Education Infrastructure and Unsustainable Development in Africa

Rather than creating the appropriate social relations for the means of production, the perspective on development in Africa has hinged on "infrastructure for development" thus leading to underdevelopment. This is because the social relation of infrastructure for development is parasitic and thus cannot reproduce itself. What it does is to accumulate primitive capital for conspicuous consumption rather than the creation of reproductive capital. Consequently, a dependency relation with the source(s) of primitive capital accumulation is almost inevitable if the dominant group in the relationship, with its foundation in the acquisition of formal education, is to continue to subsist. Ironically, this incapacitates the subordinate group(s) as their recruitment processes are conditioned by the powerful ideological state, now global, apparatuses. The paper shows how this process works through the empirical examples of the acclaimed "success" story of Botswana and the perceived "failed" state of Nigeria.