© 2022 University of South Africa
All rights reserved
Printed and published by the
University of South Africa
Muckleneuk, Pretoria
DVA1502/1/2022–2024
10019960
InDesign
HSY_Style
CONTENTS
Page
ORIENTATION TO THE MODULE
i.
Introduction
ii.
The purpose of the module
iii.
The specific outcomes
iv.
Overview
v.
E-tutor site
vi.
Study material for this module
vii.
How should you go about studying this module?
viii.
Assessment in this module
ix.
Orientation to using myUnisa
x.
Icons
xi.
Conclusion
v
v
v
v
v
vi
vi
vii
viii
viii
ix
ix
Learning unit 1: INTRODUCTION TO DEVELOPMENT
PROBLEMS AND INSTITUTIONS1
1.1
Introduction to DVA1502
1
1.2
Defining development strategies and policy processess
2
1.3
The aims and outcomes of Development Studies
3
1.4
Themes covered in Development Studies
3
1.5
Conclusion5
1.6
Outcomes checklist
5
Learning unit 2: EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT7
2.1
Introduction: Education – key to success
7
2.2
Literacy, development and education systems
8
2.3
The colonial inheritance
14
2.4
Problems with Africa’s formal education systems
24
2.5
The tendency to overrate the value of education
37
2.6
Covid-19: a new global challenge to accessing education
39
2.7
Conclusion41
2.8
Outcomes checklist
42
Learning unit 3: HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT43
3.1
Introduction43
3.2
Definition of health
43
3.3
The health situation in developing countries
44
3.4
Primary health care
53
3.5
The South African healthcare system
55
3.6
Managing health crises and pandemics
57
3.7
Conclusion61
3.8
Outcomes checklist
61
DVA1502/1(iii)
Learning unit 4: POLITICS, PARTICIPATION,
EMPOWERMENT AND DEVELOPMENT62
4.1
Introduction62
4.2
Definintion of concepts 68
4.3
Problematising participation in development
77
4.4
Impact of Infomation and Communications Technology
ICT on community participation
78
4.5
Public participation legislation in South Africa
80
4.6
Conclusion83
4.7
Outcomes checklist
83
Learning unit 5: WOMEN, GENDER AND DEVELOPMENT84
5.1
Introduction84
5.2
Why we focus on women
84
5.3
Women and development
88
5.4
Global, regional and local institutions that address
gender equality
91
5.5
Selected thematic gender issues
98
5.6
Conclusion109
5.7
Outcomes checklist
110
Learning unit 6: CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT111
6.1
Introduction111
6.2
Definition of culture
112
6.3
Evading culture in Africa
118
6.4
The relationship between culture and development
122
6.5
Traditional leaders and development
129
6.6
Culture-economic growth nexus
133
6.7
Conclusion134
6.8
Outcome checklist
135
Learning unit 7: TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT136
7.1
Introduction136
7.2
What is the Fourth Industrial Revolution?
136
7.3
South Africa’s role in the Fourth Industrail Revolution
137
7.4
Outcome checklist
139
Learning unit 8: THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT OF
DEVELOPMENT – THE AID DEBATE140
8.1
The definiton of aid and the institutions that give aid
140
8.2
Developing countries’ debt crisis
150
8.3
The decline of the IMF and the role of the new
development banks
154
8.4
Conclusion159
8.5
Outcome checklist
159
References160
(iv)
Appendix A: Fifty Years of Economic Development: What Have
we Learned? (Irma Adelman)
170
Appendix B: “As if her whole self belongs in that mark ...” –
Women, Development and (Dis)empowerment (Ciara Regan)
195
Appendix C: Accelearing health equity: the key role of universal
health coverage in the Sustainable Development Goals
198
1
ORIENTATION TO THE MODULE
i.
INTRODUCTION
Welcome to the Development Problems and Institutions module that is offered in UNISA’s
Department of Development Studies. As a student, you may be a Development
Practitioner or a student who has absolutely no experience. Whatever the case, if
you have enrolled for this course, you certainly wish to learn how to become a better
development practitioner. I trust that, whether you are an aspiring or an experienced
development practitioner, you will derive enough information and preparation to
enable you to become better.
ii.
THE PURPOSE OF THE MODULE
The purpose of this module is to introduce students to integrated development
problems, theoretical understanding and development actors. Students who complete
this module will be able to identify, evaluate, reflect on and develop schemes to
address development problems. The module considers development problems in
the developing countries (in general) and particularly in Africa and focuses on
institutions that are responsible for developing and implementing programmes to
address such problems.
iii. THE SPECIFIC OUTCOMES
• Understand the contestations around development issues.
• Demonstrate knowledge of current development problems experienced in
•
•
•
developing countries especially in Africa.
Evaluate the impact that institutional systems in areas such as health care, education
and gender have on development.
Analyse case studies of development actors and institutions.
Challenge development problems and propose solutions to development problems,
iv. OVERVIEW
Your study guide and tutorial letters contain everything you need to complete this
module. However, you may benefit from also using the module website on myUnisa.
By using the website, you can:
• submit assignments (please note: it is advisable that you submit your
•
•
•
•
assignment online as this will ensure that you receive rapid feedback
and comments),
access your official study material,
have access to the UNISA Library functions,
“chat” to your lecturer or e-tutor and fellow students and participate in online
discussion forums, and
obtain access to a variety of learning resources.
DVA1502/1(v)
Check the site regularly for updates, posted announcements and additional resources
uploaded throughout the semester.
Please note that there are two sites you should use in studying the module. The
first is the module site, where you will find the learning units and where you
can communicate with your lecturer.
v.
E-TUTOR SITE
The second site is your e-tutor site, where you can communicate with your e-tutor
and fellow students. Your e-tutor is there to support your learning, and you can
post any questions to him or her in the site’s discussion forum, in the appropriate
forum or the forum for general questions. In another forum, you will also be able
to communicate with your fellow students.
On the e-tutor site, you should also respond to discussion questions that are given
in the learning units. Your e-tutor may provide you with the opportunity to engage
in additional discussions or to do specific online tasks or activities; please participate
fully, as this will go a long way to assist you with your learning. Both the lecturer
and e-tutor may also send you announcements from time to time.
vi. STUDY MATERIAL FOR THIS MODULE
Your study material for this module includes:
• Tutorial Letter 101
• Any other tutorial letters you may receive through the year
• Any additional information provided on your e-tutor site or module site on
•
myUnisa
Any additional electronic communication you may receive, for example,
announcements from your lecturer or e-tutor
Tutorial Letter 101 will be part of your study pack or will be posted to you, but
you can also access it on myUnisa. You can do this by clicking on “Official Study
Material” in the menu on the left of the module portal.
Tutorial Letter 101 is just one of the tutorial letters you will be receiving during the
year. It is extremely important that you should read this tutorial letter carefully. You
will also receive follow-up tutorial letters during the course of the year.
vii.HOW SHOULD YOU GO ABOUT STUDYING THIS
MODULE?
Distance learning is not easy and you should not underestimate the time and effort
involved. Once you have received your study material, please plan how you will
approach and complete this module.
Your work on each learning unit should involve the following:
• Skim through the unit and draw your own basic mind map of the content of the
learning unit. Then expand this map as your knowledge and understanding of
(vi)
Orientation to the module
the unit increases. If you have internet access, you can learn more about making
mind maps on the following websites:
• http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Mind-Map
• http://www.mind-mapping.co.uk/make-mind-map.htm
• Make your own summary of every unit.
• Do a reflection exercise at the end of every unit. The learning units contain some
reflective questions that you should answer.
As you work, build up your own study and exam preparation file. This study file
will not be assessed, but it will be an extremely valuable tool for you in completing
your assignments and revising for the examination. What is a study file? A study
file is a folder or file in which you gather and compile additional and/or summarised
information during the year as you work through the learning material.
viii. ASSESSMENT IN THIS MODULE
Activities in the study guide
We would like to meet you and to be able to talk to you, but we realise that this is
unlikely since you are a distance education student. Most of our communication will
therefore be written communication. If we were in a classroom situation, we would
ask questions to which you will be able to respond immediately. But since we are
not in a face-to-face classroom situation, we have set questions, which we would
like you to answer in writing. These activities require you to give your opinion or
link the content in the study guide with your everyday life, experiences and prior
knowledge. You have the opportunity to be creative to do practical work, to offer
an opinion and to say when you do or do not agree. You need to post your responses
to these activities onto myUnisa so that other students can also read your views and
start a discussion if necessary.
Testing yourself
It is of the utmost importance that you test yourself on a regular basis in selfassessment activities. Although each learning unit is concluded with an exercise which
expects you to reflect on what you have learned and whether you have achieved the
outcomes, it is important that you test yourself by constantly asking yourself “what
do I know now, that I didn’t know before?” By making mind maps of each of the
learning units as explained in the previous section, you are also testing yourself.
Assignments and the exam
Your work in this module will be assessed by the following:
• Two written assignments which will give you admission to the examination and
•
also count for your year mark
One written examination of two hours
Please consult Tutorial Letter 101 for details about the assessment in this module.
Make sure to read the following information in the tutorial letter:
• How your assignment and exam marks will be calculated
• The due dates and unique numbers of your assignments
• How you should submit your assignments
• Examination periods, admission and marks
DVA1502/1(vii)
Tutorial Letter 101 also contains the actual assignment questions.
Remember that while Tutorial Letter 101 will be sent to you, you can also access an
electronic version on myUnisa, by clicking on the option “Official Study Material”.
ix. ORIENTATION TO USING MYUNISA
You need to be able to use the various menu options on the myUnisa site. They
will enable you to participate actively in the learning process. These options include
the following:
myUnisa menu option
What you will find here
Official Study Material
Your study guide and tutorial letters will be stored
under this option, as well as past examination
papers.
Announcements
From time to time the lecturer or your e-tutor will
use this facility to give you important information
about this module. You should receive e-mail
notification of new announcements placed on
myUnisa.
Calendar
This tool shows important dates such as
examination dates and deadlines for your
assignments. You will need this information to
help you manage your time and plan your own
schedule.
Additional resources
The lecturer (or your e-tutor) may use this folder
to provide any additional learning support material
that might help you in your studies for this module.
We will send an announcement to inform you if
anything is added to this folder.
Discussions
This tool allows us to hold discussions as if we
were in a contact setting. Check your e-tutor
site for any topics that the e-tutor might have
posted. You can also post any specific queries
to the lecturer (on the main module site). There
will also be a forum for students where you can
discuss issues among yourselves, or just support
one another.
Assessment info
This tool allows you to submit your assignments
electronically, and to monitor your results. If
you can, please submit your assignments via
myUnisa. If you do not know how to do this,
consult Tutorial Letter 101.
In interacting online, always remember to be mindful of and respectful towards your
fellow students and your lecturers. The rules of polite behaviour on the internet are
referred to as “netiquette” – a term that means “online manners”.
(viii)
Orientation to the module
You can access the websites below to learn more about netiquette.
• http://networketiquette.net/
• http://www.studygs.net/netiquette.htm
• http://www.carnegiecyberacademy.com/facultyPages/communication/netiquette.
html
Please observe the rules of netiquette during your normal, everyday
online communications with colleagues, lecturers, and friends. In particular,
remember to be courteous to your fellow students when using the Discussions tool.
x.
ICONS
As you work through a learning unit, you will see that there are different kinds of
symbols on the left-hand side of some pages. These symbols (or icons) tell you where
the activities are, and what kind of activity we are asking you to do. We have used
the following icons:
This icon [book] shows that you need to do some extra reading.
The pencil shows that you will have to write down ideas or
information.
This shows that you will have to do some research on your own
– either interview people, or obtain information from a source
other than your prescribed reading.
This shows that you will need to think about something, such as
a statement or question – in other words, you will need to reflect.
xi. CONCLUSION
By paying attention to the purpose, outcomes and the overview, you will get a sense
of what the module is about. Follow this by paying attention to the outcomes at
the beginning of each learning unit. By learning to use the tutor site, myUnisa, the
library, online study material and the resources for planning your study, you will put
yourself in a position to engage fully with this module.
As you approach each of the learning units 1–8 below, and as you do the associated
questions in Tutorial Letter 101 (and also as you engage with the Activities in each
learning unit and with tasks assigned by tutors), keep in mind all these resources
discussed in this orientation to the module. This will help to give you confidence
with the Unisa environment, and it will help to give you clarity of purpose as you
work through the module.
DVA1502/1(ix)
(x)
1
1
LEARNING UNIT 1
Introduction to development problems and
institutions
OUTCOMES
Once you have completed this learning unit, you should be able to
• explain what your study guide contains and how you should use it
• describe how the themes in the study guide are linked
• understand the multifaceted characteristics of development
1.1
INTRODUCTION TO DVA1502
If you have passed DVA1501, you will be familiar with two of the five themes. We
have already introduced you to issues of development, poverty and people.
In this module we continue our overview of the developing world by studying:
• education and health: two crucial social spheres
• empowerment: using the strengths and potential of the developing countries
• context and agendas
• institutions that design, implement and monitor the development agenda
1.1.1
Education and health: two crucial social spheres in developing
societies
The social and economic aspects of countries are made up of many important sectors.
These include sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing, services, education, energy,
water, sanitation and health. In this theme, we have decided to highlight only two
sectors from this long list, and these are education and health. Our aim is to use
these two sectors to illustrate some of the problems currently being experienced in
developing countries.
We chose these two sectors because it is commonly believed that there is a very
close link between both education and development, and health and development.
Education and health affect all people in a given society. Educated people have
access to written material that can give them knowledge and insight into how they
can improve their lives, and they are likely to have more contact with people from
outside their own community than less educated people. They are therefore less
dependent on the assistance of outsiders or foreign experts. Healthy people enjoy a
better quality of life than less healthy people, because they are not physically weak and
are not as vulnerable as those suffering from chronic disease. We describe a disease
as chronic when it lasts a very long time. But we also know that a lack of education
DVA1502/11
and ill health negatively affect development and people’s interaction with one another
and with their physical environment.
1.1.2
Context and agendas
In the themes we studied in DVA1501, we focused mainly on one specific technique
in our teaching of Development Studies, and that is the descriptive technique.
We described what developing countries look like, and what problems they are
experiencing in specific societal spheres such as health and education. We also
described some of the spatial issues that we currently see as important in developing
areas, such as rural poverty, migration and urbanisation.
We still examine the practical, real world around us, but this time we will try to explain
which factors have helped to create the global South. We will do this by looking at
specific conditions or circumstances that have created mass poverty in the South. We
will also try to analyse those factors that have prevented development from taking
place. We will do this by examining some of the things that happen outside the
boundaries of specific countries that have a direct influence on development. This
will include the debt crisis in the South, the impact of foreign aid and international
development agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals.
We hope you will find this module interesting and stimulating.
1.2
DEFINING DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES AND POLICY
PROCESSES
Development is a dynamic subject, which means it is constantly changing. Many
countries’ development paths are geared towards achieving set development priorities
and targets. This is especially true of all development issues in most developing
countries including South Africa. While the Growth, Employment and Redistribution
policy (GEAR) and the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) have
been accepted widely as frameworks that will guide development in South Africa, the
various government departments are all constantly in the process of devising policy.
This is why government publications, such as White and Green Papers, can also be
informative. Very often the White Papers setting out the policies or background to
Bills are available at the office of the Government Printer, or from the ministries
concerned. The same applies to Green Papers. Different countries follow different
processes to develop their strategies and policies. These are often legally defined and
clearly stated. These are government publications that are presented as discussion
documents. They are freely available and are aimed at stimulating debate and eliciting
responses from all interested members of the public, before policy is finalised. For
long term strategic plans which sometimes span across decades these are sometimes
referred to as Development Plans or Agendas for Development. For example, South
Africa has the 2030 National Development Plan. Global regions such as continents
also have strategic plans for their development. These are encapsulated in documents
such as Platforms for Action, 2030 Global Platform for Action, the African Union’s
Agenda 2063, etc. When you read your newspaper, or listen to the news on radio or
television, make a note of any reports about new policies that are being designed,
or new Bills that are being discussed in parliament, and contact the Government
Printer or the appropriate ministry to ask for a copy of the Green or White Paper.
2
LEARNING UNIT 1: Introduction to development problems and institutions
• Because development is dynamic, issues of development and poverty usually
•
1.3
get a lot of publicity. Newspapers all over the world often carry information
on development issues. Try to read a newspaper at least once a week, and keep
your eyes open for articles dealing with development. If you have a radio or a
television, go to the trouble of finding development-related programmes that
you can listen to, or watch.
If you have internet access, you will find it worth your while to explore some of
the development-related websites mentioned by Regan in your prescribed book.
Google Scholar is also a useful search engine for finding the most recent articles
written by scholars in many fields including Development Studies.
THE AIMS AND OUTCOMES OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
The purpose of this module is to introduce you to integrated development problems
such as education and health; to the role of the state and other institutions in
development; to policy approaches; to political and economic dynamics within
countries. It is meant to show the nonlinear and multifaceted nature of development
processes and outcomes.
You are probably aware that like many academic disciplines Development Studies
started mostly in the West and was influenced by Western interpretations linked to
their own context about what could be the causes of underdevelopment. However,
there has been an increase in the number of scholars from developing countries
who believe that they understand the contexts better and provide their own ideas
about the causes of underdevelopment and poverty. Mkandawire (2011) cautioned
that in medical research, for example, 90% of the research is dedicated to diseases
that affect 10% of the global population. It is important that scholars from the
developing countries also focus on problems that prevail in their countries to reduce
over-reliance on Western knowledge. You will also learn that knowledge is not value
or context free. Therefore, understanding the context is important.
1.4
THEMES COVERED IN DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
You will see that we use terms such as “complicated”, “holistic” and “sustainable”.
You will often come across these and other developmental concepts when reading
about problems of poverty. For example, simply by reading the table of contents
given at the beginning of the study guide, you will come across development terms
such as these: participation, empowerment, gender, culture, technology and aid.
But what do all these terms mean? How will they help us to develop the qualities
employers are looking for in development workers?
Let us recap. All of these words, and all of the other subject terms you will find
in the study guides for the first-level Development Studies modules DVA1501 and
1502, are like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. You can look at each piece of the puzzle (i.e.,
each concept) and try to make sense of it on its own. And, as a matter of fact, that
is precisely what you will do in the different learning units that follow. However,
you will only be able to understand all the pieces fully when you see how they fit
together to make a full picture.
The themes we deal with in the two first-level modules, DVA1501 and DVA1502,
are linked. We cover five broad themes in these two modules. They are:
DVA1502/13

• introducing issues of development
• poverty and people
• health and education: two crucial social spheres
• empowerment: using the strengths and potential of the developing countries
• local and global institutions that are involved in policy making and implementation
• contexts and agendas
If you look at the tables of contents in the study guides for these two modules again,
you will see that each of these themes is divided into a number of smaller sections
called learning units.
Part of the complexity of development lies in understanding the different pieces that
make up the puzzle. You have to make sense of each piece on its own. But you also
need to see that these separate pieces create a complex picture when you put them
together. If you only look at one or two, or even five or six of the pieces, you will
not be able to see the entire situation. So, you need to see the pieces in their broader
context in order to see the whole development picture. This is what we mean when
we talk about a holistic approach. It is a mistake to think that you understand the
development puzzle if all you have is a heap of separate pieces, all mixed up together.
You first have to fit all the pieces together and see them as a whole before you can
say that your approach to the development problem is a holistic one.
Today the ideal picture that most practitioners and academics in the field of
development are working towards is that of sustainable development. A definition of
sustainable development that has been widely quoted is that of the World Commission
on Environment and Development (WCED):
... sustainable development is a process of change in which the exploitation
of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological
development and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both
current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations (WCED
1987:46)
The main idea in this definition is that development should meet the needs of the
present generation or population without compromising the ability of future
generations or populations to meet their own needs. Here, the word compromising
means risking or endangering something. If you compromise your freedom, you do
something which may take away some of your freedom.
The idea of sustainable development recognises that the resources of the world are
limited. These resources include people, money, the natural environment (water,
air, soil) and the man-made environment (physical infrastructure such as roads and
buildings; and institutions, like universities, banks and governments).
Mkandawire (2011) criticised the fact that development is somehow perceived as
an end in itself. We must understand that sometimes sacrifices or prioritisation of
some issues were made over others. Over time we will get to understand that what
was considered to have been a basic prerequisite for development or unavoidable
consequence of development was not necessarily the case. Many of the ends of
development such as better education, health and freedom are also transformative
instruments for development. When you study this module, you will start to see how
priorities are made and who gains from them. When you choose boys’ education
and health over that of girls, is that a necessary prioritisation? When you prioritise
cultural practices that favour older generations over youth what are the costs of those
4
LEARNING UNIT 1: Introduction to development problems and institutions
policy decisions, etc? The examples are many but we aim to equip you as development
practitioner to assess which and what issues matter and whether there is a need to
sacrifice one issue over another or whether it is possible or even mandatory to achieve
both at the same time.
If we accept that the ideal of sustainable development is at the centre of our studies
in this course, then this ideal will also be at the centre of our overall picture of
development. The objectives of this module will have been met if you understand
the following observations that have been made in more than 50 years of learning
about development. These have also determined how we have chosen the themes
that are discussed in the module:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
The economic development of developing countries is possible.
The process of economic development is both multi-dimensional and non-linear.
There is scope for choice in institutions, policies and in their sequencing,
even at similar levels of development. The choices made, in turn, generate
the conditions for subsequent development. This is why it is important to
understand the process of how development takes place.
Development does not occur evenly.
Technological, demographic, economic, social, and institutional conditions
provide the major catalyst for change.
The critical factors to generate change are both tangible and intangible. These
include leadership commitment to change; level of social capital, infrastructure
(physical and human), appropriate policies, institutions, culture, institutional
and social resilience and adaptability (Adelman, 2000).
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 1.1
Read Adleman (2000) 50 Years of Development: What have we learned? From
Appendix A or E-reserves: http://libguides.unisa.ac.za/request/request
• Write a paragraph on each of the six things that have been learnt listed above
describing how each is demonstrated in your own context.
1.5
CONCLUSION
As you start working through the learning units, you will notice that in most of the
units we follow a problem-centred approach. In other words, we explore a particular
issue or a problem. As we have explained, it is important that we divide the broad field
of development studies into smaller, more manageable sections. Once you understand
these individual pieces of the puzzle, you will be in a position to start putting them
together and working towards a holistic view of the issue of development.
1.6
OUTCOMES CHECKLIST
Do not send your completed responses back to us. This is your checklist for you to
use on your own. It helps you to judge for yourself whether you have understood this
unit, and whether you have achieved the outcomes set at the beginning of the unit.
DVA1502/15

Question
6
(1)
he relationship between the themes
T
shows the multifaceted nature of
Development Studies.
(2)
hat are the key elements that are
W
required to achieve sustainable
development?
Can do
Cannot do
2
LEARNING UNIT 2
2
Education and development
OUTCOMES
Once you have completed this learning unit, you should be able to
• describe literacy and lifelong learning
• demonstrate the ways in which education can contribute to development
• understand the role of international and local institutions in developing targets
•
2.1
and monitoring the goals of education
explain the problems encountered in formal education systems in Africa, taking
into account the education provided during the colonial years
analyse the causes for inequalities in education
INTRODUCTION: EDUCATION – THE KEY TO SUCCESS
Education should be considered one of the most crucial aspects in every individual’s
life. Education is central to the development process. According to Kagia
(2007:1), education “is one of the most powerful instruments for promoting sustained
economic growth and reducing poverty and inequality”. It gives people access to
opportunities and enables them to meet their basic needs, which is an important
measure of the Human Development Index (HDI) and an integral component of
the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Without education, we cannot lay the foundation for a successful and productive life,
with opportunities that will allow us to cater for our own basic needs and that of our
families. With education comes the opportunity of employment, and thus the ability
to earn an income and gain access to food, clothing, healthcare, and shelter, which
remain the most vital requirements to live a productive life. Colclough (2012:136)
substantiates this point by stating that
the expansion of education accelerates economic growth, which enhances
personal incomes, reduces social inequalities, improves health and nutrition,
and helps to reduce high rates of population growth and infant mortality.
To achieve the goal of education for all, there firstly has to be a gender balance in
access to education worldwide. We cannot achieve “universal” primary education
if boys and girls do not have equal access to education. The education of both boys
and girls should be prioritised equally in order for this goal to be achieved.
In this learning unit on education, we start by examining the nature and importance
of education in the development process. Reading box 2.1 below explains the progress
made in the education system between 1999 and 2012. In order to understand the
context in which these matters occurred, we look at the colonial legacy and then the
problems within the formal education system. We will conclude this learning unit with
possible solutions to these problems, and by considering how we can make education
DVA1502/17

relevant to the socio-economic and political demands of, and conditions in, African
countries.
READING BOX 2.1
Progress with the universal primary education goal
Source: UNESCO, EFA Global Monitoring Report (2015a)
2.2
LITERACY, DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION SYSTEMS
2.2.1
The relationship between literacy and development
Literacy is one of the most important indicators that the international community
uses to measure the status and relative level of development of countries. Education,
especially primary education which is aimed at establishing literacy, is seen both as
a goal of development and as a method or tool of reaching other, interrelated goals.
1 This chapter is based on an earlier version compiled by Prof Linda Cornwell. Her contribution is gratefully
acknowledged.
8

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
These goals include:
• health
• higher labour productivity
• a more rapid growth rate in the gross domestic product
• the broad social aims of social integration, including participation in cultural
and political affairs
According to Ban Ki-moon (Former UN secretary-general) (UNESCO 2010/2011),
literacy unlocks the capacity of individuals to imagine and create a more
fulfilling future. It opens the way to greater justice, equality and progress.
Literacy can help societies heal, advance political processes and contribute to
the common good.
According to UNESCO (2010/2011),
literacy is a fundamental right and a springboard not only for achieving
Education For All, but also for eradicating poverty and broadening participation
in society. Literacy is a vehicle to support the achievement of the Millennium
Development Goals (MDG) and to empower the poor in particular. As
a component of basic education and a foundation for lifelong learning, literacy
is the key to enhancing human capabilities and achieving many other rights.
In the industrialised countries of the world, the literacy figure is generally 80% or
higher. But what exactly does the concept “literacy” mean? Daley (2003:33) says
that literacy means “the ability to read and write, to understand information, and to
express ideas both concretely and abstractly”. In the simplest terms, literacy means
to be able to read and write.
“Recent decades have seen improvements in basic reading and writing skills and a
steady reduction in gender gaps, with women’s literacy rates growing faster than men’s
literacy rates in all regions over the past 25 years. However, 750 million adults – two
thirds of whom are women – remained illiterate in 2016” (SDG Indicators, un.org).
Adults face multiple barriers in pursuing education opportunities. Cross (1981, quoted
in UNESCO, GEM, 2021)) has classified the reasons in three categories:
(1)
(2)
(3)
life circumstances – family responsibilities and lack of time;
dispositional – determined by previous learning experiences – they did not
particularly enjoy learning for their own reasons;
institutional – determined by structural conditions such as costs, lack of
support, rigid timetables, etc.
It also been found that men and women generally have different reasons for not
attending classes, namely scheduling for men and family responsibility for women.
DVA1502/19

TABLE 2.1
Adult literacy rate by region 2016
Region
Percent
Southern Asia
49
Sub-Saharan Africa
27
Eastern and South-Eastern Asia
10
Northern Africa and Western Asia
9
Other
5
Source: — SDG Indicators (un.org), UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre,
stats.uis.unesco.org
The high illiteracy rates remain an enormous challenge and these rates will have to
be reduced.
In 2019 the number of illiterate adults in the world was estimated at 773 million
(http://uis.unesco.org/en/topic/literacy) which meant that roughly one in every
three adults can neither read nor write. Of these, two-thirds or 64% are women
(UNESCO 2010a).
Such high rates need to be reduced in order for the goal of education for all
to be achieved. As indicated before, we cannot achieve the goal of “universal”
primary education if we do not achieve a gender balance in access to that education.
Most literate people see illiteracy as a personal tragedy. They argue that those
who cannot read or write are at a disadvantage when it comes to improving their
circumstances or quality of life, since they lack access to sources of information
on how to improve themselves. But illiteracy is not merely a personal tragedy for
individuals: illiteracy also has serious implications for national development.
If, like Kagia (2007) says, education “is one of the most powerful instruments for
promoting sustained economic growth and reducing poverty and inequality,” education
must be central to the development process. Achieving the goal of good education
levels will reduce the number of adult illiterates and create more opportunities
for a better life for many. The significance of education as an essential tool in the
development process cannot be underestimated.
Literacy – and therefore education – is directly linked with development. The concern
is not so much with literacy as such – literacy is, after all, just one component in the
broader concept of education – but with the way the individual uses their literacy
skills. These skills include not only the ability to read and write, but also a better
capacity for clear, logical, critical thought. With this in mind, Noor (1981:2) and
Toure (1983:12–14) see a clear connection between education and development.
They point out that:
• Education provides knowledge, skills, values and attitudes which increase people’s
ability to change and create a willingness to accept new ideas and practices. In
rural areas, for instance, where mechanisation is becoming more common, peasant
10

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
•
•
•
farmers need to acquire the necessary technical know-how through education. A
person who knows how to read and write is better able to apply new knowledge
and benefit from it.
Education provides the means for people to satisfy other basic needs. Their
knowledge, gained through education, makes them aware of the connection
between improved nutrition, clean water, and primary health care, and enables
them to make better use of new medical and other services. Improved health, in
turn, raises productivity, incomes and standards of living.
Education socialises people in the dominant political and cultural value systems.
By this we mean that education teaches people to distinguish between behaviour
that is desirable and acceptable within society and that which is not.
Education and literacy make people less dependent on assistance and also less
vulnerable to exploitation and the effects of official corruption. For instance,
local cooperatives in rural areas may employ their literate members to do simple
bookkeeping.
During the 1950s and 1960s education was believed to play a vital role in economic
development – it was felt that economic development would be achieved if people
received formal education. The task of education is, however, much broader (Todaro
1981:310; Webster 1984:113). Education should not be seen merely as a means of
preparing young people to be economically active and earn a livelihood, since human
beings are more than just production machines or human resources for development.
When one considers the task of education in relation to development, the following
observation by Hartshorne (1985:41) is very much to the point: “Education’s first
concern must be with the man [sic], not with the worker, with people and not with
‘human resources.”
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 2.1
Explain the link between education and development using examples.
1
FEEDBACK
Kagia (2007) Study guide Sections 2.1 and 2.2
2.2.2
Different education systems
In the previous section we saw Hartshorne (1985:41) pointing out that education
should be concerned with the person as a whole, and not just with how much a person
can produce as a worker. This is not a new idea and particularly linked to the kind
of education system found in African societies in pre-colonial times. We call this
system a traditional education system. In pre-colonial times the entire community
was responsible for children’s education and every member of the community took
an active part. In contrast to formal Western education, which tends to concentrate
on intellectual development, education in pre-colonial Africa catered for the child’s
intellectual, physical, moral and social development. Moral education and character
moulding were of fundamental importance (Fafunwa 1982:9–11).
DVA1502/111

The main difference between traditional education and the formal systems introduced
by the colonial powers was that the traditional systems treated education as inseparable
from other facets of life. Children were educated through participation in sociopolitical and religious institutions.
In this respect, traditional African education was no different from systems found
elsewhere in the world and known in the literature as informal education (Cameron &
Hurst 1983:9). This kind of education is seen as a lifelong process. Lifelong learning
involves promoting active citizenship and inculcating the necessary knowledge,
skills, values, and attitudes with regard to daily experiences, including employment
and work (Medel-Añonuevo 2002:4).
This is where formal education comes into the picture. Formal education can be
defined as a highly institutionalised, chronologically graded and hierarchically
structured education system extending from primary schooling to post-school
technical and university training (Coombs & Ahmed, quoted in Dejene 1981:19). In
other words, formal education is part of the social system, just like the legal system,
for example. The content that has to be taught is divided up according to the age of
the learners. The whole system is structured in such a way that learners progress from
lower to higher levels of education. Further characteristics of most formal education
systems are as follows: Pupils undergo only certain types of teaching and learning
processes. Classes last for specified periods and take place at fixed times, and in set
places, other than the home. Ideally, teachers who work in a formal education system
are specially trained to do their job. Instruction is usually given to age-specific groups
and, on completion of their studies, irrespective of the level attained, the learners
receive formal qualifications such as a certificate, diploma or degree. According to
Bock and Papagiannis (1983:16), the community does not experience the benefits
of formal education immediately, because the beneficiaries are usually children who
are being prepared for adult life.
We can also identify a system of non-formal education. Hassan (2009:196) defines
this as “any organised, systematic educational activity outside the framework of the
formal school system designed to provide selective types of learning to particular
subgroups in the population, adults as well as children”.
2.2.3
The role of education in development: changes in perspectives
over time
It is evident that different people have different expectations of education and how
it can contribute to development.
Cornwell (2000a:160–167) distinguishes between the following schools of thought:
• Neo-classical views
• Reformist views
• Radical views
12
READING BOX 2.2
Different perspectives on education for development
Neoclassical views
“The neoclassical theorists believe that education will help countries to modernise
their economic, social and political systems. They have been arguing since the
1960s that countries will develop – or rather, become modern – if everything
associated with ‘being modern’ is introduced there. In the economic sphere, for
example, it was argued that developing countries simply required those inputs
that were in short supply, such as large-scale factories, money, trained workers,
and modern technology. These inputs would form the basis of rapid economic
growth” (Cornwell 2000a:161).
“The main idea that underlies the views of the neoclassical theorists is that it is
possible to invest in people in the same way that one would invest in infrastructure
– also called physical capital – you create the potential for this capital to produce
goods and services in the future. Similarly, it is argued, investing in education
will increase the productive capacity of people” (Cornwell 2000a:162).
“The neo-classicists are also optimistic that formal education will help to reduce
inequalities within societies. They believe that formal education will redistribute
job skills among the inhabitants of a country and that these redistributed skills
will, in turn, lead to a redistribution of economic benefits such as salaries ...”
(Cornwell 2000a:162).
Reformist views
“The reformists, just like the neo-classicists, firmly believe that there is a positive
link between education and development and, in particular, between education
and economic growth. But while the neo-classicists believe that the answer lies
in ‘more of the same’ – that is, more formal education opportunities have to be
made available – the reformists believe that education will only come into its
own if the existing education system is adapted to provide cheaper and more
relevant education to more people” (Cornwell 2000a:163–164).
“They argue that: the existing education system is training people for the wrong
kinds of jobs or, in other words, the education syllabuses are not relevant to
the needs of the developing economies. The starting point for their theoretical
arguments is that education must be linked to planning aimed at meeting the
labour requirements of a specific society. It is argued that such planning would
help to train a sufficiently large labour force for jobs in the modern economy,
while those who remain in the rural areas would be equipped with the necessary
and appropriate knowledge and skills that will encourage them to try and make
a living there. The reformists have identified minimum learning needs which
they believe every individual should have ...Communication skills and general
knowledge – including literacy, numeracy and general civic, scientific and cultural
knowledge, values and attitudes. – Life skills – such as hygienic practices,
sanitation and family planning. – Production skills – those that enable a person
to earn an income.
DVA1502/113

“The reformists believe that people who possess these three kinds of skills will
also be able to fulfil any one of their other basic needs such as food, drinking
water, health and shelter. Such knowledge and skills can be transferred by means
of formal education but, the reformists argue, it might best be done through
non-formal education” (Cornwell 2000a:164).
The radicals
“One of the main points of criticism against the reformists’ argument is the one
put forward by the radical school of thought. They argue that the reformists only
take into consideration what they perceive to be shortcomings in the abilities of
the poor. Instead, the radicals point out, the reformists must also acknowledge
that people are poor not only because of a lack of education, but also because
of the social and economic context within which education functions” (Cornwell
2000a:165).
“They argue that the way in which education is currently offered and the content
of syllabuses in use today contribute to the ‘wrong’ kind of development. They
argue further that the use of Western education models and syllabuses increases
the developing countries’ dependence upon the West. They also feel that the
syllabuses promote only one development option and that is capitalism ... They
argue in favour of a total restructuring of education to change it into a tool that
will actually transform society. This has to be done by means of participation,
empowerment and conscientisation. Paulo Freire is one of the people whose
ideas have strongly influenced the views of the radicals. He is particularly
critical of the existing formal schooling system, which he says is equal to
‘banking education in which students receive, file, and store deposits’ ... In the
place of ‘banking’ education, Freire proposes a liberating and problem-solving
form of education that would take place by means of dialogical processes ...
In his proposal education would rest on constant dialogue (instead of lectures)
and interaction between students (Freire refers to them as group participants),
teachers (whom Freire calls coordinators) and their contexts ...” (Cornwell
2000a:167).
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 2.2
• Which of these three schools of thought discussed in 2.2.3 is in your opinion
the most appropriate for education and development? Explain your answer.
2.3
THE COLONIAL INHERITANCE
This section provides a historical overview of development and education in Africa.
It is important background information for your understanding of the struggles of
people in Africa.
Contrary to popular belief, formal non-indigenous education was not introduced
by European traders, missionaries or colonial powers, but by the Arabs and their
African converts to Islam. Cameron and Hurst (1983:10) state that Islamic education
in the form of Koran schools was introduced centuries before the introduction of
Western education, and was deeply entrenched in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa
such as the Sahelian countries and the east coast.
14


Western education, too, gained a foothold in Africa long before the continent was
formally colonised. Portuguese missionaries started their first schools in Africa as
early as the 16th century, although the real foundations of the schooling system on the
continent were laid only in the 19th century. These schools and tertiary educational
institutions were inspired by the Christian ethic and did not replace the Islamic
schools, but coexisted with them (Cameron & Hurst 1983:10).
Even after the introduction of formal colonial rule in the 19th century, missionaries
continued to play a dominant role in education, with the colonial governments
doing little more than providing financial assistance to the mission schools. And,
although there were many instances in which colonial administrations eventually took
over education from the missionaries, this in no way implies that mission schools
disappeared from the scene.
Previously, in Lesotho, for instance, the education system (particularly at primary
school level) remained largely in the hands of voluntary religious organisations or
missionaries. The Lesotho government exercised considerable control over education,
however, through financial subsidies to the missions, and through educational
legislation (Cameron & Hurst 1983:172). Presently, broad goals and policies are
being developed for the education system in Lesotho, including opportunities
for all to develop competencies, a sufficient number of individuals to be provided
with appropriate skills so that they can participate in the country’s socioeconomic
development, as well as incorporating cultural values and activities that enhance
individual and social development (UNESCO 2010a).
After the First World War (1914–1918), colonial governments began to assume more
responsibility for education in Africa. However, colonial education was usually
designed to meet the needs of the colonial powers, rather than those of the colonies.
An obvious need of the colonial system was to have a small group of educated people
to fill junior posts in its administration. Because of this need, and despite their very
different educational policies, both of the principal colonial powers in Africa (Britain
and France) ultimately did little more than produce an educated elite; the position
of the ordinary people remained virtually unchanged (Cameron & Hurst 1983:5–6).
The creation of an educated African elite may have been designed to satisfy the needs
of the colonial government of the time, but it had one unforeseen result: it created
a group of politicised Africans, who later came to form the opposition to colonial
rule. Coleman (quoted in Mazrui 1978:1) writes:
Western education has been the most revolutionary of all influences operating
in sub-Saharan Africa since the imposition of European rule. It has been the
instrument of the creation of a class indispensable for imperial rule, but one
which invariably has taken the leadership in challenging and displacing that rule.
So it came about that Western education played an important part in the creation
of the African nationalist movements which mobilised resistance to the colonial
system. This is illustrated by the fact that many of the early nationalist leaders were
either school teachers or were associated with missionary societies or mission schools
(Mazrui 1978:1–3).
While the Western education system helped to stimulate African nationalism, the
nationalist movements in turn promoted education. Nationalist leaders soon realised
that education had helped to develop their own political awareness and so they
DVA1502/115

demanded more educational opportunities for their people. Thus, formal education
became a political issue.
After independence, this became a troublesome dilemma for the leaders of the new
states, who had to decide how much of their budgets to allocate to education and
how to create enough job opportunities for all the people who sought an education.
There was some uncertainty, too, about how political stability might be affected
by extending education to the entire population. Initially it was predicted that to
deny the young equal educational opportunities would cause political unrest. Later
it turned out that unrest was equally likely when children and young people were
given educational opportunities, but without sufficient jobs for all of those who
qualified (Ward 1974:xv).
2.3.1
Setting the goals for education
In 1948 education was highlighted by the United Nations as a basic human right
(see reading boxes 2.3 and 2.4 below), and it occupied an important position in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted that year. The leaders of the African
states emerging from the 1950s onwards were keen to show their commitment
to increasing educational opportunities for their citizens. This commitment was
expressed clearly across the decades at numerous international conferences where
leaders set goals for their countries.
READING BOX 2.3
Timeline of education
Source: UNESCO (2015b), en.unesco.org
16

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
READING BOX 2.4
The right to education
Source: UNESCO (2015c)
2.3.1.1
The conference in Addis Ababa
One of the first important conferences was the Conference of African States on the
Development of Education in Africa, held in Addis Ababa in 1961. The main theme
was the growing demand for education, in the belief that education was the only way
of overcoming poverty, economic backwardness and other problems. This conference
was attended by the ministers of education of some 40 African states and colonies,
and delegates set short-term (1961–1965) and long-term (1961–1980) objectives.
The short-term goals included raising primary school enrolments by 5% annually,
increasing secondary school enrolments from the 1961 level of 3% to 9% annually,
and devoting special attention to adult education. The long-term goals included the
provision of free, compulsory, universal primary school education; the availability
of secondary education for 30% of all primary school leavers; the provision of
DVA1502/117

higher education for 20% of all secondary school leavers; and an improvement in
the overall quality of African school and university education (Schoeman 1981:47).
Another long-term aim was to reduce the inequality between educational opportunities
for boys and girls. Today such inequalities still exist, even though much progress has
been made. What also still remains, is the belief that education is vital for overcoming
poverty, economic backwardness and other related problems. In most regions the
statistics for girls dropping out of school still remain higher than that for boys. This
is especially pronounced in sub-Saharan Africa. In the period 2000 to 2005, with the
exception of Botswana and Lesotho, the percentage of literate adult women was still
much lower in these countries than that of adult males. This means that there is still
a huge gender gap in access to education. This in itself could delay the achievement
of the goal of “Education for All”. We will discuss the education of girls and women
in more detail later in this learning unit.
2.3.1.2
The Nairobi and Thailand conferences
Seven years after Addis Ababa, at an educational conference in Nairobi, there was
clearly far less of the enthusiasm that had characterised the Addis Ababa conference.
It had become clear to educationists that the dramatic increase in learner numbers was
endangering the quality of education. There were also severe educational problems
in rural areas, where up to 80% of the continent’s people lived.
Although countries made progress in terms of providing more educational
opportunities for their citizens between the late 1960s and the end of 1980, it was
clear that education was still, in the words of Hall and Peters (2003:630): “... highly
differentiated regionally, with some areas improving much more rapidly than others.
Consequently, in many parts of the world a quality education is still primarily the
privilege of urban elites, with the majority of urban poor and rural children lagging
in terms of grade levels achieved at school.”
In 1990 an international conference was held in Jomtien, Thailand. This conference
was to shape the goals and agendas set by countries for their educational expansion
processes, for it was here that the catch phrase “Education for All” was adopted.
At this conference, countries had to commit themselves to achieving a number
of comprehensive goals in the education field, ranging from early childhood education
to adult literacy; from achieving universal access to and completion of primary education
by 2000, to creating opportunities for training in essential skills for youths and adults.
As 2000 approached, however, it became clear that most countries were not going to
achieve the ideal of universal access to and completion of primary education. While
large numbers of children were gaining access to education, the attrition or dropout
rates were alarmingly high. Factors such as conflict and civil war, and the impact of
HIV/AIDS, were working against the achievement of these goals.
2.3.1.3
The conference in Senegal
In 2000 another important educational conference was held in Dakar, Senegal. The
aim of this conference was to determine the progress countries were making towards
achieving the goal of “Education for All” (EFA) and to set tangible targets for
national educational development through the Dakar Framework for Action. In the
same year, the international community agreed on eight Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs), two of which focused on education.
18

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
Achieving the goal of education requires development in other areas. “Achievement
of Universal Primary Education will not be feasible without increasing and equalising
access to food, sanitation and other life-sustaining resources” (Education International
2009). Children who live with hunger, poverty and disease cannot perform to their
full potential at school. Public health and child mortality, in turn, are both linked
to education: when mothers are educated and know how to live healthier lifestyles,
infant-child mortality rates are likely to remain low. Therefore, the Dakar Framework
went hand in hand with the MDGs in outlining the importance of the Education
for All goal in order to achieve the other MDGs.
2.3.1.4
The conference in Scotland
Forty-two years after the important Addis Ababa conference, another conference was
held: this time it was the 15th Commonwealth Conference of Education Ministers,
held in October 2003 in Edinburgh, Scotland. It was attended by 48 ministers, most
of whom represented African states. However, at this conference, as at Jomtien and
Dakar, there was one significant difference: expectations of education’s contribution
to development had been modified slightly by the realisation that education does
not necessarily shape society, but that it is rather more common to find education
reflecting society with all its imperfections and being shaped by prevailing social,
economic and political conditions. From the late 1990s context, and in particular
the context of poverty, was consciously being considered as a key factor influencing
the attainment of educational goals.
In 2004, Bellamy (2003:1–2) assessed progress in achieving universal primary education
as follows:
Universal education may seem a relatively straightforward goal, but it has proven
as difficult as any to achieve. Decades after commitments and reaffirmations
of those commitments have been made to ensure a quality education for
every child, some 121 million children are still denied this right. Despite
thousands of successful projects in countries around the globe, gender parity
in education – in access to school, successful achievement and completion – is
as elusive as ever and girls continue to systematically lose out on the benefits
that an education affords. As a result, the children whose lives would have
been saved if their mothers had been educated continue to die. Those boys
and girls who would have been healthier had their mothers been educated
continue to suffer needlessly. The reduction in poverty, hunger and HIV/AIDS
that would follow if all children were educated, remains an idealist’s dream.
Nevertheless, significant progress towards the achievement of the goal of
universal education has been made since Dakar. In 2006 there were over 40 million
more children in primary school than in 1999. The most substantial increases in
school attendance were found in sub-Saharan Africa, and South and West Asia, with
a 42% and 22% increase respectively (UNESCO 2010a).
2.3.1.5
Sustainable Development Goals and Agendas
Despite the progress made, many targets were not reached (see reading box 2.5)
and this led to the creation of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). See
reading box 2.6, which explains the transition from the Millennium Development
DVA1502/119

Goals to the SDGs. Reading box 2.6 indicates the centrality of education to the 17
SDGs. Then look at reading box 2.7, which explains what Education 2030 is.
READING BOX 2.5
Challenges in the way of achieving the goal of primary education
• Overall, there was considerable progress towards equal access at primary
level. At the secondary level, a striking number of countries had enrolments
that favoured girls.
Key education-related MDG challenges
• There are still approximately 17.2 million primary-aged children out of school
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
in the Commonwealth.
Despite some progress, there are still 16.4 million youths out of school in
the Commonwealth.
There are approximately 596 million illiterate adults in the Commonwealth.
Gender discrimination towards girls has improved, but there are still
approximately 3% more boys than girls enrolled in primary schools across
the Commonwealth countries.
Disparities in primary school participation reflect lower female participation
– approximately 3% average difference across the Commonwealth. Large
discrepancies in gender parity exist across the Commonwealth, with national
averages as low as 0.62 girls per 1 boy in primary. 0.69 girls per 1 boy in
lower secondary, and 0.62 girls per 1 boy in upper secondary.
Gender disparity is wider at a secondary level, with national averages across
the Commonwealth ranging between 0.62 girls per 1 boy to 1.38 girl per 1
boy, with the under-representation of boys in certain countries and regions –
within the Caribbean and Pacific, boys face disparities in terms of completion
and graduation rates.
The radicalization of young people and the underachievement of boys are
emerging as challenges.
School attendance has been affected in areas of conflict and during the
recent Ebola outbreak
Source: The Commonwealth Education Hub (2017)
20

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
READING BOX 2.6
The transition from the MDGs to the SDGs
Source: The Common Wealth Education Hub (2017)
DVA1502/121

READING BOX 2.7
The Sustainable Development Goal of Education
22

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
DVA1502/123

READING BOX 2.8
The relation between the Education SDG goals and other SDG targets
Source: UNESCO, Sustainable Development Goals (2017)
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 2.3
After carefully reading through reading box 2.6 explain, in your own words, the
differences and similarities between the Millennium Development Goals and the
Sustainable Development Goals.
2.4
PROBLEMS IN AFRICA’S FORMAL EDUCATION SYSTEMS
We can now turn to some of the problems experienced in formal education systems
in African countries. Remember that not all countries experience these problems,
nor are they equally serious throughout the continent. You should therefore keep
yourself informed about the progress and problems in your own community by
reading newspaper reports.
24

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
Below we discuss four main problems in formal education systems in Africa, namely
the learner explosion, quality of education, inequality in education, and education
of girls and women. But first complete the activity below.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 2.4
Refer to reading box 2.9 below on the barriers to education. Consider each of these
barriers and ask yourself whether they exist in your community. Which barriers
are relevant in your context?
READING BOX 2.9
Barriers to education
DVA1502/125

26

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
Source: The Global Citizen (2014)
2.4.1
The learner explosion
The learner explosion/pupil explosion refers to the relationship between high
population growth rate in African countries and the resultant youthfulness of the
population, which has serious implications for education. The learner explosion
should not be solely seen as a barrier to education but also as an impact of the success
in getting countries to aspire for higher literacy rates. The learner explosion has
implications that educationists to speak of as the “pupil explosion” rather than the
population explosion. It is estimated that the total population of sub-Saharan Africa
increased by 30% in the decade from 1970 to 1980, which in absolute figures means an
additional 80 million children (Cameron & Hurst 1983:6). In spite of the large increase
in the number of children, African countries succeeded in providing education to the
extent that the number of children of school-going age who do not attend schools
decreased substantially (Pyke 2012:273). A decrease in the number of out-of-school
children can be interpreted as an increase in school attendance.
DVA1502/127

SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 2.5
In your opinion, why do girls have less access to education than boys? Provide
some examples.
2
FEEDBACK
Reading box 2.4 and 2.5
Despite intensive efforts to keep up with the growing youthful populations, there
still remain barriers in access to education. Accommodating large percentages of a
youthful population has serious implications for teacher-pupil ratios, the adequacy
of facilities, failure and dropout rates, and financing. See reading box 2.9 above for
other major barriers to education, and how they can be exacerbated by larger learner
numbers. These include poverty (lack of access to fees, textbooks and other school
materials), poor health and nutrition, sociocultural reasons, conflict, poor quality
of education and the lack of relevant curricula, inappropriate language of instruction,
and poor-quality learning materials.
According to Sabates, Akyeampong, Westbrook and Hunt (2011), policies to reduce
the large numbers of dropouts are crucial to achieve the universal primary education
goal. In Benin, for example, the primary school completion rate improved rapidly
from 38% in 2000 to 62% in 2005. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, the
primary school completion rate remained unchanged at 51% between the 1990s and
2007. In Bangladesh, the primary school completion rate has remained around 60%
since 2000 (Sabates et al. 2011).
2.4.2
Quality of education: developing skills
According to the World Bank (2011:3), “growth and development, and poverty
reduction depend on the knowledge and skills that people acquire, not the number
of years that they sit in a classroom”. Thus, an individual’s skills are what determine
his/her productivity and their ability to become accustomed to new technology and
life opportunities.
Education, skills and technology interact in important ways to create a “virtuous
cycle”. It has been said that low levels of human capital accumulation in a country
lead to “technological stagnation and a slow-growing economy which generates little
demand for higher-level skills” (Kagia 2007:1). Such a country will be unable to
attract foreign direct investment and will have limited capacity to generate revenue
and expand education.
When an individual has extra years of education, this leads to an increase in that
individual’s output. Also, education remains the key to breaking the intergenerational
transmission of poverty, because it increases an individual’s income and labour market
opportunities (Kagia 2007:1). One also finds that when global economies become
more knowledge-driven, the level and quality of a country’s labour force become
key determinants in its economic competitiveness.
Therefore, the “quality of education” remains an essential component in any education
system. However, research shows that quality education is a challenge to every
country in the world and the disparities are large (Kagia 2007:3). For example, in
Bangladesh, 80% of primary school graduates were found to be reading at the third-
28

