This article shows that the international community can have a decisive impact on peace and democracy in a country, based on a paired comparison of Kenya and Kyrgyzstan. Both countries have experienced similar political trajectories, amongst them a struggle to consolidate peace and democracy after outbreaks of major interethnic violence, but show varying degrees of international influence on these processes. Analyzing several critical junctures in the two countries’ peace and democratization process through over 80 interviews reveals that although crucial international impact is rare, it is possible if donors jointly pursue a political agenda that connects to a home-grown process.
This paper assesses the relative effects of acculturation preferences (assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization) on migrants’ perception of acceptability in James Town, a traditional urban neighborhood in Accra, Ghana. There is a paucity of academic work on the relationship between migrants’ acculturation inclinations and their assessment of the hosts’ attitude towards them in Ghana. Cognizant of the fluidity of acculturation strategies, the study focuses on individual inclinations towards acculturation. To examine migrants’ perception of acceptability by the host, we use perceived personal discrimination. We utilize results from a semi-structured questionnaire administered to 301 migrant individuals from different migrant households in James Town. Our findings suggest that migrants with assimilation preferences are less likely to have a higher rating on the extent to which they are discriminated against by the host population. Such an exploratory study is pertinent to understanding relationships (conflicts or "togetherness in difference") in poor multi-ethnic settings.
Using a theoretical framework based on complex adaptive systems and organizational learning, the study compares and contrasts the network structures of two disaster response systems following the 2006 avian influenza crisis and the 2011 Van earthquake in Turkey. This study emphasizes the reorganization of Turkish disaster response in 2009 and its impact in response to 2011 Van earthquake. The research utilizes data from content analysis of news reports from the Turkish daily newspapers Cumhuriyet and Sabah from 28 December 2005 to 17 January 2006 for the avian influenza, and Hurriyet from 23 October 2011 to 8 November 2011 for the 2011 Van earthquake, respectively. The research has used social network analysis and small world ratio based on the content analysis data to compare and evaluate the network structures of the two response systems. Findings indicate that the Turkish disaster system, to some degree, learned from the previous disaster and was therefore better managed. However, the system still remained very centralized and multi-sectoral involvement is still weak.
Africa is being re-imagined as a knowledge economy, and higher education (HE) systems have been propelled into the centre of national economic plans and strategies. This paper provides an analysis of four recent major initiatives directed to the revitalisation of HE in sub-Saharan Africa: the Pan African University (2010), the Africa Higher Education Centers of Excellence Project (2014), The Kigali Communiqué on Higher Education for Science, Technology and Innovation (2014), and the Dakar Declaration and Action Plan on Revitalising Higher Education for Africa’s Future (2015). Guided by critical frame analysis, we examined assumptions and expectations of these regionally/globally structured HE development agendas. The findings show that, while there is a convergence of thinking on the promise for economic transformation held by invigorated HE sectors in Africa, there are uncritically adopted premises about how this transformation is to be achieved. In particular, we find that the promise held out for economic transformation through HE is at risk of failing through the inadequate contextualisation of global policy orthodoxies to African conditions, and that some of the premises about the nature and scale of the economic transformation required to make the re-imagined Africa a reality need to be reconsidered.
Recent scholarship on Ghana’s oil industry has focused primarily on its grand contributions to the national economy while its intra-city impact has received less academic attention. Borrowing from Terry Karl’s interpretation of the paradox of plenty, and drawing on empirical evidence from 25 purposefully selected interviewees, the study examines how the oil production off the shores of Sekondi-Takoradi is creating complex processes of accumulation, contradiction, and displacement in a low-income community—New Takoradi. The results point to the accentuation of socio-economic risks in the community following the inflow of oil revenue which is shaping government’s macro-level policies. The paper opines that without attention to place-specific contexts, understanding its socio-economic risks and decadence, and its semblance of strong resilience becomes deceptive. The paper concludes that context and situation are significant for how and to what degree the oil boom matters in the oil city.
Many studies have looked into domestic violence but very few have considered women’s knowledge and perception about their rights. This study aims to examine the main sociocultural factors behind domestic violence against women with an emphasis on the power of the knowledge and perception of the women about their international and constitutional rights. Quantitative data collected in 2015 in the regions of East and Southwest Burkina Faso are used in this paper. Multivariate logistic regression is implemented to take into consideration the net effects of each factor when controlling the effects of other covariates. Results of this paper can be used to implement actions against domestic violence in the zone of intervention of the Program of Sexual Health and Human Rights project.
This article uses a newly developed theoretical concept – the ‘uncommodified blackness’ image, to accentuate the discursive methods in which the humanness of Africans is denied in subtle and commonplace ways in Australia. In other words, the concept of uncommodified blackness is used in this study to theorise both the racist infrahumanisation and the blatant racist dehumanisation that Africans are subjected to in Australia. An analysis of semi-structured interviews with 11 research participants suggests that, through the image of uncommodified blackness, the participants are viewed by mainstream Australia as dysfunctional and dirty Others who ought to be avoided in public transport. Participants’ lived experiences imply that mainstream Australia regards them as outsiders and perpetual refugees who are failing at ‘integration’.
‘Municipal indigents’ are a category of poor citizens who qualify to receive certain municipal services for free in South Africa. Having registered as municipal indigents, the poor not only gain access to free basic services but also embark upon a voyage into a bureaucratic underworld where policies are changed and eligibility criteria and sanctions are unevenly applied. Various preconditions and limits on services, as well as social surveillance of indigent households, has turned indigency programmes into a ‘regime’. The policy has swung from hard cost recovery (mass disconnections) during the period 1994–2000 to ‘free’ basic services and, more recently, to social-shaming and criminalisation. This paper provides a thematic account of recent municipal indigent processes in order to explore the ‘moving boundary’ between benevolence and control regarding this crucial citizen–state interface. Based on recent interviews with government officials, a review of relevant government documents, and describing the administrative complexities, the paper reveals aspects of what the poor confront in day-to-day experiences of the state. It is argued that there are lessons for all municipalities seeking a more sustainable and democratic path to citizenship rather than an ongoing low-level war with poor citizens.
This paper aims to address the emergence of parallel yet contradictory social movements in Bangladesh and explore the following question: what political factors in Bangladesh led to the emergence of these parallel movements? Unlike what social movements discourse has addressed, Bangladesh has seen the rise of two powerful and binary camps. To understand the growth of such conflicting movements, this paper hypothesizes that the framing of identity and ideology by the movement participants and the media has engendered the concurrent yet conflicting movements in Bangladesh. The paper focuses on how framing strategies led to ideological polarization between these movements.
Building on the theoretical proposition that congruence is as much a property to be measured in authoritarian regimes as it is in democratic regimes, the aim of this article is to understand the phenomenon of ideological and political congruence in Angola. To carry out this analysis, we rely on two original surveys, conducted in 2012 with members of parliament (MPs) and college students (voters), covering equivalent policy issues. The results, to some extent exploratory, suggest moderate levels of congruence between MPs and voters. This article contributes to the existing scholarship through a case study that escapes a golden rule in this field – i.e., it is not a democracy. Moreover, it features congruence as a potentially relevant factor in understanding dominant parties’ persistence in authoritarian settings.
This paper examines the conceptual contradiction between a nationally uniform local government system as constitutionally provided in Nigeria, and, the principles of governance model that is presently believed to advance the course of service delivery in government. The paper argues that the straitjacketed constitutional provisions that require every state government to establish a patterned, uniform local government system, is conflict-generating, opposed to effective management and harnessing of local differences in a highly differentiated country like Nigeria, and averse to the multi-jurisdictional principle advocated by the proponents of the governance model. The focus of the paper therefore, is to investigate the extent the prescribed uniform system of local government hinders the application of the governance model that could advance the course of service delivery at the local level. The author suggests that contrary to the constitutional provisions on the nature of local government, which autonomy is not strongly protected by the constitution, the state governments should be allowed to determine the nature and structure of local governments in their domain to reduce the abuse of the local government system and entrench competitive local government practice. This will advance the greater use of local networks in local governance.
For the crafters and drafters of the African Union’s (AU) Constitutive Acts particularly the Addis Ababa Charter and the Lomé Declaration of July 2000 and the Economic Community of West African States’ (ECOWAS) Protocol on Good Governance and Democracy, the novel idea was to provide a regional, sub-regional, platform of support to democratic governments and also deter any forms of unconstitutionalism. However, recent events have put to the test the political capacity of these organisations to uphold the sanctity of the normative framework and the protocol supportive of democratic processes. In the case of the AU, the outburst of revolutionary movements in the north African region provided a platform for a thorough assessment of the AU’s Normative Frameworks related to constitutionalism and democracy. While it was accepted that the case of Tunisia followed the democratic process, the Egyptian and Libyan cases were seen as a negation of the principles of the framework.Likewise,in the case of the ECOWAS, there were myriads of problems that tested the organisation’s democratic credentials. For instance, Guinea Bissau experienced two coup d’états in two years (2009 and 2012), Guinea in December 2008; Niger in March 2010; and Burkina Faso in 2015. The AU and ECOWAS have been challenged and pulled along by two parallel but not equal forces: the need to ensure respect for the principle of total rejection of unconstitutional changes of government, and the necessity to recognise the reality on the ground. This study therefore employs both historical and comparative methodologies to assess the roles of these organisations in being true to the values of democracy as contained in their normative framework and the protocol, as well asalso examines the challenges faced in the context of the situations in Libya, Mali and Guinea Bissau.
This paper discusses two distinct political mobilisations of October 2015 in Grahamstown, Eastern Cape Province, South Africa. Student protests against racial, class-based, and gender-based oppression coincided with xenophobic violence in the city. These events demonstrated both challenges to and continuity with the long history of politics in Grahamstown, a history marked by the contestation and control of space, race, and citizenship. The paper argues for the continued relevance of these themes to thinking about contemporary South African politics. By considering together the two events of October 2015, we can interrogate aspects of colonial political continuities in post-1994 South Africa which variously influence mass protest action for democratic opening, anti-democratic violence, and state responses to both.
Contemporary urbanization in India is in transition and this, along with the continuation of a ‘top heavy’ urban structure and gradual deindustrialization, is characterized by faster growth of informal employment, a declining trend of urban-ward migration of males, the slow down in the growth of cities and towns and the emergence of new urban centres. Given this immediate backdrop, this paper examines the contemporary processes and emerging forms of urban transition in West Bengal, with its longstanding history of ‘mono-centric’ urbanization. It reveals that urbanization in the state is no longer confined to a few pockets, as many new urban centres have emerged away from them and small towns are growing at relatively faster rates compared to the cities. But the underlying factors of this transition are not associated with the dispersal of economic activities and employment opportunities away from the metropolises. Furthermore, the study is sceptical about the significance of this emerging form of urbanization fuelled by the growth of small cities and towns which have a weak economic base, a crisis of urban governance and inadequate access to basic amenities.
Drawing on research from five peri-urban sites across South Africa on how local government is responding to mobility, this research explores how xenophobia is being produced by local governance processes and structures. Building a better understanding of the mechanisms of exclusion in local government is essential not only for planning interventions that may strengthen democracy, but to understand how the daily practices of local government can promote, or undermine democracy.
This study investigates what factors affect Republic of Korea (South Korea)–United States (ROK–US) relations based on a theoretical framework, using event data created by content analysis from 1990 to 2011. South Korea’s economic development led to democratization, which resulted in elite changes. New progressive elites interpreted national interests differently and demanded changes in ROK–US relations. Accordingly, the ROK–US relationship was tense during the progressive administrations. ROK’s economic development attracted more trade with the US, which enhanced the bilateral relationship due to heightened interdependence. By contrast, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)–US relationship and the trade between ROK and China did not significantly affect ROK– relations, meaning ROK’s relationship with other countries does not affect ROK–US relations.
As Africa’s urban systems change and transform with more women becoming educated and getting work outside the home and more men are confronting unemployment and retrenchment, an emerging phenomenon has surfaced challenging common gender identities and roles in the context of families. Current livelihood realities reconstruct and renegotiate how household needs are met and who meets these needs, consequently questioning traditional patriarchal dictates. Increasing numbers of women in Africa’s urban centres play breadwinning roles and become lifelines for their families. Unfortunately, research and literature says little about the experiences of these women as they navigate unusual social spaces. This article investigates the challenges that breadwinning women face and how they cope with these challenges in a Nigerian megacity. Data were gathered through In-depth Interviews (IDIs) with 20 female breadwinning families and the theoretical framework adopted is a triangulation of modernisation and patriarchy theories. Data analysis was done through content analysis and presented as ethnographic narratives and summaries. Important findings were made and presented in this article.
The purpose of this research is to investigate and analyse higher education institutions’ enrolment and drop-out rates within the Gauteng province, South Africa. Large-scale secondary data from the General Household Survey, obtained from Statistics South Africa (2012) were used. This study’s findings show that finance, orphan-hood, transport to the higher education institutions and, to a lesser extent, unplanned pregnancies, are some of the main factors that affect the enrolment rate of students. This study hopes to be useful to policy-makers, research managers and other decision-makers within the higher education (HE) landscape.
Statutes and policy documents, as well as open-ended interviews in Zhejiang, China, were used to identify key aspects of rural land law reforms in China to help develop the national economy. It has been observed that despite its positive effect on general rural economic development such development is compromised by extensive corruption that harms peasants’ interests. Peasants face new forms of exploitation by local governments and businesses, as well as environmental damage caused by over-exploitation of land and resources that becomes a serious hurdle for sustainable development in rural areas.
State repression is particularly likely when social movements target property relations that cause ordinary citizens to suffer. Whether these movements are violent, and whether the state is a liberal democracy is a contingent matter. This is illustrated by India’s ‘Maoist movement’ (which is also known as the Naxalite movement because it originated in an area called Naxalbari, located in India’s West Bengal State). Where necessary, sections of this movement use violent methods to fight for justice for aboriginal peoples and peasants. This strategy, which the author, incidentally, does not endorse, has been seen by the state as the greatest internal military threat to it. Such a perception invites state violence. What is often under-emphasized or ignored is that the movement is an economic, political and ideological threat, and not just a military threat, and it is so through its localized alternative developmental activities, and this is also a reason for the state’s violent response to it.
This paper provides a broad review of agrarian change in Ghana by highlighting the major developments in the agrarian political economy and their implications for agricultural commercialisation and its modifying influence on land tenure systems, livelihoods, production systems, social relations, and labour relations. While current land tenure arrangements and labour relations in Africa are often explained in terms of globalisation, we argue that the historical context of agricultural commercialisation in Ghana shows continuities and discontinuities in agrarian relations from the colonial period to the present. We also argue that changes over the years have blended with globalisation to produce the distinct forms of labour relations that we see today. The commercialisation of agriculture in Ghana has evolved progressively from the colonial era aided by policies of coercion, persuasion and incentives to its current globalised form. The expansion in the range of commodities over time necessarily increased the demand for more land and labour. The article contributes to the literature by providing great insights into changes in land and labour relations due to increasing commercialisation, and how these enhanced wealth accumulation for the richer segments of society and global capital to the detriment of the poor throughout Ghana’s agrarian history.
There has been significant debate about the land occupations which occurred from the year 2000 in Zimbabwe, with a key controversy concerning the role of the state and ruling party (or party-state) in the occupations. This controversy, deriving from two grand narratives about the occupations, remains unresolved. A burgeoning literature exists on the Zimbabwean state’s fast-track land reform programme, which arose in the context of the occupations, but this literature is concerned mainly with post-occupation developments on fast-track farms. This article seeks to contribute to resolving the controversy surrounding the party-state and the land occupations by examining the occupations in the Shamva District of Mashonaland Central Province. The fieldwork for our Shamva study focused exclusively on the land occupations (and not on the fast-track farms) and was undertaken in May 2015. We conclude from our Shamva study that involvement by the party-state did not take on an institutionalised form but was of a personalised character entailing interventions by specific party and state actors.
