The lack of effective leadership and disciplined workforce is a major contributor to the lack of economic development and progress in the Sub-Saharan African countries. The essays in this book take a fresh look at Sub-Saharan African problems of underdevelopment and argue the need for African countries to incorporate appropriate personality characteristics in the education and training of their labor force. The volume is aimed at providing international development scholars and agencies, Sub-Saharan African countries, and non-governmental organizations with an overview of the problems in Sub-Saharan Africa, and supplying some possible solutions.

Education and training are important in nation building and development. Properly articulated, implemented, and operated, educational and training programs can help develop the necessary human qualities and skills required for economic development. Although many African countries have paid a great deal of attention to and invested significant resources in these programs, they have been unsuccessful in developing the caliber of people needed. This failure is due to the fact that the programs pursued have focussed primarily on human capital acquisitions. Yet with human factor, human capital alone is not sufficient to make development happen. This work is an exploration of the reasons for the failure, and it discusses how African countries can develop the type of labor force needed to initiate and manage the development process.

Focusing on the development agenda of selected developed and developing countries, the contributors in this volume show that the varying degrees of success or failure in the programs of different countries are due to the way they deal with human factor development. Each essay clearly shows that a nation cannot achieve development if it continuously fails to develop its own national human factor. The contributors maintain that what different parts of the world, particularly Southeast Asia, call a development miracle is not a miracle at all.

Countries such as Japan and Singapore have experienced significant development in recent decades because their programs have focused intently on building the human factor. Countries such as Mexico, Nigeria, Bolivia, and India, on the other hand, are struggling to develop because their ongoing development programs do not address the human factor. Nations that aspire to achieve sustained human-centered development in the 21st century should focus on human factor development now.

Scarcity is the basic economic problem confronting all humanity, and humanity has struggled for centuries to overcome it. Yet, despite new ideas and new technology, little has been achieved in dealing with scarcity. Moreover, despite successes in conquering space and in developing technological innovations, humanity has failed to deal successfully with social, economic, environmental, political, and educational problems. This book analyzes these successes and failures and argues that the root of developmental problems lies in continuing human factor decay and underdevelopment. For successful economic development, every country must focus on human factor development.

Traditional books on economic development focus on items like investment, human capital acquisition, population control, foreign aid and technical assistance, international trade, and technology transfer. This book argues that the integrating core of every development program is human factor development. In the presence of human factor decay, no nation can develop, even when the necessary resources are made available.

This collection of articles concerning the economic development of Africa was written by a group of scholars who are experienced in African societies and are knowledgeable about African needs. This experience and knowledge allows the authors to improve the focus on subjects like productivity, rural development, and transportation along with social and political issues involved in African developmental problems. The work consists of three parts: a general introduction, a section focusing on theoretical perspectives, and a section on practical problems. Since much of the work is derived from original research, it is unique in its treatment of the subject. The work is addressed to scholars, researchers, and teachers interested in African development in the North American market and elsewhere.

For many decades post-colonial leaders in developing countries have tried various development plans based on orthodox development thinking and theorizing. Yet the developing world has failed to achieve sustained human-centered development. Many of the development plans have failed or been abandoned. Why does the developing world run the risk of falling behind their previously attained standards of living? This book takes a detailed look at the key paradigms of orthodox development thinking, discusses the various theories about economic growth, and concludes that the myths of orthodox development thinking regarding the origins of and obstacles to economic growth and human factor decay are the cause of economic underdevelopment in developing countries. The book goes on to argue that developing countries need to establish and maintain efficient and effective human factor development programs in order to set the stage for human-centered development and to experience positive economic growth and a development turnaround.

Each day, a new set of programs and technologies is created to help solve the social, economic, and political problems we face in our immediate and global communities. To successfully overcome these problems, it is essential that we comprehend the extent to which the human quality impacts the performance effectiveness of the social institutions, cultural activities, governance structures, economic, and political systems. In Portraits of Human Behavior and Performance, Senyo B-S.K. Adjibolosoo discusses the various portraits of human behavior and their impact on performance effectiveness. Adjibolosoo argues that due to the relationship between human behavior and performance, institutions and programs that fail are human failures.