Reasons for African underdevelopment.

  

Date Posted: 2/13/2013 8:02:48 AM

Posted By: Geofrey Nalianya  Membership Level: Bronze  Total Points: 38

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REASONS FOR AFRICAN UNDERDEVELOPMENT

Lack of official ideology

Most African countries lack an official ideology. An ideology is a set of ideas that defines a country’s political, economic and socio-cultural structures and development strategy. Lack of an ideology therefore has led to a lot of confusion in developing states. Even where such ideologies exist, political actors rarely understand the correlation between ideology and development. We have many parties in existence like in the case of Congo, Uganda and Kenya but they are not ideologically driven. Instead focus is placed on the personalities behind the political parties.

Political uncertainty and civil wars

African states are characterized by massive corruption and widespread abuses of human rights that provides a germinating ground for political unrest. Civil wars are as a result of conflict over the limited resources for example border disputes (Kenya-Uganda dispute over migingo island), land disputes.

High levels of illiteracy

A high populace in Africa are illiterate and even those that are learned have undergone an inappropriate education system. This is so because the education systems do not equip learners with technological skills required to enhance industrial growth. This greatly hampers participation of the masses in development process.

Decision making is top-down

This means that decisions made are highly reflective of the ruling class interests and the masses are therefore forced to accept what has been decided elsewhere. The masses may also not understand what is required of them and the significance of their efforts in promoting the welfare of the nation as a whole.

Colonial legacies

Transport and infrastructure that was built during the colonial period was unevenly distributed in most colonies. This led to regional imbalanced development which is still reflected by post-colonial Africa.
Secondly, colonialism led to retardation of technological and industrial development due to neglect of industrialization.
Thirdly, the concentration on the production of a few cash

crops led to neglect of food production thereby making Africans to “produce what they did not consume and consume what they did not produce” .This has led to food shortages in Africa up to date.

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