"To understand the dynamism of the grassroots we must correct our false and mystified perceptions, move away from our 'development' mentality and stop thinking that external intervention is what is needed."
--Thierno H. Kane. Development 2 (1994), p. 48
Addressing the twenty-first world conference of the Society for International Development (Mexico City, 6-9 April 1994), Thierno H. Kane, Secretary General of Fouta Federation of Village Associations (Senegal) observed that "the p icture we have before us today could seem simple, but it is distressing. We see the Africa of granted independence; the Africa of armed liberalization movements; the Africa of enormous mineral resources; the Africa of resource richness; the Africa of drum mers; the Africa of the economic recovery sorcerer's apprentices; all these Africas...seem trapped in the same stranglehold that will be getting ever stronger: development" (Development 2 [1994], p. 47).
The resource materials in this chapter explain why Africans like Thierno Kane question and challenge the traditional concepts of development. Is development a solution, they ask, or is it, in fact, the problem? The resource materials also descri be the innovative, alternative development strategies that are being implemented in Africa and elsewhere in the Third World.
People First, which was written by a fieldworker with more than eight years' experience at the village level in Uganda, is the most readable of the three books for a popular audience.
Challenging perspectives by individual African development specialists are found in One Africa, One Destiny: Towards Democracy, Good Governance and Development (wa Mutharika 1995) and in a 59-page booklet entitled The Outlook for Development in the 1990s (Dadzie 1994). Bingua wa Mutharika, Secretary-General of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, draws two lessons from his study of African development. The first is that people must be at the center of all economic and social activity. "Those responsible for political and economic decisions," he contends, "must agree that if development bypasses the common people, then such development is meaningless both morally and spiritually." Wa Mutharika's second lesson is that "Africa cannont be developed using foreign traditions and cultures." Africa needs to learn from its own traditions, wa Mutharika concludes, and it must develop its own development ethics and philosophy.
K.K.S. Dadzie's booklet, The Outlook for Development in the 1990s, contains the texts of four lectures Dadzie delivered at the University of Ghana in June 1990 on various aspects of African development. Dadzie is the Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Geneva.
African Development: Adebayo Adedeji's Alternative Strategies (Asante 1991) presents the thinking of one of Africa's leading advocates of the need for alternative approaches to African development: Adebayo Adedeji, Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) from 1975 to 1991. Author S. K. B. Asante, himself an ECA senior regional adviser, draws extensively on Adedeji's writings to chart the course of the development debate in Africa since the 1950s.
The viewpoints of various African development theorists and practitioners are well represented in the following collections of papers:
Two clothbound volumes edited by Aguibou Y. Yansané contain papers presented at a Multidisciplinary Colloquium Series held at San Francisco State University in 1990 on "Evaluation of Development Strategies: Prospects for Growth in Africa in the 199 0s": Development Strategies in Africa: Current Economic, Socio-Political, and Institutional Trends and Issues (Yansané 1996) and Prospects for Recovery and Sustainable Development in Africa (Yansané 1996).
Perspectives often at odds with the views expressed in the publications listed above are evident in the conference papers brought together in The Crisis and Challenge of African Development (Glickman 1988). Here, academics at U.S. universities, World Bank officials, and the U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria (in 1988), offer their analyses of what has gone wrong with development in Africa and their recommendations for corrective actions.
Two bibliographies of note are Economic Development in Africa: A Select Bibliography, 1975-1988 (Research and Information System for the Non-Aligned and Other Developing Countries 1989) and Popular Participation and Development: A Bibliograph y on Africa and Latin America (Dow and Barker 1992).
"It is not by chance that Africa has remained underdeveloped. Consuming what it does not produce and producing what it does not consume, the continent exhibits an imbalanced, externally oriented economic structure that can, to a large degree, be attrib uted to the neglect of the development of its human resources and to its colonial legacy."
--Hassan Sunmonu, Africa Within the World (Adedeji 1993), p. 197.
The issue of rural development in Kenya and Zimbabwe is examined by African sociologists in Working with Rural Communities: A Participatory Action Research in Kenya (Chitere and Mutiso 1991) and Grassroots Leadership: The Process of Rural Dev elopment in Zimbabwe (Mararike 1995).
The 4-part television series, Local Heroes, Global Change (Church World Service, Elkhart, Ind.), examines "what works in the battle against hunger and poverty in the developing world." Ghana and Zimbabwe are two among the African nations covered in the series.