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
grade level, whereas in Namibia and Zambia fewer than 30% of sixth-grade pupils
met the minimum reading requirements.
In the reading box below the current situation in terms of numbers and quality
of education in South Africa is outlined. Read it carefully.
READING BOX 2.10
Quantity or quality?
Some progress has been made in South African education, but there is
a long way to go
While the 2011 Census shows huge improvements in access to education since
1996, important concerns remain regarding the quality of education.
• Increased access to education is indicated by the following census figures:
• In 1996, the percentage of the population who were 20 years and older with no
schooling at all was 19%. These figures have dropped by half in 2011 to 9%.
• In 1996, 16% of the same age group as above had matric. This almost doubled
•
•
•
to nearly 30% in 2011.
Higher education rates increased from 8.4% of the population in 2001 to
nearly 12% in 2011.
Only 23% of five-year-olds were enrolled in an educational institution in 1996.
This increased to 81% in 2011.
In 1996, 33.6% of people15 years and older were illiterate. This figure has
decreased to 19%.
However, access to education is “primarily the means to the more important
outcome, which is learning” says Nic Spaull, a researcher at Stellenbosch
University. Research he has yet to publish indicates that 98% of grade six-aged
children are enrolled in a school. But only 71% of them are functionally literate
and only 59% of them are functionally numerate. This shows that at least a
quarter of children “are enrolled but learning shockingly little in six years of
schooling,” he says.
The then head of the Wits School of Education, Ruksana Osman, says there
should be less celebration about access and more focus on success and retention.
“Yes, many more young people are getting into school and higher education
institutions, but how many are succeeding in those contexts?” she asks. Retention
in education remains the biggest challenge, she says.
From a gender perspective, the census shows that there are fewer men than
women without schooling – there are 900 000 men in the population with no
schooling, while 1.5 million women have no schooling. But in higher education,
women enrolling in business, commerce and financing courses have increased
from 17% of the enrolments in 2001 to 30% in 2011.
While Spaull acknowledges gender inequalities, he argues that disparities in
access to education have much more to do with socioeconomic factors. “Whether
you are a boy or a girl is less important than whether you are rich or poor, in
terms of access to quality education,” he says.
(Adapted from Time to go back and hit the books by Victoria John in the Mail &
Guardian of November 2 to 8, 2012)
DVA1502/129

2.4.3
Inequalities in education
In African countries, formal education and the provision of education are characterised
by inequalities. “Strengthening education systems means aligning their governance,
management of schools and teachers, financing rules and incentive mechanisms
with the goal of learning for all” (World Bank 2011:6). This applies not only to the
provision of educational facilities in urban areas as opposed to rural areas, but also
to the provision of education in different regions of the same country; it applies to
the proportional share of the education budget in relation to money spent on other
government sectors, and to persistent gender inequalities. Let us consider these
various inequalities.
Inequalities between countries. First, there are considerable inequalities in the provision
of education between different African countries. According to Sabates et al. (2011),
the drop-out rates differ from country to country. In Malawi, Rwanda and Uganda
non-completion of primary school remains relatively high. Other countries such as
Mali, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Benin have a large proportion of children out of
school, which means that they have never enrolled in school; and of those who were
enrolled, 30% dropped out.
Inequalities between regions in the same country. Another inequality – much more disturbing
than that between countries – occurs between regions within the same country.
For example, Tables 2.2 and 2.3 below illustrate the differences in the numbers of
learners, teachers and schools situated in each province in South Africa as well those
in public and independent schools. From these tables we can identify inequalities
between regions in the same country.
TABLE 2.2
Number of learners, educators and schools in the ordinary public-school
sector, by province, in 2016
Province
Learners
Educators
Schools
Eastern Cape
1 898 723
58 372
5 468
Free State
67 712
22 465
1 214
Gauteng
2 048 558
63 092
2 083
KwaZulu-Natal
2 808 207
84 810
5 895
Limpopo
1 706 725
51 650
3 678
Mpumalanga
1 046 234
34 034
1 725
Northern Cape
287 435
8 841
544
North West
811 340
24 876
1 472
Western Cape
1 063 349
33 254
1 450
South Africa
12 342 283
381 394
23 718
Source: Department of Basic Education (2018:4)
30

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
TABLE 2.3
Number of learners, educators and schools in the ordinary independent
school sector, by province, in 2016
Province
Learners
Educators
Schools
Eastern Cape
62 824
3 257
208
Free State
16 637
1 058
68
Gauteng
278 026
18 986
730
337
4 989
247
Limpopo
58 830
2 768
151
Mpumalanga
28 118
370
122
Northern Cape
4 080
295
30
North West
19 207
1 232
63
Western Cape
53 223
4 264
237
South Africa
590 282
37 219
1 856
KwaZulu-Natal
Source: Department of Basic Education (2018:4)
TABLE 2.4
Key Education Statistics South Africa 2021
INDICATOR
RATE
Youth Literacy (aged 15-34)
93,9%
Adult Literacy (aged 35-64)
79, 3%
Upper secondary completion rate (aged 15 and older)
55,1%
Secondary school completion rate (age 25 and older)
30,7%
Post-secondary completion (aged 25 and older)
11,4%
Tertiary education income covered by tuition fees
34,1%
Average rise in the cost of education (2016)
4,6%
Source: Statistics SA, 2021
2.4.3.1
Urban-rural inequalities
The provision of education facilities in African countries is generally not in keeping
with the distribution of the population. Despite the fact that up to 80% of the
population resides in rural areas, the vast majority of schools are located in urban
areas. Urban schools are better built and equipped than rural ones, and they have by
DVA1502/131

far the most qualified teachers. Clearly, then, urban dwellers have a far better chance
of gaining access to sound secondary and tertiary institutions, and of eventually
obtaining a good job, than rural people. Income-based disparities overlap with
wider inequalities. Rural children in many developing countries are thus less likely
to attend school and far more likely to drop out. In Senegal, children in urban areas
are twice as likely as those in rural areas to be in school. The children in rural areas
face challenges such as high levels of poverty, poor health and limited services.
Poverty and inequality are overwhelming factors in the discrepancy between urban
and rural school attendance (EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009).
READING BOX 2.11
Inequality in South African Education
Much has been written about the history of education in South Africa. Unfortunately,
some of it suffers from the biases seen in many South African history books.
The perspectives of the colonised have been ignored and often the history
presented attempts, explicitly or implicitly, to justify the process of colonisation
and oppression. Understanding this history is vital for the ongoing transformation
of education and to ensure that education helps create a society that values
equality and rejects prejudice.
Apartheid brought with it prolonged segregation by race, but also language,
with a ferociousness not seen in any other country during the twentieth century.
The legacy of division is still strong and is reinforced by economic inequalities.
The schooling system must continuously make a conscious effort to heal the
divisions of the past, foster a sense of South African nationhood and, above
all, provide education opportunities that will break down the deep inequalities
that still pervade South African society. In higher education in recent years, this
work has increasingly been referred to as the work of decolonising education.
This term is also applicable to basic education. Here too, decolonising the
system as a whole, and the curriculum in particular, involves understanding the
harm done to nationhood and the psychology of both the oppressed and the
oppressors. This understanding should guide a process of healing which affirms
equality, undoes the marginalisation of African culture and values brought about
by colonisation and apartheid, and moves beyond the confines a Eurocentric
world view and curriculum.
Decolonising the system as a whole, and the curriculum in particular, involves
understanding the harm done to nationhood and the psychology of both the
oppressed and the oppressors. Apartheid, especially following the 1953 Bantu
Education Act, was characterised not only by the racial segregation of learners
but, crucially, also by segregation in the training of teachers. Different groups
of teachers experienced training that was different in terms of its resourcing, its
quality and its ideological thrust. Individual teachers, teacher unions, NGOs and
government have done much work over the years to erode the apartheid teacher
training legacy through, for instance, new in-service training programmes and
the promotion of common values via the mass media. Yet, this apartheid legacy
will remain present for many years to come. It will continue to be necessary to
address these legacy problems in the design of in-service training and in the
way training programmes are targeted towards teachers.
32

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
Per learner spending by the state under apartheid was highly unequal and
differentiated by race and ethnicity. Although these funding inequalities became
slightly smaller towards the end of apartheid, in 1994, spending on every white
learner was still about 4,5 times as high as for every black African learner. It was
only in around 2000 that public spending per learner came close to being equal
and that the apartheid spending legacy, at least in a recurrent expenditure sense,
could be said to have ended. However, the legacy of inequality with respect to
many years of unequal expenditure remains stark, both as far as backlogs in
physical capital (such as school buildings) are concerned and human capital
(largely due to the unequal teacher training legacy referred to previously).
Moreover, the allowance made after 1994 for the charging of fees in public
schools serving the middle class, subject to exemptions in the case of learners
from poor households, means that, even as far as total recurrent spending is
concerned, there are large spending inequalities, though these inequalities are
considerably smaller than those that existed under apartheid. Allowing school
fees in public schools has often been referred to as the cost of maintaining an
inclusive public school system serving a broad range of the South African society.
By developing country standards, the size of South Africa’s independent school
sector is small. Instead, social inequities are reflected within the public school
system, as opposed to between the public and private school systems, as
happens in many other developing countries. These historical factors make
South Africa’s school funding system complex and, in many ways, unique. A key
challenge will continue to be improving equality within a public school system that
operates within a highly unequal society. Reducing inequality in basic education,
in particular with respect to the skills learners leave school with, is fundamental
for bringing about a more equal society.
South Africa’s education system can be proud of its contribution towards the
struggle against colonialism and apartheid. Schools, from the many missionary
schools which, over the centuries, opposed attempts by colonial authorities
to stop the education of black South Africans, to the government schools in
Soweto and other townships in the 1970s, where students faced the might of
the apartheid state, have been at the centre of the struggle for a new South
Africa. Many of South Africa’s post-apartheid leaders emerged from student and
teacher organisations. The protests that began with the 1976 schools uprising and
continued almost unabated until the fall of apartheid were necessarily directed
at undermining the authority of the apartheid state. They played an important
historical role. An important aspect of the struggle against apartheid was its
grassroots nature and its reliance on local democratic structures. South Africa’s
school governing bodies (SGBs) are an important embodiment of this tradition and
should be upheld as a means of maintaining accountability to local communities.
SGBs can play a key role in improving the quality of schooling.
The 1913 Land Act set in motion a process of land dispossession and resettlement
that has shaped the location of schools. Schools in former “homelands” account
for just under half of all public-school enrolments and face a particular form of
poverty characterised by the inaccessibility of public facilities and jobs. Around
the world, much of the legacy of colonialism persists through the dominance of
colonial languages.
DVA1502/133

In South Africa, English, though only spoken by about 4% of public-school
learners as a home language, is the predominant language of the textbooks
used in classrooms, as well as in the system’s policy documents. The history
of marginalisation of the remaining official languages and, in particular, of the
country’s nine African languages continues, despite the official position of
equality between the languages as enshrined in the 1996 Constitution. The
schooling system needs to pay special attention to the promotion of all official
languages. Compelling research indicating that young children learn best if,
during the first few years of their schooling, key concepts are taught in their
home language, informs South Africa’s education policies. But beyond these
pedagogical considerations, promoting all languages in the education system
is a matter of national pride and of liberation.
Finally, there is a strong tradition of associating success in education with
academic studies at a university after school. While university studies are
obviously a noble and important pursuit, alternatives have not received the
focus they deserve in schools. In particular, vocational training options within
schools and beyond basic education have not been sufficiently available and,
when available, were under-valued by many teachers and parents. This is
partly a symptom of the history of unequal access to vocational training under
apartheid and the legacy of race-based job reservation. Even today, in the
National Senior Certificate examinations, white learners are six times as likely
as black African learners to take one or more of the four key technical subjects.
Schools, in particular secondary schools, must provide black learners with better
access to vocationally-oriented subjects and should play a more pro-active role
in alerting the youth to new training and job opportunities and in moving away
from a narrow focus on university studies as the only post-school study option
(Department of Basic Education 2020).
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 2.6
Based on reading box 2.11 and Tables 2.1, 2.2 and 2.2, reflect on inequalities in
South African schools
• List at least five kinds of inequality described above discuss their causes.
• Use statistical data to support your arguments where applicable.
2.4.4
The education of girls and women
“Gender inequality is not just a women’s issue; it is a development issue” (Tembon
& Fort 2008). This means that educating girls and women is critical to economic
development. The majority of African states still have a long way to go to achieve
gender parity. Parity simply means that the same proportion of boys as girls of the
same age group enter the education system and participate in the different cycles.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 2.7
• Explain why the education of girls and women is critical to development
• Apart from economic development, in what other aspects of development does
the education of girls and women play a crucial role?
Refer to reading box 2.12 for examples, see also The Global Monitoring Report 2011.
34

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
2.4.4.1
Gender parity
According to the EFA Global Monitoring Report (2011, Chapter 1),
(g)ender parity in education is a human right, a foundation for equal opportunity
and a source of economic growth, employment creation and productivity.
Countries that tolerate high levels of gender inequality pay a high price for
undermining the human potential of girls and women, diminishing their
creativity and narrowing their horizons. Although there has been progress
towards gender parity, many poor countries will not achieve the target without
radical shifts of policy and priorities in education planning.
READING BOX 2.12
Gender parity
Globally, there is gender parity in pre-primary through secondary education
enrolment. However, averages hide continuing country-level gender disparity. In
one-quarter of low-income countries, for every 100 males, fewer than 87 females
are enrolled in primary education and fewer than 60 in upper secondary, at which
level only 25% of countries have achieved parity. While there is full information
on gender enrolment gaps, there is little information on gender enrolment
segregation in single-sex schools (Focus 14.1). Global gender parity figures
across education levels are easy to communicate but insufficient for identifying
those left furthest behind. Intersecting disadvantage severely affects education
opportunities of children and youth. In low-income countries, females from the
poorest 20% of households are consistently less likely to progress: 12 poor
women attend post-secondary education for every 100 poor men. The ratio is
much more favourable, although still not equal, for the richest women. In lowermiddle-income countries, up to secondary education completion, the poorest
females experience a similar if smaller gap. But their relative chances improve
in post-secondary education, reflecting the fact that average disparity at that
level is at the expense of men in all but low-income countries.
How far countries let the most disadvantaged fall behind is evident in country
rankings for a given education indicator, such as completion, and its value for the
most disadvantaged group by sex, location and wealth (usually the poorest rural
females). The average lower secondary education completion rate is around 28%
in Cote d’Ivoire and Rwanda, but while completion is close to zero among the
most disadvantaged in the former, the latter, although still low in absolute terms,
does better at 10%. Completion is marginally higher in Cameroon (43%) than
Cambodia (41%), but it drops by 41 percentage points for the most disadvantaged
in Cameroon, compared with a 25-point drop in Cambodia. Similarly, Nepal does
better than the Philippines.
Source: Global Monitoring Report (2021:275)
DVA1502/135

READING BOX 2.12
Case study – Girls and education
36

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
Source: Voices of the Youth (2013)
2.5
THE TENDENCY TO OVERRATE THE VALUE OF EDUCATION
Cameron and Hurst (1983:11) maintain that “the role of education in modern subSaharan Africa is both crucial and catalytic, the more so since its peoples have
an almost pathetic faith in its efficacy to solve their problems and promote their
prosperity”. This is the view not only of scholars, but also of politicians and parents.
Political leaders believe that heavy investment in education will not necessarily lead
to rapid development. But as we mentioned earlier, education is just one component
of development. Investment in education will be beneficial only if it is accompanied
by a drive to create job opportunities and infrastructure. This means that investment
in education must be matched by capital investment in other sectors.
DVA1502/137

In the past, parents used to place a high value on education, and they often pressurised
governments to provide more opportunities for education. They saw it as something
that would help their children to improve their social circumstances and earn higher
incomes. The fact that qualified Africans were the first to occupy high positions in
newly independent countries strengthened these expectations. However, parents’
attitudes seem to be changing. Now that education and qualifications have become
more common, people are beginning to understand that the situation is more complex.
These days, parents are more inclined to keep their children out of school if they do
not see any immediate benefits and if the cost of schooling is too high.
But while the attitudes of parents are beginning to change, the expectations held by
academics and educationists remain high. One of the reasons that people overrate
the value of education is that they expect education to provide a powerful long-term
method of making the distribution of earnings and income more even. In other words,
people expect that more education will reduce inequalities in wages and salaries. The
belief is that formal education makes job skills available to more people and that
these skills determine the distribution of economic benefits within a given society.
According to South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan (2012), “the importance
of a job lies not only in the income that is earned and the skills that are acquired,
but also in the intangible and invaluable benefits it provides, including dignity,
independence, accomplishment and freedom”. If equal opportunities are provided for
all, each individual can determine his/her progress, with access to education being
the starting point. However, as you have seen in this learning unit, in practice the
provision of education in less developed countries is characterised by considerable
inequality: resources are unequally distributed among developing countries, between
urban and rural areas within a single country, between female and male inhabitants,
and among different ethnic and social groups.
Psacharopoulos and Woodhall (1985:266–269) maintain that the extension
of educational opportunities in less developed countries does not automatically lead
to greater equality and justice. In both less and more developed countries, people
are questioning just how effective it is to invest in education as a way of bringing
about redistribution and justice. In the past few years, the International Labour
Organisation and the World Bank have undertaken several studies to determine
whether education, job opportunities and income distribution are linked, and whether
investing in education does have the effect of redistributing income (World Bank
2000). These two institutions came to the conclusion that investment in education
and an increase in the provision of education might, in certain circumstances,
increase inequality in education, although in other circumstances it might reduce
such inequality. Investment in education can, for example, have a positive effect in
that the total income level in a society increases and the absolute level of poverty
therefore declines. Education can create new opportunities for the children of the
poor and for the rural population especially, which can serve as an instrument to
bring about social mobility. Education can also interact with other developmental
phenomena such as fertility, mortality and health, and this interaction can have
a positive effect on income distribution. However, education can also exacerbate
inequalities. If, for example, participation in the education system is limited to the
children of the well-to-do, it simply means that the inequalities are carried over from
one generation to the next. And when certain groups in society (say, men or city
dwellers) draw greater financial benefits from their level of education than others
(say, women or rural inhabitants), the inequalities will, once again, continue to exist.
38

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
The expectation that the extension of education will assist development and
guarantee justice is certainly not an accomplished fact. Developing countries are in
fact characterised by a distinction between the modernised, often Western-qualified
elite and the traditionally educated or mother-tongue-educated masses. This gap
between the elite and the masses tends to coincide with the urban-rural population
pattern, and with the clear-cut division between the socioeconomic classes. The
formal education system continues to act as a mechanism for providing new members
for the elite, despite governments’ efforts to provide more opportunities for people
to enter the system. Because urban areas tend to be favoured when it comes to
development planning and the provision of services, rural areas often suffer for lack
of say, facilities, textbooks and teaching aids (Dore & Oxenham 1984:7). One such
example was the 2012 textbook crisis in the Limpopo province in South Africa,
where the late delivery of textbooks to schools in the province was a matter of
serious concern. Such crises are likely to have a serious negative impact on the goal
of EFA and hamper its achievement. In addition, there are many more problems,
such as rural poverty and the high opportunity costs of education for children from
poor families, cultural factors that make it difficult for girls to get an education,
unsuitable syllabuses and overcrowded schools. All of these give rise to an extremely
high dropout rate in rural schools. In the light of this, we cannot expect investment
in formal education alone to bring about greater equality and justice. We can rightly
say that the expectations held out for the formal system are unrealistically high.
2.6
COVID-19: A NEW GLOBAL CHALLENGE TO ACCESSING
EDUCATION
The world experienced a new phenomenon starting in 2019 that affected all spheres
of life including health, economies and social life. The Covid-19 pandemic started
in Wuhan in China, at first mainly affecting national health systems as the number
of patients who had contracted the virus increased. However, its impact eventually
extended to all spheres of life such as education. This was because the recommended
measures to contain the contagion included social distancing, limiting crowds and
avoiding closed spaces. Teachers got infected as well as some learners. The different
countries’ responses, and the extent to which minimal interruption to schooling was
achieved, further highlighted the glaring global disparities in accessing education.
It is also not clear for how long the world will continue to experience the impact of
the Covid-19. It is therefore imperative that to ensure continued access to education
some of the traditional forms of education delivery will have to adapt.
DVA1502/139

READING BOX 12.13
The Impact of Covid on Education
A NEW LAYER TO THE CHALLENGE OF EDUCATION INCLUSION
In the course of a few weeks, the Covid-19 pandemic overwhelmed many national
health systems. Uncertainty over its deadliness led governments around the
world to impose lockdowns and curtail economic activity threatening billions
of livelihoods. One key measure to limit the risk of contagion was school and
university closures. At the peak of the closure period in April 2020, 91% of
the global student population was affected in 194 countries. Only a handful of
countries, including Belarus, Nicaragua and Tajikistan, kept all schools open
throughout, although a few high-income countries including Australia, the Russian
Federation and Sweden kept some schools open. Covid-19 thus precipitated
an education crisis, fuelled by the deep and multiple inequalities discussed in
this report. While these inequalities have long existed, many were obscured
in classrooms. Lockdowns and school closures suddenly brought them into
sharp relief. During this period, millions of people had to make tough decisions:
Individuals had to decide whether to respect or evade quarantine restrictions,
medical staff needed to choose among patients’ competing needs and authorities
had to decide how to allocate economic support. The management of education
also posed moral dilemmas. The disruption of learning confronted policymakers
with the ‘do no harm’ principle – the requirement that no plan or programme should
be put in place if there is a risk of it actively harming anyone at all. Unfortunately,
just as education policymakers look to the future to make an opportunity out of
a crisis, it has become apparent that many of the solutions tried pose a risk of
leaving many children and young people further behind.
EFFORTS TO MAINTAIN LEARNING CONTINUITY MAY EXACERBATE
EXCLUSION
The consequences of the health and financial crisis for inclusion in education
were both immediate and gradual. Education systems responded with distance
learning solutions, all of which offered less or more imperfect substitutes for
classroom instruction. In addition, closures interrupted support mechanisms
from which many disadvantaged learners benefit. Forcing these learners to
spend more time at home may not have been conducive to learning. Economic
difficulties resulting from lockdowns are expected to have medium- to long-term
impact. Governments will need to respond to the loss of revenue in the ensuing
recession and to competing urgent demands from various sectors. Households,
especially those near or below the poverty line, will also need to make hard
decisions about resource allocation, which may lead to withdrawing children
from school.
No current learning continuity solution ensures learning for all
The world was caught by surprise when the global pandemic struck, even though,
in retrospect, it is arguable that it should have been anticipated. It had been
estimated that the probability of an influenza pandemic causing at least 6 million
deaths globally in any given year was 1%, or a 25% probability in a generation
(Madhav et al., 2018). The 2014–15 Ebola virus epidemic in western Africa was
all too recent to have been erased from planners’ memories.
40

LEARNING UNIT 2: Education and development
Yet the challenge was too large for any education system to respond effectively.
School closures placed unprecedented challenges on governments, teachers,
students and parents aiming to ensure learning continuity. The poorest countries
have relied relatively more on radio. For instance, 64% of low-income countries
used this approach for primary education, compared to 42% of upper-middleincome countries. The use of radio had weakened over the years, although there
had been exceptions, such as Sierra Leone, which broadcast education radio
programmes five days a week in 30-minute sessions during the Ebola crisis
(Powers and Azzi-Huck, 2016). In mid-March, Kenya began running primary
and secondary school lessons on public radio (Kenya Institute for Curriculum
Development, 2020). In Madagascar, a non-government association of about
30 local radio stations offered education programmes (Verneau, 2020). By
contrast, 74% of lower-middle income countries used television programmes in
primary education, compared with 36% of low-income countries. Country income
is also a crucial factor in differences in adoption of online learning platforms. In
primary and secondary education, they were used by about 55% of low-income,
73% of lower-middle-income and 93% of upper-middle-income countries. Highincome countries capitalized on recent investments in education technology
to mobilize online learning. platforms, whether synchronous (real-time) or not.
Source: UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report (2021:58)
2.7
CONCLUSION
In this learning unit we introduced you to one of the most vital sectors in developing
societies: education. We identified some of Africa’s problems and put forward a
few alternatives. We have also identified some of the unique problems that were
caused by apartheid in South which is an added dynamic of racial exclusion to
existing problems in Africa. The new phenomenon of the Covid-19 pandemic
added an additional challenge to already existing obstacles towards achieving access
to education. What is evident in all the statistics provided is that policy commitments
need to be strengthened. Not only should there be universal access to education, but
that access should come with quality and high standards. What we need to remember
is that giving a child access to school does not ensure that they will complete their
primary education, or that value and quality would be added. A crucial point that is
stated in the EFA Global Monitoring Report and the Global Education Monitoring
Report is that the capacity must be developed to measure, monitor and assess education
quality, and that this must include the assessment of learning conditions such as
infrastructure, textbooks and class sizes.
The inequalities in education between various countries should be assessed. “The
circumstances into which children are born, their gender, the wealth of their parents,
their language and the colour of their skin should not define their educational
opportunities” (EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009).
What you should do, is think about the goal of Education for All and weigh both
the arguments in favour of and against the achievement of this goal and arrive at
your own conclusion about the role of education in development.
DVA1502/141

2.8
OUTCOMES CHECKLIST
Question
42
(1)
escribe the meaning of literacy and
D
lifelong learning.
(2)
escribe the ways in which education can
D
contribute to development.
(3)
xplain the problems encountered in
E
formal education systems in Africa, taking
into account the education provided during
the colonial years.
(4)
nalyse the causes of inequalities
A
in education and their impact on the
quality and quantity of education.
Can do
Cannot do
3
LEARNING UNIT 3
3
Health and development
OUTCOMES
Once you have completed this learning unit, you should be able to
• give an overview of the current health situation in developing countries
• explain how the health situation in a country affects its development
• discuss the health system in developing countries in relation to their potential to
•
3.1
achieve universal health coverage (UHC) and implement primary healthcare (PHC)
discuss the roles of the WHO and CDCs as institutions that are critical in the
detection, control, and prevention of health crises, epidemics and pandemics
INTRODUCTION
Development is a multidimensional concept which has different meanings for
different people. However, the overall goal of development is to improve the socioeconomic wellbeing of society. From this perspective, we will examine the relationship
between development and health in this learning unit. As you saw in the previous
learning unit, people have very high expectations of education, which they see as a
key to development, and educational planners are under a great deal of pressure to
live up to these expectations. The same applies to the health sectors in developing
countries. The achievement of the health-related Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs) (eradicate poverty and hunger; reduce child mortality; improve maternal
health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases) is very important.
We will review the health situation in the developing countries, particularly in some
African countries, in the context of the progress towards the health-related SDGs.
You will discover that it is in an appalling situation, and you will learn the reasons
for this. You will also learn about the principles and approaches of primary health
care (PHC) and universal health coverage (UHC) and how they strive to improve
access to health. Using the South African case study on National Health Insurance
(NHI), we will consider how Africa has used the primary health care principles and
approaches to manage some of the healthcare challenges. Finally, we will share the
experiences that Africa has had in dealing with the health crises, epidemics and
pandemics the continent has faced.
3.2
DEFINITIONS OF HEALTH
Health is defined in the World Health Organisation (WHO) constitution of 1948 as
“a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence
of disease or infirmity” (WHO 2006:1).
Illich (quoted in Pritchard 1981:7) gives a more detailed definition which also takes
into account people’s environment:
DVA1502/143

Health designates a process of adaptation. It is not the result of instinct, but
of an autonomous yet culturally shaped reaction to socially created reality. It
designates the ability to adapt to changing environments, to growing up and
ageing, to healing when damaged, to suffering, and to the peaceful expectation
of death. Health embraces the future as well.
From these definitions it follows that health is the product of a complex group of
factors existing in a state of equilibrium or balance. When the balance is disturbed,
people become sick, or they perceive themselves as being sick.
FIGURE 3.1
Types of health
Source: Microsoft Clip Art
3.3
THE HEALTH SITUATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
The health situation in most developing countries is appalling. Indicators are normally
used to determine whether the population of a country has access to health services.
If access to health services is good, the infant and child mortality levels are likely
to be low, people will have a fairly long-life expectancy and the number of people
affected by communicable diseases will be relatively low. Poor health can be linked
to poor socio-economic growth and development. The healthcare problems in
developing countries result from a combination of factors and as such affect the
development of those countries.
Before the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we had the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs), signed in 2000, which consisted of eight goals that
countries committed to achieve by the target date of 2015. These goals were:
• Goal 1:
• Goal 2:
• Goal 3:
• Goal 4:
• Goal 5:
• Goal 6:
• Goal 7:
• Goal 8:
44
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
Achieve universal primary education
Promote gender equality and empower women
Reduce child mortality
Improve maternal health
Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
Ensure environmental sustainability
Develop a global partnership for development

LEARNING UNIT 3: Health and development
As can be seen, the health-related MDGs were Goals 4, 5 and 6. Reports showed
that progress towards the achievement of these health-related MDGs varied from
country to country and from goal to goal (WHO 2010). The MDG expired in 2015,
following which the SDGs, also known as the Global Goals, were adopted as the
universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure that by 2030, all
people enjoy peace and prosperity. The SDGs therefore represents the consolidated
global development agenda for the next fifteen years (2015–2030).
Central to the SDGs are the 17 integrated goals with specific targets and indicators.
Integrated means that actions in one area have an impact on outcomes in others, and
that development must strike a balance between social, economic, and environmental
sustainability (https://www.undp.org). Some of these goals are: End poverty in all its
forms (Goal 1); Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages (Goal
3); Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning
opportunities for all (Goal 4); Achieve gender equality and empower all women
and girls (Goal 5); Reduce inequality within and among countries (Goal 10); and
Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalization of the global partnership
for sustainable development (Goal 17).
In this learning unit we are more concerned with good health and wellbeing (SDG3).
In this regard, one of the targets of SDG3 is the attainment of universal health
coverage (UHC), including financial risk protection, access to high-quality essential
healthcare services, and universal access to safe, effective, high-quality, and affordable
essential medicines and vaccines for all.
The United Nations Development Program (https://www.undp.org) paints a bleak
picture of global health status and notes among others that:
• at least 400 million people lack basic healthcare, and 40% lack social protection;
• more than 1.6 billion people live in delicate settings, where protracted
•
•
crises, combined with weak national capacity to deliver basic health services,
pose a significant challenge to health;
by the end of 2017, 21.7 million people living with HIV were receiving antiretroviral
therapy; and
more than one in every three women has experienced either physical or sexual
violence at some point in their lives, resulting in both short- and long-term
consequences for their physical, mental, sexual, and reproductive health.
Many of the problems likely to be faced by the developing countries in achieving
SDG3 may be attributed to institutional capacity, and to this end the goal target is
to “strengthen the capacity of all countries, in particular developing countries, for
early warning, risk reduction and management of national and global health risks”
(https://www.undp.org). As indicated earlier, the SDGs are integrated, and in the
sections that follow, we examine the factors that we regard as the most important
and interesting in helping us to understand why the health situation in developing
countries is so serious:
• hunger and malnutrition (related to SDG2)
• poor water supplies (related to SDG6)
• lack of health literacy (related to SDG3)
• demographic issues and the status of women (related to SDG5)
• economic and financial factors (related to SDG8 and SDG3)
DVA1502/145

3.3.1
Hunger and malnutrition
The SDGs aim to end all forms of hunger and malnutrition by 2030, ensuring that
all people, particularly children, have enough and nutritious food throughout the year
(https://www.undp.org). This includes encouraging sustainable agriculture, assisting
small-scale farmers, and ensuring equal access to land, technology, and markets.
International cooperation is also required to ensure investment in infrastructure
and technology to enhance agricultural productivity.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) reported that the number
of undernourished people had reached 821 million by 2017 (https://www.undp.
org). Malnutrition (which occurs when people do not eat enough of the right kinds
of food) is something that causes many deaths. In fact, Young (2001:231) explains
that “malnutrition in its various forms contributes to about one-third of all deaths
of young children in developing countries. Protein energy malnutrition, nutritional
anaemia, iodine deficiency disorders and vitamin A deficiency are the four major
clinical forms of malnutrition in the developing world. According to estimates,
about 150 million children under five are underweight (27 per cent), and 182 million
children (33 per cent) are stunted.”
The nutritional status of children is an important indicator, or set of statistics, that
helps us understand what the health situation within specific countries looks like.
In sub-Saharan Africa the nutritional status of children worsened during the 1990s.
This is a strong indication that there are increasing levels of poverty, and that the
struggle to eradicate poverty and hunger (in other words to achieve higher levels of
development) is being lost. There are various reasons for the decline in children’s
nutritional status:
• Natural disasters such as drought is an important cause, as insufficient food is
•
•
•
produced for local consumption.
Civil unrest or war is another important factor because, on the one hand, it reduces
people’s access to land on which to grow food (it is no longer safe to work in
the fields) or, on the other hand, people are displaced or become refugees and
insufficient food reaches the refugee camps.
HIV/AIDS is a crucial factor because it affects the health of the economically
productive sector of the population, who then become too ill to spend enough
time and energy producing food, or who are too ill to work and earn money with
which to buy food.
HIV/AIDS has another impact: many children are orphaned and do not have
regular access to sources of nutritious food.
HIV/AIDS is a significant factor, as can be seen above. Conversely, according to Porter
(quoted in Blackmon 2008:1), malnutrition is helping the onset and progression of
the HIV/ AIDS virus. The desperation of people looking for ways of making money
to buy food could lead them into having unsafe sex, and as such the transmission
of the HIV/AIDS virus could be higher.
Malnutrition also plays a role in other diseases such as gastroenteritis and diarrhoea.
According to the WHO (2000), children who suffer from malnutrition are more
susceptible to other diseases and also suffer from diarrhoea twice as frequently as
well-fed children. Diarrhoea causes dehydration, inadequate absorption of nutrients
and a reduced food intake, which in turn causes undernutrition.
46

LEARNING UNIT 3: Health and development
Malnutrition reduces resistance to infections to the extent that a disease like measles
will have many more complications and fatalities among poorly fed children. Infection
of any kind commonly causes reduced food intake, which further weakens the
sufferer’s health and perpetuates the vicious circle, especially amongst children in
developing countries.
For as long as the world has known it, malnutrition has been associated with hunger,
conjuring up images of gaunt and prematurely aged children and adults (Burslem
2004:1). There are still many hungry and underfed people, but what is also very
noticeable is the growing number of obese (overweight) people in developing countries.
According to the World Health Organisation, obesity is the number one health
problem affecting the world today. People are overweight, but still not nourished
– it is basically just malnutrition taking on a new form. People are eating more of
the wrong, fatty foods that make them fat and overweight, and these poor diets
and lifestyles make them prone to diseases like heart disease, cancers and diabetes.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 3.1
Look at the two pictures below carefully. In a paragraph, explain why you would
agree/disagree that the children in both pictures are malnourished. Do you think
the “face” of malnutrition is changing? Give reasons for your answer.
3
3.3.2
FEEDBACK ON 3.3.1
Water
Our focus here is on the significance of water as a health factor, and this has
been expressed under SDG6. One of the goal targets is to “… improve water
quality by reducing pollution, eliminating dumping and minimizing release of
hazardous chemicals and materials, halving the proportion of untreated wastewater
and substantially increasing recycling and safe reuse globally” by 2030 (https://www.
undp.org). Water is often described as the key to health, since the quantity, quality
and proper use of water have a direct bearing on health.
A disease like diarrhoea is usually transmitted through interpersonal contact, such
as when an infant’s food is contaminated by the mother’s unwashed hands. The
quantity and accessibility of water could therefore have a major impact in reducing
the incidence of this disease. The quality of water is just as important as the quantity
or availability. Water is often a carrier of infections such as gastroenteritis, cholera
DVA1502/147

and typhoid. Therefore, contaminated water can cause the spread of infections and
diarrhoea, which often cause malnutrition which weakens the human system, making
it susceptible to other diseases.
Schistosomiasis and other diseases carried by water snails affect chiefly mothers,
since it is they who are usually responsible for fetching water and are therefore
more exposed to these infections. Schistosomiasis is an infection of the blood with
a parasitic flatworm. It can cause liver and intestinal damage.
Better quality water will have little effect, however, unless sanitation is improved,
since this is the only way to break the chain of infection. Improved sanitation could
dramatically reduce the incidence of cholera, and could have a marked impact on
diseases such as schistosomiasis. Latrines reduce the risk of water being contaminated
and so help to break the cycle of infection and disease.
Mozambique ranks sixth in the world for the percentage of rural population without
access to safe water. The case study below, extracted from WaterAid (2017), showcases
some of the problems experienced by people residing in a rural area in Mozambique.
CASE STUDY 1
Mozambique experiences extreme weather events, including cyclones,
flooding and droughts. In January 2015, torrential rains in northern and central
Mozambique caused severe flooding, leaving tens of thousands of people
homeless and devastating crops and livestock. Drought also gripped parts of
southern Mozambique in 2016, with 1.5 million people in need of humanitarian
assistance and 95 000 children at risk of severe malnutrition. Julietta Chauque,
42, lives with her four children in the rural village of Marien Ngouabi, in southwestern Mozambique. In February 2016, storms battered Julietta’s village, leaving
her home badly damaged and forcing the family to move into a tent provided by
the government. The area is now in drought. ‘The drought is very strong, so we
cannot cultivate anything. Under normal circumstances, I can sell vegetables
I grow, or, in extreme circumstances, I find Kakana [a wild, drought resistant
vegetable] to sell to those with money, but our situation is very hard,’ explains
Julietta, ‘I wish for rain. Our only hope is farming, and without rain there is no
farming, no food, and no means to survive and feed my children.’ Water – a
5-km round-trip away – is usually supplied by a tap. When the supply runs out
during prolonged dry spells, Julietta must buy water from a local water tanker.
She says, ‘I normally have to pay for water, but it is very difficult with no way to
raise money.’
Source: WaterAid (2017)
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 3.2
The case study above shows a mother of four struggling to get access to water
and also having to buy it. Are there ways in which poor communities can be selfsufficient in their access to water? On myUnisa, go to the Blog site and add a
topic on “Access to water for us by us”. On the blog, list four ways by which rural
people can access water if they do not have institutional support.
48

LEARNING UNIT 3: Health and development
4
FEEDBACK
WaterAid article (2017) above.
3.3.3
Lack of health literacy
In this section, the focus is briefly on the way in which education, that is, literacy of
the population, influences health. Education provides knowledge, skills, values and
attitudes that help people to realise their full potential. It is generally accepted that
literate people have a better understanding of disease and know more about dealing
with it than illiterate people do.
People’s lack of information on health matters can be harmful to their wellbeing
because people, especially children, die from easily preventable diseases. People
who are informed about health issues (who are “health literate”) are better equipped
to protect themselves and are able to change their behaviour, thus reducing their
likelihood of contracting and spreading diseases.
READING BOX 3.1
What is health literacy?
Source: Baus (2015)
Health literacy is an important way to ensure the wellbeing of all, yet there are people
who are unable to read or interpret posters with health information. The difficulties
encountered in spreading information about health to people who cannot read posters
or brochures can be overcome, for example, by using traditional songs and poems
to spread the message. For example, a population communication project in Malawi
invited grassroots artists from the project’s target audience to a communication
workshop. The participants then worked together to produce a coherent multimedia
package of songs and dances, stories and plays, village clowneries and drum shows
addressing a variety of population issues and lifestyles (FAO 1999:9). This technique
is used in many developing countries in order to reach the population that would
otherwise not get the message, if it were only available in print form. You should also
DVA1502/149

bear in mind the effect of health on education, where the poor health of a person
could also affect his/her educational attainment.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 3.3
Consult Learning Unit 2 on education for an overview of the literacy rates in
selected African countries. Discuss how people’s lack of education can affect
their health status.
5
FEEDBACK
Learning Unit 2: Sections 2.3, 2.4.3, 2.5 and reading box 2.12.
3.3.4
Demography and women’s reproductive health
One of the most serious links between population growth and health concerns the
position of women in developing societies. One of the goal targets of SDG6 is to
ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights.
Issues on women and gender are dealt with extensively in Learning Unit 5. Women
have two major tasks in any society, namely that of producer, and that of reproducer.
Maternal health is of major concern in most developing countries.
Every minute, a woman dies in pregnancy or childbirth …. The consequences of losing
over half a million women every year have a ripple effect in families, communities and
nations. Children without mothers are less likely to receive proper nutrition, health
care and education. The implications for girls tend to be even greater, leading to a
continued cycle of poverty and poor health. And every year, $15 billion in productivity
is lost due to maternal and newborn mortality, a huge burden on developing nations
(United Nations Family Planning Association 2009:1).
Women in developing countries are significantly affected by gynecological problems.
According to Rizvi and Zuberi (2006:908), sexual health issues, abortion, sub-fertility,
cancer and genital fistulae (an opening between an organ and the skin caused by injury
or disease) are gynecological problems that women face, among many others. Most
of these problems and diseases could be prevented if women were knowledgeable
about them. This shows that there is a need for women to be educated about their
health. Women’s education is very important: when women are educated there is more
agricultural productivity, lower population growth rates, lower maternal mortality,
better health, nutrition and education for children, and there is less spread of disease
(malaria, cholera, HIV/AIDS). This further demonstrates to us that women play a very
important role in development. Learning Unit 5 (Women, gender and development)
gives a detailed account of the position of women in development.
3.3.5
Economics and finance
SDG8 promotes sustained economic growth, higher levels of productivity and
technological innovation, and the goal is to achieve full and productive employment,
and decent work, for all women and men by 2030 (https://www.undp.org). These
issues are also intertwined with resources allocated to health, and here we consider,
firstly, the health budgets of Third World countries and, secondly, the distribution
50

LEARNING UNIT 3: Health and development
of health services and personnel. If you study the development budgets of Third
World countries, you will see that health is a fairly low priority.
The health budgets of developing countries play an essential role towards achieving
the goal of health for all. In some countries there are competing needs which get
prioritised at the expense of good health. Just as is the case with education (as
discussed in Learning Unit 2), there may also be inequalities in healthcare budgeting
between different regions, between urban and rural areas, and also within households,
between males and females.
The uneven distribution of health funds between urban and rural areas is not the
only way in which the allocation of these funds is skewed. Health spending in the
developing world also favours specialised, curative services and, as a result, preventive
care is insufficiently funded.
Later in the learning unit, in reading box 3.6, we illustrate the situation regarding
the availability of healthcare infrastructure in South Africa. Reading box 3.2 below
shows the 2016 health budget of Zambia, which is significantly smaller than the 2015
budget. A tight or smaller budget adversely affects staffing and the procurement of
medicines, which for most of the developing countries has to be imported (UNICEF
2016).
READING BOX 3.2
Zambia’s health budget (2016)
• Zambia’s health budget in 2016 represented 8.3 percent of the total national
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
budget, down from 9.6 percent in 2015.
The budget allocation was 6.7 percentage points below the Abuja declaration
target of 15 percent.
60 percent of the budget was allocated to salary-related costs.
This squeezed fiscal space for investments in programmes and human
resources.
In US$ equivalent, the per capita allocation was reduced from US$44 in
2015 to US$23 in 2016 as a result of the Kwacha depreciation. With a large
share of drugs imported, this had significant implications for the quantities
that could be procured. Mitigating measures had to be adopted.
The health sector had low budget utilization – 53 percent of the budgeted
amount in 2013. This was despite receiving 90 percent of its budgeted
allocation.
Zambians spent twice as much for out-of-pocket health care expenses as
their counterparts in other lower middle-income countries in the region such
as Lesotho or Swaziland.
High inflation was likely to put household health expenditure further under
pressure, in particular for families who live below the poverty line. Plans to
roll out social health insurance needed to be accelerated.
Source: U NICEF (2016). Zambia health sector: Budget brief review of budget performance
and 2016 allocations. https://www.unicef.org/ zambia/HealthBudgetBrief-4.pdf
DVA1502/151

SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 3.4
(Spend about 10 minutes on this activity.)
the extract from an article by on the state of healthcare in Africa by KPMG Africa
(2012), quoted in reading box 3.3 below. Then answer the following question in
the space provided below:
Explain, in your own words, the state of healthcare in Africa
READING BOX 3.3
Healthcare in Africa
Africa is not a healthy continent. On all indicators of health, Africa lags behind
the rest of the world, and poor countries of South-East and South Asia that
were behind Africa when measured these metrics a few decades ago. Much
of this gap, which has widened since the 1980s, is a consequence of the HIV/
AIDS epidemic which has hit Africa harder than any region on earth, but much
of it (the sometimes sluggish and ineffective responses to HIV/AIDS) can be
blamed on other factors.
African governments focused on direct payment, and continue to do so to a
large extent, after most countries started to move more towards facilitating
health insurance schemes. Widespread and rapacious corruption has meant
that large slices of health budgets have gone missing. Infrastructure problems
have made it difficult to provide services to many people in more remote areas.
Poverty has slowed the emergence of private healthcare initiatives outside of a
few cities. Conflict has directly affected Africans’ health through high numbers
of deaths and injuries, and indirectly by hampering healthcare provision.
All of these problems, as well as Africa’s sheer size and its position on the globe
– most of it is in the tropics where the nastiest germs and parasites flourish
– have made Africans unhealthier and worse looked after medically, than the
inhabitants of any other continent on earth. If one looks at the state of Africa’s
healthcare as a unit in 2012, the picture is still one of a generally poor population,
subject to diseases that have been eradicated or brought under control on most
other continents, neglected by private healthcare providers and underserved by
governments, reliant on irregular help from abroad.”
Source: KPMG Africa (2012)
The greatest need is for healthcare that is affordable and within reach of the poor
masses. And this need gave rise to the development of the primary health care (PHC)
approach. The preceding sections gave you an overall picture of some of the most
problematic health problems in the Third World. The questions to be posed are:
Does PHC offer a solution to these problems? Can it help to improve the quality of
life of people in the Third World? In an effort to provide answers to these questions,
we now look at the idea of PHC, and its characteristics and components, and use the
case study of South Africa to assess its efforts towards achieving universal health
coverage (UHC) and in implementing the principles and approaches of PHC.
52

LEARNING UNIT 3: Health and development
3.4
PRIMARY HEALTH CARE
Primary health care (PHC) as a specific approach to the provision of health services
was developed when it became clear that the conventional approach to providing
health services did not offer a solution to health problems, particularly those in
Third World countries. To refresh your memory, these are some of the health-related
problems in those countries:
• economic development problems
• low productivity (as a result of ill health)
• rapid population growth
• unequal distribution of social services
• in many instances, still a predominantly curative approach to the provision of
•
•
•
•
•
health services
inadequate or even no sanitary services
insufficient or polluted water sources
environmental pollution
prolonged droughts and the resulting inadequate cultivation of food crops
the debt crisis experienced by Third World countries in particular
In the late 1970s there was a worldwide shift in development thinking. We can
ascribe this to a tendency among authors and development practitioners to move
away from a purely mechanical approach to development to one in which there is
greater emphasis on people, and on their circumstances and needs.
Reading boxes 3.4 and 3.5 are summaries of the characteristics and elements of
primary health care. Please read through these and make notes on whether these
are achievable within the context of the general healthcare situation in the Third
World countries.
READING BOX 3.4
Characteristics of primary health care
According to the Alma-Ata Declaration, primary health care
• evolves from the economic conditions and sociocultural and political
characteristics of a country and its communities
• is based on the application of social, biomedical, and health services research
•
•
•
•
and public health experience
tackles the main health problems in the community – providing promotion,
preventive, curative and rehabilitative services as appropriate
includes education on prevailing health problems; promotion of food supply
and proper nutrition; an adequate supply of safe water and basic sanitation;
maternal and child health care, including family planning; immunisation
against the main infectious diseases; prevention and control of locally endemic
diseases; appropriate treatment of common diseases and injuries; and
provision of essential drugs
involves all related sectors and aspects of national and community development,
in particular agriculture, animal husbandry, food, and industry
requires maximum community and individual self-reliance and participation
in the planning, organisation, operation, and control or services
DVA1502/153

• develops the ability of communities to participate through education
• should be sustained by integrated, functional and mutually supportive referral
•
systems, leading to better comprehensive healthcare for all, giving priority
to those most in need
relies on health workers, including physicians, nurses, midwives, auxiliaries
and community workers as well as traditional practitioners, trained to work
as a team responding to the community’s expressed health needs.
Source: Declaration of Alma-Ata (https://www.who.int/publications/almaata_declaration_
en.pdf.)
READING BOX 3.5
The elements of primary health care
These elements are also known as “essential health care”, and are:
E
Education about prevailing health problems and methods of
preventing and controlling them
L
Prevention and control of locally endemic diseases
E
Provision of essential drugs
M
Maternal and child health care; including family planning
E
Expanded immunization against major infectious diseases
N
Promotion of food supply and nutrition
T
Appropriate treatment of common diseases and injuries
S
Adequate supply of safe water and basic sanitation
Source: Public Health Notes (2020)
Some countries have made some progress in terms of improving the health situations
of their communities by using the five principles of primary health care. These
principles are (1) Social equity; (2) Nation-wide coverage/wider coverage; (3) Selfreliance; (4) Intersectoral coordination; and (5) People’s involvement in planning
and implementation of programmes (Public Health Notes 2020). However, most
developing countries have experienced challenges in the implementation of PHC.
These challenges are listed in reading box 3.6.
54

LEARNING UNIT 3: Health and development
READING BOX 3.6
Challenges in the implementation of PHC
• Poor staffing and shortage of health personnel
• Inadequate technology and equipment
• Poor condition of infrastructure/infrastructure gap, especially in the rural areas
• Concentrated focus on curative health services rather than preventive and
promotive health care services
• Challenging geographic distribution
• Poor quality of healthcare services
• Lack of financial support in healthcare programmes
• Lack of community participation
• Poor distribution of health workers/health workers concentrated on the urban
•
areas.
Lack of intersectoral collaboration
Source: Public Health Notes (2020)
We now turn our focus on the health system of Africa, by focusing on the case
study of the South African Health System. As you read through this section, pay
particular attention to efforts towards bringing about “health for all” in the South
African health system as espoused in the PHC and UHC. Do you think that South
Africa is on the right track? What are the foremost challenges that prevent the
realisation of these ideals?
3.5
THE SOUTH AFRICAN HEALTHCARE SYSTEM
South Africa’s health system is divided into two parts: the public (run by the
government) and the private. Primary, secondary, and tertiary public health services
are provided through health facilities located in and managed by the provincial
departments of health. As a result, the provincial departments are the direct employers
of health workers, while the National Ministry of Health is in charge of policy
development and coordination.
Individual practitioners who run private surgeries or private hospitals, on the other
hand, provide health services in the private sector. The majority of these private
health services are concentrated in urban areas. While both public and private health
services are available to everyone, access to private health services is determined by
an individual’s ability to pay. The majority of people who use private health care are
members of medical schemes. According to the Government of South Africa (www.
gov.za), there probably were over 80 medical schemes in South Africa by September
2020, with over eight million beneficiaries. While 82.6% of the population relies
on public healthcare and 17.4 % on private medical schemes, expenditure in both
areas is nearly equal, resulting in a significant disparity in the quality of healthcare
services (https://www.finddx.org).
DVA1502/155

