Abstract

Edwin Babeiya

Life during pre-colonial Africa was determined by nature, during the colonial times it was miserable and in postcolonial Africa it has remained horrible in many African countries. The source of this state of the art remains controversial thus leaving contending views such as civilization, exploitation and absence of democracy to dominate the center stage of the development discourse. The same ambivalence is commonplace in cogitating about the ways through which the continent can make development progress. While international financial institutions such as the World Bank and IMF embrace foreign aid as the panacea to this problem, a different school of thought led by scholars such as Dambisa (2009) and Tandon (2008) regards foreign aid as the main source of the continent’s development crisis. It is on this basis that Yash Tandon proposes a seven-step strategy through which the continent can end aid dependency. A critical look at this strategy, with a support from documentary review, shows that it is not a sufficient means through which this anticipation can be realized. The paper concludes that Tandon’s exit model is a useful tool that can guide African countries in making development progress but not a means towards ending aid dependence.