Compare and contrast marxist and beourgeoisie theories of social development and indicate their contribution to the understanding Africa's development problems?

Answer 1

This sounds like an essay question, so I'm not going to do it all for you! However, what it means is, you need to have a look at how Marxist and 'bourgeoisie' (I guess capitalist/free market theories?) can explain development problems in Africa. Now, both these are economic theories - not just social theories. You can have a look at things like Marx's theory of worker alienation, and how this relates to different African countries. You need to understand that some African countries but not all are unindustrialised, which means that most people still live in villages and farms instead of in cities, and there are few modern production techniques (factories) in the cities.

Now a Marxist, for example, might explain this lack of development due to the residues of Imperialism from the time when European powers controlled Africa, and the political instability of the Cold War.

However, Marx himself and free market proponents (called bourgeoisie by Marx, or upper-middle class people) might both agree that a complicated list of things like capital management and investment are the catalysts for development.

While it was generally Marx's view that capitalism was a bad thing, he still held that countries needed to be capitalist in order to industrialise, and only then could a socialist revolution take place.

Fundamentally, both of the theories of social development will always relate back to economics, with the Marxists portraying it as a class struggle and the 'bourgeoisie' usually blaming a lack of development on any number of economic mis-management problems, the problems depending on their perspectives.

Now, if you want an A for this be sure to take a good hard look at two things at least: the Cold War, which saw about half of Africa become Marxist-Leninist and the other half capitalist/Western-aligned, and also Angola, which is rapidly industrialising as a result of Chinese investments into their economy, after only recently being in a civil war. Hope this helps.