ISLAMIC MOVEMENTS AND THE POLITICAL
ECONOMY IN AFRICA: AN OVERVIEW OF
SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA - 7

[The Concept ]    [The Context ]   [Contemporary Islamic Movement ]   [African Political Economy ]   [Further Evidence ]   [Description to Prescription ]   [The Human Factor ]          [Role of Movements ]   [Conclusion ]  The Human Factor Colonial education has not only stunted our initiatives and creativity but much worse it has distorted our vision, including our economic thinking. We have equated economic development with industrialization so that development has come to mean the development of the physical environment but not of man himself. Our love for, some would say obsession with, figures has meant that our idea of economic development has for a long time been centered on rate of growth to the detriment of human welfare itself. Capital centered, GNP growth rate oriented economics means that the human story is never told when we assess our economic progress. The misery of the urban poor and ghetto dwellers and the stressful and panicky life of the working middle class, who hardly get up to 5% of the wealth they help produce, is completely masked by the otherwise impressive figures and charts of the advanced economies. We have ignored man, the supposed beneficiary of the whole enterprise and ignored the real needs and priorities of our societies and become consumed by the craze to catch up with the West. This faulty perception has largely been the result of our educational system which, many decades after independence, has continued to teach a curriculum which is essentially western, using textbooks that are western, in a language which is western and, only natural enough, produce graduates who are essentially western in perspective, taste and style. As civil servants or as politicians, these graduates know no other way except the western way which they hold in high esteem and see as their primary duty to defend. Our military were similarly trained and as Okigbo observed, "they were original only in their intervention in civil politics which swept through Africa as a form of political measles".[31] These are the products that have occupied the corridors of power in Africa since independence. It is in these corridors that economic policies and decisions are drawn and executed. Is it surprising therefore that Africa is in such a mess?