Contemporary Issues in Africa’s Development: Whither the African Renaissance?, edited by Richard A. Olaniyan and Ehimika A. Ifidon

Abstract

There is a wide corpus of literature on Africa’s developmental issues, for example Morten Jerven's Poor Numbers (University of Cape Town Press, 2013); Dambisa Moyo’s Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa (Penguin Books, 2015); Emmanuel Akyeampong et al.’s Africa's Development in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2014); and Munyaradzi Mawere’s Development Naivety and Emergent Insecurities in a Monopolised World: The Politics and Sociology of Development in Contemporary Africa (Langaa RPCID, 2018), such that one is legitimately tempted to ask: What are Olaniyan and Ifidon adding to the literature? Based on the foregoing, expectations are already heightened whenever one picks up another book on Africa’s development trajectory. This is because there are very deep pockets of disillusionment with Africa’s quest for development since the 1960s waves of decolonisation that were supposed to lift Africa out of the mire of underdevelopment, an uncontested legacy of colonisation. With misses with regard to Millennium Development Goals, which came to a close in 2015, and given uncertainty regarding the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals, coupled with deepseated Afroscepticism and the impoverished lot of large sections of the African population, issues of Africa’s development are very topical. Therefore, any book that puts Africa’s development under a searing microscope and goes beyond lamentations and proposes developmental solutions is a worthy read and an invaluable contribution to development policy. However, does this book fit in this category? In other words, does it rise to the occasion or expectations?