Modernization and Africa's Development

Modernization has dominated Africa's development trajectory since the 1950s. The paradigm, which states that the path for the development of African countries lies in the replication of Western institutions, defines African culture and institutions as inimical to development. Up to the early 1980s, authoritarian state-centered development characterized the continent despite its failure to promote meaningful development and consequences such as economic dependency, debt, and alienation. The neoliberal Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) introduced in the beginning of the 1980s, which emphasized state minimization, currency devaluation, and social service subsidy removal, worsened Africa's economic crisis. SAP reformulations, which supposedly emphasized democratization, grassroots empowerment, educational reforms, and indigenous knowledge, retained modernization at their core and continued to denigrate Africa's culture as detrimental to development. This modernist denigration of African culture alienated African development, engendering a fierce resistance that countered development's progress. This paper argues that any meaningful strategy for Africa's development should originate from African culture and be implemented within a Pan-Africanist context. As a starting point, the development strategy must embrace the African renaissance paradigm.