This study explores the correlates of early sexual debut and risk factors of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among the youth in Malawi. Data was obtained from the Malawi Demographic Health Survey 2010. Out of a sample of 2987 males and 9559 females aged 15–24 years, 1405 males and 5217 females were considered. Chi-square and multivariate analysis was performed and findings presented by gender. The results indicate that females aged 15–19 years (OR=4.18), who were Muslims (OR=1.42), with no education (OR=3.99), were significantly more likely to initiate sexual debut early. Meanwhile, males aged 15–19 years (OR=3.50), from the northern region (OR=2.35) and of the Chewa ethnic group (OR=1.45) were significantly more likely to initiate sexual debut early. Muslims males (OR=0.57), from the poorest (OR=0.69) households were significantly less likely to initiate sexual debut early. Females who initiate sex earlier form a distinct risk group in this study. Specific intervention is therefore needed for young females in their early teen years before they initiate sexual debut.
This article aims to conceptualize political relations in Bangladesh by building a descriptive model of these relations. It draws on the concept of segmentary opposition developed by Evans-Pritchard in his study of the Nuer political system and on the concept of vertical integration used in the study of both industrial relations and party structures in federal states. It is argued that the structure of political relations in Bangladesh is based on the interaction of the logic of segmentary opposition and of vertical integration under leader-based groups. The descriptive model is then applied to two cases, based on qualitative fieldwork in Dhaka and Chittagong, to further clarify the model and illustrate its use as an analytical tool.
This paper explores reactions to election results in the Brong Ahafo region of Ghana from the perspectives of the politics of belonging debates – the distinction citizens of the same nation-state make between those who belong and those who belong less in one of Ghana’s highly competitive electoral regions. It argues that multi-party democracy has intensified or given rise to social and political tensions or conflicts in some local communities rather than enhance democratic ideals and peaceful coexistence
This study examines the political implications of women’s participation in social movements in Thailand. Based on interviews at protest sites and focus group discussions with movement participants as well as interviews with leaders and key informants, the study suggests that political socialization within what is commonly called the color-coded movements has resulted in women acquiring political knowledge and learning about political engagement while being increasingly accepted as competent political actors. Consequently, women have utilized the Red and Yellow Shirt movements to increase their engagement in politics in three different ways. First, women form groups to enhance their political roles and opportunities within the movements. Second, women are expanding their political roles beyond those offered by the color-coded movements by becoming informal representatives, bridging their communities with formal political agents and institutions. Finally, women are increasingly entering into formal politics through the support of their movements.
This study analyses toponymic inscription, the exercise of street/place naming, as a tool for articulating power in Anglophone and Francophone Africa. The focus is on Dakar, Senegal and Nairobi, Kenya, which were respectively indispensable for the colonial projects of France and Britain in Africa. Dakar was for France’s West African Federation what Nairobi was for Britain’s colonial East Africa. It is shown that toponymic inscription was used with equal zeal by French and British colonial authorities to express power in built space. Thus, both authorities used the occasion to christen streets and places as an opportunity to project Western power in Africa. With the demise of colonialism, indigenous authorities in Kenya inherited the Western vocabulary of spatiality but speedily moved to supplant Eurocentric with Afrocentric street/place-names. In contrast, post-colonial authorities in Senegal remain wedded to the colonial tradition of drawing most important street- and place-names from the Eurocentric cultural lexicon. Consequently, although the vocabulary of spatiality in Nairobi projects African nationalism and power, that of Dakar continues to express mainly Western power.
The period from 1992 saw Ghana, under pressure from both internal and external sources, embark on the transition to democratic rule. Despite the strides, an issue that has the potential to undermine Ghana’s liberal democratic credentials has centred on the process of political party financing. The purpose of this paper is to analysehow the existing political party financing system in Ghana is negatively impacting on electoral competition and the country’s democratic process. Drawing on secondary sources, this paper shows that, given that it is political resources that drive party vibrancy and competitiveness, a level playing field in terms of public financing of political parties can help in electoral competition and the promotion of the democratic process in Ghana. However, the importance of transparency and accountability, as well as a legal framework that monitors, denounces, sanctions and punishes abuse in the use of public funds, would be crucial if success is to be attained.
The Pentecostal Movement in Nigeria, like elsewhere, is a distinctly Christian organization by virtue of what it professes and what characterizes it. Increased privileges for leaders, leadership visibility and leadership style have tended to encourage other aspirants to form similar organizations. Despite the existence of an umbrella association like the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria, different centres have emerged, each seeking relevance and influence. Using historical and sociological approaches, this paper discusses the trends in the New Pentecostal Movement in Nigeria, identifies some characteristic types and probes into the basis for belonging, seeking to belong or otherwise. It also interrogates the strategies employed and its effectiveness or otherwise.
The Sunflower Student Movement was a significant event in Taiwan’s political history. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, we argue that the effect of the movement on the attitude of the general public, particularly the young, toward the cross-Strait economic interactions and the perception that Taiwan may be forced to make political concessions resulting from such ties is limited. Based on the Taiwan National Security surveys, we find out that the movement, to a certain extent, reflected public sentiment already existing in the society, and did not push the sentiment further. Compared to the attitude toward national identity, which is more long-lasting, the views on the cross-Strait economic ties may be more volatile, and are thus less predictable.
The Sunflower Movement—an occupation of the Legislative Yuan (the Congress) for 24 days—was an unprecedented moment in the history of Taiwan. We examine the social foundation of the Movement and explore an important factor that has long been missing in the literature of Taiwanese politics: nationalism. We divide nationalism into three dimensions: national attachment, national chauvinism, and feelings toward other countries. Using original survey data collected six months after the Movement, we find that national attachment (being proud of Taiwan) and anti-China feelings are unique dimensions and both lead to a higher level of support for the Sunflower Movement. National chauvinism, on the other hand, is not associated with supports for the Movement. Furthermore, the impact of nationalism is contingent on sociotropic views. People who express higher levels of nationalism are more responsive to the issue of rising income inequality when evaluating the Movement. The underlying logic is when people are more nationalistic they care more about the potential social impact of expanding socio-economic exchanges with another country. These results point to it being necessary to disentangle various components of nationalism and further investigate their effects on individuals’ political behaviors.
This article plays on the word re-location to examine the memories of Indians in South Africa through oral histories about relocation as a result of the Group Areas Act, to memories of parents and grandparents relocating to South Africa from India as told to interviewers and to their own memories of journeys to India and back. The narratives of mobilities traverse time and national boundaries and are counter-posed by narratives of local mobilities as well as stasis. The article identifies ways of narrating, themes of narration and the meaning of memories while noting the re-location of memory construction against the backdrop of South Africa’s democratic transition and the 150th commemoration of the arrival of indentured Indians to South Africa. It argues that the local and the national are important in narrations of transnational journeys, thus advancing a particular approach to transnational memory studies.
The language of instruction in South Africa is currently an extremely controversial issue. As a result of South Africa’s political history, English is almost always chosen as the language of instruction. However, in many cases, students have not been adequately exposed to English when they enter the Foundation Phase. This study reports on research conducted at an Ex-Model C (formerly privileged) primary school in South Africa where an immersion-type model is followed with English as the instructional language. The aim of the study was to explore the practices implemented by Foundation Phase teachers to teach students through the medium of English, and to ascertain how the school has managed to maintain a consistently high academic standard, despite the language difficulties of their students. The findings of the study can make a significant contribution when similar strategies are implemented in schools which are faced by challenges similar to those of the sample school.
We examine the effects of socio-environmental change on personality in Mali in three ways, using data from a longitudinal two-wave (1994, 2004) survey conducted in rural Mali. Firstly, we compare the between-wave personality stability of Anxiety, Self-confidence, Mastery/Fatalism, and Authoritarianism with that in USA, Japan, Poland, and Ukraine. Secondly, we examine socio-economic hardship and political instability in pre-industrial Mali. Thirdly, we examine patterns of psychological reaction to political and social change during the study period. Our findings have implications for comparisons and generalizations across times and cultures about the contribution of socio-environmental conditions to over-time change in personality.
Recent studies indicate that poor migrants are more likely to depend on social capital among other resources for livelihoods in host communities. Relying on insights from the social networks theory and using qualitative data from two migrant sending regions and one migrant destination area in Ghana, this paper examines the role and effects of networks of social capital on migration processes and livelihood strategies of migrants in the construction and domestic work sectors in Accra, Ghana. The paper argues that different categories of migrants fashion out specific migration strategies based on a complex intersection of social networks, which is shaped by specific contexts. Therefore the various ways in which migrants access, maintain and construct different types of networks in varied social locations and with diverse people needs to be interrogated in a more nuanced way and their policy implications addressed.
The qualitative case study explores the effect of cost-sharing policy on the dropout rates of students in public secondary schools in the Limuru district, Kenya. Interviews were conducted with students who returned to school after they had raised money for tuition, teachers serving on the school district committee and the head teachers. The cost-sharing policy was viewed as a burden that has increased dropout, repetition and absenteeism in schools. Children from poor backgrounds continue to be marginalised as some national schools charge exorbitant school fees. Based on the findings the study offers some recommendations for policy-makers to consider.
This paper examines the utility of the hegemonic stability theory in understanding regional power dynamics within Africa. The study operationalizes the concept of regional hegemony by drawing insights from a comparative foreign policy analysis of African regional powers, with emphasis on Nigeria. Using a largely qualitative methodology supplemented with primary data, the paper examines the underlying assertions of Nigeria’s perceived ‘hegemonic’ influence. Through the use of the hegemonic stability theory as a theoretical lens, this paper argues that Nigeria’s foreign policy shows few signs of a continental hegemonic disposition. In applying this theory at a regional level of analysis, the study finds very little empirical evidence that it fits the African regional context. In short, hegemonic claims in Africa are mere (un)official rhetoric and lack substance.
Drawing on 70 interviews with civil society staff in Malawi, I argue that when development trends and issues in the country change, at donors’ wishes, organizations proactively strategize to vie for donor funds. Collected over three research trips, my data show that between 2008 and 2010 there was a widespread belief among civil society in Malawi that climate change was becoming the "it" issue, surpassing HIV/AIDS in predominance. Alongside this belief, there was a dynamic, if invisible, process of organizational repositioning. Comparing the earlier interviews with those conducted in 2014, I contend that the issues of focus, while interesting, are less telling than the ways Malawian organizations endeavor to adapt and respond to them. This paper adds a critical dimension to development literature, investigating a process that occurs when development agendas change.
This study aimed to examine the relationship between maternal health and good quality of life in an attempt to understand the years between 2005 and 2011. Data from the Ethiopia Demographic and Health Surveys 2005 and 2011 were used. Bivariate, Camer-V, chi-square and logistic regression analyses were used to determine the relative contribution of the predictor variables. The hypotheses tested in this study were that gender, wealth quintile, type of place of residence and region are highly significant with women’s education and work status. Females’ expected age (adjusted odds ratio = AOR) for some school training has dropped in 2011 from 0.678 to 0.255 for the age group 25–34, but male expected age (AOR) for some school has increased in 2011 from 0.784 to 2.274. The age of the respondent, age at first cohabitation and socio-economic variables were positively associated with having visited health facilities in the last 12 months and being visited by a family planning worker.
There have been trade interactions between Africa and some Asian countries, specifically India, a South–South trade relation, which are accompanied with outcomes that are based on output, macroeconomic stability and compliant with the agreements reached at different points in time. This study investigates the effects of Africa’s trade agreements with India on Africa’s exports. The findings suggest that there are potentials for Africa’s exports in India. The trade agreements in Africa–India trade relations were marginally trade-enhancing, while Indian high tariffs did not debar Africa’s exports access. However, the non-tariff barriers were more pronounced than the tariff barriers.
China has been engaged with Africa since the 1956. Following the domestic economic reforms of 1978, politically and ideologically motivated engagement gave way to economically and commercially driven cooperation. Successive waves of reforms in China have made the engagement more economically and commercially driven. Initially China’s engagement with Africa in general was dominated by China’s state-owned enterprises. More recently private enterprises have entered the arena.
In discussions on China–Africa, China is often presented as a single actor. In fact, there are many ‘Chinas’ in Africa. More nuanced literature has disaggregated ‘China’ in Africa into different actors. With regard to China’s economic cooperation, the literature has either focused on its state-owned enterprises or the impacts of its commercial relations on local African business and populations. This paper intends to contribute to the growing literature on Chinese private enterprises in Africa. It provides a characterization of Chinese private companies in Kampala, Uganda, based on a recent survey of 42 Chinese enterprises there. It will present the data, analysis and stories of how and when they came, what problems they encountered and how these were solved based on the in-depth interviews that were carried out. The paper will show that many of these companies are relatively small, recent entrants in Uganda, motivated by the potential of the markets and increasingly facing problems with the authorities concerning their visas and work permits. It will be concluded that life for these private enterprises in Uganda is becoming gradually more difficult. There will be a shaking out of the companies that do not provide positive contributions to the local economy and society in general. This leaves many, especially smaller, Chinese private entrepreneurs uncertain about their future in Uganda.
Women have less access to land than men in Africa. Previous analyses have typically identified African indigenous culture as the problem’s exclusive source. With Cameroon, Kenya and Sierra Leone as empirical referents, an alternative explanation is advanced. Here, the problem is characterized as a product of Africa’s triple heritage, comprising three main cultures, viz., African indigenous tradition, European/Christianity and Arabia/Islam. The following is noted as a major impediment to women’s access to, and control of, land: the supplanting of previously collective land tenure systems based on family or clan membership by ‘ability-to-pay’ as the principal determinant of access to land.
China and India have for quite some time been participants in African politics and have employed persuasive strategies to make their presence felt in that continent. The main objective of their current participation and presence in Africa is to exploit energy resources and establish greater political connections there. The Chinese strategy is to be generous with loans and financial aid; the Indian strategy has been to employ populist and democratic measures, highlighting its historical and cultural connections with Africa. Pursuing stronger bilateral relations with African countries has been the principal medium of their continental reach. But bilateral bonding has been taking a backseat recently in their approach vis-à-vis multilateral relations, for which institutional and organisational bonding is being used as the prime medium. South Africa is a conspicuous illustration of this approach. Both China and India share strong bilateral ties with South Africa, which is the frontier state for their outreach to Africa. Their engagements with that country through multilateral forums like the AU, BRICS, BASIC and IBSA exhibit how multilateralism is becoming for them a leading approach relative to bilateralism. Their objective, besides enriching and influencing their bilateral understanding with that country, is to achieve their global ambitions and objectives in tandem with the African continent on a whole. This paper examines the instrumental approach that the two countries employ towards Africa where multilateralism is becoming a prime channel of contact over bilateralism. To what extent this approach has advanced their strategic interests in Africa commercially and politically also needs analysis.
This essay explores the role of textiles, particularly Dutch wax prints, in the lives of women in Ghana, West Africa. Wax prints are colorful message-bearing printed cloths produced in Holland, based on Indonesian batik designs that express meaningful messages. Central to this discussion is the practice of counter-appropriation, that is, how women as individuals are in dialogue with culture by transferring the foreign, in this case Dutch wax prints, into the local in a culturally appropriate way. It positions women not only as cloth distributors and consumers, but also as producers of knowledge through the phenomenon of naming.
This paper builds on the work of Professor George Clement Bond who, over a 20-year period, explored the impact of the movement of rural Yombe men of northern Zambia in search of wage employment and how this migration challenged their kin-based cults. Instead of rejecting capitalism, Yombe society members adjusted it to coexist with the ancestor cult. However, Yombe laborers did not merely appropriate money; by imbibing it with the spirits of the ancestors, they made it a new and meaningful form. In a similar vein, Ghanaian women culturally redefine factory printed textiles from a Dutch import by assigning them local meaning and value through the phenomenon of naming, resulting in an object accepted as foreign that is synthesized and indigenized into something that is meaningful and useful to them, becoming a "visual voice" for creative expression. This essay will show Dutch wax prints as a realm in which women play a key role not only as distributors and consumers, but also as producers of knowledge and of a new cultural form. It positions women as active participants in the global markets who have taken advantage of the economic opportunities offered by technological changes and the subsequent reordering of class relations of production.
The Pointillists – notably Georges Seurat and Paul Signac – were à la mode in the late 19th century. Their paintings relied upon a brushwork that placed points of colour to construct their representations. These points were placed such that when looked at as a whole they revealed a picture of some reality. This article argues the possibility of social pointillism, where the picture one is attempting to paint is of what happens in global social realities. Points in pointillism were daubs of colour. They painted pictures on canvases. Points in social pointillism are forces with powers. They create analytic canvases that reveal fields of power in the starry nights of human being. In order to make this argument, discussion begins at the Otello restaurant; proceeds to presentation of social pointillism; explains how social pointillism is relevant to a starry night ontology, and ends by identifying a virtue of employing such pointillism to paint pictures of starry nights.
