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1 Introduction

In this chapter, I argue that the tendency to define developmentalism in Africa in terms of unqualified capitalist or socialist models will not yield to the desiderata of sustainable growth, sustainable development and sustainable human development within the region. For one, the ideological representations and asymmetry embedded in the two opposing world views make them incapable of redressing the most critical issues of the human condition. The chapter argues that adaptation of failed capitalist and socialist models for African developmentalism is bound to fail because they are based on the fallacious premise of developmentalism, something which makes Western ideals of society and modernity the benchmark upon which the development of African nations is founded. Most importantly, I argue that, the adaptation of the two failed models is tantamount to an affliction of their inadequacies, which are visible in all African nations. This outcome is particularly unfortunate, more so because these models are applied without regard to cultural and social realities of Africa. As a response to these problems, the central argument throughout this chapter for a model of development based on African humanist egalitarian principles – the core value animating African socio-economic and political institutions, such as the law, property, capital and so forth. African humanist egalitarianism, so described, can better guarantee social equity and distributive justice in ways which can never be attained through the refractive ideological prisms of capitalist and socialist development models.

My argument against the corruptions of capitalism and socialism cannot properly be understood outside the context of globalization. Globalization is a reformulation of global capitalism, which seeks to rationalize and justify market fundamentalism and Washington Consensus prescriptions, both of which have failed across the world, especially in the third world. Recent developments in the United States (US) and Europe, underscored by economic depression, huge debt burden, mass unemployment, huge budget deficits, capital market crash and unprecedented corporate governance failure have failed to be addressed through these prescriptions. Rather than cut government spending the affected Western governments are embarking on Keynesian reflationary measures to spend their way out of depression. A high magnitude of public funds has been deployed in the US and Europe to prop up ailing private corporations on the verge of insolvency. These measures clearly run against the grain of capitalist market fundamentalism.

The ongoing global economic and financial crisis has exposed the fundamental flaws of the Washington Consensus and market fundamentalism. The prescriptions have not been applied strictly especially when the subject of application is a core Western economy. This selective practice also exposes the fallacy implied in the gleeful assertion that there is no alternative to market fundamentalism; that is, the Western ideals of capitalism, which gained ascendancy after the collapse of the Soviet Union as well as the diminution of the influence of socialist ideology.

While I am not oblivious of the gains of western capitalism and the innovativeness of its productive processes, it is, however, doubtful whether it is proper for a nascent, developing, or simply any nation, as the US economic crisis clearly attests, to leave its economy to the capricious dictates of market forces or what Hernando de Soto has characterized as the invisible network of laws without reining on them. No nation can afford to embrace such market fundamentalism. Not even the bastion of democracy – that is, the US and the group of industrialized capitalist nations, with their chequered economic history – have left their economies to the vagaries and dictates of market forces. The US pursued what its statesmen and scholars characterize as splendid isolationism after World War I, a euphemism for trade protectionism.

China was a complete enclave at the beginning of the revolution led by Chairman Mao, and it practiced self-sufficiency while carefully growing its economy to a high level of global competitiveness. It was only after achieving this that it embarked on a tolerable level of liberalization. Japan has astutely shielded its industries since the end of World War II, to a high level of global competitiveness and its emergence as the second strongest economy after the US, has only recently been supplanted by China in terms of scale economy and sheer demography. South Korea carefully grew its nascent automobile and electronic industries immediately after the Korean War to a high level of global competitiveness. The path to economic success of several nations, including the nations previously mentioned, illustrate that none of them fully embraced market fundamentalism, which is at the core of globalization.

It is commonplace to state that alleviation and the ultimate eradication of poverty, hunger and starvation is the most critical challenge of governance in Africa and the world. As succinctly put by the 2005 report of the Commission for Africa, African poverty and stagnation are the greatest tragedies of our time. An appreciable understanding of the magnitude of this tragedy requires an examination of statistical analysis of pervading poverty in the group of poor developing nations. In 1970, there were 1.2 billion poor people in the developing world. Of this number, there were 104 million in sub-Saharan Africa, 830 million in East Asia, 208 million in South Asia, 36 million in Latin America, and 27 million in the Middle-East and North Africa. Between 1970 and 2000, there was a tremendous reduction on the number of poor people in the developing world. More specifically, the number fell from 1.2 billion in 1970 to 647 million in 2000. A considerable proportion of the reduction is accounted for by East Asia, where the number of poor people dropped from 830 million in 1970 to 114 million in 2000. Africa, particularly south of the Sahara remains the only sub-region which recorded considerable rise in the number of poor people in the same period.

Will the alternative development model stand sui generis in its distinctive characteristics? Will it be a synthesis of the two failed paradigms? Within the context of the ongoing global economic meltdown the chapter seeks to demonstrate the explanatory value of African humanist egalitarianism, which animates every socio-economic and political institution in Africa; that is, institutions of capital, property, and law among other institutions. After the proof of the explanatory value of African humanist egalitarianism, the chapter will demonstrate its potential value in redressing the most critical issues of the human condition, and furthermore, its value as the third alternative model of economic development, which will catalyze real sustainable growth, sustainable development and sustainable human development of Africa and indeed, the world as a whole.

The African region recorded a head-count ratio of 54.8 % in 2000; its proportion of domestic population that is poor remains the highest. There have been abundant efforts to unravel why Africa, especially sub-Saharan Africa has such a disproportionately high number of poor people and, more generally, to determine the causes of poor economic performance in the sub-region. Studies on Africa have found that the lack of high and sustainable economic growth in the sub-region is a critical factor responsible for its inability to make significant progress in the effort to eradicate poverty.

It has also been found that the nature of growth is crucial in terms of facilitating poverty alleviation. Other factors underscored as responsible for lack of growth and resultant poverty, include political instability, corruption and governance failure, macroeconomic volatility, poor investment climate, geographical disadvantage, the colonial legacy, the disproportionate global division of labour and unequal exchange.

A recent study by the Economic Commission for Africa reveals that, if current trends continue, sub-Saharan Africa is unlikely to meet the target of reducing by half the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day between 1990 and 2015. The 2006 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) report also reached the same conclusion. The report shows that between 1990 and 2002, the number of people living in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 140 million.

