ABSTRACT
The chapter provides a general overview of how 'development' became the rallying point for both the first generation of African leaders in the postcolonial era as well as external bodies that also invoked development as a strategy to maintain their influence in the post-colonies. It offers a genealogy of the neoliberal agenda in African to the publication of the Berg Report in 1981 and explores how this coincided with key developments within the global economy. The chapter explores the emergence of the new aid and development architecture in the form of a global consensus towards poverty reduction. The linkage of security with development or what Mark Duffield calls, 'securitization of aid' has become the central component of development policy and aid cooperation between rich and poor countries. There are striking parallels between the post Second World War modernization/development approach towards the global South and the Cold War aid politics and the 'war on terror'.
