The Development Crisis I

Several decades of development efforts by a wide range of agencies have not helped sub-Saharan Africa to overcome its ongoing development crisis, which has generally resulted in unpromising trends in economic indicators, increasing political and ethnic tensions, and worsening environmental degradation (Wiesmann 1998, p. 15).

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The debate on appropriate development policies and underlying development dynamics is, broadly speaking, dominated by the controversy between macro-positions that concentrate on national and international boundary conditions and micro-positions that emphasise indigenous aims and local development forces. It has enumerated a variety of policies within the development community, which can be roughly grouped under three trends (Wiesmann 1998, p. 30):

• Substitution of development cooperation by humanitarian aid.
• Focus on support for local initiatives at the grass-roots level, by-passing governmental structures in the process.
• Concentration on economic boundary conditions and governmental decision-making structures.

These developmental and practical reactions reflect different (and partially contradictory) conclusions about the causes and consequences of the development crisis. But they all have a certain resigned radicalism towards economic and social realities. This radicalism can be interpreted as a crisis in development policy and practice; but it at the same time reflects a crisis of understanding with regard to the aims and dynamics of development (Wiesmann 1998, p. 31).