In the light of the above, the crucial question is how can poverty be stopped in its track in sub-Saharan Africa? What are the measures needed to meet the objectives in the Millennium Declaration? The potentials of domestic savings to finance required investments are not in doubt, coupled to the fact that savings are less volatile than external finances. This is because unlike the Official Development Assistance (ODA) domestic savings are not subject to ‘conditionalities’. Domestic savings, nevertheless, cannot meet the financial resource needs of African nations. Domestic savings cannot be deployed to solve Africa’s financing problems because Africa has one of the lowest levels of savings globally relative to its investment requirements.

Between 2000 and 2004, domestic savings as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) was 17 % in sub-Saharan Africa and 26 % in the Middle-East and North Africa. It was 35.6 % in East Asia and the Pacific, and finally; it was 21.2 % in Latin America and the Caribbean.

If the MDGs are to be fulfilled, the only way to catalyze sustainable growth in sub-Saharan Africa, it is argued, is to radically increase the level of domestic savings and channel them into productive investments, which must be sustained on a level higher than at the level of domestic savings.

Methodologically, I have elected to explore the entire phenomenon of development through modernization and dependency theory as heuristic devices to unravel and provide plausible explanations for the pervasive poverty that characterizes the group of very poor developing countries. This will provide a basis upon which to argue for a model of development capable of reversing poverty through innovative governance and enlightened economic choices.

2 The Theoretical Underpinnings of Developmentalism

Modernization theory evolved at the end of the Second World War, first as the intellectual justification for the promotion of western values and ideals of society in the post-war era, and second, to illumine the attractiveness of such Western notions of society over and above non-Western paradigms. Modernization theory was spearheaded by Talcott Parsons, who propounded a theory of structural-functionalism. Parsons postulated an evolutionary theory of society, which understood development as a process of deterministic and inexorable movements from one state of the evolutionary pedestal to another. He argued that development leads to structural differentiation of social institutions, which will create economic, political and social institutions akin to Western social institutions of capital, market economy, democratic liberalism, the rule of law and due process, freedom of the judiciary, separation of powers, freedom of the press and respect for the fundamental human rights of the citizenry (Huntington1978, pp. 30–69).

Under the modernization schema, certain conditions must be fulfilled in order to attain the structural differentiation of social institutions pursuant to attaining economic development. The first major condition is rationalization, a concept based upon the works of Emile Durkheim, Max Weber and Talcott Parsons. Rationalization entails the progressive movement from the particular to the universal. In other words, from a society characterized by ascriptive roles to that which is comprised of individual attainment, something which can further be differentiated from the arbitrary ascription of status at birth. The second condition is the significance of the integration of diverse nationalities and nation-building. Democratization is the third condition that must be met pursuant to attaining social differentiation. Democracy according to the modernization theory, underscores social pluralism and transparency. Democracy also eradicates arbitrariness and discretion while fostering constructive engagement by introducing a spirit of sportsmanship to political culture. Finally, the political space must be expanded to be inclusive through mass mobilization of the citizenry to participate in the political process (Hermassi 1978, pp. 239–257).

The abysmal economic performance of post-independence third world developing countries, characterized by the rot and decay of their social, legal and political institutions, the affliction of rapacious and corrupt political elites, restive youths and predatory military, have all combined to engender skepticism about the relevance and efficacy of the modernization theory in the new era (Kadt 1974, p. 65).

In counter-eloquence, the modernization school attributes state failure in the third world to endogenous factors, such as the lack of civic culture necessary to evolve, grow and sustain Western-type political and social institutions. To the modernization theorist, the political culture in third world countries is inorganic; it is characterized by a combination of individual and group solidarity within the clan or ethnic nationality in contrast to solidarity to the national state. What facilitates the lack of organic solidarity is the lack of psychological acceptance of the legitimacy of the national government, democracy, the non-internalization of national laws, the role of the state, and also, the role of political actors vis-à-vis the obligations of the citizenry to the state (Latham 2000, p. 288).

Among many of the foibles of modernization theory elicited by critiques is that it is ethnocentric, deterministic and evolutionist. Its theoretical foundation of structural-functionalism has been subjected to critical appraisal, and characterized as a value-laden paradigm with acute ideological asymmetry (O’Neill 2007).

The pessimism with which the modernization theory was viewed must be considered against the backdrop of the social turmoil which rocked the American society in late 1960s and early 1970s. The cataclysm of this era in the evolution of American society resulted in the call in certain quarters for the curtailment of individual rights in order to impose a greater order. This crisis removed the wind from the modernization sail, and skepticism, was generally expressed in the form of the universality of the so-called core libertarian American values and ethos (Inglehart 2005, pp. 5–25, 26–180).

It was discovered that the modernization theory in itself cannot operate ex propio vigore. It cannot yield to any development premium, as its tenets can only impact positively in situations where there is purposive single-mindedness to develop among political elites and the people (Anderson 2005, p. 225).

The law and development movement emerged amidst the throes of the social crisis experienced in the American society between 1965 and 1975; hence it inherited the perceived inadequacies related to its foundations in modernization theory. However, the failing of the modernization theory, and by extension the law and development theory, was completely unconnected to the state of law in developing countries. In other words, the failure of both the modernization theory and law and development movement did not, in any way, negate the centrality of law in society (Brym 2005, p. 214). The law and development movement, however, drew heavily from the fundamental doctrine of the modernization theory, which was predicated on the assertion that law and its institutions will through an evolutionary process progressively attain a level of differentiation similar to Western law and legal institutions (Kiely 1995, pp. 85–143).

Many scholars may not fault the position asserting the centrality of law in development, nor would they fault the evolutionary underpinnings of both the theory of modernization and law and development respectively. What they question is the use of Western institutions as the benchmark for the evolutionary process. They will detect several ideological representations in both models, which establish Western ideals and social/legal institutions as the terminal point on the evolutionary scale. A study of social statics and dynamics involved shows that human society is in a state of flux as well as in constant motion. Human society is unamenable to statics. Thus, it is not improbable that a universalizable ideal misplaces that attribute by yielding to either a variant of itself, which has mutated into a higher form of itself or a completely different form, which supplants and displaces the extant form in the evolutionary process. The central tenet of modernization theory is, therefore, wrong-headed to the extent that it suggests that the evolutionary path to be trodden by the emergent modernizing states of the third world has to be exactly those trodden by Western societies. It shows no understanding of their social-cultural differences.

The foregoing submission is without prejudice to the reality of the gains of Western ideals and values, such as liberal democracy, the rule of law, due process and the respect for individual rights. My point of departure is to disagree with the position that the evolutionary pedestal attained by Western societies is the terminal point on the evolutionary scale in ways Western achievements mark the end of history (Gilman 2004, pp. 1–24, 72–241; Fukuyama 2006, pp. 3–39, 55–131, 143–199, 211–328).

