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AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT: THE IMPERATIVES OF …

AFRICA'S development : THE IMPERATIVES OF indigenous . knowledge AND VALUES. by MARTIN ODEI AJEI. submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY. in the subject PHILOSOPHY. at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA. PROMOTER: PROFESSOR M. B. RAMOSE. AUGUST 2007. Contents Declaration vi Acknowledgement vii List of Acronyms viii Key terms x Summary xi INTRODUCTION: development AND PHILOSOPHY 1. i. Statement of the Problem 1. ii. Against Economism 1. iii. Critique of Competition 5. iv. Poverty is Unnatural 6. v. Thesis Statement 9. vi. Methodology 10. vii. Structure of Dissertation 15. CHAPTER ONE: DIMENSIONS OF development AND. THEIR INFLUENCE ON AFRICA 21. What is development 21. development and Economic Growth 25. Schools of development Thought and their Influence in Africa 27. The Modernization School and its Essential Claims 27. Growth Theory under Economic Liberalism 28. Evolutionary Theory 29. Functionalist Theory 30.

AFRICA’S DEVELOPMENT: THE IMPERATIVES OF INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE AND VALUES by MARTIN ODEI AJEI submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of

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1 AFRICA'S development : THE IMPERATIVES OF indigenous . knowledge AND VALUES. by MARTIN ODEI AJEI. submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY. in the subject PHILOSOPHY. at the UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AFRICA. PROMOTER: PROFESSOR M. B. RAMOSE. AUGUST 2007. Contents Declaration vi Acknowledgement vii List of Acronyms viii Key terms x Summary xi INTRODUCTION: development AND PHILOSOPHY 1. i. Statement of the Problem 1. ii. Against Economism 1. iii. Critique of Competition 5. iv. Poverty is Unnatural 6. v. Thesis Statement 9. vi. Methodology 10. vii. Structure of Dissertation 15. CHAPTER ONE: DIMENSIONS OF development AND. THEIR INFLUENCE ON AFRICA 21. What is development 21. development and Economic Growth 25. Schools of development Thought and their Influence in Africa 27. The Modernization School and its Essential Claims 27. Growth Theory under Economic Liberalism 28. Evolutionary Theory 29. Functionalist Theory 30.

2 Common Assumptions and Methodology 32. The Influence of Modernization on development Practice in Africa 34. Critique of Modernization 36. Dependency Theory and its Essential Claims 39. i The Theoretical Heritage of Dependency Theory 41. Structuralist Economics and the Prebisch Thesis' 41. Marxism 42. Common Assumptions of Dependency Theory 42. Criticisms of Dependency Theory 43. The Influence of Dependency Theory on African development Practice 44. Nkrumah's Communalism and development Preoccupations 44. Nyerere's Ujamaa 47. The Neo-Liberal Perspective and its Basic Claims 49. Theoretical Heritage and Context 51. Shared Assumptions 53. Influence on African development Plans and Practices 55. Common Approaches to Africa's development 55. The Lagos Plan of Action 56. Structural Adjustment Policies (SAPs) 62. Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRSs) 64. The New Partnership for African development (NEPAD) 66. APPER, UNPAAERD and NEPAD 70.

3 Criticisms of the Neo-Liberalism and its development Practices in Africa 73. Similarities of Neo-Liberalism with earlier Theories 73. CHAPTER TWO: ALTERNATIVE APPROACHES' TO development 75. Introduction 75. The Basic Needs Strategy (BNS) 76. Criticisms of the BNS 80. Human development 81. People-Managed development 82. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) 84. Criticism of People-managed development and PRA Approaches 85. The Rights-Based Approach 86. ii Criticism of the RBA 88. The Millennium development Goals 89. Criticisms of the MDGs 91. Sustainable development 97. Criticisms of Sustainable development 101. The African Alternative Framework 102. The End of Poverty 103. Clinical Economics and the End of Poverty 104. Clinical Economics in Action 105. A Critique of Sachs 107. Concluding Remarks 110. CHAPTER THREE: SCIENCE AND AFRICA'S development 112. Is Science a Universally Valid knowledge System? 112. Modern Science: Initial and Current Preoccupations 113.

4 The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Natural Sciences 116. The Metaphysical Basis of the Social Sciences 123. The Challenge of Theoretical Physicists to Internal Epistemologies'. and the Metaphysics of Science 130. Science as Culture and Practice: the Challenge of Contemporary Philosophers and Historians of Science 133. The Paradigm as a Disciplinary Matrix (DM) 134. The Paradigm as Exemplars 135. African Critique of Internal Epistemologies and Western Science 137. The Social Sciences and Africa's development 147. indigenous knowledge , Scientific Systems and Africa's development 153. Concluding Remarks 158. iii CHAPTER FOUR: FOUNDATION FOR AFRICA'S development 159. Introduction 159. Essential Features of African Ontology 160. The Structure of Be-ing 160. Holonness: the Non-fragmentation of Be-ing 168. The Rheomode and the Nature of Be-ing 171. Be-ings in a Network Universe' 176. knowledge and development 178. The Conditions of knowledge in the Western Epistemological Tradition 178.