READING BOX 3.7
The South African general healthcare infrastructure
• The South African healthcare system is based on a referral system. Primary
•
•
•
•
•
•
healthcare (PHC), which includes clinics and municipal ward-based healthcare
outreach teams, are the first point of contact for patients.
Community outreach interventions include community health workers (CHWs)
who serve as contacts between PHC facilities and surrounding communities.
Clinics are the first point of access to care. 1,000 clinics were to be qualified
as “Ideal Clinics” by 2017/18 and 2,823 by 2019/20 in order to be accredited
by the NHI.
District hospitals: they have GPs and clinical nurse practitioners. Small district
hospitals (DH) have between 50–150 beds and larger ones have between
300-600 beds.
Regional hospitals: serve patients based on referrals from district hospitals
and usually have 200–800 beds.
Tertiary hospitals: receive referrals from regional hospitals. They provide
supervised specialist and intensive care services. They usually have 400–800
beds.
Central hospitals: provide tertiary and central referral services, and may
provide national referral services.
Source: h
ttps://www.finddx.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/5A_South-Africa_Healthcareprofile.pdf.
Maphumulo and Bhengu (2019) noted that there has been quality improvement in
South African healthcare since the end of apartheid but argued that, while many
quality improvement programs were initiated, adapted, modified, and tested, they
did not produce the desired level of quality service delivery. Among other things,
the authors highlighted the unequal distribution of resources, with approximately
84% of South Africa’s estimated population of 55.5 million relying on the public
health sector for their healthcare needs, while only 16% of the population is covered
by medical aid schemes, which are administered by the private sector (Naidoo,
quoted in Maphumulo & Bhengu 2019:4). They went on to say that as a result, the
South African government faces a challenge in ensuring that the implementation
of National Core Standards will result in the desired health outcomes, because
establishing a long-term quality improvement system in health care appears to be
a difficult task (Maphumulo & Bhengu 2019). (This article can be found in your
e-reserves for this module.)
There are clearly very serious challenges that South Africa is facing in terms of
access to health services and achieving universal health coverage (UHC). In its
efforts to achieve UHC in the country, the South African government published
the White Paper on National Health Insurance in December 2015, and members
of the public were invited to submit comments by 11 March 2016. After Cabinet
approval, the National Health Insurance policy document was gazetted on June 30,
2017. According to the government website, the National Health Insurance (NHI)
is a health financing system that is intended to pool funds in order to provide access
to quality, affordable personal health services for all South Africans based on their
health needs, regardless of socio-economic status. NHI is intended to ensure that
individuals and their families do not face financial hardship as a result of using
healthcare services. It also aims to achieve UHC for all South Africans. This means
that every South African will have the right to free comprehensive healthcare
56

LEARNING UNIT 3: Health and development
services at accredited health facilities such as clinics, hospitals, and private health
practitioners.
Now read what the aim of the NHI is and what its potential benefit are. These you
will find in reading box 3.8 below.
READING BOX 3.8
The South African National Health Insurance
The National Health Insurance (NHI) aims to ensure that all citizens and residents
of South Africa, irrespective of socio-economic status, have access to goodquality health services provided by both the public and private sectors, thereby
eradicating financial barriers to healthcare access. The NDP envisions a health
system that works for everyone, produces positive health outcomes and is
accessible to all.
By 2030, the NDP expects South Africa to have, among other things, raised the
life expectancy of South Africans to at least 70 years; produced a generation of
under-20s that is largely free of HIV; achieved an IMR of less than 20 deaths per
thousand live births, including an U5MR of less than 30 per thousand; achieved
a significant shift in equity, efficiency and quality of health service provision.
Potential benefits from the NHI Fund would include:
• treatment for schoolchildren with physical barriers to learning such as eyesight,
hearing, speech and oral health;
• free ante-natal care in the form of eight visits to a doctor for each of the
•
•
1,2 million women who fall pregnant annually. Family planning, breast and
cervical cancer screening and where appropriate, treatment, will be provided;
better services for mental health users, such as screening;
assistive devices for the elderly like spectacles, hearing aids and wheelchairs.”
Source: https://www.gov.za/about-sa/health#
3.6
MANAGING HEALTH CRISES AND PANDEMICS
According to the WHO (2018:21), stronger health systems are required to mitigate
the impact of epidemics, protect the health workforce, and ensure continuity of
health services during and after them. The WHO (2018:21) goes on to emphasise the
enormous pressure and stress that epidemics and pandemics place on these systems,
particularly as a result of the sudden surge of large numbers of sick individuals to
healthcare facilities, which stretches the systems’ capacity and resources even further
and more markedly where resources are already scarce. Since this module is about
institutions, familiarise yourself with the central roles played by institutions such as
the WHO (World Health Organisation) and the CDCs (Centres for Disease Control
and Prevention) in health and the management of health-related crises.
DVA1502/157

SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 3.5
(Spend about 10 minutes on this activity.)
Read the extract from the publication by World Health Organisation (2018) on
Managing epidemics; key facts about major deadly diseases, quoted in reading
box 3.9 below. Then answer the following question:
• Explain in your own words, what are the effects of epidemics on the health
systems and how can their effects be mitigated?
6
FEEDBACK
Reading box 3.9
READING BOX 3.9
Strengthening health systems: essential in epidemics
In order to mitigate the impact of epidemics, protect the health workforce and
ensure continuity of health services during and after them, stronger health
systems are needed. Epidemics and pandemics put these systems under great
pressure and stress. The sudden influx of large numbers of sick individuals to
health facilities stretches the systems’ capacity and resources, even more so
and more noticeably where resources are already scarce.
When an epidemic emerges and spreads, it inevitably draws most of health
responders’ attention and monopolizes most of the health system’s human and
financial resources, as well as medical products and technologies. People,
efforts, and medical supplies all shift to respond to the emergency. This often
leads to the neglect of basic and regular essential health services. People
with health problems unrelated to the epidemic find it harder to get access to
health care services. Some may die as a result, if the disruption overwhelms
the health system. Mortality rates of other diseases for which people could not
get treatment may rise.
Furthermore, health care settings, and especially emergency rooms, can become
hubs of transmission. Many people get infected there, if prevention and control
measures are not properly implemented. This is particularly true for unknown
and emerging pathogens (for instance, MERS). A delay in the recognition of the
disease will lead to delay in applying the right protection measures. Infected
patients will be able to transmit the disease because health care workers, family
members and other patients will not know how to protect themselves. Because
health care settings and emergency rooms are usually crowded, the lack of
appropriate infection prevention and control for example through triage, isolation,
and other precautions can be very significant.
58

LEARNING UNIT 3: Health and development
Health systems resilience after epidemics may be challenging for unprepared
health systems. Indeed, if the health system is ill-prepared to cope with epidemics
of infectious diseases, health care workers, at the frontline of the response, may
themselves become infected and die. Tragic as such cases are, they have wider
consequences. In countries where there are health staff shortages, the loss of
several more health workers further weakens the health system. It takes years
to train new medical staff and rebuild the health workforce. In the meantime,
other constraints are burdening the health system that still has to provide the
usual and regular services.
Long-term substantial investments should therefore be made to strengthen health
systems, so they are able to provide safe, effective and qualitative health services
before, during and after epidemics. Critical elements include an appropriate
health financing system and a fit-for-purpose workforce that is trained, safe and
provided with personal protective equipment. In addition, access to essential
medical products and technologies and a business continuity plan are essential
to ensure that health systems are strong enough to withstand the increased
needs and to mitigate the impacts of very disruptive epidemics.
Source: World Health Organisation (2018:18)
3.6.1
Africa’s experience of managing pandemics
Frieden and Damon (2015) paint a grim picture, but also demonstrate the resilience
that has characterised how the countries in the West African region have dealt with
the challenges posed by the Ebola virus. The authors also highlight the significance
of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCs) working with the World
Health Organisation (WHO) in helping the affected countries to manage the Ebola
epidemic. According to the authors, the Ebola virus has highlighted the need
for national and international systems to be strengthened in terms of detecting,
responding to, and preventing future health threats (Frieden & Damon 2015:1897).
Just under five years after Frieden and Damon’s (2015) article was published, the entire
world witnessed the emergence of a lethal Covid-19 pandemic. This SARS-CoV-2
virus, which emerged from East Asia in December 2019, has quickly transformed
into a major global pandemic, infecting millions of people in almost all countries and
regions. The current uncertainty about the pandemic’s impact on Africa, in particular,
necessitates close monitoring of the pandemic’s evolution and the correlation of
factors that influence the disease’s burden (Torti, Mazzitelli, Trecarichi & Darius
2020: on e-reserves: http://libguides.unisa.ac.za/request/request
However, as Torti et al. (2020) have noted, the epidemiologic picture in Africa is
markedly different as the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic continues to ravage the world, with
Western industrialised countries registering record numbers of deaths in the tens of
thousands. The authors reported that only 135,412 cases had been confirmed from
the African Region as of June 8th, 2020, accounting for 2% of total global cases.
SARS-CoV-2-related deaths in Africa account for less than 1% of all reported deaths
worldwide, with 3236 deaths in Africa out of a total of 400,857 worldwide (Torti et
al. 2020). Could the current state of affairs in Africa be indicative of the resilience
and preparedness that Ebola outbreaks have bestowed on the continent?
DVA1502/159

What is clear is that scientists are puzzled by the low levels of transmission and
fatalities from the Covid-19 pandemic in Africa when compared to other parts of the
world. This is despite the fact that dire conditions in Africa could have resulted in
extremely high levels of infection and death from this airborne respiratory disease.
They wonder, “Could it be that African nations learned important lessons from
previous outbreaks like Ebola, and thus strengthened their surveillance systems to
contain the Covid-19 outbreak?” (Torti et al. 2020:2).
According to Torti et al. (2020:2), some of the conditions in many parts of Africa
include:
• Many cities are often densely populated with several families living in shared
accommodation and communal settings.
• Due to overcrowding and a lack of proper spacing, the number of people living
•
•
•
•
in slum settlements has increased.
According to UN-Habitat, approximately 200 million people in Sub-Saharan
Africa live in informal settings, often with inadequate ventilation.
Residents in such settings are frequently economically vulnerable, relying on a
daily wage to support their dependents.
For many of these people, social isolation is the least of their concerns
when compared to other priorities such as food or basic needs.
Furthermore, the inadequate ventilation in these settlements would facilitate the
rapid spread of airborne infections such as SARS-CoV-2 within the community.
Africa is in a precarious position in the face of a relentless pandemic, weakened
health systems, and insufficient supplies of personal protective equipment. However,
previous infectious disease epidemics should have taught African governments
the importance of investing in and building their health systems, with a focus on
disease surveillance and careful healthcare planning and financing. Kenya is one
of the countries that has begun to manufacture their own personal protective
equipment, such as masks and gowns (also other countries on the continent). The
authors concluded that, even in the absence of vaccination and effective treatments,
Africa can lead the fight against SARS-CoV-2 if appropriate containment response
systems are implemented, and by addressing systemic constraints such as access to
water, improved food systems, health education, critical care hospital bed capacity,
and increased healthcare funding and investment (Torti et al. 2020:4).
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 3.6
Go to the e-reserves for this module.
Open and read the articles by Torti et al. (2020) and Frieden & Damon (2015),
http://libguides.unisa.ac.za/request/request entitled Potential implications of SARSCoV-2 epidemic in Africa: where are we going from now? and Ebola in west Africa
– CDC’s role in epidemic detection, control, and prevention, respectively. Then
do the following:
• Identify and discuss, in one to two paragraphs, the roles played by CDCs and
the WHO in the detection, control, and prevention of health crises, using the
case studies of the Ebola virus (Frieden & Damon 2015) and Covid-19 (Torti
et al. 2020) in Africa.
60

LEARNING UNIT 3: Health and development
3.7
CONCLUSION
We cannot deny the huge impact that health has on development. A person’s physical,
mental and social wellbeing is very important as it contributes to their ability to
perform tasks that might help improve their situation.
Better health is central to human happiness and well-being. It also makes an
important contribution to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer,
are more productive, and save more. Many factors influence health status and
a country’s ability to provide quality health services for its people. Ministries
of health are important factors, but so are other government departments,
donor organisations, civil society groups and communities themselves. For
example: investments in roads can improve access to health services; inflation
targets can constrain health spending; and civil service reform can create
opportunities – or limits – to hiring more health workers (World Health
Organisation 2012:1).
In this learning unit, we have introduced you to the challenges that developing
countries face in dealing with the health status of their communities. Health care
problems in developing countries result from a combination of factors. We have
seen how factors like poor water supplies, lack of education, demographic issues
and the status of women, and limited health budgets affect the health situation of
these countries. We have dealt with the Sustainable Development Goal on health,
and seen how the poor health status of developing countries has a huge negative
impact on the development of those countries.
Finally, we have explored the health systems in developing countries, using the South
African health system as a case study, in relation to its ability to achieve universal
health coverage (UHC) and implement primary healthcare (PHC). We concluded
with a discussion on Africa’s experiences in managing health crises and pandemics
by focusing on the critical roles played by the WHO and CDCs as institutions that
are critical in the detection, control, and prevention of health crises.
3.8
OUTCOMES CHECKLIST
Question
(1)
ive an overview of the current health
G
situation in developing countries.
(2)
xplain the health issues affecting the overall
E
well-being of a country.
(3)
sing the case study of South Africa, discuss
U
the health system in developing countries in
relation to their potential to achieve UHC and
implement PHC principles and approaches
(4)
D
iscuss the pivotal roles of the WHO and
CDCs as institutions critical in the detection,
control, and prevention of health crises.
Can do
Cannot do
DVA1502/161

4
4
LEARNING UNIT 4
Politics, participation, empowerment and
development
OUTCOMES
Once you have completed this learning unit, you should be able to
• understand effective mass participation in development
• discuss the impact of ICT (Information and Communications Technology)
•
4.1
in community participation
analyse the role of legislation in public participation
INTRODUCTION
In module DVA1501 you have learnt about the problems of poverty and how the
majority of people in the developing world have always been trapped within the
poverty cycle. The key challenge for those involved in development has been how to
extricate the poor from this cycle of poverty. Muhammad Yunus (cited in NdlovuGatsheni 2007:170), a Bangladeshi banker, professor of economics and a Nobel Peace
Prize winner, expressed the following view (http://www.goodreads.com/author/
quotes/1254841. Muhammad Yunus):
I believe that we can create a poverty-free world because poverty is not created
by poor people. It has been created and sustained by the economic and social
systems that we have designed for ourselves; the institutions and concepts
that make up that system; the policies that we pursue.
Muhammad Yunus blames the human-made economic, political and social institutions,
as well as concepts and policies designed and pursued by people and governments,
as responsible for creating poverty. This learning unit is broadly about development
problems, institutions, participation and empowerment. But it is important for you
to understand, in the first place, what institutions are, before you can move on and
gain knowledge about participation, empowerment and development.
Institutions are defined as structures or mechanisms constructed by those people
with power, to assist them in achieving their goals and to manage others. Examples
of international institutions include the United Nations (UN), the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). Other examples of institutions
include universities, parliaments, judiciaries, municipalities, chieftaincies, political
parties, prisons, schools, hospitals, and many others.
Institutions are born out of necessity and the need to maintain social order. Institutions
are also used to foster human cooperation. We may perceive institutions as “good” or
“bad”, depending on how we view them from our position and class. For example,
a poor person might view the capitalist system as constructed by those with capital/
62

LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
money to gain profits from the labour of workers who are paid very poor wages.
Similarly, the poor people of Eastern Europe might blame communism for their
poverty.
Then there are other institutions such as the police, army, prisons and the state who
may be abused by powerful people like presidents and other politicians to control
the behaviour of those who oppose them.
But institutions are not bad by their very nature. It all depends on how they are used.
For example, the judiciary system can be used to dispense even-handed justice. The
army can be used to protect a country from external enemies. The police can be used
to protect people from criminals. But at the same time, the army and the police can be
used to prevent people from exercising their right to free expression and association.
For example, in Zimbabwe and other dictatorial states, the army and the police have
been used to violently deal with any form of opposition to the reigning power. The
same is true of oppressive systems like colonialism and apartheid that were used by
white people to oppress and exploit black people. The patriarchal system likewise
authorises and normalises the subordination and disempowerment of women.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.1
In the list of institutions above, a mixture of global, national and local institutions
is provided.
• Categorise them into global, national and local institutions. Make a list of each
•
7
category.
Do you think Muhammad Yunus is correct to blame systems and institutions
for creating poverty? Explain your answer in a short paragraph.
FEEDBACK
Section 4.2, and Yunus (cited in Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007:170)
4.1.1
How can ordinary people who live under the control of institutions
and systems escape from poverty?
The answer to the above question is that the poor must participate in development.
Participation is part of empowerment. In his famous book, The Wretched of the Earth,
Frantz Fanon who is a well-known theoretician on African decolonisation, urged
ordinary poor people to fight against oppressive systems like colonialism and
apartheid. Fanon believed that only “actional” people can free themselves from
oppression and exploitation. By “actional” people, Fanon meant those who are able
to rebel against oppression and take practical actions to change an oppressive and
exploitative situation. Fanon urged the dominated people to articulate their ideas
without fear, as part of their struggles to extricate/remove themselves from poverty.
This is how he put it (Fanon 2004:56):
The citizens should be able to speak, to express themselves and put forward
new ideas. The branch meeting and the committee meeting are liturgical acts.
They are privileged occasions given to a human being to listen and to speak.
DVA1502/163

At each meeting, the brain increases its meanings of participation and the eye
discovers a landscape more and more in keeping with human dignity.
In this learning, we deal with issues of participation and empowerment as strategies
used by the poor to escape poverty and take responsibility for their own development.
Our premise is that people who do not participate in development do not have a
say in their future. Robert Chambers (1983:112) describes lack of participation as
resulting in “voicelessness” and “powerlessness”. Lundy, Pennington and Bowes
(2004:1) added their voices on the importance of participation, noting that
[…] a positive future is not a spectator’s future; it is a participant’s future. If
you want to live a certain future, you have to get involved in creating it. You
can’t sit back and let others create the future; otherwise, it’s their future you
will live in, not yours.
For far too long the poor have been spectators of their own development and
development projects have been imposed on them and their communities. They
have been living in a world constructed for them by others.
Amartya Sen (see reading box 4.1 below), is of the opinion that people can, through
their own agency (action or accomplishment), participate in their own development
by building on their state of being and doing (functionings) and in this way increase
their capabilities – see reading box 4.1 below. In short, Sen places human development
– and not that of things or the economy for example – at the centre of development.
READING BOX 4.1
Capabilities and functionings
The capability approach
The capability approach is a broad normative framework for the evaluation
of individual well-being and social arrangements, the design of policies and
proposals about social change in society. The capability approach is used
in a wide range of fields, most prominently in development thinking, welfare
economics, social policy and political philosophy. It can be used to evaluate a
wide variety of aspects of people’s well-being, such as individual well-being,
inequality and poverty.
In development policy circles, it has provided the foundations of the human
development paradigm (Fukuda-Parr 2003; Fukuda-Parr and Kumar 2003). The
core characteristic of the capability approach is its focus on what people are
effectively able to do and to be, that is, on their capabilities. This contrasts with
philosophical approaches that concentrate on people’s happiness or desirefulfilment, or on theoretical and practical approaches that concentrate on income,
expenditures, consumption or basic needs fulfilment.
A focus on people’s capabilities in the choice of development policies makes a
profound theoretical difference, and leads to quite different policies compared to
neo-liberalism and utilitarian policy prescriptions. Some aspects of the capability
approach can be traced back to, among others, Aristotle, Adam Smith, John
Stuart Mill and Karl Marx (see Nussbaum 1988; 2003b; Sen 1993; 1999), but the
64

LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
the approach in its present form has been pioneered by the economist and
philosopher Amartya Sen (Sen 1980; 1984; 1985b; 1985a; 1987; 1992; 1993;
1995; Drèze and Sen 2002), and more recently also been significantly developed
by the philosopher Martha Nussbaum (Nussbaum 1988; 1992; 1995; 2000;
2002a; 2003a).
Sen argued that in social evaluations and policy design, the focus should be on
what people are able to do and be, on the quality of their life, and on removing
obstacles in their lives so that they have more freedom to live the kind of life
which, upon reflection, they find valuable: ‘The capability approach to a person’s
advantage is concerned with evaluating it in terms of his or her actual ability
to achieve various valuable functionings as a part of living. The corresponding
approach to social advantage – for aggregative appraisal as well as for the choice
of institutions and policy – takes the set of individual capabilities as constituting
an indispensable and central part of the relevant informational base of such
evaluation’ (Sen 1993: 30).
The capability approach has been advanced in somewhat different directions
by Martha Nussbaum, who has used the capability approach as the foundation
for a partial theory of justice.
A key distinction in the capability approach is that between the means and the
ends of well-being and development. Only the ends have intrinsic importance,
whereas means are only instrumental to reach the goal of increased well-being
and development. However, both in reality and in Sen’s more applied work, these
distinctions often blur. The importance therefore lies especially at the analytical
level – we always have to ask and be aware what kind of value things have.
The core concepts: Functionings and capabilities
The capability approach involves ‘concentration on freedoms to achieve in general
and the capabilities to function in particular’ (Sen 1995). The major constituents
of the capability approach are functionings and capabilities. Functionings are
the ‘beings and doings’ of a person, whereas a person’s capability is ‘the
various combinations of functionings that a person can achieve. Capability is
thus a set of vectors of functionings, reflecting the person’s freedom to lead one
type of life or another’ (Sen 1992). A person’s functionings and her capability are
closely related but distinct. ‘A functioning is an achievement, whereas a capability
is the ability to achieve. Functionings are, in a sense, more directly related to living
conditions, since they are different aspects of living conditions. Capabilities, in
contrast, are notions of freedom, in the positive sense: what real opportunities
you have regarding the life you may lead’ (Sen 1987: 36). The difference between
functioning and capability can best be clarified with an example. Consider the
following variation on Sen’s classical illustration of two persons who both don’t
eat enough to enable the functioning of being well-nourished. The first person
is a victim of a famine in Ethiopia, while the second person decided to go on a
hunger strike in front of the Chinese embassy in Washington to protest against
the occupation of Tibet. Although both persons lack the functioning of being
well-nourished, the freedom they had to avoid being hungry is crucially distinct.
To be able to make this distinction, we need the concept of capability, i.e. the
functionings that a person could have achieved. While both hungry people lack
the achieved functioning of being well-nourished and hunger- free, the protester
in Washington has the capability to achieve this functioning which the Ethiopian
person lacks.
Source: Robeyns (2017)
DVA1502/165

SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.2
Read Rading box 4.1 above. Then discuss the difference between functioning
and capability.
8
FEEDBACK
Reading Box 4.1
Chambers (1983:104) argued that
(p)oor people are rarely met; when they are met, they often do not speak;
when they do speak, they are often cautious and deferential; and what they say
is often either not listened to, or brushed aside, or interpreted in a bad light.
Muhammad Yunus (cited in Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007:170) supported Chambers when
he said:
I have a very strong feeling that we don’t care to know about the poor. We
not only don’t know about the poor, worse still, we love to make up our own
stories to build our favourite theories around them. We keep ourselves in
a comfortable position by fortifying ourselves with these theories […]. We have
trained our eyes not to see them, trained our ears not to hear them. When we
want to hear them, we make sure we hear them the way we wish to hear them.
The quotations above speak to the issue of common stereotypes about the poor: they
are said to be indifferent to their plight; they are lazy; they are passive; they are not
intelligent; and they are fatalistic – fatalistic meaning that the poor accept whatever
happens to them because they feel powerless to change or control events around
them. But generalisations like this are based on faulty reasoning and are not valid.
Patrick Chabal in his Africa: the politics of suffering and smiling (2009) revealed that the
poor always used directed, meaningful, intentional and self-reflective social action,
rather than falling into fatalism. He emphasised how poor, ordinary people used
their local knowledge to cope with various burdens emanating from failed/failing
states and the pressures of globalisation. In short, according to Chabal, the poor are
free agents capable of exercising intentional and purposeful social action which we
call agency (Chabal 2009:10-11). Agency is thus defined as “directed, meaningful,
intentional and self-reflective social action” (Chabal 2009:7).
What is the case for active involvement of ordinary poor people in development?
There are a number of compelling reasons:
• The poor possess a wealth of indigenous technical knowledge.
• They know the state of their poverty better.
• Involving them in development is part of empowering them and recognising
•
•
•
66
their worthiness as human beings.
The poor have to have a say in their own lives and future.
Development cannot be imposed on people as though they were mere objects
of development.
Successful development can only be the result of unconstrained dialogue with
the impoverished communities and peoples.
LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
READING BOX 4.2
Participation and empowerment
Source: Morgan (2016)
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.3
A nswer each of the following questions in a short paragraph:
• According to you, why is there so little participation in development by the poor?
• Is it really true that the poor have been spectators of their own development?
Give a reason or reasons for your answer.
DVA1502/1
67

• Are the poor really living in a world constructed by others? Explain your answer.
9
FEEDBACK
Reading Box 4.2 Morgan, 2016.
4.2
DEFINITION OF CONCEPTS
The three concepts, namely agency, participation and empowerment, have different
meanings – so we need to start by explaining what we mean by them. These definitions
will give you a point of departure for understanding other issues of development.
4.2.1
Agency
Agency refers to action or accomplishment (De Beer 2012:108). Patrick Chabal
(2009:7) defines agency as “directed, meaningful, intentional and self-reflective social
action”. Agency is often understood as the opposite of structure. By structures we
mean such things as the economy, which Karl Marx identified as the key element
that influences human action. According to Marx, human action was not free from
the demands of the economy. The economy determined and conditioned human
action, thoughts and intentions in the form of classes. He concluded that while human
beings were able to make history, they did so under circumstances determined by
the economy. He went on to argue that history itself was nothing but a story of class
struggles (Chabal 2009:7). Classes are those human identities that are informed by
market forces. Examples include peasants and workers.
The problem with Marx’s emphasis on the economy determining all human actions
is that he denied space to the role of individual action, free from structures. Agency
emphasises the quality of individual action. Poor African people have generally been
able to deploy individual and collective initiative to adapt to different challenges and
to fight against negative systems such as colonialism and apartheid. Peasants have
fought for land. Workers have fought for better wages. Women have rebelled against
patriarchy (male domination) and asserted their rights as human beings.
Agency also means the human ability to help yourself (self-help). Building on the
concept of agency, Amartya Sen developed what he termed the “capabilities approach”
(CA) (see reading box 4.1) to development. It focuses on the capabilities and abilities
of individuals and groups to participate actively in development. What is clear is that
without agency, there is no participation. Participation is an expression of agency,
which allows people to compete for and question power.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.4
Read reading box 4.3 below, which lists the capabilities identified by Martha
Nussbaum, and think about whether it means anything to your life. Explain in a
short paragraph whether you agree or disagree with Nussbaum’s view and give
a reason for your viewpoint.
10
FEEDBACK
Reading box 4.3
68

LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
READING BOX 4.3
Martha Nussbaum’s list of capabilities
Source: Nussbaum (2003)
4.2.2
Participation
Participation became popular in the 1990s as an alternative way to address a range of
development ills. It promised to give the poor more voice and choice in development.
The success of liberal democracy at the end of the Cold War (1945–1989), which
emphasised human rights, further entrenched the concept of participation in
development studies.
DVA1502/169

It has become a buzzword, a common phrase used by development agencies working
in the development industry in developing countries.
Pickett (1988:5) gives us his definition of participation:
Social progress and development require the full utilisation of human resources,
including in particular the active participation of all elements of society in
defining and achieving the common goals of development, as well as the
assurance to disadvantaged population groups of equal opportunities for social
and economic advancement in order to achieve an effective integrated society.
Participation therefore refers to the role people play in the change that occurs
during the process of development. If people participate, they determine the goals of
development and work together to bring about change. This means that participation
is a dynamic process involving the masses, so that they can formulate their own end
goals and work together to realise them. A dynamic process is one that generates its
own changes and its own energy.
De Beer (2012:109) distinguishes between a passive (or liberal) and an active (or
radical) interpretation of participation. In the passive interpretation, people and their
abilities may be acknowledged, but they are at best co-opted into participating in
projects and programmes identified and implemented by “outsiders”. In the active
interpretation, people are the masters of their own development and have decisionmaking powers; they have the power to decide, and even to invite “outsiders” to
contribute on terms dictated by the community.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.5
Summarise your understanding of passive and active participation by using an
example.
11
FEEDBACK
Section 4.3.2
If power accompanies participation, people are set free to build on their own agency.
By promoting participation in development on the part of individuals and communities
themselves, societies are more likely to become engines of self-development, societies
that care for people and the environment (De Beer 2012:114).
70

LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
READING BOX 4.4
People and their participation in development
Source: De Beer, in Regan (2012)
DVA1502/171

The Tanzanian Ujamaa Villagisation Programme discussed below was an interesting
attempt at promoting development and equity.
CASE STUDY 4.1
Socialism and Ujamaa in Tanzania
Julius Nyerere, the founding father of Tanzania, had a strong belief in the
ability of peasants and workers to contribute to their own development. He was
a socialist. He formulated his own version of African socialism. He termed it
Ujamaa (familyhood). Ujamaa was associated with the president personally. It
was his idea. Ujamaa emphasised the concept of peasants and workers working
together on collective farms given to them by the state. Ujamaa was critical of
individualism and capitalism. It was premised on public ownership of means of
production such as land. The core idea behind the Ujamaa project was to create
a classless society of equal Tanzanians. The Ujamaa project was informed by
the socialist thinking that said: “from each according to their ability; to each
according to their need”. According to Nyerere, those who worked the land and
mined the minerals had to be given a fair share of what they produced.
The Ujamaa project was founded on the principles of an extended African
family and the mutual cooperative nature of village communities. Ideally, in
village communities there were no class struggles since peasants were considered
to be the same and to strive through caring for each other. Nyerere used this
model to chart a non-capitalist path of development. “Why create capitalism,
with all the individualism, the social aggressiveness and human indignities
which it involves?” Nyerere asked. In Tanzania the state structures were used
to mobilise peasants and workers to relocate from their individual homesteads
to stay in collective villages where the government provided amenities like water
and electricity. Peasants and workers were also organised to work collectively on
farms provided by the state. These farms were called village communes. Nyerere
himself even went to the extent of living and working in a village commune for
a period of time, in order to stress that all Tanzanians had to work to secure
economic development.
The central idea behind the “villagisation” programme was to combine tradition
(village life of mutual assistance) with modern production methods (larger
collective farms with access to technology). The villages were the point of contact
for government officials to teach peasants modern agricultural techniques, and for
them to supply technology (machinery and fertilizers). The government provided
schools, clinics and hospitals and promoted local village pristine democracy.
Community members made decisions aided by state officials.
By 1977, over 13 million Tanzanians lived in Ujamaa villages. The people in
these villages did not have to pay taxes. But the state had to use force to push
those who were reluctant to join the Ujamaa villages. What is disappointing is
that the Ujamaa villages project did not, in the long run, succeed to produce the
desired increase in food production, improved rural development and economic
empowerment of peasants and workers.
72

LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
Why did the Ujamaa villages experiment fail? In the first place, this was a
presidential project, not a people’s project. It was a state project, rather than
a community project. It was an idea that was imposed from above (from the
government and presidency), rather than an idea developed by the peasants
and workers themselves. Participation was not entirely voluntary. The state
had to coerce some peasants, while also attracting others peacefully using the
provision of schools, clinics and hospitals. The Africanist Göran Hydén argued
that the Ujamaa villages failed to meet their production targets because the
state and its ideology failed to “capture” the Tanzania peasantry. The peasants
never fully adopted the modern agricultural production methods advocated by
the state. They continued to produce for subsistence, that is, on a smaller scale,
for consumption purposes. They did not produce a surplus.
The state also contributed to the failure of the Ujamaa villages. The state officials
made errors by settling some peasants in unproductive areas that were not
suitable for crop production. Infrastructural support for the peasants, such as
transport, was also lacking and affected the timeous transportation of harvests.
Where the peasants were reluctant to farm collectively, the state had to employ
authoritarian and top-down managerial styles of public administration that
were common during the colonial era.
When it became clear that the Ujamaa villages were failing as engines of economic
development, Tanzania abandoned the non-capitalist path and succumbed to
the capitalist path like other African postcolonial states. Still, the Ujamaa villages
were not a total failure. Education and health care improved remarkably within a
short period of time. But it remains to be seen if turning to the capitalist path will
enable peasants and workers to exercise their agency, participate in development
and gain economic empowerment.
Source: Adapted from Thompson (2000:50–55)
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.6
After having read case study 4.1 on the Ujamaa villages in Tanzania, answer the
following questions:
• Are the Ujamaa villages a good example of participation and empowerment?
•
•
•
•
•
Give reasons for your answer
Whose agency was behind the establishment of the Ujamaa villages?
Why do you think the Ujamaa villages failed?
If you were Nyerere, would you have done it differently? Consider how you would
have done it differently.
Why was participation difficult to realise under the Ujamaa villages?
DVA1502/173

CASE STUDY 4.2
The WORTH programme
Source: Hunt & Samman (2016)
74

LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
CASE STUDY 4.3
Mexico’s Estancias public childcare services
Source: Hunt & Samman (2016)
4.2.3
Empowerment
Empowerment has been defined as an intentional ongoing process centered in the
local community, involving mutual respect, critical reflection, caring, and group
participation, through which people lacking an equal share of valued resources gain
greater access to and control over those resources; or a process by which people gain
control over their lives, democratic participation in the life of their community, and
a critical understanding of their environment (Perkins & Zimmerman 1995).
Empowerment is therefore a process that has its roots in changing social, economic
and political structures of the community. When these structures start to change,
it is vital that the people involved have the necessary agency and self-confidence.
Empowerment is successful if the participants regard the results of their action as
beneficial, if the social system achieves more than was the case prior to empowerment,
and if the members of the social system regard the action and its consequences as
valuable. The success of empowerment therefore depends on the extent to which it
has the approval of the masses themselves.
DVA1502/175

Swanepoel and De Beer (2011:52) added the issue of access to power to the process
of empowerment. Empowerment is a political process and mobilising people to
participate in projects not initiated in and by the community, leads to co-option
and tokenism. It is therefore important to discuss forms of power and how power
is exercised. There are four dimensions of power that are important in the process
of empowerment:
• Power over: This is the ability to dominate, which prevents/limits empowerment
of the masses.
• Power to: This is the ability to see possibilities for change.
• Power with: This is the power that comes from individuals working together
•
collectively to achieve common goals.
Power within: These are the feelings of self-worth and self-esteem that come from
within individuals.
(Adapted from Willis 2005:103.)
Participation is viewed as a form of empowerment. Empowerment and participation
are important for people-centred development. Involving and empowering community
participants in programs at all levels, from local to national, provide a more effective
path of addressing and solving development problems that exist in the society.
About participation and empowerment, one may ask the following three questions:
(1)
(2)
(3)
Why should people participate in development?
Who should participate in development?
How do people participate in development?
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.7
Test your understanding of the content above by answering the following questions
in your own words, in not more than three sentences each.
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
12
What is empowerment?
Why should people participate in development?
Who should participate in development?
How do people participate in development?
What is the linkage between empowerment and participation?
FEEDBACK
Section 4.3.3
From a justice perspective, one can say that participation is the democratic and
human right of people. This right should not be restricted to the powerful – the
elite, men and persons with political influence. It should also extend to women, the
elderly and youth. In countries with democratic constitutions and practices, people
participate through elections. In some countries, for example, South Africa (during
the apartheid era) people participate through national political groupings, such as the
United Democratic Front, and community-based development-oriented institutions.
76
LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.8
• Read case study 4.2 on the WORTH programme again. Do you know of a
•
•
4.3
project in your community in which the people took ownership? Briefly describe
what happened?
Do you know a person like Sukarni Chauhan, whose story is told in this case
study?
What do you think motivates a person to do what she did?
PROBLEMATISING PARTICIPATION IN DEVELOPMENT
Participation in development has proven difficult to implement. At one level, it has
been reduced to a series of methodological packages and techniques under which it
is conceived in “technicist” terms, devoid of its liberatory ideological underpinnings.
In its radical conception, participation was part and parcel of privileging grassroots
resistance to achieve radical social transformation. But conceived within liberal
thought, participation has been reduced to a buzzword which is seductive and
popular, while failing to enable effective participation, empowerment and reduction
of poverty within developing countries.
Earlier we showed that De Beer (2012:109) distinguishes between participating
actively and passively. Passive participation refers to taking part in development projects
defined and set up by others. Active participation refers to the ability to initiate,
set up and take a leading role in a development initiative. Without some power,
one cannot actively participate in development. Without participation, it is almost
impossible to actively struggle to change an oppressive and exploitative status quo.
In most cases mass participation is made difficult by the role of bureaucracy and
the elites who control power. Read case study 4.4 below and answer the questions
under Self-assessment Activity 4.10.
CASE STUDY 4.4
Bureaucracy and development in Zambia
Under President Kaunda of Zambia, the official ideology that guided the state was
a humanist development policy. Humanism emphasises people and their welfare.
Mass participation was an important ingredient in the policy. Participation was
encouraged through encouraging people to actively participate in production.
Rural cooperatives, resettlement schemes and so-called “rural reconstruction
schemes” were set up, where the masses were encouraged to participate. Power
and control were devolved to the local level to enable the masses to participate
and make decisions. This process resulted in the creation of district councils,
ward development committees and village productivity committees.
But these programmes failed to achieve mass participation. The impoverished
peasants interpreted the local structures and cooperatives as hidden ways of
exploiting and excluding them from sharing fairly in the available resources and
benefits of the country. Bwalya (1984:74–79) identified the following weaknesses
in the Zambian government’s attempts to secure mass participation in production:
DVA1502/177

(i) The cooperatives were dominated by wealthy farmers and became the arena
for a power struggle between these famers for exclusive control of and access
to resources and credit.
(ii) The structure and functioning of the cooperatives were dominated by
administrative officials and the local economic and political elites. The
impoverished masses, for whose sake these institutions had been created,
were excluded from participation and decision-making and had no say in the
distribution of benefits.
(iii) Inclusion in agricultural resettlement schemes required farmers to cultivate
certain prescribed crops. This gave established farmers a considerable
advantage and discouraged the poor from joining, since they could not grow
the crops, they wanted to grow.
(iv) Credit facilities were granted mainly to established farmers.
(v) At local level, only inexperienced junior administrative staff and political leaders
were employed to run the decentralised and devolved structures. These people
were unable to make decisions on their own, leading the central government
to make decisions without consultation of the masses.
(vi) Decentralisation amounted to “administrative penetration” involving the local
elite playing an active role in local issues and taking control of allocation of
services.
(vii) The local committees created by government in an attempt to involve people
led to consolidation of power of local elites.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.9
Carefully study case studies 4.1 and 4.4 and answer the following questions:
• Identify the key institutions that attempted to drive the adoption of particular
•
•
forms of participation.
Write a short essay on how particular institutions affect people’s participation
in your country.
Identify a specific government department involved in your country and
(1)
(2)
(3)
briefly describe its actions and activities
identify the role of the elites in relation to this department’s activities
show how mass participation is promoted (or discouraged) by the actions
of the elites
• Compare and contrast the spaces allowed for participation of the masses under
the Ujamaa villages in Tanzania and under the humanist development in Zambia.
4.4
IMPACT OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
TECHNOLOGY (ICT) ON COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
Technology has changed the way we engage the community. Before technological
introduction and advancement, the majority of community members could not share
their opinions without calling a town hall meeting or going door-to-door. Organising
a community meeting was the only way to prioritise community problems and
solutions, and to generate and implement a community action plan.
78
LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
Community Development Practitioners known as CDPs together with the community
leaders, normally distribute questionnaires to community members at the community
meetings and this participatory instrument allow community members to participate
right from the outset in the planning and execution of projects. Questionnaires,
village mapping, problem trees, seasonal calendars, story boards, and semi-structured
interviews/dialogue help in getting a deeper understanding of the central problems,
causes, and effects. These methods and tools are used at a face-to-face community
meeting (UNDP Barbados 2003).
ICT is an increasingly powerful tool for participating in global markets; promoting
political accountability; improving the delivery of basic services; and enhancing local
development opportunities. But without innovative ICT policies, many people in
developing countries – especially the poor – will be left behind.
Technology is a catalyst for the social and economic development of rural areas. It
helps the communities to have an input on upcoming policy decisions. Using social
media should not be off limits for cities and counties. Not everyone can attend a
face-to-face meeting. Instead, people who need other options to engage in dialogue
can offer their ideas through interactive technologies (Williams 2005).
Many countries, including South Africa, have formulated ICT policies and strategies
that influence the quality of life, including agriculture, education, health and culture.
These ICT policies are merged into national policies such as Sustainable Development
Goals, for instance, extending Internet access to rural clinics can improve the delivery
of health services (Ruxwana et al. 2010; Naidoo & Fourie, 2013).
In remote rural areas, the implementation of ICT policies is a challenge because most
them fail to prioritise community problems and solutions, and people often do not
have access to technological instruments such as telephones, laptops and cell-phones
used to generate a community action plan. Often only those who are employees at
government institutions are able to use technological tools which allow them to
participate in surveys that concerns their socio-economic development. Residents
of such communities are generally excluded from the information society and bear
the brunt of the widening digital divide in society.
There are also community members who have access to community centers
and computer laboratories where technological devices such as computers are
provided, however these community members are often not e-literate, and this
becomes a hindrance for them to participate in community development. Low
e-literacy levels in a community might mean high probability of being unemployed,
as well as low entrepreneurship skills; this perpetuates poverty in that society. Some
of the communication materials provided at the community centers are not jargon
free and do not provide an alternative or home language option. This makes them
unfriendly to a layperson because it is often difficult for them to read English. As a
result, the local community is unable to take part in the design, implementation and
management of development projects that affect their standard of living (UNDP
Barbados 2003).
Bala et al. (2002) identified several issues that needed addressing to improve the
adoption of ICT in rural areas:
• Costly infrastructure, connectivity and use.
• Language of resources – English is not understood by many people in the rural
areas and so the trainer needs to simplify the manual and write it in their home
language.
DVA1502/179

• Coordinated approaches and skilled human resources – the use of ICT-based
•
development in communities requires new skills and approaches from a variety of
professions, in particular, researchers need to be able to work with the communities.
ICT awareness in rural communities – through training or workshops, people
of various ages need to be equipped with knowledge on w internet and how to
use it effectively.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.10
• Discuss how community members participated in the development project
•
•
•
•
13
before technological introduction.
Write a short essay on how ICT policies are widening digital divide in
rural communities.
Describe how ICT has improved community participation.
How does e-literacy perpetuate poverty in rural areas?
Mention issues that need to be addressed to improve the adoption of ICT in
rural areas.
FEEDBACK
Case studies 4.1.and 4.4
4.5
PUBLIC PARTICIPATION LEGISLATION IN SOUTH AFRICA
Public participation is not synonymous with citizen participation – mainly because
the former is a wider concept which may include citizen participation. The reason
for this is the fact that the word “public” in public participation refers to all the
people, whether or not they possess the rights and have the obligations of citizenship
(Langton 1978:20).
The South African government has vowed to improve the standard of living of
all its citizens. The basis of the Constitution (1996), and other policies such as the
Reconstruction and Development Programme (1994), and the White Paper on the
Transformation of the Public Service (1997), is the development of the potential of
each individual citizen for self-reliance and sustainability as a priority. It is extremely
important for the government to build a strong relationship with citizens. The aim
of these policies was to grant South African citizens an opportunity to participate
actively in projects that aims to solve their developmental challenges, be involved
in decision-making and policy-formulation. Developmental programmes should be
people-driven (DPSA 2011:4).
The South African government has introduced various initiatives in an effort to
involve citizens in participatory democracy. To engage communities, government
has established mechanisms such as the African Peer Review Mechanism. This was
not initiated by the SA government?>>, Open Government Partnership, community
development workers, Imbizos and ward committees to help local residents participate
in development initiatives so that they can select their own goals and the means of
achieving them. Such mechanisms also ensure community ownership, commitment
and accountability to the development project (DPSA 2011:5).
80
LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
Due to bad governance in South Africa, the goal of achieving public participation
becomes a myth and becomes more and more elusive. The government is failing to
promote participatory democracy because of seemingly endless maladministration
and corruption. As a result, the government fails to build a competent, responsible
citizenry. As a result, citizens struggle to acquire useful skills such as active listening,
problem solving, creative thinking, etc., that they can put to good use in other areas
of their lives. The policies that intend to improve the quality of life of citizens are
not effective because they are not serving local communities (Coetzee 2010:84).
In the local sphere, municipal officials tend to act as gatekeepers and controllers
rather than facilitators enabling communities to have a greater voice and control over
resources and resource allocation. Municipalities are accused of being either unwilling
or unable to share the decision-making power with communities, especially in relation
to project identification. Mechanisms are geared mainly towards seeking communities’
input into already formulated policy responses (Tshoose 2015:18).
The key to effective participation is probably the willingness on the part of government
to be accessible to citizens in general and the poor in particular (Naidoo 2003;
Atkinson 2002). The poor cannot gain a voice through structured participation
forums because they are usually disorganized and lack the capacity to participate
(Friedman 2006:8–11). Many of the poor do not participate in grassroots survivalist
organisations because the government does not provide participatory spaces in which
they will be free to express themselves (Friedman 2006:8–11).
The main purpose of creating democratic spaces is to give ordinary people an
opportunity to engage with government officials from an empowered position
where their voices can be heard, and their concerns can be prioritised. This helps
in strengthening the relationship between citizens and the government and it also
enhance the accountability of both parties (Buccus & Hicks 2008:115).
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.11
• Define public participation?
• Is public participation in South Africa a myth or a reality? Give reasons for
•
14
your answer.
Write a short essay on how the South African government can improve the
effectiveness of public participation.
FEEDBACK
Section 4.5
There is a dialectical relationship (or interaction) between participation and
empowerment. Empowerment is impossible without participation. Participation is
the cornerstone of empowerment. It is a prerequisite for achieving empowerment.
The motto should be “no participation, no empowerment”. Empowerment is one
of the consequences of participation.
DVA1502/181

READING BOX 4.5
Is this participation?
Source: https://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoonview.asp?catref=forn2141
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 4.12
Look at the cartoons above in reading box 4.5.
• What does this picture tell you about politics, participation, empowerment and
development?
82
LEARNING UNIT 4: Politics, participation, empowerment and development
4.6
CONCLUSION
Popular participation in development is, above all, a political process. Participation
is generally the result of a struggle by those who are excluded from participation.
For example, when the apartheid regime denied black people from participating in
government through voting, a liberation struggle was fought that brought about
democracy in 1994.
Democratically elected governments that subscribe to the core principles of democracy
have a greater possibility to facilitate mass participation in development than military
juntas and dictatorial regimes. Bureaucracies often exist to suppress participation.
They are designed in accordance with a centralised form of governance where
participation is limited. There are also stereotypes and prejudices about the poor,
which work against popular participation of the masses in development.
4.7
OUTCOMES CHECKLIST
Question
(1)
xplain the meaning and aim of mass
E
participation and empowerment.
(2)
Identify the main obstacles to effective
mass participation in development.
(3)
Describe the connection between
agency,
participation, and
empowerment.
(4)
xplain how bureaucracies in developing
E
countries and local elites stand in the way
of participation.
(5)
iscuss the impact and challenges of ICT
D
on Community participation
Can do
Cannot do
•
•
•
DVA1502/183

5
5
LEARNING UNIT 5
Women, gender and development
OUTCOMES
Once you have completed this learning unit, you should be able to
• define concepts such as gender equality and women’s empowerment
• analyse the different approaches used to deal with women’s issues
• know how different local and international institutions are dealing with gender
•
5.1
inequality
analyse the impact of selected gender issues such as GBV and HIV and AIDS
on development
INTRODUCTION
This learning unit is about women, gender and development. Our focus on women
and gender is a result of the sad realisation that nowhere in the world are women
accorded the same respect and opportunities as men. Although some countries,
especially in the Northern Hemisphere such as in Scandinavia, Europe, Canada, and
the United States of America have achieved higher targets towards gender parity,
there are still glaring gaps worldwide towards achieving gender equality, which is
about ensuring that “women and men have equal conditions for realizing their full
human rights and for contributing to, and benefiting from, economic, social, cultural
and political development” (UNESCO 2013). In Learning Unit 4 you came across
definitions of empowerment that focus on the poorest of the poor. In this learning
unit the main focus is on women’s empowerment and their rights in various spheres,
but mainly in education, health, power and decision-making. All of these spheres
involve the social, political and economic empowerment of women. Later in the
learning unit we will look briefly at some of the approaches that have influenced
gender and development.
5.2
WHY WE FOCUS ON WOMEN
We focus on women because they make up about half of the world’s adult population
and often contribute more than their due share to society, yet their personalities,
interests and activities have not received the attention commensurate with their energy
and contribution in history (Arkpabio 2007:1). Although one of the most celebrated
treaties – the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against
Women (CEDAW) – was signed in 1979 by various governments, committing
themselves to the protection of women’s rights, the reality for women in most
countries is that they still face gender discrimination and their rights are still not
protected. It is for this reason that we have to focus on women’s rights as important
human rights.
84
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 5.1
Read the summary on trends in women’s rights in the chapter by Ciara Regan,
(Appendix B) and then think about the following question.
• Discuss at least six challenges that women in your country and community face.
• What should government and communities do to ensure that there is real
progress on women’s rights?
15
FEEDBACK
Appendix B and all of 5.3, 5.4 and 5.5
Women face many challenges when attempting to empower themselves. For instance,
they may lack access to a variety of resources such as education, health and land.
They may also have to deal with barriers such as customary laws and a culture that
favours men over women in decision-making.
It has been asserted by Karl (1995:15) that the goals of development cannot be
attained without women’s full participation, not only in the development process
itself, but also in shaping its goals. A closer focus on women’s activities and desires
will make society more responsive to the needs of all people. This will ultimately
redress the unequal balance of decision-making power and hopefully tip the balance
of power in favour of women in their relationships with men in the household,
workplace, communities, governments and the international arena.
We now look at the different gender dimensions/approaches that have been used
to explain the women-and-development debate. These are also presented below in
the form of a table.
5.2.1
Gender dimensions/approaches in development
In this section we discuss three approaches that have influenced our ideas on
women and development. The three gender dimensions are commonly known
as the Women in Development (WID), Gender and Development (GAD), and
Women and Development (WAD) approaches. The first approach evolved during
the mid-1970s as gender activists and feminists continued thinking about issues
that affected women. It is important for you to have an idea of where and when the
debate began. The three development approaches emerged within specific political
and institutional contexts.
DVA1502/185

