HomeDevelopment Seen from Africa: Perceptions, Management, and the Challenge of “Better Living”

Development Seen from Africa: Perceptions, Management, and the Challenge of “Better Living”

Le développement vu d’Afrique : Perceptions, gestion et défi du « vivre-mieux »

O desenvolvimento visto de África: perceções, gestão e o desafio do «viver melhor»

El desarrollo visto desde África: Percepciones, gestión y el desafío del «Vivir Mejor»

التنمية من منظور أفريقي: التصورات، الإدارة وتحدي "العيش الأفضل"

Mada: Maendeleo kwa Jicho la Kiafrika: Mtazamo, Usimamizi na Changamoto ya "Maisha Bora"

Revue « Daftari za Ngūgī », Vol. 6, 1er semestre 2027

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Published on Friday, January 16, 2026

Abstract

Ce numéro de la revue Daftari za Ngūgī (ex-Nouvelles Dynamiques Africaines) invite à une rupture épistémique avec les mesures occidentales du développement (IDH). Contre la vision d’une Afrique pathologisée par les classements internationaux, cet appel sollicite des enquêtes empiriques rigoureuses explorant le « développement par le bas » : économie informelle, solidarités villageoises et définitions endogènes du « vivre-mieux ».

Announcement

Daftari za Ngūgī (Formerly Nouvelles Dynamiques Africaines) Vol. 6, 1st Semester 2027

Daftari za Ngūgī is the heir to the journal Nouvelles Dynamiques Africaines (NDA), founded in Comoros in 2017 (Racaud, 2022).

Argument

Sixty years after independence, and despite billions of dollars injected into development aid, the majority of African countries remain stagnant at the bottom of international rankings. The UNDP’s Human Development Index (HDI), a globalized thermometer measuring GDP per capita, life expectancy, and formal schooling, continues to project an image of a pathologized Africa: destitute, uneducated, and sick. Yet, this alarmist vision conceals a systemic invisibilization of social wealth. These indicators, blind by design, fail to measure community solidarity, the resilience of the informal sector, or the density of cultural capital. Thus, territories qualified as "poor" by UN metrics often prove rich in a social bond that Western modernity has eroded elsewhere.

It is urgent to cease conceiving development as the unilateral transfer of exogenous models. From theory to practice, this concept of "development" has revealed itself to be the semantic successor of European "progress"—that "great transformation" described by Polanyi (1983) which standardized the West at the cost of destroying village solidarities through the advent of the selfregulating market. In the aftermath of World War II, President Truman globalized this specific historical trajectory. Popularized by Walt W. Rostow, this teleology places Western modernity as the ultimate stage of a linear evolution that so-called traditional societies—meaning: poor—are summoned to achieve.

This Rostowian vision, institutionalized by the World Bank (1993, 1994), defines development as a marked path, an orthodoxy that States must follow under penalty of marginalization. However, decades of practice have demonstrated that this road is a dead end in Africa. Beyond the radical inadequacy between these Eurocentric models and local sociologies (Badie, 1992), rendering development "unfindable" (Ela, 1998), one must recall the violent genealogy of this model. Western progress was built on feudalism, enclosures, worker exploitation, and, above all, the slave trade and colonial predation. To grasp the continent's "underdevelopment," one must therefore cross the "abyssal line" (De Sousa Santos, 2016) that separates the epistemological realities of the Global North from those of the South. The developmentalist model, far from bringing "Better Living," perpetuates structural dependency (Cardoso, 1971) and maintains unequal exchange (Amin, 1973).

If development is an "Afrodystopia," a mirage, or a colonizing discourse that forces Africans to perceive themselves as "backward" (Escobar, 1992), how can it be rethought? Paulin Hountondji (1994) invites us to seek endogeneity, while Joseph Ki-Zerbo (1992) warns against sleeping on "someone else's mat." AbdoulMaliq Simone (2004), meanwhile, shifts the gaze from physical infrastructures to "people as infrastructure": where Western development fails, fluid, informal, and ingenious forms of social collaboration take over. Development must be reclaimed from the bottom up. It must cease to be a "somatic response" to the traumatic graft of modernity to become the expression of "Better Living" anchored in African togetherness (vivre-ensemble). It no longer relies on the State (Ikonicoff, 1983), but on the "capabilities" (Sen, 2003) of communities.

In a context of the Africanization of humanitarian aid, Walter Rodney’s (1986) observation becomes more complex: it is no longer just Europe that underdevelops Africa, but also a local "cannibal elite" (Táíwò, 2023). These development officials, urban and disconnected, produce knowledge oriented towards donors, ignoring village realities (Connell, 2024).

For this sixth issue of Daftari za Ngūgī, we exhort researchers to an epistemic rupture. We refuse theoretical generalities and demand a science of detail. We await contributions that explore bottomup development: agrarian practices, artisanal fishing, the informal economy as sociability, or the frictions between the development industry and local populations. How do "traveling theories" (Said, 2000) acclimatize? How does the South respond to epistemic injustice?

