Africans perspectives on development : constructing agency through post-colonialism approach

Abstract

This study examines African intellectuals´ notions about Africa´s development and their respond to the current development debate, in which Eurocentric development discourses have taken a hegemonic position. Since colonialism, the definition of development has historically constructed and defined by European countries, which has allowed them to guide development knowledge as well as practices. Instead of seeing Africa as an object of different kind of development practices, the study´s focus is to see it as an actor; subject, which produces actively its own agency. Thus the study investigates what kind of African agency African intellectuals are constructing within their texts in the context of development. The primary source is based on four articles by African intellectuals considering development. The analysis has used the means of content analysis as well as the means of applied discursive analysis.

The study draws also attention to Africa´s relations with China and the Western countries while using post-colonialism approach as a critical tool that allows speak about such things as power relations, marginalization, resistance, and also potentiality. It illustrates the importance of history in present time, and form timeline between past, present and future. The analysis results which were founded by this study show that African intellectuals are constructing the present agency as well as the future agency for Africa. The present agency is represented as delayed agency which is inevitably connected to the historical experience and its affiliations to the present, which has created, for its part, dependence from external actors´ assistance. While within African intellectuals texts China´s agency is described more from a light of unbiased because of its economic pragmatism, the West` agency is more illustrated as an impostor, which still tries to control African development via its own values using moral argumentation.

The present delayed agency is inextricably connected to the future agency in which African intellectuals are constructing within their texts. They are constructing assertive agency which consist of responsible, selective, versatile and participatory aspects of it. They locate Africa to the present using history as a critical tool to form continuum for the future scenario. Decolonization was expected to give back the lost agency of Africans, but after decolonization new neo-colonial practices appeared to international scene, and left asymmetry within power relations, which continuing to challenge the autonomous agency. In that sense, both delayed agency as well as assertive agency, reflect the historical continuum, in which more autonomous agency has always been the main goal. China´s different development knowledge can be seen to challenge the Eurocentric development knowledge as well as practices meanwhile extending its own agency. African development discourses are not homogeneous, but it is possible to construe that development process should be invented and implemented by Africans themselves. It should happen in the level of the mind, in the level of the language as well as in the level of the practice.