If, at the turn of the twentieth century, one wished to study the group that WEB Du Bois referred to as Black America’s "Talented Tenth," Tuskegee Institute’s campus could have served as an ideal laboratory. Still, a century after Booker T. Washington’s death, scholars remain hard-pressed to reconcile the portrait of Tuskegee primarily as a producer of a submissive black laboring class with the school’s illustrious faculty and the progressive black movements, institutions and leaders in education, politics, architecture, medicine and other professions it spawned across the African Diaspora.
This paper investigates teknonymy and multi-nominality as multiple identity markers for Vhavenda from an autochthonic view. Employing an ethnographic research design, and locating its argument within a six-pronged theoretical framework, the paper gleaned its data from two sources – interviews and document reviews. Its participants comprised 100 respondents. From this standpoint, the paper has mounted a discussion of the Vhavenda teknonymy. With reference to the latter, it has given pride of place to both teknonymy and multi-nominality, arguing that the two help engender multiple references, multiple addresses, and multiple identities.
The growing presence of a diversifying group of Africans in China raises broader issues of their status and permanence. The politics associated with African transnationalism in China are evident in Chinese and African government responses and the transnational African voice. This article looks at facets of an African transnational presence and some key responses at a local, international and transnational level to suggest an evolving state of Sino-African relations in which African multilateralism and the transnational African actor play a greater part.
Why has the share of non-institutional finance sources for agricultural households not come down between 2002 and 2012? Is the dependency on non-institutional sources the same across farm size classes? Who are the major beneficiaries of the revival in agricultural credit in the 2000s? Are larger farmers becoming more productive and commercial thus requiring higher levels of credit? Are small farms becoming unviable, making it difficult for banks to finance them? This paper examines these issues empirically based on data from the Situation Assessment Survey (SAS) of Agricultural households and the All India Debt and Investment Survey (AIDIS) conducted by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) in its 59th (i.e. 2003) and 70th round (i.e. 2013) and various publications from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
Compared to the disputed rise of China in Africa, the emergence of India has been rather neglected. Facing a quasi-absence of reliable data and literature, this article makes an attempt to explore the expanding presence of India in Africa’s agro-food sector. Based on a preliminary collection of information in Eastern and Western Africa, the analysis suggests that India’s corporate sector has been the main driver, with the facilitation of pro-active Indo-African business networks historically established in Eastern and Southern Africa in particular. The role of the government of India has been occasional and subsidiary.
Using ethnography from a 1995 ‘race’ crisis at Rutgers University, I show the applicability of George Bond’s writings on inequality. Bond’s ideas about social constructions of the past, organic ideologies, and people’s acceptance of structures that subjugate them, are discussed to demonstrate the use of ‘hoaxes’ and clientage in the Rutgers episode. The discussion occurs in the broader context of theory about social inequality and social dominance.
In this essay, I discuss church state relations in Cameroon through a hermeneutics of the political theology of Christian Cardinal Tumi. I begin with a brief introduction to set the scene and follow it with a discussion of two major works by Cardinal Tumi. In the first book Tumi provides a detailed analysis of his relationship with the political leaders of Cameroon, and in the second book, he articulates his political theology. I conclude by arguing that one way forward for a political theology in Cameroon is to embrace a broad perspective that is not restricted to one’s personal faith in Jesus Christ.
This article is interested in shedding light on why a phenomenon such as Boko Haram came into existence and why it poses a threat to the very existence of the Nigerian state. The Boko Haram phenomenon, I argue, can only be understood as a reaction to more than a half century of corruption, venality, poverty, and abuse by the state predator class. My argument is that Boko Haram is the entirely logical consequence of more than five decades of the post-colonial Nigerian state ruled by a parasitic predator class that is itself a by-product of the colonial state.
This article provides a comparative analysis of the political economy of Chinese and Indian economic engagement strategies in Nigeria. It argues that although China is becoming increasingly prominent in Nigeria partly because of its state-led economic engagement strategy, India’s private sector-led engagement strategy chimes with Nigeria’s neoliberal economic reforms. However, the article maintains even though both Chinese and Indian strategies are not mutually exclusive to either of the two giants in the pursuit of their interests on the continent, African leaders and policymakers need to develop more strategic engagement plans in their dealings with China and India.
The King of Thailand’s Sufficiency Economy (SE) has been heralded and influential in Thailand. It was also featured in the United Nations Development Programme Thailand Human Development Report 2007. Reports and personal stories of applying the SE are widely available. A striking remark is that many of these claims were backdated. Projects, activities, and practice claimed to be its implementation predated the SE in its present form. As the SE is caught in political struggles, this is perceived to reveal propaganda. In this article, through a case of Phooyai Wiboon’s agroforestry, the act of backdating the claims is analyzed and re-interpreted with help of Ricoeur’s concept of narrative time.
Ghana, like other African countries, suffers a huge infrastructure gap. In recent times China has become a major bilateral source of investment in Ghana’s energy infrastructure. This article examines the strategic importance of Chinese infrastructure investment in Ghana’s energy sector in recent times. The study is based on field research conducted by the author in Ghana and on the analysis of semi-structured interviews with Ghanaian policy makers, journalists, civil society organizations, academics and individuals. Additional data were collected on some key projects China has been sponsoring in the energy sector. The paper suggests that China has become a key partner in Ghana’s development efforts as its provision of infrastructural projects soars and its involvement in Ghana’s economy grows. Yet China’s engagement presents a complex dynamic given its dual role as financier of energy infrastructure and at the same time a competitor or seeker of Ghana’s oil and other natural resources.
Cuba’s long military commitment to Angola resulted in two great victories that saved the country from catastrophic defeat and in the end initiated profound regional change. But long warfare also helped to entrench a heavy, elitist authoritarianism which served as a platform for deep presidentialist corruption. An ‘oiligarchy’ enjoys great wealth while simultaneously ignoring the basic needs of the people.
Reflecting on Contested Terrains and Constructed Categories: Contemporary Africa in Focus, a book George Bond and I edited during our work at the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University in the late 1990s, this paper considers the notion of contested terrains, that for George Bond was played out in the scholarship of African studies, in the daily encounters which he had with his colleagues, and in his Zambian research. Bond understood these contestations as continuously operating on and across and often taking place below the surface or at the margins of insititutions. This paper emerged in response to Bond’s invitation to speak about Fanon’s psychiatry writings and his critique of sociotherapy on a panel he was organizing at the American Anthropological Association in 2014 (AAA). After he died, the focus shifted to include Bond alongside Fanon and Foucault underscoring the continued need for dialog on the work of three intellectuals—African-American, African Caribbean, and French. The connections and misconnections between Fanon and Foucault in part the discussion about contested terrains and the willfulness of constructed categories. Indeed, intellectual genealogies, the unknown connections as well as dividing lines was something that interested Bond, the anthrolopologist of the politics of knowledge.
This paper explores the parallel experiences of Black and Brown Americans which are often regarded as mutually exclusive. In discussing the divergent but similar histories of Chicanos and Afro-Americans, I utilize the notion of ‘improvisation’, a re-examination of the 1930 desegregation court case, Roberto Alvarez v. Lemon Grove focusing on how Jim Crow laws also affected the Mexican American Southwest as José Crow custom. Utilizing George Bond’s critical narrative, I argue that the Black/Brown struggle is co-joined in history and the social justice movement. In the Bond tradition, my aim here is to refresh our historical understanding and also to reinvigorate the Black/Brown dialogue.
This paper illustrates how politics on resource entitlement have historically shaped the vulnerable condition of people in Nuapada district (formerly Nawapara sub-division of Kalahandi district) of Orissa, India. It finds that the underutilisation of existing resources in the district, backed by loopholes in district administration, has widened the vulnerability conditions of local people. The collapse of the state command economy during post-economic reform and the subsequent withdrawal of welfare state from welfare activities, which opens space for elite groups and middlemen to exploit both resources and local people, have caused serious disruption in the development of the district as evident from the declining livelihood options and increasing distress migration. Thus there is a need to bring reform in equitable distribution of resources at the state level.
Traditional and social dimensions of wedding celebrations have been altered by modernity. Such alteration is apparent in the emerging culture of conducting wedding ceremonies in event centres as against the use of traditional family social space. This paper investigates the reasons underlying this emerging culture and its symbolism. Findings indicate that conducting marriages in event centres eased stresses associated with celebration. Convenience, accessibility, proximity, and cost influenced the choice of event centres used by celebrants. Event centres are categorised as big, medium and small relative to cost and facilities present. Hence, patronage of any of these leads to social categorisation and delineation of the users as ‘rich’ and ‘poor’, and confers high valuation on the users and the event.
Reliance on traditional methods of birth control causes psychological tension in couples because the fear of unwanted pregnancy bars them from experiencing a healthy sexual life. However, in Assam, half of all contraceptive users depend on traditional methods of birth control. The current study used National Family Health Survey 2005–2006 data. Out of 3840 sample women in the age group 15–49 years, 1286 women are filtered for the present study. Most of the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of traditional method users fall between those of modern spacing method users and terminal method users. Thus, the burden of unwanted fertility is highest among the traditional method users.
The methodology of grounded theory has great potential to contribute to our understanding of leadership within particular substantive contexts. Leadership is a global phenomenon, but appears to have a variety of attributes and seems to elude clear definition. In this research we argue that such variation is contextually derived. Leadership is not only a socially influenced process but also a relation-influenced process that occurs within a social system. The focus in this paper is on the challenges facing leaders engaged in multicultural education. In general, grounded theorists seek to develop theory inductively from systematically gathered and analysed data. An integrative picture or story is developed from this process. In the present instance we explore how conducting grounded theory research according to a qualitative approach accentuates the need to understand and explain contextualised leadership. We conclude by suggesting how leaders might overcome challenges in multicultural education.
This article surveys the intellectual, fieldwork, and professional career of the anthropologist George Clement Bond. Beginning in 1963, he conducted fieldwork in Zambia over four decades and produced a substantial body of writings on history, ritual, colonialism, and contemporary rural life. He also worked in Uganda in the 1980s on the HIV/AIDS crisis. From 1968, he taught at Columbia University, where he was Director of the Institute of African Studies. Bond’s measured outlook on the interrelated conceptual orientations and practical realities that confront the people anthropologists work among and learn from, and also shape their own circumstances, gave meaning and purpose to his work, which was recognized in honors and awards, speaking invitations, fellowships, and elected professional offices.
This paper is an ethnomusicological and media studies collaborative study that discusses the politics of representation on media health images, especially HIV/AIDS in Africa, and how a South African AIDS support group and choral ensemble offers a counter-narrative to the images that are seen in the Western media. Using ethnographic data on the group’s organization, music events, and interviews with choir members, we argue that Siphithemba Choir’s story is a narrative of self-representation that subverts the appropriation of their story by the scientific community, and counters the helpless image of HIV-infected individuals that often comprise the face of HIV/AIDS in Africa in the mainstream media.
This article uses Edward Said’s post-colonial framework to analyze India–United States (US) nuclear security relations in the post-Cold War period as a clash of US Orientalism and India’s nuclear sovereignty as a key marker of India’s post-colonial essence. Through an analysis of the discourses of India and the US with regard to India’s May 1998 detonation and the 123 Agreement, it explores the following questions: To what extent has America’s security relationship with India been characterized by Orientalist discourses? Does the revision of the US post-9/11 security relationship with India as evidenced through the 123 Agreement indicate continuity or change in America’s Orientalist discourses vis-à-vis the nuclear policies of the Indian state? How has this shaped India’s nuclear nationalism? In exploring these questions, it will be argued that US security discourses reflective of Orientalism have constructed India along Orientalist lines; have structured US security policies towards the nuclear strategies of the Indian state (thereby consolidating India’s nuclear nationalism); and, that the revision of the US security relationship with India post-9/11 shows a continuity of America’s Orientalism towards the Indian state and its nuclear program. The article concludes with an analysis of the implications of Orientalism on South Asian security/International Relations.
Current discourses in education circles are on the professional status of the teaching profession due to teachers’ continued involvement in labour protests. This paper discusses whether teachers may still be considered as professionals or workers. There is an assumption that if formulated policies reflect on alleviating the plight and actual conditions in which teachers work, strikes can be halted resulting in quality teaching and learning in schools. A literature review was conducted to seek solutions to this impasse. It is expected that with insight into the actual teachers’ working conditions by policymakers, barriers that lead to endless labour protests may be alleviated to restore professionalism in teaching.
The present paper aims to analyse a number of those slogans collected from the sit-in quarters in Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Using political discourse analysis, it unravels various typical discourse structures and strategies that are used in slogans in the construction of a sub-genre of political discourse in the Arab world. Drawing data from several mediums, including banners, wall graffiti, audio-visual instruments, chanting, speeches and songs, this paper tries to show the extent to which the slogans serve as a medium by which political complaints and comments are dispensed and consumed. This paper draws on a rhetorical analysis to find out their persuasive effect on shaping the Arab intellect and on the change of the political atmosphere in the region. Lastly, this paper attempts to show to what extent the slogans meet the standards of political discourse and whether they can be considered as a sub-genre of political discourse or not.
Political unrest in 2014 threatened Lesotho’s newly found democratic stability. Observers focus on educating the public about the electoral system and encouraging pre-election coalition discussions. However, this analysis suggests that such remedies ignore the institutional influences of Lesotho’s electoral system that undermine both public understanding and stability. Furthermore, a statistical analysis of district competition finds the 2015 elections to be largely consistent with previous elections, but that the percentage of rejected ballots correlates with a district victory for the largest party. Although this may simply be a statistical anomaly, the findings highlight structural challenges and reconsideration of electoral reforms.
This article examines the embattled intersection of magic and rationality in the transnational Sathya Sai movement and positions the magical materializations of the charismatic "godman" Sathya Sai Baba, and the sacred objects thus produced, within the neo-liberal economy. It then explores the tensions between the twin processes of magical production and rational debunking set against the framework of the discourse of nation building in contemporary India as it seeks to be and sustain a global power. The article illuminates the two conflicting discourses of materiality and rationality. It demonstrates that both are ethical subjectivities situated with regard to virtue—a "virtuous materiality" and a "virtuous rationality" —that together create a "critical politics of virtue". The article concludes by tentatively suggesting that the critical politics of virtue can liberate current theory from a unitary understanding of ethical subjectivity in a neo-liberal world.
Although existing research on trust networks shows that ethnic networks, for example, have sustained long-distance trade from the origins of cities and states onward, this article reveals that, even in the absence of connections to cities and states, by their nature and because of their commitment component, trust networks can also be uniquely customized and made to lend themselves to the peculiar enterprise that was slave-dealing in Igboland, even in contexts that are devoid of cities and states and their governmental trappings. This assertion about trust networks is substantiated in the article with an account of the effectiveness of the Aru Igbo trust network, which enabled the extensive participation of the Aru1 Igbo in the slave trade in the lower southeast Niger basin. Also, the article taps into Charles Tilly’s theoretical formulation on error correction to demonstrate that, in spite of the error, correction measures adopted by the abolitionist campaigners to bolster the purposive action that characterized the initial phase of their campaign, slave-dealing and trade in Igboland and in the lower southeast were sustained in spite of all that largely because of the durability and resilience of the Aru Igbo trust network.
This research was undertaken to explore experiences of xenophobia by refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with the health care system in Durban, South Africa. The study adopted a qualitative methodology consisting of 31 in-depth interviews with refugees from the DRC. Framework analysis was conducted. The findings revealed that refugees face medical xenophobia during their encounter with health care workers with language barriers and documentation as the first stumbling block in efforts to seek health care services. The pervasiveness of xenophobia is also experienced in prejudice evident in ethnic slurs, unwelcome and insensitive comments and discriminatory practices, including denial of treatment, contributing to inequality in health care delivery.
