Journal of African Development

The paper will compare the legal approaches of constitutionalism, the rule of law and development governance in India and various African nations and their ways of converging and diverging of these two concepts. It delves into interplay between the aspects of past colonial sources, aboriginal law, and contemporary global forces in the evolution of these paradigms that are critical. The analysis of these nations in the paper is done based on the challenge of how they manage the complexities of sorting out good constitutional democracies and models of development that are fair as they tend to have common issues in institutionalizing the idea of good governance and in protecting the basic rights. In addition, it discusses law and judicial interpretations effectiveness as a means of implementing constitution and sustainable development in different socio-political circumstances. Still not sure and with suspicions still plenty over the real meaning of the Rule of Law, and the institutional form in which it occurs, this paper proposes that the legal pluralist approach represents a more conscious standpoint as it is one which allows space to be given to fully varied conceptions and to practice in contexts. This methodology recognizes that legal systems are embedded in the different cultural norms and in different socio-economic discourses and leaves behind one singular, Universalist conception of constitutional values. Such a point of view is especially pertinent in the case of swamping multiplicity of legal systems, more often a create of colonialism, the operation of law generally requires a very fine tune so that it can be useful to sustainable development rather than a noxious obstacle to it