Abstract
The year 2010 was a model year for the celebration of fifty years of political independence among African countries. Assessments of the human condition in Africa show that the continent, especially sub-Saharan Africa, has lagged behind other regions of the world in terms of development. Based on the analysis of the constants of development, this paper argues that effective development is fundamentally driven by the maximum deployment of organized endogenous human agency defined as the capacity of individuals or groups to think, act, and impact their social environments. Because African agency was not properly shepherded in the first fifty years of independence, transformational leadership through the instrumentality of the developmental state is the path to effective development in post- fifty Africa. This requires three key development strategies namely, inserting local human resources or domestic agency to the center of development activity; exit from fixation on extractive economies to a deliberate policy of value-added production embodied in industrialization; and a paradigm of development knowledge that sees development as the primary responsibility of endogenous agency.
Recommended Citation
Ukaegbu, Chikwendu C.. "Leadership and African Agency for Development in Post-Fifty Africa." Journal of Retracing Africa: Vol. 2, Issue 1 (2015): 1-28. https://encompass.eku.edu/jora/vol2/iss1/3