TABLE 5.1
An outline of the gender approaches
Women in Development
(WID)
Gender and Development
(GAD)
Women and Development
(WAD)
(1) WID first appeared in the
early 1970s.
(1) This emerged in the mid1970s as a critique of WID.
(1) It emerged in the developing Countries.
(2) A rgued that development
approaches benefitted
men more and excluded
women.
(2) The main problem was the
unequal power relations
between men and women.
(2) It tried to merge the good
points from both WID and
GAD.
(3) C hallenged the view
that women were less
productive than men.
(3) A rgued that women’s
inequality is not a Third
World problem alone, but
a problem that is affecting
women everywhere in the
world.
(3) Argued that both approaches lacked women’s perspectives, as well as the
perspectives of developing
countries.
(4) E mphasised women’s
productive roles in society
and the importance of
their access to resources.
(4) Q uestioned the WID
approach of treating
women as a homogenous
category and emphasised
the differences between
them based on class, age,
race, ethnicity and marital
status.
(4) A rgued that gender
inequality was not of major
concern, as was the lack of
food, shelter, employment
etc.
(5) The main argument was
that women’s exclusion
from resources was the
source of their problems.
(5) D isagreed with the
economic framework
advocated by WID.
(6) Everything was seen
through an economic lens.
.
Sources: Connell (1987); Miller and Razavi 1995; Tinker (1990); United Nations Fund for
Population Activities (1998)
In summary, GAD and WAD criticised WID on the following:
(1)
(2)
(3)
86
The WID approach did not deal with the root causes of these inequalities. Their
efforts could have yielded better results if they had dealt with the stereotypes,
the cultural beliefs and the historical issues that caused gender inequalities.
If not interpreted carefully, the WID approach could result in the overburdening
of women. The fact that WID advocated for women’s space in the marketplace
did not automatically remove women’s household burden from them.
WID promoted the status quo by its failure to link issues of class, race,
underdevelopment and imperialism.
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
(4)
WID could not differentiate between women’s needs, that is, between the
needs of women from the North and women from the South. It viewed all
women as one homogenous group and this was a shortcoming in that these
women’s needs were different and unique.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 5.2
• Carefully study Table 5.1 and identify the differences in the three approaches
that are used to explain gender inequality.
5.2.2
Convergence of the three approaches
The three approaches agreed that there were gender inequalities in society. Women
empowerment became the critical issue. They all
• rejected the assumption that women could be used to carry out policies designed
•
•
without their participation.
agreed that women should be integrated in all aspects of development and
assistance and should be involved centrally in the planning and implementation
of development policies, programmes and projects.
made an attempt to address the inequalities that existed between men and women
in societies.
From the late 1970s onwards, different states and UN agencies started to put on
paper agreements, protocols and targets that aimed, among other things, to observe
women’s rights, economic empowerment and the much-needed freedoms that were
advocated by WID, GAD and WAD.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 5.3
Read the extract below. How would you describe the approach to women and
development outlined here? If it fits into any of the three approaches above, which
one(s) would it be? Discuss this in about half a page.
Revealed: The best and worst places to be a woman
Literacy rates among women in Lesotho exceed those of men, with 95% of women
able to read and write compared with 83% of men. Mamokete Sebatane, 65, is a
visually impaired teacher from Lesotho, the only country in sub-Saharan Africa
which closed its education gender gap, and where more women than men can
read and write. Having worked for more than 40 years in Lesotho, Mrs Sebatane
has had to overcome discrimination based not only on her gender, but also
on her disability. “Parents used to say that they would rather take their boy to
school than their girl, because they had to pay for them. Now, because of free
primary education, both can go. As more girls are educated, more women are
beginning to feel independent and confident. I am very proud of that.”
Source: The Independent, 4 March, 2012
DVA1502/187

It is clear from the above extract that the approach that was followed here was the
Gender and Development Approach (GAD). The case study is about inequalities that
existed between men and women in Lesotho and what was done to close the gender
gap. For example, more resources (such as free and accessible primary education)
were made accessible to women as well.
5.3
WOMEN AND DEVELOPMENT
We now turn to explanations of some concepts used in the literature on gender and
development. You will come across concepts such as gender equality, women’s empowerment,
and gender-based violence. Other concepts that we will refer to here are also explained
in detail in the Study Guide for DVA1501, as well as in Learning Units 2, 3, 4, 7
and 8 in this study guide. These concepts are globalisation, development and Sustainable
Development Goals, particularly Goal no. 5, where the focus is on gender equality and
women’s empowerment. A lack of empowerment and gender inequality can result in
gender-based violence, low educational levels and HIV/AIDS, among other debilitating
consequences (UNDP 2008:3). These are discussed below.
5.3.1
Gender and gender equality
According to the Gender Equality Strategy of the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP 2011:2), gender refers to the social attributes and opportunities
associated with being male or female, and the relationships between women and
men, and boys and girls. Gender determines what is expected, allowed and valued in a
woman or a man, in a given context. You will be introduced to the concept of gender
in more detail in one of our papers (DVA4805) at honours level.
Gender equality is a term that is much debated and open to interpretation. It is used
mostly by international development organisations such as the World Bank (WB)
and the United Nations (UN), as a means of achieving some development outcomes.
Gender equality suggests equal access to resources and opportunities. It implies
equal participation in all realms of society, for all members of society. It also implies
an equal distribution of power between men and women. Equality does not mean
that women and men will become the same. It does, however, mean that women and
men’s responsibilities and opportunities will not depend on whether they are born
male or female. Gender equality implies that the interests, needs and priorities of
both women and men are taken into consideration.
According to the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development/
UNRISD (UNRISD 2004:49), inequality is seen as social exclusion and a lack of
freedom, which leads to disempowerment. For example, gender wage inequality can
contribute to unequal bargaining power within the household and thus an unequal
distribution of family resources, which can affect women’s absolute level of well-being.
In other words, there is a link between this concept and women’s empowerment,
which we briefly define below.
5.3.2
Women’s empowerment
The concept of empowerment is explained in more detail in Learning Unit 4. Soni
(2006:11) defines empowerment as a process of awareness and capacity-building
leading to greater participation, decision-making power and control, particularly
88
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
for women. The empowerment of women allows women to gain the knowledge,
skills and attitudes needed to cope with the changing world and the circumstances
in which they live.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 5.4
• Read the two short case studies 5.1 and 5.2 below and answer the question
•
at the end of each.
What advice would you give these women in order to empower them? Write
your answer in about half a page.
CASE STUDY 5.1
Ka Lilay weaves sawali or palm leaves for her employer in her remote village in
the Philippines. But she is not paid this time by her employer, who happens to
be a subcontractor/trader for an exporter. Unable to deliver on time for reasons
of his own, the subcontractor could not collect his fees. Then he decided not to
pay the thirty sawali weavers working for him, on the pretext that their products
are of a poor quality. Can Ka Lilay and her co-workers complain and file a case
in court and have their wages paid?
Source: Lazo (1995)
CASE STUDY 5.2
Ibu Hassana has been embroidering traditional costumes in a far-flung village
in Indonesia since she was twelve. At thirty-five, her eyes are blurred from her
day-to-day threading and stitching. Too poor, she could not buy a pair of glasses,
least of all consult an eye doctor. Can she ask her employer to give her glasses
or to foot her doctor’s bills.
Source: Lazo (1995)
5.3.3
Development
This is a term that has been given different meanings by scholars in the field of
development, as you may have seen in module DVA1501. Handelman (2011:15)
defines development as positive change. Rist (2008:8) defines development as a
process which enables human beings to realise their potential, build self-confidence
and lead lives of dignity and fulfilment. The report of the United Nations Fund
for Population Activities (UNFPA 1998:18) explains that development is about
economic growth and that this is not an end in itself, but a means to a goal. The goal
is to produce sound human well-being. Development is not only about economic
growth, but also about the social production that sustains life. The report goes on
to explain that development is a process which frees people from the fear of want
and exploitation. Development is defined here as a movement away from political,
economic or social oppression. The UN Human Development Report (UNDP
2011:13) argues that the objective of development is to enlarge the range of people’s
choices, and to make development more democratic and participatory. These choices
are stated as including access to income and employment opportunities, education
and health, and a clean and safe physical environment. In summary, individuals,
DVA1502/189

including women, should have the opportunity to participate fully in community
decisions and to enjoy human, economic and political freedoms. Adelman (2000:1)
makes a distinction between economic development and growth. She argues that
economic development combines self-sustaining growth, structural changes in
patterns of production, technological improvements and social and political and
institutional modernisation and widespread improvement in welfare. Development
is a non-linear, ever evolving process which is characterised by different interactions
which have important implications for policy.
One of the critics of how development is defined and its implications for Africa is
Mkandawire (2011). He says that development is somehow seen as an end in itself.
The general understanding is that some needs have to be met through development
but also that sacrifices had to be made to achieve those development goals. In Africa
in particular some of these sacrifices have even led to the suppression of human
rights for the sake of development. Mkandawire (2011:8) also asserts that over the
years we have learned that things that were considered essential for development
or as an inevitable consequence of development were not so. Many of the ends of
development; better education, better health and greater freedom – are also powerful
transformative instruments for development.
Our understanding of development has a profound link to policy interventions on
how to achieve gender equality. Looking at Mkandawire’s arguments about perceived
developmental sacrifices, we must ask ourselves to what extent women’s rights have
been sacrificed through unequal access to land, employment, wages, property, legal
rights, education etc. Sometimes when women’s empowerment is mentioned in
national community debates, we are cautioned about disrupting nation-building.
Does it mean that women’s rights can sometimes cause disruption and disharmony
in families or communities? Are the two goals mutually exclusive? Is it possible to
have gender parity and stable socio-economic conditions?
5.3.4
Millennium and Sustainable Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were eight targets that 189 heads of
state agreed to work on at a meeting of the United Nations in 2000, to end poverty
by the year 2015. They made a promise to free people from extreme poverty and
multiple deprivations (UNDP 2011:3). Millennium Development Goal 3 as stated
in the MDG Report (United Nations 2007:18) was to “promote gender equality
and empower women”. The existence of a separate MDG goal on gender equality
demonstrated that the global community had accepted the centrality of gender equality
and women empowerment in development. Yet in practice there was a gap between
the rhetoric and reality. The targets and indicators hardly addressed the need to
ensure full participation of women in various spheres of their countries. There was
a need to look into the equality and empowerment of women from various social
classes. Rural women, for instance, are often placed in the same category as urban
women when women’s issues are being discussed – thus neglecting context-specific
matters which differentiate the two groups. Gender equality and the empowerment
of women to fully participate in social, economic and political life are important
development outcomes in themselves. It is important for development planners and
practitioners to look into issues of household resource allocation, and access to, and
control over the different resources if we are to address gender inequality and the
lack of empowerment of women.
90
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
In 2015 the United Nations evaluated the progress against the MDGs and decided to
embark on a longer-term programme of action because the MDGs had not sufficiently
addressed the stated objectives. The member states adopted the 2030 Agenda for
Sustainable Development with 17 Sustainable Development Goals as its core.
Sustainable Development Goal 5 focuses on the need to “achieve gender equality
and empower all women and girls”. See more at http://www.unwomen. org/en/
news/in-focus/women-and-the-sdgs/sdg-5-gender-equality#sthash.Er2cINQj.dpuf.
The targets of Sustainable Development Goal 5 are as follows:
5.1 End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere.
5.2Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and
private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation
5.3Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and
female genital mutilation
5.4Recognize and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of
public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion
of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally
appropriate
5.5Ensure women’s full and effective participation and equal opportunities for
leadership at all levels of decision-making in political, economic and public life
5.6Ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights
as agreed in accordance with the Programme of Action of the International
Conference on Population and Development and the Beijing Platform for
Action and the outcome documents of their review conferences
5a.Undertake reforms to give women equal rights to economic resources, as well as
access to ownership and control over land and other forms of property, financial
services, inheritance and natural resources, in accordance with national laws
5b.
Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information
and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women
5c.Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the
promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at
all levels. www.un.org
5.4
GLOBAL, REGIONAL AND LOCAL INSTITUTIONS THAT
ADDRESS GENDER EQUALITY
The achievement of gender equality is a global goal that requires inter-governmental,
regional, local institutions and organisations to combine their efforts and resources.
Although many countries have their own laws and systems for addressing gender
inequality it has become a common practice since the establishment of the United
Nations in 1945 to develop common areas of concern and international instruments
that can be used to address this global problem. The next section addresses two
international organisations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), UN Women
and the local South African Commission for Gender Equality (CGE). These focus
DVA1502/191

on governments’ roles in combating gender inequality because they have the power
to make laws that can change gender discriminatory practices. They also have
financial resources to implement laws. This is not to minimise the role that NonGovernmental Organisations (NGOs) and local communities play in addressing
gender issues. International and governmental institutions have strengths and
weaknesses which one must be aware of in order to determine which institutions
are more suitable and effective in combating gender inequality. You will also realise
in the discussions below that even governments have limitations in addressing some
gender disparities and that these leaves and creates space for other institutions such
as NGOs, communities, religious and cultural groups and families.
5.4.1
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW)
The CSW is the principal global intergovernmental body exclusively dedicated
to the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women. A
functional commission of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), it was
established by Resolution 11(II) of 21 June 1946.
The establishment of the Commission on the Status of Women served to promote
the introduction of important declarations and conventions that protect and promote
the human rights of women. The CSW played an important role in promoting the
principle that men and women should have equal rights, and in the development of
proposals to give effect to such recommendations. The CSW crafted all the necessary
instruments for addressing the different challenges that women are exposed to. It
was however realised that although many Conventions were introduced between
1946, when the CSW was established, and 1963, such conventions were fragmented.
Moreover, it was realised that there was no specific convention that addressed the
various kinds of discrimination against women holistically. The Commission was
therefore requested by the UN General Assembly to initiate the process of crafting
the Convention on the Elimination of All Discrimination Against Women which
was adopted in 1979. This was therefore the first legal international instrument which
articulated the international standards in the promotion of equality between men and
women. However, the fact that the Convention was not a treaty meant that, despite
having moral and political force, it did not create binding obligation for the state
parties (see https://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/history.htm 6 Ibid 7).
The CSW is instrumental in promoting women’s rights, documenting the reality of
women’s lives throughout the world, and shaping global standards on gender equality
and the empowerment of women.
In 1996, ECOSOC expanded the Commission’s mandate and decided that it should
take a leading role in monitoring and reviewing the progress and problems in
the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and in
mainstreaming a gender perspective in UN activities.
During the Commission’s annual two-week session, representatives of UN member
states, civil society organisations and UN entities gather at the UN headquarters in
New York. They discuss progress and gaps in the implementation of the 1995 Beijing
Declaration and Platform for Action the key global policy document on gender
equality, held in 2000.
92
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
The Commission adopts multi-year programmes of work to appraise progress and
make further recommendations to accelerate the implementation of the Platform
for Action. These recommendations take the form of negotiated agreed conclusions
on a priority theme. The Commission also contributes to the follow-up to the 2023
Agenda for Sustainable Development 2030 so as to accelerate the realisation of
gender equality and the empowerment of women.
The Commission elaborated a multi-year programme of work for the first time in
1987, containing priority themes for discussion and action at its annual sessions.
Subsequently, multi-year programmes of work were adopted in 1996.
Based on the resolutions from 2018 and 2020, priority and review themes for
2020–2024 are:
• 2020: Review and appraisal of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and
•
•
•
•
5.4.2
Platform for Action and the outcomes of the 23rd special session of the General
Assembly, and its contribution towards the full realisation of the 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development.
2021: Priority theme: Women’s full and effective participation and decisionmaking in public life, as well as the elimination of violence, for achieving gender
equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. Review theme: Women’s
empowerment and the link to sustainable development (agreed conclusions of
the 60th session).
2022: Priority theme: Achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all
women and girls in the context of climate change, environmental and disaster
risk reduction policies and programmes. Review theme: Women’s economic
empowerment in the changing world of work (agreed conclusions of the 61st
session).
2023: Priority theme: Innovation and technological change, and education in the
digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and
girls. Review theme: Challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality
and the empowerment of rural women and girls (agreed conclusions of the 62nd
session).
2024: Priority theme: Accelerating the achievement of gender equality and the
empowerment of all women and girls by addressing poverty and strengthening
institutions and financing with a gender perspective. Review theme: Social
protection systems, access to public services and sustainable infrastructure for
gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls (agreed conclusions
of the 63rd session).
UN Women
UN Women is the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the
empowerment of women. It was established on January 1st 2011. Until August
2021 it was headed by the former Deputy President of South Africa, Dr Phumzile
Mlambo-Ngcuka. UN Women was established to accelerate progress on meeting
women’s needs worldwide. UN Women supports UN member states as they set
global standards for achieving gender equality, and works with governments and civil
society to design laws, policies, programmes and services needed to ensure that the
standards are effectively implemented and truly benefit women and girls worldwide.
It works globally to make sure the vision of the Sustainable Development Goals is
focusing on the following four strategic priorities that affect women:
DVA1502/193

• Women lead, participate in and benefit equally from governance systems
• Women have income security, decent work and economic autonomy
• All women and girls live a life free from all forms of violence
• Women and girls contribute to and have greater influence in building sustainable
peace and resilience, and benefit equally from the prevention of natural disasters
and conflicts and humanitarian action
UN Women also coordinates and promotes the UN system’s work in advancing
gender equality, and in all deliberations and agreements linked to the 2030 Agenda.
The entity works to position gender equality as fundamental to the Sustainable
Development Goals, and a more inclusive world (www.unwomen.org).
5.4.3
The African Union – Women, Gender and Development
Directorate: WGDD
The African Union (AU) was launched in 2002 in South Africa as a re-modelled
version of the former Organization of African Unity (1963–1999). It has 55 member
states who together formulate the African Development Agenda to promote unity
and solidarity among African states and intensify cooperation for development.
The AU adopted Agenda 2063 as a response to development problems on the African
continent. Out of the seven priority areas Goal 6 talks about: An Africa whose
Development is people driven, relying on the potential offered by African People,
especially its Women and Youth, and caring for Children.
The target is to achieve full Gender Equality in All Spheres of Life with a focus on
Women and Girls Empowerment and Ending Violence and Discrimination against
Women and Children. In 2003 the AU also adopted the Protocol of the African
Charter on Human and People’s Rights of Women in Africa. This was followed up
by the adoption of the Declaration of Gender Equality in 2004.
The Directorate for Women, Gender and Development (WGDD) is responsible
for leading, guiding and coordinating the AU’s efforts on gender equality and
Development and promoting women’s empowerment by ensuring the AU Solemn
Declaration on Gender Equality (http://au.int/en).
The AU Declaration on Gender Equality has the following objectives:
(1)
(2)
94
Accelerate the implementation of gender specific economic, social, and legal
measures aimed at combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic and effectively
implement both the Abuja and Maputo Declarations on Malaria, HIV/AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Other Related Infectious Disease. More specifically we will
ensure that treatment and social services are available to women at the local
level making it more responsive to the needs of families that are providing
care; enact legislation to end discrimination against women living with HIV/
AIDS and for the protection and care of people living with HIV/AIDS,
particularly women; increase budgetary allocations in these sectors so as to
alleviate women’s burden of care;
Ensure the full and effective participation and representation of women in
peace processes including the prevention, resolution, management of conflicts
and post-conflict reconstruction in Africa as stipulated in UN Resolution 1325
(2000) and to also appoint women as Special Envoys and Special Representatives
of the African Union;
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
(9)
(10)
(11)
(12)
5.4.4
Launch, within the next one year, a campaign for the systematic prohibition
of the recruitment of child soldiers and abuse of girl children as wives and
sex slaves in violation of their Rights as enshrined in the African Charter on
Rights of the Child;
Initiate, launch and engage within two years sustained public campaigns against
gender-based violence as well as the problem of trafficking in women and
girls; Reinforce legal mechanisms that will protect women at the national level
and end impunity of crimes committed against women in a manner that will
change and positively alter the attitude and behaviour of the African society;
Expand and Promote the gender parity principle that we have adopted
regarding the Commission of the African Union to all the other organs of the
African Union, including its NEPAD programme, to the Regional Economic
Communities, and to the national and local levels in collaboration with political
parties and the National parliaments in our countries;
Ensure the active promotion and protection of all human rights for women and
girls including the right to development by raising awareness or by legislation
where necessary;
Actively promote the implementation of legislation to guarantee women’s land,
property and inheritance rights including their rights to housing;
Take specific measures to ensure the education of girls and literacy of women,
especially in the rural areas, to achieve the goal of “Education for All” (EFA);
Undertake to sign and ratify the Protocol to the African Charter on Human
and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa by the end of 2004
and to support the launching of public campaigns aimed at ensuring its entry
into force by 2005 and usher in an era of domesticating and implementing
the Protocol as well as other national, regional and international instruments
on gender equality by all State Parties;
Establish AIDS Watch Africa as a unit within the Office of the Chairperson
of the Commission who should render an annual report on the HIV/AIDS
situation on the continent during annual Summits; and promote the local
production of anti-retroviral drugs in our countries;
Accept to establish an African Trust Fund for Women for the purpose of
building the capacity of African women and further request the African Union
Commission to work out the modalities for the operationalisation of the Fund
with special focus on women in both urban and rural areas;
Commit ourselves to report annually on progress made.
The Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) in South Africa
The Commission for Gender Equality (CGE) in South Africa was established through
Act No. 39 1996. The object of the Commission on Gender Equality is to promote
gender equality and to advise and to make recommendations to Parliament or any
other legislature with regard to any laws or proposed legislation which affects gender
equality and the status of women (Government Gazette, 24 July 1996).
The powers and functions of the Commission:
In order to achieve its object referred to in section 119(3) of the Constitution, the
Commission:
(a)
shall monitor and evaluate policies and practices of – (i) organs of state at any
level; (ii) statutory bodies or functionaries; (iii) public bodies and authorities;
and (iv) private businesses, enterprises and institutions, in order to promote
DVA1502/195

(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)
gender equality and may make any recommendations that the Commission
deems necessary;
shall develop, conduct or manage – (i) information programmes; and
(ii) education programmes, to foster public understanding of matters
pertaining to the promotion of gender equality and the role and activities of
the Commission;
shall evaluate – (i) any Act of Parliament; (ii) any system of personal and family
law or custom; (iii) any system of indigenous law, customs or practices; or (iv)
any other law, in force at the commencement of this Act or any law proposed
by Parliament or any other legislature after the commencement of this Act,
affecting or likely to affect gender equality or the status of women and make
recommendations to Parliament or such other legislature with regard thereto;
may recommend to Parliament or any other legislature the adoption of new
legislation which would promote gender equality and the status of women;
shall investigate any gender-related issues of its own accord or on receipt of
a complaint, and shall endeavour to – (i) resolve any dispute; or (ii) rectify any
act or omission, by mediation, conciliation or negotiation;
shall maintain close liaison with institutions, bodies or authorities with similar
objectives to the Commission, in order to foster common policies and practices
and to promote co-operation in relation to the handling of complaints in cases
of overlapping jurisdiction or other appropriate instances;
shall liaise and interact with any organisation which actively promotes gender
equality and other sectors of civil society to further the objectives of the
Commission;
shall monitor the compliance with international conventions, international
covenants and international charters, acceded to or ratified by the Republic
(Government Gazette, 24 July 1996).
In line with its Constitutional mandate, the CGE monitors the implementation of
International conventions to ensure that the country complies with its obligations.
An evaluation report of the performance of the CGE (2020) highlighted the following
accomplishments and obstacles:
In particular, the review also focused attention on the government’s response to,
and implementation of, the CEDAW Committee’s Concluding Observations and
Recommendations following its consideration of South Africa’s period report during
its 967th and 968th Sessions in 2011.
In areas such as policy and legislative or law reform, tremendous progress has been
made over the years, including the reporting period covered in this report (i.e., 20112015). Also, a number of institutional reforms, strategies and programmes aimed at
dealing with gender-based violence, including discrimination and violence against
women, have been put in place over the years. At the political leadership level, the
country’s political leadership cannot be faulted for responsiveness to public calls
and demands for action against gender-based violence, including violence and
discrimination against women.
It is clear that in many areas of compliance, the government has done the bare
minimum of what was required in terms of the CEDAW Obligations. Much of the
challenge has been at the level of administrative and implementation action, which
had been characterised by poor performance, leading to lack of compliance on the
part of the state.
96
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
A number of key factors accounted for these failures, the most important of which
were poor planning and coordination, poor costing of programmes, ineffective
allocation of resources and implementation of government departmental policies,
legislation, plans and programmes of action to deal with violence and discrimination
against women. In addition, the country’s National Gender Machinery has for many
years been characterised by tremendous institutional weaknesses (evidenced not
only by current institutional fragmentation and lack of coordination, but also by the
collapse of the National Council on Gender-Based Violence), lack of appropriate
skills and poor training for state personnel (including members of the South African
Police Service, judiciary and other agencies) at the forefront of the country’s fight
to combat gender-based violence in general and violence against women in particular
(CGE 2020).
5.4.5
Lessons learned from institutional interventions
A consolidated review of the progress made by the various institutions shows that
progress has been made towards achieving gender equality. While the observations
below were made in relation to UN Women, the majority are applicable to the rest
of the world including the AU and South Africa.
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
The priorities and interventions are relevant and aligned to key normative
agreements for gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls.
There is a need to strengthen global frameworks and translate them into
national and regional standards and implementation plans, while bringing
on-the-ground realities to the development of those frameworks.
UN-Women’s Strategic Planning continues to be relevant and contributes
to the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and supports the
implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
UN-Women’s Strategic Plan indicators need to deliver more quantitative
assessments of the entity’s substantive impact in the lives of women and girls,
alongside qualitative indicators designed to capture transformative change.
UN-Women’s convening role has led to catalytic change, but partnerships
need to become more results-orientated.
Partnership with gender equality advocates has played a key role in achieving
results. The importance of engaging the non-committed is also essential for
transformative change. There is a need for greater focus and coordination to
achieve the full gender equality agenda.
UN-Women continues to be hampered by a resource constrained environment
that prevent sustainability and scaling up of successful interventions. Ensuring
adequate financing will be critical to the successful implementation of the 2030
Agenda and UN Women can do more to track resources gaps and quantify
its implications.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 5.5
• Compare the roles of the CSW/UN Women/AU’s WGDD and the CGE in South
•
16
Africa.
How effective are they in addressing gender inequality?
FEEDBACK
All of 5.4
DVA1502/197

5.5
SELECTED THEMATIC GENDER ISSUES
There are many aspects of women and men’s lives which affect each gender differently.
At various phases of the work of the international and national institutions mentioned
in 5.4 some themes have been chosen as an area of focus depending on their prevalence
at a specific time. Below we are going to focus on a couple of themes so that you can
get a better understanding on how these impact economies and social lives. These
themes are gender-based violence, and HIV and AIDS. We also to a small extent
will demonstrate how Non-Governmental Organisations can be instrumental in
bringing about gender equality.
5.5.1
Gender-based violence (GBV)
What do you know about gender-based violence (GBV)? How does it affect development?
Can you give examples of GBV that you know of, or that you may have read about?
In your answer you may have included the fact that GBV is violence directed at a woman
simply because she is a woman. For a more detailed discussion of the term, read
Appendix B, the chapter on Women, development and (dis)empowerment by Ciara Regan
(2016). Although GBV is widespread, it is not a universal problem (Heise, Ellsberg &
Gottmoeller 2002).
READING BOX 5.1
Gender-based violence includes a host of harmful behaviors that are directed
at women and girls because of their sex, including wife abuse, sexual assault,
dowry-related murder, marital rape, selective malnourishment of female children,
forced prostitution, female genital mutilation, and sexual abuse of female children.
Specifically, violence against women includes any act of verbal or physical force,
coercion or life-threatening deprivation, directed at an individual woman or girl
that causes physical or psychological harm, humiliation or arbitrary deprivation
of liberty and that perpetuates female subordination.
Source: Heise et al. (2002)
Gender-based violence may take various forms, among others:
• Domestic physical abuse
• Honour killings
• Forced marriage
• Rape and sexual assault
• Sexual abuse in war/post war
• Physical injuries, morbidity, contraction of diseases (HIV/AIDS)
Gender-based violence are evident in, among others:
• Psychological effects such as feelings of shame, social stigma and rejection
• An increasing rate of absenteeism at work and decreasing productivity
98
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
Source: UNWomen.org
Regan (2016:7) highlights the fact that GBV is very pervasive, a very indiscriminate
form of human abuse, yet it often goes unnoticed. In war-torn countries, GBV is
often used as a weapon of war, intimidation and harassment. During armed conflicts
soldiers/paramilitaries often terrorise women with rape, sexual violence and other
forms of harassment. These tactics are tools of war and instruments used to punish
and hurt women, wrench countries apart and force women to flee their homes (Human
Rights Watch). Women in Iraq, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Sierra
Leone, Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo have reported cases of brutal rape,
sexual assault, slavery and mutilation, perpetrated by male soldiers.
Often the end of war does not mean an end to the violence against women. In
some areas where foreign military bases are present, women are still exposed to
severe cases of rape and other forms of violence by the very military personnel
stationed in their countries to protect them! The much-publicised cases of UN
troops’ abuses in Rwanda and the DRC and those of US troops in Iraq, are cases
in point. See, for instance, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/11/
un-peacekeepers-accused-killing-rape-central-african-republic
According to Jagger (2001:25), the casualties of war are predominantly civilians and
though the combatants/soldiers are predominantly male, the vulnerable civilians
are predominantly women and children. In 2004 according to UNFPA (2004) the
total figures of refugees were 21.4 million and 80% of this figure were women and
children displaced by war. However, although the figure has increased to 26.4
million refugees worldwide, the number of women and children is now 50% of this
figure. (UNHCR, 2020)
DVA1502/1
99

CASE STUDY 5.3
Nguyen Thi Ahn first learned about the Women’s Counselling Center for Health
three years ago. She had come to the Duc Giang General Hospital (DGGH)
hospital for treatment of her arm, which she feared her husband had broken during
a beating. She had suffered verbal and physical abuse from her husband and, at
times, from her mother-in-law, for almost 20 years; both had threatened to throw
her out of the house and keep her from her children. Though she worked hard to
earn more money and tried to be a good wife and homemaker, her husband and
mother-in-law continued to insult or beat her. She felt hopeless and depressed.
She was very surprised when the nurse asked whether the injury might be due
to abuse at home, but she answered shyly that yes, her husband had done it.
A short time later, the nurse accompanied her to a quiet room on the third floor
called the “Women’s Counselling Center for Health,” where a counsellor politely
asked about her arm and what was happening at home. For the first time ever,
Thi talked about her problems without being blamed. The counsellor said she
was experiencing “gender-based violence,” which was illegal and which she
did not have to tolerate. They talked about her alternatives – she felt she did
not have the option of leaving her husband, and she could not bear the thought
of leaving her children. Thi went home with the counsellor’s phone number. A
week later, she called back and made another appointment. With the counsellor,
she made a plan to be safe if her husband and mother-in-law abused her again.
Over time, she returned every few months for further counselling. The Women’s
Counselling Center for Health had become her lifeline.
Source: AIDSTAR-One (2012).
CASE STUDY 5.4
Group counselling: the workshop that saved a Kigali family
Fredrick Uwanyigira, living in Gisozi, the poorest neighbourhood of Kigali, couldn’t
work for more than 10-12 days a month. Aids and daily drinking would leave the
47-year-old construction worker too frail to even get out of bed.
His wife of 14 years, Grace Nzikobankunda, who is also HIV positive, was growing
desperate. The labourer would keep most of his meagre earnings for alcohol,
leaving Nzikobankunda with just RWF 8,000–9,000 (R135.00) a month to buy
food. Illiterate and unskilled, the mother-of-four was pawning household items
to meet the shortfall.
Things came to a head when the younger two of their constantly hungry children,
aged five and three, began to lose weight rapidly. “It terrified me. My brother had
lost children to illness, his pain was unbearable,” Uwanyigira says.
On Nzikobankunda’s suggestion he agreed to seek help at RWAMREC’s local
men’s workshop. “I was surprised to see I was not the only one with alcohol and
violence problems. It helped me tremendously to listen to the problems of the
other men and find solutions to my own,” he says.
100
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
“But most importantly I learnt to include my wife in decision-making, especially
in money matters,” Fredrick adds.
Inspired by other participants in the workshop, the construction worker also
encouraged his wife to enrol in a vocational programme.
Today Frederick’s children are back to a healthy weight, thanks to the nutritious
meal they get daily at Aspire Rwanda, where their mother is learning hair-dressing
skills. The labourer has quit drinking and is able to work more days.
“This is a better life” he smiles.
Source: The Guardian (2012) Group counselling: the workshop that saved a
Kigali family – A drive to beat Rwanda’s gender-based violence case studies:
https://www.the guardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2013/
nov/22/Rwanda-gender-based-violence-case-studies
READING BOX 5.2
Combating gender-based iolence in South Africa
The government, in South Africa’s 5th periodic report on the implementation of
the CEDAW (2009-2014), points to several awareness raising campaigns in the
country attempting to address issues of prevention, protection and promoting
confidentiality in order to systematise and integrate approaches for multiple
government sectors. However, many of these initiatives were undertaken by nonstate actors or nongovernmental organisations. In a few instances, government
was involved sometimes only to a limited extent. These are some of the activities
which have been used to combat Violence Against Women in South Africa.
• The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act
•
244: This Act, known commonly as the Sexual Offences Act, brings together,
codifies and revises South Africa’s laws dealing with sexual offences. In
addition to qualifying sexual offences in line with the Constitution, it has
also created new offences, including those of child pornography. A critical
contribution in combating VAWC has been the Act’s redefinition of rape,
which is defined as, “intentionally committing an act of sexual penetration
without consent, irrespective of gender”. The Act also empowers courts
to provide specialised victim support services in order to mitigate against
secondary victimisation or traumatisation, reduce case handling time and
improve conviction rates.
365 Days National Action Plan against Violence against Women: In response
to the call by the UN, and as an extended version of the international 16
Days of Activism for No Violence against Women and Children (VAWC)
(25 November–10 December) awareness campaign, the government of
South Africa runs an annual campaign to combat VAWC. Though South
Africa adopted the 16 Days of Activism campaign in 1998, the government
and multiple partners adopted a 365 Day National Action Plan to End
Violence against Women and Children in what is known as the Kopanong
Declaration in 2006. This Action Plan, which is multisectoral and involves
several stakeholders, is also in accordance with the uppermost priority of the
Declaration – to ‘strengthen and place far greater emphasis on prevention’.
DVA1502/1101

• Victim Empowerment Programme (VEP): In responding to South Africa’s
high rates of violent crime in general, and the unproductive focus of earlier
strategies on retributive justice, a new national crime prevention strategy
was introduced in 1998, focusing on restorative justice; a victim-centered
approach to criminal justice. Principally, the VEP is aimed at developing a
victim-friendly criminal justice system, providing quality services to survivors
and promoting intersectoral and departmental collaboration in victim-centered
interventions.
Thuthuzela Care Centres (TCCs): In the spirit of the VEP and in accordance
with the Sexual Offences Act, TCCs were established under the leadership of
the National Prosecuting Authority’s Sexual Offences and Community Affairs
Unit, as one-stop facilities to provide services to survivors of sexual offences.
They operate from public hospitals and are linked with the Sexual Offences
Courts. 244 Act 32 of 2007.74. As an essential part of an anti-rape strategy, they
enable rape survivors to lodge a case with the police and receive counselling
and medical care in one place. (Commission for Gender Equality, 2020, see the
full report on E-reserves: http://libguides.unisa.ac.za/request/request
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 5.6
Explain your understanding of GBV by giving an opinion on how gender-based
violence can be dealt with in communities and nationally.
17
FEEDBACK
Reading boxes 5.1 and 5.2 and case study 5.3 and 5.4
In your answer to the question above you may have highlighted the roles that need
to be played by various role players at different stages. Governments at both the
national and local levels need to address specific needs and concerns of women. It is
also evident that women need to be part of decision-making processes both in their
households and in communities and have to be part of the solution in eliminating
gender-based violence and not just be relegated to the role of victims.
5.5.2
HIV and AIDS
In Learning Unit 3 of this module, you were introduced to the issue of HIV/AIDS
and its impact on various aspects of development. In this learning unit we focus on
its impact on women – and we specifically single out women, because “the negative
impact of the virus for the lives of women is more severe than for men principally
due to their subordinate status in society” (Duffy 2012).
102
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
READING BOX 5.3
Adolescent girls and young women aged 15–24 years are at particularly high risk
of HIV infection, accounting for 20% of new HIV infections among adults globally
in 2015, despite accounting for just 11% of the adult population. In geographical
areas with higher HIV prevalence, the gender imbalance is more pronounced.
In sub-Saharan Africa, adolescent girls and young women accounted for 25%
of new HIV infections among adults, and women accounted for 56% of new HIV
infections among adults. Harmful gender norms and inequalities, insufficient
access to education and sexual and reproductive health services, poverty,
food insecurity and violence, are at the root of the increased HIV risk of young
women and adolescent girls.
Source: UNAIDS (2016). Global AIDS update 2016. Joint United Nations Programme
on HIV/AIDS, page 8 (http://www.unaids.org/sites/default /files/media_asset /
global-AIDS-update-2016_en.pdf)
All of the above make women susceptible to poverty, discrimination and violence,
including HIV infection. In reading box 5.4 below, examples are given of how women
and girls are more susceptible to HIV infection compared to their male counterparts.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 5.7
Read reading box 5.4 on Women and HIV/AIDS: advocacy, prevention and
empowerment by the UN (2004) and 5.5, South Africa’s response to HIV and
AIDS and Gender
• Write four paragraphs in which you discuss any two vulnerabilities faced by
•
women as a result of HIV. In your opinion what can be done to empower women
to decrease the risk of HIV infection?
What role do Non-Governmental Organizations play in HIV/AIDS advocacy,
prevention and gender empowerment?
READING BOX 5.4
Women and HIV/AIDS: advocacy, prevention and empowerment
The global AIDS epidemic crossed a significant threshold in 2003 when, for the
first time, according to new statistics, half of those living with HIV were women.
At the outset of the epidemic in the 1980s, women were considered marginally
at risk from a virus that seemed to be confined to men who have sex with men,
sex workers and intravenous drug users. Now, HIV has infected tens of millions,
many of them women who contracted it from their husbands or partners. AIDS
has become the worst pandemic in human history – one from which no one is
immune, regardless of gender, race, class or sexual orientation.
DVA1502/1103

Young people are especially at risk, and particularly young women who in
many countries have limited access to information and public health services.
Young women and girls are less likely to be educated than young men and
more prone to coercion and violence in sexual relationships. Because of their
unequal status, women and girls have unequal access to prevention, treatment
and care programmes. In some countries with limited resources, treatment may
be reserved for certain “priority groups” such as the military or civil servants.
More than a health crisis, HIV/AIDS is a global development challenge.
Discriminatory property and inheritance rights, and unequal access to education,
public services, income opportunities and health care, as well as ingrained
violence, render women and girls particularly vulnerable to HIV infection. Women
living with HIV/AIDS suffer the additional burdens of stigma, discrimination and
marginalization.
In recognition of the devastating impact AIDS has on women today, the UN
Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality decided that International
Women’s Day, observed annually on 8 March, would in 2004 focus on women
and HIV/AIDS.
Biological Factors of Vulnerability
One of the apparent cruelties of the HIV/AIDS epidemic is that women are at
a biological disadvantage relative to men in terms of contracting the disease.
Male-to-female transmission is much more likely to occur than female-to-male.
In fact, studies have shown that women are twice as likely as men to contract
HIV. In the developing world at the end of 2003, more than half of those living
with HIV were women, and in sub-Saharan Africa, young women aged 15 to 24
were 2.5 times more likely to be infected than young men.
Physiologically, women are more vulnerable to HIV infection because they are
more likely to develop microlesions during sexual intercourse, and laboratory
tests have shown that male semen contains higher concentrations of the virus
than female secretions per unit volume. Additionally, because the reproductive
systems of young girls are underdeveloped, they are more prone to microlesions,
especially when sex is coerced. As with all sexually transmitted infections (STIs),
women are estimated to be twice as vulnerable as men, and the presence of
untreated STIs is a further risk factor for contracting HIV.
While condom use and distribution have received widespread support and
financing, microbicides and female-controlled protection methods have
been under-researched and under-funded. Since women continue to be at a
disadvantage in negotiating safe sex, more resources need to be channeled
towards finding new methods of protection that are designed for and accessible
to women.
Epidemic Fueled by Violence
Beyond the biological aspects of HIV and its rampant spread lie a series of social,
economic and cultural factors that are equally challenging for and detrimental to
women. One of the most important of these is violence, which violates women’s
human rights and increases their vulnerability to HIV infection.
104
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
Domestic violence is one of the most insidious forms of violence against women.
It is prevalent in all societies and affects women of all ages. Ten to 50 percent of
women globally report physical abuse by an intimate partner at least once in their
lives, and this is often accompanied by sexual violence. Domestic violence is one
of the leading causes of injury to women in almost every country in the world.
In situations of armed conflict, women experience all forms of violence, including
sexual assault. Recent examples from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Timor-Leste,
and Rwanda, reveal systematic use of rape and sexual violence as tools of war.
Clinical data from the Sudan reported that HIV rates among expectant mothers
were 6-8 times higher in war-torn areas than in demilitarized zones.
Trafficking in women and sexual exploitation also put women at high risk of
HIV infection, violence and abuse. Even the threat of violence can seriously
undermine AIDS prevention efforts.
Fear of violence prevents women from seeking information about HIV/AIDS,
testing, prevention of mother-child transmission, treatment and counselling.
Coercion – an Added Risk
The high incidence of non-consensual sex and the inability to negotiate safer
sex also contribute to the rapid spread of HIV among women. In one recent
survey in South Africa, over one-third of young women reported they were
afraid of refusing sexual advances and over one-half admitted to having sex
only because of a partner’s insistence. An alarming number, between 20 and
48 percent, reported that their first sexual encounter was forced.
Women often contract HIV from husbands or intimate partners who have multiple
sex partners. Many societies tolerate and even encourage men to engage in
such high-risk behaviour and deem promiscuity a sign of masculinity. The long
incubation period of the virus before symptoms of AIDS develop can lead to a
false sense of complacency.
All over the world, civil society and community groups are working to change
practices, values and behaviours that discriminate against women, and to ensure
that gender perspectives are incorporated into efforts to combat HIV/AIDS.
Economic and Legal Barriers
Another factor contributing to the AIDS crisis among women is their economic
and financial dependency on men. Issues of ownership of, access to and control
over land, housing and other property acquire particular urgency for HIV-positive
women or widows and children orphaned by AIDS. Many countries still have laws
that discriminate against women, or legal systems that give women unequal status.
When women lack titles to land or housing, their economic options diminish and
they are more vulnerable to poverty, violence and homelessness. Poverty can
lead women towards desperate measures such as enduring abusive relationships
or engaging in unsafe sex in exchange for money, housing, food or education.
In many countries, women’s rights to land and property are secured through
marriage. If the marriage ends through abandonment, divorce or death, a woman’s
right to land or home may also cease. Frequently, poor and illiterate women have
no practical resources available to appeal for help through the legal system.
DVA1502/1105

These hardships are compounded in the case of women living with HIV/AIDS.
The stigma and discrimination associated with AIDS can have a devastating
impact on women and their families. When women are rejected by their families
because of their HIV status, or widowed because of AIDS, they risk losing all
claims to family assets, particularly in countries where traditional legal systems
are in place. The relatives of a deceased spouse may claim inheritance rights,
leaving widows and orphans vulnerable to destitution.
Protecting women’s equal status through legal reform can mitigate the negative
consequences of AIDS experienced by women and their defendants. Reforms
such as upholding female property and inheritance rights can actually reduce
the spread of HIV by promoting women’s economic security and empowerment
and reducing their vulnerability to domestic violence, unsafe sex and other
AIDS-related risk factors.
Educating Girls Is Critical
Girls account for 57 percent of the estimated 104 million primary school-aged
children not enrolled in school. Girls are also more likely than boys to drop out
of school because of early marriage, pregnancy, economic hardship, or family
duties.
In countries with high rates of HIV infection, the number of girls enrolled in school
has decreased in the last decade. Surveys have shown that fewer girls than
boys aged 15 to 19 have basic knowledge about how to protect themselves from
HIV/AIDS and many misconceptions are common in areas with limited access
to accurate information. Such misconceptions can lead to the creation of myths
that are particularly harmful to girls, such as ‘having sex with a virgin can cure
HIV’ and similar fallacies.
Educating girls is an effective way of empowering them to become more informed
and equipped to succeed in life. It also prevents the spread of HIV and other STIs
by giving them greater access to information. Girls who stay in school longer
and obtain life skills and health education generally become sexually active later
and have more awareness of prevention methods and the importance of testing.
Steps recommended (for) increasing educational opportunities for women and
girls include abolishing school fees and offering financial incentives to keep girls
in school. More strategic investment and prevention policies are required at all
levels to ensure that girls and women receive the education and protection they
need to lead safer, more productive and healthier lives.
Sharing the Care Burden
Around the world, women are the primary providers of domestic work and care
for family members. The term ‘care economy’ is sometimes used to describe
the many tasks carried out mostly by women and girls at home such as cooking,
cleaning, fetching water and wood and caring for household members. The
value of the time, energy and resources required to perform this unpaid work is
rarely recognized or accounted for despite its substantial contribution to national
economies and society in general.
106
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
The AIDS pandemic has significantly increased the care burden of many women.
Poverty and inadequate public services contribute to making the burden unviable
for many women with consequent social, health and economic implications.
Women and girls pay a high price in lost opportunities when undertaking unpaid
care for family members or others with HIV or AIDS-related illnesses, since they
are prevented from investing their time in other activities that generate income,
improve (their) education or impart skills. AIDS is contributing to the feminization
of poverty and disempowerment of women, particularly in the regions hardest
hit by the epidemic.
Women and girls who carry the burden of HIV/AIDS often lack adequate material
and moral support. More needs to be done to provide them with training and
health care materials, such as disposable gloves and medicines, as well as
supplemental food and means for paying school fees and other educational
costs. Home care programmes also need to include counselling, and income
generation opportunities for widows.
These programmes should involve men and boys to help change traditional
attitudes and cultural beliefs about gender roles. Men and boys need to adopt
responsible sexual behaviour and become involved in care and support. They
need to practice egalitarian and consenting sexual relations and provide caring
roles in relation to pregnancy, birth and child-rearing. Men have critical roles to
play in promoting women’s economic rights and independence, including access
to employment, appropriate working conditions, control of economic resources
and full participation in decision-making.
Advocacy must be strengthened and awareness raised about the magnitude of
women’s unpaid care work in terms of the social and economic costs and benefits
involved, to themselves, their communities and society as a whole. The UN and
its inter-governmental and non-governmental partners are encouraging policy
makers to extend social protection to caregivers through action at the global,
national, community and household levels.
Global Coalition on Women and AIDS
In February 2004, a UNAIDS-initiated group was established of women and
men committed to mitigating the impact of AIDS on women and girls. The Global
Coalition on Women and AIDS was launched to raise support and to energize
and drive AIDS-related programmes and projects aimed at improving the daily
lives of women and girls.
The Coalition identified seven key areas for action, namely:
• preventing HIV infection among girls and women;
• reducing violence against women;
• protecting the property and inheritance rights of women and girls;
• ensuring women’s and girls’ equal access to care and treatment;
• supporting improved community-based care with special focus on women
•
•
and girls;
promoting access to prevention options for women, including microbicides
and female condoms;
supporting ongoing efforts towards universal education for girls.
DVA1502/1107

The Coalition is headed by a Global Steering Committee that represents a
broad range of partners (UN agencies, non-governmental and civil society
organizations) from all regions of the world. Members include women and
men from a wide range of specialty areas: politicians, scientists, activists and
celebrities. In recognition of the critical importance of involving HIV-positive
persons in public awareness campaigns, around 20 percent of the Steering
Committee members identify themselves as HIV-positive. Meeting once a year
and communicating regularly through a website, the Coalition is coordinated
by UNAIDS.
Source: UNAIDS (2004)
READING BOX 5.5
South Africa’s response to HIV and AIDS and gender
The South African government developed a National Strategic Plan on HIV,
TB and STIs, 2012-2016, which consisted of five goals. The goals that related
to violence against women were (i) ensuring an enabling and accessible legal
framework that protected and promoted human rights, and (ii) reducing selfreported stigma related to HIV and TB by at least 50%. The key strategic
objectives of the National Strategic Plan included: (a) addressing social and
structural barriers that increased vulnerability to HIV, TB and STI infection; (b)
preventing new HIV, TB and STI infections; and (c) increasing the protection of
human rights and improving access to justice. The country has prioritised these
services for sex workers. In addition to this, the South African government has
developed several pieces of legislation, as well as policies and programmes
which address issues at the intersection between violence and HIV/AIDS.
The government, in South Africa’s 5th periodic report on the implementation of
the CEDAW (2009–2014), pointed to several awareness raising campaigns in
the country attempting to address issues of prevention, protection and promoting
confidentiality in order to systematise and integrate approaches for multiple
government sectors. However, many of these initiatives were undertaken by nonstate actors or nongovernmental organisations. In a few instances, government
was involved sometimes only to a limited extent. Programmes to reduce barriers
faced by women in accessing HIV/AIDS services are in place, such as eliminating
user fees and addressing stigma and discrimination in the healthcare sector.
Post-Exposure Prophylaxis interventions continue to be provided to victims of
sexual violence.
• Sonke Gender Justice’s Community Education and Mobilisation unit, a
•
108
nongovernmental organisation initiative, works closely with men and women
from all walks of life, and in numerous communities across South Africa’s
nine provinces, to address gender inequality, gender-based violence and the
spread and impact of HIV and AIDS. The campaigns aim to inspire community
activism, and encourage community members to form community action
teams.
The One Man Can Campaign, which encourages men aged 15–30 to become
actively involved in advocating for gender equality, preventing gender-based
violence and responding to HIV and AIDS.
LEARNING UNIT 5: Women, gender and development
• The Brothers for Life Campaign which engages men aged 30-50 in order
•
•
•
•
•
to address the risks associated with having multiple and concurrent sexual
partnerships, men’s limited involvement in fatherhood, lack of knowledge of
HIV status by many, and insufficient health seeking behaviours in general.
Women in Partnership Against Aids and Men in Partnership Against Aids;
Programmes targeting high transmission areas such as commercial sex
workers. In this programme, peer educators address and educate women
about prevention of HIV and other STIs, the use of male and female condoms,
sexual and reproductive health and distribution of condoms; HIV prevention
programmes for young girls aged 15–24, where they are taught health education
and skills to protect them from contracting HIV.
The Love-Life Campaign, funded by the DOH, assists with prevention of
HIV transmission amongst the youth.
Ground breakers programmes targeted at young girls where they
are educated on sexual and reproductive health.
The Youth festivals and First-Things-First initiative at universities and
higher education institutions educate students on the prevention of HIV and
access to ARV treatment for HIV infected studnts.
The Khomanani Campaign, an outreach programme which provides
information and educational programmes that have extended their prevention
initiatives to focus on school leavers and young adults, implemented through
well trained volunteers, who interact face-to-face with residents.
It should be noted though that the government has certainly made efforts to
respond to the CEDAW Committee’s Concluding Recommendations with regard
to equality of access to healthcare. However, several challenges and obstacles
continue to bedevil these efforts as pointed out in parts of this report. Some
of these challenges surround general systemic issues such as lack of funding,
ineffective implementation, poor resource allocation and resource management,
as well as lack of capacity and skills, negative attitudes of healthcare workers,
prejudice and stereotypes towards people with HIV/AIDS or other health
conditions - including prejudicial and discriminatory practices towards women’s
sexual and reproductive health rights, which often fuel the scourge of violence
against women (CGE 2020).
5.6
CONCLUSION
In this unit we have looked at issues of inequality facing women in developing
countries. We have attempted to explain concepts such as gender equality, genderbased violence, women’s empowerment, the Sustainable Goals and institutions that
focus on the promotion of gender equality. We have also explained why we focus
on women and discussed the different approaches that have influenced our ideas on
women and development. The activities in the learning unit were intended to help
you interact with the text and relate it to your own experiences.
DVA1502/1109

