Africa’s Development Impasse: Rethinking the Political Economy of Transformation

£10.00

ISBN:: 978-1842779729
Edited by:: Stefan Andreasson
Published in:: 11 February 2010
Published by:: Zed Books
Pages:: 258
Format:: Paperback

Orthodox strategies for socio-economic development have failed spectacularly in Southern Africa. Neither the developmental state nor neoliberal reform seems able to provide a solution to Africa’s problems.

In Africa’s Development Impasse, Stefan Andreasson analyses this failure and explores the potential for post-development alternatives. Examining the post-independence trajectories of Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa, the book shows three different examples of this failure to overcome a debilitating colonial legacy. Andreasson then argues that it is now time to resuscitate post-development theory’s challenge to conventional development. In doing this, he claims, we face the enormous challenge of translating post-development into actual politics for a socially and politically sustainable future and using it as a dialogue about what the aims and aspirations of post-colonial societies might become.

This important fusion of theory with empirical case studies will be essential reading for students of development politics and Africa.