Social Policy and the human factor in Africa's economic recovery and development

Abstract

Development in Africa, as is true elsewhere, is to improve the well-being of its peoples so that they can realize their own human potential. It is this quintessential dimension of development that has to be the lodestar to guide thinking and action. A one-dimensional approach to recovery and development, that gives overriding priority to economic concerns and neglects social development, is self-defeating. In the absence of sufficient efforts in the social domain, economic development remains brittle, an easy target for the first winds of adversity, or skewed heavily in favor of a relatively small proportion of the population.