5.7
OUTCOMES CHECKLIST
Question
110
(1)
efine concepts such as gender equality
D
and women’s empowerment.
(2)
xplain the different approaches used to
E
deal with women’s issues.
(3)
nalyse the impact of the role of
A
government institutions in promoting
gender equality.
(4)
pply concepts used to deal with women’s
A
issues to selected case studies on
women’s issues such as gender-based
violence (GVB) and HIV and AIDS.
Can do
Cannot do
6
LEARNING UNIT 6
6
Culture and development
OUTCOMES
Once you have completed this learning unit, you should be able to
• discuss the role of culture in development
• discuss the relationship between African cultures and Euro-American cultures
• analyse between general culture, institutional settings and development
• understand the role of traditional leadership in culture
6.1
INTRODUCTION
In this learning unit we will introduce you to the concept of culture. You will see
the complexity in the relationship between culture and development. One may ask,
why does development need culture? Culture nourishes development. Development
fosters culture, which in turn leads to development. There is a generally accepted
notion which says development should be anchored in a people’s culture, rather
than be antagonistic to it (Hosagrahar & Albernaz 2011). However, much as the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO 2005)
shares this view, particularly in Articles 13 and 14 of the Convention on the Protection and
Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the role of culture in development has
largely been a pie in the sky. Hence, to this day culture is still central to discussions
about development.
This is partly because of the complexities of the contestation over the conception of
the term “culture” – which, like culture itself, tends to change and reform itself to
adjust to the fast-changing socio-economic and political environment. Mainly two
schools of thought have emerged from the debate about the conception of culture
and its role in development.
On the one hand there are those scholars who argue that culture should be seen
as an ongoing political process and as a hybridity of multiple cultural and social
interactions, and not as something hostage to, and frozen in the past. Based on this
argument, this group advocates for cosmopolitanism.
On the other hand, there are the scholars who are emerging particularly from the
post-colonial theoretical perspective. These scholars maintain that culture is rooted
in the past and argue that African cultures have been interrupted and erased by
colonialism and that, as a result thereof, African cultures are now dominated by
Western cultures. One of the examples these scholars use is that, notwithstanding
the fact that the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that 80% of the
population in Africa use traditional medicine (Traditional Medicine Strategy 20022005, cited in Richter 2003:10) and those traditional healers consistently provide
health services for the majority of rural communities in sub-Saharan Africa, they
(traditional healers) remain largely excluded from mainstream health discourses and
DVA1502/1111

practices. Some of these scholars argue for the restoration of African cultures and
further argue that cosmopolitanism favours Western culture.
Powerful cultures tend to dominate over the weaker ones at all levels of human
existence (at the global, regional, national and community levels, and within
marginalised cultures themselves). For example, at a global level Euro-American
modernity is the dominant form of modernity (Mbakogu 2004).
So, not only is there an absence of one single definition of culture and its continually
changing forms and various contending schools of thought on the issue – the discourse
is further complicated if development is thrown into the picture. In this study unit
we will introduce you to a post-colonial interpretation of culture which, as mentioned
earlier, argues that Western culture dominates the development discourse. It must,
however, also be noted that the postcolonial interpretation of culture and its relation
to development is not sacrosanct, as it also has its own challenges and contradictions.
The bad history of development practice, particularly in Africa, points to continued
failure by governments to lift millions out of poverty, and declining life expectancy
and quality of life. These challenges are caused by a number of factors, both internal
(in Africa) and external (global), and further point to the real crisis the current global
development trajectory finds itself in, and its desperate search for alternatives. In
this learning unit, we will be looking at one such alternative: that is, how “local”
culture/s should inform the development of the peoples around the world.
While cultures – particularly those of non-Western origins – were once viewed as
constraints or limitations to modernisation and development (Brennan, Flint &
Luloff 2008:98), by the late 20th century desperate searches for alternative solutions
to development challenges had begun to appreciate the significance of culture in
development. The recognition and appreciation of culture as a catalyst for development
was marked on several occasions starting in 1973, when EUROCULT, the regional
Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies in Europe, organised in Helsinki
by UNESCO, proposed a redefinition of “culture”. The homologous Cultural Policies
Conferences that followed for Asia (Yogyakarta), for Africa (Accra) in 1975, and for
Latin America (Bogota) in 1978, each made a bid to place development within a
wider cultural context, beyond the economic sphere.
It is thus on the basis of the search for development in or through culture, that
this learning unit will explore the concept of culture and how it (culture) relates to
development. Among some of the key questions we will address are the following:
What is culture? Does culture have any significance for development? What
opportunities and challenges does culture pose in the context of development?
In this learning unit we make use of Ifeyinwa Annastasia Mbakogu’s article entitled
“Is there really a relationship between culture and development?” which appeared
in the journal Anthropologist in 2004. You should read each section of the article as
it is introduced and then do the activity that follows.
6.2
DEFINITION OF CULTURE
The word “culture” means many different things to different people, making it very
difficult to define in one sentence. For some, culture is derived from music, dance,
arts and film, while for others, it is derived more from traditional value systems,
local attitudes and behaviour. (Mbakogu: 2004).
112
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
Tylor (1958:1) defines culture as that complex whole which includes knowledge,
belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by
man as a member of society.
Culture consists of ideas, norms and material dimensions. Brennan et al. (2008:98)
argue that ideas include the values, knowledge and experiences held by a culture.
They further advance the idea that values are shared ideas and beliefs about what is
morally right or wrong, or what is culturally desirable.
Williams (1970, quoted in Brennan et al. 2008) further states that culture is a living
thing and consists of elements of the past, outside influences and new, locally
developed elements.
From all of the above, we can conclude that culture is defined by the environment
and/ or space, and society or community within which people find themselves. In
the South African context for example, the concept “ubuntu” is a cultural concept
which defines how African people should relate to one another (Broodryk 2006:2).
Reading box 6.1 shows how art and culture are inseparable. It briefly illustrates how
art is an important element of culture and how it contributes to development.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 6.1
Carefully read reading box 6.2 below. Explain why art is important for development.
DVA1502/1113

READING BOX 6.1
Culture and development
Source: UNESCO (2010b)
114
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
READING BOX 6.2
Art, culture and development
DVA1502/1115

Source: Milbrath and Lightfoot (2010)
The 1982 the World Conference on Cultural Policies in Mexico (MONDIACULT)
expanded UNESCO’s operational conception of culture from an essentially
humanistic paradigm to embrace “… the whole complex of distinctive spiritual,
material, intellectual and emotional features that characterise a society or social
group” (Hosagrahar & Albernaz 2011:17). It includes not only the arts and letters,
but also modes of life, the fundamental rights of the human being, value systems,
traditions and beliefs.
116
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
READING BOX 6.3
Mbakogu
INTRODUCTION
The focus of this paper should expectedly arouse diverse perceptions or
expectations for equally diverse individuals due to its universal appeal in a world
in constant search for new ingredients for sustainable growth and development.
However, it must be emphasised that the paper is not intended to provide
a network of definitions on what culture and development are or are not. The
major intentions are: providing simplified definitions of ‘culture’ and ‘development’;
discussing some issues that could have accounted for the gradual disintegration
of our cultural heritage; assessing the culture-development relationship; and
seeking avenues for nurturing that relationship.
THE CULTURAL REALM
Culture is a term that should connote different things to different individuals.
As such, often, people trivialize the limitless scope of the term with definitions
of culture as simply music, singing and dancing. To them, the goal of culture
is nothing but entertainment (Ayoade, 1989:5). If this is not the goal of culture,
what then is culture?
Most definitions of culture, describe it, as the way of life of a certain group of
people in a particular society for instance, the nomadic Fulani should possess
similarities in language (Irish and Prothro, 1965:19; Ukeje, 1992:395; Shoremi,
1999:94). Ukeje (1992) added that culture is the totality of a people’s way of life
as deduced from material and non-material aspects of their life such as clothing,
values, beliefs, thoughts, feelings and customs. This should include traits imbibed
by all healthy individuals in the course of growing in a specific society. Andah
(1982:4–5) presented a more embracing definition: Culture embraces all the
material and nonmaterial expressions of a people as well as the processes with
which the expressions are communicated. It has to do with all the social, ethical,
intellectual, scientific, artistic, and technological expressions and processes of
a people usually ethnically and/or nationally or supra-nationally related, and
usually living in a geographically contiguous area; what they pass on to their
successors and how these are passed on. Culture could therefore depict glaring
similarities between people within the same territorial space that fosters a feeling
of oneness that they would wish to preserve for future generations.
In addition, Shoremi (1999:94) is of the view that “… any culture is a set of
techniques for adjusting both to the external environment and to other men …
cultures produce needs as well as provide a means of fulfilling them.” In essence,
an individual born into a society would through social interaction, unconsciously
imbibe certain traits that could build up personality or act as boosters for adjusting
in that society. Some other researchers (Oyeneye and Shoremi, 1985:3) also
highlighted certain features of culture as:
DVA1502/1117

• Culture is shared by members of a society;
• Culture is not genetically transmitted;
• It is historically derived and … transmitted from one generation to another;
• Culture is created … through the process of adjustment to the social setting;
• Culture is universal – found in every human society;
• Culture is dynamic.
In summary, culture is a network of traits that could be learned, based on
interaction or derived from history. Whatever culture is, it definitely regulates
our lives by unconsciously shaping our attitudes, values, goals, behaviour or
personality. From all indications, man is definitely nothing without culture. Little
wonder that Dabaghian (1970:103) stressed “… the pride of any society lies
in its culture since no society in the world could be considered great without
reference to its tradition and culture.”
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 6.2
In your notebook, write down your response to the following questions:
• How would you define culture?
• List at least six characteristics of the word “culture
• Write a paragraph in which you mention specific cultural practices that are
viewed as important by your community. Then explain how you think the cultural
practices identified relate to development in the community.
18
FEEDBACK
Reading Box 6.3 Mbakogu, 2004.
6.3
EVADING CULTURE IN AFRICA
In the extract below, Mbakogu (2004) demonstrates in broad global terms how
African and European cultures are different and how, very often, powerful cultures
dominate other weaker cultures. In this particular case the author shows how
European culture managed, through colonialism, to dominate African cultures
and make them obsolete. Furthermore, Mbakogu demonstrates how the European
culture also dominates and dictates what is considered as development:
118
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
READING BOX 6.4
Africa: our culture, the way we were and the evasion
AFRICA: OUR CULTURE, THE WAY WE WERE AND THE EVASION
The African society had prescribed ways of educating their young ones before the
colonial period. Such education could be through art forms, music, artisanship,
and initiation camps for maidens and young men. There was also the role of
oral tradition in passing our cultural heritage to emergent generations through
legends or folklores.
During the colonial era, our traditional culture and values were seriously
threatened. This could be because of dividing the African territories without regard
for the traditions, languages and values of these African people. Sometimes,
African subjects were forced to imbibe the cultures of their colonial masters.
And with the introduction of western education and ideas, our cultural heritage
slowly filtered away. In extreme cases, Gbotokoma (1996:21) reported “… the
colonialists categorically denied the existence of African cultural values and
worse still, taught the Africans themselves to despise them”.
Cultural disintegration: The African perspective
Cultural disintegration in Africa could be attributed to internal and external
factors, which include wars, conquests, the slave trade, migrations, contact
with Europeans and colonialism, urban overcrowding and industrialization. An
important aspect of contact with the western world was the creation of a vacuum
in the colonized people that derided a proper fusion or blend of cultures that
would have created a balanced reintegration.
Cultural disintegration could be explained as that destabilization instituted when
cultural changes go beyond the control of the people in the affected society.
We have historical instances of such cultural disintegration in the Ancient Mali,
Songhai and Egyptian empires. In fact, it is evident from history that dominant
cultural systems in Africa were irreparably torn apart to create room for the
exploitative western rule. This disintegration of political set-ups, made them
easily malleable. This could be likened to the reckless disruption of sculptures
in the 16th century in the cover of Christianity and fight against fetish practices.
This wanton destruction persisted until the beginning of the 20th century.
One may need to ponder on Gbotokuma’s (1996:23) stance that if Africa has been
weighed down by 400 years of exploitation, alienation, cultural and economic
dismantlement, the white man’s recent deliberate political absolution of his
conquests by renouncing colonialism, does not change anything.
What is cultural dynamics?
All countries are prone to a tendency towards either stability or change “…
because the individuals in the society or the ‘cultural architects’ constantly
modify their cultural plans, improve and adapt their behaviour to the caprices and
exigencies of their physical, social and ideological milieu.” What may however
remain a puzzle, is ascertaining in what ways, at what periods, for what reason
and where cultural elements are included, lost, replaced or blended.
DVA1502/1119

It may be deduced that stability and change could be positive and negative
factors in cultural dynamics. More importantly, cultural dynamics could breed
negative changes that result in cultural dearth.
The realm of development
Olutayo (1985:200) explained that Nigeria adopted and has since practiced a
model of development entrenched on the modernization theory. The modernization
theory traces the root of Nigeria’s underdevelopment to absence of technology
and incomplete disentanglement from primitive modes of life.
To correct this situation, the modernization theory holds that a state of development
can be reached through a transfer of technological ideas, institutions, attitudes,
values and cultures to the undeveloped nations. More specifically, Osagie
expressed the opinion of psychologists and sociologists that a transfer of modern
attitudes reduces the presence of “absurd” traditional attitude and fosters an
atmosphere for growth in western markets on which rests “the wealth of nations.”
In essence, such “free trade” visualised by the researcher, is an “osmotic”
relationship whose benefits could only be reaped by the toughest countries. For
Olutayo (1985), the implication is “Europeanization,” in which Europe is perceived
as having the “higher” culture which the “lower” culture of the undeveloped nations
needs to develop. If this “higher” culture is rightly imbibed, the undeveloped
nations will, ultimately develop. In essence, undeveloped nations would need
to imbibe the higher culture of the west to develop. This corresponds with
Dabagan’s (1970) summation of acculturation: “when an individual goes from
one culture to another, he gradually superimposes the way of life of the second
culture on top of the first. In some ways, he is still a member of the culture in
which he is born, but in many ways, he has become a member of the culture in
which he now lives.” However, this does not explain whether there is a limit to
acculturation or what may be called the better brew. What if more of the alien
culture is consumed and almost nothing of the host culture is left. What then is
the benefit of acculturation?
Based on the preceding discussions, what then is development?
First, Osagie (1985:129) visualized “development” as multi-faceted with its cognate
notions and Victorian terms of “growth” and “progress” respectively. Also, when
the term development is mentioned, there is a tendency for economists to dwell
on the indices of Gross National Productivity, increasing productivity, developing
technology in the bid to increase productivity based on the conception that
development is the route to economic growth. Similarly, Osagie (1985) presented
an encompassing definition of development thus:
Development however, is a more inconclusive concept with its social,
political and economic facets. It is the qualitative and quantitative positive
transformation of the lives of a people that does not only enhance their
material well-being but also ensures their social wellbeing, including the
restoration of human dignity.
120
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
The assertion is that development is a warm, gradual and considerate process in
its attempt to alleviate man’s economic and technological standard or conditions
without disregarding or disrespecting any aspect of man’s existing social, cultural
and political values. This implies that development does not bring only ill tidings
after all, with colonization; Africans were introduced to a new religion, education,
technology and industry. The important thing is that we should learn to filter the
good from the bad to mature into self-reliant and actualised individuals. In other
words, development cannot be divulged from man’s culture, for culture makes
a man and man cannot be developed in a vacuum.
Cultural dominance: How deep-seated in Africa?
What really is the cultural dominance of the West? The cultural domination of
the West is entrenched in imbibing the western way of life and thus making
our political, economic and development aspirations conform to this alien way
of life. Very often, we wonder why certain tourism, trade, and technological
ideas implemented by our leadership go wrong. Not surprisingly, such should
be the fate of projects fashioned strictly within the western way of thinking thus
disregarding our cultural heritage.
It can never be said that there has been cultural exchange between the
economically and politically strong western and African countries. Notions of
exchanges are mere myths.
One may also point out that news on Africa and about African people published
in the western press are written by westerners and without doubt, are prone
to diluted accounts of Africans through the eyes of the west. There is also,
absentminded transfer of some technologies that deride the essence of our
cultural heritage. As Professor Joseph Ki Zerbo cited in Gbotokoma (1996:22)
stressed, “… no technical object is culturally neutral, in the sense that it carries
with it the stamp of the society in which it was conceived. Every manufactured
product is an ambassador of a certain culture, while the raw materials and finished
products exported by Africa carry no social or cultural message.” A deplorable
situation indeed – when considered in the light of the vibrant cultural, social and
moral values of the African heritage. Maybe what Africans need is a cultural
reorientation targeted at sieving that which will always radiate the beauty of
our Africanness to create a balance between modern and traditional outlooks
After colonization
At the end of the colonial period and the acquisition of political independence,
what do we as Africans have to show for this period of forced bondage? Nothing!
Nothing but an inability to govern ourselves, resuscitate or protect those cultural
values that were laid to sleep during the colonial period. In fact, the new breed
of Africans is more concerned with passionately accusing the colonialists of
contributing to a derision of our cultural values. But are we being completely
true to ourselves? For how do we explain the rampant sale, disappearance or
importation of Africa’s priceless works of art.
At the same time, we should also be accused of been willing recipients of western
cultures without making concerted efforts to project our African heritage as
attractive and unique enough to be assimilated or emulated by others. In reality,
our world is gradually moving to a time when exchanges should be promoted
because no nation should be completely satisfied with reclining in an arm-chair
waiting to savour what others have to offer.
DVA1502/1121

Effects of cultural disintegration
Major effects of colonial domination and eventually cultural disintegration in
Africa could be the biting problems of industrialization and congestion in Africa.
With technological advancement, there has been an exodus of young people
from rural to urban areas in search of white-collar jobs. Thus, the alien traits of
depersonalization and deculturisation were introduced (Gbotokuma, 1996:20).
Before this, life in the African traditional setting was never without a feeling of
oneness – because there were laws; family values and community assistance
schemes that ensure the helpless are never left despondent. In the urban setting,
man is alone, only responsible to his immediate family, uncaring of his moral and
cultural values. Not surprisingly, an abandonment of the restrictive strength of
cultural behaviour evident in mode of dressing, respect for parents and elders,
opened the gate to the negative urban traits of crime, unemployment, alcoholism,
debauchery and divorce. Similarly, Agbaje (1989:46–47) described colonialism
as a disruptive force that tried to replace long- tested traditional cultural practices
with socio-political and economic policies that had been developed and tested
in Europe.
For Agbaje, when the traditional checks and balances for governance and
social responsibility have fallen short, cases of abuse of office and inappropriate
behaviour would be aggravated. More importantly, colonialism put on hold cultural
pluralism and moved to disrupt the essence of our African unity by creating
conflict among erstwhile peaceful groups, breeding the monster called tribalism
which Davidson (1991:16) described as a major raison d’être, instrument and
facilitator of corruption in the post-colonial era.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 6.3
In a page, show your understanding of
• the African perspective of cultural disintegration and cultural dynamics
• the Nigerian experience, by explaining the link between culture and development
•
•
19
from a modernisation perspective
the link between culture and development as argued by Mbakogu (2004)
whether you personally feel that your own culture has disintegrated (substantiate
your argument)
FEEDBACK
Section 6.3
6.4
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CULTURE AND
DEVELOPMENT
In the reading box below Mbakogu (2004) exposes the absence of cultural diversity
in development. In particular, the author highlights how modernisation – meaning
progress or improvement – tends to mean Westernisation (adopting Western ways of
doing) rather than being based on people’s own cultures. It is against this background,
together with the persistence of poverty and the need for peace, that UNESCO
(2005) stresses the importance of the connection between culture and development.
122
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
The importance of the relationship between culture and development is therefore
born from an understanding that no developmental initiative can be successful if it
does not have its roots in a people’s culture.
READING BOX 6.5
UNESCO’s stance, international conferences, fostering the culturedevelopment relationship, and seeking desirable remedies
For a clearer understanding of the culture-development relationship, there
is a need to briefly assess the activities and stance of the United Nations
Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) on the issue. The
organization (UNESCO) has from inception, stressed the connection between
culture and development. This is emphasised in its mission of “advancing
through the educational, scientific and cultural relations of the peoples of the
world, the objectives of peace and the common welfare of mankind.” Culture
became increasingly important in the 1960s or postcolonial era with the evident
deficiencies to cultural diversity in the currently adopted development model.
The liberated people had become aware of mode of existence and persistently
challenged the notion that modernization had to mean westernisation – rather
than being based on their own tradition. In response, in 1966, the UNESCO
General Conference in Article1 of the Declaration stated that “each culture has
a dignity and value which must be respected and preserved” and that “every
people have the right and the duty to develop its culture.”
• The Intergovernmental Conference on the Administrative and Financial
aspects of Cultural Policies was held in Venice in 1970 and spearheaded
the process of introducing culture to the heart of policy making agenda.
The hallmark of this conference, was Rene Maheu, then UNESCO DirectorGeneral’s message to the world:
“Man is the means and the end of development; he is not the one-dimensional
abstraction of homo economicus, but a living reality, a human person, in the
infinite variety of his needs, his potentials and his aspirations … in the concept
of development the centre of gravity has thus shifted from the economic to
the social, and we have reached a point where this shift begins to approach
the cultural”.
• Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies in Europe was held in
•
•
Helsinki in 1972 and the major observation was that any growth that is based
solely on the economic aspects of life, is definitely maladjusted or out of
touch with the environment.
Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies in Asia was held in
Yogyakarta in1973 and advised member States to formulate their economic
and social objectives within a cultural framework for healthy societal growth.
Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies in Africa was held in Accra
in 1975 and stressed that cultural development is boosted when cultural
authenticity and technical progress continually complement each other. It is my
perception that based on the meeting, the Festac 77’ Festival was organised
probably to collectively display the uniqueness of the African culture. But the
whole idea was merely a waste of resources for the host country, Nigeria and
like all projects initiated by Africans, there was a lack of continuity.
DVA1502/1123

• Intergovernmental Conference on Cultural Policies on Latin America and
•
the Caribbean was held in Bogotá in 1978 and emphasised that cultural
development should be targeted towards alienating the living conditions or
life of individuals (sic).
The World Conference on Cultural Policies (MONDIACULT) was held in
Mexico City in 1982 and came up with the unique definition that links culture
to development: “Culture … is … the whole complex of distinctive spiritual,
material, intellectual and emotional features that characterise a society or
social group. It includes not only arts and letters, but also modes of life, the
fundamental rights of the human being, value systems, traditions and beliefs.”
To further fulfil the objective of making cultural factors the focal point of all
strategies for development, the World Decade for Cultural Development was
initiated and spanned from 1988 to 1997. Within those ten years, UNESCO,
earmarked four key objectives:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
(iv)
Acknowledging the cultural dimension of development;
Affirming and enriching cultural identities;
Broadening participation in cultural life; and
Promoting international cultural cooperation.
Within that decade, projects exceeding 1,200 were launched in almost every
country worldwide (sic). And more recently, the intergovernmental Conference
on Cultural Policies for Development came up with an action plan on cultural
policies for development and identified some crucial principles for development.
It must be emphasised that man’s development is enhanced when man is both
socially and culturally fulfilled.
Fostering the culture–development relationship
Yes, for me, there is a relationship between culture and development! For it
would be unreasonable to think that any development task would be successful
if it does not have roots in a people’s culture. There is also the belief that culture
is one basic assessment of whether a society is either developing slowly or
rapidly. Undoubtedly, no society exists in a vacuum, as such, existing cultural
patterns of the people will determine whether and to what extent that society
welcomes or rebuffs change.
In support of these assertions, Isamah (1996:31) reported that, “Numerous
studies of anthropologists have shown that the traditional values of a people are
closely related to the pace with which such people accept or reject the demands
of modern industrial or commercial operations.”
While Morris (1976:15), cautioned that change “does not necessarily involve
instability, and provided change is gradual and innovations are steadily tested
and absorbed, the stability of society and all its institutions is not seriously
affected.” In other words, any agent or advocate of change should be judicious
enough to assess changing situations within the society, assess that change
and adjust to it if it is relevant to that society’s development.
124
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
More so, how do we contemplate a mission of development when we are
still weighed down by the shackles of ignorance, insufficient exposure and
incompetent leadership? We are in a world where we are born free yet find
it so difficult to express that which is the soul of our existence – that which
categorises us as belonging to a certain race, colour or language unit. When we
talk about liberation what immediately comes to mind are the economic, social
and political aspects of the term. Little regard is placed on cultural liberation.
Yet culture has daily played an invisible role in determining our customs, values,
morals and growth in the society. If we truly aspire freedom from the shackles of
underdevelopment, there is also an urgent need to break away from the confines
of western cultural systems evident in our dressing, language, music, artwork,
attitude to innovations and search for that which made us proud to be Africans
before colonization.
For the liberation process to be triggered off, one should address the ugly trend
that makes western countries inventors of cultural and technological initiatives
that are ultimately consumed by African countries. A major step in addressing the
issue of an African cultural policy is commissioning professionals in the area of
conservation of our African heritage to present an inventory of our works of art,
art forms, folk history or oral tradition and practices. Such documentation should
take into account the element of cultural contamination caused by mingling with
people from diverse cultures or ways of life.
It is a puzzle why research for the revitalization of our African heritage is
restricted to intellectual workings. There is a need to awaken an interest in
those countries calling for a cultural revolution to assist in suggesting strategies
for packaging these cultural ideas to be shared with other continents. There is
also the language problem. To understand a people adequately, one should
understand their language.
With this in mind, the colonialists started a process of destabilising African heritage
by imposing not only their languages but also their culture on the colonised. The
crux of the matter is simple – the earlier Africans began emphasising the use
of their national languages as official languages rather than the English, French
or Portuguese languages of their colonial masters, the soul of many Africans
will never be truly African (sic). In my view, it really is a sad situation where
many African children can neither speak nor understand a word of their native
languages. Some may consider it an aspiration to glamour or modernization
but I consider it an outright betrayal and disregard for that which our ancestors
handed down to us. The language issue may pose adjustment problems with
the elimination of already familiar and functional colonial languages. However,
a gradual process is required and strategies should be formulated by which
prominent African languages are made appealing via press, radio, literary
publications, films and other publicity gimmicks.
The key intent is a projection of our cultural values, ideals and unique identity.
Quite often, it bothers me that we, as Africans with specific reference to Nigerians,
do not know much about preserving, revitalizing and saving our rich cultural
heritage. If we do, then how do we explain why our continent’s rich tourist
attractions have been inadequately managed despite their huge economic,
social, cultural, scientific, educational and ethical potentials? There is a need
to formulate attractive strategies to promote interest and awareness among
international tourists, regional travels and even local inhabitants about a nation’s
cultural heritage.
DVA1502/1125

For instance, UNESCO, with the assistance of Member States, the World Tourism
Organization, UNDP, NGOs and the World Bank, tour operators, museum experts,
are interested in contributing to and tackling the tourism-culture challenge.
A useful strategy proffered by UNESCO (2000), could be “influencing tourist
projects and policies through research, training and awareness-raising activities,
the setting up of networks and the implementation of pilot projects, and also to
clarify choices for decision makers, sensitise the general public and promote
culture as a factor of peace and development.”
When properly managed, culture could be an important vehicle for intercultural
exchanges and sustainable development. It would be imperative to always
remember that Africa is a community-oriented community. Thus, the community
moulds and nurtures an individual’s personality. As such, all-new orientations
toward development for Africa must be community focussed. From the foregone,
it can be deduced that contact with and acquisition of western ideas have
contributed to Africa’s cultural identity crisis. Not surprisingly, a continent that
so haplessly neglects its own development paradigms to welcome alien outlooks
will experience such progressive disintegration that only judiciously applied
medication and therapy can repair. Nevertheless, some may argue whether
Africa would ordinarily have had a faster development without the destabilizing
interference of western colonisation.
Seeking desirable remedies
A leadership interested in the technological, political and economic advancement
or development of its nation should never disregard the role of culture. A nation
consciously or unconsciously allowing for a deriding of its cultural identity would
ultimately lose some of the respect it would have received from the outside
world. Implausibly, the western world has immense respect for the cultural
heritage, values and ideals of the African nations. If not, how do we explain the
disappearance of our ancient and priceless works of arts to foreign museums
and persuasive art collectors. For once, we need to be true to ourselves. We
as Africans are the ones more interested in imbibing all that is western. This is
evident in our quest for western clothing, ideals and values thereby causing all
that our ancestors handed down from one generation to the next to experience
a slow dearth (sic).
In addition, a search for and protection of our cultural heritage is the start point
of any meaningful attempt at African cultural liberation and development. An
African development that should begin with an identification of Africa’s condition
as well as solutions for correcting these conditions, formulated by Africans for
Africans. It must also be enunciated that for as long as Africans remain armchair
recipients of western cultures, without learning to do things targeted at their
awakening, the development challenge will persistently remain an illusion.
Source: Mbakogu (2004)
6.4.1
Western culture and domination in South Africa
Now read the brief piece below by Peter Stewart, about culture in South Africa
today. This passage brings the concerns of this unit into the cultural practicalities
of the current day, and argues that there are many different cultural groupings
and practices in South Africa, and that many of these practices can aid the kind
of development that will address the needs of the masses. By reading this passage
together with Mbakogu’s arguments, we hope to engage you in a vibrant debate
about the relevance of culture in development in Africa today.
126
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
READING BOX 6.6
South Africa’s cultures after colonialism, imperialism and apartheid
Westernisation and tradition in South Africa
Throughout history cultures have changed, mixed and have been reinvented.
People attempt to create cultures that address their needs of survival, meaning
and flourishing. At the same time, dominant elites attempt to spread and impose
cultures which advance the interests of these elites. In the South African context,
the white and business elites of colonial and apartheid times have continued to
form culture after 1994. New elites also shape culture. Global capitalist forces,
such as multinational corporations, foster consumerist culture; new black political
and business elites encourage a culture of nationalism, development and wealth
accumulation. In general, South African culture is more dominated by Western
cultural forms than other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, perhaps with the
exception of Angola.
Language groups indicate one level of culture. Most South Africans speak African
languages at home. The use of African languages carries and adapts aspects
of traditional culture and the black experience of imperialism, colonialism and
apartheid. English, which is an excellent means of linking to global cultures, is
also a language of old and new elites and of middle classes. The speakers of
English and Afrikaans at home (including white, Indian and coloured people and
by 2012, 1.5 million Africans) are people who are at this level separated from
African tradition.
Despite colonial and post-colonial contempt for indigenous traditional cultural
forms, there are large numbers of people in South Africa who, in addition to
using an African language at home, use a traditional healer and practice lobola
in marriage arrangements. In the face of several centuries of Western cultural
domination, this shows significant cultural resilience. Yet this use of tradition is
mixed with Western forms of education, dress and religion, and these practices
often coexist with more or less Africanised Christianity. For example, the Zionist
churches and African Pentecostal churches strongly influence the culture of many
of their members – the Zionists towards affirming tradition in their practices,
while the Pentecostals guide members to move away from certain traditions. In
this way, almost all culture in South Africa is mixed and “hybrid”.
Culture and development in South Africa
Amid this variety of cultural forces, which are resources for national development,
what kind of development do they favour?
What can we expect from elite culture? On the positive side, the middle class
and elite pursuit of education and their confidence with technologies provide a
resource for the more technical and “expert” sides of building a better society
and economy. But cultures of greed, accumulation and exclusion found in the
white elite and, in a modified form, in the new black business and government
elites may assist in unequal capitalist growth.
The often-suffering culture of the black masses in townships and rural areas
is numerically the main culture in South Africa. At the same time, it is often
dominated by the global, elite and government culture that surrounds it.
DVA1502/1127

This culture provides a resource for people-centered development in a number
of ways: in the thousands of service delivery protests, ordinary people are
demanding a voice; in family sharing of resources and other coping strategies;
in informal enterprise; and in the safety and confidence provided by religious
groups supported by township families.
Yet the culture of the masses also reflects the damage of past dispossession and
humiliation and of being largely excluded from the benefits of capitalist growth
and the rise of the new black middle classes. A significant proportion of people
show a fractured and conflictual culture, in practices of crime, alcohol and drug
abuse, sexual violence and abusive parenting. For example, on the Cape flats
there is a strong (and problematic) gang culture, especially among unemployed
young males. In such fractured cultures are found some people who are angry
and frustrated with their life situation, and who then imitate the strategies of
superiority and domination they see around themselves. This can also be seen
in groups striving for social advancement by imitating the classes above them.
At the same time, the cultures of protest and newly-devised local economic
and social strategies come largely out of this fractured culture. Perhaps people
outside the safety of a coherent culture are better placed to clearly see – and
protest against – injustices.
A youth culture emphasizing building a life for oneself has taken different forms
in privileged and downtrodden groups, but through new forms of relationships,
social networking and music, and through youth wishing to shape their own lives
freely, youth culture provides an energy for finding solutions to social problems.
Linking elite and mass culture is a modernist nationalist culture associated
particularly with the ANC. This political culture, fed by the struggles of the 20th
century, by mission education, by decolonization in Africa, and by exile, is now
diffused in government and community activism, and mixed with other positive
and negative cultures.
In this way, in various sectors of South Africa, there are aspects of dominant,
hybrid and traditional culture that can assist in a project to address the needs
of the masses. Those parts of the different sub-cultures which show creativity,
initiative and a wish to contribute to society are likely to help with this. One
source of this creativity can be the sense of cultural lack and loss: this can be
the basis of resistance and of the creation of entirely new practices which serve
the needs of those without dignity or wealth.
In summary, in the cultures of South Africa, there are elements that will assist
in creatively addressing the needs of the masses. At the same time, there are
other aspects of culture which make this sort of development project very difficult
or impossible. The conflicting interests of groups and the damage inflicted by
the past create defensive and sometimes hostile sub-cultures. Further, some
groups have fractured cultures that are too violent, confused and soulless to even
support a fight for their own interests. If we are working towards giving people
flourishing and whole lives, clearly one need is to guide cultures and sub-cultures
to overcome their destructive, hateful, divisive and dominating elements. This
requires initiatives such as combating racism, affirming African traditional culture
and current constructive and nurturing parts of popular culture; it also requires
structural changes in the economy to reduce inequality in society and greatly
increase employment. It could therefore be argued that the damage caused
by colonialism, imperialism and apartheid, and caused by new forms of global
and local domination, must be addressed through constructing a new, locally
constructed modernity, rather than through re-traditionalisation.
128
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 6.4
Now that you have read both Stewart’s and Mbakogu’s arguments, write three or
four lines on each of the following issues:
• What is the significance of culture in development?
• What are the opportunities and challenges of culture in development?
• In what way can you say your culture influences development in your area?
• Do you think that African culture and development is dominated by Euro•
20
American culture or not?
Do you personally feel that your own culture is included or excluded in the
mainstream development discourse? Substantiate why you think so or not.
FEEDBACK
Reading boxes 6.4 and 6.5
6.5
TRADITIONAL LEADERS AND DEVELOPMENT
Traditional leaders are also a part of a larger system of leadership institutions.
Traditional leaders have been the only authorities at local level in many rural areas in
Africa including South Africa. As a result, social cohesion, stability and development
in rural areas depend largely on these leaders. As we shall see below, although the
various countries have different histories, there are some similarities and differences
in the role played by traditional leaders.
6.5.1
The role of traditional leaders in Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa spans many countries with diverse regions which also have
diverse cultures, languages and colonial experiences. There is sometimes a danger
of perceiving it as a homogenous grouping and a tendency to view the role of culture
and traditional leaders as uniform as well. As we shall see below, even among some
countries that form the Southern African Development Community (SADC),
traditional leaders play different roles.
6.5.1.1
Namibia
Although traditional leadership is recognised in the Namibian Constitution, the role
of traditional leadership diminished substantially after independence. As in other
African countries like Zimbabwe, the colonial powers used traditional leaders in
Namibia for their own purposes, to assist in the implementation of colonial policy
and the enforcement of colonial laws. As a result of this collaboration, the traditional
leaders lost much of their legitimacy with the people. The traditional rulers also did
not gain favour with the incoming liberators of the South West African People’s
Organisation (SWAPO) who assumed power upon independence in 1990. Traditional
leaders were marginalised and stripped of some of their powers and functions. For
instance, they lost their former criminal jurisdiction and could only try civil cases
based on customary law. They lost powers of detention and the tribal police were
disbanded (Rugege 1998).
DVA1502/1129

The Traditional Authorities Act, 1995 (Act 17 of 1995) set up traditional
authorities comprising traditional chiefs and their advisors, but it awarded them
no specific function to exercise powers accorded to them by customary law. The
new legislation, the (Traditional Authorities Act, 2000 (Act 25 of 2000), does not
substantially improve the position of traditional authorities. It restricts them largely
to cultural or traditional matters and to assisting government in maintaining law
and order. It gives them no specific role in development or service delivery. Section
3 of the Traditional Authorities Act, 2000 (Act 25 of 2000) requires traditional
authorities and their members to promote peace and welfare in the community and
to supervise and ensure the observance of the customary law of the community by
its members (Rugege 1998).
Traditional authorities are confined to assisting in the implementation of policies
and governmental programmes rather than being in charge of such programmes
themselves. Another factor that restricts Namibian traditional leaders to matters of a
traditional nature is that traditional leaders are denied the right to fill elected political
positions while holding the position of chief or head of a traditional community.
Traditional leaders are not prohibited from taking up political office, but once elected
to office such a traditional leader is considered to have taken leave of absence from
the office of chief or head of a traditional community. The traditional leader may
then no longer be accorded the status of chief or head of a traditional community
nor receive allowances payable to a chief or head of a community. Nevertheless,
nothing prohibits traditional leaders from being elected to local authority councils
and participating in decisions on development (Rugege 1998).
6.5.1.2
Zimbabwe
The 1979 Constitution of Zimbabwe provides for the recognition and appointment
of traditional leaders by the President giving due consideration to the customary
principles of succession of the tribal members over whom the chief will preside.
There is a National and a Provincial House of Traditional Leaders. The National
House of Traditional Leaders is entitled to have 10 of its members as part of the 150
members in the National Assembly. The Constitution also provides for a Council of
Chiefs elected by chiefs in communal land areas (rural areas excluding commercial
farming areas and rural towns). The Council of Chiefs has advisory powers only,
similar to the National House of Traditional Leaders in South Africa (Draft White
Paper on Traditional Leadership and Governance 2002:13).
In Zimbabwe the most important part of the Traditional Leaders Act isw the functions
and duties of traditional leaders under section 5. The first duty is the performance of
functions pertaining to the office of a chief as the traditional head of the community
under his jurisdiction. This has to do with functions under customary law and culture.
Another duty is the discharging of functions conferred to the chief in terms of the
Customary Law and Local Courts Act. A further important duty is overseeing the
collection of taxes, levies, rates and other charges by village heads payable under
the Rural District Councils Act. Chiefs also have an important role in ensuring
that communal land is properly allocated in accordance with the Communal Land
Act and ensuring that the requirements for occupation and use of land are observed
(Rugege 1998). The Zimbabwean traditional leaders are not specifically restricted in
terms of taking up political office while retaining their positions as traditional leaders.
This allows traditional leaders to participate in local and national government. As in
the case of Namibia, the position and role of traditional leaders in Zimbabwe is not
similar to those traditional authorities in South Africa who are demanding a greater
130
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
role for traditional leaders in local government, and especially for autonomy from
elected municipalities. Zimbabwean traditional leaders have been reduced to civil
servants, administrators and tax collectors, without meaningful authority in terms
of decision-making and implementation of development programmes and service
delivery (Rugege 1998).
6.5.1.3
eSwatini
ESwatini is a monarchy, with the system of government which is a democratic,
participatory, tinkhundla-based system. This system emphasises the devolution of
state power from central government to tinkhundla areas (administrative subdivisions
smaller than a district but larger than a chiefdom). It is established by the king on
the recommendation of the Elections and Boundaries Commission. The tinkhundla
system of governance heavily relies on the existence of traditional authorities, in
particular chiefs, for its perpetuation. The chiefs are responsible for local governance,
including the power to control the distribution of land on behalf of the king, which
they generally report to the king.
ESwatini is one of the countries on the African continent where post-partum sexual
abstinence is practiced (Shabangu & Madiba 2019). It is believed that the woman is
dirty during this time. Furthermore, they cannot have sexual intercourse with their
husbands or partners because it will have a negative impact on the growth of the
child, as it will, it is believed, dilute the breast milk; moreover, a woman must wait
six months before sexual intercourse can commence (Shabangu & Madiba 2019).
This kind of cultural practice indeed sabotages development and human rights as it
is characteristic of a patriarchal state.
6.5.1.4
South Africa
In South Africa, with the advent of the colonisation and racial segregation period,
the most important powers of traditional leaders were taken over by the colonial
state and later by the apartheid state, thereby weakening the role of traditional leaders
in governing the African people (Rugege 1998:13). For example, according to the
Commission on Provincial Government (1995:10), in the first half of the twentieth
century the powers of chiefs were reduced, the state instituted a hierarchy of elected
advisory councils alongside the colonial bureaucracy of magistrates and civil servants,
and the chiefs were thus deprived of their important administrative functions.
The Interim Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act No. 200 of 1993,
Section 182, gives recognition to traditional leaders, and states that traditional leaders
are chiefs and headmen appointed to rule in their area of jurisdiction (Department
of Constitutional Development, 1999). Traditional leaders ascend to the throne of
leadership either by appointment or by birth. Prior to 1995 and 1996, when the first
democratic local municipalities were put in place, chiefs and headmen were responsible
for addressing developmental issues in their respective areas of jurisdiction (Botes,
Brynard, Fourie & Roux 1996:166).
The implication is that the powers of traditional leaders were reduced by the colonial
and racial segregation states. Traditional leaders no longer enjoyed the powers they
had over their tribal members. The only authority that traditional leaders still had
pertained to moral values, the other important administrative powers and functions
DVA1502/1131

were under the control of the state. However, the South African government later
recognised the traditional leaders in the communities under tribal authorities.
The power to appoint traditional leaders, which power was vested in the supreme
chieftaincy, was assigned to the Governor-General by the Black Administration
Act, 1927 (Act 110 of 1927). According to Rugege (2001:13) before the 1994 nonracial democratic elections in South Africa, local government was not operational
in the rural areas. Traditional leaders had authority over their areas of jurisdiction
in terms of the erstwhile Black Authorities Act, 1957 (Act 110 of 1957). The control
of rural communities was left in the hands of traditional leaders. Traditional leaders
were in charge of tribal authorities and powers were given to these tribal authorities
to control the black population.
The powers that traditional leaders possessed in terms of the Black Administration
Act were later re-assigned to the President of South Africa in 1961 and then to the
homeland governments upon attaining their self-governing status, and to the Transkei,
Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei states, upon attaining independence. Outside the
former self-governing territories and independent TBVC states the South African
President still appointed traditional leaders (Rugege 1998:14).
During the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) in 1992, the role of
the institution of traditional leaders in a democratic South Africa was discussed with
a view to defining its role after a democratically elected government in South Africa.
In a discussion paper prepared by Botha and Tandy, presented to the Convention for
a Democratic South Africa, on the re-incorporation of the Transkei, Bophuthatswana,
Venda and Ciskei (TBVC) they state the following comprehensive duties of tribal
authorities (Shabangu 2008):
• the maintenance of roads bridges and dams;
• the organisation and promotion of agricultural activities, for example the control
•
•
•
•
•
of grazing and arable land;
the establishment of agricultural co-operatives as well as the purchasing of stud
stock for use by villagers;
the promotion of education by means of erecting and maintaining school buildings
and granting bursaries and loans to students;
the improvement of the economic and social life of the people through measures
such as the screening of applications for old age pensions, other social benefits,
and business premises;
the preservation of law and order, including powers for settling minor disputes; and
the allocation of arable grazing and residential land by the chief to his subjects.
Section 211(2) of the Constitution regards traditional authorities as the primary
agents of development. The reason is, they are seen as the representatives of
the community and as such are entrusted with an important responsibility namely
of harmonizing community customs and traditions with the ethos of the Constitution.
District municipalities are the main agents for rural development in South Africa.
They are given the task of ensuring effective and efficient implementation of integrated
development planning for the district as a whole which includes areas of traditional
leadership (George & Binza 2011). Traditional leaders control vital resources such as
land and play a very important role in any service delivery and development strategies
to be implemented in the rural areas.
132
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
Traditional leaders have different roles in the community, which are, amongst others:
• to promote and preserve the culture and tradition of communities, for example,
•
•
•
the Zulu monarch maintaining the annual reed dance;
to promote the preservation of the moral fibre and regeneration of communities;
to promote the social cohesiveness of communities;
to promote social-economic development; and contribute to nation building.
Traditional leaders are leaders in their communities and cannot be ignored
by government in delivering services to their communities (Shabangu 2008).
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 6.5
Now that you have read about the role of traditional leaders in society, please
answer the following questions:
• What is the significance of traditional leaders in development?
• What are the opportunities and challenges of traditional leaders in development?
• In your area, what role do traditional leaders play in development?
• Discuss the extent to which colonialism has affected the role of traditional
leadership in development?
• Is traditional leadership necessary for development? Substantiate why you
think so or not.
21
FEEDBACK
Section 6.5
6.6
CULTURE-ECONOMIC GROWTH NEXUS
What then is the role of culture in an economic growth and development
process? Cultural attributes such as belief in the importance of individual effort,
trust, commitment (i.e., outside close family relations), autonomy, an ethic of hard
work, and thrift are important for enterprise development and economic growth
(Lucas 1988; Romer 1990). These attributes provide a collective motivation for people
to do things better, faster and more efficiently and to suspend immediate pleasures in
order to invest their resources in economic growth-enhancing activities (Hyden, Court
& Mease 2003). For example, societies that place emphasis on honest behaviour and
diligence find their members developing trusting and enduring business relationships
that reduce transaction costs and ensure sustained business performance as well as
higher levels of economic growth (Maridal 2013).
Growth-enhancing cultural attributes are normally reflected in institutions that
reproduce and convey progress-prone norms, rules, conventions, and habits that
help contain socially undesirable consequences of unguarded market systems. In
this way, they level the playing field for all stakeholders and help expand the circle of
opportunity for a majority of people in a given society (North 1990; Hollingsworth
& Boyer 1997).
The relevant question to ask is whether the dominant cultural attributes in SubSaharan Africa (SSA) are prone or resistant to economic progress. The four main
characteristics of SSA culture are kinship structures and relationships, non-kin
relationships, institutions, trust mechanisms, and religions. These are discussed below.
DVA1502/1133

In African societies, the family is the primary social unit in relation to individuals
(Assimeng 1981; Gyekye 1996). Individual members of the family are bound to
one another by the collective moral rules and obligations of the family. The family
therefore limits, influences, and, in some situations, determines the individual’s
activities in society. The division of labour and distribution of power within the
family are determined by age (seniority), the size of financial contribution, genealogical
placement and gender. Poverty and inequalities in income distribution in African
societies further accentuate the need for relying on the traditional family structures
and the acceptance of moral obligations to help the less advantaged family members.
Sociologists use the term “familism” to describe these relationships.
Familism influences cultural transmission, attitudes to knowledge acquisition and
personality development. It therefore has an indirect influence on human development
and entrepreneurship. For example, children reared within such family structures are
hardly encouraged to take any initiatives beyond those required for doing daily routine
chores. Major decisions in life, including the choice of partners and childbearing,
are all collectively discussed and agreed upon. Most often, the views of the elders in
the family carry the greatest weight. The risk of making a wrong decision is shifted
from the individual to the family, which collectively shoulders much of the negative
consequences of decisions made. Familism and ethnic relations tend to be a major
source of economic resources for some entrepreneurs and promote human capital
development in Africa (Kuada & Buame 2000; Beuving 2004).
Some scholars argue that the communitarian and family-dependent African cultures
may promote corruption and therefore can constitute a drag on economic efforts
(Lipset & Lenz 2000). The argument is that since family members are most likely
to have access to funds accumulated by the relatively more industrious among them,
this discourages people to make efforts to save for future endeavours like starting
their own businesses (Moore 1997). Furthermore, those who start new businesses
may quickly find that they are overwhelmed by the financial demands from extended
family members and this may even lead to the collapse of their businesses (Kuada
2009). Apart from this, some business owners find themselves to be under immense
constant pressure to hire family members. Sometimes family members are hired even
when there are no jobs for them. However, since these family members get the jobs
easily and take their job security for granted, they often don’t feel obliged to improve
their skills or do a good job (Kuada 1994; Etounga-Manguelle 2000). Naturally, this
attitude negatively affects the performance of the business.
6.7
CONCLUSION
In this learning unit we have looked at the meaning of culture and how culture relates
to development. While we have noted the significance of culture in development, the
learning unit also demonstrated the complexities around what constitutes culture, and
how stronger cultures tend to dominate weaker ones at all levels of human existence
(at a global, regional, local, and community level). This unit further demonstrates
how, through colonialism, African cultures were made obsolete, thereby allowing
Euro-American cultures to dominate. Hence the current development discourse is
currently dominated by Euro-American modernity which is based on Euro-American
cultural value systems.
134
LEARNING UNIT 6: Culture and development
6.8
OUTCOMES CHECKLIST
Question
(1)
I can provide a general definition of culture.
(2)
I can explain how cultures are formed.
(3)
I can discuss the link between culture and
development, as well as the significance of
culture in development.
(4)
I can discuss how African cultures are
dominated by Euro-American cultures.
(5)
I can discuss how my own culture relates
to and/ or is excluded from development.
Can do
Cannot do
DVA1502/1135

