Over five decades since the surge of decolonization in Africa after World War II, post-colonial African states are still beset with myriads of crises in their social, economic and social life that has relegated the region as an appendage in the international plain only remembered for poverty, refugees, flood, wars, IDPs, human trafficking and in recent times a new wave of trans-national terrorism. The dearth of statesmen of strategic vision to give the region a clean break with its colonial past has been one of the major albatross to the development of postcolonial Africa. Daunting as these challenges appeared to be they are however surmountable if they are diagnosed from a broader perspective and addressed holistically with focus on both internal factors and extra-regional pressures that had impeded development of the region [1].

A litany of theories and Perspectives have been propounded and formulated to explain the factors behind the backwardness of the region and proffer solutions to addressing the underdevelopment crisis in Third world Countries for which virtually all Sub-Saharan Africa fall into: the Modernization Theory, the Dependency school, the Third World Analysis and the Globalization Perspectives [2].

This paper focuses on some illustrative expositions to the underdevelopment crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa with reference to some endogenous causative to the underdevelopment of the region. The paper anchors eclectically on theoretical perspectives on the underdevelopment of the Third World Countries which covers a larger sphere of the Latin America Asian and Sub-Saharan Africa, unravels the endogenous impediments (the home-grown factors) while acknowledging the exogenous narratives to the underdevelopment crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa and proffer solutions.

Dudley Seers in a seminar paper conceives of development as not only involving economic growth but also conditions in which people in a country have adequate food, jobs and the income inequality among them is greatly reduced [3]. According to Seers, the questions to ask about a country’s development are threefold:

• What has been happening to poverty?

• What has been happening to inequality?

• What has been happening to unemployment?

Seers noted that if these three aspects: poverty, unemployment and inequality have witnessed significant decline, then there had been fundamental development for the country involved. In a post-thesis review eight years later in 1977, Seers asserted that he had left an essential element which must now be added: ‘self-reliance’.

Development as economic growth

The World Bank and most economic literature in early post-World War II, defined development as a rapid and sustained rise in real output per head and attendant shift in the technological, economic and demographic characteristics of a society. This definition has been broadened decades after by development economists and other economic institutions [4].

Development as modernization

This offers a broader definitional context of development in the light of social change. As modernization, development centers on how to inculcate wealth oriented behavior and values in the individuals.

Development as distribution of justice

By the end of the 1960s, prevailing economic trends indicated that neither development as economic growth nor as modernization has yielded the expected effect on the living conditions of majority of the individuals as manifested evidently in widespread poverty and destitution. This led to the broadening of the concept of development as not merely a reflection transfer of output and income but the reduction and elevation of poverty levels across societies. The interest of development as social justice again brought to the fore, three major concerns:

• The nature of goods and services provided by the governments for the overall population (public goods): defense, health, roads, dams, electricity and security;

• Where these goods are localized;

• How equitable has the distribution been carried out.

• These factors are fundamental to whether these goods can be equally accessed or homogeneously benefiting to the entire society.

Acheoah AO conceptualizes underdevelopment as the antithesis of development manifestly in backward indicators: low per capita income/GDP; the preponderance of rural and agricultural populations; low literacy levels; the predominance of inferior technology; weak economic and political institution; underdeveloped political culture; the prevalence of a ruling class that stresses and rationalizes values that are incompatible with socio-economic and political development as well as fragile statehood [1].

Research questions

This study is poised to answer the following research questions:

• Why has Sub-Saharan Africa failed to develop in spite of all efforts towards transforming the region?

• What endogenous factors have contributed to the underdevelopment of Sub-Saharan Africa?

• How can the crisis of underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa be surmounted?

The modernization theory

Among the earliest theories of development and remedies to underdevelopment is the Modernization Theory. The theory presents the Western models of economic development as the quickest and surest way of taking underdeveloped countries out of their underdevelopment crisis. Its postulations interpose the Western societies as a ‘mirror’ reflecting before the underdeveloped societies a future they should aspire. This school of thought emerged after the World War II when post-war realities brought to bear the imperatives to assist the underdeveloped world in addressing their developmental needs. A key exponent of this School was Walt Whiteman Rostow who postulated a five- Stage economic growth model in his ‘the Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto’.

Modernization theory assumes that what was simply required was to provide underdeveloped countries with comparable historical data and the presumed characteristics typical and associated with the western society’s developmental process.

The theory predicated the single denominator upon which all aspects of development can be reviewed and pursued on the attainment of industrialized, nationally and politically integrated democracy that is socially patterned after the Western democratic model and liberalized trade.

In this light, a country is only modernizing if it experiences changes in its economic, social and political systems in the mold of western society.

A strong criticism against the modernization school has been historicity, not only because it failed to account for historical antecedents of the underdeveloped countries, but also because it failed to account for how slavery and colonialism set the developmental clock of these underdeveloped societies backward.

