Against the backdrop of the remarkable success in the East and South-East Asian developmental states, scores of research in Africa has tried to look at the replicability of the model to conditions in Africa. This paper seeks to review and analyze the existing literature on the 'developmental states' notion and comes out with five crucial features that have spurred the success of the states in the aforementioned region. Given the African context, the thesis challenges the 'impossible theorem' and concurs with African scholars who call for a democratic developmental state for Africa. In doing this, the thesis seeks to track the development path of a country - Mauritius, as a typical example of a successful developmental state in Africa.