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Since the mid-1940s the academy has seen the rise and embedding of the field of international development studies especially in North America and Europe. While mediated by local historical, political and economic conditions, the ideas embodied in this field have greatly influenced academic and policy debates pertaining to processes of political, cultural and economic change in the diverse social formations commonly referred to as the global South. In the main, the hegemonic ideas underpinning the evolution of development studies have been ahistorical, reductionist and technocratic. This paper, then, interrogates the constitutive ideas underpinning development discourse in the current phase of globalization as they pertain to the role of institutions of global governance, specifically the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, in politico-economic processes in contemporary Africa. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]