Abstract
Since the middle of the 20“ century, various governments, organizations and stakeholders have
suggested ways of realizing a desirable change, which is an index of development. The quest for
this pursuit had led to the evolution of concepts and theories examples of which are;
modernization, dependency, sustainable, participatory, and post development among others. The
reality of this pursuit still proves to be unresolved for many developing nations as a result of the
constraints of some of these theories especially those that conceive development according to the
standard of the developed western states of the world. The way in which governments and
development planners set out objectives of development without finding out the people’s needs
from them or involving them is however bewildering.
Development planners assume to know the needs of nations and individuals.
Inadvertently, this approach to development does not bring about sustainability in the life of the
project, nor does it have a lasting effect The lacunae as argued in this paper have to do with the
issue of people’s participation and adequate strategies to incorporate them. It thus suggests that the
use of popular arts is effective in addressing issues of development. The genre of this popular art in
question is referred to as Theatre for Development (TFD).