ABSTRACT
Modernization has played a dominant role in Africa's development trajectory from the 1950s. From the 1950s to the 1970s, neo-Keynesianism, which occupied an ascendant position in the modernization paradigm, advocated state intervention in the economies of African countries. It is important to point out that contrary to the claim of modernization proponents, the European modernization experience is a specific cultural phenomenon that cannot be universalized; it is therefore Eurocentric and intimately bound to the social and historical realities of European societies. The contradictory relationship between the transplanted institutions and technologies and the African social, economic and cultural realities, turned out to be counterproductive. The modernist discourse has placed great emphasis on the failure of liberal democracy, as one of the greatest manifestations of the crisis of development in Africa - a discourse that assumed more prominence with the neoliberal political economy from the 1980s.
