ABSTRACT
The chapter on dualism theory revisited turns to the development of the institutions and classes that have made the post-colonial regimes fail to shift their countries’ focal point of progress from the rural agriculture to industrial transformation. Most Sub-Saharan African countries have failed to provide conditions for the majority of their citizens to engage in formal productive sector activities, hence the continuation of a narrow enclave modern economy, which is at the heart of economic dualism. This point is emphasised in Fernando De Soto’s ‘capitalist apartheid which will inevitably continue until we all come to terms with the critical flaw in many countries’ legal and political systems that prevent the majority from entering the formal property system’. The majority of the population involved in these informal, communal/subsistence sector activities, operate outside these countries’ legal property laws. The chapter focuses on the key missing links in the development puzzle, viewed as the lack of institutional and legal property mechanisms that stand in the way of the poor people’s assets to move fluidly in the market, as was the earlier experience in countries like Italy and Germany and more recently from some Asian countries.
