interpretation of the sub-Saharan value of communion entails for appraising development, drawing two major conclusions. One is that a majority of the criticisms that have been made of development by those sympathetic to African values are weak; I argue that, given the value of communion, development should not be rejected because it is essentially, say, overly materialistic and scientistic, or insufficiently spiritual and local. The second conclusion, however, is that three criticisms of development are strong from the perspective of Afro-communalism and are particularly powerful when set in that context. I argue that development theory and practice are characteristically anthropocentric, individualist and technocratic, and that a reading of the sub-Saharan value of communion provides a unitary foundation for rejecting these features and for grounding an alternative, more relational approach to social progress and to what justice demands from the West in relation to Africa.
Post-Development Theory and the Question of Alternatives: a View From Africa
Third world quarterly, 2004
Post-development theorists have declared development obsolete and bankrupt and have called for ‘alternatives to development’. What do they mean by such calls and what should be the African response to such calls? In this paper I will attempt to address three important questions: first, what is meant by post-development theory’s call for ‘alternatives to development’? Second, why consider post-development theory from an African perspective? Third, what contributions can a consideration of African difference and diversity make towards debate on ‘alternatives to development’? I conclude by arguing that increased consideration of the African experience would be valuable for all who are seeking alternative ways of dealing with the problems that development purports to address.
Africa and development from discourse to reality
From the years of independences to the present era, many debates took place about Africa and its capacities for change, progress and development. This is evidenced through the implications of the United Nations and its specialised institutions, National programs like USAID, Regional organisations as OECD, and private institutes as McKinsey Global Institute, universities and research programs, International banks and so on, to help Africa in making possible the so desired development. It seems that the entire world systems are working to help Africa to achieve the aforementioned goals. Throughout the history of this continent researchers have discovered, as in other continents, different dynamics for change, progress and well-being which characterise all humans around the planet. Imperialism and colonialism have slowed down these movements initiated by Africa but have not stopped them (movements). Since the Conference of Berlin to nowadays, the problematic of development in Africa is one of the main debates in the scientific literature of development studies. In this essay, we want to try to understand some aspects of that problematic by analysing a critical article of one of the most radical theories of the development, namely the post-development theory.We want to explore issues that this theory put on debate on the basis of the critical article of Jan NederveenPieterse “After post-development”. The first part of this essay will help us to understand and discuss the development theory and its critics as well as negations put forth by some radicals as the post-development theory. In the second part of this essay, the contemporaneous debates about African development and its (new) mechanisms will be explored by regarding another article entitled “The ‘New Scramble’ and Labour in Africa”by Roger Southall. In this way, we want to understand the recent debates about Africa and the possibilities of its “development”.
2012
This special issue attempts to further a line of critical inquiry in African politics, administration and development discourse, which we refer to here as the 'posts'. In our terminology, the 'posts' constitute a body of narratives, which critique the heterogeneous assortment of orthodoxies in the mainstream African development discourse. The 'posts' , although part of the mainstream thinking, interrogate themes within that discourse for their disingenuous intellectual and policy approaches to African problems (see Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1999 for a general discussion of the subject). The 'posts' charge that mainstream discourses, far from being beacons of enlightenment about Africa, often reflect a broad intellectual inertia, manifested in failed policies to address poverty-alleviation, the region's main development challenge.
This paper seeks to examine the postmodernist perspective of development and its applications on the contemporary trends of development in Africa. The paper reveals that postmodernism is an aggressively expansive stage in global capitalism; the weakening of the centralized state power in developed and developing societies; the patterning of life by an increasingly powerful and penetrative technology that controls production and promotes consumerism and the development of liberationist social movement based not in class but in other forms of identity and nationalism such as race, gender, sexual orientation, the environment and the like. Secondary data was used for the paper. The paper contends that the postmodern society or late capitalism as it is also known has negatively affected the development of Africa as her cultural identity, attitude, behaviour and nationalism are gradually being replaced by a more dominant western culture as a result of globalization. The paper recommends among others that African leaders should endeavour to control the access and the use of the internet to protect the influence of western culture on the African continent.
IOSR journal of humanities and social science, 2013
This paper seeks to examine the postmodernist perspective of development and its applications on the contemporary trends of development in Africa. The paper reveals that postmodernism is an aggressively expansive stage in global capitalism; the weakening of the centralized state power in developed and developing societies; the patterning of life by an increasingly powerful and penetrative technology that controls production and promotes consumerism and the development of liberationist social movement based not in class but in other forms of identity and nationalism such as race, gender, sexual orientation, the environment and the like. Secondary data was used for the paper. The paper contends that the postmodern society or late capitalism as it is also known has negatively affected the development of Africa as her cultural identity, attitude, behaviour and nationalism are gradually being replaced by a more dominant western culture as a result of globalization. The paper recommends among others that African leaders should endeavour to control the access and the use of the internet to protect the influence of western culture on the African continent.