Contra globalização...

“Following the independence of most African countries in the 1960s, and within the context of the ideological rivalry engendered by the Cold War, the early years of development theory involved an extremely mechanical transposition of concepts fashioned in respect of very distinct Western or Eastern settings. During at least two decades, so-called experts merely transferred their blueprints to an environment whose historical, social and cultural specificities they hardly knew, or even cared to discover.”

“A Cameroonian writer asks, with a pleasantly mischievous sense of humour, whether Africa does not in reality need . For this author, the fundamental reason why the continent south of the Sahara has from the common developmental norms is , the of which includes: apathy, a large dose of fatalism, a peculiar relation to the notion of time, the insignificance of the individual in the face of the community, a tendency to excesses, the primacy of conflict avoidance and the weight of the ”.

 

“It ought now to be possible to give attention to cultural factors without giving the slightest credence to those who believe in the innate inferiority of Africans”.

Patrick Chabal, Africa Works, Disorder as political instrument, Africam Issues, 1999, página 126, 128, 129.