Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Goodrich Tshuma
MPA 514 – African Philosophy
Dr E.O. Ekwueme, SJ
9 December 2018
According to Dambisa Moyo, there are many reasons why foreign aid for Africa has
never worked, is not working, and will never work. First, receivers misuse foreign aids. In
other words, most African leaders embezzle the money given as aid. How do they do that?
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Before the money reaches to the intent beneficiaries or project, leaders transfer good amount
to their offshore accounts. Secondly, foreign aids are often invested on nonproductive
sectors. Thus, at the end of it most of the projects funded by foreign aids are unsustainable.
This leads to more lending, environmental degradation, and over dependence. , (Harsch 155).
Thirdly, foreign aids undermine local peoples’ own criteria of development. It overlooks
material, social and spiritual well-being of local people, as its implementers focus on the so-
called donor will. In short, Foreign aids help most African countries survive and not realizing
sustainable, life centered development (155).
Sankara proposes the change of mindset of Africans. He argues that African leaders
should stop living luxurious lifestyle; rather they should live a life of austerity. He highlights
that foreign aids are not permanent, and that African intellectuals should help define policies
that will limit dependence syndrome and make Africa a self-reliant continent. He asserts that
Africa should only accept aids that help them get away with aids (Harsch 156). In his article
‘An endogenous model to development’, Sankara advises African states to endorse an
endogenous or a self-centered development as the process of economic, social, cultural,
scientific and political transformation. According to him, African model of development has
to be based on the mobilization of internal social forces, resources, knowledge, and
experiences of the people. For Sankara, citizens should be active agents in the transformation
of their society instead of remaining spectators outside of a political system inspired by
foreign models (“Thomas Sankara” 1)
What is Economic Development in African Perspective?
At the independence, most African countries found themselves in a situation where
poverty was deep-seated, resources were limited, population was rapidly growing, and the
number of educated indigenous middle class was nearly non-existent. These realities forced
most African nationalists to formulate ideologies that could help their respective countries
address the aforementioned problems. Some of these African nationalists such as Nkrumah,
Sekou Touré, Senghor, Sankara, and Nyerere adopted African socialism as their ideology.
Although the adherents of the African socialism argued that, their notion of socialism was
different from the Soviet Union’s, the Chinese, and the Marxist’s, their main objective was
still essentially an attempt to resolve social and economic inequalities by controlling the
means of production (Akyeampong). They believed that true economic and social
development could only be realized if means of production were socialized (Nkrumah).
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disagree, but that did not dissuade members from the main objectives of the meet. Thus, basic
human needs for a country should be decided through dialogue and conversation.
bribery. To achieve their objectives, they change narratives to suit their interest and rallying
people against the government.
In many African countries, patriarchy, as denounced by Sankara, is among the
greatest challenge to development. In a patriarchal system, women are overexploited.
Although they devote several hours to housework (cooking, care of children and adult...), this
kind of work is not valued because it does not involve a financial return. The consequence is
that those who work outside the household and who receive a salary, that is to say essentially
men, find themselves in a position of domination. Another characteristic of a patriarchal
system is the difficulty for woman to claim their rights in a society where customary laws
favour men over women. A typical example concerns the right to land inheritance. Even in
countries where women's rights are most respected, as in Rwanda, the right of women to
inheritance remains a taboo subject. Lastly, domination-based relationships produce a
discourse that represents social inequalities as natural. In such a society, subjugation of
women is easily justified and the non-participation of women in the country's development is
not felt as a problem. Only men are considered the engine of development.
The second great challenge to the proposed model of development is capitalism. It has
been incorporated into socialism. If men suffer from capitalism, Sankara said, women suffer
more. In a capitalistic society, women are underpaid. The reason being that they are
considered less productive: because of their physical makeup, they spend some time on leave
for pregnancy, maternity leave, caring for the relatives… These reason are used to explain
why a woman gets a lower a salary compared to a man even if they are equally qualified.
Capitalism benefits from this injustice. Comanne holds that in women’s workers, capitalism
has “a cheaper, more flexible labour pool that can be used or laid off according to market
fluctuations”. This enables capitalists, Comanne adds, “to bring down rates of pay generally”.
This analysis applies also to marginalized groups in all societies. Capitalism exploits them for
its profit and maintain them in chronic poverty. In a new model of development,
empowering economically women and marginalized people will be beneficial for the nation
and the whole continent.
The lack of planning and looting of the nation is the third threat to the development
model that we have proposed. In many African countries, agriculture, the sector where
women and peasants are more active is neglected. If those who spend a lot of time in fields
are not encouraged (mostly women) no development is possible. To end poverty and hunger,
a report of World Bank suggests, there is need to help women’s access to productive
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resources and (seeds, fertilizer, extension services) technologies, including land. In other
words, neglecting the development of agriculture and not empowering agents involved in this
sector is a threat to development. Lack of planning can concern all sectors: health, education,
justice, security… To give a concrete example, a few days ago, the Burundi minister of
education admitted that trades education was not well thought out by her ministry (November
2018). According to the Minister's comments, the following elements were not taken into
account: the number of teachers required, their intellectual level, the duration of teaching, etc.
This kind of confession is constantly heard from officials who, instead of seating and plan for
the development of the country, are busy fulfilling the agenda of their political parties
(Fanon), looting the country to the expense of nation development. Lack of planning affects
the way governments respond to basic human needs we identified above: security,
participation, freedom and others. This lack of planning reflects the lack of vision. “This
short-sighted bourgeoisie lacks vision and inventiveness” (Fanon 119). Yacouba and
Wologueme warn that, “A man without vision is likely going to fulfil somebody else’s vision
unconsciously. Likewise, a people without vision is ready to be exploited by another”. As
China is becoming the guest of honour in Africa, it is high time to revisit the speeches of
Sankara, Nkrumah, Fanon to learn how to respond to the “adaptability” of this big country
and to the ever-changing nature of patriarchy and capitalism if we want our model of
development to win.
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