Elite Conflict and the Negation of Economic Development in Lesotho

Abstract

Several factors have been offered to explain depressing economic development levels in Africa. The factors include colonial legacy, social pluralism, and its centrifugal tendencies, corrupt leaders, and limited inflow of foreign capital. While Lesotho shares some of the above challenges, it is more homogenous in terms of ethnicity, a remarkable departure from most African countries, south of the Sahara. Notwithstanding the insulation from inter-ethnic squabbles, Lesotho is not faring better in economic development due to internal conflicts within elite ranks for political power reminiscent of what is in other parts of Africa, albeit not on ethno-linguistic or cultural lines. This intra elite conflict has largely not been interrogated as a bane to development in Lesotho. This work makes use of prebendalism theory. Methodologically, the work used secondary data. The temporal scope is from 1993 to 2018. It is deduced that elite conflict has impacted negatively economic development in Lesotho.