This paper examines how Subway, the US fast food restaurant franchise, has adapted to Indian culture. Glocalization theory will be the guiding framework used in this analysis. Glocalization rests on the premise that a universal concept must change to fit and function in a local culture. Blending the local and the global, it provides a passage to empowerment where modifications to a particular commodity can make it prosper in various traditions. Four important themes of glocalization emerged from this analysis: (1) adjustment of restaurant ambience; (2) adoption of Jain values; (3) adjustment of advertising practices; and (4) adjustment of the use of social media. An important conclusion is that, although India is embracing modernity, Subway has honoured many religious and cultural views in that nation.
This paper examines the challenges confronting community-based geotourism as a tool for Local Economic Development in a poor rural community based in the Free State province of South Africa. Data were collected through interviews that were held with participants of the Witsie Cave project, local community leaders and municipal officials, as well as through the content analysis of the project’s documents. The results indicate the need to address a conundrum of intertwined endogenous and exogenous conditions as a strategy for enhancing the viability of community-based geotourism projects.
The benefits of early childhood development (ECD) programmes are strongly supported by evidence of reduced school dropout and repetition rates. However, the literature on ECD is primarily grounded in research based in the United States (US); in the light of this gap in the literature, this paper provides a comparative overview of ECD policy and practice from outside of the US, namely in South Africa and Turkey. As a theoretical framework the paper has followed the World Bank’s Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER)-ECD Analytical Framework. Findings indicate that both countries have established an enabling policy environment for ECD but implementation and the setting of and compliance to standards for quality is still emerging, in spite of massive strides made in this field during the past fifteen years.
This article adopts a non-formalized decision–theoretic model to examine patronage strategies by the monarchy in Swaziland as a means to stave off threats to its hold on power. The article’s main argument is that the logic of patronage is largely about controlling and monitoring local chiefs and placating royal princes with administrative positions and sources of revenue and limiting the insurrectionary potential of non-traditionalist urban groups to absolute monarchical power in Swaziland.
The Rwandan Government has implemented various education policies that contribute to higher enrolment in education, but has become aware that these policies might be less effective for children from poor families. This study investigates the contribution of poverty reduction programmes on education expenditure of households. Using a multi-level regression analysis, combining district data on labour markets with detailed expenditure data on 7,230 households, it teases out the effects of several social protection programmes. The results show that access to health insurance and to waged work are positively related, while direct financial or in kind support are negatively related to paying into the children’s schooling. Non-agricultural employment opportunities in particular seem to stimulate education investments. Reducing the vulnerability of households might provide more equal access to these opportunities.
This study examines the risk associated with inconsistent use of condoms as a risk factor for human immunodeficiency virus/sexually transmitted infections (HIV/STIs) and sexual risk behaviours. The Malawi Demographic Health Survey 2010 data were used. Out of a sample of 2987 males and 9559 females aged 15–24 years, 511 males and 675 females were filtered in the present study. A Chi square test and logistic regression techniques were performed. About 147(28.7%) males and 240(35.6%) females reported inconsistent condom use. The likelihood of inconsistent condom use was higher among females with secondary/higher education (odds ratio’s (OR)=1.46), with more than one partner (OR=4.27), and married males (OR=8.76), with more than one sex partner (OR=1.78).There is a need to raise condom use awareness and improve sexual education about consistent condom use, especially among females, in order to curb the spread of HIV/STIs and reduce sexual risk behaviours.
The Republic of Congo experienced repeated outbreaks of armed conflicts between militiamen affiliated to three main political factions, which affected the socioeconomic fabrics of the Congolese society until late 2000. This paper examines the socioeconomic and environmental impact of interactions between the local population and forcibly displaced people from an environmental sustainability perspective. The findings hold that the impact of repeated political violence and associated livelihoods insecurity escalated resentment towards refugees regarded by some members of the local population as scroungers, despite their visible contribution toward innovative community projects. It is also shown here that although refugees’ livelihoods initiatives were environmentally sustainable, institutional disregard and misrepresentations enhanced misleading interpretations and subjectivities. It is proposed therefore that environmental sustainability is one of the key ingredients in refugee–host relations.
This paper examines how the British managed the 1918–1919 influenza epidemic in Lagos, the reactions of the local population to new sanitary and medical policies enforced during the period, and its social and political implications for future epidemic management in the colony. Unlike several studies which approach the history of the pandemic from global and national perspectives, a focus on Lagos, the colonial capital of Nigeria, one of Britain’s most important colonies provides this paper with a rare opportunity to engage with how local peculiarities informed decisions about the resolution of a global problem. Lagos is chosen as the terrain for discussion because of the ample data generated about it in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries (not just between European missionaries and the indigenous Lagosians, but also for other influential cultural and ethnic groups such as the Saro and Amaro (migrants from Brazil), and the Indian influence on medical policies in Lagos).
Small-scale mining in Ghana has been proclaimed as a net contributor to local economies in many scholarly works. Many writeups have lauded the significant contributions these miners have made or are making in terms of poverty alleviation. Quite significantly too, other commentaries have dwelt on the environmental degradation the miners effect on the communities within which they operate. Such activities have led to the destruction of forest areas, the creation of dangerous pits and diversion of rivers. Besides, the incessant use of mercury in the course of mining has also led to serious consequences for their host communities.
This article, however, sets out to explore an aspect of small-scale mining operations which is yet to see much scholarly work, perhaps due to its surreptitious manner. It looks at the rituals that permeate the workings of these miners in order to tilt the tides of fortune in their favour and how such determination is leading them to the cauldron of spiritual elements in order to accomplish their objectives.
The overthrow of dictatorial regimes in Tunisia and Egypt by revolutionary demonstrations during the Arab Spring in 2011 inspired Libyans to depose the Gaddafi regime. The heavy handedness of Gaddafi attracted the intervention of the West and the United States under the emblem of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973. The article argues that instead of effecting regime change, the demonstrations whose epicentre was Benghazi culminated in a deeply contested civil war. This was caused partly by the United States of America and its allies’ active involvement at the expense of the African Union and its member states.
This paper makes a case for conviviality as a currency for frontier Africans. It argues that incompleteness is the normal order of things, and that conviviality invites us to celebrate and preserve incompleteness and mitigate the delusions of grandeur that come with ambitions and claims of completeness. Conviviality encourages frontier Africans to reach out, encounter and explore ways of enhancing or complementing themselves with the added possibilities of potency brought their way by the incompleteness of others, never as a ploy to becoming complete, but to make them more efficacious in their relationships and sociality. Frontier Africans and conviviality suggest alternative and complementary modes of influence over and above the current predominant mode of coercive violence and control.
Aim is to find out the disparities in cesarean sections among institutional deliveries across segments of the society in the study area. The National Family Health Survey data 2005–06 were used. There were 14,808 women who were found to be relevant for this study. Bivariate results show that cesarean section is highest among women older than 40 years, having the highest level of education, holding skilled jobs, from the highest social hierarchy, who delivered in private health institutions, experienced cesarean section in previous delivery, and had pregnancy complications. Performance of cesarean section may be necessary for safety of both mother and infant.
This paper examines the 2013 municipal elections in Bali subdivision, North West Cameroon. The ethnography utilises participant observation, semi-structured interviews, document analyses and so forth to unearth strategies employed by the CPDM and SDF parties to retain and/or regain Bali Council. The CPDM, in collusion with traditional authorities, was accused of utilising a sacred cult ‘Voma’ to intimidate voters. The SDF was accused of importing witchdoctors from Nigeria and Pygmies from East Cameroon to cast magical spells on the population, to make the people vote for it. The CPDM won a landslide, but struggled to dispel rumours about the impact and consequences of Voma.
By focusing on the case of the Jarso and the Girhi in eastern Ethiopia, this article seeks to contribute to comparative studies on the social, territorial and relational effects of the effort at political and administrative decentralization in multi-ethnic settings. The article analyses the political and social implications of the elements that constitute impediments to social cohesion and socio-economic interaction in the study area. The data required for the study were collected through fieldwork that involved interviews, focus group discussions and field observations. On the basis of the analysis, the article recommends what should be done to create a relational politics of place in which places and spaces that connect people remain open, discontinuous, relational and internally diverse.
In South African universities, a particular epistemic hierarchy exists within which African knowledge and resources are under-valued. This paper examines humanities courses that include content that deliberately aims to interrupt the existing knowledge hierarchies, through a qualitative analysis of spaces where African knowledge is granted importance. The paper provides a snapshot of the potentials for change in South African higher education today, and of the ways in which theories of Africa, for Africa, and about Africa, are being generated and taught.
This paper explores the implications of state land tenure modernization and urbanization-promotion initiatives for human rights in Cameroon. The aim is to promote understanding of the implications of these initiatives for the right-to-the-city of indigenous urban residents. It is argued that the implications are more severe in politico-administrative headquarters than elsewhere in the country. Three different cities have served, at some point, as national politico-administrative headquarters in Cameroon, the study’s empirical referent. The designation of any city as a politico-administrative headquarters invariably creates a land scarcity problem in that city. The problem is aggravated for the city’s indigenous population by colonial and post-colonial planning policies. For this reason, the policies are said to be in violation of basic human rights as stipulated by the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights as well as the African Charter.
South African teachers leave teaching due to factors such as lack of support and adverse working conditions. This study investigated rural teachers’ resilience experiences of teaching in a resource-constrained school. A life history design was used to generate data. The research site was visited six times over 20 months. Fifteen interview–conversations were collected and transcribed. The results indicate that the teachers faced chronic poverty as life-span risks. The teachers listed the unstable education system, resource-constrained teaching environment and chronic adversity as risk factors in their environment. They were also concerned with the illiteracy of parents and demotivated students. Significantly, this study shows how rural teachers fostered hope despite chronic adversity in order to be resilient in their chosen profession.
Since its formation in 1975, The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has attained a mixed-bag of accomplishments in the area of peace and security. Despite its modest gains in this area, the capacity of the organization has been constantly challenged by emerging and recurring security threats in the West African region. These include jihadist terrorism, drug trafficking and the unconstitutional changes of government. Informed by a brief analysis on the theory of security regionalization, this paper assesses the progress of ECOWAS in resolving the aforementioned security challenges, and then determines how the organization could become more meaningful to regional and global security. The data acquired for the paper was gleaned through scholarly deductions and a vigorous review of ECOWAS’ security mechanisms.
Professional development of teachers has been found to be a key initiative in raising standards in South African schools. The aim of this study was to establish the value of the continuous professional development programme on teachers’ learning, learners’ outcomes and whole school change in six special schools in South Africa. The focus was on the adaptation of ‘Learn Not to Burn’, a fire safety programme, and teacher and learner support materials for an inclusive classroom. The study proved that a staff development model based on collaborative networking in the specific context of special education can bring about significant social capital with gain particularly in teachers’ professional capacity, learner outcomes and whole school improvement.
The argument of the moral economy of mines claims to illuminate the consent and associational power of mineworkers, and thereby the real foundation of social exchanges between management and black mineworkers. Our collection of life histories shows how the moral economy was fragile and its codes not widely accepted. As a tool of analysis it does not include certain facets of the workers’ experience, feeling and human essence. The moral–economic relationship was conducive to surplus extraction by eliminating the non-conformist but industrious or sick workers in the labour system. It contributed to morbid sexual and emotional ways of life. The life histories further reveal how the rank-and-file generally endorsed and participated in what Moodie depicts as a positive class compromise struck between management and the workers’ union from the 1980s to the 1990s. It brought to them conditions for a regular family life and ‘advancing humanity’. This notwithstanding, our narrators found that the norm of apartheid gave way to that of discrimination and differentiation between black workers. Management replaced white ‘boss-ism’ by economism and a corporatist model of labour–management relationship. It engendered the spirit of new ways to secure opportunity.
This article examines the increasing problem of corruption with its accompanying "hostage-taking" in the district assemblies, which are the core institutions in Ghana’s democratic decentralization program. I argue that the problems are both self-inflicted and out of the greed and pervasive corruption that have engulfed the political system in Ghana. The article concludes by recommending certain measures that must be put in place if the situation is to be brought under control.
The aim of the research is to examine the HIV risk factors affecting poor health in Ethiopia by epidemiological perspectives. The Demographic and Health Survey 2011 and other secondary data were used. Ethiopian population growth has slowed dramatically or stopped due to HIV and AIDS. A logistic regression and correlation between HIV positive towards AIDS, high risk factors leading to exposure to HIV infection was adopted with selected variables. The study confirmed that the high level of HIV positivity and poor health was highly affected by socio-economic and demographic factors.
The process of engaging the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea stands at a crossroads that presents challenges as well as opportunities. We believe that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) can indirectly help to facilitate North Korean reforms in three ways: (i) Political: via ASEAN’s ability to function as a neutral facilitator of dialogue; (ii) Economic: as models of economic reform for North Korea (particularly based on the experiences of Singapore and Vietnam); (iii) Social: the Choson Exchange based in Singapore is an ideal location for enabling North Koreans to study abroad and thus gain a greater understanding of other countries.
This paper examines the role of Muslim religious organisations in northern Nigeria as religious interest groups in relation to government decision-making, including their role as ‘superior Muslim influence’ in the introduction and dissemination of Sharia law in 12 northern states in Nigeria. Two of the most prominent Muslim organisations in Nigeria, the J’amatu Nasril Islam (JNI) and Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs (NSCIA), are examined in this regard to compare and highlight their lobbying strategies in their attempt to justify claims to representing over 80 million Muslims in Nigeria. This paper suggest that Islam and the support from Muslim organisations were significant influences on government policy-makers involved in the process of adopting Sharia law in the northern states. Overall, this paper concludes that Muslim organisations have superior influence, have significantly marginalised non-Muslims and have focused on Sharia law policy, thus enabling an analysis of the relationship between religion and politics in Nigeria.
The problems of African development and integration with the world of globalisation have continued to attract concern in the policymaking cycle and the academic world, within and beyond the shores of the continent. Ever since the issues of economic development became the continent’s priority, a series of propositions have been advanced and considered. Against a background of post-colonial nationalism, most African leaders have preferred African solutions to African (development and security) problems, despite the region’s continuous reliance on external investment and markets. At the moment, however, this strategy is low priority. In consideration of this, a revival and new dimension of the African Solution (AS) Strategy is observed in this paper. In this regard, global, regional and sub-regional struggles for competitiveness and the resultant hegemonic traits are seen to dominate the unveiling of AS Strategy.
This paper explores the food insecurity level and coping strategies of two particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs) in India. It finds that despite the availability of resources, limited income always becomes a proxy for their food vulnerability because they cannot purchase food items outside state programmes. These groups traditionally adopt various coping strategies to overcome food insecurity at household level and these have become a structure and behaviour for ensuring food security
Two million people were affected in the floodplains and low-lying areas in Sirajgang in 2012. Seven hundred and fifty families were made homeless and forced to live in small temporary huts on the river protection embankments. Unemployment rose alarmingly and the jobless left their villages to find work in larger cities, leaving behind their vulnerable and insecure families. Consequently, women were increasingly required to take on totally unfamiliar roles. Our research utilised in-depth interviews with women managing without the support of their husbands. Key findings highlighted that community resilience would improve if these women were engaged at the local operational level of disaster management.
Utilising a qualitative case study approach, this research study set out to understand discrimination experienced by immigrant students in their interactions with South African students and the prejudice immigrant students expressed against Black South African students. Findings reveal that the discrimination experienced by immigrant students could be clustered into four broad themes, namely categorisations and prototypes; practised stereotypes; academic and social exclusion; and work ethic. Furthermore, statements immigrant students make about South African students seem to fall into two broad categories, namely lack of value for moral integrity and lack of value for education. Educating students to value human dignity and to view each other as cosmopolitan citizens of the world could be a way to ensure social cohesion and harmony of future generations to come.
There is a huge re-emergence of Frantz Fanon’s ideas and an equally huge interest in his work in post-apartheid South Africa, both in the academy and social movement and organizations. Contrary to some commentators, particularly his biographers, this article aims to locate Fanon within the South African struggle for liberation. It is argued here that Fanon, throughout his life, as evidenced by his writings, was highly concerned about apartheid just as he was about French Algerian colonialism. For him, the paper claims, apartheid was synonymous with colonialism and therefore his critique of colonialism was just as much a critique of apartheid. The resurgence of his name and ideas in the country is a consequence of this critique.
