ABSTRACT
Modernizing elites tend to perceive a socialist order with its promise of radical change, coordinated planning and élite leadership as offering a more realistic and short-cut strategy for their countries’ transformation. The aim of centralized national economic planning in each of Africa’s nation-states was to achieve a rapid rate of economic growth based upon increasing industrialization of what had been almost entirely agrarian economies. Corrupt centralized power harnessed the kinship relations of African society and drove underground into informal and illicit operations those – the vast majority – who were excluded from the groups surrounding the ruling elite. In W. W. Rostow’s catalogue of stages, take-off was to be followed by regular growth as increasing proportions of the national product were invested in new means of production. Growth of gross domestic product in the decade of the 1970s had fallen behind that in the 1960s everywhere, but particularly badly in Africa and worst of all in sub-Saharan Africa.
