One of the most striking things about the efforts to develop Africa in the past three decades is the central role of foreign aid. Literally all African countries have found themselves reliant on capital and technical assistance from more or less friendly donors. By providing much of the necessary support for development projects, donors have come to occupy a very prominent position in the policy-making process in Africa. Aid has been viewed as the fast-moving variable in the development equation; it has been regarded as providing the shortcuts to progress.
In this situation, it is not surprising that ideologies that have guided African development reflect donor concerns and interests. The valiant efforts to generate "African" ideologies in the context of extended liberation or independence struggles have come to little in the post-independence era. The visionary and bold objectives contained in political documents produced by leaders like Amilcar Cabral and Julius Nyerere have given way to more "instrumentalist" perspectives, reflecting the prevailing values of the donor community.
It may be argued that this increasing pragmatism in policy outlook has not necessarily been harmful, because it has forced decision-makers to become realistic and practical about what can be done in the context of poverty-ridden countries. To some extent, this is true. Political action needs to be practical in order to sustain legitimacy. The problem in Africa, as I see it, is the extent to which ideology has been married to the practical concerns of the donors. It has been largely used to justify such concerns and has shifted as these concerns have changed. The "developmentalist" legacy has created a paradox whereby ideology reigns supreme yet has the effect of marginalizing ideas. Much of the post-independence experience, therefore, can be described as one of "ideology without ideas". The principal concern has been to justify one particular kind of "development" at the expense of alternative ideas. The result has been a devaluation of the role of ideas in African societies and an ensuing degradation of precisely those intellectual cadres -- the social scientists, in particular -- for whom ideas constitute the basis of their daily bread.
My contribution to this panel is to trace this relationship between ideology and the social sciences over the past thirty years. I have decided to first discuss the way development ideology has evolved during this period and what implications this has had for social scientists in the region. The last part of my contribution is directed towards what we may expect in the future.
The phenomenon of an hegemonic development ideology is relatively recent, going back thirty years or so. It coincides with the emergence of the assumption that massive resource transfers from rich to poor countries are not only morally desirable but also politically necessary to enable backward countries to catch up with the already more advanced societies. It has provided a rationale for richer countries to play a direct role in the development of the poor ones. Because of being potential beneficiaries of this resource transfer, the latter have largely accepted this outside involvement in their own affairs. Development ideology has been the sweetener that has allowed the poor countries to accept this otherwise bitter political pill.
Development ideology has not been static. It has evolved largely in response to the practical experience with development aid and changes in the ideological climate in the rich countries. Thus, it has changed for reasons that are only indirectly related to what is happening in countries receiving aid. The shifts that have occurred in development ideology in the past thirty years may be described as a spiral journey around two axes: (1) growth-equity, referring to the objectives of development, and (2) management-participation, the modes of development. The journey is sketched in the figure below:
Growth
1955-65 1985-
Central Intermediary
Government Organizations
"Trickle "Enabling
Down" Environment"
Management Participation
"Basic "Small is
Needs" Beautiful"
Decentralized Grassroots
Administration Organizations
1965-75 1975-85
Equity
Following this framework, it is possible to identify four distinct phases through which development ideology has evolved. Each phase is distinguished by a lead concept (inside the spiral), capturing its normative essence, and a key institutional actor (outside the spiral), indicating the predominant mode of implementation.
By suggesting a linear progression the above "map" is more forebearing than reality. It does not acknowledge the multiple zig-zag movements in and out of blind alleys that have also characterized the search for "development". Nor does it take into consideration the conflicts associated with the shifts from one phase to another. It does recognize, however, that, as the journey progresses, there is an accumulated learning, hence the notion of a spiral rather than a circular move. In other words, I do suggest that lessons learnt in one phase are carried over into the next. There is no return to the same sport as before, although the same broader territory may be revisited, as suggested by the figure above. The basic features of each phase are outlined below.
The "trickle down" phase coincided with the birth of development economics and was heavily influenced by the thoughts of economists trying to draw the lessons from post World War II experiences in reconstructing Europe. Efforts to discover the sources of economic growth and to analyze long-run processes of economic change were of course not new at this point in time. Classical economists like Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill had devoted most of their professional careers to doing exactly that as had Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels as well in the 19th century.