Furthermore, Rostow’s model assumes that inequality between regions/nations will in the long run disappear as progress as is accelerated. It is evident in contemporary times that Sub-Saharan Africa has not achieved this proposed path to development.

The third world perspective, dependency theory and centerperiphery analysis

This synoptically covers the contributions of scholars who have sentiments of the Third World and underdeveloped societies largely of the Latin American origin who emerged as a radical and offered counter perspectives to the Modernization School. A leading exponent of this School of Thought was Raul Prebisch who enquired into the dialectical growth in wealth between the rich and poor nations, Andre Gunder Frank, Walter Rodney, Immanuel Wallenstein and Samir Amin [5-8].

They argued that the Less Developed Countries (LDCs) covering Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in Asia and Latin America did not witness underdevelopment until their coming into contact with the Western Societies (Slave trade and Colonialism) this altered their development trajectory in their course of nation building, thus, they began to experience arrested development. They argued that incorporation of third world economies into the international capitalist system orchestrated a structure of inequality skewed disproportionally against the Third world [6].

They argued that the poor nations provide the resources, cheap labor and consumer markets for the wealthy nations which ensured the development of the developed nations. The trajectory of this relations is that development becomes two sides of the same coin; one side develops, while the other under develops.

Challenging the Linear model of Modernization Theorists Immanuel Wallenstein in his World System Theory argued that not every nation can develop simultaneously. The World System theory argues that the development of underdevelopment is a simultaneous phenomenon in a character of one regional development and surpluses produces it’s under development and deficit counterparts elsewhere in another region.

To the Guyanese Marxist historian Walter Rodney with reference to How Europe Underdeveloped Africa nostalgically asserted that the decisiveness of the period of colonialism and its negative impacts on Africa sprang from the fact that Africa lost power (economic and political) [8].

To Rodney when one society is forced to relinquish power entirely to another society that in itself is a form of underdevelopment.

Prebisch considering the contradiction in the trade relations between developed and underdeveloped nations began to question the notion that countries can benefit equally and that mutual profitability in trade between developed and developing nations. Examining the relationship from the standpoint of balance of payment rather than resource allocation, he asserted that there is a tendency for the terms of trade to shift against agricultural product and its impact on balance of payment far outweighs its benefits with respect to the efficient allocation of resources [5].

Using this argument as a parameter, Prebisch formulated a number of hypotheses which came to be known as the ‘Prebisch Doctrine’ [5].

Inspired by the world economic crisis of the 1930s and his experience as ECOSOC for Latin America and UNCTAD, Prebisch became concerned with two distinct but interrelated issues [9]:

• The first deals with the transfer of the benefits of trade from the developing to the developed countries because of the adverse terms of trade being experienced by the former;

• The second relates to the balance of payment effect of differences in the elasticity of demand for agricultural and mineral products vis-à-vis secondary products and the fluctuating earnings and foreign exchange shortages it induces for developing countries.

Advancing the arguments, Prebisch declared that:

• International division of labor is governed by an asymmetry in which developed nations dominate the dynamic industries from the center while the developing countries are impoverished because their exports of agricultural and mineral raw materials from the periphery by extension while these produce of developing countries are bought at under quoted prices, those of developed countries of the center are sold and bought at over quoted prices thereby allowing the latter to take advantage of the differences. According to Prebisch the phenomenon is cyclical in character.

Corroborating Prebisch, notes that not only is the system sustained by unequal levels of technological acquisition, but also, progress and the distribution of the benefits accruing from science and technology [1,5]. The development of the means of production determines of the state and patterns of development experienced by any society.

The position of this paper is that while extant narratives offered by different theories of development on the crisis of underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa are plausible, there are home-grown factors which have also impeded efforts towards developing the region. The leadership disposition of the African political elites lacks can never transform the region, the values they stress and the agendas they push are incompatible with peace and development. Therefore, if Sub- Saharan Africa must turn a new leaf, its political class must conceptualize their notions of leadership and begin to see themselves as servants of their people, state societies.

Sub-Saharan Africa: the historical roots of its developmental crises

According to the United Nations, Sub-Saharan Africa comprises the south of the Sahara, (i.e.) all African countries that are located south of the Sahara excluding North Africa with the Sahel as the transitional zone between the Sahara and the tropical savanna of Sudan region [10].

With a population of 1,014,318,745 (2017 est.) of Africa’s 1.250.000.000, Sub-Saharan Africa is the second most populous region in the world after Asia 4.49 billion population (2018 estimate).

Nigeria and South Africa are the two biggest economies in Sub- Sahara Africa with 430 billion USD and 364 billion USD representing 30.2 per cent and 26.9 per cent respectively.

The region had gone through turbulent historical experiences from slavery to colonialism, fought bitter civil wars, and witnessed a litany of forceful changes of government via coups and presidential assassinations. Conflicts in post-colonial Africa had been both inter and intra state all of which had contributed to the underdevelopment of the region.

