Debating Development in Africa
The African nations that gained independence from colonial rule from the 1950s through the 1970s faced a number of development challenges. Read the documents below and the relevant pages from Chapter 22 (the section Experiments in Economic Development: Changing Priorities, Varying Outcomes in particular) and then answer the question that follows.
1. Excerpt from A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism, 1987
A. Adu Boahen was a prominent historian and scholar in Ghana who acknowledged some positive aspects of colonialism but who, on the whole, was negative in his assessment of the legacy of colonialism.
“It is this loss of sovereignty and the consequent isolation from the outside world that one finds one of the most pernicious impacts of colonialism on Africa and one of the fundamental causes of its present underdevelopment and technological backwardness.”
Source: A. Adu Boahen, African Perspectives on Colonialism (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 99
2. Excerpt from Mildred Malineo Tau, “Women: Critical to African Development,” 1981
Post-independence planning for African economic development focused almost exclusive on men. In 1981, Mildred Malineo Tau wrote an essay on the importance of women for Africa’s economic development.
“Recognition of the role of women in development is critical.... The issue of women’s access to wage work and other sources of cash income in the African continent is more than one of equity. It goes beyond the question of equal rights for women to become one of economic survival for them and their children.”
Source: Mildred Malineo Tau, “Women: Critical To African Development,” Africa Report (March/April, 1981): 4–6.
3. Excerpt from George B.N. Ayittey, Africa Betrayed, 1992
George Ayittey is a prominent Ghanaian economist and scholar. His writings have focused on the internal problems that have hampered African development.
“It is easy for African leaders to put the blame somewhere else... on Western aid donors or on an allegedly hostile international economic environment, ... but in my view the internal factors... have played far greater roles than the external ones... [I]n Africa, government officials do not serve the people. The African state has been reduced to a mafia-like bazaar, where anyone with an official designation can pillage at will.”
Source: George B. N. Ayittey, Africa Betrayed (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), 100, 335–36.
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