Where Africa may be heading – the question asked in the title of this chapter – is an issue that has become increasingly urgent and important to Africans and outsiders alike. The vast majority of Africans are no better off than their parents were. Despite struggling hard to make a living, they are caught in webs of relations of dependence that are becoming more and more costly to sustain. Although there are those who wish to break out of these affective relations, they are frustrated because there is no formal and predictable system in place to latch on to. Foreign investors and aid agencies share much of that frustration. They want to contribute, but their funds become constant prey to well-placed individuals – investment partners or public officials – for whom they constitute an attractive opportunity to make a quick gain. Even donors who have maintained a constant optimism about Africa and the difference that their own contributions can make have become increasingly skeptical about the future. For instance, after decades of espousing an almost unbounded optimism regarding the prospects of policy reform, the World Bank (2000) is now questioning whether Africa will really be able to “claim the twenty-first century.”

The issue is whether these signs of frustration with the state of development in Africa should be called into question. Isn't Africa changing for the better? Aren't there signs that the region is turning a corner? There are reasons to address these questions here to place both past and present in the light of the future. The chapter begins with a review of the strategies that have been part of mainstream discourse over the years, followed by a discussion of the problems that donor dependency has caused for African countries wishing to chart their own development path. This review is followed by an analysis of the factors in the present that point to a “new” Africa emerging, and a discussion of which practical proposals for better governance derived from political science research might be considered. It concludes with an overall assessment of where Africa is after fifty years of independence.