African Development: A Critical Review

This paper looks at how African countries have been dribbled by the two ideological blocs-capitalist and socialist– all in search for ideal path to development. Their dissatisfaction with these two contending and often conflicting politico-economic prescriptions (path of capitalism and path of socialism) for development led scholars, intellectuals, leaders and policy-makers, and analysts in the Third world, which Africa constitutes a part, to come up with the idea of ‘delinking’ from the international capitalist system. Essentially in this paper, delinking means the breakaway of this group of countries from the imbalanced international capitalist system in order to develop. Various approaches of development are discussed. The paper also discusses ways through which African states are exploited and how these states react to this unequal relationship. The paper, then, visits the various strands of arguments for delinking. The findings reveal that African states need not delink, but remain within, and adjust to, the global capitalist system just like South Korea, India and Brazil. Secondly, African leadership has a very important role in Africa’s development and otherwise. Finally, ideology and language also plays vital role in this same respect.