Decolonising economic development: the role of development sector

In this report, we lay out what a framework for decolonisation entails, building on anti-colonial, post-colonial and anti-imperialist scholarship, primarily originating in lower-income countries.

The framework identifies development and key elements of underdevelopment as common historical processes and aims to uncover and challenge the power structures that have created these linkages. This framework recognises that key elements of poverty and exclusion are not imperfections in the development process to be fixed. Rather they are outcomes of how the development process is structured and it is the structural process of uneven development that needs addressing.

This framework suggests that a Eurocentric approach to economic development ignores the common historical processes that produce both the markers of development and aspects of underdevelopment on a global and national scale, to focus only on the ‘lack’ of an individual or institution that an INGO can step in to fill.