 African socialism; or, the search for an indigenous model of economic development?Emmanuel Akyeampong Economic History of Developing Regions, 2018, vol. 33, issue 1, 69-87 Abstract: Ralph Austen in African Economic History (1987) noted how few African countries explicitly choose capitalism on independence, and for those who did it was a default model or a residual pattern. ‘African socialism’ was popular in the early decades of independence and pursued by several countries, including Ghana, Guinea, Senegal and Tanzania, the cases considered in this paper. The term had multiple meanings, and its advocates were quick to stress that they were not communist, and some said they were not even Marxist. This paper explores the argument that African socialism was a search for an indigenous model of economic development for a generation that was justifiably ambivalent about capitalism, but wary of being put in the communist camp in the Cold War era. Importantly, advocates of African socialism often proposed bold and transformative visions for their countries. These visions might be worth revisiting, devoid of the paradigm of socialism. Date: 2018 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rehdxx:v:33:y:2018:i:1:p:69-87 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/20780389.2018.1434411 Access Statistics for this article Economic History of Developing Regions is currently edited by Alex Klein and Alfonso Herranz-Loncan More articles in Economic History of Developing Regions from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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