The Need to Go Beyond GDP in Measuring Development

This ARTICLE is a Rejoinder to a Paper entitled, AFRICAN AND ASIAN DEVELOPMENT COMPARED LESSONS FOR ZIMBABWE, jointly presented at the Womens University in Africa in December 2014 by Dr. Roel Van der Veen and Dr. Jan Bade. The Paper was anchored on the GDP and painted a rather gloomy picture about development in Africa. Such a depiction clearly exposes serious flaws in the use of GDP as an appropriate instrument of measuring development. The instrument is not only incapable of accurately measuring development, but equally economic growth, per capita, and quality of life. That GDP is incapable of accurately measuring these aspects of life is not the fault of its architect, Simon Kuznets, who devised it in 1934, but that of neo-classical and neo-liberal scholars, who have tended to inappropriately use the instrument. Kuznetss primary aim was for the instrument to provide Franklin Roosevelt Government with as accurate information as possible on the performance of the American formal economy that was undergoing serious shrinkage during the 1930s worldwide Great Depression.