Currently there are fifty four countries in Africa with divergent colonial heritages. The regional body, African Union (AU) was established in 2002 as a successor entity to the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the first pan African regional organization founded in 1963 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to consolidate the nascent independence of African states and end all traces of colonialism in the region through unfettered decolonization [11].

While for the United Nations the whole Africa is a region, the African Union on the other hand conceives of Africa as comprising five regions: North, Southern, East, West and Central Africa. However, on a broader note, Sub-Saharan Africa comprises four regions: Southern Africa; West Africa; East Africa; and Central Africa.

For the purpose of this paper, assessment of Sub-Saharan African societies demands an account of their pre-colonial, colonial and postcolonial experiences in order to appreciate how these antecedents partly but not exclusively impeded the underdevelopment of the region in contemporary times.

Pre-colonial African societies were feudal, agrarian and monarchical. These were empires, kingdoms, emirates and caliphates such as the Zulu Kingdom in modern day South Africa, the Buganda kingdom in Uganda, the Oyo Empire, Benin Kingdom, Kanem-Bornu Empire and Sokoto Caliphate in modern Nigeria, the Ashanti Empire in modern Ghana. There was commercial intercourse between them but not authoritative power relations among them until and after decolonization majorly in the late 1950s.

With Colonial conquest that followed the scramble and partition of Africa impacted in the region in several ways among are:

• It brought in on the economic front a new mode of production and exchange into the existing agrarian, feudal and pre-industrial African states. Capitalism as an economic system and ideology brought in free trade, monetization, banking system, novel exchange system and threw up new class as well as new social relations. Instructively, prior to the introduction of capitalist mode in Sub-Saharan Africa which produces new carriers and professions and bureaucratic institutions, there was no unemployment in Africa;

• Fundamentally, because every mode of production throws up its own authoritative institutions, the emergence of capitalism side by side with colonial rule, the monarchical rule that super structurally controlled the feudal system and pre-colonial Africa saw a significant decline. As new class of educated elites rose to newly established institutions that were founded on legal-rational bureaucratic tenets of Marx Webber. This shift manifested in the establishments of parliament, Judiciary, Executive and other bureaucratic authoritative institutions alien to Africa.

The economic consequence of colonial capitalist state formation in Sub-Saharan Africa was that it inverted the process of state, society and economic development untypical of the western mold. How?

While capitalism began in Europe in a transitional shift that saw a gradual development from agrarian, feudal Europe to capitalistindustrial European societies, in Africa this transition was a ‘false start’ in that Capitalism was introduced to Africa at a time when there was no capitalists to grow capitalism but peasants who had no capital to take active part in capitalist mode of production and exchange as were the cases of western capitalist countries that saw the transition from agrarian, feudal mode of production to capitalist mode occasioned by the bourgeoisie revolution. The western capitalist states thus emerged as authoritative institutions established by the dominant capitalist class to protect their privileges. These emergent capitalists needed a state that protects rationalizes their economic interests. This helps one to appreciate why the states are stronger in Europe being created by business men who needed authoritative superstructure institutions to sustain and protect their privileges and weaker in Africa. The economic mode produced the states system, thus a capitalist state will protect private property rights as well as right to inheritance.

The irony of African case is that there were no capitalist, industrialists or bourgeoisie in the western mold to drive the system that was transported to the region. African bourgeoisie were petty middlemen, and those who have embezzled state funds and converted state properties from the strict sense of it. Majority of African billionaires if properly investigated will found their wealth traced to public funds misappropriated at one time or the other. This trend has not changed among African political and business class. Privatization in the African parlance has been skewed to a very fraudulent policy where those in government who want to acquire state properties they could not bought while in government, now decided to acquire those assets after leaving service with the funds stolen while in government. This practice characterizes the Nigerian privatization policy in the early 21 Century in which state investments were sold to friends and cronies with no new wealth coming into the system.

As there were neither capitalists nor industrialists when capitalist mode of production was introduced to Sub Saharan Africa, the economies of sub-Saharan Africa became an appendage of the metropolises; the economies became planned, structured to meet the needs of the metropolitan industries for raw materials. This colonial economic structure still remains as virtually all countries of the Sub- Saharan Africa remain primary producers, surviving on raw materials and mineral resources.

It was against this background that decolonization began after World War II in what came to be described as the third wave of decolonization. Consequently, this historical antecedent had fundamental impact on post-colonial African state in three different ways:

• It created a dichotomy between the economy and the society. This implied that the economy of post-colonial Africa were not offshoot of their society, it is disarticulated from the societies and polities;

• A transformed social-economic system imposed on a people who missed the proper transitional phases leading to capitalist state formation. This inverted the process of capitalist state formation in the ideal mold of the western capitalist society;

• In Africa there were no capitalist privileges as it were and those managing the economy had no stake in the economy, an unproductive ruling class to whom economic productivity becomes an anathema, embezzlement of public funds becomes the norms and above all the absence of a developmental regimes as those who don’t know what to do with political powers beyond primitive accumulations took the stage of governance and African states took the character of hijacked entities [1].

