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Those Who Saw Themselves As Developed Took It Upon Themselves To Guide Those ...

Those who saw themselves as developed took it upon themselves to guide those who were seen as less developed. Bottom-up development, on the other hand, takes as its point of departure a rejection of trusteeship.' This issue of trusteeship needs to be resolved if development approaches are to be truly ‘bottom-up'.
In summary, the need to make development practices in Africa more bottom-up ties in with the argument that African society should look to its own history to secure its own developmental future. However, two qualifying points need to be made. In the first place, a bottom-up approach needs to be participatory in more than just name. It is not acceptable to consult a few people on the technical details of a propsed development programme. Ideally the development programme should be designed and ‘owned' by the target population such that they themselves are defining the goal as well as designing the most appropriate means. Secondly, it is important to note that even if not by design, African society has been playing a part in its own development and this role should not be overlooked because we are over-focused on critiquing top-down development programmes. Furthermore, I would add that African society should be looking not just to its own history (pre-colonial, colonial and post independence) but also to its here and now. In examining what has and has not worked over time, it may be possible to devise more productive and effective strategies for the future.
Chapter 2: the colonial legacy and links between colonialism and development in Africa
Berman (1998, 305) argues that ‘modern African ethnicity is a social construction of the colonial period through the reactions of pre-colonial societies to the social, economic, cultural and political forces of colonialism. Ethnicity is the product of a continuing historical process, always simultaneously old and new, grounded in the past and perpetually in creation.' It is not only in terms of ethnicity that the colonial period has played a great part in constructing the social realities of contemporary Africa. Another major factor (as seen above) is the form and nature of the state, and the organization of social relations that the particular form and nature entails. The legacy of the colonial bureaucracy and systems of patronage combine with the colonial construction of ethnicity in Africa to shape the nature of political and social relations today. According to Berman (1998, 305), ‘[p]atron-client networks remain the fundamental state-society linkage in circumstances of social crisis and uncertainty and have extended to the very centre of the state. This accounts for the personalistic, materialistic and opportunistic character of African politics.


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