7
LEARNING UNIT 7
7
Technology and development
OUTCOMES
Once you have completed this learning unit, you should be able to
• explain what 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) is
• explain the role of South Africa in the 4IR
• discuss the relationship of capitalism and technology in development
• demonstrate the benefits and disadvantages of technology and development
7.1
INTRODUCTION
Industrialisation has led to many of the world’s current environmental problems.
For example, climate change, unsafe levels of air pollution, the depletion of fishing
stocks, toxins in rivers and soil, overflowing levels of waste on land and in the
ocean, loss of biodiversity and deforestation can all be traced to industrialisation
(World Economic Forum 2017). As the Fourth Industrial Revolution gathers pace,
innovations are becoming faster, more efficient and more widely accessible than
before. Technology is also becoming increasingly connected; in particular, we are
seeing a merging of the digital, physical and biological realms. New technologies
are enabling societal shifts by having an effect on economics, values, identities and
possibilities for future generations. Hence, green skills are so important and needed
for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) to be a sustainable revolution.
7.2
WHAT IS THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?
The Fourth Industrial Revolution or 4IR is a way of describing the blurring of
boundaries between the physical, digital, and biological worlds. It’s a fusion of
advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D
printing, genetic engineering, quantum computing, and other technologies. It’s
the collective force behind many products and services that are fast becoming
indispensable to modern life, for example GPS systems that suggest the fastest route
to a destination, virtual presentation and digital meeting platforms, for example,
Teams, Zoom, and digital communication platforms, that is, social media, which is
basically about the digital economy, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of things
(IoT), cross border e-commerce, and many more (Ramli, Rasul and Affandi 2018).
7.2.1
History of the Fourth Industrial Revolution
Industrial revolutions are more than eras wherein new technologies are developed
and introduced. Rather, they are times of technological change that have a particular
set of characteristics that are connected to, and contemporaneous with, broader
social transformation. They lead to changes that go beyond discreet technological
136
LEARNING UNIT 7: Technology and development
capabilities and, instead, shift entire systems of power. The First Industrial Revolution,
which first emerged in the United Kingdom in the 18th century, brought with it both
steam power and factory politics, as women were pushed out of manufacturing roles
in favour of a male-dominated workplace culture. The combination of steam power
and mechanised production created a step change in output. This dynamic increase
in capacity and productivity led to urbanisation, the growth of regional and global
market economies, the relevance of democratic governments, and a rising middle
class in the western hemisphere. It inspired scientific and technical pursuits and the
revision of academic fields. It brought new forms of literature and, as state-funded
science was not the norm, stimulated entrepreneurial endeavours to spur further
breakthroughs and gain new insights into emerging disciplines (Philbeck & Davis
2018).
The Second Industrial Revolution, which Vaclav Smil has persuasively dated between
1867 and 1914, is a subsequent wave of systems change that coalesced around the
modern belief that science and technology are the way forward to a better life and
that progress is in many ways a destiny for humanity. Entrepreneurs applied science
to the ends of production, and the era saw a boom in products that were themselves
the direct products of science and engineering. The revolution brought a step
change in standardisation, technical complexity, and precision in manufacturing,
as well as large-scale technological infrastructure such as electricity grids and new
forms of public transportation based on the internal combustion engine. Alongside
innovations such as the steamship, the telephone, the gas turbine, artificial fertiliser,
and mass production, a much more mobile and cognisant international public was
developing a desire for goods, travel, and perhaps most importantly for the next
industrial revolution, information.
The Third Industrial Revolution, which began in earnest following the Second World
War, brought a step change in information theory and the power of data. It bloomed
alongside the discovery of the double helix, the space race, and the development of
nuclear power. It shaped a post-war world that needed new economic structures and
that had shifting conceptions of the human place in the cosmos, the natural world,
and the political order. It also connected the planet’s societies through infrastructure
and applications, creating new flows of information sharing that continue to shape
values, knowledge, and culture. Governments and businesses recognised the power
of computers for performing complex calculations and, eventually, for generalpurpose use. Rapid progress toward increasing computational power led to a more
interconnected and complex world in many ways and is still driving change across
sectors and regions at the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, just as the
continuing spread of electricity access is still bringing the benefits of the Second
Industrial Revolution to communities around the world (Philbeck & Davis 2018).
7.3
SOUTH AFRICA’S ROLE IN THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
7.3.1
The digital divide and inequality
The disparity in access to Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)
which may result from differences in class, race, age, culture, geography or other
factors can affectively deprive certain citizens to participate in the global economy
(Kroukamp 2005). This disparity is known as the digital divide. There is a need for
governments around the world to bridge the digital divide. Using the Internet to
DVA1502/1137

capture and provide access to appropriate and relevant digital information produced
by governments could also contribute towards bridging the digital divide (Chisenga
2004).
The idea of e-governance has changed the way in which governments communicate with
one another and with their citizens (Kroukamp 2005). In the past communication used
to be via public meetings, printed media, radio and television. Today communication
is also done via the modern information and communication technologies like
the internet and satellites (Kroukamp 2005). E-governance involves new styles of
leadership, new ways of debating and indeed the internet is changing the way people
live today. This implies that more and more people will rely on the internet for
information. Therefore, if government has to reach out to this internet population,
they have to put their information and activities on the internet via websites. The
digital divide is defined by Cullen (2003:247) as the metaphor used to describe the
perceived disadvantage of those who either are unable or do not choose to make use
of ICT in their daily life. The Digital Divide Network (2004) defines the concept as
the gap between those who have access to communication tools such as the internet
and those who do not.
7.3.2
The digital divide and Covid-19
Internet access should not be a luxury given that it is not only a pathway to
information, communication and economic opportunity, but is increasingly necessary
to access basic commercial and public services. Nonetheless, years after the conclusion
of the first World Summit on the Information Society in 2003, open, affordable and
free internet access still remains a critical challenge across the globe. Significant digital
divides still exist and in some cases are widening between and within countries.
These have negative impact in terms of achieving the crosscutting contribution
of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to the achievement of
the Sustainable Development Goals and the abolition of poverty (Rey-Moreno &
Pather 2020).
Poverty, inequality and unemployment remain a harsh reality in South Africa, specifically
in rural areas, as it remains largely underserved in terms of telecommunications
services. This situation has prevailed historically given that in the phenomenon of
pre-convergence, rural areas remained neglected in terms of telephony. This situation
has unfortunately been perpetuated in the era of broadband. Market failure is one
of the problems that have remained. A holistic approach is of importance to address
all elements of the digital ecosystem (Rey-Moreno & Pather 2020). Furthermore,
the people-centric approach to policy making and service delivery is critical, so that
governments can rebuild trust in the public administration, improve the effectiveness
of public action and better respond to the global and domestic challenges in developing
countries (OECD 2019).
Besides unemployment, a large proportion of the population is also vulnerable
to financial shocks (for example, long illness or job loss). Income disparities have
widened in most OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development)
countries over the last two decades, and redistribution through taxes and transfers
has decreased. Across OECD countries, the wealthiest 10% of households control
52% of total net wealth, while the bottom 10% of people own only 10% (OECD
2019). This entails that wealth concentration (e.g., ownership of economic capital,
such as real estate) is now twice the level of income inequality, which indicates
138
LEARNING UNIT 7: Technology and development
that the capacity to respond to financial shocks is unevenly distributed among the
population (OECD 2019).
Furthermore, digital technologies are altering social and civic communities, as well
as how people participate in and perceive civic and political life. These technologies,
as well as the increasing availability and use of data, as well as benchmark services
provided by the private sector, are transforming how public goods and services are
produced and consumed on a global scale. This, in turn, has an impact on people’s
expectations of how governments should operate and provide services. People are
increasingly wanting to interact with their governments in more efficient ways,
including through digital platforms, and they expect the same level of service
regardless of the channel used to access the service. When implemented properly,
information and communication technologies (ICTs) have helped simplify government
processes, eliminate paper-based transactions and established single access points to
the government; nonetheless, new expectations put pressure on governments to make
service delivery more integrated and proactive while remaining fiscally constrained,
inclusive policy responses should also target groups such as youth, the elderly, the
poor, and those with limited access to information and technology, and/or perceived
themselves as being left behind (OECD 2019).
A very relevant example in this regard is the Covid-19 pandemic. In early 2020,
talks of preparation for Covid-19 were furiously circulating around the healthcare
system nationwide, and having seen what was occurring in China, and later in Italy,
we feared what was to come. Like many others, our hospital system began looking
closely at the recommendations for decreasing transmission of Covid-19 (Ramsetty
& Adams 2020). Yet when vaccinations started, with the registration of vaccination
being done online, what happened to people who did not have excess to the internet
or were illiterate?
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 7.1
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
7.4
Discuss the relationship of colonialism and 4IR in development.
Analyse the digital divide in South Africa especially on how the new normal
of COVID-19 has impacted our lives?
In your own view, how do you see South Africa’s digital development
prospects in the next ten years?
Is the 4IR necessary for development? Substantiate your views using
academic literature.
OUTCOMES CHECKLIST
Question
(1)
How has the 4IR impacted development?
(2)
hat are the prospects for 4IR
W
advancement in South Africa and the
developing countries?
Can do
Cannot do
DVA1502/1139

8
8
LEARNING UNIT 8
The International context of development:
the aid debate
OUTCOMES
Once you have completed this learning unit, you should be able to
• explain the debt crisis of developing countries and the effect that it is having on
•
•
8.1
their development
describe the arguments of those who are for and those who are against aid to
developing countries
identify aid institutions and the potential roles they play in development
THE DEFINITION OF AID AND THE INSTITUTIONS THAT
GIVE AID
It is obvious that many developing countries struggle to make ends meet. Is aid
part of the solution to this, or does it undermine development? This learning unit
examines this question by considering how aid has worked, and the effects of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment. It also introduces you to
a new situation in which other development banks have emerged and the position of
the IMF has weakened. The sources of investment have changed; there is much more
private investment and Chinese investment. In addition, the developing countries
are changing. While many countries are still economically very weak and even
more have poor majorities, a number of countries in the global South, for example
Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Ethiopia, now have the beginnings of industrial
production that generates large surpluses within the country; others such as India
and Rwanda display high rates of growth centred on services. Yet in a financialised
global economy, overall world debt is higher than before. “Since 2007 global debt has
grown by US$57 trillion … (and) developing countries have accounted for roughly
half of the increase” (Das 2016:55–56). While Africa as a whole is much less indebted
now than in 2000, indebtedness in Africa is increasing quite fast since 2012 and is
again putting the poorer countries at risk (Coulibaly, Gandhi & Senbet 2019:3–4).
In this new situation, what is the relevance of aid and development banks? There
are no easy answers to this question, and there are as many supporters as there are
critics of aid to poor countries. In this learning unit we will explore some of the
debates. First let us look at the definition of “aid”. The Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development (OECD 1985) defined aid or “overseas development
assistance”/(ODA) as
… loans and grants allotted to developing countries and which fulfil three
criteria: 1) the loans and grants must come from the public sector, 2) they must
be granted with the aim of fostering economic development, and 3) they must
be concessional and contain a grant element of at least 25%.
140
LEARNING UNIT 8: The international context of development: the aid debate
Regan (2006:92) explains that aid:
… cover(s) a multitude of things such as humanitarian assistance in times of
emergency, debt relief, technical assistance, grants for every type of project
from massive international projects to small scale grants (and it) involves a
huge variety of organisations, structures and activities which are engaged in
aid work– governments, voluntary organisation and community groups, the
United Nations, political parties and trade unions, religious orders, churches
and individuals.
“Humanitarian assistance” is a term used to describe the aid and action designed to
save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain and protect human dignity during and
in the aftermath of emergencies.
The committee which monitors government aid internationally is known as the
Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic
Co- operation and Development (OECD). Members of the DAC includes the US,
Canada, some European countries, the European Union itself, Japan, Australia, New
Zealand and many more rich countries The DAC monitored official development
assistance (ODA) from all these individual rich countries. Up to 2014 aid of this
kind was much bigger than aid from the World Bank, the African Development
Bank and China (Humphrey & Michaelowa 2019:16). However, in recent years new
Chinese-led multilateral banks and investment from the Chinese government and
Chinese companies has risen to be Africa’s biggest source of investment ((Humphrey
& Michaelowa 2019:15). In the section that follows, we are going to look at which
institutions or organisations provide aid.
READING BOX 8.1
Who provides aid?
Most people have heard of NGOs – non-governmental organisations – which
encompass everything from religious charities to grassroots human-rights
groups. But what about a Quango? That stands for quasi-autonomous NGO,
according to a classification from Dutch researcher Sara Kinsbergen. Her list
goes further: there is the Bongo, or business-organised NGO; the Engo, or
environmental NGO; the Ingo, or international NGO; and, of course, the Gongo,
or government-organised NGO – an apparent oxymoron, the term is occasionally
used to describe an NGO set up by a government to take advantage of privileges
or funding available to true NGOs. Last, and not least, there’s the Mongo, or
“my own NGO”, a charity set up by an individual.
This list may be a little tongue in cheek, but it helps to make a serious point:
the development world is complex and becoming more so by the year. As well
as traditional donor governments, like those of the DAC, there are emerging
donors, like China and India, which are becoming important players. In addition,
there are also government-supported aid agencies, multilateral organisations
like the UN, development banks, any number of NGOs, and much, much more.
Listing even a fraction of these would eat up much of the rest of the book. But
it is useful to take a broad look at who does that.
DVA1502/1141

Governments
The members of the OECD’s DAC provide the bulk of the world’s aid, but they
are not the only government sources. A number of non-DAC members are also
significant donors, for example Turkey, which gave $967 million in ODA in 2010.
In recent years, there’s also been a growing focus on the role of the emerging
economies, especially the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa),
most of which are themselves also aid recipients. Their precise role is difficult to
quantify, partly because – unlike DAC members – they don’t routinely report data
to an international agency and partly because they don’t always have an official
definition of what counts as aid. Nevertheless, some numbers are available: for
example, Brazilian officials estimated their aid activities were worth $362 million
in 2009, while China’s aid in the same year was estimated (but not confirmed)
at $1.9 billion by Chinese research institutions. According to official data from
China’s government, the cumulative total of the country’s foreign aid stood at
just over 256 billion yuan (about $39 billion) by 2009. Most of it was bilateral and
about four-fifths of it went to Asia and Africa. Like many traditional donors, the
new development partners engage with other developing countries at a number
of different levels, including technical co-operation. India, for instance, has
provided training and education in areas like environmental management and
IT to 40 000 people in other developing countries through the Indian Technical
and Economic Co-operation programme.
Multilateral donors
As we’ve seen, a large slice of aid – around 40% – is channelled through an
estimated 200 multilateral donors and agencies, such as the World Bank and
United Nations. Multilaterals are “owned” by their member governments – some
are regional, such as the European Union’s agencies, while others are truly
international, such as the United Nations, which has more than 190 member
governments. In aid terms, multilaterals fall into four main categories:
Development banks: The best-known internationally is the World Bank, but
there are also a number of regional agencies, such as the African and the Asian
Development Banks. All focus mainly on lending to developing countries, but they
are also a source of expertise and advice. Confusingly, The World Bank is itself
made up of two separate institutions: The International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (IBRD), which focuses on middle-income countries and the
stronger lower-income countries, and the International Development Association
(IDA), which deals only with the world’s poorest countries. The World Bank Group
also includes a number of other agencies, such as the International Finance
Corporation (IFC), which offers financing, guarantees and advice to privatelyowned enterprises in developing countries.
United Nations: The UN is active in many areas of development – indeed, it
says of itself that the issue consumes “the vast majority of the Organization’s
resources”. UN efforts range from providing emergency and humanitarian
assistance through agencies like the World Food Programme, to pursuing longerterm development goals, like poverty reduction and strengthening governance.
Europe: The combined efforts of the 27 members of the European Union make
it collectively the world’s largest donor. Although there is a high degree of cooperation among EU Member States, much of their aid effort still reflects the
development priorities of individual countries.
142
LEARNING UNIT 8: The international context of development: the aid debate
Global funds: Over the past decade or so, a number of special agencies have
been set up to pursue particular development goals, the best known being the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which was created in
2002. Unlike UN agencies such as the World Health Organization, the Global
Fund is solely a financing agency.
Multilateral donors have many advantages in development. By pooling funds
from multiple donors, they can cut the cost of administration, and save recipients
the trouble of liaising with numerous individual donors. Their neutrality can also
allow them to provide political “cover” for national governments with contentious
aid decisions. And, unlike national governments, they can often have a more
global vision, giving them a stronger hand in tackling international issues like
climate change.
Against that, multilaterals have sometimes suffered from a perception that
they’re bureaucratic and expensive; that they lack transparency and are too
remote from the people they’re supposed to be helping. And even some of the
advantages of multilaterals, such as the pooling of resources, can pose a problem
for donors. That’s because in order to maintain support for aid programmes
with domestic voters, donor governments usually want to show that aid money
is having an impact. But when money is poured into a multilateral, that can be
hard to do. That’s part of the reason why donors often “earmark” their funding to
multilaterals. It may also be behind the fall in general funding for UN agencies in
recent years, and its replacement by funding for specific UN programmes and,
especially, the global funds.
“… as the aid given to a multilateral is pooled before being allocated to partner
countries, this makes individual donors less visible and gives them less control
over specific aid destinations.”
Non-governmental organisations
NGOs (also referred to as civil society organisations, or CSOs) have become
increasingly active in development in recent decades, in both developed and
developing countries. Some are mostly national, like the Irish aid charity
Concern, and others are international, like Oxfam. NGOs are important sources
of development funding in their own right: according to OECD estimates in 2009,
NGOs in developed countries raise between $20 billion and $25 billion a year in
private contributions to development assistance. Governments also use them
as a channel for official aid: about 10% of ODA goes to NGOs, rising to as much
as a quarter of ODA in the United States. There are also growing numbers of
NGOs in developing countries, such as the Kenya-based Green Belt Movement,
created by the late Nobel laureate Wangari Maathai, which campaigns on
environmental issues and supports this with practical action like tree-planting.
Governments in developing countries also use NGOs to deliver services on the
ground: in the 1990s, for example, India’s government quadrupled the amount
of money it allocated to NGOs.
The role of NGOs has come to be increasingly recognised in development,
especially their power to represent the voice of communities and social groups,
such as women, that have in the past been excluded from the development
debate. But their proliferation has also contributed to the growing complexity
of the development world, making it ever more difficult to co-ordinate aid and
development co-operation and avoid unnecessary and wasteful overlaps.
DVA1502/1143

“CSOs are … often particularly effective at reaching the poor and socially
excluded, providing humanitarian assistance, mobilising community efforts,
speaking up for human rights and gender equality, and helping to empower
particular constituencies.”
Private philanthropy
It’s a remarkable reflection on the scale of his donations that Bill Gates is now
perhaps better known as a philanthropist than as the man who gave the world
Microsoft Windows. In the 16 years since it was founded in 1994, the Gates
Foundation has committed more than $24 billion in grants for global health and
development. In 2009, it contributed $1.8 billion in health aid alone, making it
the world’s third largest such contributor to this sector, exceeded only by the
United States and The Global Fund.
The Gates Foundation is unusual in the scale of its donations. What’s less
unusual about it is that it’s American: by a large margin, the bulk of the world’s
private philanthropy comes from the United States. In part, that’s a reflection of
the scale of America’s economy, a tax system that provides strong incentives for
giving to charity, and a long tradition that sees it as noble to give to charity. For
many people, the example was set by Andrew Carnegie, a self-made ScottishAmerican businessman who gave up working at the age of 65 and devoted the
rest of his life to giving away his fortune in order to avoid what he described as
the “disgrace” of dying rich. Critics, however, suggest that the scale of American
philanthropy is a reflection of enormous wealth inequalities – too many rich
people with too much money on their hands – and inadequate government
welfare provision.
Private philanthropy takes many different forms: diaspora groups – typically
emigrants and their descendants – are one source, as are religious groups,
representing most of the world’s main faiths, including Buddhism, Christianity,
Islam, and Judaism. A substantial amount comes from foundations, some of
which are associated with individuals, like the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which
works to raise standards of governance in Africa, and others with businesses
or wealthy families. Mo Ibrahim is part of a trend that has seen a big rise in the
number of foundations in North America and the European Union, as successful
entrepreneurs follow the examples of billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
This has also spread to developing countries themselves, with the emergence
of donors like telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim in Mexico and property developer
Huang Rulun in China. Many businesses also provide aid, sometimes as a cash
donation and sometimes “in kind”, which can include acts like providing expertise,
scholarships or discounts on goods sold to developing countries. In June 2011, a
number of Western drug companies announced big cuts in the price they charge
for the rotavirus vaccine, which protects against a major cause of diarrhoea, in
developing countries. Typically, the vaccine costs $50 per shot in a developed
country, but this will fall to as little as $2.50 in poor countries. No area of aid is
exempt from controversy, and private philanthropy is no exception: critics say
that, unlike governments, private philanthropists are answerable to no one and,
in some cases; they may use aid to further their business interests.
Source: OECD (2012)
After this text was published, new development banks emerged, in particular the
New Development Bank (NDB; the “BRICS bank”) and the Asian Infrastructure
Investment Bank (AIIB). Both were heavily influenced by China.
144
LEARNING UNIT 8: The international context of development: the aid debate
The role of the African Development Bank
The African Development Bank (AfDB) was set up in the early years of African
countries’ political independence from colonial powers, in the 1960s, and is owned
by African countries. Other continents similarly set up banks at the same time
because of dissatisfaction with the World Bank. Between 2000 and 2014 it distributed
development finance worth US$65 billion to Africa (as compared with $114 billion by
the World Bank (Humphrey & Michaelowa 2019:16). “The AfDB can intermediate
substantial resources – several billion USD each year – at very low interest rates
and long maturities, which is fundamental to the long-term nature of tackling
developmental challenges and while other multilateral development institutions
operate in Africa … none have the AfDB’s continent-wide perspective and African
ownership” (Humphrey 2015:19).
However, the AfDB has rigid procedures, extremely slow bureaucratic processes and
business and financial practices which do not fit the needs of middle-income African
countries such as South Africa. In addition, “MDBs of necessity must access private
financial markets to raise the resources they need to effectively operate. This is in fact
one of the great strengths of the MDB model: it is to a large degree self-financing,
requiring very little direct fiscal contributions from member countries for regular
operations. The flip side, however, is that it also requires MDBs to keep a very close
eye on the perceptions of private capital markets when shaping their operational and
financial policies therefore ratings agencies now place considerable pressure on the
capital adequacy of MDBs in a way that they did not in the past, such that MDBs
must utilise their capital in an extremely conservative fashion, thus limiting their
operational scope” (Humphrey 2016:108) The African Development Bank was also
locked into this conservatism, which aligned it to the World Bank in some respects.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 8.1
Read reading box 8.1 with the extract from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development/OECD on “Who provides aid?” and answer the
questions that follow:
• The second paragraph of the extract shows that China and India are also
•
•
•
“emerging donors”. From your understanding of countries of the “Third World” as
learnt in DVA1501, what do China and India exemplify in terms of development
(answer in one page)?
What is the difference between how the Gates Foundation and NGOs are run?
(Answer in half a page.)
Do you think the rich have a moral obligation to give to those who are less
fortunate? Why? (Write half a page.)
What, if any, are the challenges of developing a MONGO?
In the next section we are going to have a look at the deeper debates on aid and why
some are opposed to the idea of aid while others are in favour of it.
8.1.1
The aid debates
It would seem like an obvious fact that when others are in need of help, someone,
some institutions, local or abroad, have to assist. Right? The aid debates are not as
DVA1502/1145

clear-cut as that, as is shown in the reading box below, which highlights a few of
the issues in the controversial debate.
READING BOX 8.2
Arguments about aid
Argument 1
Donors accept that direct intervention can actually help to solve the problems.
But
• better to provide the conditions for wealth creation through the market because
direct intervention distorts and disturbs markets
Argument 2
Donors accept that the moral claim to use funds for aid outweighs other (moral?)
claims on those resources.
But
• there are poor people in rich countries – ‘charity begins at home’
Argument 3
Donors believe that direct intervention through external financial and/or technical
assistance will achieve development objectives.
But
• rejected by the right for reasons described immediately above and rejected
•
by the left who view aid strategies as wholly inappropriate in circumstances
of structural inequality
capitalism is the problem, strong intervention at that level is required, aid, at
best, is only tinkering around the edges
Argument 4
Donors believe that government-to-government or government-to-international
institutions (such as the various UN bodies), will help solve problems.
But
• what about the nature of the state in Third World countries (corrupt, elitist,
•
•
146
undemocratic etc.)?
encourages the state to play more direct interventionist role thus distorting
the market
many such institutions are inefficient, corrupt, bureaucratic and ineffective
LEARNING UNIT 8: The international context of development: the aid debate
Argument 5
Comparing domestic living standards with those of others and contrasting
domestic development with the lack of development in other countries and
among certain groups in other societies, the potential donor accepts that there
are problems out of which arises a moral basis for action.
But
• is there a moral duty or obligation?
• Many challenge the view that past historical relations were unjust and argue
that there isn’t a moral argument that we ‘owe’
• others argue that even if past relations were unjust is restitution for this
•
required?
even if there is a moral case, do governments have a moral duty as distinct
from individuals?
Argument 6
Donors accept that there are defined categories of countries and groups of
people within countries for whom the moral case exists.
But
• governments have responsibility for their own citizens only
• even if longer-term world security is achieved, thus benefiting all, it is one’s
•
•
own citizens’ interests that motivate aid
governments do not have moral obligations, only individuals
aid is more properly placed in the realm of individual charity
Source: Regan (2006)
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 8.2
Visit the site https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idrCVgS5NOI and watch the video
on Aid, Debt, and Economic Development Series: Concerns about Aid: Understanding
what they are, by Brad Cartwright. Also watch the video ABC News: Documentary
about Foreign Aid on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi0KyAvHT1Y. Then
answer the following questions:
• The first video discusses seven concerns about aid. Choose two of them and
•
discuss how these concerns show themselves in your own country.
The second video shows one journalist saying that there is no need to give aid to
Africa. In one page, discuss whether you agree or disagree with her viewpoint.
A view that expresses aid as either good or bad for Africa is acceptable, as long as
you support your views with evidence from your own country or community.
It will be true to say there are some development concerns which governments need
to just deal with by themselves, while others go beyond borders and may require
international collaboration in order to deal with the issues.
DVA1502/1147

This is especially true for the future need to cope with the damaging effects of climate
change. The 2001 report of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
has confirmed that climate change impacts are a given and that the poorest countries
are going to be the hardest hit. Floods, droughts, unseasonal rains and extreme events
could lead to high levels of death, social disruption and economic damage in poor
countries (Richards 2003:344-347; 351; Yamin, Rahman & Huq 2005:2).
Unfortunately, not much financial planning has gone into helping poor countries cope
with future disaster recovery, relief and rehabilitation, and yet much of the changes
in the climate are the result of industrialisation by the developed countries. Aid in
cases such as these can be said to be justified, yet current disaster relief assistance is
characterised by piece-meal voluntary funding mechanisms and poor coordination
between governments and aid agencies (Richards 2003:351). Furthermore, in 2005
development assistance to developing countries amounted to $55-60 billion annually,
while climate and other global environmental issues only received $3-6 billion, a
much lower figure (Yamin et al. 2005:9). It is obvious that much still has to be done
in this area.
Probably the biggest problem with aid is the political and institutional structures
that keep poor countries trapped in poverty. We are now not just talking about the
Bretton Woods institutions and the impediments to aid that you listened to in the
previous activity, but all the other problems covered in this learning unit.
Yamin, Rahman and Huq (2005:6) say:
Policy processes aimed at securing human wellbeing are institutionally
fragmented and dysfunctional. For many developing countries, financial,
economic and trade policy is determined, in large part, by the Bretton Woods
Institutions, the World Trade Organization and transnational corporate actors
using narrowly defined framings of wellbeing. These processes and players
generate wealth but also embed structural vulnerabilities in the social and
economic order. Dealing with inequalities and the impacts of vulnerabilities
is left to a vast array of national, regional and international institutions with
weak legal mandates ill-matched to challenge and create alternative forms of
people-centred development.
The result is uncoordinated development and disaster relief efforts that duplicate
or cut across each other, in ways that waste aid, privileges donors, and the
epistemic communities that support them, in defining “good” development for
others, and leaves the poor and vulnerable exposed to a wide range of long-term
threats, shocks and surprises.
The following reading box contains an article written for BBC Focus on Africa by
Bekele Geleta (2011), the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red
Cross and Red Crescent Societies. You will notice that Geleta does not call for more
aid, but rather talks passionately about long-term developmental initiatives to prevent
human disasters from happening.
148
LEARNING UNIT 8: The international context of development: the aid debate
READING BOX 8.3
Never ever again
Early warning systems and seasonal forecasts have long been in place and the
deadly impact of a lack of rain on communities and their crops and animals has
been well explained. But warnings and appeals for the Horn of Africa, including
from my organisation (Red Cross), were launched many months ago and were
received with a pitifully lukewarm response. So-called “donor fatigue” and apathy
on the part of a de-sensitised public and a fickle media focused on the turbulence
in the Middle East and on global markets were perhaps the main reasons for
such an indefensible lack of interest.
Now the media are on the ground and the plight of the people in the region is
finally making the news. But what happens once the media circus rolls on by
and the knee-jerk compassion and quick-fix aid donations suddenly dry up? We
cannot simply sit back and wait for the inevitable famine or drought to come
along and ravage Africa once more. We need to look at the root causes of this
problem and invest in fixing them. Putting a bucket under a leaking roof will
never repair the roof.
Of course, drought is nothing new to the Horn of Africa. Rainfall levels have
historically fluctuated across the region, so it is too simplistic to blame the
magnitude of this crisis on weather patterns alone. Other factors can exacerbate
and intensify the effects of drought if not addressed effectively. Rising food
prices, population growth, conflict and the resulting influx of arms and community
displacement worsen the suffering of the people of the Horn of Africa as this
crisis unfolds.
But a lack of preparedness for a recurring event is what really needs to be
recognised and addressed. While emergency response and saving lives
should be a critical priority for humanitarian agencies, investing in long-term
development programmes, which address the root causes of hunger and drought
and prepare communities to cope and withstand emergency situations, is
something the international community and governments in the Horn of Africa
should now be seriously considering.
But despite all the lessons learned from previous droughts, and all the advances
in early warning systems, governments and public donors still do not support
mitigation work at the scale needed. This needs to change.
Education should also become a priority area of investment. Keeping children
in schools and giving them skills to be more resilient when disaster strikes is
critical. Of course, this can only happen if the parents of these children are not
reliant on their offspring to abandon schools to hunt for food and clean water for
the family. Also, serious investment in basic infrastructure and well-maintained
water facilities such as wells and pumps would help mitigate the immediate
effects of drought, and constitute a much more cost-effective investment than
emergency aid in the long-run.
DVA1502/1149

Governments and donors also need to do more to support the sizeable
pastoralist communities and ensure that when times get tough, and livestock is
lost, they are able to respond and adapt to changing circumstances. This could
be done through economic diversification and by ensuring that people, whose
income is dependent on livestock or harvests, are equipped with the skills and
tools to make a living through other trades. With pastoralists increasingly moving
into the agricultural sector, and agriculturalists moving into cities to find work, it
is especially important that governments and donors adapt and respond to the
changing patterns of livelihoods in the region.
Perhaps most critically, we need to lessen the dependency on foreign aid. Over
the years, aid agencies have flocked into the Horn of Africa to respond to many
crises which have struck the region. While the critical value of emergency aid
should not be underestimated, the long-term benefit of development should be
equally valued and become a priority for 2011 and beyond.
It is my hope as an Ethiopian – and as one of many passionate people in the
humanitarian sector – that we never again see images like those we are currently
witnessing on our TV screens.
Source: Geleta (2011:21)
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 8.3
After reading the extract and discussion of Geleta’s article above, answer the
following question:
In one page discuss whether or not aid should be given to natural-disaster-stricken
Haiti, or food aid for Ethiopia.
8.2
DEVELOPING COUNTRIES’ DEBT CRISIS
“Debt is a cleverly managed reconquest of Africa. It is a reconquest that turns each one of us into
a financial slave.” Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso President 1983–1987)
8.2.1
Borrowing from private banks
Throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the newly independent countries of the South
were encouraged by the North to follow a particular development model focusing on
modernisation and industrialisation. In order to finance these development efforts,
they had to borrow vast sums of money on the international market. At the time, it
was not a problem, since loans were relatively cheap. In the mid-1970s the OPEC
(oil states) quadrupled the price of their oil and deposited their newfound wealth or
“petro-dollars” as they were called, with European and US banks. These banks were
eager to make money from this huge inflow of funds and lend it out at low interest
rates to “lure” borrowers. Developing countries’ governments were eager to borrow
this money to pay for rising oil prices and to finance their “development” projects
in a quest to modernise their economies and “catch up” with the West (Cornwell &
De Beer 2010:145; Linden 2003:54–55).
150
LEARNING UNIT 8: The international context of development: the aid debate
In the 1980s though, the US and European banks raised their interest rates. Soon,
developing countries found themselves in a debt crisis. In 1986 developing countries
owed Western banks $1,9 trillion in debt. This huge amount in itself was not the
biggest problem – a country such as the US for instance, owed Western banks about
$2 trillion at the time; almost the same as the whole Third World put together. The
problem was that the high interest rate made it impossible for developing countries
to pay back the yearly interest on these loans, never mind the loan itself ... In some
cases, the annual payment of interest on old loans was more than the amount of
new loans raised by that country in the same year! (Cornwell & De Beer 2010:145;
Linden 2003:55).
There was more than one reason why these countries couldn’t pay back their loans:
(1)
They used their funds inefficiently and/or mismanaged the loans.
Cornwell and De Beer (2010:146) say:
Perhaps the debt problem in ... the developing world would not have
been quite so serious had the money been invested in projects that
yielded large economic returns, in other words, in projects that were
successful financially, or in projects that assisted the majority of the
people to improve the agricultural output on which their very survival
depended. However, this did not happen. The literature on aid and the
debt cites numerous examples where vast sums were wasted on large-scale
projects that were not financially viable or were poorly researched … aid
(started) disappearing and (was) not being invested in the economy for
which it was intended because of corruption or capital flight … much
aid and foreign loans made their way to military spending to back up
weak political systems or to benefit individual politicians, rather than
to other sectors such as health and education for which they were
originally intended.
(2)
The second reason though, was much more complex. Debt is usually expressed
in dollars, and therefore has to be repaid in dollars. The only way dollars can
enter a country is if they are earned through income from exports. But as we
have seen in the previous unit, many developing states develop trade deficits
because they pay more for their imports than what they earn from their exports,
which means they have serious problems with their balance of payments. In
addition, a fall in the price of a primary product on which a country depends,
will have a negative effect on its balance of payments, which in turn makes the
country unable to pay back its loans (Cornwell & De Beer 2010:146). Faced
with this difficulty, a country then has three choices:
(a)
(b)
(c)
They can announce a default (definition: when a person or organisation
cannot pay back a loan), but this puts considerable strain on the
international banking system.
They might try to increase their foreign revenue (income) by exporting
more. This is problematic, because they may not produce enough, or an
increase in exports may flood the market and lead to a fall in the price
of export products.
They can pay back the loans. This is then done with money that is
desperately needed for health, welfare and development projects in their
own countries. Cornwell and De Beer (2010:145) cite the writer Somers
DVA1502/1151

(1996) who puts it eloquently – they are paying back money with “the
lives of their people”.
At the beginning of this century poor countries paid Northern governments, banks
and financial institutions $16,5 billion per month or $542 million per day in debt
repayments (Cornwell & De Beer 2010:145). This represents a huge outflow of
desperately needed resources from developing countries to the North. Obviously,
this is not a good thing, since it adds to an already existing unequal global order.
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 8.4
Go to the option on myUnisa called Blogs and start a discussion in which you explain
how the ordinary person also pays for their country’s debt in debt repayments.
Refer to any two sources of your choice and give their bibliographical details. You
should not copy what others have done.
Your blog should be at least 250 words long.
8.2.2
Borrowing from the IMF and the World Bank
Besides borrowing from private banks, developing states can also borrow money
from the World Bank and the IMF. But, when dealing with these institutions, there
are very particular consequences (Cornwell & De Beer 2010:147).
As indicated above, the 1980s saw the adoption of the so-called Washington
Consensus. The IMF and World Bank also adopted this consensus into their rules
and dogma. This meant that when a country applied to borrow money from these
institutions, they had to undergo a “stabilisation programme” involving restrictions
on government spending and changes to economic governance. These programmes
were known as structural adjustment programmes (or SAPs) and had mixed results.
The IMF claimed that the SAPs were a success in economic terms, and that they were
helping developing states to address their debt crisis. But let us take a closer look at
these programmes, and what they hoped to achieve (Cornwell & De Beer 2010:147).
READING BOX 8.4
Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs)
Through their SAPs, both the IMF and the World Bank are attempting to bring
about a “conscious change in the fundamental nature of economic relationships
within a country” (Sparr 1994a:1). Although their aims are identical, there is a
difference between the programmes of the IMF and the World Bank. The IMF aims
largely to cut demand, while the World Bank aims to boost supply and to increase
domestic productivity. Yet in both instances there is an important common
emphasis: to reduce the role of the state and to increase the role of the market
in resource allocation.
152
LEARNING UNIT 8: The international context of development: the aid debate
Both the IMF and the World Bank blame the poor economic performance of
the South on the way resources are allocated. Supporters of SAPs argue
that the economic conditions in the South were primarily caused by too much
government involvement in the economy, which turned the economy into a
massive bureaucratic “mess”, one which is inefficient and unproductive (vide
Sparr 1994a:5). They argue, therefore, that governments are overspending on the
public sector and that their direct controls and subsidies are counterproductive.
They want governments to reduce the role of the public sector and to remove
direct controls and subsidies.
Supporters of SAPs believe that allowing a country to become capitalistic by
letting the free market (rather than governments) take over economic relations will
make the economy “a stronger, more efficient mechanism for meeting people’s
needs and will enable the economy to cope better with future external shocks”
(Sparr 1994a:5), such as fluctuations in the prices of basic commodities.
The decision to embark upon SAPs is usually not one that governments take
voluntarily. More often than not, they are “forced” into accepting SAPs. When a
country is in a serious economic dilemma, and cannot afford to repay its debts,
it can opt for a stabilisation loan from the IMF. The main aim here is to reduce
the demand for imported products, in other words, to force the country to live
within its financial means. This demand is lowered by taking the following steps:
(1) Firstly, the local currency is devalued to make imports more expensive.
(2)Then the budget deficit is reduced (this is done by cutting subsidies on
goods and services and by cutting down on services such as education
and health).
(3)At the same time, ceilings on interest rates are removed (or raised) to
discourage borrowing, to curb inflation and to stop capital flight.
(4) Price controls are abolished or phased out.
Once the economy has been sufficiently stabilised, governments have to
accept structural adjustment loans from the World Bank to help them bring
about comprehensive and long-term changes to the economy.
In practical terms these structural adjustments mean that governments have
to lower social expenditure by reducing the number of jobs in the public sector,
and by lowering wages. This means that some teachers’ and nurses’ jobs are
made redundant, or they are offered lower salaries. When social spending is
reduced, the shortfall is made up by user charges. Households now have to pay
(or pay more) for education and health services. At the same time, the cutting of
subsidies means that households have to pay more for basic foodstuffs. The local
currency is devalued (in Nigeria the naira was devalued by 500% in the early
1990s). This means that foodstuffs and agricultural inputs are sold at inflated
prices. All this affects the purchasing power of a household.
To make the civil service more productive, working conditions and conditions of
service are changed. Bureaucrats now have to work harder and for longer hours
to receive a lower salary; job security is reduced and fringe benefits are cut.
Source: Cornwell & De Beer 2010:148
The World Bank and IMF assumed that the impact on everyone in a country
accepting an SAP would be the same, and would be positive. However, they did
not allow for the fact that women and men perform different tasks in society, and
DVA1502/1153

that SAPs would, in particular, have a negative impact on women and their daily
survival tasks. Cornwell and De Beer (2010:149) list a number of negative effects
that SAPs have on women:
More women have to enter the labour force to supplement their husbands’ income.
At the same time, the likelihood of women getting employment in the formal sector
is lower than that of men because their educational status is generally lower than
that of males.
• More women enter the informal sector in the absence of jobs in the formal sector.
• Women do not benefit from the devaluation of the local currency because they
•
•
produce largely for own consumption, or they trade only in restricted, local markets.
The unpaid work of women definitely increases, as already mentioned. One way
in which this happens is that they have to spend more time shopping to get
products at low prices, and then have to spend longer times in preparing food
because they buy fewer processed foodstuffs, or cheaper cuts of meat. In urban
areas they often start food gardens.
Girls assist their mothers with unpaid work. This means that there is less time for
schooling, and their eventual educational attainment is lower than that of males.
There is a higher incidence of male migration in search of work.
So how can a country break free from the debt trap? The following box explores
this issue.
Since the recession of 2008, we have seen interesting developments in the world
debt scenario. Because of the fact that rich countries’ economies are so closely
intertwined with that of the USA, ripples of the American financial crisis of 2008
caused widespread recession in the developed world, especially Europe. The recession
made countries that owe a lot of money very vulnerable.
The US and the countries belonging to the Euro zone faced a lot of economic
difficulty because of not being able to pay back high loan amounts. The biggest
challenge these countries faced was how to stimulate their economies while cutting
down on government spending. Their crisis paralysed their democracies into inertia,
with politicians having to make difficult choices over cutting benefits and social
spending – measures that are not popular with a voting public in a well-developed
democracy (Zakaria 2011:17-19). What has become obvious is that the debt crisis is
not just reserved for poor nations alone, but for rich and poor alike (Richter 2011:6;
Mthombothi 2011:10). The difference is that rich countries are financially in a much
fitter position to deal with their crises. Developing countries are still struggling with
the odds stacked against them.
8.3
THE DECLINE OF THE IMF AND THE ROLE OF THE NEW
DEVELOPMENT BANKS
Due to the economic rise of countries such as China and India which has given the
developing countries more voice within IMF voting structures, and massive criticism
of structural adjustment programmes the IMF has softened its demands attached
to loans, but also lost its dominant position in international finance of government
stabilisation.as countries used other routes for finance, such as bilateral (state-tostate) finance from China, and extensive use of readily available private sector finance
(Humphrey 2016:109). This is despite a greatly increased role that the IMF had in
154
LEARNING UNIT 8: The international context of development: the aid debate
bailing out countries after the Thrombotic financial crisis of 2007-2008 (Ahmed &
Sukar 2018:62, 65). This time also saw the emergence of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia,
India China, South Africa) grouping of non-western powers (with headquarters in
Shanghai), which aimed to better position this grouping and the developing countries
in the world economy.
8.3.1
New multilateral banks: The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank
(AIIB) and the New Development Bank (NDB)
Both the AIIB and the NDB can be seen as strategic initiatives by China to enhance
its global presence (Humphrey & Maduz 2020). Yet they are also multilateral banks
giving access to funds to many countries – the AIIB has 57 member countries who
have access to funds, while the NDB serves mainly the five BRICS countries (Cooper
2017:275). As new development banks with some new practices (including spending
much less on bank administration and delivering faster than older development
banks) and bringing the investment concerns of the developing countries to the fore,
they are likely to strengthen the system of global banking. They are also funding
infrastructure on a massive scale at a time when the World Bank is funding other
things (Wang 2017:115).
Both of these new development banks have unconvincing environmental standards,
and invest on the basis of returns and risks rather than tying investment to social
and political change (Wang 2017:116).
However, these two new development banks differ – the AIIB is similar to older
banks and works well with older banks including the World Bank (Wang 2017:115)
whereas the NDB is more innovative. The AIIB, like the IMF, allocates votes by
member contributions (which effectively gives China a veto) while the NDB gives
equal voice, in many respects, to each of the five BRICS members. The AIIB is directly
asserting China’s power while the role of the NDB is less clear (Cooper 2017:275–6).
8.3.2
The New Development Bank and innovation
Suchodolski et al. (2018) see the NDB as necessary at this time because of the
problems with global governance of development finance and the huge backlog
of infrastructure development. They discern five areas of innovation in the NDB:
democratic governance, lending within the local currency (if your currency falls
you do not pay back in expensive dollars); targeting sustainable infrastructure
development, the speed of execution of projects, and using country-specific standards
rather than imposing international, EU or other standards. Cooper (2017:276–281)
also sees a number of innovative features in the NDB. He concurs with Suchodolski
et al. that there is “process innovation” through democratic governance and that
speed of execution is an innovation in delivery. He also fleshes out the sustainable
infrastructure aim: “the NDB set out to constitutionally promote an alternative mode
of development the foundation of which is green infrastructure” (Cooper 2017:278).
Lastly, he argues that the BRICS bank has been innovative in raising capital from
markets, using local currencies and starting green government bonds, for example
(Cooper 201:279–80). Cooper believes that all these areas of innovation are issues
that all multilateral development banks must face and the NDB rests at the interface
of key debates about global governance’ (Cooper 2017:281).
DVA1502/1155

8.3.3
Critical approaches to the NDB
The NDB has its critics, however. Bond (2019) argues that the NDB is a “highrisk institution” and “it appears from the South African case that the ingredients
exist for the NDB to amplify uneven development through financing some of the
country’s most notoriously corrupt institutions, for projects which themselves were
highly dubious” (Bond 2019:18). Bond is referring to NDB funding of an Eskom coal
venture and a corruptly-procured Transnet deal (Bond 2019:15). Bond argues that
the national elites of the BRICS countries (perhaps excepting China) are pursuing
uneven development within their nations and are therefore unlikely to engage with
global financial reform through the BRICS bank; further, by 2015 Brazil, South
Africa and Russia all suffered the collapse of commodity prices (oil, for example)
and all three were given junk rating (Bond 2017:11–12) – so their financial problems
were of a much larger scale than could be managed by the NDB.
READING BOX 8.5
On the NDB amidst national corruption and environmentally destructive
investment, from Bond 2019 pp14–15
Another major factor that will create additional risk to all parties is systematic
corporate and state corruption. It pervades all the BRICS countries, at a level
just as high as can be found in the US, Europe or Africa. The top four countries
in which economic crime occurs, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (2018),
are South Africa, Kenya, France and Russia, with China ranked eighth. Financial
Times commentator Gideon Rachman (2018) expressed concern that “In all five
countries, popular rage about graft is at the very heart of politics.”
Moreover, worried Rachman (2018), the BRICS countries “may be spreading
corrupt practices more widely. The US, EU and UK pride themselves on their
sound institutions. But western bankers, lawyers, real estate agents, PR firms
(and perhaps even presidents) are often all too willing to share in the proceeds
of corruption.” (In South Africa such firms included Bell Pottinger – which as a
result of South African corruption went into bankruptcy – and consultancy and
law firms KPMG, McKinsey, Hogan Lovells, SAP and others.)
A degree of corruption-denialism exists within the NDB. Asked about the corruption
associated with its loan to Transnet in mid-2018, the institution’s Compliance
Officer Srinivias Yanamandra (2018) claimed, “At the time of loan appraisal, NDB
gives consideration to corruption risks in accordance with internal policies and
guidelines, which articulate a zero-tolerance policy against corruption. These
policies and guidelines stipulate adequate mechanisms to ensure compliance with
highest standards of ethics, accountability and integrity. The Bank further reckons
adverse media news, if any about the prospective borrower, taking into account
the country system of law enforcement for handling corruption issues. The Bank
supplements internal assessment with a co-operative relationship externally with
law enforcement as well as other responsible agencies that deal with matters
relating to anti-corruption at national/international level” (Yanamamdra 2018).
156
LEARNING UNIT 8: The international context of development: the aid debate
Such “zero-tolerance” policy claims cannot be taken seriously given the
widespread media and law-enforcement attention to Transnet at the time the
loan was granted, in May 2018. Recognizing the contradiction, Yanamandra
(2018) further explained, “The appraisal of the loan to Transnet went through the
above-mentioned procedures of the Bank. While approving the loan in May 2018,
the Bank recognized the ongoing efforts by the South African Government to
address corruption issues both at the national level and at the level of Transnet
as a particular entity (including through the new Special Investigative Unit set
up by the President of South Africa). The Bank further took note of internal
developments at the Company (viz., forensic investigations under the oversight
of Board Audit Committee and ongoing review of procurement processes). The
Bank has also noted the ongoing improvements in oversight of the Company
by the Ministry of Public Enterprises, including through leadership changes that
were implemented in recent times.”
Such improvements were not adequate to halt a major episode of corruption in
late 2018, one so serious as to halt the Durban port’s expansion. Although the
notorious Transnet Chief Executive Officer Siyabonga Gama’s contract was by
October 2018 finally terminated due to corruption, a $500 million component
of the Durban port deepening project, commissioned in July 2018, became the
source of a controversy over the procurement process.
The project involved not only the Italian-South African CMI Emtateni Joint Venture,
but in particular, Durban’s best-known procurement fraudster, Shauwn Mpisane
(Cowan 2018). Without disclosing details about the malfeasance, which included
a lawsuit by a competitor who raised substantive complaints about the process,
Transnet stated, “In the interest of good corporate governance, Transnet has
decided to issue a stop work instruction on the Main Marine Construction Works
contract pending the outcome of the investigation” (Mkentane 2018). (By mid-2019
there was no word on the investigation and the NDB project remained stalled.)
In 2019, a leading BRICS official admitted that the 2016 loan to Eskom – which
had been put on hold allegedly by Brian Molefe due to his opposition to solar
energy – was actually “saddled with corruption allegations and governance
challenges. So that loan was put on ice and never formally concluded” (although
it was reaffirmed in mid-2018) (Wright 2019). The character of this particular
case of corruption was not revealed.
However, like other BRICS countries, South Africa remains bedevilled by
procurement fraud, which has been estimated by a leading Treasury official as
costing 35 to 40 percent more on each outsourced contract than is reasonable,
on $50 billion in annual corporate procurements (Mkokeli 2016).
In Brazil, Operation Car Wash revealed mensalão bribery in Congress and
widespread Petrobras patrimonialism. Russian elites, including several close to
Putin, were fingered as having multi-billion-dollar offshore accounts in tax havens,
in the leaked lawyers’ emails known as the Paradise and Panama Papers. In
India, the extent of citizens’ experience with petty bribery has been measured by
Transparency International at more than 60 percent of respondents. And China’s
highest-profile corruption case – the prosecution of former Chongqing mayor
(and Xi competitor) Bo Xilai – was seen as a political hatchet job, although to
Beijing’s credit, many thousands of corrupt officials have been jailed (Zhao 2012).
DVA1502/1157

A final risk is faced by all financiers in the current period: fossil-intensive
investments considered to be “stranded assets,” resulting in devaluation of
their portfolios. This is not merely an institutional risk, but – due to ongoing
species-extinguishing climate change – one that extends deep into the future
of global civilization. Ironically, NDB rhetoric leaves the impression that the
2013-14 leaders of the BRICS countries, prompted by the institution’s illustrious
designers Nicolas Stern and Joseph Stiglitz (2011), had a strong commitment
to earth stewardship.
In reality, all five BRICS countries are amongst the world’s most unsustainable
countries in terms of pollution loads, and naturally this will affect the availability
of infrastructure investments (e.g., a high emphasis on ports, railroads and roads,
such as in the case of Transnet). Indeed, the BRICS countries are amplifying
the inherited Western corporate traditions of externalizing environmental costs
onto nature and onto the societies surrounding their main industrial districts.
Although the NDB’s commitment to the vaguely-defined promise of “sustainability”
is a noble sentiment, it has little hope of ever being realized given the broader
BRICS project of high-carbon extractive infrastructure.
South Africa alone is engaged in massive new fracking investments, offshore
oil and gas exploration (in early 2019 Total discovered a billion oil-equivalent
barrels); 18 billion tonnes of coal exports (mainly to India); and coal-fired power
generation including two 4800 MW plants now under construction and a 4600
MW plant promised in a Chinese metallurgical complex, as well as several others
in the 1000MW range.
Even though the NDB has sustainable aims and wishes to promote renewable
energy projects, many of its bigger investments go against these aims and the
NDB has not adequately clarified its environmental standards (Wang 2017:116).
Therefore, the NDB is ill-equipped to contest the central BRICS ‘project of highcarbon extractive infrastructure’ (Bond 2019:16).
The other line of concern about the NDB has already been mentioned: “with
such dominance in the NDB and AIIB, China is in a position to use these two
MDBs to pursue its own policy goals” (Wang 2017:116); “the very existence of
new multilateral institutions championed by China is a challenge to the existing
US-dominated global order’ while not upsetting this order’s liberal character”
(Humphrey & Munoz 2020:3).
Kellerman (2019:108) believes that “the New Development Bank is not … so new”
because many alternative banks have been started before. Moreover, he argues,
there are perhaps too many banks with overlapping functions. While the NDB
will grow to be one of the larger multilateral development banks, it will not be the
largest (Wang 2017:115); and since the need for global infrastructure spending
is ten times larger than all the development banks’ spending combined, the NDB
is likely to cooperate creatively with the global collection of development banks.
In conclusion, the NDB clearly has important innovative features, but is caught
in the issues of the member countries and issues of the global economy. It also
does not effectively implement environmental standards (despite having green
values) and, with AIIB, works within global liberal financial management.
Source: Bond (2019:14–15)
158
LEARNING UNIT 8: The international context of development: the aid debate
SELF-ASSESSMENT ACTIVITY 8.5
Gto the e-reserves for this module: http://libguides.unisa.ac.za/request/request
Open and read the article by Wang entitled New multinational development banks:
opportunities and challenges for global governance.
(1)
(2)
(3)
8.4
Summarize the potential benefits of the new MDBs
Summarize the potential risks of the new MBDs
Discuss in one paragraph how useful the New Development Bank is likely
to be for Africa, (using Wang’s article and the whole of 8.2 and 8.3 above)
CONCLUSION
In this learning unit, we looked at poor countries’ debt problems and the issues of
aid to assist them. As in the previous unit, it was obvious that many of the problems
poor countries experience lie not only in the mismanagement of funds (e.g., the loss
of funds to corruption and conflict spending), but also at the feet of international
institutions and their damaging policies (especially the IMF). This obviously has to
change (Cripps, Izurieta & Singh 2011:32). The writer Prabhakar (2010:044, 067)
says (with regard to the global recession):
The international community needs to provide the global public goods to
foster growth that is more resilient to crises. This means effective reform of
the global governance systems with a new voice for emerging and developing
countries. The UN needs to establish its role in leading global debate on issues
of worldwide concern. The crisis has undermined the reputation of pre-crisis
development models, as well as any belief that the West knows best … The
current global crisis has created an opportunity to change the current global
economic and political order.
Whether this will happen remains to be seen. An institution like the New Development
Bank may assist in such change or may get sucked into elite politics. In the meantime,
we can only hope that the voices of those who advocate a more just global order will
become more and very loud. Without a decisive change in policy at international level,
the rich will continue to stay very rich, and the poor more vulnerable and powerless
in an increasingly environmentally unstable world.
8.5
OUTCOMES CHECKLIST
Question
(1)
xplain the debt crisis of developing
E
countries and the effect that it is having on
their development.
(2)
re alternative funding organizations
A
to the Bretton Woods institutions better
financiers for developing countries?
Can do
Cannot do
DVA1502/1159

