

























Abstract
As Philosophy of Economics investigates the 
foundational concepts and methods of economics: the 
rational choice, the appraisal of economic outcomes, 
institutions and processes, and the ontology of economic 
phenomena and the possibilities of acquiring knowledge 
of them, this research raises the question of why is there 
continuing economic underdevelopment in Africa? How 
to explain Africa, the world's second-largest continent, 
with 1.4 billion people in 54 countries and with plenty of 
human and natural resources, but still lacking in 
development over 60 years after its independence? By 
phenomenological and structural methods, the author 
critically evaluates the economic theories, particularly 
on the views of African scholars after Independence, that 
have been proposed for this continuing problem that 
affects the human condition of so many people. This study 
nds that among post-colonial African scholars, the path 
to African development has been debated between the 
Internalist and Externalist schools of development. While 
the Internalist tends to blame inside forces (local 
corruption, tyranny, bad governance), and with the view 
that Africa alone has the responsibility of bailing itself out 
of its present state of underdevelopment. The externalist 
school contends that Africa alone cannot attain any level 

AN AFROCENTRIC CRITIQUE OF 

AFRICA'S UNDERDEVELOPMENT

 

              Evarestus IGWE-ALUFO, Ph.D.
      St Albert the Great Major Seminary, Idowu-Offonran

Abeokuta, Ogun State, Nigeria.

eigwedumogu@gmail.com



of development because of historical constraints, such as 
the slave trade, imperialism, colonialism, and the power 
structure of the modern world. The Integrationist school, 
which nds the polarizing African development experts 
ridiculous, as they blame both internal and external 
forces for the causes of Africa's underdevelopment, holds 
that Africa's underdevelopment is solved by the 
integration of forces both from within and outside Africa. 
However, and philosophically speaking, the author nds 
that Africa's development is possible only with an 
appreciation of what is original and authentically 
African, which is dependent on the culture and 
consciousness of African people.

 
Keywords: Africa's Underdevelopment, Internalists, Externalists, 
Integrationists, Culture and Consciousness.
                             �
Introduction 
As Philosophy of Economics investigates the foundational concepts 
and methods of economics, and philosophers of history, not only 
ponder on the past and the future of Western civilization, they also 
reect seriously upon the experiences of other societies in hopes of 

1
understanding the larger dynamics of world history;  the question of 
why is there continuing economic underdevelopment in Africa 
comes to mind.
 How do we explain the fact that Africa, the world's second-
largest continent, with 1.4 billion people in 54 countries and with 
plenty of human and natural resources, is still lacking development 
over 60 years after its independence? By lack of development, I mean 
a nation's inability to provide its citizens with food, clothing, shelter, 
education, decent health care, good road, and employment, while 

2
also attending to environmental sustainability.

1Jerry H. Bentley, Shapes of World History in Twentieth Century Scholarship, 
Washington DC: American Historical Association, 2003, 3.
2Jeffrey Sachs, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities of Our Time, London: 
Penguin Books, 2005,  23.

60 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



 The more puzzling issue is that despite over 60 years of 
independence and after receiving 600 billion US dollars of external 

3aid,  Africa continues to be underdeveloped. The consensus is that the 
4money has had a little long effect.  It is more disturbing to see that the 

region's extreme poverty has increased during the reign of 
“globalization” in the 1990s when the modern world experienced 
great economic growth. 
 Moreover, as of January 2020, 91% of African countries had a 
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of less than the net-worth of the 
World's richest person- Jeff Bezos (An American internet and 
aerospace entrepreneur, media proprietor, and investor). Only South 
Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Angola, Sudan, and Algeria have a GDP of 

5
above US$115 billion.
 Why such continuing underdevelopment after a lot might 
have been put in place? Could poverty and underdevelopment be the 
destiny or lot of a people? What is the cause of persistent poverty in 
African land? Could this persistent underdevelopment and poverty 
be socially constructed or the design of the Maker of the world? 
Where is this curse of underdevelopment and poverty upon Africa 
coming from? 
 However, to philosophically enquire into this existential 
issue, a multi-dimensional approach has to be employed. Such as a 
phenomenological, structural, and historical method may enable us 
do the evaluation analysis. First, we will briey glance over the 
Western theories proposed to explain the lack of development in 
Africa. Secondly, we will critique the views of African experts on the 
issue. Lastly, we will propose that sustainable development in Africa 

3Cornelius P. Cacho, "Confronting the Main Causes of African Underdevelopment" 
in Foreign Policy Association (Resource Library, 2008).  Adam Lerrick, "Aid to 
Africa at Risk: Covering Up Corruption" in International Economics Report, 
December 2005.
 http://www.house.gov/jec/publications/109/12-09-05galliotcorruption.pdf.
4James A. Robinson and Daron Acemoglu, "Why Foreign aid fails- and how to 
really help Africa" in the Spectator, 2017. Retrieved Jan 30, 2020, from 
https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/04/9824422.
5Shephard Dube, "Jeff Bezos richer than 130 countries" in Shepharddube.com, 
retrieved Jan 30, 2020. 