This paper examines the response to the 2006 avian influenza crisis in Turkey. Using complex adaptive systems as the theoretical framework, the paper discusses the extent to which the Turkish disaster management system showed self-adaptation during the crisis. Self-adaptation requires organizational flexibility that facilitates sufficient information flow through technical and cultural infrastructures. This study uses qualitative methods to analyze the data. The research findings indicate that during the crisis, Turkish disaster management was faced with critical difficulties related to organizational, technical and cultural capacities that undermined its capacity to adapt to changing conditions. The system was able to manage these difficulties in seven to ten days; however, Turkey’s contemporary disaster response services still require a transformation to effectively respond to any influenza pandemic.
This paper draws from two case study informal settlements and their recent Constitutional Court litigation to explore the connection between informal living spaces, democracy, and housing. The temporal element of this development dynamic is examined through the erosion and building of hope resulting from the political actions of the state and the political agency of the poor. This engagement of time as an element of space is considered through residents’ expectations manifested in social processes reflecting either the criticality of hope as a catalyst for bottom-up developmental agency or waiting as a fortification of the top-down status quo.
This research aims to examine the sophistication of export portfolios of selected Association of South East Asian Nation (ASEAN) and developed Asian economies. It aims to provide evidence of where exactly ASEAN economies are in the context of exports sophistication and structural transformation. Results from a product space analysis indicate that although limited in product scope, there are prospects for ASEAN economies to converge to the level of export sophistication of developed Asian countries. The analysis finds a need for governments to take a more active role in promoting more appropriate industrial and economic policies.
This paper examines how changes in Fertility Rate Differentials affect household portfolio demand (expenditure on food, monetary transactions, goods and services and non-cash expenditure) in Nigeria. The paper disaggregated household portfolio into four categories and established a link between population dynamics (demographic variables) and household expenditure components using the Vector Error Correction Methodology. The estimated equations are used to project the pattern of the different components of household demand based on the optimum case population scenario. The results suggest that fertility dynamics in Nigeria can produce significant effects on the economy via the expenditure profiles of households.
Decentralization is a concept well professed by political elites in Ghana yet there has been inadequate political will to transfer actual power, authority and resources to the district assemblies. Ghana’s current decentralization was introduced in 1988 with a mesmeric mantra of ‘power to the people’, and the concept is now over two and half decades old. This paper examines the extent to which local government reform through decentralization has brought about any meaningful changed relationship between central and local governments in Ghana. This work adopts a retrospective analysis of policy documents and a critical stage review of the relevant literature on the theoretical suppositions and practical experience of decentralization practice. The appointment of assembly heads in Ghana makes the relationship a principal-agent typology. Decentralization is at best a theoretical ramification but its actual practice has been just minimal. The study provides a ‘walk-the-talk’ model that requires political will to address the key challenges of decentralization in Ghana.
This study explores the reflection of recorded economic growth on human development in Ethiopia. The principal puzzle the study unravels is if there is a positive co-variance between per capita income levels and achievements made in life expectancy, educational attainments and reduction in the levels of income poverty in the past decade. To put Ethiopia in a comparative perspective we have attempted to contrast Ethiopia with some of the Eastern African countries. The results of this exercise show that economic growth made in Ethiopia has contributed to human development. Income, life expectancy and school attainments move together; however, life expectancy progresses faster than educational attainments.
In 1992, more than 25,000 United States forces landed in Somalia as part of a 37,000-strong United Nations Task Force (UNITAF) operation. In 2011, a combined total of 8000+ Kenyan and Ethiopian forces were ordered into Somalia. This article demonstrates that American soldiers were deployed to Somalia in the early days of a post-Cold War world, largely as a foreign policy experiment about how to deal with the threats ‘small states’ posed in a new world order. It is maintained that Kenyan and Ethiopian soldiers were deployed to Somalia to deal with some of the very threats American foreign policymakers had identified almost two decades earlier, from refugees to terrorism. To conclude, the article uses public goods theory to contend that military interventions that are ostensibly peacekeeping in nature can be inherently inadequate because ‘self-interest works against the interests of the collective’ (Bobrow and Boyer, 1997: 726). Accordingly, America’s intervention in Somalia between 1992 and 1994 failed to remedy adequately the circumstances and concerns which spawned the perceived need for Kenyan and Ethiopian forces to intervene in Somalia a generation later, in 2011. Unfortunately for Kenyan and Ethiopian soldiers, Somalia’s politicians and political processes might relegate them to realizing little more success than their American predecessors.
According to the UNAIDS Global Report of 2010, Sub-Saharan Africa has about 22.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS. In a textual analysis of government-sponsored and private websites originating in East Africa, we analyze how the Internet and social media tools are used to disseminate information about HIV/AIDS and promote social change among targeted audiences. Our analysis found that content available on selected government and private websites, with minor exceptions, is generally not updated frequently nor systematically targeted specifically to those who can benefit most from the information. The government-initiated websites were populated with information that highlighted national strategic plans and focused on evaluation reports, while the private organizations provided information that in some instances was customized for specific audiences, but overall encouraged grassroots collaborations.
A few key factors affecting usage of all methods and contraceptive discontinuation among women whom are currently married in Ethiopia are discussed. What are the factors affecting women’s contraceptive use? The aim is to explore the two regions on the basis of high total fertility rate (TFR) regions (Oromiya (5.6) and Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region (SNNPR) (4.9)) in the Ethiopian demographic and health survey (EDHS) 2011. A descriptive and comparative study using the quantitative research method is chosen to address the above research question. The study findings show that the contraceptive discontinuation rate for users of all types of methods is 37%. The highest women’s discontinuation rate is for the pill which is 70% due to side effects.
A growing body of scholarship links instructional leadership to effective teaching and learning. This article looks at the ‘what’ of instructional leadership as practised in Swaziland primary schools. A qualitative investigation was undertaken based on individual and focus group interviews conducted at eight primary schools in the Hhohho region of Swaziland. The findings show that demonstrative leadership accompanied by collaborative support and recognition for achievement are important features of an effective instructional leadership programme. The main limitations to optimal learning are the collection of school fees during school hours and balancing English as the language of instruction with preserving the indigenous language. The findings emphasize the importance of mutual effort as the main component of effective teaching and learning.
We examine the impact of four different climatic shocks as perceived by households and community representatives on child learning and health outcomes in Ethiopia; one of the poorest countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. Two waves of household panel data for the years 2006 and 2009 are used and data is collected from both urban and rural areas of Ethiopia. For child learning outcomes we use enrollment, Peabody picture vocabulary and math test scores and for health outcomes we use body mass index z-scores and height for age z-scores.
This paper examines the effects of truth and reconciliation commissions and peace committees on popular perceptions of the judicial systems of Africa. Using data from the Afrobarometer, and conducting mixed effects quantitative analysis, we test whether or not the use of truth and reconciliation commissions (TRCs) and peace committees led to greater popular trust in the courts. We find both cross-nationally, sub-nationally, and over time, the use of TRCs has not led to greater trust in courts (as is often claimed by its advocates), but find some support for the notion that they detract from trust in the judiciary. We suggest this is because such institutions have been established to compete with existing judicial practices, rather than complement and enhance them.
This study examines the contextual beliefs held by interactants in the 2008 quasi-judicial public hearing on the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja Administration in Nigeria, using Odebunmi’s (2006) model of context. The data for the study includes forty video recordings of the 2008 quasi-judicial public hearing on the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja Administration in Nigeria. The findings indicate that the shared contextual beliefs in the public hearing are based on shared knowledge of the public hearing aims and procedure, legal codes regarding landed property, government involvement and knowledge of Abuja metropolis.
The study identified predominant crime type and pattern of crime occurrence in Ile-Ife, Nigeria. The research used crime data, by type and location, from January 2005 to December 2010. The spatial distribution of crime types revealed that 68 cases (49%) of offences against individuals occurred in the core area of the city, 40 (29%) in the transition area and 31 (22%) in the suburban, while 184 (20%), 265 (30%) and 451 cases (50%) of offences against property occurred in the core, transition and suburban respectively. The study concluded that there was notable geographical variation in the pattern of crime locations and that this differs with regard to crime type.
This paper examines the formation of majority-favouring affirmative action (AA) regimes in Malaysia and South Africa. Malaysia’s Constitution premises AA on a group’s special position; South Africa’s refers to unfair discrimination. Malaysia established AA amid continuation of a political order and consolidation of executive power, while South Africa democratized and transitioned from minority to majority rule. Minority groups held less economic power in Malaysia than in South Africa. Consequently, AA in Malaysia is characterized by discretionary decision-making, and quota-based, centralized programmes, whereas South Africa has followed a legislative route involving negotiation and enforcement of target-based, statutory requirements, under less centralized oversight.
Whereas some scholars have shown that urban contexts are the best place for mobilization, some others have argued that the contemporary complex governance transforms the city into a "post-political" space. Focusing on urban residents’ reactions to slum clearance in Nouakchott, the capital city of Mauritania, this paper seeks to explore these two opposite theses about politics in the Southern urban contexts – the quiet encroachment paradigm versus the post-political thought. Both dynamics are useful and complementary according to the scale of analysis: depoliticization on the level of urban governance and politicization on the level of popular politics.
This article discusses factors that shaped the initiation and escalation of the Jarso–Girhi violence that occurred two decades ago. The data required for the study were collected from community leaders, ordinary members of the communities, and administrative and political officers. The data were collected through one-on-one interviews, focus group discussions and field observations. The study shows that the inter-communal violence was the result of convergence and interaction between historical, ethnopolitical, sociocultural and psychosocial factors. The study reveals the impact of ethnically based mobilization in stoking underlying communal cleavages, in breaking trust and cooperation and in escalating communal unrests. The violence featured dynamics of ethnic competition and destruction in which ethnic competitors failed to minimize mutual harms and maximize mutual gains.
This historical essay critically examines the early military settlement projects realized by the French Engineering Corps in Senegal and the Western Sudan during the second half of the 19th century. The French were preoccupied with the establishment of official control over the hinterland, confronting a variety of challenges in situ. In striving to go beyond the prestigious image of the Corps and the discourse on colonial settlement forms as an instrument for domination, this article exposes aspects of uncertainty and haphazardness behind the projects. Visual correspondence with indigenous cultures is expanded, employing a rich variety of historical sources.
After an unprecedented and notable delay, the State of African Cities Report 2014 has been published. It makes a bold claim for re-imagining urban sustainability in Africa, continuing two earlier attempts at shaping the nature of urban discussion among scholars, students, and practitioners interested in cities located in Africa. A systematic content analysis shows that although, as in previous attempts, the report is a major success in highlighting developments in African cities, this year’s attempt is undermined by severe drawbacks, among which are conceptual challenges, a failure to achieve agreement between the report’s claims and research findings, and a bias in focus against smaller African countries and their cities. In turn, there are many dark clouds hanging over this otherwise successful report.
The sexual behaviour of youths in Malawi is believed to play an important role in the spread of sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Relevant data from the Malawi Demographic and Health Survey 2010 and a sample of 16,217 youths aged 15–24 have been studied and subjected to bivariate and logistic regression analysis. The results show that married youths were not interested in using condoms (94.2%, p < 0.05) and that those who were living together were 69 times (OR = 1.69, 95% CI, 1.26–2.26) more likely to be involved in early sexual activity than those who were not living together. It is argued that the results should help other researchers, policy makers and planners to create strategies to encourage these youths make use of contraception.
This study looked at the challenges, needs and transformations of the technology education language teachers who responded to questionnaires and extensive interviews. In total, 88 teachers from 20 institutions, heads of English departments and placement professionals of engineering institutions were involved in the study. It was found that hands-on communication and soft skills training in industry was the uppermost need. The lack of industry exposure and opportunities to articulate is the highest challenge. The heads of department revealed that industrial collaboration is the highest priority. The placement professionals made the point that institutions need to develop communication skills with respect to the current trends in industry.
Although the Black student population in South Africa now amounts to 72% of student enrolments in higher education, the same trend is not experienced in early childhood education (ECE). Research suggests that cultural and linguistic differences between home communities and university settings as well as meeting the academic demands of an institution that is unfamiliar with students’ home languages and cultures can be overwhelming. Using the Force Field Model of Professional Development as a theoretical lens, the experiences of Black students are explored at a previous White university. Findings from focus group interviews indicate that financial restraints, unfamiliar teaching practices and language barriers are amongst the factors that are experienced as barriers and could serve as reasons for the low enrolment in ECE.
The aim of this article is to show a comparative analysis of contraceptive use in areas of traditionally high fertility that have gone through profound changes. Data have been taken from the latest Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). Logistic regression models were adopted for four selected representative countries, namely Egypt, Mali, Namibia and Niger. There were two selection criteria: data should be recent, and selected countries should have high (Egypt 57.4%; Namibia 46.4%) or low (Mali 7.5%; Niger 10.0%) contraceptive use. The probability of using contraception when a woman has had one to four children is 2.4 times higher than when they have had no children. Contraception data are always gathered at a point of time, but cross-sectional data are not sufficient to understand all the mechanisms hidden behind contraceptive use. Different contraceptive behaviours need good estimation tools to develop specific family planning programmes.
Tanzania’s child mortality rate—between 103 and 130 deaths per 1000 live births–is well above the world average. The data from the Tanzania HIV/AIDS and Malaria Indicator Survey 2007/08 were used in order. There were 27,511 children included in the analysis. Regression analysis focused on child mortality based on maternal and fertility behaviours. Children belonging to the group of higher birth order faced 0.17 odds of dying. A birth spacing of 24 months or longer was observed in the successive birth interval for 76% of the respondents. Focusing on the study’s findings, encouraging longer breastfeeding practice is one way to help produce a healthy baby.
Islamic scholars raise different opinions and views on modern insurance practices. Some hold that private insurance services and instruments serve as assurances that are allowed under Islamic law, whereas some others oppose this view arguing that there are serious doubts on their compatibility with Islam. Islam does not allow interest-based approaches and practices in the economic field; for this reason some Muslims are cautious vis-à-vis insurance services. Reactions by scholars to the insurance practices and implementation do not eliminate the needs of Muslims who want to regulate their daily lives by the Islamic tenets. Those who hold that conventional insurance practices are not compatible with Islam stress that there could be an alternative to this practice that would also be compatible with Islamic law. There are some versions of the companies created to address such concerns in Iran and Malaysia. Such institutions are pretty rare in countries such as Turkey, where Islamic finance receives little attention. For this reason, the study analyses the Takaful practices in Turkey and measures public awareness on this new practice. The results of the survey are tested empirically and some insights are offered accordingly.
Ghanaian women have made, and continue to make, considerable progress on their journey to the upper echelons of the decision-making institutions of the country. However, the overall number of women in decision-making positions, especially in the civil service, is distressingly small. At the end of 2011, for example, of 36 positions available only six were filled by women, as chief directors of a ministry. What is being witnessed in the civil service, then, is what has been described in the academic literature and popular press as the glass ceiling. This paper examines what has been and is being done by government, and what sort of strategies will be necessary to deal with the problem. The questions addressed are what are the strategies; and how effective are they in breaking down the glass ceiling that appears to exist in the civil service and which prevents women from progressing into senior management. What is the way forward – or up – in breaking through the glass ceiling?
Conventional wisdom holds that democratic governments listen to their populations, while authoritarian governments do not. This paper questions the extent to which this dynamic applies in cases of government scandals, using the illustrative cases of China and Kenya. We expect democratic countries with free media to be responsive and authoritarian states to ignore public pressure. Counter to this expectation, however, authoritarian China is more responsive to public pressure to clean up scandals than democratic Kenya. Using case studies and quantitative analysis, we argue that while democracy and free media are important for government responsiveness to scandal, they are neither necessary nor sufficient conditions. We assert that political will, state capacity to respond and high public expectations for state action are also necessary.
The purpose of this article is to demonstrate some of the ways in which rural histories can enhance our understanding of both rural and urban resistance, both past and present, in contemporary South Africa. In order to do so, it explores two books in conversation with each other, Thembela Kepe and Lungisile Ntsebeza’s edited volume Rural Resistance in South Africa: The Mpondo Revolts after Fifty Years as well as Peter Alexander, Thapelo Lekgowa, Botsang Mmope, Luke Sinwell and Bongani Xezwi’s Marikana: A View from the Mountain and a Case to Answer. These two books provide a useful platform from which to engage in a re-examination of rurally based protest and repression in order to locate some of the suggestive links, particularly in regard to the transmission of repertoires of struggle, between the Marikana strike and the Mpondo revolts, as well as the on-going struggles of the organised poor in some of South Africa’s urban centres.