The implication of this is that by the 1960s, the decade of decolonization, while there were democracy, liberalism in principle not in practice, there were no middle class and social cohesion to sustain democracy, consequently conflicts, civil wars, coups and forceful changes of regimes became a common phenomenon in Post- colonial African states [1]. The atomization of the African societies reflects the limited development of the productive forces especially in so far as they have hampered generalization of commodity, production and exchange…the post-colonial state is unable to mediate the struggles between classes and within classes particularly the hegemonic class. The net effect of this is that politics essentially the struggle for control and use of state power becomes warfare.

The causes of the crisis of underdevelopment in post-colonial Africa has since taken multi-dimensional form beyond colonial antecedents of western capitalist exploitations as ample evidence of post-colonial Asian countries that have broken out of the mold of underdevelopment in spite of their colonial past. These narratives are fundamental in spotlighting local factors that had impeded development in Sub- Saharan Africa that are engineered by the indigenous people which are not compatible with development in principle and practice.

A Pan-Africanist of the first rank Dr. Kwame Nkrumah once optimistically remarked: ‘If Africans must be respected in the world, let us today make a solemn vow, let us unite, let us create one country with one passport, let us create one country with one army, let us create one country with one currency, let us create one country with one immigration law, let us create a ‘United States of Africa’ (USA). African leaders did not pay heed to this earliest call for African integration by Kwame Nkrumah in the founding conference of the Organization for African Unity Addis Ababa. Nkrumah’s OAU would be a confederation of African states with one currency, army, immigration policy and one identity of (driven by Negritudes) in the words of Leopold Cedar Senghor. Prior to Nkrumah Marcus Garvey has demanded that Africa unity is an imperative if they must shakes off colonial heritage and chart their path to prosperity [11].

Today, decades after Nkrumah’s demise, post-colonial African states still searching for a path to development, beset with fundamental structural crises from the Central African Republic to South Sudan, From Democratic Republic of Congo to Nigeria the stories are appalling;‘ ’the richest region in the world paradoxically cannot feed its people’’. Today, it has been argued that there is a post-colonial process of recolonizing Africa via the neocolonial institutions: International Monetary Fund, World Bank, the World Trade Organization, even subtly the United Nations [4].

Post-colonial African states are without high degree of autonomy, weak and unable to neither contain the forces threatening their corporate existence nor reconcile the conflicting interests of the rancorous political elites. Africa lacked the hegemonic leadership that could provide a direction and propagate a dominant idea to unify their people and develop their societies. Politics without idea became a dominant feature of post-colonial Africa. Nelson Mandela was a single hegemon in apartheid South Africa who left a better society than one he was born in. He said:

‘’during my lifetime I have dedicated my life to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal for which I hope to live for and see realized. But, my lord if it needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die’’ [12].

Professor Wole Soyinka, alluding to the dearth of good leadership in Africa, says: ‘’Africa will only rise when the man in us awakes’’. African men are asleep as mounting crises beset their society waiting for the west and blame everything on their colonial past, losing sight of the fact that Brazil, Singapore and the Asian Tigers were at one time or the other colonized.

Africa is replete with political instabilities; authoritarian leadership, military coups and forceful regime change all of which had also undermined effort at transforming the region. Of the countries ranked in the 2015 failed states index by the Fund for Peace, three Sub- Saharan African countries: South Sudan, Somalia and the Central African Republic appeared first, second and third respectively. African countries as against the giant stride at common currency convergence among the EU countries, African countries don’t accept their currencies but the USD the US Dollars, yet they lament poor treatment at the WTO. How can they compete favorably in trade? The largest concentration of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is found in sub- Saharan Africa. Of the 48 countries listed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development UNCTAD as Least Developed Countries, 33 are in Sub-Saharan Africa representing 69 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa falling into this category. According to World Bank the economies of Sub-Saharan Africa are majorly primary-produce oriented with only ten of the economies agricultural sectors contributing less than 20 percent to the GDP [9]. For most of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa, manufacturing contributes less than the 13 percent weighted average share of this sector in the GDP of low income economies (China and India excluded) as Classified by the World Bank.

It was against this backdrop that the Millennium Development Goals were developed in September 2000 with a unified focus for the first time by the international community to address some of the most pressing issues in Less Developed Countries for which virtually all Sub- Saharan Africa fall into that classificatory scheme: (LDCs) [13,14]. The MDGs are eight goals and 21 targets: eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality rates; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; develop a global partnership for development. The MDGs were the most laudable developmental blueprints carried out in consultation with African countries. Goal 1 of the MDGs: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger woven around three targets: to halve between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 a day; target B, achieve decent employment for women, men and young people; and to halve between 1990 and 2015 the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. Within the targeted period, poverty and hunger have increased in Sub-Saharan Africa particularly South Sudan and Nigeria where the Nuer rebellion against the Dinka and the Boko Haram terrorism in North Eastern Nigeria has left serious humanitarian crises in the affected states. In Nigeria increases in revenue has never approximated to improvement in the living standards of its people but creates new influx for privileged few, further widening the inequality between the rich and poor.