An Afrocentric Critique of Africa's Underdevelopment   | 61



must be based on the culture and consciousness of the African people.     

Highlighting Theories of Underdevelopment in Africa
Going through the available data, we can see that questions continue 
to arise as to why the situation of Africa's development continues to 
deteriorate? Attempting a solution, three main Western theories tend 
to explain why the continent is still lacking in development half a 
century after its independence. They are Modernization theory, 
Dependency theory, and World System theory.         
 During the 1950s, some Western economists tied the idea of 
development to the idea of modernization. In searching for a model 
of development for Third World nations, including Africa, 
modernization analysts studied the political, social, economic, and 
cultural history of Western nations to identify policies that led to their 
material  prosperity.  Among some prominent economic 
modernization analysts include Walter Whitman Rostow (1916-
2003), W. Arthur Lewis (1915-1990), and Cyril E. Black (1916-
1989). "They assumed that underdeveloped Africa could adopt 

6similar policies and follow the same path to prosperity."
� Walt W. Rostow, an American economic historian, for 
instance, described the development of the First World as the result of 
ve sequential stages:  traditional society, preconditions of 
development, industrial take-off, full industrialization, and, nally, 
high mass consumption. Rostow states the possibility of identifying 
all societies in their economic dimension as lying within one of the 
ve stages and suggests that underdeveloped countries pass through 

7
the same stages of development.
 However, in the late 1960s, against Rostow and 
modernization theorists, Dependency theory holds that it is not 
internal factors that impede the development of the Third World, 
including Africa, but rather their relations of dependence on Western 
powers. Dependency theorists, such as Raul Prebisch (1901- 1986), 

6Jerry H. Bentley, Shapes of World History in Twentieth-Century Scholarship, 
Washington DC; American Historical Association, 2003, 8.
7. Walt W. Rostow, the Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto 
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1960, 1-105.

62 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



Andre Gunder Frank (1929 - 2005) and Theotonio dos Santos (b. 
1937), viewed Africa as a continent which has become 
underdeveloped because it was an integral part of the modernization 
process of the Western industrial nations, but in a subordinate and 
exploited position. 
 Andre Gunder Frank has strongly attacked the Stages of 
Economic Growth by arguing that Rostow ignored the exploitation of 
the Third World by the capitalist economy of the United States, which 
presents free-market policy as a panacea for the development of 
backward economies. But the policy was only a ploy to perpetuate 

8American hegemony.  Frank contends that it is not internal factors 
that impede the development of Africa, as posited by Rostow, but 

9
rather their relations of dependence on Western powers.
 Yet, during the 1970s, one of the popular founders of the 
World Systems theory, Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein believed, 
like dependency theorists, that world economies are integrated into 
one market system, the capitalist system, in which the surplus is 
transferred from the periphery to the core. Wallerstein (b. 1930), an 
American sociologist and an expert on post-colonial African affairs, 
analysed that the core states are administratively well organized and 
militarily powerful.  
 Wallerstein observed a third economic zone (semi-periphery) 
to the core and the periphery of dependency theory, and this addition 
accounts for the experiences of countries that moved up or down in 
the economy of the world-system. He argues that Africa's lack of 
development is a result of the continent's peripheral position in the 
international division of labour mediated through trade exchanges 

10 
without a unied political structure. He advocates for a truly  

8 Andre Gunder Frank, “Sociology of Development and Underdevelopment of 
Sociology,” Catalyst 3, in (New York: Monthly Review, summer 1967); also in, 
mcx.sagapub.com/cgi/content/refs/4/3/341   
9 A. G. Frank, “Dependency theory” in Capitalism and Understanding in Latin 
American: Historical Studies of Chile and Brazil  New York: Monthly Review, 
1969. 
10 Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Rise and Future Demise of the World Capitalist 
System: Concepts of Comparative Analysis,” Comparative Studies in Society and 
History (1974), vol. 16, 390. 

An Afrocentric Critique of Africa's Underdevelopment   | 63



democratic world in which all peripheral countries would unite 
against the system of world exploitation.
 Summarily, no matter the differences, western theories of 
underdevelopment in Africa are formulated in universalistic terms, 
implying that only by following their theories could resolve the 
situation of underdevelopment in Africa. But, among other 
criticisms, a cultural anthropologist, Franz Boas (1858-1942) 
believes that local conditions force adaptations to the local 
environment, and, therefore, what is adaptive for one region might 
not be appropriate for another.
 The dependency-world system theorists have also been 
accused of some bias towards the West. So, neither Western 
ethnocentrism nor bias toward the Western capitalist economy fosters 
development in Africa. More so, some critics have held that 
dependency and world system analysts have focused on the interests 
and activities of Western capitalists, overlooking the roles played by 
peoples in the peripheral countries as active participants in the 

11development of their world. Thus, the issue of overlooking roles 
played by peoples in the peripheral countries has called to examine 
the opinions of African scholars on the continuing underdevelopment 
in Africa, following Frank Boas' important admonition that local 
conditions force adaptations to the local environment.