This study investigates the status of the Druze women in Israel, focusing on the effects of the frequent interactions between the Druze and the more permissive Jewish-Western society. The main question posed is why Druze women accept the double standards of freedom, especially on sexual morality, that expect them to be chaste but allow sexual freedom to men. I argue that this is a patriarchal deal, in which women trade their sexual freedom in exchange for access to higher education, and to the prestigious status of moral guardians from western temptations. The paper is based on narrative analysis of in-depth interviews conducted with 50 Druze students, half of them male and half female, enrolled in Israeli universities.
Based on archival and ethnographic research, this paper examines the introduction, nature and implementation of a recent anti-immigrant act in Guangdong province and its implications in the regional, national and international contexts. Chinese state regulation of undocumented African migrants is analyzed with regard to the legal production of African ‘illegality’ in the Guangdong context; the contradictions in the implementation of the Guangdong Act and its unintended consequences; and the discrepancy between anti-African immigrant campaign at the local level and pro-African political ideology at the national and international levels.
My central aim in this paper is to evaluate the outcomes of the amnesty programme established in mid-2009 by the Nigerian government as a way of resolving the groundswell of violence in the oil-rich Niger Delta region. In particular, I focus analytic attention on the planning and implementation of the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) process of the amnesty. I argue that while the amnesty promotes non-killing alternatives to conflict resolution and opens a door for stabilisation, its current planning and implementation is flawed and unable to reduce the long-term potential for armed conflict in the Niger Delta. Far from been a transformational strategy, I argue that the amnesty programme has become a strategy of gilded pacification essentially targeted at buying off militants and re-establishing oil and gas production in the Niger Delta without addressing the multilayered causes of peacelessness in the region.
The 1992 decentralization reform in Mali failed to address the deficiencies embedded within the state. The resurgence of the Azawad crisis and the coup d’état of March 2012 have made these limits striking. After a brief account of the causes behind the century-long decay of Tuareg people, I will show that the 2013 elections may only represent an ephemeral solution unless strong policies of institution strengthening are deployed and the northern elites are put in condition to exert legitimate authority. The decentralization reform and peace agreements of the 1990s and 2000s have further increased the weakness of security forces. Moreover, they proved unable to provide northern elites with adequate means for securing legitimation and activating a process of institutional anchoring.
Traditional or indigenous politico-administrative institutions, as opposed to those of western origin, appear to be regaining their once lost allure in Africa. Yet, it is not enough to simply extol or advocate a return to tradition. There is a need to examine the implicit hypothesis of such advocacy. Are traditional institutions truly capable of making a positive contribution to ongoing efforts to promote good governance and, ultimately, development in Africa? The present study attempts to address this question by analysing the traditional system of Meta, an acephalous polity with a tradition of autonomous chiefdoms and village-centric orientation, in the Northwest Region, Cameroon. A sample of village-level initiatives undertaken within the polity’s decentralized indigenous politico-administrative framework, and region-wide development projects under the auspices of centralized modern institutional bodies, are compared. Results show the indigenous systems markedly outperforming their modern counterparts, particularly based on outcome measures of good governance. This provides some empirical justification for recommending the incorporation of traditional institutions in the modern governance process in Cameroon in particular and Africa in general.
This study investigates the importance of social-ecological systems in the conservation of forest and woodland resources in a planned resettlement area in Zimbabwe. The study uses methodological integration, comprising a questionnaire survey and participatory rural appraisal that were conducted on five randomly selected farms to explore the way resettled communities interact with tree resources and the cultural and traditional practices that they employ to conserve the resources. The study concludes that forest and woodland resource conservation is a function of complex and dynamically linked processes that are not only embedded in biophysical space but also connected to socio-economic and political realms depicting the livelihoods, social needs and culture of members of the resettled communities. This knowledge is important for designing conservation strategies in future resettlement areas.
This article provides an overview of the policies of the colonial and post-colonial state regarding the tribal people of Andhra Pradesh. The penetration of colonial capital, the policies of the Nizam state which supported this and the resultant process of land alienation is analysed, followed by the presentation of various attempts by the post-colonial state to return tribal land by means of the Land Regulation Act, to rectify the wrongs of the past and to halt any further alienation. The article concludes by arguing that the state has not been successful in ending the process of land alienation which destroys tribal life.
The right to life is inherently connected with the right to food which implies that any foodstuff be nutritious and safe. The government of Bangladesh bears binding obligations to protect these rights under both international human rights instruments and its national constitution. The violation of these rights has, nonetheless, been commonplace causing numerous human deaths and terminal diseases. The perpetrators have been adulterating foods, flouting laws with impunity and taking advantage of regulatory impotence and governmental lenience for decades. Laws exist in books, regulators subsist in theory, but consumers die without remedies. This situation must not prevail forever as every human has an inherent right to live until their natural demise. This article aims to explore the binding obligations of the government to prevent food adulteration and to protect people’s essential rights. It highlights that numerous laws exist almost invisibly in the country, and recommends that their enforcement be reinforced in order to protect the people who are exposed to the overly contaminated food markets in Bangladesh.
In the early 1970s in South Africa two developments coincided. Workers in the port city of Durban struck, triggering a union movement which was crucial in defeating apartheid and which remains the society’s largest organized force. And radical scholars began to analyse apartheid as a system of class domination. The two were related, for the scholarship helped convince middle-class radicals to join the union movement. It also made democracy and a critique of private economic power key themes for the movement. The relationship between the ideas and the movement show the limits and possibilities of academic influence on social movements.
This article, based on in-depth oral interviews, focuses on the conflicts between Bororo Fulani pastoralists and Yoruba farmers in Saki and Iseyin towns of the Upper Ogun River (Oke-Ogun), Oyo State Nigeria to show the power disparity and competition over land resources. The conflicts that occurred between Bororo Fulani pastoralists and Yoruba farmers are classified as: economic (crop destruction and cattle killing); social (murder, rape, armed banditry, molestation on both sides of the conflict); and communal (large-scale destruction of villages, pastoral settlements and markets). Other conflicts involved access to grazing and water resources and access to markets. These conflicts were products of resource scarcity and broader challenges of power relations between indigenes and settlers/migrants in Nigeria. Ethnicity became more conspicuous among local people as these conflicts intensified. This article discusses the intervention of Yoruba traditional rulers (Oba) and Fulani headman (Ardo) in the formation of peace committees in Iseyin and Saki towns.
This article provides a new perspective on parliamentary representation in South Asia, focusing on the collective under-representation of population majorities based on the macro-demographic categories of age, class, and gender. Situating this analysis within debates on descriptive representation, it presents the first comparative analysis of the contemporary demographic characteristics of members of parliament (MPs) in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Highlighting three major gaps in parliamentary representation, it finds quotas, proportional representation electoral systems, and leftist parties to have positively impacted the descriptive representation of South Asian women, the working class, and young adults.
The Niger Delta militancy and Boko Haram insurgency pose the greatest security threat to Nigeria since the end of the civil war in 1970. This article places both rebellions in comparative perspective. It argues that, though spatially and ideologically differentiated, both insurgencies are products of the dysfunctional character of the Nigerian state. Owing to poor governance, the state relies essentially on repression and the military option in managing challenges to its legitimacy, leading to the radicalization of violent non-state actors. The article recommends the need for developmental politics and a critical re-examination of the National Question to make the state more relevant to the people.
Electoral violence in Nigeria has continued to defy every policy put in place to check it. A comparison of elections from the First Republic to the present Fourth Republic reveals that the focus of policy strategies are on the conduct and administration of elections without an attempt to change the objective of seeking political offices through elections. This objective, which is using political office to accumulate private wealth, is the reason politicians employ ruthless means to win elections. While immediate and short-term policies should continue to focus on eliminating rigging and thuggery during elections, medium and long-term policies should seek to reduce the material attractiveness of political offices, political corruption, and the capacity of politicians to accumulate private wealth from state offices.
The study of minor parties has largely focused on well-established democracies, even though these political organizations play significant roles in new and emerging democracies. With Ghana as a case study, this investigation provides a theoretical path to understanding the normative role of minor parties in political competition, especially in developing nations with single-member plurality systems. By placing emphasis on the experiences of such parties in Ghana’s 2012 elections in the Fourth Republican dispensation, this article examines the value and importance of minor parties in helping to create and maintain stable democracies. In spite of the recognizable obstacles minor parties face, we argue that they nevertheless contribute to the health of a burgeoning democratic culture.
This study focused on the experiences of a principal in developing a collaborative practice for teachers in his school. A qualitative research design was employed to determine the views of the principal in initiating and maintaining a collaborative culture in the primary school. A narrative analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings show the necessity of supportive leadership, how important it is for teachers to share their intellectual property and the benefit of creating supportive conditions for teacher collaboration. The study provides a tentative theoretical framework for a better understanding of the role of leadership in teacher collaboration and suggestions for teachers who would like to develop practical learning communities in their schools.
This paper argues that policy space ownership dynamics, political and historical institutional variables determine the implementation of reforms advocated within the context of the international transfer of public sector reform models to Africa. Through the case of the Malawi Hospital Autonomy reforms, this paper demonstrates that although policies transferred by international donor organisations to African countries through aid conditionality may be initially adopted so as to secure the much-needed developmental aid, the actual implementation of such reforms is not an automatic process. This is due to contextual factors, which in part include the neo-colonial struggle for policy ownership in the face of conditionality, path dependency tendencies and veto players that are constrained by deeply entrenched political and historical institutional proclivity that lead to policy stability even in the context of coercive policy transfer pressures. Taking a qualitative approach, the analysis combines the use of primary and secondary data. The study findings show that while other African countries successfully implemented such reforms, Malawi has not, due to specific implementation, historical, political and institutional factors.
At the beginning of 21st century (ethnic) civil wars have been proliferate all over the world. Many ethnic conflicts – for example the conflict in Sri Lankan between the Sinhalese majority government and the guerrilla fighters of the Tamil minority – are characterized by constant efforts for conflict resolution interspersed with renewed violence, with cycles of military escalation and de-escalation. Also, they are marked by the helplessness of the international actors, who profess their interest in a resolution and try to mediate between the contending parties. But they are rarely successful – why? I assume that the most important question in war and peacetime is whether security is possible to achieve to prevent the security dilemma escalating. In many Asian and African countries people perceive politics and security in ethnic terms. Thus how a party defines security is of decisive importance concerning whether a conflict can end in peace or will be solved militarily. Within an exclusive security concept, security can only persist if the other is annihilated or oppressed by military means, while inclusive security concepts can achieve security by special arrangements, peace agreements or security guarantees. Third parties, who are engaged in mediating violent conflicts, have to keep in mind that it is the elusive balance of these security schemes which determine successful negotiations and at least a permanent solution. To reach a lasting peace it is not sufficient for external actors to provide security; in the long run, they must transform exclusive into inclusive security concepts.
The emergence of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) group of states as a new geopolitical power bloc has received substantial coverage in the media. South Africa’s inclusion in the group has been particularly controversial, and media attention tended to focus on the country’s relationship with China against the backdrop of the BRICS alignment. The media industry itself has also been a part of global movements of people and capital. This article seeks to establish how this relationship has been represented in the South African media, and to explore the attitudes of senior journalists and editors towards South Africa’s position within the changing global geopolitical landscape.
This paper analyzes the experience of Bharti-Wal-Mart, a joint venture between Wal-Mart and Bharti Enterprises (an Indian telecommunications company), based on the principles of glocalization theory. By and large, glocalization refers to the adaptation of multinational corporations (MNCs) to local cultures. MNCs achieve this by immersing themselves into local cultures and by adopting unconventional marketing techniques. A major finding of this analysis is that globalization is not monolithic. It is not a homogenizing factor that forces local cultures to follow the norms, practices, and values of a big corporation. In fact, Wal-Mart executives quickly learned that imposing the Bentonville blueprint on local Indian populations would be doomed to failure from the beginning. An important focus of this analysis is to establish a framework for greater understanding of the strategies adopted by Wal-Mart in India.
Colonial legal historiography has tended to focus on customary tribunals rather than ‘European’ courts. This article offers a new vantage point from which to view Kenya’s legal system by looking at colonial judges through the eyes of the trial lawyers who appeared before them. By the late 1950s, Asian lawyers were numerically superior to Europeans and there were only a handful of African advocates. The focus of this article is these advocates’ day-to-day court experiences, and their assessment of individual judges’ competence, roles and attitudes. Their oral testimony adds to our understanding of the function of Kenya’s superior courts and the characters and outlook of the judges and lawyers who staffed them.
The North American scholarship on gated housing communities posits the desire for security as the main driver for gating, but does this hold true for less wealthy countries? To address this question, this study examines evidence of why people live behind gates in Malaysia and Ghana and investigates the socio-economic implications of gating. It uses a critical institutional framework anchored on Foucault’s interpretation of ‘panopticon’ and Runciman’s theory of relative deprivation, while drawing empirical evidence from surveys and emic experiences. It finds that, while security is an important reason, it is the provision of quality housing services that is reported as the single most important reason for living behind gates. ‘Quality service’ is, however, shorthand for a preference for privileged status. Further, the paper reveals that it is more helpful to see the binary between quality and security as constituting a flexible continuum of motives. Inhabitants of gated housing communities may be primarily motivated by quality service or prestige. Yet, as they set themselves up against the rest of society by enclosing themselves in walls of affluence, they begin to feel a need for greater security. This feeling of insecurity is heightened as people outside the gates feel relatively deprived. Thus, the desire for security becomes illusory and attainment of privilege, pyrrhic, while the harsh socio-economic conditions for a large stratum of the urban population living outside the gates persist and are sometimes worsened.
The paper discusses participation of the public in local councils in Malawi in the context that Malawi has had no councillors since 2005. The paper is based on empirical evidence collected through a largely qualitative research design. It adopts a case study approach focusing on Lilongwe District Council and Balaka Town Council. The study has established that the absence of councillors in Malawi has negatively affected the participation of the public in local public machinery. Analysis of the empirical evidence indicates that in the absence of councillors, (i) local people are detached from councils because of a political leadership vacuum that has been created, (ii) withdrawal of formal policy spaces has culminated in the weakening of voices from below, (iii) power struggles among the actors sitting in for councillors impairs them for motivating people to participate in local public life at the council, and (iv) the interim participatory structures have ended up being patronage oriented rather than community-serving oriented as envisaged. The paper holds the view that, in the absence of councillors, participation in local public affairs is largely limited to the people that are connected to the influential political and social figures and networks.
Civil Society and many youth activists were elated when the youth, those aged between 21 and 40 years, were given prominence in Ghana’s parliament after the 2012 elections. Indeed, as many as 44 young people were elected during Ghana’s 2012 Parliamentary Elections. Prior to this, the number of young people in Ghana’s parliament was negligible. In view of the demographic advantage of the youth and their invaluable contributions to Ghana’s political history, there have been incessant calls for their representation and an eventual return to the days of the 1950s when politics was dominated by the youth. The outcome of the 2012 Parliamentary Elections was therefore hailed as unprecedented and described by many as a giant step towards youth representation in national decision making. However, a survey of all the young parliamentarians and some 4400 young people carefully selected through purposive sampling provides the basis for this paper’s thesis that the growth in the number of young people in Ghana’s parliament does not necessarily guarantee youth representation in national decision making; rather, it promotes tokenism, exclusivity and co-optation of the youth into decision-making structures of state. The study makes practical recommendations to create a relationship between youth in Ghana’s parliament and youth representation.
This article examines calls for the introduction of partisan politics into the District Assemblies system, which is the core institution in Ghana’s democratic decentralization program. I argue that in spite of constitutional provisions and an enabling legislation on the need for a ‘politically neutral’ District Assemblies system, this has not been the case, ironically partly due to the composition of the membership of the Assemblies as provided for in the 1992 Constitution and the unnecessary interferences by governments. This situation, the article notes, has undermined the effectiveness of the District Assemblies system. The article concludes by recommending certain measures that must be put in place if the situation is to be arrested and ensure the attainment of the goals of the District Assemblies system.
