Political Conditions: The Greatest Impediment To Africa’S Development
Davies Emmanuel Opuene Ph.D
epartment Of Political Science, Rivers State University, Portharcourt Nigeria
Akhiojemi Oribim
epartment Of Political Science, Rivers State University, Portharcourt Nigeria
Wali Naomi
department Of English & Literary, Studies, Rivers State University, Port Harcourt
Keywords: Development, Underdevelopment, Political condition, Impediment, Africa
Abstract
Development has been a major problem of the Third World countries, particularly African countries today. African countries are not as developed as the industrialized Western capitalist societies. It is altruistic that African countries are faced with the hydra-headed problem of development. In some circles, Africa is considered grossly underdeveloped. Several reasons have been postulated by various scholars as to why Africa is underdeveloped, ranging from social conditions, economic, structural to political reasons among others. Thus, the objective of this paper is to interrogate political conditions as the greatest impediment to Africa’s development. The paper looked at the ideas of the Modernization theory, Dependency theory and the Limiting Factors theory in a bid to understand development and underdevelopment. The paper identified, among others, imperialism, slave trade, colonialism, political instability, poverty, corruption and structural dependence as some of the impediments to Africa’s development problems. The paper concluded that there is still hope for African countries to develop on a fast track, and suggested that there is the need to institute an accountable governance faster than ever; African countries should transform as a matter of urgency to spur growth and development; there should be rapid investment in infrastructure- power, good health system, and political stability for meaningful development to take place.