The process of decolonization and the birth of new nations in Asia and Africa in the 1950s, however, gave an impetus for a renewed focus on the issues of economic growth. Development economics then arose, as Meier (1984) suggests, not as a formal theoretical discipline, but as a practical subject in response to the needs of policy-makers to advise governments on what could and should be done to allow their countries to emerge from chronic poverty. These practical concerns of the first generation of development economists came to characterize development ideology from the start.
Among leading economists at the time, John Maynard Keynes was the most influential. By contradicting orthodox liberal economics, Keynes had prepared the way for an alternative approach to economic problems. By assigning a larger role to the public sector, he had also prepared a case for discretionary national economic management. In his perspective, public policy and public management were to be much more active forces in national economies. Full employment, social security, the political and social responsibility of government -- all these attributes of the welfare state -- were carried over into development economics and the emerging development ideology.
This ideological orientation fitted the political conditions in Africa as it began to liberate itself from the colonial yoke. Development economics shared the policy optimism of the emerging generation of African political leaders. It also shared with them the prospect of using the state to redress economic and social imbalances caused by colonial policy. Finally, in a situation where the indigenous private sector was weak, it made perfect political sense to embrace the notion that the state ought to serve as the engine of growth. Macro-economic management, then, came to make up the foundation of the new development ideology. Its distinct features were shaped by a fresh generation of economists among whom Sir Arthur Lewis stands out as probably the most significant as far as Africa is concerned. His influential book on economic growth (1955), drawing heavily on West African data, constitutes a landmark as far as development economics and development ideology in these early years are concerned.
Development in his and others' perspective was tantamount to modernization. The political ambition of Africa's leaders was to industrialize their countries, educate their population, and provide the social amenities associated with modern life. To promote manufacturing the state had to engage public capital and to administer complex -- and expensive -- import substitution policies. To promote the development of human resources,the state had to vastly expand available opportunities for both primary and secondary education. To upgrade medical and other facilities for the local population, large investments in hospitals were deemed necessary. This largely "demand-driven" strategy of development was to be financed through foreign aid. The latter was seen as having a pump-priming function.
It is important to remember that this strategy was not cast in the language of equity but that of growth. The latter was to be achieved through the "big push" of public investments but it would also be targeted on special categories of people, notably the well-endowed and entrepreneurial types. In agriculture, for example, these were identified as "progressive farmers". They were expected to take the lead in introducing modern farming practices and thereby encourage others to adopt the same innovations. To ensure this trickle down effect, rural cooperatives were viewed as key instruments. Kept under close supervision by government, these institutions would provide credit and other inputs to interested and willing members. By making farmers cooperate on a voluntary basis, there was a local organizational base for diffusing innovations in the rural areas. Back-up services were provided by government extension officers. For example, agricultural instructors equipped with advice from findings obtained at agricultural research stations, provided valuable support for this drive towards agricultural modernization.
The extensive role of the state, or more specifically the central government, in development posed a special challenge to its executive arm, especially since capacities were generally low in Africa. The cadre of well-trained and experienced public servants was very small and it was necessary to make the best use of scarce human resources. This ruled out decentralization. Instead, a call was made for a new style of administration which met the development needs of new states better than conventional public administration. This "development administration", according to one observer, refers to the administration of development programs, to the methods used by large-scale organizations, notably governments, to implement policies and plans designed to meet development objectives (Riggs 1970:6-7). Development administration was being contrasted with regular "bureaucratic" administration which was viewed as control-oriented and stressing regularity. The new style of administration was demanding both flexibility and innovativeness (Schaffer 1969; Gant 1979).
In practice, this meant that existing administrative structures were left largely untouched. The demand for change was placed on individual officers, whose outlook and behaviour were expected to reflect this new style. Thus, for example, governments retained their functional organization as developed in colonial days. Each ministry or department continued to operate very much as a self-contained entity with its own field organization. Although central planning units were introduced, there was no or little effort to coordinate various branches of government beyond what was possible at cabinet level.
