Western policies are responsible for Africa’s failure to develop

Development policies are based on a flawed analysis of the history of development by the West. African development strategies need to solve local problems with the existing material and intellectual resources of local people. Africa does not need big social goals but small policies that make everyday life more predictable.

Two ideas are central to the concept of development.

• Firstly, the belief that development describes the political, economic and social condition of Western countries.
• Secondly, the assumption that if a country follows a set of policies (which people believe to be responsible for the present state of Western societies) it will reach a state similar to theirs.

Both are wrong.

People think that the way to development is both known and accepted by those who are expected to undertake it. However, this is a dangerous argument since belief in the inevitability and desirability of certain states of affair can lead to totalitarianism. We can see aspects of this totalitarianism in the international disapproval of countries that seem to be refusing development.

People think that development can only be brought to Africa by enlightened outsiders who will correct what African history, the environment, politics and culture have done wrong. The West claims that Africa needs development because it lacks development. The real reason is that the West wants to achieve its own geopolitical and strategic interests.

The question that African countries have to address is whether such interests are consistent with their own nation-building efforts. Moreover:

• The big issues, such as the balance of payments or shortcomings in political accountability, are not what make life for Africans difficult. Lack of jobs, stability and the space to discuss local issues with members of one’s community are more fundamental problems.
• Development itself is one of the major unacknowledged sources of unpredictability in the everyday life of Africans. 
• Most Africans have become guests in their own worlds. Foreign objects and ideas, over which they have no control, have invaded their lives in the name of development. These include medicines, schools, roads, political parties, election laws and human rights.
• If Africans are unable to make such foreign objects and ideas relevant to their everyday lives their livelihoods will not improve and the result will be non development.

Development, as it is understood today, might lock African countries into a totalitarian vicious circle. Therefore:

• The search for African alternatives to development must begin with a resistance against the present understanding of development.
• While African countries should commit themselves to political, economic and social stability and justice, they must broaden their horizons beyond current development ideas.
• The real alternatives must be those that seek to tackle the small problems that make everyday life in Africa unpredictable. These problems vary in nature and cannot be properly grasped with reference to the distant language of economics and political science.