Paper long abstract:

The article examines two Ghanaian-born intellectuals - economist George N. B. Ayittey and anthropologist and sociologist Kwesi Kwaa Prah - and their positions on both local and global inequalities by studying their writings from the mid 1980s-1990s. It answers the question of how and through which debates both intellectuals addressed and engaged with notions of global inequality. Methodologically anchored in global intellectual history, this article offers a historical, qualitative, and actor-oriented study. Earle (2018) has underlined that the question of how African intellectuals have shaped the intellectual history of the modern world represents an understudied field within global intellectual history (para. 45). In an attempt to address this void, I show how Ayittey and Prah invoked global inequalities through different notions of neo-colonialism as well as criticisms of African elites - such as their rootlessness - within broader debates on African development. The article argues that their conceptions of global inequalities are hinged on the internalist/externalist debate revolving around the larger issue of African under-/development while their proposed solutions are founded on African indigeneity drawing on earlier African thought. I show how they actively reuse ideas of indigenous development as formulated by African intellectual Joseph E. Casely Hayford (1866-1930) in the be-ginning of the 20th century.