ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines an intellectual and historical background to the representation of Africa and its inhabitants as underdeveloped. Development assistance is intuitively coupled with idealism moulded into plans and actions to help deprived or poor people to access basic needs and other goods and services in a multitude of contextual circumstances. The modern American enterprise of development assistance is often attributed to President Truman and the ideas he outlined in the fourth point of his inaugural address. The classification of humans according to racial hierarchies is as old as historiography. Race relations and slavery in the US have been an important subject of study and an integral part of the American identity since 1619 when the first African slaves were brought to Virginia. Early studies of political systems in anthropological contexts derived from the same theoretical perspectives that structured hierarchy between cultures.
