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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Culture, the missing link in development planning in Africa
Author:Prah, Kwesi KwaaISNI
Year:2001
Periodical:Présence africaine
Issue:163-164
Pages:90-102
Language:English
Geographic term:Africa
Subjects:culture
development
Abstract:This article argues that although a combination of internal and external forces is responsible for the current social malaise in Africa, the deep structure of the malaise is largely entangled with the general impact of the colonial experience. While the West introduced modern techniques into precolonial and preindustrial Africa, putting it on the road to modernity, it also distorted the autonomous nature of the processes of African development. Fifty years of postindependence history have shown that the much vaunted modernization theories of the 1950s and 1960s nowhere provided successful cases of development. The message which filtered through this experience is that whatever development formula may be adopted, it has to be built on what people have and know. The absence of cultural relevance and the need for cultural adaptation of external inputs into African development planning constitutes the major obstacle to success in development planning and implementation in Africa. And the key to the door of the cultural world of Africa is African languages. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract]
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