Such wide conclusions can only be made upon the basis of the worst state of intellectual depravity. It is not only pedestrian, but also ahistorical and completely at variance with the dynamics of the dialectic upon which any evolutionary process is predicated. Above every other consideration, it is impossible as it is improbable to contrive and engineer such an end of history, as history moves inexorably in a circle from ages to ages and from epoch to epoch. It is synonymous with the order of the cosmos, which is immutable, constant and not without theoretical foundation. Circularity is not a fallacy in the hermeneutical sciences. The hermeneutic circle breaks the crust of formalism (or pseudo-formalism) which provides the apparent justification for the structural-functionalist conclusion.Footnote 1

While disagreeing with the central premise of modernization theory and the law and development movement, I submit that the reality in developing countries has, on the contrary, pointed at the lack of political plurality, acute social stratification, wide gaps existing between the classes, the prevalence of absolutist and personalized governments, weak state structures and the total alienation from the people from the national government. Furthermore, citizens have generally shown greater allegiance to their primordial groupings, mainly as a result of the lack of psychological acceptance of the law. In many ways, laws have often been contrived to do the bidding of the dominant political and economic elites. In addition to this, the judiciary is often derelict (Huntington 1996, pp. 8, 32, 59, 109, 344).

While it is commonplace to state that the foregoing limitations are excessive and may limit or constrain the instrumental application of law for social-economic change in developing societies. Those limitations and constraints paradoxically compels (rather than diminishes the centrality of law and its institutions in the development process) the use of law as an instrument capable of catalyzing economic growth and development within this group of countries (Hsiung 2006, pp. 1–3).

The perceived gaps between the structural-functionalist paradigm, the modernization theory and the central tenet of the law and development model, and the reality in the modernizing and developing third world nations, do not in any way diminish the relevance, functionality and applicability of these models to catalyze social/economic change in the third world. Social/economic change only requires the reforming state to accommodate those gaps, and also, to adapt the models to the circumstances of the social and political milieu of the third world.Footnote 2

It is also important to dispel the self-indulgent pessimism of those who have only seen the evil perpetrated in the name of the law. These pessimists fail to see any good that has been wrought through the instrumentality of the law. Not even the limitless potentials of law in advancing economic goals with a view to moving the society forward and increasing the well-being of the citizenry are recognized by the pessimists (Davis 2008, pp. 8–14). Having examined the posturing of the modernization theory and its offshoot, the law and development model, I now turn the attention to its antithesis – the dependency theory.

3 Dependency Theory

The dependency theory, in contradistinction to the modernization theory holds, among other things, that state failure, underdevelopment and lack of growth in third world countries, is contrary to the position of modernization theorists. Underdevelopment, among other things, is not wholly internal but the result of the political economy of international Western capitalism, which in its evolution had by astute adaptiveness exploited non-Western peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America by the process of colonization (Ndulu 2008, pp. 5–650).

Through the process above, these regions were forcefully incorporated within the structure of Western international capitalism. Their natural resources and human capital exploited unremittingly for many centuries at first through pillage and slave trade and later through outright colonization (Hubbell 2008, p. 112).

Consequent upon the consolidation of colonialism, an international division of labour was contrived, which structured the economies of the colonies in a manner that would complement the economy of the metropolis. The colonies provided raw materials, which are fed to manufacturing industrial complexes of the metropolis whilst concomitantly turning the colonies into captive markets for the products of such industries. For these purposes, chartered trading companies were commissioned and deployed to such colonies with exclusive rights to engage in the production, trade and evacuation of such raw materials. The plantation economy thrived and white settler enclaves were created (Peet 1999, pp. 3–12, 18–57, 107).

The exploitation remained unabated in the post-independence epoch. New structures that were adaptive to the seeming emergence of a new world order were ingenuously contrived to sustain the stranglehold on the international economic order. Domination was sustained by the agency of transnational corporations, which have operations cutting across international boundaries. These octopi corporations are run as sovereign states and are avid exploiters as well as destabilizers of their host countries (Rahnevia 1997, pp. 3–250).

The unique historical experience of developing countries has is that dependencies have bled these societies of their vitality and zest to develop. They were forcefully conscripted into the international capitalist system with a legion of disabilities. The pillage of their economies during colonialism stunted industrialization, as their economies were deliberately structured to complement that of the metropolis by serving as mere sources of raw materials that were evacuated without added value. Allied to that, and as a consequence of the colonial agenda, the infrastructure they inherited was derelict and run down. The foregoing only results in a vicious circle as these nations slip further and further down the mire of dependence. They require foreign aid, foreign direct investment and loans from both private and public international financial institutions of the West to develop their infrastructure. They remain gross exporters of primary products mainly derived from their extractive sectors, which have no nexus with the other sectors of their economies resulting in lack of diversification and making them prone to price shocks and fluctuation in the commodity exchanges controlled by the West (Desai 2008, p. 150).

According to the dependency school, there is an unbridgeable divide between the Western core and the developing periphery yielding to a structure, which sustains the perpetual exploitation of the periphery by the core (Larrain 1991, pp. 5–215). A key element of the dependency postulate is the identification of the collaboration between economic and political elites in developing nations and Western capitalists, pursuant to the sustenance of the status quo. According to dependency theorists, the most vulnerable groups that suffer the tyranny of this unequal world order are the rural poor and the urban poor that are completely untouched by whatever little impact is generated under this economic order (Hettn 1985, pp. 5–150).

The foregoing postulations of dependency theory are not without merit. First, they provide a fresh draught of air against the suffocating impact upon the modernization theory, which many justifiably regard as Eurocentric. Second, they catalyzed the spirit of economic nationalism in a number of developing nations that contrived policies to shield their fledging industries from foreign competition (Ghosh 2001, pp. 3–165).

That said, dependency theory has received its fair share of negative reviews and it has invited critique. To many, its Marxist foundation diminishes the explanatory powers of dependency theory. This became evident after the collapse of the Soviet Union – the subsequent loss of ascendancy by communism and Marxism – coupled with the economic successes recorded by the Asian countries. The phenomenal growth and development of Asian countries like Japan, India, Singapore, South Korea and China, among other countries, has all combined to diminish the influence of dependency theory. The successes of the Asian economies have been achieved without wholesale and unqualified application of modernization model. Similarly, their successes have not been predicated on the dependency model (Tetreault 1986, pp. 5–210). The emergence of China as the world’s fastest-growing economy is a testimony to this fact. China’s mixed reform agenda of selection but eclecticism has had a profound impact on its economic growth (Leys 1996, pp. 3, 48, 64, 80, 107–188).