By 2015 it was realized that the Goal of eradicating poverty and hunger has not been achieved among other things and a successor blueprint was developed as the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) as a post-2015 development blueprint. The SDGs are 17 Goals and 169 targets set by the UN [15]. The SDGs unlike the MDGs do not distinguish between developed and developing countries built upon the principles agreed upon in Resolution A/RES/66/288, entitled ‘’the Future We Want’’ (a non-binding document released as a result of Rio+ Conference held in 2012). Ambitiously, the SDGs pledged to end poverty in its entire ramification a goal that is undermined by bad leadership, corruption and parasitic ruling class who predate their states and leave their people acutely impoverished. Recent indicators put Nigeria ahead of India with 87 million extremely poor populations over 40 per cent of its citizens while India has 71 million extremely poor citizens constituting about 6 percent of its citizens.

Africa suffers electricity crisis with electricity generating capacity of 0.14 MW per 1,000 populations, compared with the world total of 0.55MW per 1000 persons. Electricity output per capita is 503 Kwh in Africa compared with 2,692 kWh in the world. Only 20 percent of African roads were paved in 1990, only 19 telephones existed per 1,000 populations, compared with 130 per 1,000 for the world [2].

In 1990-1992, Africa receives one-thirtieth of the net inflows of FDI to developing economies and 0.6 of portfolio equity inflows. Malaysia alone receives three times as much FDI and five times as much portfolio capital [16]. Sub-Saharan Africa has been witnessing a constant decline in its share of world trade. A turn around in economic decline in Africa’s economic decline in the post Uruguay era will require some appreciation of the causes of the decline. An important starting point is to understand that the decline was neither predictable nor inevitable, but rather contingent.

Ndlovu notes that at independence in the 1960s, Africa was in better economic shape than the less developed Asian economies [17]. It was added that weak policies for infrastructural development and education had contributed to Africa’s malaise. As the regions preference margin was skewed in the World Trade Organization, coupled with undiversified economies, Africa lost competitiveness in the world markets in respect of her share in world exports dropping by 50 percent between 1985 and 1995 in spite of preferential treatment. From a share of 4.2 per cent in 1985, Africa’s share of total world exports was only 2.1 percent in 1995.

To add to the under-development crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa is the debt trajectory for which leadership capacity in debt management is critical. Inability to repay these debts have bred indebtedness and compounded the economic woes of Sub-Saharan African states. This has been at the core of socio-economic crisis in the region. Capps, Gav notes that Africa’s debts appears to be a tiny drop in the ocean of global finance, however, a distinctive feature which makes Africa’s case worse among the Third World countries is its massiveness compared to the size and the repayment capacity of the African economies. This trend came to the fore in the 1980s following the inability to redeem debt obligations to global creditors by these African states [18]. Onimode notes that the collapse of commodity trade and shrinking of external aid had monumental impact on Africa and other Third world countries, and resulted in acute balance of payment crisis, thus forcing them to borrow from the developed countries inorder to pay for essential imports and indeed survive as nations [19]. This trend not only constitutes a burden to the African people but also poses a key impediment to the development of the region.

UNCTAD in its 2004 report on Africa submitted that the continent received about 540 billion USD in loans and paid back 550 billion USD in principal and interests between 1970 and 2002 and a debt burden stock of 295 billion USD was outstanding within this time frame.

According to World Bank, Africa’s total debt stock as at the end of 2002 was USD 295 billion, representing only a small part about 13 percent of global developing countries debt of about USD 339 billion. Capps noted that by 1987 only 12 of the 44 African states had the ability to regularly service their external debt without debt relief, while the rest were locked into an internal cycle of further borrowing, thereby compounding interest and accumulating debt stock and arrears [18].

African debt trajectories can be partly attributed to slow economic base, slow growth and harsh conditionality tied to these loans of these loans. Moss attributed the debt crisis to the failure of these investments to attract expected profits [20].

Capps notes that mechanisms by which the national resources of Africa states are channeled abroad as capital flight include large-scale competition through the embezzlement of borrowed funds, kickbacks on government contracts, misappropriation of natural resources and trade mal-invoicing [18].

Consequentially, Africa had repaid more than what they had borrowed. Africa Action reported that Africa received between 1970 and 2003 about USD 540 billion in loans and paid back USD 580 billion in debt services, yet left with an external debt obligation of USD 330 billion. At the background of this debt trajectory is the adoption of a developmental strategy by sub-Saharan economies built along heavy external financing. However one of the biggest challenges to foreign borrowing in Sub-Saharan Africa is the high level corruption in public life. African leaders borrowed to consume and re-borrow to repay, thereby creating a debt-cycle and severing their debt trajectory. These factors had also contributed to the under-development of the region.

