Economists are the cause of Africa’s Poverty

A Development Planner, Nyaaba-Aweeba Azongo, has observed that the fundamental flaw of applied economics is the treatment of INDICATORS as GOALS, and consequent HASTY DEVELOPMENT CONCLUSIONS based on skeletal aggregate statistical indicators from national capitals.

He said this development has rendered the entire development purpose in Africa towards the pursuit of STATISTICAL TARGETS to satisfy the quest of External partners’ instead of broad-based inward oriented HUMAN DEVELOPMENT TARGETS.

According to him, this has misled and blindfolded African governments and the developing world in the unbridled pursuit of aggregate statistical Economic indicator targets such as middle income, GDP, interest rates, inflation etc, as development finalities predicated on the assumption of a ‘trickle-down’ of growth manners expertly engineered by ‘omnipotent gods’ called ‘Economists’ from the national capitals of Africa. These indicators only create an illusion of progress. He said Ghana has attained significantly higher growths in the past whilst struggling to meet the basis needs of its population. He cited the case of 1978 where a growth rate of 9.8% was registered yet scathing economic circumstances culminated in a coup de tat in 1979, and the famine period of 1984 where an ‘enviable’ growth rate of 8.8% was equally registered.

Mass poverty in Africa is the result of this Eurocentric Discipline-Centrist Grand Theorization Development mirage which has been religiously embraced as the solution to Africa’s future. He noted that economists oversimplifies development as a conclusive statistical product engineered from the centre, and by this posture remains the weakest link in the coach of development.

Mr. Azongo was interacting with the media to mark the 40th Anniversary of the COCOYOC DECLARATION which was issued in October, 1974 by a symposium of UN Experts calling for the rejection of the existing economic growth model and its associated ‘trickle down’ illusion to redefine the whole purpose of development from the development of things to the development of man.

According to Azongo, 70 years of proven illusion with the existing Economic Growth Development order and its ‘economics’ twin-disciplinary anchor in trickling development down to the masses of the world is a lesson well-aged to wake African governments from the slumber of perpetual enslavement with the Growth and Trickle Down syndrome of economics.

He has therefore urged African governments to draw inspiration from the COCOYOC DECLARATION issued in 1974 to build a more human essence Mass-oriented development model to determine the next phase of Africa’s Development.

He said the massive weakness of the existing economic growth paradigm and trickle down illusion has been admitted on several platforms by the very global authorities, like the World Bank, as lacking the depth to drive broad-based development, particularly in the developing world.

He quoted a portion of the declaration issued in 1974 which said “A growth process that benefits only the wealthiest minority and maintains or even increases the disparities between and within countries is not development. It is exploitation. We believe that 30 years of experience with the hope that rapid economic growth benefiting the few will "trickle down" to the mass of the people has proved to be illusory” and said this observation captured in the cocoyoc declaration 40 years ago remains relevant till today and a time-tested judgment to compel a rethinking of the expert-led Economic growth-concentrated path of development.

He questioned rhetorically why the very authorities of applied economics are questioning the very basis of these theoretical postulations, yet African economists, who are but retailers of western economic theories continues to present the Growth-Concentrated Economic model as the panacea for Africa’s development. He said mass poverty, cyclical economic crisis and frightening inequalities remain the age-old character of the economic growth-concentrated model of development.

He bemoaned the lack of courage by African governments and African educated elites to master intellectual authority in challenging global development systems and theories which have proven unworkable in the African Development Landscape.

The conclusion of development from easily drawn statistical permutations on the assumption of all things being equal is the greatest absurdity and intellectually myopic conception in the global human development enterprise. The ‘things that are supposed to be equal’ are what matters most in development and cannot be shelved under a mass-murderous expert-led and justified statistical indicator conclusions as has been the character of the growth-concentrated paradigm of development that has so far succeeded in spawning mass economic drop-outs . He observed that statistics cannot capture human feelings and values which are the core social indices of development and humanity.

According to the development planner, Increasing poverty gap , environmental and human degradation is linked to the oversimplified conception, determination and appropriation of development by an intellectually skeletal economic discipline that conceives development purely in statistical terms engineered from national capitals.

He says Economics is the principal disciplinary anchor of the existing development order and cannot be insulated from the massive failure of the existing global development order to broker a mass-oriented human development and a sound environmentally preserved society.