Research was being encouraged in this period, but there was a strong emphasis on it being applied. Both governments and donors took a highly instrumental view of research. It was meant to serve national development interest. As such it was not expected to question the basic assumptions of policy but only serve its promotion and implementation. Wherever academics, and social scientists in particular, took a critical view, they were accused of operating in an "ivory tower" fashion. With these pressures to conform, many intellectuals preferred to exercise self-censorship or take the more opportunistic route of supporting current policies even if there were good reasons to question them.
This phase coincided with the radicalization of the development debate in the second part of the 1960s. Especially important was the renaissance of Marxist theories, notably in the form of a "dependency" approach to the study of development and underdevelopment. In this perspective, political independence was not sufficient to secure a state-administered development because the economic dependency of poor nations on the rich ones severely curtailed their policy options. In this respect, the second phase represents a reaction to the excessive optimism about the development potential of ex-colonial countries that was so typical of the first phase.
"Development" was no longer seen as coterminous with growth. Analysts began to argue that growth without equity was growth without development. With this redefinition of the concept, the progressive farmer was abandoned in favour of the poor peasant. Trickle down was no longer adequate. Dissemination of information and diffusion of innovations (Rogers and Svenning 1969) -- key features of the earlier phase -- were too slow-moving to suit the mood of the time.
The development ideology of the second phase stressed the importance of a determined political will and a strong benevolent government ready to carry out redistributive policies. Governments of this kind were given priority by the international community. Even a cautious institution like the World Bank changed its tune, supporting, among other things, ambitious land reforms and large settlement schemes involving poorer people. Following Robert McNamara's appointment as Bank President, a special directive was issued that the bulk of the institution's project assistance must be targeted on the poorer half of the population in recipient countries.
Growing equity concerns also meant greater attention to social development issues. While these had been on the political agenda in the first phase too, it was only now that governments and donors shifted their investments towards health and education on a massive scale. This phase saw the introduction of universal primary education and the rapid expansion of health care facilities at the local level. This new orientation was in response to the emerging notion that without satisfaction of their basic needs, poor people could not participate meaningfully in national development. If the peasant in the first phase had been approached primarily as a producer, he was now being treated as a "full" person. The logic was that by appealing to his perceived needs, governments and donors could entice him to participate more fully in development.
This redefinition of development had important repercussions for its management. The centralized nature of public policy-making that characterized the new states in the first phase had led to much red-tape and thus inability to perform the expected role of the innovator. The presumed and prescribed behaviour of the new public servant had never materialized. Furthermore, the functional specialization of government activities had caused waste and confusion in the field. The second phase, therefore, opened the door to structural reforms. Of particular relevance here were the efforts to decentralize authority and to create integrated management structures for development. There were now sufficient number of trained and experienced African servants available in government that shortage of manpower was not viewed as a constraint on such reform efforts.
Although the notion of popular participation featured in the political rhetoric justifying these reforms, they were largely administrative. No political authority was delegated to autonomous lower level institutions such as district councils. In fact, in countries like Tanzania and Zambia they were abolished. The major changes in these two countries, as elsewhere in the region, implied giving greater authority to government-appointed officials in the field. This form of decentralization -- usually referred to as deconcentration -- gave more clout to the field in relation to headquarters but left governments spread thin over a widening range of development matters.
Integrated development programs were another type of administrative innovation in this phase. The first years of post-independence experience had suggested that not only were departmental headquarters far removed from implementational realities but they were also insensitive to the needs for coordination of governmental activities in the field. Integrated programs, carried out within existing government structures or independent thereof, as the case was in several countries, helped bolster the executive capacity in the field but also increased the management costs in significant ways. For example, the growing emphasis on integration of government activities reinforced the need for development planning. Proper design of projects as well as adequate identification of linkages and relations at the macro level were viewed as preconditions for successful implementation (Nellis and Rondinelli 1986).
If the first phase had been dominated by development economists, the second belonged to those concerned with development management. This period was the peak of interest in public management. The latter had not worked well in the first phase. Development administration had proved little more than rhetoric. Because the state was still presumed to play the leading role in development, it became imperative to reform existing structures and thus strengthen management.
