Revolution and Development in Amilcar Cabral's Political Thought
Abstract:
Early studies on Amilcar Cabral construe him more as a revolutionary theorist. His political ideas have been discussed, cutting across his ideas of cultural identity, revolutionary thought, imperialism, citizenship among others. An understanding of Cabral’s pragmatic approach to theories revealed that Cabral was not interested in theory for the sake of mere pontifications but rather to enhance the purpose of the revolution he pioneered in Guinea (Guinea-Bissau) against Portuguese colonialism. Incidentally, this underlying objective of the revolution, (that is, development) has not been properly discussed by scholars. Thus, this thesis has as its general objective, an examination of Cabral’s idea of development. This study is significant for two reasons: first, the perennial status of underdevelopment and poverty in Africa; second, the absence of sufficient literature on Cabral’s theory of development. This study employed qualitative method of research. It utilized secondary sources of data as a way of effectively locating Cabral’s philosophy of development. The secondary data were analyzed through textual analysis and explanatory (interpretative) method. In other words, the concepts that formed the body of work on development in Cabral’s Political Thought were identified and interpreted with the intention of drawing both the direct and the indirect inferences on development. Thus, this study identified and classified Cabral’s idea of development as ‘Humanistic conception of Development’ which is primarily people-centered development ideology. Cabral conceived development as progress in the living condition of the people. His theory of development could also be referred to as participatory theory of development. This brings his development thought in line with those of Amartya Sen, Arturo Escobar, Claude Ake, among others. Cabral conceived the people as the creative force of development (Creative View of Development) – the people as the means and the ends of development. In view of this, he emphasized ‘bottom-top’ approach to governance and development as against the current ‘top-bottom’ approach which is said to be the undoing of the African continent. He argued that development should be a partnership between the leaders and the led and that the people must feel the positive effect of the economic growth in their country. In other words, economic growth must trickle-down to the people. Thus, it is concluded that Cabral’s Political Thought (Ideas of Development) has great relevance and applicability to contemporary African States. From the aforementioned, the study’s recommendations are as follows: Africa should pursue ‘bottom-top’ instead of ‘top-bottom’ approach to development; endogenous entrepreneurship should be encouraged and supported; the economy should be diversified in order to avoid the danger of running a mono-economy that is liable to produce underdevelopment; there is a need to promote self-reliance among the citizens and the government must also embrace self-reliance in its interaction with other countries; the agricultural sector must be developed because a country’s greatness starts with its ability to feed itself; democratic governance in Africa should begin to incorporate the fundamental features of good governance such as accountability, transparency, efficient and effective service delivery mechanism among others. This is because democracy without good governance could be antithetical to development. Also, there must be conscious policies geared towards human capital developmen ORDER COMPLETE MATERIAL (CHAPTER 1-5)
