Abstract

AMARO, Rogério Roque. Development or post-development? De-(en)velopment and… noflay!. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos [online]. 2017, n.34, pp.75-111. ISSN 1645-3794.  https://doi.org/10.4000/cea.2335.

The aim of this article is to foster the debate on the meaning, the relevance and the current usefulness of the concept of development, given the criticism voiced by post-development authors. Is it still useful and relevant to speak of development and use this concept? Or is it a word and a concept that is definitively perverted, disqualified and irrecoverable, as post-developmentalists advocate? This article assumes that the most interesting and enriching attitude in this regard is to put those concepts in dialogue and interaction with one another. For this reason, symbolically it ends up proposing an innovative and challenging dialogue between “de-(en)velopment” (semantic rediscovery of the original meaning of the word) and “noflay” (a word that in the Wolof language of Senegal means “wellbeing” or “being well”), as one of the most recent proposals for this debate from a usually forgotten continent - Africa.

Keywords : development; community development; sustainable development; post-development; buen vivir; noflay.

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