This concern with reform of the public service was reinforced by the radicalization of politics itself. Many African governments turned to a socialist development strategy in these days, arguing that it was more appropriate for the conditions of a poor country than capitalism. The role of research was redefined in this light. It was no longer enough for it to be applied. The researcher had also to show commitment; to accept the basic ideological premises on which public policy rested. This had the effect of further confining the role of intellectuals who were now expected to echo the official ideology in an even more explicit way than the case had been in the first phase. The result was that empirical research was downgraded in importance and scholars expected to engage primarily in "political education", as was illustrated by the introduction in many universities of compulsory "development studies" courses, the main purpose of which was to inculcate the "correct" political ideology. Thus, while the intellectual debate may have been quite heated at times -- as the case was at the University of Dar es Salaam in the early 1970s -- it was pursued within narrow parameters.
The second phase had been the logical continuation of the first. Both were characterized by a strong belief in government as the key institutional actor, responsible initially for growth but subsequently for a much broader range of development activities. Furthermore, both phases had been marked by government control over the provision of inputs for progress, thus reinforcing the notion that development was to come from above and to be centrally directed.
The break between the second and third phases is more pronounced. It reflects the new conditions that were brought about in the world economy by the first "oil crisis" in 1973 and the growing disillusion with efforts not only to modernize Africa but also to reduce poverty on the continent. In other words, criticism was being directed not only against the liberal but also the socialist strategy of development. The positivist spirit that had been underlying both these development strategies was now being called into question. Neither political mobilization nor improved public management was seen as the answer to the continent's problems. Ordinary people displayed increasing doubts that their governments were willing to or could serve as the sole dispenser of resources and benefits. By heavily taxing producers and at the same time failing to implement development programs in a timely and reliable fashion, governments had alienated people. For them, government was no longer an asset or facilitator but increasingly a liability and a hurdle.
This was becoming evident in many countries in Africa in the latter part of the 1970s, but the issue only exploded in the open with the publication of the World Bank's Report on Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa (1981). It is important to recall that although it has been characterized as a report by non-Africans (which is true in the sense that its principal author was a U.S. economist), it was actually solicited by the African Directors on the Bank Board.
Perhaps the most serious indictment of the African governments was their involvement in the gradual destruction of the public realm. Although there were individual exceptions, the majority of Africa's political leaders made a habit of making decisions in an arbitrary fashion, taking little or no advantage of the expert advice of civil servants. The accumulated effect of this habit was beginning to show up in the late 1970s in terms of high levels of demoralization among the public service cadres and growing levels of misappropriation of public funds. The core of the state -- the concept of a public realm in need of protection from private and sectarian interests -- had been effectively punctured.
Against this backdrop, it is only natural that ordinary citizens in Africa turned away from the state and towards things proximate and known. Faced with deteriorating -- and in the 1980s contracting -- public services, people were induced, or compelled by circumstances, to explore alternatives. People began to recognize the significance of their own contribution. Development, for the first item, was being seen as coming from within or below rather than from without or above. Development analysts started to take seriously Schumacher's point that "small is beautiful", i.e. that small-scale, typically community-based, efforts can achieve what the large-scale government bureaucracies had failed to do. In retrospect, one may argue that the crisis that hit the African economies in the early 1980s as a result of both global and domestic factors, was a blessing in disguise because it encouraged people to rediscover their own potential.
Thus, it was no longer possible to view development management exclusively as a government domain. It was now acknowledged that it involved also other institutions in society, notably those in which people participated freely and on a voluntary basis. Society itself had an active contribution to make, whether in the form of self-help or the private and cooperative pursuit of progress.