5 knowledge Requires Certainty 179. knowledge Requires Good Evidence 180. Some Features of African (Non-Foundationalist) Epistemology: 181. Levels of Nimdee in Akan Epistemology 182. Nea Wohu 182. Nea Etra Adwen 182. Paranormal Cognition: A Way of Knowing in African Epistemology 186. Paranormal Cognition and the Causal Theory of knowledge 187. Ontology, Epistemology and development : Towards Afri-centrism 190. CHAPTER FIVE: TOWARDS AN ETHICS-BASED development . PARADIGM FOR AFRICA 194. Ethics and Africa's development 194. The Basis of African Ethics 196. We are what we are: The African Community-oriented Socio-political Ethic 196. Because we are does not mean that I am not 199. African Humaneness and the Morally Good 201. Politics from a Communitarian-ethical Perspective 204. Democracy from a Communitarian-ethical Perspective 204. Sovereignty of the People 205. iv Consensus Seeking: Democracy through the Palaver' 211. Political Culture in an Ethics-based Model of development 215.

6 Humane Economics and Africa's development 220. Humane Technology, Ethical Ecology and Africa's development 223. Conclusion 227. Bibliography 229. v Declaration Student Number: 3518-975-4. I declare that Africa's development : The IMPERATIVES of indigenous knowledge and Values is my own work and that all the sources that I have used or quoted have been indicated and acknowledged by means of complete references. (M. O. Ajei) 2nd August 2007. vi Acknowledgement I am deeply grateful to Professor M. B. Ramose for his thorough supervision, encouragement and patience; and to Hawa, my wife, for her faith, sustained inspiration and invaluable validation. Without you, this work would hardly have come to fruition by now. vii List of Acronyms AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome AU: African Union APPER: Africa's Priority Programme for Economic Recovery BNS: Basic Needs Strategy CT: Causal Theory [of knowledge ]. DC: District of Columbia DM: Disciplinary Matrix EU: European Union GATT: General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GDP: Gross Domestic Product HIPC: Heavily Indebted Poor Country HIV: Human Immunodeficieny Virus IBRD: International Bank for Reconstruction and development IDGs: International development Goals ILO: International Labour Organization IMF: International Monetary Fund ISENPAD: In Search of New Paradigms for African development MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction MGDs: Millennium development Goals UNCTAD: United Nations Conference on Trade and development UNDP: United Nations development Programme UNECA: United Nations Economic Commission for Africa UNECLA: United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America UNEP: United Nations Environment Programme UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization UNPAAERD: United Nations Programme of Action for African Economic Recovery and development NBER.

7 National Bureau of Economic Research viii NEPAD: New Partnership for African development NJ: New Jersey NY: New York OAU: Organization of African Unity ODA: Official development Assistance PRA: Participatory Rural Appraisal PMD: People-Managed development RBA: Rights Based Approach PRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy SAP Structural Adjustment Programme SCSST: Studies in the Social and Cultural Studies of Science and Technology SVO: Subject-Verb-Object TRIPS: Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual property Rights USA: United States of America WCED: World Commission of Environment and development WTO: World Trade Organization ix Key Terms African philosophy; Africa's development ; indigenous knowledge and values;. development paradigms; Africa's liberation; ubuntu; culture; economism; epistemicide;. ethics and politics. x Summary In post-colonial Africa, conceptions of the nature and purposes of development as well as the theories and strategies for achieving them have remained a territory traversed predominantly by non-African social scientists.

8 In this context, social scientists studying Africa's development proclaimed, at the dawn of the 1990s, a paradigmatic crisis and embarked on a quest for new paradigms1. In advancing this quest, a number of homegrown development strategies have emerged. This work argues that these are mere adaptations and reconstructions of dominant Eurocentic paradigms that exaggerate the value of economic goods and wealth creation founded on a competitive marketplace by making them immutable features of development . Yet the ethic of competition theoretically condones a trajectory of killing in the quest for wealth accumulation. In this way, internalist epistemologies perpetuate epistemicide and valuecide in Africa's strides towards development . The stranglehold of internalist epistemologies has resulted in the impasse of rationality. By this we mean that Reason, apotheosized since the Enlightenment, has advanced humanity out of barbarism to civilization but has now placed humanity on the brink of unredeemable barbarism.

9 Reason, through its manifestations in the philosophy of Mutual Assured Destruction and global warming, has condemned humanity to willful but avoidable suicide. Since the subjects and objects of development must be one and the same, development is necessarily culture-derived and culture-driven, with the preservation and improvement of human dignity and welfare as its ultimate aims. Accordingly, we defend the thesis that it is necessary for a framework meant for Africa's development to be founded on indigenous knowledge and values, if it is to succeed. And at this moment of impasse 1. The project In Search of New Paradigms for African development (ISENPAD), which yielded the Publication of African Perspectives on development (see footnote 2 in the Introduction), is one such effort xi reached by Reason, an African ethics-based development paradigm, predicated on humaneness and life is mutual aid , can restore Reason to sober rationality and liberate Africa's development efforts from the intoxicating prison of profit making.

10 Hence the institutions and frameworks devoted to Africa's development , such as the Constitution and Strategic Plan of the African Union as well as NEPAD, must incorporate salient features of the philosophic ethic emanating from the knowledge and ontological systems of indigenous Africa into visions of the African future. xii INTRODUCTION: development AND PHILOSOPHY. i. Statement of the Problem At the dawn of the 1990s, social scientists studying Africa's development proclaimed a paradigmatic crisis and embarked on a quest for new paradigms1. Undeniably, conceptions of the nature and purposes of development as well as the theories and strategies for achieving them have remained a territory predominantly traversed by non- African social scientists. The contribution of many African academicians towards a development vision for Africa has been to echo, often in an opportunistic fashion, the voices of theorists elsewhere in the Since the 1950s, three Euro-American development ideologies, and their concomitant theories (Modernization, Dependency and Neo-Liberalism), have held sway over development thought and practice in Africa.


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