REFERENCES
Adelman. I. 2000. Fifty Years of Economic Development: What Have We Learned
(mimeo). Washington DC: World Bank.
African Union 2002 Strategy for Gender Equality and Women Empowerment
(GEWE), http://au.int/en/.
African Union 2004 Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality.
Ahmed, S & Sukar, A. 2018. A Critical Evaluation of IMF History and Policies.
Manag Econ Res J. 4(2018):60–66. doi.org/10.18639/MERJ.2018.04.520663.
AIDSTAR-One. 2012. Public sector response to gender-based violence in Vietnam. Case study
series. USAID. https://aidsfree.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/gbv_vietnam_print.
pdf.
Arkpabio, IA. 2007. Women, NGOs and the socio-economic status of rural
women in Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. Journal of Agriculture and Social Sciences
(3):1813–2235.
Assimeng, M. 1981. Social Structure of Ghana (Accra Ghana Publishing Corporation).
Atkinson, D. 2002. A Passion to govern: Third generation issues facing Local
Government in South Africa. Centre for Development and Enterprise.
Available at: http//www.hsrc.ac.za. Date accessed: 05 May. 2021.
Bala, P., Songan, P., Khairuddin Ab Hamid, Harris, R., & Khoo, G. L. 2002. Bridging
the digital divide: The e-Bario experience. Sarawak Development Journal, 5(1), pp.
63–78. Sarawak Development Institute, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia.
Baus, J. 2015. Low health literacy in the older adult: identification & intervention
power point. Health and medicine. https://www.slideshare.net/jmbaus/
health-literacy-power-point-2115.
Bellamy, C. 2003. The state of the world’s children, 2004. Girls, education and development.
New York: UNICEF.
Beuving, J. 2004. Cotonou’s Klondike: African traders and second-hand car markets
in Bénin. The Journal of Modern African Studies Vol. 42 Issue 4 pp 511–537
Blackmon, E. 2008. Health issues in Third World countries. www.lsu.edu/faculty/
jwither/ Essays/Health/Blackmon_Essay.html (accessed on 30/01/2012).
Blossner, M & De Onis, M. 2005. Malnutrition: quantifying the health impact at national and local
levels. Geneva, Switzerland: World Health Organization. Environmental Burden
of Disease Series. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2005/9241591870.pdf
(accessed on 20/01/2012).
Bock, JC & Papagiannis, GJ. 1983. Some alternative perspectives on the role of
non- formal education in national development, in Non-formal education and
national development: a critical assessment of policy, research, and practice, edited by JC Bock &
GJ Papagiannis. New York: Praeger.
Bond, P. 2021. Does BRICS Banking offer an Alternative to the IMF and World Bank?
Pessimistic Signals from South Africa. CADTM Committee for the abolition of
illegitimate debt. Available from: https://www.cadtm.org/Does-BRICSBanking-offer-an-Alternative-to-the-IMF-and-World-Bank-Pessimistic
[Accessed 30 April 2021].
160
REFERENCES
Bowes, B, Pennington, S & Lundy, G. 2004. South Africa 2014: the story of our future.
Pietermaritzburg. Interpak Books.
Bread for the World Institute. 2004. Are we on track to end hunger? Hunger report 2004.
14th Annual Report on the State of World Hunger. Washington: Bread for the World
Institute.
Brennan, MA, Flint, CG & Luloff, AE. 2008. Bringing together local culture and
rural development: findings from Ireland, Pennsylvania and Alaska. Sociologia
Ruralis 49(1), January:97–112.
Broodryk, J. 2006. Ubuntu African life coping skills: theory and practice. Paper presented at
the CCEAM Conference on Recreating Linkages between Theory and Praxis in
Educational Leadership, 12–17 October, Lefkosia (Nicosia), Cyprus.
Buccus, I. and Hicks, J. 2006. Assessing the effectiveness of community-based
involvement. Critical Dialogue: 2.
Burslem, C. 2004. Obesity in developing countries: people are overweight but still
not well nourished. http://worldhunger.org/articles/04/global/burslem.htm
(accessed on 27/7/2012).
Cameron, J & Hurst, P. 1983. International handbook of education systems, vol 2. Chichester:
Wiley.
Cartoon Stock. https://www.cartoonstock.com/cartoonview.asp?catref=forn2141
(accessed on 29/3/2017).
Chabal, P. 2009. Africa: The politics of suffering and smiling. London & New York: Zed Books.
Chambers, R. 1983. Rural development: putting the last first. London: Longman.
Chan, M. 2008. Return to Alma Ata. World Health Organisation. http://www.who.
int/dg/20080915/en/index.html (accessed on 27/7/2012).
Chisenga, J. 2004. Africa Governments in Cyberspace: are they bridging the content
divide? In: Birungi, P and Musoke, M. C. 2004. SCECSAL XV. Towards a
knowledge Society on Africa. www.dissanet.com [Accessed on 13 May 2021].
Coetzee, T. Co-operative governance and good governance: reality or myth? University
of Free State: Department of Governance and Political Governance.
Colclough, C. 2012. Education, poverty and development – mapping their
interconnections. Comparative Education 48(2):135–148.
Commission for Gender Equality 2020. The Bare Minimum Report on South Africa’s
Compliance with CEDAW Committee.
Common Wealth Education Hub (The). 2017. Education and the SDGs. https://
www. thecommonwealth-educationhub.net/practice-centre/find-tools-andresources/education- and-the-sdgs/ (accessed on 28/3/2017).
Connell, RW. 1987. Gender and power: society, the person and personal politics. Cambridge,
UK: Polity Press.
Cooper, AF. 2017. The BRICS’ New Development Bank: Shifting from Material
Leverage to Innovative Capacity. Global Policy. 8(3):275–284. doi.org/https://
doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12458.
Cornwell, L. 2000a. Education and development, in Introduction to development studies, edited
by F de Beer & H Swanepoel. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
Cornwell, L. 2000b. Aid and debt, in Introduction to development studies, edited by F de Beer
& H Swanepoel. Cape Town: Oxford University Press.
Cornwell, L & De Beer, F. 2010. Development problems and institutions. Only study guide for
DVA1601. Pretoria: University of South Africa.
Coulibaly, BS, Gandhi, D & Senbet, LW. 2019. Is sub-Saharan Africa facing another
systemic sovereign debt crisis? (Policy Brief). Brookings.
Cripps, F, Izurieta, A & Singh, A. 2011. Global imbalances, under-consumption and
over borrowing: the state of the world economy and future policies. Centre
for Business Research, University of Cambridge, Working Paper No. 419.
DVA1502/1161

Cullen, R. 2003. The digital divide: a global and national call to action. The Electronic
Library, 21 (3):247–257.
Cultural Expressions. 2005. Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization, 3–21 October, 33rd session, Paris.
Daley, E. 2003. Expanding the concept of literacy. EDUCAUSE Review. Also available
at http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0322.pdf (accessed on 26/7/2012).
Das, S. 2016. Banquet of Consequences: The Reality of Our Unusually Uncertain Economic Future.
Reprint edition ed. Harlow, England; New York: Trans-Atlantic Publications.
De Beer, F. 2012. Participation, empowerment and development, in 80:20 Development in
an unequal world, edited by Colm Regan. Pretoria: Unisa Press and Wicklow, Ireland:
80:20Educating and Acting for a Better World.
Dejene, A. 1981. A broader concept of development and the role of non-formal education: analysis of three
rural development projects. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms.
Doorly, M. 2012. Living in the hollow of plenty – world hunger today, in 80:20 Development
in an unequal world, edited by C. Reagan. 6th edition. Unisa Press: Pretoria, copublished by 80:20 Educating and acting for a better world.
Dore, R & Oxenham, J. 1984. Educational reform and selection for employment – an
overview, in Education versus qualifications? A study of relationships between education, selection for
employment and the productivity of labour, edited by J Oxenham. London: Allen and Unwin.
Duffy, V. 2012. Women, vulnerability and HIV and AIDS, in 80:20 Development in an Unequal
World, edited by C Regan. Pretoria: Unisa Press.
Education International. 2009. Education for all by 2015. Education International’s
Response to the Global Monitoring Report 2009.
EFA Global Monitoring Report. 2003. Gender and education for all: the leap to equality. Paris:
UNESCO.
EFA Global Monitoring Report. 2009. Overcoming inequality: why governance matters. Paris:
UNESCO and Oxford University Press.
EFA Global Education Monitoring Report 2020. Inclusion and Education: All Means
All. Paris UNESCO.
Etounga-Manguelle, D. 2000). Does Africa Need a Cultural Adjustment Program? In
L. Harrison and S. Huntington (eds), Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human
Progress. (New York: Basic Books).
Fafunwa, AB. 1982. African education in perspective, in Education in Africa: a comparative
survey, edited by AB Fafunwa & JU Aisiku. London: Allen and Unwin.
Fanon, F. 2004. The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press.
FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). 1999. Voices for change: rural
women and communication. Rome. http://www.fao.org/docrep/X2550E/X2550e04.
htm (accessed on 6/8/2012).
FAO. 2005. The state of food insecurity in the world. Eradicating world hunger – key to achieving the
millennium development goals. Rome: FAO http://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/008/
a0200e/a0200e00.pdf. Accessed on the 20/01/2012.
Fletcher, P. 2011. African ‘ lions’ can still rise: IMF/ World Bank. http://af.reuters.com/article/
topNews/idAFJOE78M0HW20110923 (accessed on 12/10/2011).
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. See FAO.
Frieden, T. R., & Damon, I. K. (2015). Ebola in West Africa—CDC’s Role in
Epidemic Detection, Control, and Prevention. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 21(11),
1897–1905. https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2111.150949.
Friedman, S. 2006. Participatory governance and citizen action in post-apartheid
South Africa. Paper for International Institute of Labour Studies: 8–11.
Geleta, B. 2011. Never ever again, in BBC Focus on Africa, October–December, BBC
World Service.
162
REFERENCES
Giddens, A. 2008. The impact of globalisation in development and underdevelopment:
the political economy of global inequality, in Development and underdevelopment:
the political economy of global inequality, edited by MA Seligson & JT Passe-Smith.
Boulder: Lynne Rienner.
Gillam, S. 2008. Is the declaration of Alma Ata still relevant to primary health care?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2265356/pdf/bmj_3367643analysis-00536.pdf (accessed on 25/7/2012).
Gills, DS. 2002. Economic globalisation and women in Asia: challenges and responses. London:
Routledge.
Global Citizen. 2014. 10 Barriers to education around the world. https://www.globalcitizen.
org/en/content/10-barriers-to-education-around-the-world-2/ (accessed on
28/3/2017).
Global Partnership for Education. 2015. Education and global goals. http://www.globalpartnership.
org/multimedia/infographic/education-and-global-goals (accessed on
29/3/2017).
Groenewald Y. 2012. Widespread water woes. City Press, 11 March:15.
Guha-Sapir, D. 1994. Health and nutrition of the urban poor: the worst of both
worlds. TheCourier 147:61–62.
Gyekye, K. 1996. African Cultural Values (Accra, Sankofa Publishing Company)
Hall, GB & Peters, PA. 2003. Global ideals and local practicalities in education policies
andplanning in Lima, Peru. Habitat International 27.
Handelman, P. 2011. The challenge of Third World development. Boston: Pearson Publishers.
Hartshorne, K. 1984. In pursuit of learning in human resources. Leadership
South Africa, Johannesburg.
Hassan, MA. 2009. Financing adult and non-formal education in Nigeria. Educational
Research and Review 4(4):195–203. Also available at: http://www.academicjournals.
org/ERR3/ PDF/Pdf%202009/Apr/Hassan.pdf (accessed on 13/5/2013).
Heise, L, Ellsberg, M & Gottmoeller, M. 2002. A global overview of gender-based
violence. International Journal of Gynecolog y and Obstetrics 78 Suppl. 1, S5–S14.
Hollingsworth, J. R. & Boyer, R. 1997. (eds) Contemporary Capitalism: the Embeddedness
of Institutions, (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Hosagrahar, FBJ & Albernaz, FS. 2011. Why development needs culture.
http://www.un.org/ apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=39485&Cr=literacy&Cr1
(accessed on 17/6/2012).
Hughes, C & Hutchison, J. 2012. Development effectiveness and the politics
of commitment. Third World Quarterly 33(1):17–33. London: Routledge.
Hyden, G, Court, J and Mease, K. 2003. Civil society and governance in 16 developing
countries (World governance survey discussion paper 4, Overseas Development
Institute, UK) pp. 1–29
Humphrey, C & Michaelowa, K. 2019. China in Africa: Competition for traditional
development finance institutions? World Development. 120:15–28. doi.
org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.03.014.
Humphrey, C. 2015. The African development bank: ready to face the challenges of a changing
Africa? Stockholm: Expertgruppen för biståndsanalys.
Humphrey, C. 2016. The invisible hand: Financial pressures and organisational
convergence in multilateral development banks. The Journal of Development
Studies. 52(1):92–112.
Humphrey, C & Maduz, L. 2020. China, Multilateral Banking and Geopolitics. CSS
Analyses in Security Policy. 272:5. doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000444811.
Hunt, A & Samman, E. 2016. Women’s economic empowerment: navigating enablers and
constraints. Overseas Development Institute. https://www.odi.org/sites/odi.org.
uk/files/ resource-documents/10683.pdf (accessed on 29/3/2017).
DVA1502/1163

International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(9),
1082–1095. Skills in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR).
Kagia, R. 2007. Education and development. Education for all fast- track initiative. Washington:
World Bank.
Karl, M. 1995. Women and empowerment: participation and decision-making. Bath: Bath Press.
Kellerman, M. 2019. The proliferation of multilateral development banks. The Review
of International Organizations. 14(1):107–145. doi.org/10.1007/s11558-018-9302-y.
Kieh, GK. 2008. The new globalization: scope, nature and dimensions, in Africa and the
New Globalization. USA: Dalro.
KPMG Africa. 2012. The state of healthcare in Africa. KPMG Africa Blog. http://www.blog.
kpmgafrica.com/state-healthcare-in-africa-report/.
Kroukamp,H. 2005. E-governance in South Africa: are we coping. Acta Academia,
37(2):52–69.
Kuada, J. 2009. Gender, Social Networks, and Entrepreneurship in Ghana. Journal
of African Business Vol. 10 No. 1 pp: 85–103
Kuada, J & Buame, S. 2000. Social ties and resource leveraging strategies of small
enterprises in Ghana. Paper presented at the 5th International Conference on Marketing
and Development, Accra, Ghana 3–6 January.
Kuada, J. 1994. Managerial Behaviour in Ghana and Kenya: A Cultural Perspective (Aalborg,
Denmark: Aalborg University Press)
Lazo, L. 1995. Some reflection on the empowerment of women, in Women, education
andempowerment: pathway towards autonomy, edited by C Medel-Aňonuevo. UIE Studies
5,UNESCO:23.
Lindio-McGovern, L & Walliman, I. 2009. Globalisation and Third World women: exploitation,
coping and resistance. Surrey: Ashgate.
Lipset, S M and Lenz, G S,. 2000. “Corruption, Culture, and Markets”, in Lawrence
E. Harrison, and Samuel P. Huntington, eds., Culture Matters (New York: Basic
Books)
Lucas, R.E. 1988. On the mechanics of economic development, Journal of Monetary
Economics, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 3–42
Maphumulo, W.T. & Bhengu, B.R., 2019. Challenges of quality improvement in the
healthcare of South Africa post-apartheid: A critical review. Curationis, 42(1).
a1901. https://doi.org/10.4102/curationis. v42i1.1901.
Maridal, J. H. 2013. Cultural impact on national economic growth. The Journal of
Socio-Economics 47 (2013) 136–146
Mazrui, A. 1978. Political values and the educated class in Africa. London: Heinemann. Mbakogu,
IA. 2004. Is there really a relationship between culture and development? Anthropologist
6(1):37–43.
Medel-Añonuevo, C (ed). 2002. Integrating lifelong learning perspectives. Hamburg: UNESCO
Institute for Education.
Milbrath, C & Lightfoot, C (eds). 2010. To create is to be: the role of the arts in
human development. American Psychological Association. http://psqtest.
typepad.com/blogPostPDFs/201008191_psq_55-27_ToCreateIsToBe
TheRoleOfTheArtsInHumanDevelopment.pdf (accessed on 5/4/2017).
Miller, C & Razavi, S. 1995. From WID to GAD: conceptual shifts in the women and development discourse.
Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).
Mkandawire, T., Running while others walk: Knowledge and the challenge of Africa’s
Development. Africa Development, Vol. XXXVI, No.2, pp1–36. Council for the
Development of Social Science Research in Africa.
Morgan, J. 2016. Participation, empowerment and capacity building: exploring young
people’s perspectives on the services provided to them by a grassroots NGO in
sub-Saharan Africa. Children and Youth Services Review 65:175–182. Elsevier.
164
REFERENCES
Moore, M. 1997. Societies, polities and capitalists in developing countries: A literature
survey. The Journal of Development Studies Vol. 33 No. 3 pp. 287–363
Morrison, S. 2012. Revealed: the best and worst places to be a woman. The Independent, 4 March.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/revealed-the-best-andworst-places-to- be-a-woman-7534794.html (accessed on 30/9/2013).
Mthombothi, B. 2011. Don’t give money to the EU. Financial Mail, 7 October, Johannesburg:
BDFM Publishers.
Nah S’L & Chau CF. 2010. Issues and challenges in defeating world hunger. Trends in
Food Science & Technolog y 21(11):544–557. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/
article/pii/S0924224410001779 (accessed on 20/01/2012).
Naidoo, K. 2003. Civil society, governance and globalisation’ World Bank Presidential
fellows lecture, Secretary General, world alliance for citizen participation,
Washington DC:6–8.
Naidoo, L. & Fourie, L. 2013. Participatory anchored development in South Africa
as evaluated at Thusong Service Centres. Communitas 18(1):95–115.
Namibian Government 2000. Traditional Authorities Act, Windhoek. Government
Printers.
Ndikumana, L & Pickbourn, L. 2017. The impact of foreign aid allocation on access to
social services in sub-Saharan Africa: the case of water and sanitation. World
Development 90:104–114. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/
S0305750X1530543X.
Ndlovu-Gatsheni, SJ. 2007. Giving Africa voice within global governance: oral
history, human rights and the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council,
in Human rights: international perspectives, edited by VB Malleswari. Punjagutta:
The ICFAI University Press.
Noor, A. 1981. Education and basic human needs. Washington: World Bank.
North, D.C. 1990. Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge:
Cambridge University. Press)
Nussbaum, M. 2003. Capabilities as fundamental entitlements: Sen and social justice.
Feminist Economics 9(2–3):33–59. https://philpapers.org/archive/NUSCAF.pdf.
Accessed on 29 March 2017.
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). OECD.1985.
Twenty-five years of development co-operation: a review. Paris:171–173.
OECD. 2012. From aid to development: the global fight against poverty. OECD Insights. OECD
Publishing. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789264123571-en.
OECD. 2019. Government at a glance: Towards people-centric public service.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (The). See OECD.
Philbeck, T & Davis, N. 2018. The fourth industrial revolution: Shaping a new Era.
Journal of International Affairs, Journal of International Affairs, Vol.72, No.
1. pp 17–22, New York.
Pickett, LE. 1988. Organising development through participation: co-operative organisation and services
for land settlement. London: Croom Helm. https://www.cabdirect.org/cabdirect/
abstract/19876705134. Accessed on 11 July 2017.
Pritchard, P. 1981. Manual of primary health care. 2nd edition. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Psacharopoulos, G & Woodhall, M. 1985. Education for development: an analysis of investment choices.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Public Health Notes. 2020. Primary Health Care (PHC): History, Principles, Pillars,
Elements & Challenges. Available at: https://www.publichealthnotes.com/
primary-health-care-phc-history-principles-pillars-elements-challenges/.
Pyke, A. 2012 ‘... Understanding and invoking rights ...’ Education and Development, in
80:20Development in an Unequal World, edited by C Regan. Unisa Press: Pretoria.
DVA1502/1165

Ramli, S., Rasul, M. S., & Affandi, H. M. 2018. Sustainable Development: Needs
of Green (Publisher??)
Ramsetty, A., & Adams, C. 2020. Impact of the digital divide in the age of COVID19, Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, Volume 27, Issue 7, July
2020, Pages 1147–1148, https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa078 [Accessed on
10 May 2021].
Regan, C (ed). 2006. 80:20 Development in an unequal world. Wicklow, Ireland: Co-published
with 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World.
Regan, C. 2012. 30 years of women’s rights and wrongs, in 80:20 Development in an Unequal
World, edited by C Regan. Unisa Press: Pretoria.
Regan, C. 2016. Women, development and (dis)empowerment, in 80:20 Development
in anunequal world, edited by C. Regan. 7th edition. Bray (Wicklow), Ireland: 80:20
Educatingand Acting for a Better World.
Republic of South Africa. 2018. Department of Basic Education. Education statistics in
South Africa 2016.
Republic of South Africa and https://www.gov.za/about-sa/health#. Accessed 08 May
2021.
Republic of South Africa. 2002. A Draft White Paper on Traditional Leaders. Pretoria
Government Printers.
Republic of South Africa. 1996. Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996
Pretoria: Government Printers.
Republic of South Africa. 2011. Guide on public participation in the Public Service.
South Africa: Department of Public Service and Administration DPSA.
Richards, M. 2003. Poverty reduction, equity and climate change: global governance
synergies or contradictions? Overseas Development Institute Globalization and Poverty Programme
Series Paper. London: Overseas Development Institute.
Richter, M. 2003. Traditional medicines and traditional healers in South Africa.
Discussion paper prepared for the Treatment Action Campaign and AIDS
Law Project.
Righter, R. 2011. How this Greek tragedy will end. Newsweek, 26 September. New York:
The Newsweek/Daily Beast Company.
Rist, G. 2008. The history of development. London: Zed Books.
Rizvi JH & Zuberi NF. 2006. Women’s health in developing countries. Best Practice
and Research Clinical Obstetrics and Gynaecolog y 20(6). http://www.sciencedirect.com
(accessed on 29/6/2012).
Robeyns, I. 2003. The capability approach: an interdisciplinary introduction.
http://commonweb.unifr.ch/artsdean/pub/gestens/f/as/files/4760/24995_
105422.pdf (accessed on 29/3/2017).
Robeyns, I. 2017 Wellbeing, Freedom and Social Justice: The Capability Approach
Re-Examined. Open Book Publishers http://dx.doi.org/10.11647/OBP.130
(accessed on 07/05/2021).
Rogoff, B. 2016. Culture and participation: a paradigm shift. Current Opinion in
Psycholog y 8, April:182–189.
Romer, P. 1990. Endogenous Technical Change, Journal of Political Economy 89, pp.71–102
Rugege, S. 1998. The Institution of Traditional Leadership & Its Relation with Elected Local
Government. Pretoria: Human Science Research Publishers.
Ruxwana, N.L., Herselman, M.E. & Conradie, D.P. 2010. ICT applications as e-health
solutions in rural healthcare in the Eastern Cape Province South Africa. Health
Information Management 39(1): 17–26. Date accessed: 05 May 2021.
Sabates, R, Akyeampong, K, Westbrook, J & Hunt, F. 2011. The hidden crisis: armed
conflict and education. Paper commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report
2011. Education for all global monitoring report. Paris: UNESCO.
166
REFERENCES
Schoeman, S. 1981. Education and training in multi-cultural societies. Journal of Contemporary
African Studies 1(1).
Sen, A. 1985. Commodities and capabilities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Shabangu, M. H. 2008. The role of traditional leaders in the improvement of the
lives of the communities in South Africa. Journal of Public Administration 43:3.1.
Shabangu, Z., & Madiba, S. 2019. The Role of Culture in Maintaining Post-Partum
Sexual Abstinence of Swazi Women. International Journal of Environmental
Research and Public Health. MDPI.
Smile Foundation. 2016. Girl child education – the key to development. http://www.
smilefoundationindia.org/blog/2016/06/21/girl-child-education-the-key-todevelopment/ (accessed on 29/03/2017).
Soni, JK. 2006. Women empowerment: exploring the facts. New Delhi: Authorspress.
South African Health Profile. n.d. available at https://www.finddx.org/wp-content/
uploads/2020/01/5A_South-Africa_Healthcare-profile.pdf. Accessed on
01 May 2021.
Stephen, M. 2011. Globalisation and resistance: struggles over common sense in the
global political economy. Review of International Studies 37.
Stewart, P & Rakolojane, M. 2010. Development theories: Only Study Guide for DVA3701.
Pretoria: University of South Africa.
Suchodolski, SG & Demeulemeester, JM. 2018. The BRICS Coming of Age and
the New Development Bank. Global Policy. 9(4):578–585. doi.org/https://doi.
org/10.1111/1758-5899.12600.
Swanepoel, HJ & De Beer, FC. 2011. Community development: breaking the cycle of poverty.
Cape Town: Juta.
Tembon, M & Fort, L. 2008. Girl’s education in the 21st century: gender equality, empowerment, and economic
growth. Washington: The World Bank.
Thomson, A. 2000. An introduction to African politics. London: Routledge.
Tinker, I 1990. Persistent inequalities: women and world development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Todaro, MP. 1981. Economic development in the Third World. 2nd edition. New York:
Longman.
Torti, C., Mazzitelli, M., Trecarichi, E.M., & Darius, O. 2020. Potential implications
of SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Africa: where are we going from now? BMC
Infectious Diseases. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12879-020-05147-8.
Toure, C. 1983. General remarks on functional literacy. Children in the Tropics 142.
Tshoose, C.I. 2015. Dynamics of public participation in local government: A South
African perspective. South Africa: University of South Africa.
Tylor, EB. 1958. Primitive culture: research into the development of mytholog y, philosophy, religion, language,
art and customs. London: Murray.
UNAIDS. 2004. Women and HIV/AIDS: advocacy, prevention and empowerment.
http://www.un.org/events/women/iwd/2004/aids_backgrounder.pdf.
UNDP. See United Nations Development Programme.
UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). 2003.
UNESCO’s gender mainstreaming framework: baseline definitions of key concepts and terms.
UNESCO. 2005. Convention on the protection and promotion of the diversity of cultural expressions.
Paris.
UNESCO. 2010a. Adult and youth literacy: global trends in gender parity. UNESCO Institute
for Statistics. Paris.
UNESCO. 2010b. The power of culture for development. http://unesdoc.unesco.
org/ images/0018/001893/189382e.pdf (accessed on 5/4/2017).
UNESCO. 2010c/2011. World data on education. 7th edition. Paris.
UNESCO. 2015a. EFA global monitoring report 2000–2015: achievements and challenges. http://
unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002322/232205e.pdf. (accessed on
29/3/2017).
DVA1502/1167

UNESCO. 2015b. Timeline: the global education movement. http://en.unesco.org/node/265601
(accessed on 28/03/2017).
UNESCO. 2015c. The right to education. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/
themes/ leading-the-international-agenda/right-to-education/ (accessed on
28/3/2017).
UNESCO. 2016. Sustainable Development Goals. Unpacking Sustainable
Development Goal 4. Education 2030. Guide. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/
images/0024/002463/246300E.pdf. (accessed on 28/3/2017).
UNFPA. See United Nations Fund for Population Activities.
United Nations. 2004. Gender equality: striving for justice in an unequal world. Research Institute for
Social Development. New York: UNRISD (United Nations Research Institute
forSocial Development).
United Nations. 2007. Millennium Development Goals report. New York: Oxford University
Press.
United Nations. 2012. Millennium Development Goals: 2012 progress chart. New York.
http:// mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Resources/Static/Products/Progress 2012/
Progress_E.pdf (accessed on 27/7/2012).
United Nations. 2012. Millennium Development Goals report 2012. New York. http://mdgs.
un.org. Accessed on 27/07/2012.
UNDP Barbados. 2003. Information & Communications Technology. UNDP
Barbados and the Organisation of Eastern Carribean States (OECS). Date
accessed: 07 May 2021.
United Nations Development Programme. 2003. Human development report 2003. New
York: Oxford University Press.
United Nations Development Programme. 2008. Empowered and equal: gender equality strateg y
2008-2011. New York.
United Nations Development Programme. 2011. Human development report 2011. New York:
Oxford University Press.
United Nations Development Program. n.d. The SDGs in action. UNDP. Available
on https://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals. Accessed on
01 May 2021.
United Nations Family Planning Association. 2009. Giving birth should not be a
matter of life and death. http://www.unfpa.org/webdav/site/global/shared/
safematernalhealth_factsheet_ en.pdf (accessed on 20/1/2012).
United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA). 1998. Gender, population
and development report. New York: Oxford University Press.
United Nations Fund for Population Activities. 2004. Empowering women: promoting
gender equality. http://www.org/gender/empowerment (accessed on 14/2/2012).
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR (2020) https://www.
unhcr.org.
United Nations Women http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/womenand-the-sdgs/sdg-5-gender-equality#sthash.Er2cINQj.dpuf. (accessed
04/04/2021).
UN News Centre. 2011. Literacy vital for beating poverty and disease and reinforcing stability.
Washington: United Nations.
Vogt, JF & Murrell, KL. 1990. Empowerment in organizations: how to spark exceptional
performance. San Diego: University Associates.
Voices of the Youth. 2013. Why we should support girl’s education. http://www.voicesofyouth.
org/en/posts/why-we-should-support-girls—4 (accessed on 29/3/2017).
Wang, H. 2017. New Multilateral Development Banks: Opportunities and Challenges
for Global Governance. Global Policy. 8(1):113–118. doi.org/https://doi.
org/10.1111/1758-5899.12396.
168
REFERENCES
Ward, FC (ed). 1974. Education and development reconsidered: the Bellagio conference papers.
New York: Praeger.
WaterAid. 2017. Wild Water: the state of the world’s water 2017.
Webster, A. 1984. Introduction to the sociolog y of development. London: Macmillan.
WHO (World Health Organization). 1978. Declaration of Alma Ata. International Conference
on Primary Health Care, World Health Organisation, Geneva. http://www.who.
int/hpr/ NPH/docs/declaration_almaata.pdf (accessed 26/07/2012).
WHO (World Health Organization) 2000. Turning the tide of malnutrition: responding to the challenge
of the 21st century. http://www.who.int/home-page/ (accessed on 20/01/2012).
WHO. 2006. Constitution of the World Health Organization. Basic Documents,
Forty-fifth edition, Supplement, October 2006. International Health Conference
held in New York from 19 June to 22 July 1946, http://www.who.int/governance/
eb/who_constitution_en.pdf. (accessed on 1/3/2017).
WHO. 2010. Health-related Millennium Development Goals: report by the Secretariat.
http://apps.whi.int/gblebwha/pdf_files/EB128/B128-7-en.pdf (accessed on
20/01/2012).
WHO. 2012. Health and development: World Health Organisation. http://www.who.int/
hdp/en/ (accessed on 20/01/2012).
WHO. 2018. Managing epidemics: key facts about major deadly diseases, Version 1. Geneva:
WHO. Available at; https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/managingepidemics-key-facts-about-major-deadly-diseases. Accessed 29/04/2021.
Williams, W. 2005. Community Engagement. United States: Department Agriculture
Cooperating.
Willis, K. 2005. Theories and practices of development. London: Routledge.
World Bank. 2000. World development report 1999/2000. Washington: World Bank.
World Bank. 2011. Learning for all: investing in people’s knowledge and skills to promote development. World
Bank Group Education Strategy 2020. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/
EDUCATION/Resources/ESSU/Education_Strategy_4_122011.pdf (accessed
27/3/2012).
World Bank. 2011. Millennium Development Goals. The World Bank: working for a world
free of poverty. http://www.worldbank.org/mdgs/education.html (accessed
on 30/1/2011).
World Economic Forum. 2017. Harnessing the Fourth Industrial Revolution for
Sustainable Emerging Cities. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org
[Accessed on 14 May 2021].
Yamin, F, Rahman, A & Huq, S. 2005. Vulnerability, adaptation and climate
disasters: aconceptual overview. IDS Bulletin 36(4).
Young, H. 2001. Nutrition and intervention strategies. In Food Security in Sub-Saharan
Africa,edited by S Devereux & S Maxwell. DOI: 10.3362/9781780440170.010
Zakaria, F. 2011. The debt deal’s failure. Time Magazine, 15 August.
Zehra I. 2009. The undernourished picture of India. http://www.instablogs.com/entry/theunder-nourished-future-of-india/ (accessed on 20/01/2012).
DVA1502/1169

9
APPENDIX A
Fifty Years of Economic Development: What Have we Learned?
by Irma Adelman
I.
Development Defined.
Before addressing the question of lessons of development, we must make
clear at the outset the sense in which the term is used. Economic development,
as distinct from mere economic growth, combines: (1) self-sustaining growth;
(2) structural change in patterns of production; (3) technological upgrading; (4)
social, political and institutional modernization; and widespread improvement in
the human condition. Kuznets used “development” in the sense of the first three
elements; development historians, new institutional development theorists and the
neoclassical development economists of the eighties added increasing the sphere
in which markets guide economic decisions (institutional modernization) to the
Kuznetsian definition of development. Modernization theorists have added social
and political development to the list of transformations that development entails
while the deficient entrepreneurship school has added socio cultural evolution to
the necessary aspects of development. Finally, the deficiencies of the concentrated
growth process of the first two decades of economic growth have led those concerned
with the welfare of the poor (McNamara 1973, Adelman and Morris 1973; Adelman
1973, Streeten and Stewart 1976, Sen 1988 and the UNDP,1990 onwards) to add
widespread improvements in national welfare explicitly to the list of characteristics
of economic developmentwhich distinguish it from economic growth.
When the notion of “development “is used in this sense, less than half a dozen
countries, mostly East Asian, have traveled the whole path from underdeveloped to
developed. since the endof World War Two. Others have progressed part-way. The
semi-industrial countries have achieved substantial transformation of their patterns of
production, gone part-way in increasing the sway of markets and the democratization
of their political institutions but failed to share the benefits of growth widely. And
the Sub-Saharan countries have accomplished some growth in human capital and
infrastructure but are still relying on primary production and its processing for
whatever growth they attain, if any.
II. Lessons About the Development Process:
Lesson One: Perhaps the single most important lesson we have learned is
that economic development of developing countries is possible. This was not
obvious in the 1950s, since prior to the end of the second World War, growth in
developing countries had been purely cyclical and exogenously induced. There was
little structural change in patterns of production, and even less institution-building
or human-resource accumulation. Developing countries’ growth was linked to the
growth-cycles of metropolitan centers and waxed and waned in response to changes
in international demand for raw materials and food. The growth of overseas territories
also depended heavily on the import of factors of production from industrial countries
– cyclically varying inflows of investment-capital and immigration of skilled and
unskilled labor.
170
APPENDIX A
Economic development became feasible only after the second World War, when
developing countries acquired an unprecedented degree of autonomy in managing
their economic destinies thanks to political independence, a benign global system,
subsidized capital and technical assistance from developed countries, and rapid
economic global economic growth.
Thus, during the last fifty years, five countries that were developing in the
nineteen fifties (Israel, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan) became developed by
the 1990s and about twenty,mostly Latin American, countries in which manufacturing
played only a minor role at the end of World War Two became semi-industrial by
the eighties. The rest of the paper will attempt to describe what we have learned
about the nature of the development process and answer the question of how the
transformation of developing into developed countries became achievable.
Lesson Two: The process of economic development is both
multidimensional and highly nonlinear. It entails dynamic change not only
in production patterns and technology butalso in social, political and economic
institutions, as well as in patterns of human development.
With respect to multidimensionality, there is ample empirical evidence that
economic development is multidimensional. Quantitative studies of development
since the nineteen sixties have indicated that economic change is an interrelated
multifaceted process and that the rate of economic growth is intimately linked to
changes in social, institutional, cultural and political factors. (Adelman and Morris
1967 and Adelman 1999). Abramowitz (1986) found that initial levels of social
capability explained intercountry differences in the trajectories pursued by different
European industrializers during the 19th century. This finding was confirmed for
current developing countries by Temple and Johnson (1998). Using the AdelmanMorris index of socio-economic development in 1960 as an indicator of initial levels
of social capability, they found that rates of growth in per capita income and in total
factor productivity are strongly relatedto the extent of a country’s initial level of social
capability. They therefore rejected the Solow model, in which technology is the same
across countries, in favor of a model in which technologydiffers and preexisting social
factors play a role in the speed. Finally, recent cross country regression studies of the
rate of growth of per capita GNP have found that they obtain better explanations of
this rate when they add to the rate of change of the capital labor ratio and technical
change, one or more of the following economic, or socio-political institutions: the
economy’s openness (Krueger 19XX; Balassa 1989; and Bhagwati 1988); or the
degree of development of capitalist institutions (De Melo et al 1996 and World Bank
World Development Report 1993); the availability of human capital (Lucas 1988 and
his followers); the degree of democracy (Barro 1996 and his followers); the degree
of corruption (Mauro 1995); or the degree of development of political institutions
(Campos and Nugent 1996).
Nevertheless, till recently, with a few notable exceptions, most of the development
literature and most prescriptions for development policy have concentrated on the
purely economic aspects of the development process and ignored interactions with
social factors, political institutions, and with institutional and cultural change. Not
all development theorists viewed the development process as purely economistic.
Important exceptions to the economistic view were offered by the classical economists,
the comparative economic historians,the dependency theorists, and the modernization
theorists. Thus, the classical economists, from Adam Smith, through Marx and
Schumpeter, had a multidimensional view of the grand dynamics governing the
DVA1502/1171

economic fate of nations. Indeed, the general analytic framework I used in my first
book to present their theories as special cases of each other (Adelman 1958) was
based on an expanded production function whose arguments consisted of vectors
describing not only the physical resources used in production, but also the technical
knowledge applied in various sectors, and the different social and institutional
structures within which the economy operates.
Economic historians, such as Abramovitz (1986), Kuznets (1966), North (1973
and 1990), and Landes (1969 and 1998), all had a multidimensional view of the sources
of economic progress, which included institutions, culture and technology. So did
Polanyi (1944) and Myrdal (1968) and the dependency theorists, such as Baran (1957),
Furtado (1963) and their followers. They all viewed economic retardation as being
due not to resource constraints but rather to inimical domestic political structures,
adverse international institutions and to path dependence. Finally, modernization
theorists, such as Black (1966), Hoselitz (1960), Inkeles (1966), Lerner (1958) and
Adelman and Morris (1967) all adopted a multi-indicator theory of development
including transformations of production structures as well as social, cultural and
political modernization. ASchumpeterian school of economic development emerged
which studied the social origins of entrepreneurship. Also, a socio-cultural school
of economic development (Hagen (1962) and McClelland (1961)) sought to analyze
the socio-cultural and psychological barriers to entrepreneurial attitudes and the
differences in the prevalence of entrepreneurial attitudes. The multidimensionality of
the process is now starting to be recognized. A social development division, composed
of a large number of non-economists concerned with development has beenformed at
the Bank and the Bank’s president has called attention to this fact (Wolfenson 1998).
With respect to the non-linearity of development, we also have ample empirical
evidence. Kuznet’s (1966) delineation of the systematic changes in the composition
of output that, on average, take place at different levels of per-capita GNP traced
nonlinear paths.
Similarly, in their pioneering studies of the systematics of industrialization and
social change Chenery (1960) and Chenery and Syrquin (1975), found the best fit
to be non-linear in logs. Their best fits related intercountry differences in GNP to
both the logs of the levels of per capita GNP and population and the logs of their
squares. Using country-deviations from the average process, they established that
one could distinguish among four different developing country-strategies: primaryoriented development; import-substitution; balanced growth; and a program of
industrialization. Finally, in their statistical analysis of sources of intercountry
differences in growth rates of per capita GNP between 1950 and 1965 Adelman
and Morris (1967) found that interaction patterns among economic, social and
political institutions differed systematically at different levels of socio-economic
development. Thus, in developing countries at the lowest levels of socio-economic
development (Sub-Saharan Africa and a few severely underdeveloped countries in
Latin America and Asia) the primary variables explaining intercountry differences
in economic growth were intercountry differences in degrees of social development.
Next, at a development level characteristic of the more developed but still transitional
developing countries, social development no longer exerted a significant impact on
economic growth. the important interactions between economic growth were mostly
with economic variables, investment and the rate of modernization of economic
institutions, particularly financial systems. Finally, in the socio-economically most
developed LDCs, in which the primary social-development and infrastructural
barriers had been overcome, one political variable – leadership commitment to
172
APPENDIX A
development–and two technological variables were added to the previous list of
significant economic interactions explaining intercountry differences in rates of
economic growth.
The impact of initial conditions on subsequent development options, in turn,
implies thatthe development process is characterized by path-dependence. History
matters, as it exerts a strong influence on both the tangible and intangible initial
conditions for successful subsequent long-run development. In turn, path-dependence
implies the need to understand the country’s prior history of social interaction
patterns between civil society and the government, the bureaucracy and the military;
how existing institutions have operated, and the history of prior interventions
before prescribing a blueprint for institutional change in a given country. For
example, countries such asthe former Soviet Union that have only known oppressive
government are more likely to get awaywith abusing the economic freedom generated
by market institutions than countries that have known responsive democratic
government before communism, such as Czechoslovakia, or than countries whose
governments have been authoritarian, but in which the government is expected to
act in the social interest, such as those of East Asia. Path dependence also suggests
that good or bad luck may have a lasting impact. For instance, good weather in the
initial years of market reform in rural China increased generated bumper crops which
raised the likelihood of continuation and widening of market reforms to industry,
while the droughts, which plagued the early years of Soviet reform, contributed
to the eventual discrediting of market systems and resurgence of pro-communist
sentiments evident in Parliamentary elections. Thus, unsuccessful initial ventures
make the adoption of following initiatives less probable, even though the community
might have learned from its initial mistakes.
Classical development theory recognized that long-run economic growth is a
highly non-linear process which is characterized by the existence of multiple stable
equilibria, one of which is a low-income-level trap (e.g Leibenstein 1957). They saw
developing countries caught in the low-income-level trap, which occurs at low levels of
physical capital, both productive and infrastructural, and is maintained by low levels
of accumulation and by Malthusian population growth. They argued that industrial
production is subject to technical indivisibilities, which give rise to technological and
pecuniary externalities. They therefore argued that coordination failureswould lead
to the realization of systematically lower rates of return from investments based on
ceteris paribus, individual, profit maximization than those that could be realized with
coordinated, simultaneous investment programs.
Together with low incomes, which restrict levels of savings and aggregate
demand, and with Malthusian population growth, the result would be to ensnare
an economy starting at low levels of income and capital in a low-income-level trap.
Government intervention would be needed to propel the economy from a lowlevel income trap onto a growth trajectory which permits the realization of the
inherent technological and pecuniary increasing returns to scale achievable through
coordinated investments.
The implications of this understanding of the development process, as a dynamic,
ever- changing, nonlinear, multidimensional process that is characterized by varying
interactions overtime has important implications for development policy. It implies
that interventions may have to be multipronged; that what is good for one phase
of the development process may be bad for the next phase; that there are certain
irreversibilities in the development process which create path-dependence; and
DVA1502/1173

hence that policy prescriptions for a given country at a given point in timemust be
anchored in an understanding of its situation at that point in time as well as how
1
it got there, not only recently but on a historical time scale . Thus, while there are
certain regularities and preferred time sequences in the development process, universal
institutional and policy prescriptions are likely to be incorrect.
Lesson Three: There is scope for choice in institutions, policies and in
their sequencing, even at similar levels of development. The choices made, in
turn, generate the initial conditionsfor subsequent development This is why
understanding how development has taken place is critical.
The development process has been characterized by alternative trajectories,
whichconstitute special, extreme, forms of non-linearity and imply that choices can
and need to be made. There have been numerous examples of alternative development
paths in the last fifty years of development:
First, developing countries have differed sharply in their patterns of
accumulation. This is significant because the different accumulation sequences
pursued by individual countries during the fifties and sixties led to their subsequent
achievement of comparative advantage in either labor intensive or capital-intensive
exports (Balassa 1979), with different consequences for inequality, industrial structure,
domestic price levels, competitiveness, and optimal commercial policy.
Thus, some countries, primarily in East Asia, initiated development by stressing the
accumulation of human capital prior to embarking upon serious industrialization, with
favorable effects on income distribution, growth, industrialization and productivity.
Others, especially in Africa and the Middle East, initially stressed infrastructure
investment while importing the necessary human resources for industrialization and
developed indigenous skills only subsequently. This accumulation strategy resulted in
a narrow-based, dualistic development path; little, low-productivity industrialization;
natural-resource based exports; cyclically varying growth, responding to changes
in world demand for raw material inputs; and shallow social change. Still other
LDCs, mainly in Latin America, embarked on the accumulation of physical capital
at an early stage in their development, widening inequality and developing an
insufficient domestic market for the output of manufactures. They pursued lowproductivity industrialization by engaging in import-substitute industrialization,
starting with consumer goods and subsequently widening import-substitution to
encompass industrial inputs.
Second, the sequences of industrialization and trade policies diverged significantly
among countries at similar levels of development. Some LDCs, primarily in Latin
America, pushed into the second phase of import-substitution, in capital-and-skillintensive producer goods, after completing the first phase of import-substitution,
in labor-intensive consumer goods (Waterbury 2000). While they succeeded in
promoting significant structural change in their economies, this was at the cost of
slow growth, loss of competitiveness, and worsening distributions of income (Krueger
1983). Other LDCs, mainly in East Asia, shifted immediately to export-led growth
in labor-intensive consumer goods after a short period of import substitution (Kuo,
1 David Landes (1998) makes a convincing case that the current travails of transition to market economy
in Russia have their roots in the social structure prevailing in Russia under the tsars, in which the
division of society into oppressed serfs, on the one hand, and profligate and incompetent noblemen, on
the other, imprinted cultural attitudes which are inimical to interactions between labor, management
and government based on honesty, public spiritedness and hard work.
174
APPENDIX A
Ranis and Fei 1981 and Wade 1990). These countries experienced egalitarian growth,
increased competitiveness, and rapid economic growth.
Third, while during the first two decades of post WWII development all
Sub Saharan countries pursued a resource intensive development strategy, during
1980-94 some sub-Saharan countries shifted to broadly-based rural-development
while others continued their earlier trade-led, natural-resource intensive, limited
industrialization pattern, of narrowly-based economic growth (Adelman, 1999).
In addition, some intermediate social-development-level countries have continued
their previous dualistic, export oriented, growth while others have concentrated
on developing the institutional bases for subsequent broad-based development.
(Adelman, 1999).
Fourth, the role of governments in economic development has contrasted
considerably among countries. In some East Asian nations, the government has
successfully played an entrepreneurial role, in much the same manner as it did in
the late comers to the Industrial Revolution (Amsden 1989 and Wade 1990). The
governments of East Asian countries shaped their financial, investment, trade
and commercial policies so as to promote their countries’ climbing the ladder
of comparative advantage. They restructured institutions to conform to theirpolicy
aims, changing old institutions or introducing new ones whenever they embarked on
newpolicy initiatives. And they exhibited high degrees of government-commitment
to development and enjoyed high degrees of autonomy from pressures by business
or workers. At the beginning of each policy phase, their initiatives were marketincentive distorting, though the extent of market distortions was limited by tying
subsidies to the firms’ export-performance; and, once industries attained certain
levels of proficiency, the government spurred competitiveness by shifting to market
conforming policies and liberalizing trade. By contrast, Latin American governments
enjoyed less autonomy, exercised less direction, and had less commitment to the
economic development of their countries (McGuire 1997). Their main struggle was
over social reform rather than over economic development. Their governments
started out as captives of landed feudal elites and the foreign interests to which they
were allied (Furtado 1963) and tailored institutions, especially land tenure, to favor
landed-elite interests. When urban middle-class interests became important, they
embarked on import substitution policies, to benefit them, and stayed with these
policies till the 1980s.
Fifth, adjustment patterns to the debt crisis of the 1980s have varied significantly
among countries (Balassa 1989). Some developing countries, mostly in Latin America
and Africa, adopted restrictive import regimes, deflationary government expenditure
and macroeconomic policies, and restraining wage policies, reduced subsidies, and
liberalized their domestic markets to reduce their current account deficits, lower
inflation, and increase competitiveness. For the countries that followed this path,
this was a lost development decade, with substantial increases inpoverty, inequality
and characterized by low- growth, from which these countries have started to emerge
only in the 1990s. By contrast, a few countries, mostly in East Asia but also in Latin
America (Brazil and Chile), coped with the adjustment problem by exporting their
way out of the crisis. They shifted from import-substitution to export-promotion,
devalued to promote expenditure switching among imports and domestic goods, and
raised interest rates to increase netcapital inflows. After a short period of curtailed
growth rates, these countries rebounded remarkably quickly, and successfully grew
their way out of the crisis.
DVA1502/1175

