ABSTRACT
The bi-polar or multi-polar world order that preceded the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war was, in more ways than one, a world of relative political, economic, cultural and even ideological diversity. African countries have undoubtedly undertaken and witnessed many movements and changes in the half a century or so of the accession of the former colonies among them to independence. The African and non-African proponents of vassalage-driven development have touted that model since colonial times as the continent's only possible hope of salvation from underdevelopment, backwardness and poverty. The political, economic, cultural, intellectual, philosophical, psychological and other bonds with which the colonial masters tied their subjects would ordinarily have sufficed to guarantee their spiritual enslavement as well. The colonial project for the transformation of African societies, which has demonstrably and often blatantly continued into the neo-colonial and globalisation eras, has been traditionally described as "westernisation".
