The article discusses the role of the developmentalist project within an African context, such project being part both of the national liberation struggles and the descent of most post-colonial states into authoritarianism and economic crisis. Special emphasis is given to the problematic role of Western prescriptions that shaped the fate of the continent from the modernization approach to the neo-liberal orthodoxy. As a consequence, the article calls on African social scientists to find new, independent and imaginative ways of thinking about development.
