Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T21:42:20.053Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - Critique of Eurocentrism and a Mapping of African Development Initiatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2024

Lehasa Moloi
Affiliation:
University of South Africa
Get access

Summary

For Africa as a continent and its people to experience freedom from Western intellectual bondage, the conceptual framing of African development discourse(s) must be re-grounded within African knowledge systems, values, history and culture, through African agency. Such a shift in thinking will enable Africans to participate actively in shaping their own development as agents, rather than merely existing as objects of the European development story. The colonization of Africa by Europeans has framed Africans as people without any history or knowledge of their own to improve the quality of their own lives. As I have already shown, this view of Africans, held by many European scholars, was used to justify the colonization of both Africa as a continent and its people. As a result, Africa's future development was also placed in the hands of Europeans, who were presented as a perfect model of how development was imagined. Anything that seemed to differ from this view was regarded as a form of backwardness. The idea and practice of development in Africa after World War II (from 1945 onwards) was a continuation of the same colonial pattern of undermining African people's capacity to solve their challenges.

Eurocentrism in Development Studies: From Modernization to Neoliberalism

The fundamental challenge facing Development Studies is how the subject can transcend the limitations created by Western epistemology and open the path for alternative development visions. According to Pieterse, Eurocentrism as a guiding intellectual paradigm has long served the agenda of imperial management of societies labelled part of the ‘Third World’. In this regard, Ndlovu-Gatsheni raises the following fundamental question: ‘What does development mean for a people struggling to emerge and free themselves from the inimical legacies of enslavement, colonialism, imperialism, apartheid, neocolonialism, underdevelopment as well as the imposition of the Washington Consensus and neoliberalism?’ In this context, it is important to interrogate the epistemological foundation that informs the nature and structure of development as a discourse in the Global South, and in Africa in particular. The main challenge facing Development Studies in Africa has been the fact that it is a derivative of Western epistemologies and that it is informed by Western experiences and a Western agenda. Therefore, African scholars face the challenge of decolonizing development theory itself to enable contextual relevance.

Type
Chapter
Information
Developing Africa?
New Horizons with Afrocentricity
, pp. 43 - 64
Publisher: Anthem Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×