Local economic development (LED) in the context of the development question is generally celebrated as a silver bullet to development challenges in Africa. However this discourse is more complex and needs greater theoretical scrutiny in order to understand its meaning. This paper picks up standpoint theory to critique the dominant understanding/s of local economic development and argues that unless it is more people-centered and benefits the local human/s, local economic development will remain an imposition from the top which will continue to alienate the local human and will remain an imperial project.

The contemporary discourse on local economic development (LED) has gained widespread popularity in the political, intellectual, and public social arenas of development issues. It has become a “new,” glittering philosophy for development. Through the persuasive use of romanticism, LED has managed to achieve moral high ground in development, although it has since been confronted by unresolved theoretical and ideological tensions. The challenges facing LED are (1) the meaning of “local” in LED in a “globalized” world (2) the meaning of “development” in LED in a democratic, multicultural and racialized class society like South Africa, and (3) the explanation and moral justification as to what this “development” is, or whom it should be aimed at, in a society with such a grotesquely racialized “past”. By drawing on the findings from a recent study of LED within the Ekurhuleni Aerotropolis project, in South Africa, we provide a critique of LED. We highlight its illusive philosophical foundations and their underlying mischief in South Africa. We argue that unless the said tensions are resolved, LED discourse will remain a rhetorical ploy for legitimating underdevelopment for blacks, and a methodical device to entrench the racialized socio-economic evils of apartheid in South Africa.

In this chapter, the authors problematize the narrative that South Africans are xenophobic through a critical historiographical and philosophical critique. They disentangle state agency from civil society agency (organized and non-organized) action and reject this narrative as false, and as an opportunistic obfuscation of problems confronting South Africa and the African continent in general. They suggest, rather, that the South African government or the state is xenophobic, as state ideology in Africa does not always translate into popular ideology in society. State ideology is often resisted and militated against by society in various ways both consciously and unconsciously, as the two arise from different social formation processes.

Ghana, like other developing nations, was not left behind in embracing the eight time-bound Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in September 2000. The millennium development goals aimed towards peace and good standards of living have been faced with series of problems in its attainment in Ghana. These problems have undermined the extent to which Ghana could achieve the MDGs. The study adopting qualitative research method shows that Ghana is faced with difficulty in achieving these eight millennium development goals in certain portions of the nation most especially in the rural communities due to lack of infrastructure. The study therefore recommends that Ghana should focus more on improving the standard of living of the rural dwellers by increasing the public services in the area.  The need for Ghana to focus more on solving these problems is strategic for a better result in this new era of Sustainable Development Goals.

This chapter departs from the premise that African problems demand not African solutions but solutions founded on the principles of African culture and philosophy. The chapter analyzes hegemonic Euro-American-centric ideas of development and rural development from the perspective of the African philosophy of ubuntu. This chapter per the author dismisses the idea of “rural development” because it argues that “rural” is an oxymoron in African culture and philosophy and thus a discourse of a colonial heritage. The chapter understands “rural development” as a narrow Euro-American-centric construction founded on the principles of economism and classism of the Western philosophical ethic and which, according to the chapter, needs decolonization through ubuntu. The chapter further suggests pathways towards an African “rural development” paradigm.