Beyond copycat development 

By VICTOR-BANDELE DADA

For much of the post-colonial era, developing nations were encouraged to pursue progress by imitating the historical development trajectories of industrialised economies. This article argues that such copycat development has reached its historical and structural limits. The argument is advanced through three inter-related perspectives: the internal crisis of governance in the developed world marked by populism, political polarization, and unilateralism; the erosion of the rules-based international order and international law; and a forty-year multidisciplinary research journey whose prolonged duration reveals the cost of neglecting indigenous systemic intelligence. Drawing on Universal Sustainability Dynamics and its applied governance framework, AUTOSUCOM, I hereby contend that sustainable prosperity can no longer be imported or replicated but must be internally engineered through self-organizing, culturally grounded systems.

Beyond Imitation

The assumption that development can be achieved through imitation has shaped global policy thinking for decades. Developing nations were urged to copy the institutional, economic, and political arrangements of advanced economies, often presented as universal templates for progress. Yet the world in which those templates emerged no longer exists. More critically, the societies that once embodied these models are themselves experiencing profound internal stress.

The need to move beyond copycat development is therefore not ideological but historical. It reflects the convergence of global systemic breakdown and long-ignored local intelligence.

The Cost of Ignoring Indigenous Wisdom

Any honest account of sustainable development must begin with a neglected truth: indigenous knowledge systems were not absent; they were sidelined. This reality is vividly illustrated by a 40-year multidisciplinary research journey whose foundational insights matured within five to ten years but were delayed by institutional misalignment.

In its early phase, the research crystallized as Community Foundation Banking, a locally grounded financial and governance concept rooted in trust, shared identity, and relational accountability. Rather than being allowed to evolve organically, this indigenous framework was displaced by externally inspired substitutes, first the People’s Bank and later Community Banks. Detached from the cultural and systemic foundations that gave the original concept resilience, both initiatives gradually became moribund.

The delay was not intellectual; it was epistemic. What should have been a short innovation cycle expanded into four decades of refinement, integration, and scientific validation – largely to compensate for the refusal to take indigenous systemic intelligence seriously.

The Crisis of the Developed World Models

The argument against copycat development is sharpened by the current condition of the developed world itself. Rising populism, deep political polarisation, and growing unilateralism have destabilised democratic norms and weakened institutional trust across many advanced economies.

Equally significant is the erosion of the rules-based international order. International law, once presented as neutral and universal, is now applied selectively. Multilateral agreements are bypassed when inconvenient, revealing a structural contradiction: those who once enforced the rules increasingly abandon them.

For developing nations, this collapse of normative consistency dismantles the logic of imitation. Aligning with unstable models no longer guarantees protection, predictability, or prosperity.

Why Copycat Development Has Become Structurally Impossible

Historical development in the Global North unfolded under conditions of ecological abundance, limited competition, and asymmetric power advantages. Today’s developing nations face saturated markets, environmental constraints, demographic pressures, and entrenched global inequality.

Moreover, complex social systems cannot be cloned. Institutions function not as isolated structures but as components of deeply embedded relational systems. When transplanted without their cultural and historical foundations, they generate form without function, laws without legitimacy, banks without trust, and governance without coherence.

The failure of imported banking and governance models at the community level reflects this systemic truth at the national and global scale.

The Research Maturation and Luminary Mentorship

The eventual maturation of the research into Universal Sustainability Dynamics was profoundly shaped by the dignified mentorship of two towering scholars of the University of Lagos: Emeritus Professor Isaac Ayinde Adalemo, an eminent geographer and former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, and Emeritus Professor Oyewusi Ibidapo-Obe, a distinguished engineering systems scholar and former Vice-Chancellor.

Their mentorship provided intellectual discipline, interdisciplinary rigor, and ethical clarity. It reinforced the insight that sustainability is governed by universal principles: identity, location, role, and relational coherence, and that governance failures arise when these principles are violated. Their influence ensured that the research evolved into a scientifically grounded framework rather than a transient policy proposal.

AUTOSUCOM: Development Beyond Copying

The applied expression of this research is AUTOSUCOM (Automatically Sustainable Community), a governance model designed to produce self-organizing, self-sustaining, and self-financing communities. Unlike copycat development strategies, AUTOSUCOM begins with internal coherence rather than external benchmarks.

In an era of weakening multilateral guarantees and unstable global norms, such coherence is essential. AUTOSUCOM reframes development as systemic self-completion, not convergence toward external ideals. Prosperity emerges not from imitation, but from alignment with endogenous social and economic logic.

Conclusion

Beyond copycat development lies a necessary reorientation of global thinking. The prolonged neglect of indigenous wisdom has already cost developing societies decades of lost opportunity, just as it extended a five-year research insight into a forty-year journey. Today, as populism, polarization, and unilateralism fracture the global order and undermine international law, imitation has become not only ineffective but risky.

Sustainable prosperity cannot be borrowed. It must be engineered from within, grounded in indigenous intelligence, systemic coherence, and relational governance. The future belongs not to those who copy the past of others, but to those who complete their own systems.

•Dr Dada, FRSA, CEO, DESI Consultants Ltd, wrote via: desicoin@gmail.com

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