The research that has been done in the various areas of development has tended to focus on the structure of the state and economic modes of production. This approach ignores the intrinsic variables such as culture and traditional Africa's modes of association which incorporated the cyclical nature of existence and experience. This work departs from the traditional mode of development analysis by articulating the concept of social death as the basis for the reinvention of the African woman, consequently enabling a rethinking of development analysis formulations from a more authentic African perspective. For the purposes of this work, “Africa” and “African(s)” refer to and include physical, abstract and intellectual spaces involving precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial experiences of Africans and/or their interaction on the continent and in the diaspora. A viewpoint based on the assumption of Africa as an all-inclusive heritage, it requires the maintenance of the match between the African experience and the acquired modes of discourse that have been used to explore and exclude that experience.

For example, the orthodox school of thought looks at development from an economic perspective whereby the macroeconomic variables are such that that which cannot be quantified, the non-visible, is not a subject of study. On the other hand the historical approach of the radical school of thought (the political economy school of thought) has not done enough to incorporate the role of the traditional African woman into its mode of analysis. Both schools of thought are derived from the western unilineal mode of analysis which forms the strong base for the development and maintenance of scientific thought and practice.