Postmodernist Perspective of Development and its applications on Contemporary Trends of Development in Africa: a review of the conjectures

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the postmodernist perspective of development and its applications on the contemporary trends of development in Africa. The paper reveals that postmodernism is an aggressively expansive stage in global capitalism; the weakening of the centralized state power in developed and developing societies; the patterning of life by an increasingly powerful and penetrative technology that controls production and promotes consumerism and the development of liberationist social movement based not in class but in other forms of identity and nationalism such as race, gender, sexual orientation, the environment and the like. Secondary data was used for the paper. The paper contends that the postmodern society or late capitalism as it is also known has negatively affected the development of Africa as her cultural identity, attitude, behaviour and nationalism are gradually being replaced by a more dominant western culture as a result of globalization. The paper recommends among others that African leaders should endeavour to control the access and the use of the internet to protect the influence of western culture on the African continent.