Taking its cue from another book, The Idea of Africa, this book presents the idea of the idea of development with a focus on Africa – its emergence, meanings, and connotations – and how its conceptualization is deeply rooted in colonialism. "The Idea of Development: A History" (2021) is written by Corrie Decker and Elisabeth McMahon, both historians, and is published by Cambridge University Press. This is a great introductory book, particularly for an undergraduate course on critical development studies or historical courses related to colonialism. Each chapter concludes with additional reading lists and each chapter is evenly suited to a weekly reading (with 12 chapters, the book might have been designed to align more-or-less with a semester length). Lots of notes:

"Rennel extrapolated from Mungo Park's declaration that the Niger River follow flowed from west to east. According to nineteenth-century European understanding of geography, a river the size of the Niger needed to have a significantly large geographic source such as a lake or a mountain range. James Rennel literally drew Park's speculation about the mountain and assertion about the directional flow of the river onto the map of West Africa. This was how the European "scientific" imagination gave birth to the nonexistent Kong Mountains in western Africa. Although Rennel had no firsthand knowledge of the mountains and no evidence they existed, his position as a leading cartographer, combined with Park's apparent expertise in geography, lent scientific legitimacy to the Kong Mountains, which the Europeans believed were real for almost 100 years." (p. 39-41)

"Linnaeus eventually refined his system of classification and organized humans into four "races" based on their skin tone and continental origins. These four "races" were European, American, Asian, and African. Linnaeus's secularization of knowledge classification built the foundation for scientific constructs of race." (p. 60)

"Most of Broca's peers in the scientific community, predominantly white men themselves, were easily convinced that women, people of colour, the elderly, and the poor were "naturally" less intelligent than wealthy and healthy white men. As long as he provided "scientific" arguments about racial and gender differences, Broca and his colleagues believed their work was without bias and based in sound evidence, they were convinced their work was "objective"." (p. 67-68)

"The underlying arguments of eugenics, that elite Europeans were racially superior to the rest of humanity, was used to justify settlers' claims over land and right to rule. Campbell explained, "as well as expressing the cultural fears of colonialism, eugenics also expressed the modernity of the colonial project in Africa, the newness of settler society and the perceived wrongness of African development presented an ideal opportunity to create a society modeled on eugenic insights." In colonial Africa eugenic development policies became cultural practices as much as scientific programs. As occurred with physical anthropological theories of race, eugenicists masked cultural assumptions as scientific evidence designed to make the case for European racial superiority." (p. 71-72)

"Julian Huxley, the first director general of UNESCO, took the reins in 1946 determined to bring his ideas of evolutionary humanism to this new international organization. Huxley had been a well-known eugenicist before the Second World War... Huxley gradually abandoned references to "race" and "tribe" in favor of "culture," but he maintained a strong belief in social evolutionary theory. Before World War II Huxley was both an avowed eugenicist and anti-Nazi. Huxley renounced the overtly racialist ideas of many eugenicists of his time and argued that the improvement of humanity was an issue of culture rather than skin tone Huxley promoted evolutionary humanism, which was the theory that "more evolved" societies in the West could and should facilitate the development of "less evolved" societies through a combination of cultural, economic, and social interventions." (p. 74)

"For far too long, forced and coercive sterilization has been used to control population growth among "undesirable" groups in Africa and elsewhere, most recently among HIV-positive women in South Africa during the height of the HIV crisis in the 1990s. Many women around the world find access to birth control liberating, but the "right" to birth control also includes the "right" to have children. Awareness of these rights and of reproductive justice debates generally is crucial for understanding the family planning policies that continue to be foundational in contemporary International Development discourses." (p. 77)

"The organization of Africans into "tribes" was also part of the divide-and-rule approach of indirect rule. Colonial officials often privileged some ethnic groups over others. In British colonial Kenya, educated Kikuyu men (and some women) had greater access to colonial education and thus occupied many of the intermediary positions, or government jobs, in greater proportion than other Kenyans, the effect of which is still perceptible in Kenya today. Similarly, Belgian colonial discourses about the distinction between Hutus and Tutsis helped to fuel the conflict that led to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The Belgians incorporated Tutsis into the colonial administration based on their claim that the racial stock of Tutsis was more evolved than that of neighboring Hutus." (p. 89)

"Many European and American women came to Africa in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s to work in anthropology, nutrition, hygiene, child and maternal health, and education. In the Belgian Congo, for example, this work began when the Ligue pour la Protection de l'Enfance Noire (League for the Protection of Black Children) took up the issues of breastfeeding and birth spacing. However, metropolitan development funding was only available for such endeavors when direct economic benefits were evident. Investment in the health of wives and mothers, for instance, flowed only after officials recognized that this would increase the productivity of laborers, generate wealth for colonial industries, and reinforce the racialized colonial economy. In one way or another, the science of development always served interests in profit." (p. 111-112) 

While a visiting scholar at Brookings, Claude Ake wrote "Democracy and Development in Africa" (1995), published by Brookings. As nearly three decades have passed, I focus less on the specifics (e.g., agricultural policy recommendations) and highlight the general arguments, a few notes:

"Many factors have been offered to explain the apparent failure of the development enterprise in Africa: the colonial legacy, social pluralism and centrifugal tendencies, the corruption of leaders, poor labour discipline, the lack of entrepreneurial skills, poor planning and incompetent management, inappropriate policies, the stifling of market mechanisms, low levels of technical assistance, the limited inflow of foreign capital, falling commodity prices and unfavourable terms of trade, and low levels of saving and investment. These factors are not irrelevant to the problem, Alone or in combination they could be serious impediments to development. However, the assumption so readily made that there has been failure of development is misleading. The problem is not so much that development has failed as that it was never really on the agenda in the first place. By all indications, political conditions in Africa are the greatest impediment to development." (p. 1)