Afrocentric Theories of Economic Underdevelopment in Africa: 
A Critique
The causes of underdevelopment in Africa have always evoked a 
heated debate among post-colonial African elite. Since the 1970s, 
three major schools of thought have emerged among post-colonial 
African development experts: the Internalist school, the Externalist 

12school, and the Integrationist school.  The three schools of thought 

11 Bentley, Shapes of World History in Twentieth Century Scholarship, 13. 
12 Y Fredua-Kwarteng, “Etiology of Ghana Underdevelopment,” in Modern Ghana 
News (Thursday, August 4, 2005);
h t tp : / /www.modernghana.com/pr in t /117675/1/e t io logy-of-ghana-
underdevelopment.html  retrieved July 3, 2009.

64 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



tend to reect the “functional, conict, and interactionist  theories of 
13

inequality in sociology.” Examination of these schools points to the 
thinking of African experts on a continuing lack of development in 
their continent.
 
(A) The Internalist school  
Drawing from Rostow's modernization theory and functional 
sociology of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), the Internalist school 
believes that the causes of Africa's lack of development lie mostly 
within Africa.  Especially the issues of local corruption, tyranny, and 
bad governance from the 'internal factor' which is the brain behind the 
continent's continuing underdevelopment. They hold that Africa has 
the sole responsibility to bail itself from underdevelopment; 
especially as Africa should have recovered from the scourge of 

14 colonialism after more than half a century of independence.
Internalist scholars include George Ayittey, Moeletsi Mbeki, Thabo 
Mbeki, and Chinua Achebe, to mention but a few. 
  George Ayittey (b. 1947), a prominent Ghanaian economist, 
president of the Free Africa Foundation, Washington DC, and 
founder of Internalist school, holds that Africa has to seek internal 

15solutions to its economic problems.  In his Africa Unchained (2006), 
Ayittey argues that Africa is poor because it is not free and that the 
actual cause of African poverty is less of colonial oppression and 

16
mismanagement than an oppressive native autocrat.
 He listed the ills of local autocrats including bad leadership, 
ineffective governance, rampant corruption, capital ight, military 
vandalism, political repression, economic mismanagement, and 

17
destructive civil wars.  To be replaced with a democratic 
government, a modernized infrastructure, debt reexamination, free-

13 Vincent N. Parrillo, Understanding Race and Ethnic Relations, Second edition, 
Boston: Pearson Education, 2005,  8-10. 
14 Tongkeh Fowale, “The Distant Dream of African Development”, 2009.
15 George Ayittey, Africa Unchained: the Blueprint for Africa's Future, Hampshire: 
Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, 1-10.
16 Ayittey, Africa Unchained, 2006,  1-10.
17 Y Fredua-Kwarteng, “Etiology of Ghana Underdevelopment”, 2005. 

An Afrocentric Critique of Africa's Underdevelopment   | 65



market economies, and free trade as preconditions of development in 
18

Africa.
 Ayittey narrated how the Internalist scholarship evolved 
slowly in the 1970s; how infectious the euphoria was that gripped the 
continent during independence in the 1960s; how African nationalists 
were worshipped as gods and heroes, and how it was sacrilegious to 
criticize them. It did not take long before the heroes and governments 
began to outlaw opposition parties and declared themselves 

19
presidents for life.
 There was no tolerance for dissent, no democratic freedom, 
but creeping despotism that sowed the seeds of internal revolt. The 
leaders put their own benets before people's needs, and they blamed 
the continent's problems on external factors alone, instead of looking 

20at themselves as major contributors to the continent's woes.  Ayittey 
continued that not long after independence, namely in the 1960s, it 
became increasingly clear that Africa had traded “white colonialists” 
for “black neo-colonialists,” and that the oppression and exploitation 

21of the African people continued unabated.
 Ayittey's analysis was corroborated by the former U.S. 
President Barrack Obama, when he visited Ghana in July 2009. In his 
speech in Accra, President Obama urged African leaders to end 
tyranny, corruption, and get rid of violence to move the continent 
forward. That Africa does not need strong men, but strong 
institutions; that no country can create wealth if its leaders are 
exploitative; no investment business can ourish where the 
government skims 20% off the top, and no one wants to live in a 
society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of bribery, 

18 Ayittey, Africa Unchained, 2006.
19Ko Akosah-Sarpong, “Special Interview Emerging African Development 
Thinking, II”, in Modern Ghana News (October 7, 2008).
20. Ko Akosah-Sarpong, “Ghana's Externalists and Internalists (part 2)”, in 
Patriotic Vanguard (Sierra Leone: March 23, 2010);
http://www.thepatrioticvanguard.com/article.php3?id_article=104 
21. Akosah-Sarpong, “Special Interview with George Ayittey: Emerging African 
Development Thinking (2), in Modern Ghana News (September 30, 2009). 
http://www.modernghana.com/news/241260/1/special-interview-emerging-
africa-development-thi.html 

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22
corruption, violence, and brutality.  Obama categorically concluded 
that Africa's future lies with them, and their development depends on 