Having said that, another criticism that the dependency theory has invited can be attributed to the skeptical and pessimist Marxist perspective of law. That is, the understanding of law as the superstructure of the economic base. To Marxists, law is value-laden, and replete with asymmetry. Law is an ideological representation which is contrived by dominant groups to further their cause. Thus, given the Marxist origins of dependency theory, it is rather hesitant and cautious of annexing law to serve the purpose of development (Brewer 1997, pp. 161, 201–260).

The foregoing is without prejudice to the crucial role played by dependency theory in the evolution of the domain of international law of development. It must be acknowledged that it contributed in bringing the right to development of peoples to the front burner. Though still inchoate and evolving, the concerted and articulate efforts in this regard have generated positive results in terms of trade concessions. Dependency theory has also provided an initiative for the group of highly developed and industrialized nations to partner the group of very poor nations for purposes of economic growth and development. The view is, however, rife in certain quarters that all these incoherent agendas to save the third world are half-hearted and ill-conceived measures that are too little too late. This body of opinion underscores the fact that much more far-reaching measures, the types that surpass the reconstruction agenda contrived to rebuild Europe from the ruins of the World War II, are required to salvage the third world from the mire of poverty (Chilcote 1983, pp. 5–180; Jaffee 1998, pp. 5, 151–199; Willis 2007, pp. 32, 62).

4 The Communitarian Basis of African Humanism

In my attempt to elucidate on a distinctively African humanist philosophical basis of all African Institutions, I shall explore the nature of the metaphysical notion of sociability, which is a function of the dependent biological nature of new members of the human species on significant others and matured members of the species for growth, development, security and well-being. Thus, no matter how further we trace the evolution of the human species, man can only be individuated in a society of other humans. He can only attain the total development of the traits that make him human and attain personhood only by being dependent on other significant persons. The individuation of man within community is achieved through the process of socialization (which refers to the entire motion of birth and the forging), something which molds the individual into a functional member of community.

Socialization is, thus, the process of teaching through education and learning. This is achieved through the imitation of significant others, and also, through the development of capacity, vocational skills among other things in a way that enhances the competence of individuals’ as functional and non-deviant members of community. Man’s capability to develop his capacity to function as a competent unit of development within the community is dependent upon this socialization process.

Unfortunately, since the advent of colonialism this process of socialization has been narrowly construed in terms of Western education; that is, in terms of reading and writing as well as the ability to speak the language of the conquerors. Yet, a Yoruba drummer boy who has been inducted into the vocation of drumming from the age two is no less an educated person than a Harvard trained percussionist. By the time he is 5 years old he would have become quite dexterous in the art of drumming. Through the progressive process of socialization, he is taught the skills of his family trade, which has been passed down from one generation to the other. Aside from the practical skills of drumming, he is taught the mores or lore’s of the lineage. In a similar vein, the solitary Fulani herds’ boy using a staff to herd hundreds of life stock through wide ranges of pastures is no less educated than the Oxford trained veterinary doctor; he has acquired competencies, which have sustained his people through the ages.

One of the greatest fallacies of developmentalism in Africa is the equation of education to western education. I am by no means understating the methodological value of Western education; rather the point I am trying to make is that it is only one of so many methods of socialization. The widespread acceptance, of socialization through western education, must not be at the expense of the traditional process of socialization, which encapsulates the totality of the world view of the people. The total and un-calibrated embrace of the Western paradigm of socialization will only yield to one outcome; a nation of confused people totally alienated from their primordial and time-tested productive cultural practices of economic sustenance, thrown into the uncertain world of Western global cash economy.

The army of unemployed, underemployed, unemployable youths and adults in African urban centres is a living testimony of this unwholesome outcome highlighted above. This gives a serious cause for concern because of the unremitting rural–urban drift which characterizes the demography of African Nations. In Lagos where I live and work, I am assaulted every day by the spectacles of youths hawking all sorts of inferior products dumped in Nigeria a la globalization. This is unacceptable; we certainly do not want to create a nation of street hawkers. This phenomenon is replicated everywhere in Africa. Entire generations are completely removed from their primordial cultural productive base and made to drift in cities totally disenfranchised economically.

African humanist sociability unlike parallel world views in other cultures does not merely underscore sociability as being critical to growth and development of human competencies, its distinctive characteristic is that it is at the core of every African social and political institutions, which are as a rule configured and structured to promote communal interests over and above the promotion of individual interests. The divergence in the concepts of the individual or personhood – adhered to in different cultures and societies – about how the individual stands in relation to others in the social space animate their socio-economic and political institutions, ethos and cosmogony.

Certain cultures are communitarian in orientation and structure, and they tend to emphasize group interest in the promotion of individual interests. The divergence in the concepts of the individual or personhood adhered to in different cultures and societies and about how the individual stands in relation to others in the social space animate their socio-economic and political institutions, ethos and cosmogony. Certain cultures are communitarian in orientation and structure. These communitarian cultures tend to emphasize individuation in terms of overlapping and multi-layered chains of kinship relations, including living-dead relationships, and relationships between the living and the unborn. Individuals are thus linked in this sort of long chain with a sacred duty to contribute to each lived life-time in a way that leads to the continuity of those lineages.

In contradistinction to the above, other cultures emphasize individual rights and liberties as well as conceive the individual more in the light of anonymity, impersonality, individual attributes and competencies. In the former, the individual is an integral constituent of a macro-community who has rights that individualist societies claim they accord everyone. The only difference between the two models is that the individual in communitarian social structure is not anonymous entity, but rather is a stakeholder in society’s pursuit of the desiderata of the enhancement of the general well-being of all.

The African worldview does not in any way subsume the personhood of the individual in a deterministic manner under the will of the collective. Rather the African worldview underscores the reciprocity in the mutual dependency of the individual and community for purposes of sustenance and the continuity of all. The rights, liberty, and individuality of the person are thereby not qualified, derogated and or understated by the condition of dependency. Because the two are mutually dependent, it is impracticable to conceive them as mutually exclusive in the social space. The type of ‘I’ complex which exclusive individualism breeds develops in a society where people fail to see the loftier ideals of the common good. These are ideals are also meant to stricture, circumscribe individual aspirations, including claims on the common patrimony, and also, egoism.