Acheoah AO notes that though Africa entered the 21 century with a home-grown blueprint New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD) and the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) as a score card assessment platform to ensure good governance performance, however, the lack of ethics and accountability in public sector coupled with failure of the political leadership to get their governance priorities right undermined this effort [1].

What indices of underdevelopment manifestly describe the crisis of underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa?

Kuznets identified six characteristics of structural changes in economic development, among are:

• High rate of per capita output growth and population;

• High rate of increase in total factor productivity;

• High rate of structural transformation of the economy in the form of changing sectorial share of the economy;

• High rate of social and ideological transformation in the form of change in attitude, evolution from superstitious beliefs to rational and scientific explanations of events, greater social justice and equalization of economic opportunities, growing education, literacy and skills acquisition etc.; and

• Strong international economic outreach in the form of rising exports and growing participation in international markets.

From the standpoint of political economy, development is the sustained increase in economic, social and political spheres of a nation. Developmental objectives are targeted towards increased availability and widened distribution of life sustaining goods such as shelter, health protection, improve the living standards of people and the expansion of the range of economic and social choices available to the individuals by freeing them from the forces of servitude, ignorance and human misery [21].

The core values of development is woven around the sustenance of the ability to meet the basic needs of life food, shelter, health and security; self-esteem (a sense of self-worth or dignity of human person), and freedom from servitude.

The indices of underdevelopment as manifestly evident in sub- Saharan Africa are:

• Low Per Capita Income/GDP and capital equipment as well as capital formation;

• The predominance of inferior technology;

• Entrepreneurship and enterprise are nascent;

• Accessible natural resources are badly exploited;

• There is a demographic preponderance of rural agricultural and dependent population;

• The predominance of communal ownership of land;

• Literacy level is low;

• Huge line of economic activities are either un-monetized or outside the regulatory influence of the market;

• The absence or disappearance of the middle class by the machination of the political elites with the state as instrument;

• The values stressed by the political leadership and the priorities they rationalize by the ruling class may not be compatible with sustainable development (this has been one of the fetters to developmental efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa);

• High rate of urbanization;

• The social and legal systems impede enterprise;

• An underdeveloped political culture;

• The existence of social economic dualism with rural versus urban, formal versus informal side by side;

• The absence or little existence of the needed incentives to drive private sector;

• A political and economic landscape dominated by an unproductive ruling class to whom wealth creation via economic productivity is an anathema and primitive accumulation is the norm; and

• Worst is the dearth of administrative personnel with technical and administrative competences.

The criminalization of the state by the political leadership in Africa could be understood in the light of the exploitation of the state by the political class in the furtherance of their elitist privileges and interest, without any anarchist intent, majority of states in Africa have offered the political class a platform and a cloak to oppress and repress its people from Mobutu’s Zaire to Idi Amin’s Uganda, African states have not delivered the historic benefits that gave rise to modern state system, rather, African states have proved to be a compensation to the privileged political class, a vindication of the Marxian paradigm. In Nigeria, it is politics of the belly, compounded by a patronage system by which government offices have become private estates where clientivist-relation determines the recruitment process, Loyalty becomes synonymous to dishonesty.

Acheoah AO notes that African states have largely vindicated the Marxian argument and dismay for the state, as well, rationalizes anarchist disdain for the state as they have at best served not only as arenas for looting and primitive accumulation but a source of violent repression against the people whom the state historically emerged from the pre-political societies to protect through a social contract [1]. The atrocities committed by some figures only became possible under the state cloak. Hitlerism would never have been possible outside the sphere of the state. The German Reich was exploited by Kaiser Wilhelm II and the Nazi Germany by Adolf Hitler to perpetrate one of the worst horrors in modern history plunging the world into two World Wars in the 20th Century. This story is not the same in Western Europe where the states have met their historical essence to their people and societies.

What endogenous factors to have contributed to the underdevelopment of Sub-Saharan Africa?

Responding to the question above demands that the perspectives of two honest minds be referenced.

Claude Ake (1996) lamenting the drift in ethics and accountability in public life in Nigeria, remarked that the line demarcating politics and economics has been blurred because state powers equals wealth and wealth becomes the pathway to political power in Nigeria [22].

Ake contends that post-colonial African states have failed to advance genuine developmental programs because the states are ruled by self-centered political class …he adds that that post-colonial African states adopted statism system as their economic development, thus the state appears in all facets of the society thereby making the states the center of attraction to all classes of people attracting charlatans to plunder the society via the state [23].

