ABSTRACT
Modernization has played a dominant role in Africa's development trajectory from the 1950s. From the 1950s to the 1970s, neo-Keynesianism, which occupied an ascendant position in the modernization paradigm, advocated state intervention in the economies of African countries. This gave rise to the developmental state philosophy during which state-centrist development policies were implemented in various African countries. Development economists who were the main apostles of the developmental state philosophy used the influential position they occupied in the IFIs, Western governments' development and aid agencies, and nongovernmental Western-based international aid agencies to ensure the implementation of state-centrist development programs. This was a period of great optimism and belief in the statist development model and therefore witnessed the granting of ascendancy to the state over the markets. The failure of this statist model to promote the desired level of development by the 1970s was generally blamed on the public sector, which was accused of poorly implementing government programs. Remarkably, the solutions usually proffered by both development economists and their neoliberal colleagues, and other modernist social scientists, on how to improve economic performance generally centered on reforming the state sector in order for it to more effectively play its developmental role. In all these cases there was continued faith in state-centrist development model albeit subject to some reforms of the state sector.
