Modernization Theory and African Development in the 21st Century

Abstract

The issue of development in Africa has called for the interrogation and explication of development theories to be able to explore and situate properly the nature and condition of African development in the 21st century. Continents like Asia and Latin America who were at one point or the other at the same level of development with Africa have overtaken the continent. The dependency theory is of the view that African underdevelopment is traceable  to its contact with other continents like North American and Europe in the form of slave trade, imperialism, colonialism and neocolonialism. While these factors cannot be completely ignored as responsible for Africa’s underdevelopment, this paper thinks differently in the sense that in the 21st century, the above mentioned factors can no longer be tenable as factors responsible for the underdevelopment of Africa. It is against this backdrop that the modernization theory is interrogated to find out its utility in understanding African development. Data for the study were obtained through secondary means which include textbooks, journals, magazines and newspapers. Historical and analytical methods were adopted as the analytical tools for the study and also the political economy theory was adopted as the theoretical framework. This paper found out that there are many internal factors in Africa that hinder her development. This paper recommends amongst others that there should be effective leadership in Africa and also efforts should be made to fight corruption and adhere to the principles of rule of law.

Keywords: Development, Underdevelopment, Colonialism, Neo-colonialism, Imperialism.