23 good governance and strong institutions.
 In 2004, Moeletsi Mbeki (b. 1947), blames African 
underdevelopment on its political elite. Moeletsi, a political 
economist argues that all modern political thoughts, from Marx and 
Lenin on the left to Hayek and Friedman on the right, are in 
agreement that the private sector is key to modern economic 

24
development.  Moeletsi explains that Africa arguably has one of the 
largest private sectors in the world because most Africans live and 
work within private sectors as peasants and or in subsidiaries of  
foreign-owned multinational corporations.
 However, neither private nor the public has complete 
freedom to operate within the market in Africa, hence the latter is 
controlled by the state. Since private sectors in Africa lacks political 
power, they are not free to operate in such a way as to maximize their 
objectives and to control their savings. The political elite prey on the 

25peasants' vulnerability just as Karl Marx once observed.
 Moeletsi concludes that African development needs a new 
type of democracy, that will empower the political elite as well as the 
private sector producers. Also that Africa should learn from China's 
agricultural reforms, which are today the core of its great economic 

26
growth.
� Thabo Mbeki (b. 1942), the former president of South Africa 
(1999-2008) and the elder brother of Moeletsi Mbeki, belongs to 
Internalist school when he popularized the African Renaissance in 
1998, with the slogan that “Africa is for Africans, Africa's problems 

22Cf. Barrack Obama, "End tyranny and corruption for development" in Hufngton 
Post (September 5, 2009). 
23. Cf. Barrack Obama, “End tyranny and corruption for development” in 
Hufngton Post (Sept. 5, 2009).
24. Moeletsi Mbeki, “South Africa: The Private Sector, Political Elite and 
Underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa” in allAfrica.com (August 2, 2004).
25 Karl Marx, “The Eighteen Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” in Karl Marx and 
Fredrick Engels: Selected Works London: 1970, vol. 1, pp.170-171.
26 Moeletsi Mbeki, “South Africa: the private sector…” 2004.

An Afrocentric Critique of Africa's Underdevelopment   | 67



27
require African solutions.”  Mbeki's African Renaissance is based on 
the concept that African people and nations must by themselves 
overcome the recurrent political, socio, and economic challenges 
facing the continent and achieve cultural, scientic, and economic 

28
renewal.
 In 1997, Thabo listed the elements that constitute the African 
Renaissance, including social cohesion, democracy, economic 
rebuilding and growth, and the establishment of Africa as a major 
contributor to world affairs. Thabo's African Renaissance 
encouraged education and attempted to reverse the issue of the 
“brain-drain syndrome” of many African intellectuals toward Europe 
and America. But urged the Africans and their intellectuals to be 

29
proud of their heritage and to enhance it.
 Chinua Achebe (1930-2013), a prominent Nigerian 
professor, novelist and social critic believed the Internalist factor. In 
his archetypal novel Things Fall Apart (1958), Achebe admitted that 
the arrival of British colonialism deteriorated the traditional Igbo-
Nigerian society, but the destruction of Igbo society was the result of 

30weaknesses within the native structure.
 Achebe favoured the Igbo-African culture of pre-Western 
society, with its religion, government, a system of money, an artistic 
tradition, and its judicial system. He argued that prior to British 
colonization, the Igbo people lived in a patriarchal collective political 
system which was democratic. They did not rule by monarchy nor 
single individual, as decisions were made by a council of male elders. 
Religious leaders were also invited to settle cultural issues. Achebe 
contradicted the biases of many British colonial writers who depicted 

27 Thabo Mbeki, “the African Renaissance Statement”, from the Ofce of the 
Executive Deputy President (August 5, 1998)
  http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mbeki/1998/tm0813.htm
28 Ibid., “Statement on behalf of the African National Congress, on the occasion of 
the adoption of the Constitutional Assembly of 'the Republic of South Africa 
Constitutional Bill 1996”, in Ofce of the President (August 5, 1996)  
http://www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/mbeki/1996/sp960508html 
29 W.A.J. Okumu, The African Renaissance, 2002, 12.
30Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, New York: First Anchor Books, 1994, 176-
206.  

68 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



31
Africans as ignorant and uncivilized.
 Nevertheless, Achebe's Things Fall Apart faulted the native 
structure for the collapse of Umuoa village. He placed no blame on 
the Igbos for being subjected to colonialism but often criticized their 

32
traditional customs, especially those customs that appeared “static.”  
Achebe clearly endorsed the Internalist position in his book The 
Trouble with Nigeria (1983), where he articulated the Nigerian 
problem as unwillingness or inability of its leaders to rise to their 
responsibilities and challenges of providing a personal example, 

33which, according to him, are the hallmarks of true leadership.