The relation between the individual and community in the communitarian society is not conflictual and at cross purposes. Analogous to human rights, common goods are universalizable ideals of society, which appertain to all and which are sine qua non for the attainment of a state of general well-being in which all regardless of their station in life are living a life. Furthermore, these common goods do not devalue or desecrate their shared humanity. Human rights must be situated without their textual locale and made to inhere in the individual as compelled by the African humanist world view. And this is a world which guarantees a full range of rights. These rights, in turn, include full employment and rights to land as a factor of production without which a person is no person in Africa. Every individual is entitled to claim these rights from his community, which is, in turn, under an obligation to guarantee them, not by mere declaration or textually providing for them, but through a lived experience distinct from the mundane plane of practical existence. Instead, it is a sacred bond which holds the strands connecting the individual to his past, present and future. For instance, it is an anathema and indeed, an impossibility to have idle adults in a traditional African social milieu.

In 2003, Hernando de Soto (2000) offered what was then considered in Western circles as a plausible explanation of why, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, an unequivocal flowering of capitalism had not been ushered in the developing and post-communist world. The failure of capitalism in these countries was blamed by Western scholars on several factors such as the lack of sellable assets and the non-entrepreneurial culture of their peoples.

Hernando de Soto argued that the real problem for these countries is that they were yet to establish and normalize invisible networks of laws that would turn assets from ‘dead’ into ‘liquid’ capital. According to him, standardized laws in the West allow people to mortgage a house to raise money for new ventures. Standardized laws also permit the value of a company to be broken up into so many public tradable stocks, something, which further makes it possible to govern and appraise property, especially with rules agreed-upon that have general application. This invisible infrastructure of ‘asset management’ which according to him is taken for granted in the West is the missing ingredient for success with capitalism in global north (de Soto 2000).

As convincing as de Soto’s argument seems, however, his analysis is rather subterranean and with the benefit of hindsight, his conclusions are at variance with concrete evidence of the inevitable collapse of the capitalist paradigm of production. As a matter of fact, capitalism failed not only ‘elsewhere’ but most importantly in the West because capitalisms’ underlying philosophy of exclusion and profit have failed to address the most critical issue of the human condition – that is, pervasive poverty and the widening gap between the top 5 % of the affluent segment of the population and the poorest among the poor.

Hernando de Soto’s invisible networks of laws are mere ideological re-presentations, which only serve, as evidence in the US and the whole of the West have shown, to disenfranchise, exclude and constitute a break on the well-being of the greater proportion of the population. The networks of laws have failed to create employment and redistribute income, but most importantly; the laws have failed to direct the efficient allocation of scarce resources to productive activity that would generate wealth, which can be deployed to serve the common good of all.

Furthermore, capitalism is failing everywhere because its underlying capital asset pricing model is based on fictional assumptions. It holds, for example, that all actors in the capital asset market must have access to the same set of information. In addition to this, transactions must be conducted with transparency without opacity and information asymmetry; that every traded stock has an intrinsic value, from which the market value takes a random walk. Consequently, the market value of capital assets is not a real re-presentation of their intrinsic values and thereby an inaccurate measure of the market worth of quoted firms. In fact, it is impossible to know what this intrinsic value is since the whole system is fraudulent. This is why capitalism will eternally be plagued by market failures. Besides the success of Asian developmental states, such as China, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia, have demonstrated that capitalism can no longer be the unqualified benchmark for developmentalism.

5 African Customary Land Law and Theory of Property Rights

I am obliged to dwell considerably on the nature of African customary land law and property rights, first, because in the context of African developmentalism opening up rural Africa is the key to putting the people back to work again, especially after so many years of great dislocation occasioned by a long spell of colonial rule, and now, with globalization. Second, land is the prerequisite to Africa’s sustainable economic growth and sustainable development. This is because over 80 % of Africans live in rural areas where they depend on land for their sustenance. Land is also important because these Africans are completely untouched by the version of ‘modernity’ attained by the post-colonial African state.

I shall endeavour to demonstrate how African humanism is embedded in the African conception of land law and the institution of property. I shall underscore the explanatory value of the African theory of property and show why it is a viable alternative to both capitalism and socialism, which have failed to address the fundamental issue of the human condition – the eradication of poverty and the enhancement of the well-being of human-kind in a sustainable manner.

Africa can achieve full-employment and thereby insulate itself from the adverse effect of the global economic crisis by recourse to its humanist and egalitarian world view, which is the bedrock upon which every social, economic and political institution should be erected in Africa.

Land use and ownership patterns in Africa entail a complex of overlapping claims. The patterns of ownership differ from privately held land by families and lineages to communally held land, all of which are used to guarantee the prosperity, health, general well-being, spiritual and religious practices, livelihood, and full employment of every functional member of community. Still, other huge tracks of land are left unexploited, preserved for future generations. Shifting cultivation is widely practiced in Africa, because of variegated factors such as fluctuation in rainfall, crop rotation and soil fertility, and changes to the requirement for land. Whilst land rights are primarily a function of membership in a group or allegiance to certain political authority, outsiders can acquire property rights through share cropping, customary tenancy, gift and recently, sale. According to Wily:

Customary domains are territories over which the community possesses jurisdiction and often root title. Within the domain, a range of tenure arrangements typically apply. These include estates owned by individuals or families, and estates owned by special-interest groups within the community such as ritual societies or women’s group. This is not to be confused with properties, which are owned by all members of that community in undivided shares, often the larger or remoter pastures, forests, woodlands, swampland and hill tops… these are common properties, defined by virtue of membership to groups, and a group whose composition may change over time. (Wily 2005, p. 6)

African land and resource rights are determined and encrusted within several relationships and units, such as households and networks of kinship. Land and resource rights are also encrusted in overlapping multiple social relationships, such as individual rights within households, households within intricate networks of kinship and networks of kinship within macro communities (Cousins 2007, pp. 281–315).

Property rights emanate from membership of a social unit and can be acquired by ‘birth, affiliation or allegiance to a group and its political authority. They also emanate from transactions, such as pledges, purchases, gifts, and customary tenancy (2007). Contrary to the position that individual property rights do not exist at customary law, land and appurtenant resources encompass family and individual rights to arable and residential land. They also entail equal access to collectively owned property resources like forests, waters and grazing land. In other words, land rights are both individual and communal in Africa (2007).

