Following decades of abysmal developmental performance in most of postcolonial Africa, the collapse of centrally planned economies in Eastern Europe and the
consequent triumph of the neoliberal ideology, there has been a paradigm shift in
international policy circles and in mainstream academia about the appropriate
developmental trajectory for the underdeveloped states of the African continent. Thus,
the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO actively canvass for the “rolling back of the
state†in order to unleash the potential of market forces in the developmental process.
This development no doubt has altered the relationship between the trio of state, civil
society and the market in favor of the latter.
This paper attempts an ethical critique of the neoliberal model of development. It
specifically demonstrates that the combination of the logics of unbridled market
capitalism, reckless state apparatus and hostile international environment generates
consequences which are not only morally indefensible but also deepens Africa‟s
developmental crisis. In addition, it argues that unless Africans relentlessly pursue the
reconstruction of their domestic societies as well as the global economic architecture
along the lines of egalitarianism, justice and humanity, Africa will continue to be
plagued by the pathologies of underdevelopment. The paper concludes by sketching the
outlines of the way forward.