�
(B) The Externalist School
Unlike the Internalists, and perhaps more explicitly than the 
dependency and world system theorists, the externalists blame 

34 
“outside forces” for Africa's continued lack of development. Africa 
alone cannot attain any level of development because of historical 
constraints and the power structure of the modern world. 
 The externalist scholars include Macleans A. Geo-Jaja, 
Moshood K.O. Abiola, Walter Rodney, and Cornelius P. Cacho, to 
mention but a few. They hold that Western colonialism and 
imperialism, the transatlantic slave trade, the unfair international 
trade system and practices, and the policies of the World Bank and 
International Monetary Fund (IMF), are the independent or remote 
causes of African underdevelopment.
 They chastise rampant corruption, ineffective governance, 
military vandalism, political oppression, civil war and violence, and 

35
economic mismanagement  as proximate causes of under-
development in Africa. However, they believe that any credible 
healing must start from the root-sources. 

31Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, NY: EMC Corporation, 2003, 177-207.
32Jeffrey W. Hunter, “Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe: Introduction.”(Gale 
Cengage, 2002) Vol. 152.
33Chinua Achebe, The Trouble with Nigeria, UK: Heinemann, 1984, 1
34Tongkeh Fowale, “The Distant Dream of African Development”, 2009.
35 Y Fredua-Kwarteng, “Etiology of Ghana Underdevelopment” 2009.

An Afrocentric Critique of Africa's Underdevelopment   | 69



 The Externalists highly concur with dependency theorists in 
considering the global, political, and economic order in a core-
periphery context and in the relationship between the rich North and 
the poor South. Moreover, they agree with the Marxist exploitation 
thesis which claims that European industrialization was built on the 

36
imperialist exploitation of Africa.
  For instance, Macleans A. Geo-Jaja (b. 1930), a prominent 
Nigerian development economist and educationist, has asserted that 
African development has been deliberately held ransom by and to the 
advantage of some of the advanced nations. To prove his point, Geo-
Jaja pointed out that nowhere in Africa is there an indigenous 
education system designed to meet African needs because of the 

37 
conspiracy interests of some advanced nations.
 Geo-Jaja, who is also a former professor of economics in the 
University of Utah, Salt Lake City, and, the Chair of the National 
Think-Tank on the Review of the Nigerian Constitution, has traced 
Africa's lack of development to both the African slave dealers and the 
Western industrialists. He thought that the scramble for raw materials 
and markets culminated in wars among European powers, which 

38 
enabled Africans to play them off against each other.
 Like Walter Rodney (1942-1980), a prominent Guyanese 
political historian, who in his book: How Europe Underdeveloped 
Africa (1972), supported the view that Africa was deliberately 
exploited and underdeveloped by the European colonial regime. 
Geo-Jaja argued that Africa's greatest nightmare came in 1884-1885, 
when the colonial powers of England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, 
Portugal, and Belgium met in Berlin and divided up the African 
continent. There was no consideration for pre-existing governmental 
structures, institutions, and tribal relations, but only for raw 
materials, surplus labour, and export opportunities. 

36 Tongkeh Fowale, 2009. 
37 Macleans A. Geo-Jaja, “Underdevelopment and Education in Africa” in Africa 
Economic Analysis (April 11, 2008);
http://www.africaeconomicanalysis.org/articles/15/1/Underdevelopment-and-
education-i 
38 Geo-Jaja, “Underdevelopment and Education in Africa”, 2008

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 Geo-Jaja revealed that one important weapon that destroyed 
Africa during the colonial imperialism was “imported education 
systems”, which were designed to exalt the image of European 
societies to the detriment of Africa. Colonial powers trained Africans 
into a cadre of low-level clerks and administrators,  and they shielded 
them from any intellectual or skill development as the Africans were 

39 used as wage slaves in the farms and mines.
 Prof. Geo-Jaja argued that there could be no true economic 
development in Africa without the education of Africans, by Africans 
and for African purposes. There could be no democracy and peace 
without a population prepared to be self-governing committed to  
Africanization, leaving behind the divide and conquer hatreds of 

40 
colonialism which are the source of so much current internal strife.
Geo-Jaja concluded that beyond the inuence of family and religion, 
education is the key to stopping the continuing underdevelopment of 
Africa and to prevent episodes of horrible ethnic violence, like the 
genocide in Rwanda.
 After all these analyses of the causes of African 
underdevelopment, it is not difcult to see why Alhaji Moshood 
K.O. Abiola (1937-1998) had to call for “reparations” for Africa and 
its people. M.K.O. Abiola was a popular Yoruba Nigerian 
businessman, publisher, and politician, who sponsored the campaign 
to win reparations for slavery and colonialism in Africa and in the 
diasporas. 
 “Chief Abiola personally rallied every African head of state 
and every head of state in the black diasporas to ensure that Africans 

41 
would speak with one voice on reparations.” Inspired by Pan-
Africanism, Abiola in 1990 confronted the issue of African 
development by embracing the concept of reparation. “The basic idea 
of Reparation is that Africa does not owe the world, but above and 
beyond the cancellation of the debt issue, the world that has exploited 

39Ibid, 2008.
40Ibid.
41Moshood Abiola, “on his Philanthropy- Reparation” in
http://eliesmith.blogspot.com/2008/senator-as-yarima-reparation-for-africa.html  
Retrieved March 23, 2010

