| Poverty and underdevelopment are the predominant signifiers attached to the nations that make up Sub Saharan Africa (SSA). Indeed, popular understandings and scholarly discourses are replete with SSA being synonymous with corruption; failed states; foreign aid dependency; extensive suffering as depicted by the many brutal conflicts and wars, famine and infrastructural inadequacies---such as lack of access to education and healthcare services. The paradoxical reality is that SSA is one of the richest areas in the world in terms of its natural and human resources. Equally, however, existing bodies of literature as well as lay understandings relating to the root causes of and manifestations of poverty and underdevelopment are from varied but narrow perspectives.;The purpose of this conceptual dissertation is to defend my argument that colonial and neocolonial structures and mechanisms are major contributory factors to the realities I identify above. In this way, poverty and underdevelopment in SSA are humanly constructed phenomena, and as such possibilities exist to address these conditions. I have distinguished education as an effective mechanism to enact social change in SSA, specifically within the framework of the African Union's (AU) Agenda 2063. Therefore, I offer alternative perspectives on the poverty and underdevelopment scenario in SSA; particularly by exploring their structures and mechanisms of colonialism and neocolonialism through critical theory, critical pedagogy and post-colonial theory. I also present an expanded vision of education organic to the realities of SSA that can develop critical awareness, to essentially create a new African citizen who can function as an effective change agent for ensuring sustainable development in SSA. |
