The Elusive Prince of Denmark
Author: Adebayo O. Olukoshi
Publisher: Nordic Africa Institute
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 68
ISBN-13: 9789171064288
DOWNLOAD EBOOKBackground context to the governance debate
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Our Continent, Our Future
Author: P. Thandika Mkandawire
Publisher: IDRC
Published: 2014-05-14
Total Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 155250204X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOur Continent, Our Future presents the emerging African perspective on this complex issue. The authors use as background their own extensive experience and a collection of 30 individual studies, 25 of which were from African economists, to summarize this African perspective and articulate a path for the future. They underscore the need to be sensitive to each country's unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy. Finally, they stress that Africa must, and can, compete in an increasingly globalized world and, perhaps most importantly, that Africans must assume the leading role in defining the continent's development agenda.
Transatlantic Feminisms
Author: Cheryl R. Rodriguez
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2015-03-18
Total Pages: 361
ISBN-13: 1498507174
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTransatlantic Feminisms is an interdisciplinary collection of original feminist research on women’s lives in Africa and the African diaspora. Demonstrating the power and value of transcontinental connections and exchanges between feminist thinkers, this unique collection of fifteen essays addresses the need for global perspectives on gender, ethnicity, race and class. Examining diverse topics and questions in contemporary feminist research, the authors describe and analyze women’s lives in a host of vibrant, compelling locations. There are essays exploring women’s political activism in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana, Santo Domingo, Jamaica and Tanzania. Other essays explore representation and creativity in Brazil, Nigeria, and Miami. While one essay examines African women as conflicted immigrants in France, another recounts the experiences of Haitian women trying to survive in the Dominican Republic. Core themes of the book include the evolution of black feminism; black feminist political leadership; the politics of identity and representation; and struggles for agency and survival. These themes are interwoven throughout the volume and illuminate different geographic and cultural experiences, yet very similar oppressive forces and forms of resistance.
Modernization and the Crisis of Development in Africa
Author: Jeremiah I. Dibua
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-11-28
Total Pages: 359
ISBN-13: 1351152904
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this book, Jeremiah I. Dibua challenges prevailing notions of Africa's development crisis by drawing attention to the role of modernization as a way of understanding the nature and dynamics of the crisis, and how to overcome the problem of underdevelopment. He specifically focuses on Nigeria and its development trajectory since it exemplifies the crisis of underdevelopment in the continent. He explores various theoretical and empirical issues involved in understanding the crisis, including state, class, gender and culture, often neglected in analysis, from an interdisciplinary, radical political economy perspective. This is the first book to adopt such an approach and to develop a new framework for analyzing Nigeria's and Africa's development crisis. It will influence the debate on the development dilemma of African and Third World societies and will be of interest to scholars and students of race and ethnicity, modern African history, class analysis, gender studies, and development studies.
Confronting the Shadow State
Author: Henri Decoeur
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-04-20
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 019255719X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book examines the rules and mechanisms of international law relevant to the suppression of state organized crime, and provides a normative justification for developing international legal mechanisms specifically designed to address this phenomenon. State organized crime refers to the use by senior state officials of the resources of the state to facilitate or participate in organized crime, in pursuit of policy objectives or personal profit. This concept covers diverse forms of government misconduct, including strategic partnerships with drug traffickers, the plundering of a country's resources by kleptocrats, and high-level corruption schemes. The book identifies the distinctive criminological characteristics of state organized crime, and analyses the applicability, potential, and limits of the norms and mechanisms of international law relevant to the suppression of state organized crime. In particular, it discusses whether the involvement of state organs or agents in organized crime may amount to an internationally wrongful act giving rise to the international responsibility of the state, and highlights a number of practical and normative shortcomings of the legal framework established by relevant crime-suppression conventions. The book also sketches proposals to develop an international legal framework designed to hold perpetrators of state organized crime accountable. It presents a normative justification for criminalizing and suppressing state organized crime at the international level, proposes draft provisions for an international convention for the suppression of state organized crime, and discusses the potential role of the UN Security Council and of international criminal courts and tribunals, respectively, in holding perpetrators accountable. Providing the first comprehensive analysis, from the perspective of international law, of a phenomenon so far mainly studied by criminologists, this study would appeal to researchers, social activists, and policy makers alike.
