Persistence of African Heritage as an Alternative Path to Development

As yet, what has been experimented with to achieve development in Africa has yielded nothing other than delusion. Foreign models and theories have been adopted and tried in guiding development programmes of the new states of Africa, thanks to the advice of foreign, especially Western, advisers. The theories and models, which are packages of westernization, have all proved unhelpful, along with the very notions they have engendered among Africans about development. Africa remains underdeveloped and befuddled by the seeming insurmountability of the problem and the contradictory explanations offered by these same foreign experts and some of their African cohorts. Such theories or models have a peculiarity of ignoring the local experiences and, much more, technologies which have largely sustained the people despite the march of modernization. But there might be some lessons to be learnt in this ‘persistence of African heritage’ if the appropriate understanding of development is to be achieved. It will entail embracing a more culturally autonomous approach to the problem, without necessarily ignoring the gains of modernity, especially in science and technology.