Afropessimism - Depiction, African Rebirth, Impact, Explanations, A Middle Ground, Bibliography
development economic pessimism region
Afropessimism refers to the perception of sub-Saharan Africa as a region too riddled with problems for good governance and economic development. The term gained currency in the 1980s, when many Africanists in Western creditor countries believed that there was no hope for consolidating democracy and achieving sustainable economic development in the region. The earliest use in print of the word was in a 1988 article from the Xinhua News Agency in which Michel Aurillac, France's minister of cooperation, criticized the prevailing pessimism in the West about Africa's economic development and cautioned against what he referred to as an "Afro-pessimism" on the part of some creditors.
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Many writers have given different expressions to the phenomenon of Afropessimism. Attempts to explain the concept include both cogent studies (Ayittey, 1992, 1998; Jackson and Rosberg; Kaplan, 1994) and polemical and shallow travelogues (Richburg). In general, one virtue of Afropessimist writings is that they do not whitewash Africa's problems. Further, they correctly refuse to excuse the o…
Still, the conditions that merit pessimism for the future of Africa are not manufactured by Afropessimists; such conditions are empirically verifiable. Since the end of the Cold War, important African leaders such as Presidents Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria, and Maître Abdoulaye Wade of Senegal have come to recognize this and have resolved to do something about it.…
Two explanations have been put forth for the conditions that produced the phenomenon of Afropessimism. One is the apparent inability of postcolonial African leaders to practice good governance. Since the 1960s, when most countries in Africa south of the Sahara regained political independence from European colonialists, the standard of living in Africa has fallen below expectations. The achievement…
The truth about Africa's impoverishment lies somewhere between the analyses of Afropessimists and Afro-optimists. There is no doubt that corrupt and uncourageous leadership has been the bane of socioeconomic development of sub-Saharan Africa in the postcolonial period. These leaders stunted democratic processes with force in order to preserve a system of one-person rule with no accountabili…
Ayittey, George B. N. Africa Betrayed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992. ——. Africa In Chaos. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998. Hammond, Dorothy, and Alta Jablow. The Africa That Never Was: Four Centuries of British Writing about Africa. New York: Twayne, 1970. Hawk, Beverly G., ed. Africa's Media Image. New York: Praeger, 1992. Hitchens, Christopher. "…
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