Communication for development in sub-saharan Africa: from orientalism to NGOification

The chapter provides a critical appraisal of the trends and phases that have characterised the growth of the theory and practice of communication for development on the African continent. The key argument is that communication for development has evolved with contradictions. Whereas its origins can be loosely traced to genuine bottom up efforts by indigenous Africans to educate themselves, the coming in of western development organizations have provided the funding and sustainability to design and implement such comdev interventions. The cosequence however is that such funding has come with its own ideological influence, espcially in the way dominant syntax conceptualse the field, from the perspective of western donor and development agencies. The overall objective of this chapter therefore is to rescue the field from this dominant syntax, by critically exploring the key approaches that characerise the field today.