For Professor Patrick Lorch Otieno Lumumba (a Kenyan Professor of Law) who unequivocally lamented in his speech, his submission was candid [24]. He puts it thus:‘’ When I look at Africa, many questions comes to mind, if Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Emilie Lumumba were to rise up and see what is happening they will be confronted with an Africa where the Democratic Republic of Congo is unsettled, they will be confronted with an Africa that is at war with themselves, an Africa which statisticians and Romantic economist says it is growing while it is indeed stagnating, an Africa which does not know herself, an Africa whose young men and women are constantly humiliated at the embassies of European countries and the United States as they seek the almighty green card, an Africa whose young men and women from Niger, Nigeria, Mauritania, Guinea drawn in the Mediterranean as they seek to be enslaved in Europe, an Africa which does not tell her story whose story is told by Europe and America the CNN, Radio France.

According to this frank mind, if Africa is to begin to make a contribution in their affaires positively, Africa must begin to think [25]. Africa trained medical doctors but when their political classes are sick, they seek medical help offshore depending on who colonized the state in question. The African political class introduced free education that is indeed free of knowledge and because they are suspicious of the system, they don’t enroll their children in Africa but send them overseas to be educated in the British system, the American system not because anything is wrong with Africa school institutions but because the agenda is wrong.

Lumumba summed up his speech by nothing that African leaders have long lost the script and ought to be described for who they are ‘Our Misleaders’, referring to African democracy, Lumumba remarked that Africa elect thieves to take care of goats and when the goats are consumed they wonder why [26]. ‘’Politicians in Africa are horrible not honorable ‘’-P.L.O Lumumba [24].

Akeand Lumumba’s submissions are instructive to appreciating how Africans have contributed to the underdevelopment of the region. This paper unearths the corollaries between the extraneous account of Walter Rodney’s ‘’How Europe Underdeveloped Africa’’ and the Postcolonial complicities of the African elites in impoverishing their region. Contemporary realities indicate that Africa has not shown sincere commitment towards regional transformation beyond mere policy statements [27,28]. In Nigeria for example, powerful cabals with strong presence in government circle influences contract with huge cut backs, a practice which has spiraled the costs of public contracts and encouraged fiscal indiscipline.

While post-colonial states in Latin American and Asia have broken the mold of underdevelopment with Brazil, the Asian Tigers, and the Tiger Club Economies: Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Thailand, have all chart their path to development in spite of their colonial past, African leaders still excusably blame the failure of the region on its colonial past. Such narrative is no longer tenable as there are indigenous culprits in the underdevelopment crises the region faces.

Summary

The crisis of underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan Africa has been a fundamental one, it has taken toll on the people in different dimensions: from sit tithe leadership to authoritarian rule, civil wars, refugees, IDPs, disease as well as failing states that have not met their traditional goal. It is a truism that the integration of African economies into western capitalism on a weak background was at the historical root of African underdevelopment crisis, however, bad leadership and mal-administration by indigenous political elites remains one of the stumbling blocks to sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa. There is no esoteric challenge in Sub-Saharan Africa but lack of good leadership [1].

The position of this paper is that a solution to developmental crisis in Africa must be addressed holistically. While tackling the external forces the domestic impediments must be addressed. African leaders and political class who make authoritative decisions must change their attitude; enthrone accountability and transparency in the conduct of public affairs. If the right attitudes are not in place when it comes to leadership in Africa, no assistance can salvage region. Even if the entire vaults of World Bank and IMF are exhausted in African Coffers without the right attitudes in public conducts, ethics and accountability and altruistically, the interest of the people at the front burner, the story will not change as the funds will be drained surreptitiously.

Conclusion

Social-economic and political developments of a nation are hallmarks of good leadership. That Africa needs an inclusive and equitable growth and development cannot be dismissed. The historical antecedents of African region are indisputably a factor of the region’s crisis of under-development in post-colonial Africa. However, contemporary realities indicate that there are deeply indigenous dimensions to the causatives of underdevelopment in the region. In this light, the one-dimensional narratives that point at Western imperial forces as solely responsible for the under-development of post-colonial Africa is reductionist and inadequate. Yes! Africa needs support from the development from western developed nations, from international economic institutions such as World Bank, IMF and the United Nations as well as the World Trade Organization but as complimentary efforts towards meeting local inadequacies on the development fronts.

As demonstrated under the unified policy effort within the UN system through MDGs and the successor blueprint the Sustainable Development Goals which had the Africa’s major challenges in its agenda (poverty) are vital aspects as part of the effort at ensuring the development of the region. However, African leadership has the biggest role to ensure that this effort materializes. It must show sincere commitments towards alleviating the plights of their people and transform the region.

Charity begins at home they say and as such how African political leadership has contributed to the development or ruin of the region need to be re-examined while analyzing the extrinsic motivators. The development of the developed regions were coordinated and driven by their statesmen and patriots from Western Europe to North America and from Latin America to East Asia. Success stories on developmental fronts cannot be completed without the mentioning of some actors with strategic vision who gave their society the clean break from the mold from Lincoln United States to Lee Kwan Yew’s Singapore and particularly Mandela’s post-Apartheid South Africa. Uniquely, Nelson Mandela a distinguished pan-Africanist of unparalleled principles. Mandela had shown that one can be a successful leader by blurring the line between politics and morality as opposed to the postulation of the Realist School of Thought. He said: ‘’a man who changes his principles depending on whom he is dealing with is unworthy to govern a people’’.

