Underdevelopment in Africa: Walter Rodney’s Pioneering Approach and Its Influence on Stratification Economics

The development gap within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world persists despite years of “progress” in trying to bridge this gap. “Why is Africa still poor and what steps must Africa take to reverse this situation?” “What is the stuff that is unsaid in our writings—what are our silences? Are we over-relying on the colonial library that silences the underdogs? What alternative methodologies should be thought about?” (Msindo, 2019, Writing history beyond Trevor-Roper, p. 20) By returning to the work of Walter Rodney within and beyond the postcolonial Walter Rodney National Archives, I show how Rodney attempted to address these questions, the challenge that remains and how Black economists, inspired by Rodney’s work, have developed stratification economics as a distinctive theory, even a political-economic school of thought, and a movement to address these questions and study Africa within and beyond underdevelopment.