Why has Africa remained persistently poor over its recorded history? Has Africa always been poor? What has been the nature of Africa's poverty and how do we explain its origins? This volume takes a necessary interdisciplinary approach to these questions by bringing together perspectives from archaeology, linguistics, history, anthropology, political science, and economics. Several contributors note that Africa's development was at par with many areas of Europe in the first millennium of the Common Era. Why Africa fell behind is a key theme in this volume, with insights that should inform Africa's developmental strategies.
This book examines the various factors that have influenced the growth and development process of contemporary Africa. After discussing and weighing the schools of thought that have attempted to explain the paradox of Africa’s reduced growth and development in the midst of abundant resources, this volume comes up with comprehensive and detailed suggestions and recommendations to address this painful experience. This book consistently states that the average Africans, forming the overwhelming majority of the African population, are the least, if at all, to be blamed for the paradox; but rather the African leadership and its external cronies are to be fully blamed. Contemporary Africa’s Growth and Development seeks a solution to the African growth and development puzzle in proper allocation and oversight of resources, vision, perseverance, courage, corruption-free and good governance, as well as concrete, provable, solid, and genuine unity.
Together with Mauritius, Botswana is often categorized as one of two growth miracles in sub-Saharan Africa. Due to its spectacular long-run economic performance and impressive social development, it has been termed both an economic success story and a developmental state. While there is uniqueness in the Botswana experience, several aspects of the country’s opportunities and challenges are of a more general nature. Throughout its history, Botswana has been both blessed and hindered by its natural resource abundance and dependency, which have influenced growth periods, opportunities for economic diversification, strategies for sustainable economic and social development, and the distribution of incomes and opportunities. Through a political economy framework, Hillbom and Bolt provide an updated understanding of an African success story, covering the period from the mid-19th century, when the Tswana groups settled, to the present day. Understanding the interaction over time between geography and factor endowments on the one hand, and the development of economic and political institutions on the other, offers principle lessons from Botswana’s experience to other natural resource rich developing countries.
This volume reports on the state of crisis in Africa in the early twenty-first century. Africa, on the eve of the ‘independence revolution’, was the continent of hope and high expectations. By the third decade of independence, optimism had been replaced by dismality. African states had been beset by ethno-political squabbles, military rule, civil wars, Islamic and insurgent movements, extreme poverty and disease. With the ascent of redemocratization in the 1990s and of ‘new’ pan-Africanism derived from the formation of the African Union, Africa appeared set to claim its vaunted destiny. This book asks, with hindsight to the first decade of the twenty-first century: how real was the renaissance in African life? If the dismal African condition is a phase in the historical development of Africa, this volume does not see any golden age in the past to which Africa aspires to return. There is clearly a continuation and persistence of crisis, with an absence of good governance, personalisation of state power, widespread disease, and policy failure in education, economy and infrastructural development. Although endowed with abundant human and natural resources, Africa remains the least developed and most indebted continent. Whither then the African Renaissance? The methodologies that underpin the contributions in this book are as diverse as the specialisations of the contributors. The collection questions ideologically protected assumptions and presumptions, presenting Africa as it is, because it is only by knowing where Africa truly stands that a proper direction can be charted for it.
This book lays out a rationale, provides supporting evidence, and suggests promising pathways for Sub-Saharan Africa to sustain current economic growth by aligning its tertiary education systems with national economic strategies and labor market needs.
Langan reclaims neo-colonialism as an analytical force for making sense of the failure of ‘development’ strategies in many African states in an era of free market globalisation. Eschewing polemics and critically engaging the work of Ghana’s first President – Kwame Nkrumah – the book offers a rigorous assessment of the concept of neo-colonialism. It then demonstrates how neo-colonialism remains an impediment to genuine empirical sovereignty and poverty reduction in Africa today. It does this through examination of corporate interventions; Western aid-giving; the emergence of ‘new’ donors such as China; EU-Africa trade regimes; the securitisation of development; and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Throughout the chapters, it becomes clear that the current challenges of African development cannot be solely pinned on so-called neo-patrimonial elites. Instead it becomes imperative to fully acknowledge, and interrogate, corporate and donor interventions which lock many poorer countries into neo-colonial patterns of trade and production. The book provides an original contribution to studies of African political economy, demonstrating the on-going relevance of the concept of neo-colonialism, and reclaiming it for scholarly analysis in a global era.
