External Dependence, Structural Adjustment and Development Aid in Sub-Saharan Africa

1997 ◽  
pp. 300-326
Author(s):  
Rolph van der Hoeven
Keyword(s):  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
External Dependence

Structural Adjustment and beyond in Sub-Saharan Africa

1996 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
Christopher Adam ◽  
Rolph van der Hoeven ◽  
Fred van der Kraaij
Keyword(s):  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan

Urban Studies of Accra

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Grant
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Contact Points ◽  
Urban Impacts ◽  
Sub Saharan

Accra is one of the largest and most important cities in sub-Saharan Africa. The aim of this article is to assess the evolution of urban studies in Accra and its main historical and contemporary foci. Early knowledge on urban Accra is fragmentary and orientated toward European contact points and urban plans, ostensibly from the gaze of Europeans. Writings from Euro-Africans such as Carl Reindorf provide a different prism into the precolonial, indigenous, urban society, whereas most indigenous urban knowledge was situated in the oral tradition at this time. Around independence, officially appointed social anthropologists wrote about an indigenous community in Tema and surveyed the multiethnic Accra environment. From independence in 1957 until the early 1980s, social scientists viewed the urban settlement as an alien, Western intervention. Local scholarship on Accra was sidelined as the academy in a poor, emergent nation became preoccupied with the genesis of nation-state building and the establishment of viable academic departments in national universities, and growing proportions of migrants regarded “home” as somewhere else, that is, ancestral villages. In the 1970s Accra was inserted into world history and social history, and social scientists began to study residential geographies, but scholarship at the city-scale remained sparse. Engagement with world and social histories and the social sciences demonstrated that history matters, but not in linear and teleological ways. The liberalization era ushered in by structural adjustment policies (SAPs) in 1983 invigorated studies of Accra’s urban impacts and effects. Much of this research was disseminated by international scholars, as Ghanaian scholars had to contend with the negative impacts of SAPs on their own universities and households. Since the turn of the 21st century, scholarship on Accra, and African cities in general, has been increasing. Diverse research questions and a multiplicity of methodologies and frameworks seek to engage Western urban theories and other variants, undertake policy-relevant work, assess ethnic and residential dynamics, contribute to international urban debates, and advance postcolonial and revisionist accounts of urbanism. Viewed at the third decade of the 21st century, scholarship on Accra is of diverse origins, encompassing scholarship from locals, members of the diaspora, and international urbanists, and a promising tilt is local–international collaborations co-producing knowledge.

What the People of Africa Think about International Organisations

Politeia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rod Alence
Keyword(s):  
Public Perceptions ◽  
Development Aid ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Union ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
The People ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Peacekeeping Missions ◽  
Peace And Development

International organisations have long sought to promote peace and development in sub-Saharan Africa. Much research has focused on their policies and activities, but little is known about how people living in Africa view them. How aware are people in Africa of international organisations, and how helpful do they believe them to be? This article analyses public perceptions using data from Afrobarometer Round 4 surveys conducted in 20 countries. Awareness of international organisations is widespread, especially in countries that have experienced peacekeeping missions and among individuals who have completed primary school. Evaluations are favourable on balance, more so for the United Nations and other “global” organisations than for the African Union and its sub-regional bodies. Though most Africans see development aid as helpful, large and highly visible aid inflows are associated with concerns about the influence that donors and NGOs wield over recipient governments.

Trade Union Politics in Sub-Saharan Africa

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Bernards
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Structural Adjustment ◽  
Transport Infrastructure ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Political Role ◽  
International Labor ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
International Labor Movement ◽  
The Unemployed

Although unionized workers have rarely represented more than a small minority of the population anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa, trade unions have played, and continue to play, a significant political role. Trade unions still occupy strategic choke points in many African economies, particularly around transport infrastructure, and retain a spatially concentrated organizational base as well as a degree of symbolic power drawn from participation in struggles against colonialism, apartheid, and authoritarianism. Three persistent dilemmas have strongly shaped the role of African trade unions and driven much of the academic debate about them. First are debates about the relationships between trade unions and political parties. These date to the often-fraught relationships between unions and anti-colonial movements in the last years of colonial rule. Pitched struggles, both within trade unions and between unions and governing parties, were often fought in the decade after the end of formal colonization over the degree of autonomy that unions should have from governing parties. These were often resolved through the widespread repression of politically independent unionism in the 1970s. This relationship, however, became untenable under processes of structural adjustment, and unions have often played a significant role in protests against neoliberal reforms, which have spurred widespread political transformation. Second are debates about the relationships of trade unions to non-unionized workers, especially the unemployed or the “informal” sector. Critics on both left and right have long pointed to the relatively privileged position of trade unions. This has consistently been invoked by governments seeking to justify the limited political role of trade unions as well as policies for wage restraint, state retrenchment, or currency devaluation that have negatively affected organized labor. However, given the increasingly widespread nature of informality and unemployment in contemporary Africa, trade unions have begun to make tentative steps toward organizing informal and unemployed workers in some cases. Finally, the relationships of African unions to the international labor movement and to international organizations have often been important. African unions have frequently drawn on links to international trade unions, regional institutions, or the International Labour Organization (ILO) as a way of compensating for domestic weaknesses. These strategies, however, have often engendered significant conflicts around the differing objectives of African and metropolitan actors, between African unions over access to international resources, and concerning “imperialism” by American and European unions.

scholarly journals Correction: Bountagkidis, G.; et al. EU Development Aid towards Sub-Saharan Africa: Exploring the Normative Principle. Soc. Sci. 2015, 4, 85–116

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 194
Author(s):  
Bountagkidis ◽  
Fragkos ◽  
Frangos
Keyword(s):  
Development Aid ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Normative Principle ◽  
Sub Saharan

The authors wish to make the following change to their paper (Bountagkidis et al. 2015)[...]

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