An Afrocentric Critique of Africa's Underdevelopment   | 71



Africa for so long, owes Africa the basic capital for development. 
Such capital will enable Africa to build roads, railways, hospitals, 
schools and the necessary communication infrastructure to support 

 42development.”
 In 1990, Abiola got his Concord Press to organize an 
international conference on Reparation in Lagos, and persuaded the 
then President Ibrahim Babangida (IBB) of Nigeria to endorse it at 
the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Abuja in 1991. In 1992, 
the OAU Summit in Dakar (Senegal), created a “Group of Eminent 
Persons” (GEP) to pursue the issue of reparation through the United 
Nations' (UN) Agenda. Included in the campaign for reparation were 

 43
the blacks in the diasporas.
 Abiola's reparation campaign helped African Americans in 
the United States to demand reparations from corporations from their 
unjust enrichment through the immoral and inhuman institution of 

44
slavery.  The Reparation drive is born out of a conviction that 
Africa's lack of development is attributed to Western colonization, 
unfair international trade systems and practices, and the adverse 
policies of the World Bank and IMF that multiplied debts in Africa 

45 
and made cancellation of those debts difcult.

(c) The Integrationists' perspective
There is also the Integrationist school. This third group nds the 
polarizing African development experts ridiculous, as it blames both 
internal and external forces for the causes of Africa's 
underdevelopment. The Integrationist searches both within and 
outside Africa for solutions to the continent's backwardness. This is 
because it realizes from both history and contemporary global events 

42O. K. Amuni, “Arab Enslavement of Africans: the Reparation Caravan must reach 
Arabia and Middle East” (Lagos: Dept. of Foreign Languages, Lagos State 
University, 2003), 45.
43.Ibid.
44.Ibid, 47
45. Hakeem Harunah, “Criticisms of Reparation” in Amuni's Arab Enslavement of 
Africans, 2003.

72 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



46 
that enemies of African development abound everywhere.
 The Integrationist scholars include Y. Fredua-Kwarteng, 
Wangari Maathai, Dambisa Moyo, and Chinweizu Ibekwe, to 
mention but a few. The analysis of this school evokes ideas of Pan-
Africanism, traceable to symbolic interactionism of George Hubert 
Mead (1863-1931) and Herbert Blumer (1900-1987). 
 Symbolic interactionism examines the micro-social world of 
personal interaction patterns in everyday life and studies the shared 
symbols and denitions people use when communicating with one 
another. Such that it shows how individuals create and interpret the 

47life situation they experience. Symbolic interactionism is very  
useful in understanding the Integrationist theory because it assumes 
that African people are responsive and creative in the construction of 
their world and development, rather than being passive, as might 
have been suggested by the Internalist and Externalist schools of 
African development.
� Y. Fredua-Kwarteng is a prominent Ghanaian scholar of the 
University of Toronto who coined the term “Integrationist school.” 
He stressed that in the realm of development, like any other domain in 
the social world, things are so interconnected that it is misleading to 

48 separate variables neatly into external and internal causalities.
Kwarteng cautioned that “in solving underdevelopment problems, 
scholars need to understand that human beings are multifaceted 
being: they are cognitive, emotional, religious, social and 

49behavioural.” Therefore, a non- positivist approach is needed.  
 He argues that enemies of African development abound 
everywhere, both internally and externally. He cites African corrupt 
leadership for an illustration. He believes that the sources of African 
corrupt leadership include the institutions where the leaders received 
their education and training, the personal philosophy of the leaders, 
and the inuence of people around these leaders. Kwarteng wonders 
how people could critically say that corruption and political 

46Y. Fredua-Kwarteng, “Etiology of Ghana Underdevelopment” 2005.
47Vincent Parrillo, Understanding Race and Ethnic Relations, 2005.
48Y. Fredua-Kwarteng, “Etiology of Ghana Underdevelopment” 2005.
49Ibid.

An Afrocentric Critique of Africa's Underdevelopment   | 73



oppression in Ghana, for instance, have no colonial connections.
� Kwarteng believes that African development can be sought 
through ne arts, religion, philosophy, morality, and herbal medicine. 
He does not accept that African ethics and morality can be validated 
by the application of capitalist economic principles; but that African 
ethics and morality have their own internal logic, and that their 

50 justication lies in an African worldview.
� Against the Internalists, Kwarteng criticized the idea of 
“import and implant foreign models” in Africa to attempt to solve 
African problems. But rather than foreign models should be viewed 
with suspicion and skepticism rather than with the “Europhilia 

51
syndrome” found in Africa today. �
 Chinweizu Ibekwe (b. 1943), a Nigerian economic historian 
and cultural critic, observes that the pervasive mentality in twentieth-
century Africa is one of Europhilia - an uncritical acceptance and high 
valuation of every bit of thing from the West. He calls for Africa's 

 52decolonization and Renaissance.