If African political leaders who make authoritative decisions and allocate the resources of the states in the region fail to ensure good governance by getting their acts together, their aspiration to stamp their foots in the international plain on an equal footing will remain a diplomatic illusion [1].

In this light, this paper concludes that the exogenous narratives of African underdevelopment linking slavery and colonialism to underdevelopment crisis in post-colonial Africa are plausible and contributory. However, contemporary realities indicate that there are indigenous factors that have also impeded development in the region: an indigenous ruling class to whom wealth creation is an anathema while rent-seeking and primitive accumulation is the norm; the endemic, systemic and episodic character of corruption in public life across the regions and the implication of the phenomenon to development of the region cannot be discountenanced; this study refers to this as ‘’the dearth of developmental regimes in post-colonial Africa’’. A regime that would in incorporated, steer the region aright towards sustainable development and bring about visionary leadership and a cohesive political class capable of providing transformational leadership.

As an appeal to the developed nations of the world, the international governmental organizations (IGOs) such as: the United Nations, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund as well as the World Trade Organization should re-appraise, redefine and sustain their developmental partnership with Sub-Saharan Africa so as to take cognizance of the social, historical, cultural and political ecology of the region which are fundamental to any effort towards reforms. Developmental assistance to Africa should be anthropocentric and inclusive, they should help in strengthening accountability and transparency in Africa, democracy dividends ideologically intended is been undermined by bad leadership and miss-governance, these organizations should state their stance against miss-governance in the region to its leaders in world’s intergovernmental platforms in unmistakable terms. African leaders should be told bluntly how they have contributed to the development of their region. African leaders must be made known in international bodies of the fact that they have the biggest stake in the development of their states, societies and people, that they should re-conceptualized their misconceptions about leadership.

A poverty stricken Africa is a threat to the international community as it will breed insecurity trans-territorially across Europe and America. A developed and prosperous Africa is fundamental to global peace and security. There is no by-passing, the world must come to her aid and save over a billion people from the scourge of poverty, diseases, human trafficking and conflicts.

Recommendations

Meaningful efforts at surmounting the challenges impeding development in Sub-Saharan Africa requires critical measures be taken in the following areas:

• The political leaders of the region must change their perception about leadership. They must re-contextualize their notions of leadership so as to see themselves as servants to their people, societies and states. This will restore altruism in the service to fatherland and make representative democracy an effective model of governance in Sub-Saharan Africa;

• Post-colonial African must begin to build strong, viable and enduring institutions that will reflect and serve their societies. Strong man syndrome has held the region backward for over half a century. This trend must change, African political elites must realize that they have the biggest stake in the development of their region;

• Home-grown impediments that have also contributed to the backwardness of the region should be legislated against. This will deter the culprits within the region whose activities are not compatible with peace and development;

• In the programs and policy menu, special attention should be paid to sectors that are catalysts to development: agriculture, science and technology, research and development, building and provision of social overheads;

• As a policy target, Sub-Saharan Africa economies should encourage foreign direct investments while strengthening trading among themselves. This will attract investments to the region and also stabilize their currencies and further protect their economies from adverse balance of payment;

• African countries rather than de-linking should renegotiate their trade relations in international governmental organizations (IGOs) such as: the United Nations, World Trade Organization, International Monetary Fund, and World Bank so as to redress the skewed international trading arrangements which had shortchanged the developing nations including Sub-Saharan Africa;

• Africa political leadership should strive to incorporate what this paper described as ‘’Developmental Regimes’’, regimes that are preoccupied with transformative policies and programs that measurably take their societies, states and people out of their hitherto sorry state of affair., such regimes are spare headed by committed statesmen, altruistic and forthright, not the current generation of leaders who play politics with the future of their people, rhetorical and sloganeering politics but politics of ideas, issues and development;

• No nation has developed with progress in science and technology, England, the birthplace of industrial revolution achieved that feat via progress in technical know-how. Adequate funding must be provided for Research and Development (R and D) if Sub-Saharan Africa must move from primary production to industrial/ secondary production;

• Finally, Sub-Saharan African states must embrace the idea of ‘’developmental state’’ and incorporate it properly into their statecrafts. The market has to be there while the state compliments the market. This is will take the form of interventionism but not state domination in the economies of Sub-Saharan Africa. This model will ensure the right mix between the state and the market forces (complementarity). It is to cushion against market imperfection and not a return to state dominated economic model in the mold of the defunct socialist world. Sub-Saharan Africa must turn a new leaf and rise up from a relegated appendix in the global plain remembered only for refugees, IDPs, famine, drought and diseases. The challenges are daunting but surmountable.