Keywords

Economic development, Social development, Sub saharan africa

Abstract

For the past thirty years Africa has produced a more noticeably inferior reserve of human capital than other developing regions. This is puzzling because at the inception of independence, the future of Africa looked promising. However, during the 1970s both the political and economic situation in Africa began to deteriorate, and since 1980, the aggregate per capita GDP in sub-Saharan Africa has declined at almost one percent per fiscal year. Thirty-two countries are poorer now than they were twenty years ago, and sub-Saharan Africa is now the lowest-income region in the world despite the fact that during the last two decades Africa has attracted more aid per capita than other developing regions. I hypothesize that focusing primarily on economic growth as the primary means of development has undermined and deterred social development in sub-Saharan Africa. I believe that as foreign investment and debt increase, social development stagnates and even declines. I argue that because of the focus on economics and lack of focus on social and cultural considerations sustained economic growth has been devitalized in sub-Saharan Africa. For this research I employed time-series, cross-sectional regression analysis to test the relative importance of the economic development model on social development in sub-Saharan Africa. My analysis of the forty-eight countries over thirty years gives leverage to the critique of economic growth centered development policies.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2004

Semester

Summer

Advisor

Kinsey, Barbara

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Political Science

Degree Program

Political Science

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0000088

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0000088

Language

English

Release Date

January 2014

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Arts and Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic; Development; Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Sciences

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