Governance, Cultural Change, and Empowerment

Abstract

Thefirst three decades of African independence have been an economic, political, and social disaster. The number in absolute poverty is rising faster than anywhere else in the world, and is expected to exceed 250 million by the turn of the century. Once fine universities are in decay, and governments are chronically over-staffed and underperforming. This sad state of affairs is not simply a consequence of an unfortunate coincidence of collapsing commodity prices and mismanagement, but rather because of a fundamental flaw in the prevailing development paradigm. This was based on the erroneous proposition that state institutions derived from metropolitan models could be made the engine of development in the post-colonial era. In retrospect, it is all too obvious that the underlying cultural premises of these institutions were alien to the vast majority of Africans, and they started to crumble the moment the colonial administrators left.