This open access textbook offers a critical introduction to human and economic development prospects in Africa revolving around three questions: where is Africa today, what explains the current state, and, given historical trends and what we know about the world, where do we think the continent will be in 2040? And, a final question: what can we do to create a better tomorrow? It models ambitious progress in health, demographics, agriculture, education, industrialization, technological leapfrogging, increased trade, greater stability, better governance and external support. The book reviews the future of work/jobs, poverty and the impact of climate change. A combined Closing the Gap scenario presents a forecast of what could be possible by 2040. Each chapter suggests which policies might accelerate prospects for each sector. Written in an accessible style, and supported by a range of pedagogical features, this textbook introduces undergraduate and graduate students to the contemporary human and economic development prospects in Africa.
Regional development is a broad term but can be seen as a general effort to reduce regional disparities by supporting (employment and wealth-generating) economic activities in regions. In the past, regional development policy tended to try to achieve these objectives by means of large-scale infrastructure development and by attracting inward investment” (OECD, 2014).A territorial and regional approach to development is crucial in addressing regional challenges, regional economic competitiveness, and reducing socio-economic discrepancies. This book provides a forum to articulate and discuss Africa’s regional development issues in view of the rising opportunities within the African region. This volume contains 14 chapters and is organized in four sections: Introduction; Industry, Trade and Investment in Africa; Agricultural Services and the Water-energy-food Nexus in Africa; and Environmental and Cultural Dimensions to Africa’s Regional Development.
Rapid population growth, poorly planned urbanization, and evolving agricultural production and distribution practices are changing foodways in African cities and creating challenges: Africans are increasingly facing hunger, undernutrition, and malnutrition. Yet change also creates new opportunities. The food economy currently is the main source of jobs on the continent, promising more employment in the near future in farming, food processing, and food product distribution. These opportunities are undermined, however, by inefficient links among farmers, intermediaries, and consumers, leading to the loss of one-third of all food produced. This volume is an in-depth analysis of food system shortcomings in three West African cities: Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; Rabat, Morocco; and Niamey, Niger. Using the lens of geographical economics and sociology, the authors draw on quantitative and qualitative field surveys and case studies to offer insightful analyses of political institutions. They show the importance of “hard†? physical infrastructure, such as transport, storage, and wholesale and retail market facilities. They also describe the “soft†? infrastructure of institutions that facilitate trade, such as interpersonal trust, market information systems, and business climates. The authors find that the vague mandates and limited capacities of national trade and agriculture ministries, regional and urban authorities, neighborhood councils, and market cooperatives often hamper policy interventions. This volume comes to a simple conclusion: international development policy makers and their financial and technical partners have neglected urban markets for far too long, and now is the time to rethink and reinvest in this complex yet crucial subject.
There is no term so heavily contested in social science literature/nomenclature than 'Development'. This book brings Indigenous perspectives to African development. It is argued that contrary to development as we know it not working, a greater part of the problem is that conventional development approaches that work have in fact not truly been followed to the letter and hence the quagmire. All this is ironic since everything we do about our world is development. So, how come there is "difficult knowledge" when it comes to learning from what we know, i.e., what local peoples do and have done for centuries as a starting point to reconstructing and reframing 'development'? In getting our heads around this paradox, we are tempted to ask more questions. How do we as African scholars and researchers begin to develop "home-grown solutions" to our problems? How do we pioneer new analytical systems for understanding our communities and offer a pathway to genuine African development, i.e., Indigenist African development? (see also Yankah, 2004). How do we speak of Indigenist development mindful of global developments and entanglements around us? Can we afford to pursue development still mired in a "catch up" scenario? Are we in a race with the development world and where do we see this race ending or where do we define as the 'finishing line'?A Publication of the Centre for School and Community Science and Technology Studies [SACOST], University of Education, Winneba, Ghana.
