The Idea of Development in Africa

The Idea of Development in Africa by Corrie Decker ’98 and Elisabeth McMahon challenges prevailing international development discourses about the continent, by tracing the history of ideas, practices, and “problems” of development used in Africa. Offering a balance between historical overview and analysis of past and present case studies, the authors demonstrate that Africans have always co-opted, challenged, and reformed the idea of development, even as the Western-centric development episteme presumes a one-way flow of ideas and funding from the West to Africa. (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

Corrie Decker is an associate professor of history at the University of California-Davis. She is the author of Mobilizing Zanzibari Women: The Struggle for Respectability and Self-Reliance (2014) and numerous articles in the Journal of Women's History, the International Journal of African Historical Studies, Past and Present, Africa Today, and the American Historical Review. She is currently writing a book on the history of puberty in 20th-century East Africa.