Submission Guidelines

Daftari za Ngūgī prioritizes demonstrations based on rigorous empirical surveys circumscribed to fine scales (the market, the neighborhood, the village). Every submitted article must imperatively respect the following structure:

  1. Introduction: Clear statement of the problem and research question.
  2. Conceptual Framework: Dense theorization inscribed in "epistemic disobedience." The author must justify the use of exogenous concepts or their local reappropriation, making this debate accessible to non-specialists.
  3. Methodology: Transparent presentation of the field. The author must specify their position (insider or outsider) and detail data production conditions.
  4. Results and Discussion: Analysis of empirical data.
  5. Conclusion: Return to initial objectives and answer to the problem.

Daftari za Ngūgī is an accessible Pan-African scholarly journal.

Articles are primarily in French. Each issue includes two articles in English and one to two articles in African languages. For the latter, authors are invited to suggest a competent reviewer.

  • Iconography: The presence of maps, sketches, charts, or photographs is strongly encouraged.
  • Length: Between 39,000 and 45,000 characters (spaces, notes, and bibliography included).
  • Submission: Manuscripts (Word format only, anonymized) must be sent to: daftari.journal@gmail.com
  • Deadline for article submission: July 15, 2026.

Guest editor

  • Adjimaël HALIDI, PhD, Sociologue et Expert en analyse et évaluation des politiques publiques, Chercheur associé à la Chaire sur la protection des personnes migrantes et le droit international (Université d’Ottawa) et Directeur de la revue Daftari za Ngūgī.

Evaluation

Double-blind peer review

Bibliography

AMIN, Samir : 1973. Le développement inégal. Essai sur les formations sociales du capitalisme périphérique. Paris : Minuit.

BADIE, Bertrand : 1992. L’État importé. Essai sur l’occidentalisation de l’ordre politique. Paris : Fayard.

BANQUE MONDIALE : 1993. Obtenir des résultats. Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group.

BANQUE MONDIALE : 1994. L’ajustement en Afrique. Washington, D.C. : World Bank Group.

CARDOSO, Fernando Henrique : 1971. Politique et développement dans les sociétés dépendantes. Paris : Anthropos.

CHATTERJEE, Partha : 1999. « Le commerce de l’État et de la communauté en “Orient” », Critique internationale, Vol. 2, pp. 75-90.

CONNELL, Raewyn : 2024. Décoloniser le savoir. Sciences sociales et théorie du sud. Paris : Payot.

DE SOUSA SANTOS, Boaventura : 2016. Épistémologie du sud. Paris : Desclée de Brouwer.

ELA, Jean-Marc : 1998. Innovations sociales et renaissance de l’Afrique noire. Paris : L’Harmattan.

ESCOBAR, Arturo : 1992. “Imagining a post-development era? Critical thought, development and social movements”, Social Text, no 31/32, p. 20-56.

HALIDI, Adjimaël : 2020. « Situation de crise et résilience sociale aux Comores », Les Cahiers d’Outre-Mer, n°282, pp. 437-464.

HOUNTONDJI, Paulin J. : 1994. Les savoirs endogènes. Dakar : CODESRIA.

IKONICOFF, Moïses : 1983. « Théorie et stratégie du développement : le rôle de l’État », TiersMonde, t. 24, n°93, pp. 9-33.

KI-ZERBO, Joseph : 1992. La natte des autres. Dakar : CODESRIA.

POLANYI, Karl : 1983. La grande transformation. Paris : Gallimard.

RACAUD, Sylvain : 2022. « Nouvelles Dynamiques Africaines. Éditions du Palétuvier, Québec», Les Cahiers d’Outre-Mer. Revue de géographie de Bordeaux, vol. 75, no 285, p. 309-312.

RODNEY, Walter : 1986. Et l’Europe sous-développa l’Afrique. Paris : Éditions Caribéennes.

SAID, Edward W. : 2000. Culture et impérialisme. Paris : Fayard/Le Monde diplomatique.

SEN, Amartya : 2003. Un nouveau modèle économique. Paris : Odile Jacob.

SIMONE, AbdoulMaliq : 2004. For the city yet to come. Changing African Life in Four Cities. Durham/London : Duke University Press.

TÁÍWÒ, Olúfémi O. : 2023. L’élite cannibale. Montréal : Lux.

UNDP: 2025. Human development insights. [En ligne]


Date(s)

  • Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Attached files

Keywords

  • développement endogène, post-développement, vivre-mieux, désobéissance épistémique, Afrique, économie informelle, résilience sociale, savoir situé, développement par le bas, justice cognitive

Information source

  • Adjimaël Halidi
    courriel : ahalidi [at] uottawa [dot] ca

License

CC0-1.0 This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.

To cite this announcement

« Development Seen from Africa: Perceptions, Management, and the Challenge of “Better Living” », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Friday, January 16, 2026, https://doi.org/10.58079/15ilr

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