Perspectives of Development in Africa: An Exploration of Toyin Falola’s Oeuvre

Discourse on development in Africa is fraught with the position of Africa in the global political economy. Sponsors and social scientists continue to debate the plague of underdevelopment in the African continent. These debates are centred on thoughts to discover appropriate governance models that can transform the sociopolitical economy of the continent. Despite individual countries in Africa conducting different developmental schemes to promote development, the level of development in the continent continues to move at a slow pace. Underdevelopment in Africa is caused by many factors such as relying on primary exports, insufficient capital, inadequate basic infrastructure, political conflicts, unstable government as well as predominance of corruption in governance. Over the decades, authors such as Nowrojee, SAIIA, Dawson and Brockmeier, Stuenkel and Tourinho, and House-Soremekun and Falolahave debated on humanitarian interventions such as military and foreign interventions, access to education, modern health facilities, transportation, housing and skills development that address the stated factors causing underdevelopment in Africa. These development strategies emerged from the urgent need to implement policies to abate severe ethnic cleavages, service delivery issues by indigenes and weak governance which was unfavourable in Africa. Hitherto, according to the neoliberalists, African developmentalism is inconclusive and insolvable as it only reflects a distorted picture of the African reality since it simply selects few problematic episodes in African history to measure the continent’s economic performance.Furthermore, the continuous decline and low growth of economies in most African countries in comparison to the rapid change in globalisation calls for a nuanced discussion for scholars’ engagement.