Austronesia, one of the largest language families in the world, covers a vast area from Madagascar in the extreme west to Easter Island in the far east, Taiwan in the north to New Zealand in the south. The languages are spoken by the people of insular southeast Asia, Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia in the Pacific, as well as certain parts of the Asia mainland. The vernacular architecture of the people that belong to this language family shows certain shared characteristics that seem to indicate a common origin in the distant past. The Grand Shrines at Ise, Japan pose an intriguing phenomenon because they possess striking architectural features that are reminiscent of Austronesian vernacular architecture. This paper is an attempt to investigate the phenomenon using the findings of studies by experts from other disciplines such as historians, anthropologists, linguists and others, based on the link between culture, language and architecture.1
We examine a variety of problems relating to toponymic inscription processes in urban sub-Saharan Africa. The objective is to promote understanding of: the origins, evolution, nature, extent and social implications of these problems in an era of globalization; the vocabularies of built space; and the navigation techniques of inhabitants of supposedly nondescript built space in this region. We employed primary data based on in situ experiences and secondary data from published and unpublished documents. We found that the region’s toponymic inscription problem, its built space, and urban vocabularies are deeply embedded in its European colonial legacy. Furthermore, we found that urban residents in this region have devised functional means to navigate their seemingly nondescript space. These revelations promise to fill some historiographic gaps in the literature on toponymic inscription in Africa in particular and urban history and planning in general.
This study examined secondary school teachers’ understanding of the HIV and AIDS education policy and curriculum in Zimbabwe. The study was informed by the Concerns-Based Adoption Model. Twenty teachers, four school heads from the participating schools and two Ministry of Education officials from Masvingo provincial offices participated in the study. Data for the qualitative case study were collected via individual interviews, focus group interviews and open-ended questionnaires. The study found that teachers had mixed perceptions of the HIV and AIDS school policy. Few teachers had a clear understanding of the policy and curriculum innovation while most of them were uninformed, ignorant, frustrated or confused regarding this policy and the implementation thereof. Overall, there was a disjunction between policy, curriculum requirements and teacher understanding and conceptualisation of the subject area due to a lack of professional qualifications and the non-availability of policy and curriculum documents. It is recommended that the Ministry of Education should become proactive in developing teachers’ knowledge and skills via significant and ongoing professional development and training for all teachers in HIV and AIDS education. School heads should provide support with regard to enhancing teachers’ understanding of HIV and AIDS education for effective implementation of the subject area in schools.
This study aims to explain how adolescents in a rural high school conceptualise school violence. Qualitative data were collected over two two-day periods (24 hours) through child-centred tasks like drawing and the completion of open-ended sentences, informal conversations regarding the given activities, observations documented as visual data (photographs), a research journal, and focus group discussions. In total, four boys and five girls participated in the study. Results of the study indicate that the adolescents (aged 15–17 years) view school violence both as negative, in that it causes harm, and positive, in that it serves as a strategy to ensure order and protection. The adolescents conceptualise violence as interweaving constructs of power, discipline and aggression. Future adolescent-focused interventions regarding violence must include conversations about these nuanced understandings.
This paper investigates the implications of transitional politics to the processes and outcomes of the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration (DDR) programme targeted to the Maoist ex-combatants in Nepal. It shows that the DDR programme in Nepal was unconventional because of (a) following its own context-specific model developed outside of an established DDR framework, (b) being a process led by national actors in the absence of external intervention, and (c) offering no space for non-state actors such as civil society and business to engage in designing and implementing management of the Maoist arms and armies. Highly politicized by conflicting needs and interests of key political actors, the DDR programme was stalled for nearly six years before a resolution about the future of the ex-combatants was forged. Failure of the political actors to forge a common shared outcome of the DDR programme, lack of clarity in the peace negotiation document in terms of processes of rehabilitation and integration of the ex-combatants, and minimal political will of the Maoist to participate in the DDR programme have been identified as key political constrains that have significantly implicated and altered the modality, function and outcome of the DDR programme in Nepal.
In this article the focus is on law that governs the transfer of academic employees in Swaziland. A literature study of relevant law sources brought a lack of higher education law that regulates the transfer of academic employees during a merger to light. It is this problem that the authors aimed to address in this article. The authors, in an attempt to provide a legal framework for the transfer of academic employees, considered general labour law and case law. The transfer of academics during the merger of three colleges into a private university in 2010 was studied as a practical example. The contribution of this article is that it provides information to higher education institutions in Swaziland who are contemplating merging, the legislature and policymakers who have to adopt law and policy exclusively regulating the transfer of employees in the higher education sphere and academic employees who may become transferees during future mergers.
The creation of an army loyal to the state is one of the most important institutional tasks of post-colonial leaders. But how do novice political leaders develop the capacity to subordinate the armed forces to the authority of state institutions? This essay explains alternative methods of formulating post-colonial civil–military relations and explains why four states – India, Pakistan, Ghana, and Tanzania – took such different routes of institutional development. I make two arguments. Firstly, building armed forces that willingly acquiesce to state authority is always a critical issue of regime change – whether to democracy or some other form of government – though it is more difficult to accomplish in some contexts than others. Secondly, the political and socioeconomic contexts in which armies must be built are very different and thus pose dissimilar challenges and tasks to those crafting new armies and civil–military relations. I will assess the power of several variables to explain the disparate outcomes of the four cases: the quality of political leadership and leaders’ approach to the armed forces, the strength of political institutions, ethno-religious and regional policies, civilian control mechanisms, military–societal relations, and foreign influence.
This study examines the reform trajectory of financial supervision in South Korea after the 1980s, focusing on external and internal political–economic factors. Research results indicate that the changed economic landscape led the government, which once utilized financial supervision as a tool to support industrial policy, to alter its aims and pursue the development of the financial market itself. During this transformational process, the 1997 Asian financial crisis functioned as a powerful stimulus for the reform of the previous supervisory system. The process was also marked by social actors’ efforts to affect related policies and the government’s efforts to control the reform process, as well as confrontations between organizations that supported contradictory reform plans. A multi-strategy approach including in-depth interviews with a senior staff member from a government financial regulatory agency, literature reviews, and secondary data collection, was adopted in order to enhance the validity and reliability of this paper.
This paper addresses the effects of the mixed system used for the last three elections in Lesotho (2002, 2007 and 2012), a small African country with a turbulent history regarding opposition acceptance of elections. The decision to implement a mixed system was in part to encourage democratic stability, yet whether the electoral system has become more conducive to democratic competition is unclear. Through an analysis of national and district-level results, this paper addresses the following questions. First, at the district level, is competition consistent with Duverger’s law or the contamination thesis and is a progression over time evident? Second, does the population size of a district influence the number of candidates and the concentration of votes? Finally, following recent research on detecting electoral fraud, this paper tackles whether the reports of district results suggest extra-institutional manipulation.
The young nation of South Sudan is currently engaged in a review of its Transitional Constitution with the aim of finalizing a Permanent Constitution by 2015. One of the key issues the subject of negotiations is whether the Permanent Constitution should contain power-sharing features and if so, whether those features should be formal or informal. While it is widely accepted that the Permanent Constitution will contain federal elements, this article gives consideration to the way in which formal and informal power-sharing arrangements that are found in federations such as Nigeria, South Africa and Ethiopia, could be employed by South Sudan.
The problem of disabilities is growing all over the world. Nevertheless, some progress has been made since the year 1981 was proclaimed International Year of Disabled Persons. In 2001 people living with disabilities accounted for 5% of the South African population. Because of their disabilities or the perception society has regarding their potential, this population is mostly economically inactive. This study assesses the relationship between disabilities and the adverse socio-economic impacts. Both descriptive and logistics regression models are used to understand the problem by exploring the data of the 2006 South African General Household Survey. The overall people living with disabilities and aged 15–49 years is estimated at 1742 (961 males and 780 females), when exploring people with disabilities findings reveal that the Western Cape Province’s disabled are mostly affected by physical disabilities (40%). People living with disabilities are 3.5 times (p < 0.01) more likely to suffer from illness/injuries (flu, tuberculosis (TB) and severe cough, diarrhea, blood pressure and HIV/AIDS) than others. Therefore, the study aims to contribute to a better condition of people living with disabilities in South Africa by informing and possibly changing the public perception about them.
This paper analyzes the change in the composition of the North Korean elite from 1997–2010. It examines 256 public appearances by Kim Jong Il that were reported as an ‘inspection,’ ‘field guidance’ or ‘on-the-spot guidance’ visits. In particular, the paper examines 30 mentioned individuals who accompanied Kim Jong Il at least five times from 1997 to 2010 on these inspection tours. It finds that there was a great deal of volatility and change from 1999–2004 followed by a period of stability. Further, there was a shift away from a conservative perspective to a more moderate and pragmatic perspective surrounding the ‘Dear Leader.’ This has continued under the current leader, Kim Jong Un. The implications of this shift are discussed.
The intention of this paper is two-fold; firstly, it is to explore the causal effect of perceived negativity towards Further Education and Training (FET) college education among South African youth. Secondly, it is to determine the impact of apprenticeship on the development of entrepreneurial knowledge and skills among FET college students. The FET sector serves a particular function, which is the imparting of hands-on vocational training, intended to inculcate and promote a culture of self-employment, considered a necessity for employment creation. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 112 randomly selected students from three Motheo FET colleges. The findings reveal very contrasting results, a direct correlation between apprenticeship and entrepreneurship; however, 53% of the respondents did not feel sufficiently equipped, ready and confident enough to start their own businesses after graduation. About 48% feel the need to further their studies at university in order to stand a better chance of landing a good job.
Organized religions often play a significant role in the political affairs of any country when political actors carefully employ them to pursue power. Buddhism is the major religion on the island of Sri Lanka, and often it becomes a powerful symbol for Sinhala-Buddhist politicians. This study examines the interaction between Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka, and will attempt to examine the religious factors in Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict between the two nations; namely, Tamil and Sinhala. It will examine how the politicization of Buddhism helped Sinhala political elites and leaders in their quest for power, reinforcing religious and ethnic tensions, and finally will discuss some solutions to de-religionize the state structure to help Sri Lanka enjoy the fruits of modernization and democracy.
This article examines a progressive moment under apartheid referred to retrospectively as ‘the Durban moment’ by activists. By exploring the friendship of assassinated activists Stephen Bantu Biko and Richard Turner, the paper calls for a nuanced assessment of the rich context of the emergence of Black Consciousness under apartheid, and shows how the rigid racial and ethnic categories imposed by the state could be challenged by creative and resourceful intellectuals. The paper draws on interviews, writings produced at the time, court transcripts and the secondary literature to argue that Black Consciousness was intimately linked on many levels to this progressive ‘moment’ in South Africa under apartheid, which has resonances for activists still today.
The global call by the World Health Assembly (WHA) to control the rising alcohol-related problems caused by harmful consumption became necessary in 2005 due to the recognition of the fact that many countries did not have alcohol policies. This gave rise to the adoption of a 10-point policy strategy by the World Health Organization (WHO) Member States in 2010. Against this backdrop, many countries adopted alcohol policies to reduce harmful alcohol consumption. Nigeria was one of the WHO Member Countries that adopted the resolution. Globally, Nigeria is among the 30 countries with the highest per capita consumption and alcohol-related problems, yet has not formulated alcohol policy to date. This paper draws on Eisenberg’s Strategic Ambiguity Model to explore the role of brewers in supplanting alcohol policy initiatives in Nigeria. It argues that the leading alcohol producers in Nigeria have been the main reason alcohol policies have not been formulated. The article focuses on why their campaigns for responsible drinking, promotions, sponsorships and ‘strategic social responsibilities’ may have increased since the WHA made the call and the WHO adopted the resolution in 2010. It concludes by arguing that there is an urgent need to formulate policies drawing from the WHO resolution to curtail the activities of these brewers and reduce harmful consumption.
This article examines non-legislative avenues for parliamentary influence and legitimacy in the Pan-African Parliament (PAP). It argues for an incremental approach to increasing the powers of the PAP. To make this case, the paper first expounds on the composite nature of regional parliaments, showing the convergence of complex political and institutional issues that make Regional Parliamentary Assemblies unique parliamentary entities. Given the unsuccessful attempt by the PAP to increase its legislative powers through an amendment of its protocol, the aim is to make an alternative argument for legislative powers by locating the legal and institutional legitimacy and influence drivers for the PAP.
Citizenship is essentially about membership in society which enables citizens to participate in the affairs of their community on roughly equal terms and culturally enjoins upon them to collectively surmount their commonly felt problems, such as poverty. The role of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) should be understood in this context. Through observation and conversation-analysis methods, this paper studies two SHGs in India: the successful one practiced citizenship, envisaged a sense of community and made progress towards capacity building and empowerment, especially pertaining to education, health and sanitation. It concludes that in developing countries, citizens acquire the appropriate virtues through participation in the programmes linked with their vision of well-being and thus strengthen the cause of citizenship.
In line with international studies, this study reports in a case study how a South African school principal succeeded in sustaining leadership despite the challenges South African schools experience, and how the principal’s leadership practice related to core leadership practices required for a school principal to be successful. Data were collected by means of open-ended interviews with the principal and his staff. The following main themes were constructed: (1) Personal traits; (2) Leadership style; and (3) Ability to sustain and improve development. Secondary empirical data from previous studies in the school supported the findings in this study. The findings of this case study have implications for South African school principals: (1) principals need to be fully committed to improve the quality of learning in schools; (2) they need to be skilful in effectively using available resources; (3) successful principalship develops over time and requires a clear vision, optimism, high performance expectations and acting with care and integrity to nurture trust among role players.
Bangladesh has received scholarly attention about the extent and nature of Islamism in the political domain. We argue that, to analyze the significance of religion in the political process, it is essential to consider the role of religion in both influencing the policy and electoral outcome. Based on an in-depth qualitative study during the most recent election of 2008, we review previous elections results and the policy influence of religion-based parties; we argue that, in Bangladesh, Islamic parties’ policy influence is very high and electoral success is very low. A deeply entrenched civil religion in the form of nationalistic identity bars religion from playing a significant role in influencing the voting behavior of the citizens. The mainstream political parties have so far failed to recognize the significance of this civil religion.
Politicking ranks the most lucrative preoccupation in sub-Sahara Africa generally, and Nigeria specifically. This logically derives from the central role of the state in socioeconomic processes. The public sector, by its size and share of the communal wealth, remains the most potent means of empowering nations for development. Reviewing 12 years of democratic rule in Nigeria, this paper examines the relationship between political earnings, capital flights and economic development with disappointing findings that the economic mix of political earnings constitutes a cog rather than being a catalyst of development in Nigeria. Identifying constitutional, societal and other systemic disincentives as major inhibitive factors, the paper advance measures by which local reinvestment of political earnings could be encouraged to contribute to current efforts at accelerated national development.
After nearly a millennium of uninterrupted harmony between the Sinhalese and Muslims in Sri Lanka, economic and ethno-religious developments after the 1970s have created an atmosphere of communal tension between the two groups. While a new wave of political Buddhism with its militant offshoot amongst the Sinhalese and the growth of a rigid Islamic orthodoxy amongst the Muslims have provided the ethno-religious dimension to this tension, the post-1977 open economy has added an economic dimension to it. The interplay of this toxic triad is a reminder of a similar scenario that produced the first Sinhalese-Muslim racial riots in the country in 1915. Unlike the first, which occurred in the colonial context, the current one, which if not arrested, will not only jeopardize Sinhalese–Muslim harmony but also will result in adverse consequences in Sri Lanka’s relations with Muslim countries.
This article challenges the widely accepted assumption that the provision of microfinance to poor women through organizing them in groups empowers them. The current popular thinking in development studies considers microfinance as the best remedy not only for poverty, but also for social disintegration and women’s subordination. This article argues that such analysis ignores the cultural roots of inequality, subordination and destitution. Drawing on Bourdieu’s sociological frameworks, the article constructs a critical cultural model and elucidates the complexity of gender relations in microfinance process. The article explores gendered cultural norms and expectations that control and influence microfinance practices and contributes towards a more adequate and critical theoretical understanding of its empowerment potential.