The Delusion of Knowledge Transfer
Author: Susanne Koch
Publisher: African Books Collective
Published: 2016-12-13
Total Pages: 398
ISBN-13: 1928331408
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith the rise of the knowledge for development paradigm, expert advice has become a prime instrument of foreign aid. At the same time, it has been object of repeated criticism: the chronic failure of technical assistance a notion under which advice is commonly subsumed has been documented in a host of studies. Nonetheless, international organisations continue to send advisors, promising to increase the effectiveness of expert support if their technocratic recommendations are taken up. This book reveals fundamental problems of expert advice in the context of aid that concern issues of power and legitimacy rather than merely flaws of implementation. Based on empirical evidence from South Africa and Tanzania, the authors show that aid-related advisory processes are inevitably obstructed by colliding interests, political pressures and hierarchical relations that impede knowledge transfer and mutual learning. As a result, recipient governments find themselves caught in a perpetual cycle of dependency, continuously advised by experts who convey the shifting paradigms and agendas of their respective donor governments. For young democracies, the persistent presence of external actors is hazardous: ultimately, it poses a threat to the legitimacy of their governments if their policy-making becomes more responsive to foreign demands than to the preferences and needs of their citizens.
Private Sector Response to Agricultural Marketing Liberalization in Zambia
Author: Dennis Chiwele
Publisher: Nordic Africa Institute
Published: 1998
Total Pages: 102
ISBN-13: 9789171064363
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis report examines the efficacy of the agricultural sector reforms that have been implemented in Zambia since 1991/92 when the MMD government of Fred Chiluba was elected to office. On the basis of empirical material gathered in the field, the report demonstrates the limitations of the reform and identifies a number of constraints that have hampered the private sector and made the agricultural marketing system remain relatively underdeveloped.
The Impact of Structural Adjustment Programmes on the Public Health Sector: The Case of Zimbabwe
Author: Tsitsi Muvunzi
Publisher: diplom.de
Published: 2015-01-01
Total Pages: 119
ISBN-13: 3954896354
DOWNLOAD EBOOKStructural Adjustment Programmes of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank (WB) were implemented as part of aid conditionality in Africa and Latin America since the 1980s. There is a wide range of literature critical of SAPs. Several debates have focused on whether the failure of SAPs was a result of the inherent weaknesses of the IMF/ WB sponsored structural adjustment or whether it was caused by structural failures of policy implementation within the African continent. The author uses the Zimbabwean case to analyze the impact of SAPs on social service sectors, in particular the public health sector.
Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats
Author: Dr Susan Stewart
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2013-04-28
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 1409476650
DOWNLOAD EBOOKOver the last decade the "transition paradigm", which is based on the conviction that authoritarian political systems would over time necessarily develop into democracies, has been subjected to serious criticism. The complex political and societal developments in the post-Soviet region in particular have exposed flaws in the claim that a shift from authoritarianism to democracy is inevitable. Using case studies from the post-Soviet region, a broad range of international contributors present an original and innovative contribution to the debate. They explore the character of post-Soviet regimes and review the political transformations they have experienced since the end of the Cold War. Through a combination of theoretical approaches and detailed, empirical analysis the authors highlight the difficulties and benefits of applying the concepts of hybrid regimes, competitive authoritarianism and neopatrimonialism to the countries of the post-Soviet space. Through this in-depth approach the authors demonstrate how "Presidents, Oligarchs and Bureaucrats" in the region lead their countries, examine the sources of their legitimacy and their relationship to the societies they govern and advance the general theoretical debate on regime change and transition paths.
Taken For A Ride
Author: Matteo Rizzo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2017-05-26
Total Pages: 201
ISBN-13: 0192512927
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow does public transport work in an African city under neoliberalism? Who owns what in it? Who has the power to influence its shape and changes in it over time? What does it mean to be a precarious and informal worker in the private minibuses that provide public transport in Dar es Salaam? These are the main questions that inform this in-depth case study of Dar es Salaam's public transport system over more than forty years. The growth of cities and informal economies are two central manifestations of globalization in the developing world. Taken for a Ride addresses both, drawing on long-term fieldwork in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and charting its public transport system's journey from public to private provision. This new addition to the Critical Frontiers of Theory, Research and Practice in International Development Studies series investigates this shift alongside the increasing deregulation of the sector and the resulting chaotic modality of public transport. It reviews state attempts to regain control over public transport and documents how informal wage relations prevailed in the sector. The changing political attitude of workers towards employers and the state is investigated: from an initial incapacity to respond to exploitation, to the political organisation and unionisation which won workers concessions on labour rights. A longitudinal study of workers throws light on patterns of occupational mobility in the sector, and the political and economic interests that shaped the introduction of Bus Rapid Transit in Dar es Salaam, and local resistance to it are analysed. Taken for a Ride reveals the political economy of public transport, exposing the limitations of market fundamentalist and post-colonial scholarship on economic informality, the urban experience in developing countries, and the failure to locate the agency of the urban poor within their economic and political structures. It is both a contribution and a call for the contextualised study of 'actually existing neoliberalism'.