Reflecting on African traditional property law jurisprudence, Ouedraogo posits:

If the law is seen as no more than a set of norms established by the competent legal authorities, local land tenure practices will be accorded no legal validity and excluded from the judicial arena. But if, on the other hand, one sees law from an anthropological perspective as a social phenomenon for regulating individual and collective behaviour, one is obliged to acknowledge that the realm of justice does not necessarily begin with codified law. African societies have shown that they understand this by imposing models of behaviour on their members not on the basis of pre-established rules, but through a complex of social and cultural mechanisms. (2002)

African property rights must therefore be viewed within the context of the humanist and egalitarian world view of Africans, which is embedded in every socio-political institution. It is a worldview which accords proportional socio-economic space to the individual as a link in a long chain of intricate relationships encompassing the living dead, the living and unborn generations. Thus the individual stands in relation to others in the chain of a non-exclusive social structure, which impels equitable allocation of land as a factor of production as well as its appurtenant resources. According to Adam et al.:

The free transfer of unimproved land could be taken for granted. It was received free and was given free. It was not viewed as a commercial asset. (Adam et al. 2003, pp. 55–74)

Whilst such transfers are done within networks of kinship and family relations, outsiders could also have access to land through gifts, purchase, and customary tenancy and so on.

6 Ujamma as a Development Strategy

I am obliged to dwell on previous developmental experiments, which were based on African humanist ethos and egalitarianism. Nyerere’s philosophy of Ujamaa is examined as a quintessential African humanist socio-economic developmental experiment in Africa. Over the years, Ujamaa has been subjected to both favourable and adverse critiques. A certain body of opinion suggests that it was fundamentally a legitimate effort to circumvent the post-colonial corruptions of political anarchy, inequity and lack of innovation of the political elite in Africa (Pratt 1976; Boesen et al. 1979). Others, on the other hand, were damning and rather critical of the ideological tincture of Ujamaa as a socialist economic paradigm. According to this view, Ujamaa was at best a misplaced philosophical ideal, which failed to capitalize on several developmental opportunities. In the end, it represented a breach of the compact with the Tanzanian people (Johnson 2000; Scott 1999).

To ideologues, Ujamaa was pseudo-socialism completely bereft of the class struggle which is an antecedent condition for the evolution of a truly socialist state (Shivji 1974). Others saw Ujamaa as a device which the state deployed under Nyerere to circumscribe civil liberty, stifle private innovativeness and enterprise. Ujamaa thereby denied Tanzanians of the gains of individual enterprise, which they considered to be critical to the effort to attain modernity, democracy and economic prosperity (Yeager 1989). Most of these critiques are no doubt ad hominem and evaluations through ideological prisms, which lack an empirical basis.

Contrary to the foregoing adverse critiques, I argue that Ujamaa transcends ideology. Ujamaa is a thorough-going conceptualization and articulation of development strategy based on African humanism, which as I earlier argued, is not an ideology in the same sense of Western capitalism and socialism. Capitalism and socialism are different. They are mere ideological representations of existential reality, something which explains why they have abysmally failed in addressing the most critical, fundamental and universal of the issues that affect the human condition, particularly poverty.

Having said that, the major inadequacy of Ujamaa (which incidentally is the pitfall of post-colonial African developmentalism) is that it set Western ideals of development and modernity as the bench-mark of African developmentalism, apart from failing to yield to the desired outcome of sustainable growth, full employment and development for the vast majority of peasants who reside in rural Africa. It alienated them from their time-tested primordial cultural, social and productive reality, which has worked for them in a sustainable manner over the ages. Ujamaa suffered some bouts of the transplant effect, a malady which afflicts efforts at modernity, which is predicated either wholly or partly on the Western paradigm of developmentalism.

6.1 Ujamaa: Archetype of African Social Philosophy?

In this segment, I shall seek to provide answers to these related questions. First, is Ujamaa an approximate to African social philosophy? Second, does Ujamaa have any explanatory value as a philosophy? Third, can Ujamaa be deployed for African developmentalism in the light of the spate of adverse critiques, which it has generated since 1999, after the demise of the late Julius Nyerere? (Lane 1999, p. 16)Footnote 3 In order to provide answers these questions, I will dwell considerably on the nature of Ujamaa.

The philosophy of Ujamaa, which Nyerere articulated has its origin in traditional African ethos and values, which is underscored by its deep humanistic desideratum of an egalitarian society characterized by social equity and justice. Ujamaa entails a community of humans driven by an acute consciousness of the shared humanity of all its constituents. As contrived by Nyerere, Ujamaa underscores familyhood and communalism of traditional African societies, with a tincture of socialism and Judeo-Christian ideals and world view. Nyerere attempted to fuse Rousseau’s contractarian social philosophy and Kantian notions of the ideal liberal society with African communitarian equalitarianism to attain a synthesis of the various strains of philosophy, which could be put to service as a means of unraveling Africa’s crisis of developmentalism. Thus, Ujamaa was founded on the three pillars of equality, unity and liberty. As far as Nyerere was concerned, the ideal society must be based on these three critical props (Nyerere 1967, p. 16). He argued succinctly that African development must be based on those three features because it is only then that men can work cooperatively. Secondly, there must be freedom, because the individual is not served by society, unless he belongs to that society. Finally, there must be unity, because the individual can only thrive in an environment of peace, security and high well-being. According to him, these three elements of Ujamaa are not alien to Africa. Thus, Ujamaa encompasses the African concept of communalism, which permeates every aspect of African culture, including the communal ownership of the property (land), the pooling of labour and the respect of shared humanity.

The critical question, then, is how to put this concept of African communitarian egalitarianism to service in order to unravel post-colonial Africa’s crisis of developmentalism. Nyerere posited that Western capitalism was at variance with the aspirations of post-colonial African states and the third world. Nyerere asserted that the most appropriate path of developmentalism for Africa was socialism. This fallacy, in hind sight, can be forgiven in the light of the bi-polarity of the cold-war era which made the allure of pitching at either end of the ideological divide rather strong for emergent post-colonial states (Nyerere 1961). The distinguishing feature of Ujamaa was the understatement of Marxist notion of class struggle as the foundation of his concept of ‘African socialism’. According to him, the basis of African socialism is not the class struggle, but the traditional African institution of the extended family system and communalism.