Debates and discussions about the African renaissance and the Africanisation of universities have raged for decades. The goal of developing an emancipatory Afrocentric system that frees African education from the continuous and dominant influence of Euro- and American-centric cultural values remains a challenge. This is particularly so with respect to conventional African legal training and research programmes. Some African legal scholars, sometimes imbued with xenophilia, have in many ways participated in the process that has seen the continuous marginalisation of studies on the law in Africa and African law. This paper argues that there is a need to rethink the place devoted to the study of African law and African legal systems. It contends that African law generally and African legal systems specifically will hardly be able to develop when present-day students spend most of their time, especially in a course such as comparative law, studying western legal systems. In order for African legal education to be relevant and meaningful it must prepare and equip today’s lawyers to operate in a global world. It is therefore suggested that an Africanised legal programme should include a course on African legal studies and aim to be contextually and globally relevant whilst being sufficiently innovative and flexible to address the urgent needs of our times.
The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the nature of a reading culture in a rural secondary school in South Africa before and after a literacy intervention. The systems theory with interpretivism as the epistemological paradigm was employed. A rural secondary school was selected as part of an on-going Flourishing Learning Youth and Supportive Teachers Assets and Resilience studies on resilience and rural schools. Language teachers (n = 6, male = 1, female = 5) were purposively selected to participate. The literacy intervention was developed with phonetic acquisition as the basis to develop reading skills. It became evident that implementing English (additional language) as teaching and learning language in the school may have contributed to barriers to learning. Limited resources and reading instruction training exacerbated the problems. However, once the teachers acquired new skills and the children received the needed support, the improvement in overall academic achievement was significant.
This article investigates how perceptions of China in Mozambican civil society are affected by entrepreneurial activity and bilateral cooperation between China and Mozambique – real, imagined, visible and legal as well as clandestine and illegal in the agricultural and forestry sectors. The research problem concerns how discourse on Chinese investors is formed in Mozambique. Two questions are posed. How does Mozambican civil society perceive their room to maneuver at a time of Chinese growing economic interest and ‘return’ to Africa? What views exist on the policy space for the national government? Using qualitative ethnographic interviews to answer these overarching questions about expanding/contracting maneuvering space, this article explains how Mozambique’s largest social group – peasants – the National Association of Small Farmers (UNAC) and other societal actors perceive Chinese investors. Informed by theoretical debates on civil society, the article argues that coinciding with China’s large-scale return to Africa, an already tense dynamic between civil society and the state is picking up speed. It is argued that this phenomenon is likely to have more to do with African governments accruing more power and policy space than through direct impact of Chinese economic activity on African social life. However, to avoid negative discourse formation, China and host governments need to become more open on and transparent about bilateral agreements.
Ethnic and national identities are shaped and evolve in the context of complex negotiations sustained among multiple players, each with its own and often contradicting interests. This study focuses on one unique cultural group, the Druze in Israel, and examines a multifaceted identity constructed as a direct result of policies and expectations of members and institutions of majority groups. My aim is to explore how this identity is defined within the complex intergroup context, the various components and their inter-relations (congruent or conflictual), and the way its boundaries are shaped through interaction with other identities in Israel. The analysis of the interviews conducted with 50 Druze university students in Israel yielded three major content categories: ‘Druze by blood;’ ‘Arab, but less so;’ and ‘Being Israeli.’ The Druze identity is constructed in primordialist terms, and a central role is assigned to the belief in reincarnation. The Arab identity is categorized primarily as a national one, and it is strongly affected by the negative attitude of Arabs toward the service of the Druze in the Israeli army. Three major aspects emerged in relation to the Israeli identity of the Druze: the fact of their being citizens of the State of Israel, the attitude of the state and of Jews toward them, and the army service. Our study portrays a highly complex and problematic constellation of group identities, shaped as a delicate adaptation to the unique position of a group subject to multiple political forces in the past and present.
In South Africa non-marital cohabitation rates among Africans remain low, and particularly in the context of very low marriage rates. Through qualitative interviews with urban isiZulu-speakers we explore attitudes towards ukukipita (cohabiting) in contemporary Zulu society. These in-depth interviews capture the meanings associated with non-marital cohabitation and they provide insights into why cohabitation is widely viewed as unacceptable in Zulu society unless the man has initiated ilobolo (bridewealth) negotiations and concrete marriage plans are in place. Cohabitation without ilobolo payment is widely interpreted as akin to behaving disrespectfully towards Zulu culture and tradition, the immediate family and the Zulu community more broadly.
The Self-Help Group–Bank Linkage Programme (SHG–BLP) was designed with the objective of bridging the prevailing gap in the financial network and spreading banking facilities to the poor in rural and urban areas. This paper examines the progress of SHG–BLP over the last two decades in terms of: (a) the outreach of SHG–BLP; (b) spatial disparity in SHG–BLP; (c) SHG spread with respect to banking and socio-economic indicators; and (d) potential vis-à-vis achievement under the programme in terms of coverage of rural poor population.
The literature on corruption is extensive as the topic is multifaceted, testifying to the intractable and stubborn nature of a problem that societies have been struggling to tackle with for centuries. Lack of improvement in eradicating corruption is the result of misguided and misplaced strategies based on weak analytical underpinnings and still weaker appreciation of the institutional milieu of individual countries. This paper attempts to introduce and unpack key concepts associated with the idea of corruption. The paper attempts to punctuate that corruption needs analysis as an indicator of ‘failed governance’. It presents empirical substantiation from various studies undertaken and offers a comprehensive study of the extent and effect of corruption on the Indian economy and the perception of a cross-section of people on various facets and the impact of corruption on diverse sectors.
The negotiation to end apartheid – which was initiated in secret in the 1980s – solidified in the 1990s when FW de Klerk unbanned the African National Congress (ANC), South African Communist Party (SACP), Pan African Congress (PAC) and other political and social movements, as well as struggle icons, prominent among whom was Mandela. The South African Democratic Teachers’ Union (SADTU) emerged within the euphoria surrounding Mandela’s release and the negotiations to end apartheid. SADTU combined its educational struggles with the political struggle to end apartheid rule. Drawing on documentary (mainly archival), newspaper reports and oral evidence, this article examines SADTU’s struggles for recognition, its resistance against education restructuring, and its defiance campaign against inspection from 1990–1993. I suggest that SADTU’s contentions during the period were rooted in the political struggle to end apartheid rule since it regarded the apartheid education departments as illegitimate structures needing to be dismantled. In addition, the socio-economic undercurrents that characterized the transition were carried into education restructuring and thus pushed SADTU into militancy.
The categorization of displaced people is grounded in criteria enshrined by international and regional conventions as well as receiving states’ asylum and immigration policies. However, drawing distinctions between displaced people remains a controversial issue because the causes of displacement are more diverse than the categories assigned. Whilst various categories confer different rights and entitlement, the forcibly displaced are often obliged to aspire to particular identities driven by their resettlement livelihood objectives. This paper is based on a study carried out in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo and Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom. The paper argues that the institutional and policy environments in the locations where resettlement is sought determine the way displaced people identify themselves in displacement and how they appraise their circumstances and their consequent adaptive livelihood reconstruction strategies. Furthermore, it is shown here that formalized displacement categorization adds complexity to the way displaced people must deal with their circumstances and negatively impacts on livelihood adaptation. Whilst categorization may serve perceived institutional needs, this study finds that displaced people’s self-identification makes them resilient and enables survivability.
Ghana witnessed decent economic growth in the last three decades of implementing neoliberal policy prescriptions. Indeed, this growth promoted it to a low middle income country in 2010. Paradoxically, the wellbeing of most Ghanaians in the subaltern classes has not improved significantly, and they still suffer grinding poverty. How to understand this paradox of growth without development? This paper argues that the failure of Ghana to diversify its economy into industrialization, particularly manufacturing, explains the paradox. With its relatively good politics and open economy, the Ghanaian state should spearhead industrialization, as South Korea and Malaysia did, by supporting selective manufacturing firms with capital, technology, and protective tariffs.
In the past decade India has become the financing hub for cricket, a broadcaster in its own right, and an agenda-setter in the management of all forms of the game. What some commentators have called the ‘Indianization’ of cricket extends beyond business: it is a social, political, and cultural phenomenon. For five seasons, the Indian Premier League (IPL) has offered a glimpse of this phenomenon, prompting enthusiasm from young fans and those who stand to profit from the new league, and resistance from traditionalists. This paper discusses the material and symbolic roles the IPL has come to play in global cricket. It begins with an overview of the IPL’s history, discusses how the IPL is changing the global business of cricket, and explores how the IPL is challenging the traditional culture of the sport. The paper concludes with arguments about the IPL as a grand spectacle, and a cultural phenomenon that, despite its problems, might prove its critics wrong. Throughout, the paper treats the IPL as a useful case study not only in the business of sports, but also more widely in our theoretical and empirical studies of globalization.
The workfare scheme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), and the direct food subsidy programme, the Targeted Public Distribution Scheme (TPDS), represent two social safety nets instituted in India as anti-poverty measures. This paper examines whether from the point of view of individual households the two programmes are substitutes or complements, as this will shed light on the appropriateness of the design of the two programmes. Based on primary household data collected for the Indian states of Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh (MP), we show that, in Rajasthan, a large percentage of households consider TPDS and NREGS programmes to be substitutes for each other, while in MP the households often perceive the two programmes as complements. Thus it appears that the two programmes are better designed in MP since an incentive for participation in one programme has desirable side effects on participation in the other. Correlates of participation in the two states are identified and the paper advances several policy conclusions.
In this article the authors conduct focused case studies on Zambia and Ghana to investigate the increasingly diverse popular reactions to Chinese engagement throughout the region of sub-Saharan Africa. In this effort they challenge the existing binary exploitation/opportunity paradigm through which growing Chinese engagement in sub-Saharan Africa is often analyzed. Instead, they propose an alternative framework, which centers less on the positive or nefarious nature of Chinese involvement and more on the institutional structures of African regimes. As opposed to closed autocracies and consolidated multiparty democracies, fluid transitional states create opportunities for the appearance of anti-Chinese populist movements akin to Michael Sata and the Patriotic Front in Zambia.
As China’s economic and political presence in Africa increases, so does the need for its government to maintain a favorable image with African publics. Borrowing theories of soft power diplomacy and language planning, this paper analyzes, from the perspectives of African and Chinese policymakers, the impact of the Confucius Institutes on higher education in Africa and its intersections with language planning and cultural diplomacy. An empirical case study at the University of Nairobi Confucius Institute shows that policymakers and administrators anticipate that a competent group of Kenyans with Mandarin language skills will be able to engage with Chinese people and Chinese-owned companies on the ground in Kenya. However, Chinese diplomats are more concerned with China’s image and achieving its political and economic interests in Kenya than with effective cultural exchange and language instruction.
Cast in the framework of social capital theory, this research used case studies to investigate the settlement experiences of African migrants in Armidale, Tamworth and Coffs Harbour in Australia. Analysis of individual (n = 29) and one focus group interview data revealed that most migrants expressed some satisfaction with service provision in the areas of initial settlement support and the work of local community organizations. Problems still remained with regard to employment, family reunion and dealing with changes in family relations. The study concludes that there is a need to educate African migrants on mainstream Australian culture in order to enhance the migrants’ capacity to build social capital. Local governments need to make specific provisions within their policies, focusing on the settlement of migrants to address some of the gaps in services.
In this article I explore how the post-9/11 neo-liberal climate of globalization has served as the context within which is articulated masculinist and orientalist forms of nuclear discourses between India and the United States (US). To this extent, I draw from feminist international relations (IR), that security is a gendered phenomenon, to explore the linkages between masculinities and nuclear weapons as underpinning the nuclear security discourses between India and the US. Yet considering issues of international hierarchy and power relations between India and the US, I also draw from Edward Said’s Orientalism to explore how assumptions of orientalism are also sustained in these masculinist nuclear discourses. My contribution lies in enriching feminist IR with a post-colonial angle by suggesting that feminist IR continue to engage with post-colonial feminist perspectives to comprehend the masculinist and orientalist forms of identity politics that underpin security relations/discourses between Western and post-colonial states.
In recent years efforts have been made to improve governance by ensuring institutional performance and policing for greater transparency to sustain liberal democracy in Bangladesh and elsewhere. Since gaining independence in 1971, The People’s Republic of Bangladesh has been driven by internal power struggles and economic chaos, while attempting to develop a democratic society. A predominately Islamic country, Bangladesh’s representative government is battling poverty and rampant corruption. Although this study appreciates what Bangladesh has achieved so far, it seeks to deviate from the general trend that romanticizes Bangladesh’s democracy and its recent connection with new governance parameters. This study attempts to identify some of the major paradoxes that Bangladesh’s democracy is faced with. All these factors will be analyzed in the context of a contemporary notion of governance and democracy in Bangladesh.
The paper addresses two basic questions in the globalization literature: (1) is globalization a threat or an opportunity? And (2) how far does market deepening actually encourage genuine substantive democracy in the world? Many scholars have argued that globalization has resulted in increasing inequality and marginalization of the poor, which is not conducive for democracy. Drawing on the case of India, this paper, however, argues that the rolling back of the welfare state and the demise of developmentalism led to the mobilization of the masses against the elitist and exploitative agenda of globalization. As a result, a counter-hegemonic vibrant civil society has emerged, which challenges the hegemony of the elites and channels the empowerment agenda of the subaltern groups. This new politics of the subaltern is grounded on the idea of social justice and citizenship rights, which is redefining the nature of the Indian state and democracy.
Parent involvement in Kenya has mainly been limited to making financial contributions and serving on mandated school-parent bodies. Given the dire need to improve the quality of education, it is important to understand the role of parents in the provision of education. A qualitative research design explored the implementation of this model in primary schools in the Embu West District in Kenya. The findings revealed that limited parent involvement was a result of free primary education (FPE); the lack of a policy on parent involvement; the illiteracy of parents; parents’ work commitments; lack of confidence in some parents; time constraints; the gendered nature of parent involvement; and the lack of parenting skills.
Azar’s framework for analysing protracted social conflict is used to examine the roles played by religious and other actors in episodes of inter-religious violence and their aftermath in two cities in India (Ahmedabad and Mumbai) and two in Nigeria (Jos and Kano). Although the violence was apparently related to differences in beliefs and/or religious expansionism, explanations were more complicated. Religious organizations provided relief to victims from their own tradition, but played only limited roles in the longer term aftermath. Several features of the violent episodes and their aftermath help to explain why the inter-religious conflicts studied have become protracted.
This article describes the experiences of Mandarin-speaking immigrant parents – an understudied population – raising a child with autism in the United States. Using purposive sampling, semi-structured interviews were conducted with four sets of parents and two mothers of children with autism. The interviews were transcribed and translated verbatim and analyzed using content analysis. Three main themes regarding parents’ experiences were derived from the data: immigration and cultural accommodation; impact of autism and cognitive response; and outlook for the future. Implications for developing cultural competency to serve culturally and linguistically diverse populations were discussed. It is suggested that more cultural studies involving participants of diverse backgrounds should be conducted in further studies.
This paper presents a comparative case study of party system institutionalization in Ghana and Senegal. Both countries experienced a democratic change in government in the year 2000, but while positive development has continued in Ghana, democratic quality in Senegal decreased over time. Can the concept of party institutionalization help to explain this diverging development? Four dimensions of party system institutionalization are systematically compared: regularity, social roots, legitimacy, and party organization. It is found that party competition in Ghana is characterized by high stability and a low number of parties. The major parties are organized throughout the country and have definable support bases with deep historical roots. They give orientation to voters and are perceived as legitimate actors. In Senegal, in contrast, the party system is fluid and less predictable. Parties are not structured along social cleavages and many of them are weakly organized and highly personalistic. In summary, the case studies support the assumption that an institutionalized, well-structured party system in which relevant social cleavages are translated into electoral alternatives is positively related to democratic quality.
There has been a flurry of publications examining Ghana’s decentralization programme since 1988 to date. None has, however, specifically focused on the creation of districts; that is, the political and geographical division of the state into smaller jurisdictions – arguably regarded as one of the key processes of decentralization. In other words, the numerous studies do not fully explain the politics of the creation of districts, which has not only been a recurring phenomenon but also a contentious and sensitive one. This paper aims at filling this lacuna by identifying the actors and discussing their interests, benefits and the tensions arising from the creation of new districts in Ghana. The lessons learnt are also highlighted.