In the 1980s, this manifested itself in a growing reallocation of responsibilities to "grassroots" organizations. For instance, such utilities as water supply, which previously had been the exclusive onus of government departments was now being handed over to community-based associations. The latter not only raised funds for building such schemes but also engaged in maintaining and repairing them. Similar things happened in the fields of soil conservation and tree-planting. Ordinary people, notably women, were in the forefront of this "green" movement (Harrison 1986). In primary health care, alternatives included the encouragement of "traditional" healing and care, e.g. training and use of traditional birth attendants. Finally,the search for alternatives also extended to the economic sector where individuals and groups, often women, engaged in income-generating activities for their own benefit. Much of this took place outside the formal sector and thus encouraged everybody to begin recognizing the significance of the "informal sector" in the African economies. In some countries, e.g. Zaire, the informal, and often non-authorized, economic activities grew so rapidly that by the end of the decade, they were estimated to be larger than the formal and official economy (MacGaffey 1989).
This reorientation naturally encouraged a growing scholarly interest in local institutions. A major survey of such institutions in Asia and Africa (Esman and Uphoff 1984) highlighted not only the great variety of local institutions but also their effectiveness in achieving certain development goals. Other authors (Leonard and Marshall 1982) argued that decentralization could only effectively be achieved by drawing on local institutions other than those created by the state. At the same time, there was a growing recognition that development does not come about through "blueprints" but as a result of learning from experience (Korten 1980; Moris 1981). The notion that development had to be centrally planned was being abandoned in favour of incentives for individual actors to take their own development initiatives. In the study of development economics, this led to the discovery of the "rational peasant" (Popkin 1979; Bates 1981). In agriculture, it manifested itself in growing interest in farming systems research and in the discovery of the indigenous potential of such systems (Richards 1985).
The role of research was also being redefined in the 1980s. The notion that it must be committed to a given political cause was being abandoned in favour of the idea that it must be relevant to local conditions. This meant, among other things, a move from macro to micro issues. This became evident in economic research but also in the other social sciences where gender and household issues took on a new significance. In terms of methodology, participatory research gained increasing popularity. In all, the social sciences adjusted to the new ideological orientation without too much difficulty, though for those who were wedded to a dependency perspective, it took longer time to recognize that peasants and workers may be studied as actors with a certain amount of autonomy of their own.
Even the enthusiastic advocates of people's institutions have had to accept that small is not only beautiful. By being small and dispersed, such institutions can not make much of a difference to development unless they are incorporated into broader institutional networks. But in a situation where the political legacy is of a state bureaucracy used to act at its own pace and in its own interest, spontaneous local efforts cannot expect much support and encouragement from that direction. That is why in recent years greater stress has been placed on the need for new support structures outside government.
What is happening in this most recent phase is the growing recognition that local seeds, i.e. local initiatives, can flourish and become viable alternatives to the many hybrid solutions that have been implanted with foreign assistance in earlier phases, provided that governments are ready to create an environment in which these seeds are allowed to grow. An enabling environment is being defined as open and pluralist, providing the conditions in which an economic and political restructuring can take place in a constructive fashion. The concept provides the counterpart to the now well known Russian words of perestroika and glasnost.
In spite of all the post-independence rhetoric in support of self-reliance, Africa still lags behind Asia and Latin America in promoting greater reliance on domestic resources at different levels of society, but the determination to move in this direction has been heightened in recent years. Key institutional actors in this effort are intermediary, usually non-governmental, organizations, with the ambition to assist groups of people who do not qualify for support from formal sector agencies or, even if they do, fail for other reasons to obtain such support. These intermediaries provide incentives for local initiatives through the provision of credit and technical advice. They often also engage in building management capacity at the community level.
Unlike governments, these non-governmental organizations tend to have a deliberate strategy for allowing beneficiaries to gradually disengage from their input and services. In a climate where people have grown used to patronage politics, however, reducing such dependency is not always easy, as several NGOs have already experienced.
Another challenge in Africa stems from the relative weakness, in both political and managerial terms, of African NGOs. International NGOs still dominate the African scene. Some of these have acquired the trust of local people but others are met with suspicion not only by governments but also by ordinary people, because their "agenda" may not appear very clear.
For this reason, the demand for strengthening indigenous NGOs in Africa has grown. The mainstream churches with international connections -- Catholics, Anglicans and Lutherans, in particular -- have redefined their roles and taken a much more active part in development work. As part of their mandate,these church-based agencies have also included monitoring of human rights violations on the assumption that an enabling environment is impossible without respect for the rights of citizens by governments. Secular NGOs have also begun to emerge in Africa in recent years. The environmental issues have been one catalyst for the formation of such organizations but so has the popular demand for education. For instance, in the second part of the 1980s, privatization of education has often been channeled through local trusts or associations, bringing together people of a given area or ethnic group for such purposes.