 Chinweizu, the popular author of The West and the Rest of Us,  
is a contemporary Afrocentric leader and a beacon of Africanism. 
Pan-Africanism is a socio-political worldview, philosophy, and 
movement that seeks to unify native Africans and those of African 

53 heritage into a global African community. Against Europhilia, 
Chinweizu attempts to reexamine African life and history from an 
African perspective and advocates a return to traditional African 
concepts about culture, society, and values. 
� He criticized the interpretation of African literature as a 
twentieth-century appendage to European literature, an 

50Ibid.
51Ibid. 
52Chinweizu Ibekwe, “Nationalist Values and Political Will: The Mental Health of 
the Nigerian Elite” (07 Dec., 2005);
http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/articles/chinweizu/nationalist-values-and-
political-will-18.html 
53Itibari M. Zulu (editor), “Sculpting a Pan-African Culture in the Art of Negritude: 
A Model for African Artist” in Journal of Pan African Studies, 2006; 
http://www.jpanafrican.com/ 

74 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



interpretation that was produced by those African writers who have 
digested a European tradition. He believed that the true African 
tradition extends back beyond the European and Hellenic kinds of 

54 literature and as far as the Egyptian pyramid. Chinweizu holds that 
for development in Africa, there must be an appreciation of what is 
originally and authentically African and achievable by decolonizing 
the African mind by Afrophilia. 
� The Africanist goal of decolonization is to overthrow the 
authority of alien traditions. Pan Africanism calls for the dismantling 
of white supremacist beliefs and structures which superimpose 
themselves on every aspect of African life. It is not implied that 
Africans must ignore foreign traditions, but simply a denial of the 
authority of foreign traditions and a withdrawal of allegiance to 

55them.
 More so, the Kenyan Wangari Maathai (b. 1940), an 
environmental and political activist, in her book The Challenge for 
Africa (2009), argues that there is no inherent trade-off between 
economic growth and environmental protection and that African 
leaders should pursue both. As an Integrationist, she blames both 
Western colonialism for devaluing African identity and culture and 

56Africa for its bloody attachment to fractured micro-nations.
� Maathai criticized foreign aid dependency as part of the 
problem of underdevelopment in Africa. She believes in a change that 
will come through grassroots activism and suggests strongly that 

57 Africans must embrace their own traditions. Among her Africanist 
objectives include the need for visionary leadership and nation-

54Chinweizu Ibekwe, “Chinweizu, Rothenberg, Duns Scotus”, in Towards the 
Decolonization of African Literature (United Kingdom: Howard University Press, 
1983); ... http://www.tomleonard.co.uk/online-poetry-a-prose/chinweizu-rothe
55Chinweizu Ibekwe, “Decolonizing the African Mind: Further Analysis and 
Strategy” in (Assata Shakur Forum, Nov. 17, 2004);
 ... http://www.assatasakur.org/forum/pan-afrikanism-afrocentricity/16
56Francis Fukuyama, “Out of Africa; Foreign aid is part of the problem, but so is 
corrupt politics” in Slate (May 4, 2009);
  http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2217394
57Wangari Maathai, The Challenge for Africa (Pantheon: First Edition, 2009), pp. 1-
36.

An Afrocentric Critique of Africa's Underdevelopment   | 75



building through a central leadership. She cited, for instance the 
leadership of Julius Nyerere, who knit Tanzania's multiple languages 
and ethnic groups together through the use of Kiswahili as the 

58national language.
� However, the Zambian Dambisa Moyo, a global economist 
at Goldman Sachs in London, argues in her Dead Aid (2009), that 
foreign-sponsored development is at the root of Africa's 

59 
underdevelopment and calls for its cessation if Africa is to progress.
As a world-class economist, who has understood the “pros-and-cons” 
of the World Bank and IMF's consequences of the foreign aid for 
development in Africa, Moyo favours private sector development, no 
matter where it comes from and vehemently protests against the 
agricultural protectionism of the global North that prevents trade 

60from becoming an engine of growth.
 Embracing both the Internalists' Renaissance objectives and 
the Externalists' Reparation drive, we could see that the 
Integrationists hold no ideological position, but rather seek from 
within and outside Africa for ways to move the continent forward.   

(3) Culture and Consciousness: Basis for A Sustainable 
Development in Africa
Regrettably, the Western development model for Africa takes for 
granted the impact of culture and consciousness on the political and 
economic dimensions of development in Africa. But the 
Integrationist philosophy that seeks both within and outside Africa 
for solutions to the continent's backwardness holds the way forward. 
The 'within' is Africa's peculiarity, which includes African culture 
and consciousness.  
� Kwarteng's warning that in solving underdevelopment 
problems, scholars need to understand that human beings are 
multifaceted beings and that they are cognitive, emotional, religious, 

58Ibid, 312-336.
59Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid: why aid is not working and how there is a better way 
for Africa New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009, 180-200.
60Francis Fukuyama, Out of Africa, 2009.

