Power and need in Africa

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Book

Title:	Power and need in Africa
Author:	Wisner, Ben
Year:	1988
Pages:	351
Language:	English
City of publisher:	London
Publisher:	Earthscan
ISBN:	1853830011
Geographic terms:	Subsaharan Africa Kenya
Subjects:	development basic needs
Abstract:	Famine, environmental destruction, aid dependency and the lack of any progress for women do not mean that need-oriented development policies failed in Africa - they were never seriously tried. Policies which might have started with the real needs of the poor and disfranchised were discarded in favour of a conception of need imposed from the top: 'community participation' merely became an instrument for achieving goals set by the 'experts'. The author makes a case for giving the poor of Africa the means to develop their own future. Each chapter draws on the African experience with various forms of the basic needs approach (BNA). Wherever possible the author discusses the BNA in Kenya, where he worked in the early 1970s and again in the 1980s. He shows how a new African renaissance could spring from a radical basic needs approach. A renaissance which has as its constituent elements environmental sustainability, women's emancipation and social justice, will stand as the living refutation of the new, conservative 'pragmatism' so fashionable among development 'experts' now.