The institutional landscape in Africa, therefore, is today much denser and more varied than it was before. Development management is increasingly being shared by a broadening range of public, private and voluntary organizations. This growing institutional pluralism poses a special challenge to African governments which have grown used to having a monopoly of power. Most of them have been reluctant to give NGOs the autonomy they demand in order to do their work effectively. For example, some African governments have moved "NGO Affairs" from the inconspicuous Culture and Social Welfare Department, where they typically belonged in the past, to Internal Security based in the Office of the President. While such a move may be justified because so many prominent NGOs are foreign, the location of this responsibility in Internal Security not only sends the wrong message to the people but also opens up the possibility for political harassment in ominous ways.
This lack of trust by governments in private and voluntary organizations does not, however, constitute the only threat to the realization of an enabling environment. The donors are also part of the problem by taking a very narrow and instrumental view of NGOs. Thus, for most donor agencies NGOs appear to be of interest only as alternative vehicles of project implementation. The result is that promising NGOs have been overloaded and subsequently tainted by an image of incompetence. The international community needs to accept that institution-building is a slow and often painful process. It must accept that African NGOs have an agenda of their own.
Fortunately, a number of international initiatives have been taken with a view to bringing this point home to donors, governments and others concerned. Among these, special mention should be made of the 1984 International Exhibition of Rural Development in New Delhi which resulted in a series of publications on "approaches that work" (see especially ICAI 1988), the series of conferences on the enabling environment organized by the Aga Khan Foundation in Africa since 1986, and the International Conference on Popular Participation in the Recovery and Development Process in Africa, organized by the Economic Commission for Africa in conjunction with the NGO community at Arusha in February 1990.
As the international development ideology has shifted towards a greater emphasis on the enabling environment, the role of research has also become subject to attempts at redefinition. It may be too early to give a particular label to its new role. Many stress its potentially creative aspects, emphasizing the need of research to identify ways out of the present predicament. Others point to the constructive role that research can play in highlighting viable alternatives. While these are important dimensions of research in the current phase, its most important role may still be that of helping to pluralize the policy environment; to make a contribution towards greater openness and greater involvement by others than officials in policy-making.
It is only in the last few years that the developmentalist legacy has been effectively challenged by African social scientists. For a long time, their challenge was neutralized by their own adherence to a Marxist orthodoxy that they developed in the early 1970s but subsequently could not give up. More recently, however,the social scientists have taken up issues that concern their own role in society and especially the question of their freedom to operate. Of special significance is the initiative to which Thandika Mkandawire has referred in his contribution to this panel: a special conference on Academic Freedom in Africa to be held in Kampala in November 1990 with personal sponsorship by such leading intellectuals as Julius Nyerere, Bishop Desmond Tutu and Wole Soyinka.
In concluding this panel contribution, it may be worth discussing some of the particular challenges that face the social sciences community today and tomorrow in Africa. To put these challenges in the proper perspective, it may also be important to recall the different perceptions of social science research that have guided officials to date:
Growth
1955-65 1985-
applied pluralizing
Management Participation
committed relevant
1965-75 1975-85
Equity
This paper has emphasized the influential role that official ideology has had on the perception and role of social science research. What I have referred to as the "developmentalist legacy" has seriously constrained the development of social science research in Africa. It has remained either quite parochial or too abstract. The result is that it has had little impact either inside or outside the walls of academe.
Looking to the future one can only hope that the emphasis on an enabling environment also is translated into greater respect for not only ideology but also ideas in development. The social science community does have an opportunity it has never enjoyed before in post-independence Africa to move its position forward by insisting on greater public recognition of the role of research into development issues that is independent of the constraints associated with past research. The political openings that already begin to characterize many countries in the region are important signals that the social science community in the future may be able to enjoy greater autonomy and thus also make a greater contribution to the development of research in society.