To him, African socialism is an attitude of the mind, which Africans imbibe through the process of socialization in the extended family. He stressed that African traditional humanist ideals were negatively impacted upon by the African colonial experience, Western education and capitalism. The vortex of economic, social and political power was violently removed from the African socio-political milieu and relocated to the colonial metropolis. The most critical issue in the view of Nyerere, therefore, was how to preserve African humanist attitudes and traditions within the macro-society. He was concerned with the attitudes and traditions, which provided the social security, full employment to all constituents of the community in pre-colonial Africa. And these kinds of social safety nets could only be derived from membership of an extended family (Nyerere 1967, p. 165).

Nyerere drew a sharp, even though to the ideological right, but unconvincing distinction between Ujamaa and Marxist, Fabian, Maoist, Leninist socialism. He also denied an ascription of any general Western influences to his strain of socialism. He argued that Ujamaa was totally intolerant of Western capitalism. Capitalism, according to him, sought to build a happy society on the basis of the exploitation of man by man. Ujamaa, according to him, was not synonymous with Marxist ideology, the ideal society of which can be understood as a function of the inevitable conflict between man and man (Nyerere 1968). He claimed that Ujamaa was a third alternative derived synthetically from the rich and deep African traditional ethos of communalism, something which selectively borrowed from the African colonial experience (Nyerere 1967). With the benefit of hindsight, the implementation of Ujamaa betrayed a Maoist and Fabian socialist leaning. However, what cannot be denied it is Ujamaa’s distinct purposiveness to redress the overwhelming dependency of Tanzania by transiting to economic self-reliance. In this regard, Ujamaa seemed to have been influenced by the dependency school of thought, which held sway in the 1960s and 1970s and had many adherents in Latin America and Africa.

Ujamaa was inaugurated in 1967 in the Arusha Declaration. Its set goal was the attainment of self-reliant socialist nation. It was fashionable in the immediate post-independence epoch for African states to pursue self-reliance as a development strategy as dependency and underdevelopment were seen as mutually reinforcing phenomena, which excluded post-independence African nations from the international economic system. Self-reliance was considered as a panacea which would remove African states from their position of peripheral dependencies by transforming them into active players and competitors in the international economic system. To achieve that goal, it was advised that African states must look inwards by fully controlling the factors of economic development through self-conceived policies and policy implementation devoid of external prescriptions. Consequently, it was imperative to mobilize the people from the grassroots and optimize the allocation of limited available resources pursuant to enhancing the well-being of the people (Palmer 1975, pp. 5–6). Nyerere’s economic strategy of self-reliance was, however, by no means akin to Mao’s isolationism. He made the following distinctions:

The doctrine of self reliance does not mean isolationism. For us, self-reliance is a positive affirmation that for our own development, we shall depend upon our own resources. (Nyerere 1968, p. 319)

That said, the embrace of self-reliance by Nyerere must also be seen in the light of Tanzania’s overwhelming dependence on foreign aid for the implementation of its development plan. Self-reliance became the only plausible way out of the trap of dependency on aid, which often comes with conditionalities that compromise the sovereignty of the recipient state. Therefore, beyond the idealism of Ujamaa, its inauguration in 1967 was the most appropriate response to debilitating economic problems, which characterized the Tanzanian nation at the time.

Ujamaa was therefore conceived to wean Tanzania away from overwhelming reliance on foreign aid and loans whilst concomitantly transiting from peripheral dependency to an agrarian self-reliant economy.

6.2 Implementation of Ujamaa

Within the milieu of the economic nationalism of the immediate post-independence Africa, nationalization of the forces of production was considered central to the implementation of Ujamaa. The goal as in most African nations was for citizens to take control of the commanding heights of the economy. Consequent upon the pronouncement of the Arusha declaration, the Nyerere administration expropriated all banks and industrial conglomerates, including large-scale agricultural processing industries. Sixty percent of the dominant sisal industry was taken by the state (Arkaide 1973, p. 37). The state assumed direct control of the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy by the end of 1967. The spate of nationalization was hailed by the ideological left, and the avowal of self-reliance enamored a host of Scandinavian countries (Coulson 1985, p. 2).

The ideological right was, however, critical of the turn of events in Tanzania, with British banking giants, Standard, National, Gridley’s and Barclays generally set on a policy of non-cooperation and sabotage aimed at ensuring that public control of banking failed through the systematic erosion of the confidence of the international investment community in the Tanzanian banking sector and export economy. This stance was ostensibly to stem the tide of nationalizations in Africa (1985, p. 41).

Without prejudice to the nationalization exercise, the state went into all sorts of technical partnerships with transnational corporations who were former owners of nationalized companies. The view, in certain quarters, due to the state’s actions was that the ‘commanding heights’ of the Tanzanian economy was de facto still controlled by foreigners (Shivji 1973). That said, nationalization, however, suffered the inadequacy of creating opportunities for increased corruption, over-bureaucratization, centralization and inefficiency in resource allocation (Bolton 1985 p. 154). Consequently, it dawned rudely on the administration that nationalization was not the panacea after all.

6.3 Villagization

The villagization scheme (Ujamaa Vijijini) under Ujamaa was designed to encourage self-reliance, such that would emphasize rural development as a catalyst for sustainable growth and development. It was also designed to assist in the progressive weaning of the Tanzanian economy from overwhelming reliance on foreign aid and loans. The aim of the scheme was to catalyze the metamorphosis of rural Tanzania to create rural economic and social communities where people would live together for the good of all (Nyerere 1968, p. 337). It encouraged the clustering of peasant farmers around common service points rather than dispersed settlements. Peasants were encouraged to work on farm lands formed through cooperative societies rather than on an individual basis. The villagization scheme was rationalized and predicated on traditional African practices of communal living and social equity.

The villagization scheme failed because local peasants were suspicious about the motives behind the state; they were particularly apprehensive of the spectre of nationalization of their lands, hence they refused to cooperate. The scheme was informally abandoned by 1975. The scheme also failed because of other reasons. Firstly, the scheme was top down, and commenced without sufficient ownership or involvement of peasants. The scheme was viewed with skepticism, mistrust, resentment and hostility. Secondly, the state in desperation had recourse to the use of force and coercion to achieve mass villagization. This move further alienated the people. Thirdly, the use of material incentives was counter-productive as villages became overwhelmingly dependent on them and became extremely vulnerable when the paucity of resources led to the withdrawal of such assistance by the state.