76 |    Ekpoma Review, Volume. 7, 2020   



social, and behavioural, ought to be listened to. Perhaps, a non- 
positivist approach is needed in sustaining development in Africa. 
According to the late Afrobeat legend, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, in one of 
his songs titled "teacher don't teach me nonsense" says: "Who be 
government teacher? Culture and tradition" (1986). 
� Any model of development in Africa that excludes a genuine 
historical role for consciousness, culture, and religion, functions for 
some set of economic or political interests. Hence, I enjoin the calls to 
re-examine African life and history from an African perspective, and 
a re-switch to the traditional African concepts about culture, society 
and values, and that would be the way forward. To catalyst this fact, 
there is a need for an indigenous education system and philosophy 
that will serve exclusively for African purpose and worldview.
� Probably, many may ask, what has culture and consciousness 
got to do with Africa's development? A lot, because the culture and 
consciousness of people carry them through all aspects of their life. It 
may look difcult to see that investment in ceremonies and social 
redistribution in African societies were part and parcel of the 
traditional balance between society and economies rather than just 

61
waste of economic opportunities.
 According to Battista Mondin, man has always produced 
culture, because he is essentially a cultural, and not a natural, being. 
This is because the development of cultural anthropology as a science 
has brought to light the value and the function that culture has in the 

62 development of civilization and in the characteristics of nations. He 
explains anthropologically, that culture signies the totality of 
customs, techniques, and values that distinguish a social group, a 

63
tribe, a people, a nation... and the mode of living proper to a society.

 
Thus, man is essentially a cultural being. God has endowed man with 
nature, but it is man's to order nature for his progress and 
development. Culture must not be done without. The Catholic 

61Luigi Solivetti, “W.W. Rostow and His Contribution to Development Studies: A 
Note” 2005.
62 Battista Mondin, Philosophical Anthropology Bangalore: Theological 
Publications in India, 2011, 145. 
63Ibid, 145-146. 

An Afrocentric Critique of Africa's Underdevelopment   | 77



theology teaches that grace is built on nature, so as development, 
civilization is built on culture.
� Just in January 2020, when the US President Donald Trump 
threatened to bomb the Iranian Cultural Center if Iran continues to 
retaliate for his murdering of Iran’s General Suleiman, and the world 
(the UN) including the US Congress rose against him, and 
immediately Trump rescinded his threat. Colonization in Africa was 
cultural, and that devalued African identity and culture.
� How can Africa be compared to China? Had they the same 
form of colonization? Today, China is the second-largest economies 
of the world, but without the benet of the “rule of law” and 
enforceable property rights. The Beijing Consensus proved that there 
could be market reform without democracy and that strong self-
determination can prevent powerful international actors from unduly 

64
inuencing its choices of development.  China, instead, developed a 
variant socialist rule of law that is compatible with its cultural norms, 
its current form of government, and its level of institutional 
development.
� Shameful to read some development experts arguing that 
Africa's cultural practices could be antithetical to socio-economic 
development, specically when dened exclusively in economic 

65 
terms, a self-sustaining rise in the gross national product (GNP),
without the ndings of experts on the project. 
 Ambe J. Njoh, a prominent Nigerian development analyst, 
studied the link between cultural tradition and socio-economic 
development in Africa. He discovered that there are clear differences 
between Eurocentric cultures, which are rooted in capitalist ideology 
and Protestant ethics, and traditional African culture, where ideas 
such as capital accumulation, entrepreneurial attitudes, and material 

66
wealth are not top priorities.
� Njoh, like Chinua Achebe, argued that Africa was not poor 

64Randal Peerenboom, China Modernizes: threat to the west or model for the rest? 
New York: Oxford University Press, 2007,  3.
65Ambe J. Njoh, Tradition, Culture, and Development in Africa, Burlington: 
Ashgate Pub., 2006,  5.
66bid, 5.

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before the coming of the white man. Achebe favoured the African-
Igbo culture of the pre-Western society, which he portrayed as having 
a religion, a government, a system of money, an artistic tradition, as 
well as a judicial system of its own. He explained further that before 
British colonization, the Igbo people lived in a patriarchal collective 
political system that was democratic. They did not rule by monarchy 
or a single individual, as decisions were made by a council of male 

67
elders. Religious leaders were also invited to settle cultural issues.  
Indeed, Africa needs to get back to their essences (culture and 
consciousness), to that 'distinctness', that which marks them as 
Africans, thus creating ways for its growth and development. 
� In summary, this article has raised the incredible question of a 
continuing economic underdevelopment in Africa. By a 
phenomenological and structural approaches, it has briey reviewed 
and highlighted the theories of underdevelopment for Africa, 
including modernization, dependency, and world systems theory. 
The article also reviewed and critiqued the Afrocentric theories of 
economic underdevelopment in Africa, namely the Internalist, 
Externalist, and Integrationist schools. The study nds the African 
scholars on a deadlock on whether the cause of the problem is from 
Africa or from outside Africa. Some school calls for all hands on deck 
to move the continent forward. However, it is the position of the 
article that, philosophically speaking, African development is 
possible only by appreciation of what is originally and authentically 
Africa, which depends on the culture and consciousness of the 
African people.          

67Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, New York: First Anchor Books, 1994, 176-
206.  

An Afrocentric Critique of Africa's Underdevelopment   | 79