For the first time, the climate is ripe for the identification of an African perspective on development through independent research that may entail what Kwesi Prah, in his contribution to this panel, calls the search for an African tradition". Whether we agree or not with his definition of the problem, it is clear that a lot remains to be done in order to "authenticate" social science research in Africa, i.e. liberate it from the ideological constraints imposed on its by a close adherence to official development thinking.
The greatest threat to the operationalization of an "enabling environment" for social science research is the hard economic circumstances that may encourage the view that research is a "luxury" we can not afford. It would be very disappointing if at this point in time, when the political winds are liberalizing, such an orientation would prevail in government or donor circles. If public policy in African countries is going to improve, it is less adherence to than independence of official ideology that will help. The academics must have the opportunity to serve as independent "auditors" of the development process, using their position in a manner that guarantees independent judgement in a responsible manner. In such a situation, real public debates may emerge on issues which in the past have been treated only in closed circles of government or the ruling party.
What I have been recommending here is the need for African academics to shake themselves free from ideological blinders, whether rightist or leftist, without losing sight of the fact that they can still make a valuable contribution to their society's development by simply insisting on the importance of the freedom of ideas. I am not arguing for a value-free position but for one that gives scope for exchange of ideas in mutually respectful manner. African countries have largely lacked such an atmosphere in the past and it is high time social scientists and their academic counterparts in other fields go out of their way to defend such freedoms. The adoption of declarations on the need for academic freedom by faculty of various African campuses in recent months is an encouraging step in the right direction.
Thus, it may be said, in conclusion, that the experience that African social scientists have drawn points in the direction of greater freedom and recognition by society of their own role in public affairs. The prospect for an emancipation from the "developmentalist" straightjacket does exist today and should be seized by responsible intellectuals.
1. Bates, Robert 1981. Markets and States in Tropical Africa. Berkeley, University of California Press.
2. Esman, Milton and Uphoff, Norman T. 1984. Local Organizations: Intermediaries in Rural Development. Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press.
3. Gant, G. 1979. Development Administration: Concepts, Goals and Methods. Madison WI, University of Wisconsin Press.
4. Harrison, Paul 1986. The Greening of Africa. London, International Institute for Environment and Development.
5. Institute of Cultural Affairs International 1988. Approaches That Work in Rural Development. IERD Series No. 3, Munich and New York, Saur Publishers.
6. Korten, David C. 1980. "Community Organization and Rural Development: A Learning Approach". Public Administration Review, 40, 5, pp. 480-511.
7. Leonard, David K. and Marshall, Dale K., eds 1982. Institutions of Rural Development for the Poor: Decentralization and Organizational Linkages. Berkeley CA, Institute of International Studies, University of California.
8. Lewis, Arthur W. 1955. The Theory of Economic Growth. London, Allen and Unwin.
9. MacGaffey, Janet 1989. "Notes on the Growth of the Unofficial Economy in Zaire". In Richard Joseph, ed., Beyond Autocracy in Africa. Atlanta, Carter Presidential Center.
10. Meier, Gerald M. 1984. "The Formative Period". In G.M. Meier and Dudley Seers, eds., Pioneers in Development. New York, Oxford University Press.
11. Moris, John R. 1981. Managing Induced Rural Development. Bloomington IN, International Development Institute, Indiana University.
12. Nellis, John R. and Rondinelli, Dennis A. 1986. "Assessing Decentralization in Developing Countries: The Case for Cautious Optimism". Development Policy Review 4, pp.3-23.
13. Popkin, Samuel 1979. The Rational Peasant. Berkeley, University of California Press.
14. Richards, Paul 1985. Indigenous Agricultural Revolution. London, Oxford University Press.
15. Riggs, Fred 1970. Frontiers of Development Administration. Durham NC, Duke University Press.
16. Rogers, Everett and Svenning L. 1969. Modernization among Peasants. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
17. Schaffer, Bernard 1969. "The Deadlock in Development Administration". In Colin Leys, ed. Politics and Change in Developing Countries. London, Cambridge University Press.
18. World Bank 1981. Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa. Washington DC, The World Bank.