On the whole, the scheme failed because it understated the individualism of the African in adapting a similar type of forced collectivization scheme that was conducted in the Soviet Union and Maoist China in the 1930s. On the whole, the way the scheme was implemented was at variance with the social and cultural realities of the rural economy. The planned villages, negated existing rural practice, which included shifting cultivation and pastoralism; poly cropping and dispersed settlement pattern, hence the scheme was resisted by the farmers. The foregoing limitations, however, do not diminish the explanatory value of Ujamaa as a thorough-going paradigm of developmentalism.

It would be a great disservice to the lofty ideals which informed the conceptualization of Ujamaa as a development strategy to evaluate it strictly based on economic indices such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Ujamaa must be assessed in the light of human development. And the truth is that Tanzania fared better than most African Nations south of the Sahara in terms of human development during the Ujamaa era. Tanzania enjoyed relative political stability, in a highly anarchic African sub-region during the Nyerere years. In fact, Nyerere’s legacy of equity and social justice has made Tanzania to remain one of the most stable nations in Africa. There is a high pervading sense of national identity among Tanzanians because of the considerable advances made in terms of social welfare. Tanzania was insulated from the dangerous ethnic and regionalist politics which have recently rocked the very foundations of Kenya. Generally, Tanzania has also been insulated from the type of bloody and disastrous ethnic conflicts witnessed in Rwanda and Burundi, the types of which that are rather pervasive and recurrent in the entire African continent.

Contrary to the view of some of the adverse critiques, Nyerere does not come across as a typical dictator who ruled repressively. In fact, he persistently sought to institutionalize a modicum of a participatory social and political process in the immediate period after independence. Throughout this period, he institutionalized measures to ensure the movement toward a multi-party system. Thus, the villagization scheme in spite of the shortcomings identified in its implementation was a veritable platform for the dispensation of social welfare and grassroots development.

The villages were important in the highly successful literacy programme. By 1980s, Tanzania had one of the highest literacy rates in Africa in spite of its debilitating state of economy. Every village had at least a primary school, 90 % of the villages had a cooperative store while considerable proportion had access to safe water supply, a health centre or dispensary (Africa Now 1981, p. 58).

6.4 The Option of Market Fundamentalism

When compared to some of its peers in the East African sub-region, especially Kenya; Kenya in terms of economic output outstripped Tanzania. Under the period under review, Kenya outstripped Tanzania first by 50 % in 1973, and second by 30 % between 1974 and 1984. In economic terms, it would appear that Kenya fared better, but in terms of human development, as demonstrated earlier, Tanzania indeed fared better.

In fact, by the time we assess the seeming growth advantage of Kenya in terms of the consistent torrents of generous external aid from Western nations and the international financial institutions (which Tanzania rejected on account of its policy of self-reliant development), Tanzania fared better in real terms above and beyond its peers in the East African sub-region. Without prejudice to its recourse to International Monetary Fund (IMF), finance in the 1970s in the face of economic crisis, Nyerere remained critical of neoliberal prescriptions, which according to him leave national economies worse off when embraced.

In hindsight, Nyerere as a statesman was far ahead of his era, as the unfortunate impact of neoliberal prescriptions on third world economies has brought the inadequacies of the neoliberal paradigm to the fore, as a ruinous path to development. Thus, neoliberal economic policies in no way constitute a workable alternative to Ujamaa in the development process in Africa (Sachs 1987; Bienefeld 1998). The explanatory value of African social philosophy, typified by Ujamaa, must be viewed within the context of the ensuing global economic crisis with the attendant abysmal failure of capitalism, something which has been widely regarded as the only alternative after the earlier collapse of Marxist socialism. Ujamaa as African humanist philosophy is relevant, particularly, when cured and purged of its deterministic Marxist-socialism.

7 Conclusion

I have thus far shown that both capitalism and socialism have failed to promote humanistic values needed to counter the impersonal and destructive forces of humankind’s inhumanity against itself. These have taken the form of wars, tyranny, unjust and oppressive political systems, mass-unemployment, overexploitation of the environment, abysmal economic failures caused by many years of wrong economic choices, diseases, socio-economic hierarchy, suboptimal resource allocation, inhumane treatment of people, adverse policy preferences, misrule, institutional structures, which are generally detrimental to human dignity, integrity and well-being.

At a time when the humankind is at cross-roads about how to attain social justice, equity, sustainable economic growth, sustainable economic development and sustainable human development, I have dwelt considerably on the eternal social and communal embeddedness of human life and existence. That is, I am referring to group solidarity – the benefit to the individual of enjoying the security and the protective umbrella of the group, of conformity to universalizable group customs and norms, which holds society together, of community spirit as overriding forces in human life. The superiority of African humanist paradigm of developmentalism above and beyond the two failed Western economic paradigms lie behind the fact that it emphasizes the well-being of the group, and therefore, the greatest good of the greatest number of the people as the primary purpose of governance and developmentalism. It assumes that what is good for the life of the community or society is or will eventually be good for the individual.

African humanism is neither the impersonal individualistic view of society which capitalism encapsulates, nor the deterministic perspective of human existence, which is at the core of socialist world view and developmentalism. The African humanist world view is to the extent that it underscores the realism that there can be no ‘pure’ personhood without community and no ‘pure’ community without constituent individuals. It constitutes a veritable third alternative social philosophy, which animates all human institutions, such as capital, property, law, justice and so forth. I have particularly argued that African humanism would redress the most fundamental and critical issues of the human condition, such as mass unemployment, hunger, scourge of war and conflict, diseases, poverty, inequitable allocation of resources, sub-optimal allocation of resources, environmental degradation and overexploitation, and so on.

Thus, given the developmental deficits which bedevils the world, nay Africa, African Humanist perspective’s high explanatory value as, I have succinctly demonstrated brings to the fore its value as a veritable instrument, which if embraced, particularly in Africa will catalyze sustainable economic growth, sustainable economic development, and most importantly, sustainable human development.

It is a single stroke which will open up rural Africa, where over 80 % of the people reside and unleash the latent creative and productive force of the people in a very sustainable and self-reliant manner. For Africa, opening up the rural area will entail investment in rural infrastructure such as rural feeder roads, rural telephony, rural electricity, and mass transportation, such as railways to connect settlements, rural sanitation and clean sources of water, rural health services, rural recreation and so on. Implementation of the foregoing measures will arrest the rural/urban drift and boost agricultural productivity, reduce the level of poverty and diverse the economy away from the unsustainable reliance on the extractive sectors to the sustainable agricultural and manufacturing sectors of the economy.