Lesson Four: Development occurs in an uneven manner in which different
aspects of change leap frog one another and play a game of continual catchup. The accomplishments of each phase generate the initial conditions and
challenges for the next phase. Creative evolution, redirection and destruction
constitute the essence of successful long-term development.
Institutional development has generally lagged behind industrialization efforts
in the great majority of developing countries. For example, Korea’s Commercial Law,
enacted in 1962, when Korea’s was largely an agrarian country, remained unchanged
till 1984, by which time the share of agriculture in total output had shrunk to 14%
and that of heavy industry had risen to 50%. (Song Byung Nak 1997). In most less
developed countries, the major thrust during the first twenty years of development
policy was on increasing the productivity of factor use by shifting away from lowproductivity activities, such as extensive agriculture and mining, into manufacturing. It
is only during the eighties that greater emphasis started being placed uponinstitutional
modernization in the direction of marketization and trade liberalization (Pistor 2000
and Mc Kinnon 1995). Within manufacturing, in most non-communist developing
countries, the initial thrust was in expanding the production of consumer goods
and the processing of domestic raw materials and only subsequently turned to the
expansion of producer goods and heavy industries. Some have recently progressed
to information industries.
Similarly, the expansion of human resources and infrastructure investment have
preceded early industrialization efforts in most LDCs (Chenery and Syrquin 1986).
For example, the primary enrollment rate in Sub Saharan Africa has risen from an
average of 20% in the sixtiesto an average of 78% in the 1980s, while the share of
manufacturing expanded only by a factor oftwo. Similarly, at independence, Korea’s
literacy rate was only 13% (!) (Hong 1994); by 1964, the share of college graduates
has become triple that of Great Britain (Cole and Lyman 1971). During the same
time the share of industry in value added had only risen to 15%.
But political development has lagged behind industrialization. The democratization
of political systems came late in most developing countries, and achieving some depth
in the development of democratic institutions still has some way to go in the great
majority of developing countries. Political development first stressed achieving some
degree of effectiveness of government and only afterwards turned to increasing its
degree of representativeness. The process of democratization has lagged behind
that of structural change in production patterns andthe modernization of economic
institutions. Finally, the evolution of an independent judiciary isstill in its infancy in
most developing countries. The judiciary in developing countries reflects primarily
the interests of the government and those of the ruling elites rather than dispensing
impartial justice (Pistor 1999).
Lesson Five: Technological change, demographic change, and changes
in economic, social and institutional conditions provide the major impetus for
change. They generate both new challenges and new opportunities for national
development. They have multifaceted implications and trigger switching
points in economic development.
The historical importance of technological and demographic change as prime
movers was emphasized by Kuznets (1966) and stressed in the grand dynamics of
the classical economists (Marx 1853 and Malthus 1798). In modern developing
countries, technological change takes the form of technology transfer, rather than
endogenous R&D, and occurs mostly through sectoral change in the composition
176
APPENDIX A
of output (i.e. dynamic comparative advantage). Endogenous growth models view
technological change as giving rise to increasing returns which affect long term
equilibrium growth prospects (Roemer 1986 and Lucas 1988), and can explain
both a low-level income trap and self-sustained per capita income growth. The
import of the industrial revolution technology into developing countries gave rise
to economies of agglomeration (Landes 1969) and economies of scale (Rosenstein
Rodan 1943); it increased rural-urban migration (Harris and Todaro 19XX) and its
capital-intensity decreased the equality of the distribution of income (Streeten 1986),
at least initially. The technological characteristics of the industrial revolution led to
geographic concentration of development, urbanization, marginalization of less well
linkedareas and communities and to a tendency towards monopoly. By contrast, the
new communication technologies underlying the current industrial revolution destroy
the economies of agglomeration generated by the energy-intensive production patterns
to which the 19th centuryindustrial revolution gave rise and substitute economies of
scope for economies of scale through e-commerce. It also raises returns to specific
kinds of education; and enhances the extent of globalization of production (World
Bank 1999 and Gurevitch, Bohn and McKendrick 2000).
The technological characteristics of the new economy thus offer an unprecedented
opportunityfor more decentralization and more even economic development, provided
the initial conditionsin the form of appropriate infrastructure and human resource
development are more evenly distributed geographically
Similarly, along demographic lines , urbanization and the growth of the middle
class, themselves generated by the spread of urban manufacturing activities, have
changed the political landscape towards greater economic and political participation
(Adelman and Morris 1973) At the other extreme, the increase in share of people
below the age of 25 in high-fertility African countries has contributed to the prevalence
of bloody ethnic civil wars, political instability as wellas to the rise of fundamentalist
and terrorist activities. Finally, along political lines, a decline in the political power
of the rural traditional elite and a rise in the political influence of urban workers
explain the persistence of import-substitution policies in Latin America (Mc Guire
1997 and Kagami 1995). The divergence in subsequent trajectories between two
countries with very similar initial conditions towards the third quarter of the 19th
century, Argentina, whose polity represented the feudal landed elites, and Australia,
where urban workers had captured the polity, illustrates this point (Morris and
Adelman 1988).
Lesson Six: The most critical factors needed to generate development
are both tangibleand intangible.
In order of importance, they are:
(i) leadership commitment to economic development; this includes not only
the willingness of the leadership to submerge personal and short run considerations
to the common long run welfare but also the capacity of the bureaucracy and its
dedication to the pursuit of common long run goals. Adelamn and Morris (1967, pg
241) found that, once the major economic and social obstacles to development had
been overcome, intercountry differences in leadership commitment to development
explained as much as 66% of intercountry differences in rates of economic growth.
Similarly, in Korea, it was not until President Park, whose major commitment
was to economic development, had replaced President Syngman Rhee, whose
primary commitment was to achieving and maintaining political autonomy, that the
economy started taking off. Prior to that Korea was considered by the US as a basket
DVA1502/1177

case and “the hell hole of foreign assistance” (Cole and Lyman 1971). Also, visionary
leadership has been identified as a significant factor in instituting and maintaining
credible commitment to institutional and policy reforms (Williamson 1994).
Is leadership commitment to development or exogenous?2 Some elements of
leadershipcommitment, particularly the integrity and efficiency of the bureaucracy
are endogenous. For example, in Korea, within the first three months of his taking
office, President Park succeeded in transforming the ethos of the bureaucracy from
a corrupt self-serving, inefficient one to a managerial one that was committed
to the achievement of social goals, through a combination of firing or jailing of
corrupt higher level civil servants, and retraining the rest (Mason et al 1980). But
I do not believe that commitment at the very top can be regarded as endogenous:
one cannot explain the emergence of a Park in Korea, Kemal Ataturk in Turkey,
or Lee Kwan Yu in Singapore except with Toynbee’s (19XX) optimistic historical
theory that fundamental challenge, such as those posed by unacceptably low levels
of performance at the very top, eventually produce the man needed to respond to
them. It is also true that greater social capital tends to amplify the effectiveness of
leadership commitment to development, as, for example, in Korea’s very rapid and
largely strifeless recovery from the recent Asian financial crisis.
(ii) the level of social capital. social capital includes not only the supply of
human resources but also the extent of social cohesion, and the willingness to act
in the social good. The notion of “social capital”, as used by economic historians
(Abramovitz 1986), reflects the extent of social trust, cooperative norms, and the
density of interpersonal networks (Evans 1997). The critical importance of social
capital for developing countries has been confirmed by Temple and Johnson (1996).
Social capital generates a synergistic relation between the state and civil society, in
which social capital can be coproduced between the state and civil society (Evans
1997) and, in turn, encourages the creation of a situation in which active states
and mobilized communities enhance each other’s effectiveness. The degree of
homogeneity in social structure, ethnic homogeneity and religion/culture are
important in determining the level of social capital in a given society and hence its
acceptance of reform initiatives.
Kerala, for example is a case in point. There, the interaction between state and
labor in ahigh social-capital society generated the economic processes and political
institutions for redistributive growth (Heller 1997). Similarly, the contrast between
the effectiveness of irrigation systems in Korea and Taiwan, with socially cohesive
citizenries, and their ineffectiveness in India, with a highly stratified community,
(Wade 1985) is another. So is the drastic difference in the nineties between the
evolution of China, a high social-capital civilization in which GNP rose at an average
rate of 10%, and Russia, a low social-capital civilization characterized by age-old
norms of distrust (Landes 1998) which experienced drastic declines of GNP, is also
partially due to the differences between them in levels of social capital (Burawoy
1997). Social capital is also an important ingredient in economic reform, as social
consensus for reform widens the political base for change (Williamson 1994) and
thus facilitates its implementation and enhances the probabilities of reform-survival.
A deeply stratified society with low levels of mutual trust is likely to fight over the
distributional benefits from reform, evenwhen the net benefits of reform are widely
distributed, since different groups are unlikely to feel that commitments to sharing
of benefits will be honored, once reforms are implemented (Bardhan, forthcoming).
2 I am indebted to Karla Hoff for raising this issue.
178
APPENDIX A
Till recently, there has been a tendency to ignore social capital as an input into
the process of development, as development economists concentrated primarily
on the macroeconomic and microeconomic features of developing countries and
3
largely ignored the mezo-economic , the intermediate, institutional features which
mediate between the macro and the micro. Fortunately, however, social capital is
endogenous and can be enhanced (or depleted)by the nature of interactions between
the state, external agents (such as students or NGOs) and societal civic actors. To
mobilize communities for the next thrust of development requires forging alliances
between “good bureaucrats”, reformists within the state, the media and socially
motivated groups that articulate civic aspirations and grievances, on the one hand,
and civic groups, on the other.
(iii) the tangible inputs (infrastructure, physical and human capital, investment
andfinance). The tangible inputs, while important, tend to respond to the intangible
ones. The classical economists regarded investment as the critical prime-mover of
development. Indeed, Rostow (1960) posited that an increase in the national savings
rate to above 15% was a precondition for development. And, the World Bank was
founded to provide foreign savings to provide additional finance when domestic
savings are insufficient to finance the necessary investment push. However, the
tangible inputs are the handmaidens of development, not the ultimate source of
development and certainly not the appropriate criteria for quantifying development
achievements. For example, a statistical analysis of time series for the last fifty years of
development in Korea indicated that leadership commitment to development Grangercaused investment. (Adelman and Song 2001). When there is leadership commitment
to development, investment resources can be mobilized. But investment by itself
can only contribute to economic growth, not generate development, in the sense
the term is used in this paper.
(iv) appropriate policies, especially with respect to trade, investment and
macroeconomic management are important for both growth and development.
But they must change dynamically with development and are not constant either
across different industrial sectors or across the same sector over time. They are also
interrelated We will discuss this point at some length in the next section, which is
devoted to development policy.
(v) institutions and culture. These can support or thwart development. It is
important to note that they are not immutable but are rather quite malleable. They
can be influenced by leadership and by the mobilization of social capital as well as by
domestic crises and external pressures. Institutional change can occur endogenously,
in response to a change in transactions cost (North 1977), crisis (India in 1991),
technological or social change in power relations (Marx 1859). But, in developing
countries, reforms occur mostly in response to state action, since coordination
failures, free rider problems, risk, distributive conflicts and moral hazard impede
automatic responses from the private sector through the creation or amendment of
existing institutions (Lin and Nugent 1995).
The structural adjustment era of the eighties saw substantial evolution of
market institutions and liberalization of trade in most Latin American and Asian
countries; the Latin American liberalizations occurred in response to their financial
crises and to pressure from international institutions urging pursuit of “Washington
Consensus” policies. These exemplify institutional change introduced from above in
response to a crisis and to external influences. A different example of institutional
3 This term is due to Paul Streeten.
DVA1502/1179

change, is offered by Korea in the sixties and seventies, where each major new
government policy-initiative entailed creating a new institutional vehicle for its
implementation. For example, the assumption of an entrepreneurial role by the state
when President Park took office, entailed deep institutional reform in the bureaucracy
and strengthening of the Economic Planning Board; similarly, embarking on broadbased rural development calledfor the creation of a new superagency to coordinate
and oversee rural-animation policies of different government-departments (Adelman
& Song 2001).
And (vi) institutional and social resilience and malleability. These attributes
of the society and polity are critical to successful long run economic development
because development consists of continual nonlinear dynamic change in all aspects of
economy, polity and society. One therefore needs to be able to switch out of activities
and institutional modes that have become unprofitable or undesirable. For instance,
state development initiatives are not always wise, well timed and of appropriate
scale. When mistakes are made or when development changes the initial conditions
or when the global environment changes sufficient institutional malleability, social
capital and social resilience are needed to allow what may be even a drastic aboutturn. For example, the heavy and chemical industry drive undertaken by President
Park inthe late sixties, was premature, extremely costly, and ill-timed, occurring as
it did just before the formation of the oil-cartel which drastically raised the input
prices for these industries.
Fortunately, in 1980-81, Korea was able to abandon the subsidies to these
industries and force them to become competitive. This enabled these industries to
become the backbone of the economy and over 50% of its exports during the mideighties and throughout the nineties.
Historically, economies that cannot adapt get stuck in a particular developmental
phase in which they ultimately stagnate. Thus, most East European countries had
sufficient political flexibility toenable them to introduce partial market reforms even
during the Communist era, and, after a short period of adjustment to the breakup of
the CIS, resume economic growth (World Bank 19XX). By contrast, the Communist
Party in the Soviet Union was sufficiently strong to block allattempts at even partial
market reform. It started to stagnate under Communism and, when the Soviet Union
broke up, its economy went into a tailspin.
Lesson Seven: The relationship between growth and distribution depends
primarily on the factor-intensity of growth and on how concentrated is the
distribution of the most important factor of production.
The distribution of income is established mainly through the primary distribution
of income that is generated by the production-determined circular flow. Secondary
redistribution through transfers, while needed to relieve the poverty of the intrinsically
non-working poor, is effective in changing the distribution of income only as long
as it is continued. Even then, the effects of transfer programs on the distribution
of income are quickly dissipated (Adelman & Robinson 19XX). Mere add-ons
to unchanged basic development processes are therefore an expensive and largely
ineffective way of tackling the equity problem.
The failures of the capital-intensive rapid industrialization programs typical of
the first two post WWII decades of development to improve the welfare of the poor
and their tendency todeteriorate the distribution of income indicated the importance
of the main factor-composition ofgrowth and the main means by which this growth
180
APPENDIX A
is induced. The main thrust of development strategies, how these affect real factor
prices and the nature of property-right institutions are themain determinants of how
growth impinges on the distribution of income. Different industries have different
factor-intensities and therefore emphasis on different sectors implies a different
factor-intensity of overall growth. When the main thrust of development is based
on a factor whose ownership is concentrated, development is unequalizing. More
specifically, when ownership institutions for the primary factor of production, or
when the institutions for access to the factors that are complementary to it are
concentrated, or when the policies adopted to induce that type of growth depress the
prices of the main factor of production owned by the poor, growth is unequalizing.
By contrast, when the ownership of primary factor of production and of access to
factors complementary to it are equally distributed, and when the policies used to
fostergrowth do not result in reducing the returns to the main factor owned by the
poor, growth is equalizing.
For example, whether land-intensive growth is equalizing or not depends on
land-tenure conditions. When land ownership is characterized by small and medium
sized owner-operated farms, as in Korea and Taiwan, agricultural productivity
enhancing growth is equalizing, provided access to credit and irrigation are egalitarian.
By contrast, when, as in mostLatin American countries, land tenure conditions are
of the latifundia-minifundia variety and subsistence agriculture, small tenancies are
prevalent, improvements in agricultural productivity, even when technologically
neutral as with HYV (Longhurst and Lipton 1989), are unequalizing because access
to credit and irrigation, which are needed to use the new technologies, are generally
withheld from smaller, subsistence farms. A shift towards rural development and
against urban bias will therefore not automatically improve distribution or reduce
poverty, even though this sector is more labor-intensive than even labor-intensive
industry and contains the poorest of the poor, landless labor, demand for whose
services depends on the technological characteristics of agriculture as well as on the
distribution of land.
Also, natural-resource intensive growth is almost always unequalizing, because
the ownership of natural resources, whose returns growth raises, is unequally
distributed. The primary exception is when natural resources are state-owned, as in
some oil-exporting countries, and the proceeds are used to enhance social development
and build up infrastructure and industry.
Similarly, capital intensive growth raises the share of income of the wealthy
groups of owners of capital and of middle-income skilled and professional workers
in capital-intensive industries at the expense of the lower income groups. By contrast,
labor-intensive growth tends to be equalizing, since raw labor is the primary asset
owned by the poor. However, education-intensive growth is equalizing only when
the educational pyramid is flat, as in East Asia. By contrast, when primary and
secondary education are restricted to mostly the numbers needed to fuel University
enrollments, as in Brazil and India, knowledge-intensive development is unequalizing.
In sum, the factor-content of growth, the distribution of ownership of the relevant
assets and the institutions and policies used to promote that form of growth are at
least as consequential as the rate of growth for egalitarian development.
The equitable-development trajectories of the East Asian countries were due
primarily to their having equalized access to the main factor of production before
investing in enhancing its productivity and its importance in economic growth.
Thus, they implemented redistributive land reforms before embarking on rural
DVA1502/1181

development. This meant that the benefits from subsequent improvements in
agricultural productivity were widely distributed. Also, they invested heavily in
universal primary education before embarking on labor-intensive growth. They
subsequently widened access to secondary and University education before embarking
on capital-and-skill-intensive growth in the seventies and eighties. Finally, they
drastically increased engineering, professional and computer-education before turning
to technology-intensive and information-intensive industries. There was therefore
no conflict between growth and distribution in these countries. On the contrary,
there was a synergistic relationship between them (Kuo et al 1981, Wade 1990 and
Adelman 1974).
Trade and accumulation policies are important in determining the spread-effects
of growth and how growth and inequality interact. With respect to trade, import
substitution in capital-intensive industries, is unequalizing both because it raises the
capital-intensity of growth and because it tends to raise the prices of consumer-goods
on which the lion share of income of lower-income households is spent, through
anti-import-biased measures such as tariffs, quotas, and high exchange rates. By
contrast, export-oriented growth in labor-intensive, consumer goods industries are
equalizing because it raises employment and returns to labor unless specific policies
are instituted to foster low wages. Also, when export-oriented growth is accompanied
by low tariffs and low exchange rates, it turns agricultural terms of trade in favor of
farmers and lowers consumer goods prices, with favorable distributional consequences.
With respect to accumulation, when policy favors investment in education with
a flateducational pyramid, it tends to be equalizing. By contrast, when accumulation
policies are intended to increase the supply of investment-capital, by providing
subsidized finance for investment in capital-intensive industries and raising the real
rate of interest on savings, growth is unequalizing. Also, macroeconomic policies
that increase asset prices, such as real estate, are unequalizing.
Finally, the government-market institutional profile of the economy also
influences the equity of growth. In the eighties, the view that income-distribution
failures were due to state intervention was prevalent. The state was seen as a price
distorting, rent seeking, protectionist, and corrupt and it was argued that both growth
and equity would be well served by reducing state intervention in the economy.
However, it soon became apparent that unchecked market-based growth tends to
be unequalizing, because it tends to tilt policy against labor, the main asset of lower
income groups, and restrict competition. This is why in the early part of the twentieth
century most currently developed, market-based industrial countries have had to
introduce legislation establishing the right of labor to organize and bargain collectively;
antitrust legislationto increase competition; regulations to protect against predatory
market behavior by enterprises; regulations mandating safe working environments
etc. The current view is that a balanced mix between state and market are required
for development. What matters more than the government-private sector mix is
the distribution of economic and political power to which policies and institutional
behavior respond. Taiwan and Korea were able to adopt the redistributive policies
needed for equitable growth because, for historical reasons, they startedaccelerated
growth from an egalitarian distribution of wealth and hence of power.
Is there a Kuznetz curve? Not in the sense that a U-shaped course of inequality
is inevitable. (Adelman and Morris 1973, Aghion, Caroli and Garcia-Penalosa 2000
and Squire 1993). We have seen that the course of development is characterized by
choice, and many of the choices impinge on the growth-equality relationship. It is
182
APPENDIX A
probably still true that, even if at low levels of development, the stress is placed on
rural development, the early stages of industrialization are still unequalizing because
of the large wage differentials between workers in manufacturing and real-incomes
in agriculture and the high levels of open unemployment in urban areas induced by
rapid migration reflecting expected urban-rural wage differentials. But the increase
in equality at high levels of development is a matter of national choice: if access to
secondary and higher education are restricted, or where the emphasis is on capitalintensive development there will not be an increase in equality until very late in the
development process (as in Turkey and Mexico, where the distribution of income
is still concentrated despite their OECD status). In any case, the share of income
accruing to the poor is likely to be J-shaped with per capita income, tracing a very
flat curve during the middle and late phases of development (Anand & Kanbur 1993
and Papanek & Kim etc).
The World Banks’ approach to poverty alleviation is based on “poverty
conditionality” (World Bank 1991). This entails a three pronged attack: targeted
transfers, which do not affect the primary distribution of income, to reduce the poverty
of those who cannot work for demographic reasons (age, infirmity); productivity
enhancing expenditures for education and health biased toward the poor; and sectoral
shifts towards improving the productivity of small farms – the most labor-intensive
– , away from large-scale, capital-intensive projects in industry and infrastructure,
and towards general rural development and export-orientation in labor-intensive
consumer manufacturing.
Lesson Eight: Cultural factors play a significant role in shaping institutions
and societalresponses to new challenges and opportunities.
The primary difference for development purposes is in whether the culture
promotes individualistic or communitarian values. This determines among other
things the respective rolesof markets and government, how they interact, and how
economic and political institutions are structured. It also impinge upon the extent
of social cohesion and malleability and how the economy, society and polity respond
to shocks.
Both individualistic and communitarian cultures have advantages and
disadvantages. Both can be the basis for successful development, but their relative
spheres of operation and howthey interact must also evolve dynamically. Individualistic
responses foster innovation, dynamism, creative destruction and geographic and
social inequality. They put a premium on competitiveness and on market-based
approaches to development. Communitarian responses foster social cohesion and
the social ability to absorb change, and hence national resilience and malleability.
They place a premium on social equity in growth outcomes and foster societal and
governmental approaches to development. They also enable societies to more easily
absorb shortrun decreases in personal welfare in the interest of the common long run
good (Rodrik 1997, 1998). Each culture assigns the task of correcting the deficiencies
it gives rise to the complementary sphere (e.g either government or markets).
One can illustrate the impact of culture on economic institutions by contrasting
the structure of firms in East Asia, whose culture is communitarian, with their
structure in Western industrial economies, whose culture is individualistic (Adelman
2000). We start with the proposition that a firm which faces cyclically fluctuating
revenues can only have two of the threefollowing characteristics: (1) non-decreasing
employment; (2) non-decreasing wage rates; and (3) a strict budget constraint. This
is so because, under the first two constraints, the bulk of the firm’s contractual
DVA1502/1183

obligations cannot be reduced below those of the previous year. Its wage bill is
non-decreasing; its capital costs are sunk; and its interest obligations are fixed. Under
these circumstances, if the firm operates under fixed budget constraints and the
declining phase of the business cycle is sufficiently long, the firm will eventually
have to declare bankruptcy. The long-term viability of firms therefore requires them
to relax one of the above three constraints.
When choices need to be made, the choices flow not only from the perceived
objective situation and interests of the chooser but also from his values. Therefore,
which one of the threeconstraints upon firms’ operations is dropped depends upon
the society’s religious and cultural values.
Western firms, operating in societies that embody individualistic Weberian
values, chose to resolve the trilemma facing the firm by relaxing the employment
constraint (1), while largely meeting the non-decreasing wage rate constraint for
those workers whom they continue to employ (2) as well as maintaining tight budget
constraints (3). The wage-bill of Western firms thus became flexible and, during the
downward phase of the business cycle unemployment rises, sometimes dramatically.
This throws the entire burden of cyclical adjustment on the unemployed and, to
counteract this, society as a whole accepts the duty of providing a social safety net
in the form of unemployment insurance, albeit at a much lower income levels.
By contrast, in accordance with Korea’s communitarian Confucian values,
Korea’s pre-crisis firms accepted conditions (1) and (2) while violating condition
(3). Thus, Korea’s chaebols were constrained to non-decreasing employment and
wages, while enjoying a soft budget constraint. The soft budget constraint was
implemented through an implicit commitment by the government, reflected in the
directives it imparted to the banking system, to support the continued economic
survival of the chaebols as well as underwrite their expansion. In turn, the chaebols
used this implicit commitment to meet their obligations to lifetime employment
contracts at non-diminishing wages even during periods of economic downturn.
This institutionalconstruct shifted the burden of providing a safety net from society
as a whole onto firms in an institutional system of communitarian capitalism (Song 1997).
But the Korean solution led to an overleveraged economy, which, as we saw in the
1997 financial crisis, eventually became economically untenable, as a result of the
growth of firms and globalization. It is also difficult for the two different types of
firms to coexist under globalization of capital flows.
III. Lessons Concerning Development Policy:
We shall concentrate on only a few major lessons in this section, drawn from
long term experience. For reasons of space, we omit macroeconomic management
lessons and more recentlessons on the management of capital flows. Since the North
East Asian economies have been incontrovertibly the best development performers
in the modern era (World Bank 1993) we will use East Asian experience to illustrate
the propositions in this section. While applicable to other developing countries,
the lessons for development policy will be drawn primarily from Korea, the star
performer in this group (Stiglitz 1996).
184
APPENDIX A
First, development policy consists of the creation of dynamic comparative
advantage.
In this process, economies mature through the sequential acquisition
of comparative advantage in successively more sophisticated branches of production.
Investment patterns, human resources, institutions, culture and incentives must be
continually adapted so as to fosterthe formation of comparative advantage in the next
set of industries. As one type of comparative advantage is acquired, by mastering
its technology, or as specialization in a sector,or in a specific activity within a sector,
become obsolete, emphasis must be shifted to another sector or activity.
During the past 50 years, Korea, for example, moved systematically from an
agricultural economy in 1953 (when the share of agriculture in value added was
49%4 and that of industry only 6%) specializing in primary exports (85% of total
exports); to a manufacturing economy concentrating on the production and export
of manufacturing by 1966 (14% of value added and 61% of exports) centering on
light, labor-intensive industry (74% of manufacturing); to a heavyindustry focus by
1981 (54% of manufacturing and 64% of exports); to a technology and knowledgebased economy. It became an industrial country in 1985 (Krueger 1997). Within
broad sectors, the composition of output also changed, sometimes dramatically.
For example, in the sixties, the output of petrochemical sector consisted primarily
of labor-intensive coal briquettes, produced in small shops with less than five
employees; by the late seventies, the mainactivities in the petrochemical sector had
evolved into oil refining and agricultural and industrial chemical inputs, produced
in large, capital-intensive factories, in a new urban complex of large state-owned
enterprises and their employees. Similarly, in the eighties, the primary steel firm
produced mainly rolled-steel sheets, while by the early nineties it had branched out
into specialtysteels. (See also XX for further examples).
The process leading to the acquisition of dynamic comparative advantage
is complex andmultifaceted. New comparative advantage is achieved through a large
variety of coordinated means whose nature and magnitude change dynamically:
investment in specific factors of production (the acquisition of special skills and
human capital; and the construction of plant and machinery) and in infrastructure
(roads, ports, airports, electricity generation, telecommunication facilities, etc); the
creation of an enabling policy environment which restructures incentive systems;
the building of the institutions (financing facilities, national research institutes,
trade-promotion centers, industrial processing complexes) needed for this phase;
and through technology policy. This implies that comparative advantage is manmade, not God-given.
Strategic approaches to the development of dynamic comparative advantage
require a dynamically changing, anticipatory, thrust of policy initiatives. Policy
prescriptions cannot remain constant. Rather, they must change with the country’s
initial conditions – her resource endowments, both physical and human; her
development levels; and her institutions. The same policy prescriptions are not
appropriate for all countries or even for a single country at all points of time. The
primary thrust of development policy must change with changes in (i)domestic
conditions, including but not limited to its natural and human resources, its physical
capital and its institutional infrastructure; (ii) technological and demographic trends;
and (iii) national and international conditions. The thrust the policy initiatives should
focus on creating the initial conditions for generating comparative advantage in the
4 The numbers in this paragraph are computed from Bank of Korea Statistical Yearbooks, various years.
DVA1502/1185

new activities one wants to promote at that point in time as well as on improving the
productivity of existing activities one wants to retain. The created initial conditions
include not only resources, both physical and human, butalso the country’s institutions,
outlook and behavior.
In identifying which new economic activities to stress, one needs to take account
of the linkages of the new activities in factor and inputs markets; their optimal
scales; and the local initial conditions needed for them to thrive. In choosing which
activities to develop one also needs to evaluate how potential new activities might
contribute to overall objectives when their direct and indirect effects and their positive
and negative externalities are taken into consideration. Because of virtual markets
and globalization of trade, local output-demand markets are becoming much less
important than backward linkages through production.
The East Asian countries have been particularly aggressive and skillful in
the acquisition of dynamic comparative advantage. For example, the switch from
import substitution to outward-oriented development in both Korea and Taiwan
entailed: substantial devaluation (by as much as 50% in Korea in 1964); aggressive
investment in new capacity and infrastructure (investment rates were raised above
20%, investment in electric energy was undertaken and in Taiwan in the construction
of a processing facility for reexport). In both countries a multitude of subsidies were
granted to exporters. The export incentives included: numerous quotas on imports
– in Korea by commodity, in Taiwan not only by commodity but also by country of
origin (Yotopoulos 19XX); automatic import licenses and foreign exchangeallocations
for inputs used in the production of exports and their duty-free entrance; access to
otherwise tight credit at high nominal but subsidized real rates); and, in Korea, an
industryspecific wastage-allowance system that permitted the domestic sale of some
portion of the raw-materials imported for export purposes. In Korea, individual
firms were allocated export-targets and their performance relative to the target was
strictly monitored by the Ministry of Commerce as well as by the President himself
(Cole and Lyman 1971; Jones and Sakong 1980). If the firms exceeded their target,
they were rewarded with further credit and foreign exchange allocations; if they fell
short, they were admonished and, if they did not “shape up” theywere punished with
sanctions ranging from turning off utilities, to IRS audits, to shutting them down
by revoking their trading licences.
When, in 1973, Korea embarked on its Heavy and Chemical Industries (HCI)
drive, the government’s role in promoting this reorientation from textiles and
footwear towards steel, petrochemicals, shipbuilding, machinery, non-ferrous metals,
and electronics. became especially heavy handed. Some Koreans perceived it as
a forced march, and worried about its inflationary implications, the substantial
difficulties it generated for traditional exporters, and the concentration it promoted
in industrial organization in manufacturing (private communication from Dr. Nam
Duck Woo, Minister of Finance at the time). The transition to the HCI industries
was in part a response to Nixon’s rapprochement with China, in part a response
to enhanced competition and increased controls on textile industries worldwide
(Krause 1997).
The switch from the promotion of comparative advantage in light, consumer
goods production to heavy and engineering industries entailed a second, substantial
shift in policy, just as extensive as the prior shift from import-substitution in consumer
goods to export orientation. The special export incentives were largely withdrawn
186
APPENDIX A
from the labor-intensive industries (indeedthey became starved of credit) and shifted
to capital-intensive Heavy and Chemical Industries.
The HCI industries received massive financial assistance: over 50% of policy
loans at speciallysubsidized rates and 47% of general bank loans in manufacturing
(Nam & Kim, 1997). Tax incentives for traditional exports were reduced while tax
incentives for the new industries the government wanted to develop were raised,
albeit temporarily. Also, the HCI industries benefitted from a multitude of extensive
industry-specific, targeted supports, granted under special laws enacted to promote
each individual HCI industry. At the same time, protection of light industries was
withdrawn and extended to the HCI industries. In sum, there was a shift to aclassical
import-substitution program in producer-goods industries.
Whether the HCI drive was successful or not is debatable. It was certainly very
expensive, drastically increased the capital output ratio of the economy (by 50%),
raised concentration, promoted industrial giantism and produced severe dislocations
for other industries.It also increased the government’s role in the economy not only
indirectly but also directly, since many of the HCI industries were state owned
enterprises (managed by former generals), and gavea large push to the conglomerates
(chaebols) who were “asked” to branch out into some HCI industries. It was also
ill-timed, coming, as it did, just before the first oil-shock which tripled the cost
of oil inputs into oil refineries and petrochemical industries. But, the economy’s
growth rate continued high as did its exports despite the worldwide recession. The
potentially negative distributional effects of the reorientation towards capital-intensive
growth in manufacturing were mitigated through simultaneous emphasis on (laborintensive) rural economic and social development. Some of the HCI industries
became internationally competitive very quickly, with Korean steel displacing steel
production by US Steel and Korean shipbuilding displacing Swedish shipbuilding
in less than five years from their start. Others, especially in petrochemicals, did not
become internationally competitive for 10 to 15 years. And, last but not least, by
the eighties, the HCI industries had become the backbone of the economy and its
predominant exports.
Not only trade and commercial policies but also investment strategies play an
important role in the development of dynamic comparative advantage as different
types of investment strategies give rise to different types of comparative advantage.
Investment in the accumulation of physical capital breeds subsequent comparative
advantage in capital-intensive industries, while investment in human resources
generates comparative advantage in labor, and skill-intensive industries. Latin
American countries invested in physical capital and relatively neglected investment
in education; scrutiny of their factor-intensity of their exports indicates that they
wound up with comparative advantage in capital intensive manufactures (Balassa
1979). East Asian countries, on the other hand, invested heavily in education, starting
at very low levels of per-capita GNP, both because they lacked natural resources and
because Confucianism places a high value on education; they developed comparative
advantage in, first, labor-intensive exports, then, in skill-intensive exports, finally
graduating to engineering and high-level manpower-intensive exports.
The effects of failing to adopt a dynamic approach to comparative advantage
are illustrated by Latin America, where countries have, by and large, stuck with
their large heavy industry, import-substitute development focus from the sixties
to eighties. Their history indicates that countries that have used static rather than
DVA1502/1187

dynamic comparative advantage as a guide for development policy, have eventually
stagnated.
To have sustained development, policy must anticipate the challenges and
opportunities generated by technological, institutional and demographic change.
Thus, the current changes in communication technology and in globalizationinstitutions are likely to have significant implications for the future production
patterns of developing countries.
Most likely, the “new economy technology” will generate even greater
international specialization, increase international trade not only in goods but
also in services and alter the nature of comparative advantage. For instance, with
instant communication, greater, efficient, geographic specialization becomes possible
across countries and continents, leading to more subcontracting of the production
of parts and software services. The advent of the “new economy technology” will
therefore entail changing the foci of development policy.
It should also be emphasized that the change in global trade institutions
consisting of the creation of the WTO make it doubtful whether the trade regime
it imposes on its members will permit developing countries to pursue a dynamic
approach to comparative advantage as aggressively as did Korea and Taiwan. Many of
the market instruments they used to promote theacquisition of dynamic comparative
advantage (quotas, tariffs, and industry specific subsidies) are “illegal” under WTO
rules. What this leaves is direct government investment in new activities, and nonmarket pressures on individual private firms to develop new types of comparative
advantage. It is an ironic thought that the international rules aimed at leveling the
international playing field and making it more market-oriented will result in greater
intervention and more targeted discretionary activities by governments wishing to
develop their economies.
Second, the nature of trade and commercial policies is critical to
development. Exportorientation promotes growth and structural change.
Trade is important because it is the only wild card in the deck, which enables a
decouplingof national production from national consumption. Shortfalls in domestic
production can be corrected through imports and surpluses can be absorbed through
exports. This is especially important for small countries, to enable specialization and
efficient production-scale and thus promote competitiveness. But, as we saw above,
the structure of trade-incentives offered to particular industries needs to be changed
dynamically. Infant industry protection is required to encourage new activities but
it must be replaced by export orientation once the infant approaches adolescence.
Trade policies must therefore consist of a changing mix of selective protection for
some industries and free trade for others.
The evolution of trade and trade-related incentives in Korea and Taiwan illustrates
this point (Scitovksy 1984). The East Asian economies pursued four different trade
regimes. They started with import substitution in manufactured consumer goods;
moved to export-expansion in consumer goods; then embarked on import substitution
in producer and intermediate raw materials; and then moved to successively more neoclassical free trade in the 1980s and beyond. The changing dynamic thrust of trade
regimes is a direct result of the pursuit of dynamic comparative advantage. However,
one must note that, even though one may distinguish four phases in Korea and
Taiwan’s trade regimes, their trade policies were never pure, as the detailed description
of their policy phases given below indicates. The import-substitution periods in both
188
APPENDIX A
countries, emphasized exports as well as import substitution. Conversely, selective
import-substitution was also promoted even during the heyday of their export-led
growth.
Export-led growth did not always characterize Korea and Taiwan’s trade policies.
The export-led growth period was preceded by a brief initial period of classical
import-substitution during 1961–65 in Korea and 1952–1958 in Taiwan, during
which import substitution provided the major contribution to economic growth (in
Korea, growth decomposition indicates that 36 %of growth during this period was
due to import-substitutions, as compared to only 7% for exportexpansion (Kim and
Roemer 1979). It should be noted, however, that, in contrast with most developing
countries, the primary focus of their import-substitution was on consumer rather
than producer goods industries, though some producer-goods industries (cement,
fertilizer) were also developed during this period. Therefore, like most countries
practicing the first stage of import substitution (Krueger 1997) economic growth
and restructuring were rapid also during this import substitution period, which set
the stage for the export-led growth which followed.
Next came a period of export-orientation, during which the previously importreplacing consumer goods industries were reoriented towards exports. The stress
upon export-orientation in this early phase was where the East Asian economies
differed from all other developing countries, which followed up their initial importsubstitution in labor-intensive consumer goods with import substitution in capital
intensive producer goods. This difference in trade strategy is responsible for the
contrast between the rapid expansion of the East Asian economies and the slow
growth of the rest of the developing world.
However, it should be emphasized that the export-oriented trade and
industrializationpolicies of Korea and Taiwan were mercantilist (Hong 1994) rather
than guided by either neo-classical free-trade principles, or by “open economy”,
neutral, trade-incentive systems. This was deliberate, rather than the result of
ignorance, as Bela Balassa, an adviser to Korea during this period, kept pressing for
more neoclassical trade policies. The trade strategies of East Asian countries were
generally characterized as “open” (Krueger 1997), in the sense that they did not
discriminate in their effective rates between incentives granted to exports and imports.
However,this characterization is incorrect. As it relies on a partial quantification of
the value of incentives granted to exporters. When both the direct and indirect values
of the entire system of incentives, including the value of the export-linked subsidies
such as credit and foreign exchange allocations,and of duty-free entrance of inputs
are incorporated, the results indicate that, when they shifted to export-led growth,
the real effective real exchange rate became biased towards exports. In Korea, this
calculation reveals that the real effective exchange rate for exports was 20% higher
than that for import (Kim and Westphal, 1977). Even this more comprehensive
calculation substantially understates the bias of incentives towards exports since it
excludes the value of monopoly profits accorded exporters as a result of protection of
the domestic market for their products; the money equivalent of import quotas; or the
value of reduction in incentives to import competing production. Furthermore, since
the export-incentives were detailed and industry-specific, especially in their importexport linkage mechanisms, in practice they discriminated among commodities
and sectors, even though this was not the a priori intention. In practice, this system
resulted in a pattern of multiple, commodity specific, effective exchange rates.
The effective government-subsidy rate varied substantially among commodities,
ranging from an effective subsidy rate of 125 won per dollar of exports in nylon
DVA1502/1189

fabrics to 5 won per dollar of fresh fish exports (Koo, 1984). Finally, most finished
manufactured products were either on the “Prohibited” or on the “Restricted” list
(Hong 1994). Thus, it would be incorrect to view this period as an “open economy”
period. Rather, one should view this period as one of export-led growth in laborintensive, consumer-goods industries, during which a multitude of measures was
used to promote exports.
Even though export-oriented, this period also included some selective import
5
substitution, in cement, fertilizer, refined petroleum, and textile yarn and fabrics .
These industries were alsosubsidized through various specific incentives, similar to
those granted exporters.
It is true that there was some trade liberalization as well as general liberalization
of the economy during the export-led growth period. The number of items whose
imports was forbiddenwas reduced substantially. Tariff rates were lowered. The real
effective exchange rate for imports and exports moved towards greater neutrality
and the incentive-bias towards imports was less than in most other developing
countries or than it would become during the HCI period. Finally, the import
privileges of exporters were transformed from being targeted in a discretionary
mannerto individual firms, to generalized, non-targeted incentives attached to any
exporter. Thus, the Korea-Taiwan experience suggests that a country cannot launch
a successful export drive while maintaining extreme degrees of import restriction.
This export-led growth period led to accelerated growth and structural change,
as is typical of labor-intensive manufacturing export-led growth periods in most
developing countries.
Exports grew by a phenomenal average rate of 46% annually and that of GNP
rose by almost 25% over the import-substitution period, to 9.6% annually. The direct
and indirect contribution of exports to industrial growth averaged 32%, and their
contribution to GNP growth rose by a factorof 2.5. The share of manufacturing in
GNP increased by 50% while that of agriculture dropped bya third. Manufactured
exports rose to 70% of total exports and manufacturing export industries accounted
for 33% of total employment (directly and indirectly)
The third trade policy phase, the HCI phase, entailed a return to heavy-duty
protectionism and intensification of government interventionism. However, despite
increased emphasis on import substitution this period was not accompanied by an
abandonment of export-led growth. Nor did it lead to a slow-down in economic
growth, in part because of continued stress on exportseven in the newly established
HCI industries but also because of the increased demand for exportables originating
from the Vietnam war. The average legal tariff rate in Korea was increased initially
by 50%, and then reduced gradually, though, because of exemptions of raw-material
imported for exports and for capital goods needed for the HCI industries, the actual
tariff ratio to imports was quite low (Hong 1994). The import-liberalization ratio
declined from a high of 60% in 1967 to 50% in 1978 and there were significant
increases in import restrictions on HCI-competing imports even when needed for
exports. Even raw material imports were subjected to increasing restrictions. The
share of manufactured consumer-goods imports dropped to about 15 and about 80%
of imports consisted of raw material, machinery and intermediate goods.
5 Hong Wontack “Growth and Trade Pattern” in Kim C.K. op. cit. pp 361.
190
APPENDIX A
The fourth and final phase in Korea (and Taiwan’s) trade policy came in the
eighties, when most trade restrictions were dismantled and most subsidies, even to
HCI industries, were withdrawn. This was an abrupt about-face. By 1982, the overall
proportion of automatic approval import items had been raised to 77%; but the real
rate of protection was actually increased somewhat (12% higher in 82 than in 1978).
The growth rate continued to be very high, especially throughout the eighties and
that of exports, though less than half that in the previous period and only a third
that in the export-led growth period, was still a very high 14% in the eighties and
almost 11% between 1987 and 95. Growth and exports became self-propelled, rather
than government-driven.
Third, a mix of government and market is needed to promote development.
This mixmust adapt dynamically, as development proceeds.
No area of economic development has been as contentious as the professional
attitudes concerning the role of government in the economy. General professional
attitudes have undergone three different phases. The first thirty years of development
economics viewed government as a necessary prime mover, and reflected the view
that the state represents a Platonic, social welfare-guided arbiter among conflicting
interests. It was needed to correct coordination failures in interdependent investments
in industry and move the economy out of thelow-level equilibrium trap.
Then, in the eighties, with a recognition of the failure of the governmentguided process to deliver improvements in the living standards of the poor, and
with the replacement of democrats and labor-governments in developed countries
by republican and Tory governments inthe OECD countries, the pendulum swung
against government -led development. This was the Washington-consensus period.
Government policies in distorting factor prices were blamed for the failures of rapid
growth and structural change to deliver commensurate benefits to the poor.
Government focus on industry, neglect of agriculture, and reliance on capitalintensive factor-price-distortion-induced inappropriate imported technology were
blamed. The view of thestate was changed from Platonic arbiter to a predatory, rentseeking, corruption and waste inducing entity. The weight of professional opinion
shifted towards a limited state, which can do best for development by doing least.
(It is amusing to note, however, that the Fourth Five Year Plan of Korea, of 1981,
which aimed at marketizing the economy, contained 41 statements starting with the
phrase “The government must ...”).
The third phase, in which we are currently, saw a rehabilitation of the State. This
rehabilitation was due in part to a shift against socially conservative governments in
ORCD countries, in part to a reinterpretation of East Asian experience promoted
by Japan who financed the “East Asian Miracle” study of the World Bank (1993)
and in part to the disastrous consequences for Latin America of “Washington
Consensus” growth. The current phase adopts a more balanced view of the role of
government, which incorporates and melds some of the insightsof the previous two
phases. (World Bank 1996).
Government action is critical to get development started. However, as
development proceeds the role of the private sector in development must increase.
As we saw in the previoussection, the government must aim at working its way out
of supporting adolescent industries, so as to foster their maturing into competitive
activities and proceed to stress the infrastructure, accumulation patterns and
DVA1502/1191

acquisition of resource endowments required for the development of the next phase
of comparative advantage.
Markets and the state have different, complementary strengths. The strength of
markets is their emphasis on efficiency, but only when institutions are competitive.
(To make them competitive is a function of the state). However, markets are not
particularly good at predicting the future when development is nonlinear and at taking
account of externalities, both positive and negative. While governments may not
be better than the private sector in forecasting the future, but, for better or worse,
their investment, policy change and institutional-reform activities have the force
of self-fulfilling predictions. In the presence of externalities, reliance on markets
alone is likely to promote monopoly or oligopoly, lead to underinvestment in both
industry and infrastructure, and to negative externalities on the environment and
on distribution. On the otherhand, government is not particularly good at inducing
efficient use of resources.
The strengths of government reside in correcting coordination failures (Stiglitz
and Hoff forthcoming and Hoff forthcoming) in both investment and institution
creation. The coordination failures in investment are due primarily to externalities
and economies of scale in production; thecoordination failures in building institution
arise primarily from collective action difficulties (freerider problems, distributional
conflicts, and the fact that losses are almost always immediate while gains are delayed).
Governments perform other functions as well: Nineteenth century governments
of currently developed countries (Morris and Adelman 1987) used a large variety
of instruments to promote industrialization: general and targeted subsidies; tariffs;
credit and direct finance; incentives; monetary policy; monopoly grants; quantitative
restrictions; licensing; tax privileges; and regulation of immigration, foreign
investment and foreign capital inflows. Challenged by Britain’s industrialization,
latecomer governments enlarged the size of their domestic markets through: political
unification; investment in inland transport; and abolition of internal customs duties
and tolls. Governments increased the supply of labor by removing legal barriers to
worker-mobility across regions and sectors; establishing favorable immigration laws,
importing foreign skilled workers; and investing in education. Governments increased
the supply of domestic finance by promoting the creation of investment banks; the
formation of financial intermediaries; the establishment of institutions and policies
fostering the transfer of finance to industry; and by direct finances. Governments
promoted the import of technology from advanced countries.
Governments were also a source of externality for private investment by fostering
investment in infrastructure (electricity, power and transport-infrastructure), both
directly and indirectly, and investment in human resources. Finally, governments
lowered risk by enabling the establishmentof limited liability companies, increasing
the security of property rights, and enforcing private contracts. They also manage
and set the ground rules for resolving distributional conflicts by setting labor and
tenancy laws, enforcing competition rules and, in the twentieth century, establishing
institutions to protect the weak. These functions are also performed by current
developing country governments, as well as setting the macroeconomic framework
for development and economic stability.
Since the strengths of markets and governments are largely complementary,
a mix of the two is needed. The relative roles of the two evolve with development.
Initially, the government must take a more active role in economic activity through
direct investment in infrastructure and (more controversially) economic enterprises
192
APPENDIX A
as well as through investment, policies and institutions for increasing the supplies of
factors, reducing risk, and trade and commercial policies. Thus, the East Asian states
have relied most on government for their first thirty years ofeconomic development.
As evident from the description of their trade policies above, the instruments they
used before 1980 were of three types: market and non-market incentives; discretionary
and non-discretionary bureaucratic interventions; and moral suasion. As Amsden
(1989) says about Korea, her economic growth was not a case of simply “getting
prices right”; in addition to price policy, a multitude of market and non-market,
discretionary and non-discretionary incentives were used to achieve both general
and specific industrial policy goals. Neither was it a case of “getting prices wrong”.
Rather, it represented a creative mix of prices that were almost right with subsidies,
targets, directives, regulation and controls that provided just the right mix of carrots
and sticks. The mix among instrument-types varied over time, but even now Korea’s
institutions do not fit the pure neoclassical, laissez faire, mold. (It is indicative that
several current economic Ministers and government advisers to President Kim Dae
Jung on financial crisis management and institutional restructuring are graduates of
the Economic Planning Board that directed the private sector during the heyday of
government-entrepreneurship in economic development.)
As development proceeds, developing countries should rely less on direct
investment (though Korea and Taiwan did not do so during their second importsubstitution phases) and more on setting appropriate policies, developing financial,
tax and technology institutions and on striking an appropriate balance between
macroeconomic stability and the promotion of economic growth through
macroeconomic stimuli. Finally, when developing countries become NICs, the
weight should shift to market-guided development and the functions of government
should approximate those in developed countries.
Fifth, human resource policies are critical to development outcomes.
This is a proposition that both liberal and conservative economists agree upon,
Liberals stress the beneficial distributive effects of more investment in human
resources and theircapability raising and empowering consequences (Adelman and
Morris 1973 and Sen 1988).
When accompanied by investment in human-resource, labor and skill-intensive
industries, greater investment in human resources leads to more egalitarian outcomes.
Conservative stress that investment in the creation of different types of human
resources is critical for climbing theladder of comparative advantage, and thus has
not only private but also social rates of return.
Ranis, Stewart and Ramirez (2000) reconcile the two views. They sketch
two-way links between education and development, which can give rise to either
a virtuous of vicious cycle. On the one hand, there is a feedback from growth to
human-resource investment that operates through the availability of fiscal funds
for investment. On the other hand, there is also a feedback from human-resources
to growth, which operates through factor supplies for structural change to more
skill-intensive industries. If growth is rapid, it can support higher investment levels
in human resources which, in turn, stimulate faster growth and structural change. If
the economy is stagnant, human resource investment is very limited and this leads to
further stagnation. Their analysis is supported by endogenous growth A(k) models
(Lucas 1988 and Romer 1986), in which knowledge generates external economies
and raises the productivity of physical capital andraw labor.
DVA1502/1193

Schultz (1981) was the first influential advocate of greater investment in human
capital, inorder to improve productivity, raise responsiveness to economic incentives
and improve decision-making capacity while Adelman and Morris (1973) argued
for investment in education for equality increases. Other benefits from education,
especially female education, are reduced fertility and better nutrition. Schultz’s
insights were supported by rate of return to education calculations (Psacharopoulos
1981) which indicated that, generally speaking, returns to education in developing
countries are greater than returns to investment in physical capital.
IV. Conclusion
Both the process of development and development policy are interdependent,
multifaceted, dynamic, and highly non-linear. Development therefore entails
systematically altering the portent, mechanisms, modalities, agents and institutions
for its promotion. The only constant in development is systematic dynamic change.
This would hardly be worth stating, were it not that development theory has been
presented as if its propositions are universally applicable, no matter what single
feature of development policy they choose to stress and no matter which country
its recommendation address. As a result, development policy advice has rarely been
specifically tailored to the country’s initial conditions, widely interpreted. Also, largely
as a consequence, development theory and policy have been unusually contentious.
In this context, I am reminded of an anecdote, related by Abba Lerner, about a
Rabbi and his wife. Two contending parties come to the Rabbi and state their case.
After the first party finishes the Rabbi says: “You’re right”. After the second party
finishes, the Rabbi says: “You’re right”. After both leave, the Rabbi’s wife, who has
been listening at the doorway says: “How can they both be right?” and the Rabbi
turns to her and says:” My dear, you’re also right.
194
10
APPENDIX B
DVA1502/1195

196
APPENDIX B
DVA1502/1197

11
198
APPENDIX C
APPENDIX C
DVA1502/1199

200
APPENDIX C
DVA1502/1201