"African leaders adopted the ideology of development to replace that of independence. But as it turned out, what was adopted was not so much an ideology of development as a strategy of power that merely capitalized on the objective need for development... The emphasis was shifted to a dedication to hard work; East African leaders changed the nationalist slogan from Uhuru (freedom) to Uhuru na Kaze (freedom means hard work). The hard work was to be done literally in silence; the overriding necessity of development was coupled with the overriding necessity for obedience and conformity. African leaders insisted that development needs unity of purpose and the utmost discipline, that the common interest is not served by oppositional attitudes. It was easy to move from there to the criminalization of political opposition and the establishment of single-party systems." (p. 8-9)

"African leaders and the international development community alike are now less interested in grand strategies of development. The emphasis has shifted to pragmatism, to such policy instruments and options as encouraging foreign investment, eliminating or reducing the debt burden, improving the terms of trade, and realizing greater production, export intensity, and better prices for commodities. Those options suggest that development can be achieved by relatively modest adjustments on the vertical relationship between Africa and the North. However, doing so is not an appropriate policy option." (p. 112)

"The African experience shows that exogencity defeats democracy, whatever the intentions of the developmental and economic policies associated with it. External development agents, who are presumably democrats, have felt constrained to give market reform priority over democracy. The most important issue of public policy, namely, structural adjustment programs (SAPs), is not subject to democratic choice, because the agents distrust the people's ability to choose correctly on an issue in which "the right choice" is absolutely clear. At the same time, SAPs are so draconian that they are assumed to require imposition." (p. 120) 

The Asian Aspiration: Why and How Africa Should Emulate Asia (2020), written by two Brenthurst Foundation employees (Greg Mills and Emily Van Der Merwe) and two former African leaders (Olusegun Obasanjo and Hailemariam Desalegn). The bulk of the book is 10 chapters presenting country case studies from Asia (including: Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, China, and Vietnam). The book then turns to the lessons these countries offer for Africa. The ideas are generic enough not to disagree with: create jobs, learn from others and innovate, critical role of leadership and administrative capacity, build human capital via education, improve agricultural productivity, provide basic infrastructure, enable FDI. It is somewhat unclear the target audience of this book, if it was African policy makers one would have thought that making this book Open Access would have been important. If it is to the development studies academic sphere (as other recent Hurst publications, the book is more of a survey and synthesis than a new contribution per se). It also seems that part of this book is previously published material. Some notes:

"Japan's historical example shows how a focus on education can carry a country through different stages of industrialisation and make it resilient." (p. 37)

"Throughout interviews with the politicians, planners and doers (an unusually inseparable bunch in Singapore's case) of the 1960s, a number of issues came up time and time again. These can be summarised as leadership, execution and compromise. Overall, Singapore's continuous transformation and development speak of the importance of matching deeds with words and of careful planning. Its success illustrates the necessity of rooting actions in the population's principal needs..." (p. 72-73)

12 Lessons from Singapore are summarized as: unity of purpose, make the difficult trade-offs, change the patter of the colonial economy, build institutions, integrate don't isolate, catalyse don't capture, manage labour relations, work with comparative advantages, don't be a cheap date (use aid well, but don't rely on it), do some things differently. (with details on pages 289-295) 

Lifelong development worker, K. Y. Amoako reflects on a career with the World Bank and United Nations in "Know the Beginning Well: An Inside Journey Through Five Decades of African Development" (2020). The book is interesting in that the author shares inside views, but lacks critical reflection and does not offer any bold or new calls on 'the development question'. A few notes:

"The issue of racism and discrimination in the World Bank predated my arrival and outlasted my departure. I've mentioned the difficult environment that Africans faced in the 1970s, but the truth is that people of color - whether born in Africa, America, or anywhere else - have always had a tough time reaching the Bank's highest levels. According to data compiled for an internal review in 2003 and reported by the Washington based government accountability project in 2009, Black Bank employees were 36 present less likely to hold a managerial grade relative to equally qualified, non-black employees. Numbers like these are indicative of a pervasive imbalance, which the Bank has taken increasing steps to address: a racial equality program in 1998, an office in diversity program in 2001, and a code of conduct in 2009 that addressed discrimination and diversity, still the issue persists." (p. 45)

"Kofi Annan turned toward Meles and spoke before anyone else could. "I'm sure some men in your cabinet turn out to be incompetent," he said. "Why not give women a chance? they have a right to be incompetent too." (p. 237)

"He looked back at the most powerful men at the IMF and World Bank and told them point-black that African countries disliked working with their institutions - but had no choice. "Gentleman," he added, "if we were not poor, we would not come to you for help." That acknowledgement, a surprisingly raw statement that no one saw coming, summed up years of frustration for policymakers in developing African countries: without external lending and aid, there can be no long term development-but at what point will lenders start treating borrowers as partners and not beggars?" (p. 381)

"I issued a special invitation to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, an exceptionally thoughtful and forthright leader. True to his reputation, Meles deconstructed a litany of problems with the onerous business of donor assistance: the bureaucratic requirements, the contradictory conditions, the lack of clear criteria for compliance, the process of trying aid to the purchase of goods and services from donor countries, and the practice of seeking political influence through assistance. All these issues and more imperilled the effective use of aid, Meles argued, and they needed to be addressed alongside any discussion of ODA flows. His ultimate point was that donor accountability for development financing meant so much more than big commitments." (p. 395-396)