‘It is of great value to complement the limitations of contemporary mainstream economic growth discourse by exploiting the complex relations between technology, development, and inequality, while concurrently providing a better academic orientation in the era of the upcoming Industrial...

The primary purpose of this introductory chapter is to raise a question about why the development of the Third World has evolved over the past five decades in a direction that deviates from the developmental path assumed by the orthodox economic schools of thought. The underlying background to...

The central aim of this chapter is to explore the three most recent influential development paradigm shifts to reconstruct a country's modernisation process, shifts that are aggressive globalisation forces, normative sustainable development ideas, and radical technological changes. The...

The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015 has refocused global attention on the centrality of sustainability to the development discourse. Meanwhile, African countries are prioritizing structural transformation in their national...

Development paradigms offer competing theories on the drivers of structural transformation. Most of the analysis has so far focused on the economic factors with little emphasis placed on either the social or environmental dimensions of sustainable development. Furthermore, there has been little...

In recent years several African countries have embarked on reforms aimed at structurally transforming their economies to minimize their dependence on primary exports and generate greater employment opportunities through value-addition. Meanwhile, the recently adopted 2030 Agenda for Sustainable...