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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Running while others walk: knowledge and the challenge of Africa's development
Author:Mkandawire, ThandikaISNI
Year:2011
Periodical:Africa Development: A Quarterly Journal of CODESRIA (ISSN 0850-3907)
Volume:36
Issue:2
Pages:1-36
Language:English
Geographic term:Africa
Subjects:development
universities
science
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/24484703
Abstract:Africa's quest for 'catch-up' and economic development dates as far back, at least, as its humiliating encounter with the West which led to enslavement and colonization. 'Development' is thus not an externally imposed 'discourse', but a response to the many challenges the continent has faced over the years and still faces today. Africa lags behind in many social indicators of well-being. As a 'Late, Late Comer' Africa will, as Nyerere suggested, have to 'Run While Others Walk'. This demand on the continent to 'run' has to contend with a pessimistic discourse that has, against all evidence, insisted that Africans cannot do what many other 'late comers' have done or are doing today. The 'Running' will demand radical rethinking of institutions of collective response to the many challenges about the generation and mastery of the knowledge up to the task, once again placing the universities at the centre of the continent's development efforts. The text is a slightly revised version of the paper delivered as inaugural lecture for the Chair of African Development at the London School of Economics on 27 April 2010. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. in English and French. [Journal abstract]
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