Alternative Futures For Africa

This comprehensive, critical examination of Africa’s future–written by a diverse group of Africans and Africanists–raises many questions and challenges concerning the development and unity of the African continent. Eclectic in range and method, but cohesive in concern, the book identifies and analyzes alternative probabilities in the political, economic, and social spheres and on the national, regional, and international levels. Many of the contributors point toward an unpromising future for Africa unless its development strategy is changed and its inheritance of dependence on the world system overcome.

Prepared for the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Washington, DC [under] contract MDA903-79-C-0256.

This report develops three contrasting scenarios to illustrate alternative futures, based on several global economic models and extensive stakeholder discussions, and outlines policy considerations to help ensure that future needs are met sustainably.

This comprehensive, critical examination of Africa’s future–written by a diverse group of Africans and Africanists–raises many questions and challenges concerning the development and unity of the African continent. Eclectic in range and method, but cohesive in concern, the book identifies and analyzes alternative probabilities in the political, economic, and social spheres and on the national, regional, and international levels. Many of the contributors point toward an unpromising future for Africa unless its development strategy is changed and its inheritance of dependence on the world system overcome.

This book analyses the narratives of four academics who consider themselves post-structuralist. Grounded in the work of major thinkers in post-structuralism, these narratives reflect on higher education as a community of scholars without community. The authors highlight what specifically motivates their pedagogical affirmations and orientations, analyse why they are concerned with social justice education, and what they envisage the alternative futures of higher education to be – that is, futures in which discrimination, oppression, violence and inequality are waning or have been eradicated. Through their own narratives, the authors tackle the educational matter of poststructuralist human encounters and expand upon the notion of social justice education. In doing so, they argue for higher education on the African continent as an alternative discourse that can be responsive to political, societal and environmental dystopias.