The Saga of African Underdevelopment

The authors argue eloquently that most of the development paradigms that were used to transform African economies, under free trade imperialism or under colonial and postcolonial periods were incompatible with the African system of thought and traditional production systems or mode of production. 

Following this, they propose a bold development strategy to reverse the dismal economic performance of African countries in the post independence period. This new development model/policy is based on people-centered approach to economic development similar to the model that Finland implemented in 1899, dubbed the “Pellervo cooperative model”, which transformed the country’s agrarian economy into its industrialized economy of today. 

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388 pages