50 years of development planning in Africa: retrospect and prospects

Abstract

Development planning has a long and cheered history in Africa, and the continent’s development trajectory has been influenced by various approaches to development planning since the early stages of independence. The first phase of development planning in Africa spanned the 1960s and was characterized by centralized planning with three to five year planning phases. During this period, at least 32 African countries had a national development plan. This first generation of development plans continued to the 1980s. These plans promoted state engineered economies with resources allocated by governments. It was notably the time of state-owned enterprises operating in most of the productive sectors.