Colonial development by intersector labour transfer, 1950–69
As the colonization approach, metropolitan power tried to legitimize their rule by claiming that they aim at economic development. Arthur Lewis criticized the British colonial development plan for lacking comprehensiveness and, in the 1940s, laid out his own manifesto for rapid industrialization. Later, in Manchester University, he wrote the significant 1951 UN report on development and his famous article on development by intersector labour transfer. His controversy with Herbert Frankel did not satisfy the critiques, but became the bible for those who identify development with industrialization. Lewis’s time as a policy advisor to Ghana Kwame Nkrumah left him doubtful about the possibility of successful development planning and he effectively withdrew from the development scene, despite retaining Enlightenment values.