Developing Africa from Below

The continuing search for solutions to the African development crisis led to the standard neo-liberal prescription of “rolling back” the state from the development space in favor of private and voluntary initiatives in the 1980s. This prescription had two concurrent remedies: Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) at the macro level; and the "development from below" paradigm at the micro level. Whereas SAPs have attracted substantial scholarship in Africa, little work addresses the efficacy of "development from below" paradigm. This book analyzes the contribution of this paradigm to African development using a study of community-based organizations (CBOs) in the light of their political environment in Kenya. It is argued that though activities of CBOs are largely relevant in local level development, the politics of patronage have aggravated a dependency syndrome that has left the activities of most organizations not as self-sustaining as previous assumed by neo-liberals. Consequently, it is apparent that ‘development from below'' paradigm may not be the panacea for sustainable development in the context of the political environment that obtains in Africa.