Africa Regional Unification

Adebayo Adedeji and Prebisch are revered as generational thinkers and exemplars of regional economic integration in Africa and Latin America. Both have addressed unequal wealth distribution and unfavourable conditions that lead to underdevelopment. They sought to promote domestic development concepts rather than accept a global blanket prescription for resolving the underdevelopment problem. In addition, their worldview influenced thousands of young intellectuals and activists on both continents. Their experience and unique views on the role of regional integration in establishing economic space and political differentiation were invaluable. They helped the UN embrace local intellectual thought as a development principle. Their intellectual and personal qualities allowed them to argue for reviving economic principles in both regions’ development policies. Adedeji mocked the Bretton Woods institutions for their determination to tout success stories from SAPs despite all evidence to the contrary. This paper compares their philosophical framework to today’s economic and development concerns.