Aid Effectiveness and Development Policies in Botswana: A Successful Story

For decades, aid effectiveness and development policies have been of great concern to scholars, social workers, governments and the wider community alike. Not least of all, when it comes to achieving the Millennium Development Goals. This paper argues that aid is most effective when it is directed towards the implementation of development policies which have been structured by the recipient government. It argues this by analyzing Botswana’s successful path of development since its independence from the United Kingdom in 1966. This practice can help the recipient to strengthen its own institutions and to broaden the scope of development, such as by reducing poverty and improving health facilities and the quality of life. Nevertheless, this kind of approach implies that the recipient’s institutions should already have a dedicated management team, who is accountable, and most importantly, free from corruption.Department of Applied Social Science

The governance and politics of urban space in the postcolonial city: Kampala, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam

With the fading of colonial memory in postcolonial Africa, dramatic changes are emerging and are shaping urban cities in quite significant ways. Urbanization is exploding. Large numbers of Africans are becoming town dwellers. Informal settlements alike are becoming the norm rather than the exception. Urban challenges have thus become complex, hence the need for an infrastructural rethink to urban governance and development in Africa. The interest for this paper is to explore the governance and politics of urban space in the postcolonial African city. My research question, put in its most general form, asks: what constitutes the governance and politics of urban space in postcolonial African city? By taking three East African cities of Kampala, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as my main analytical units, I focus on: (1) understanding urban structures and dynamics of urban governance and political frameworks and networks of survival, and (2) exploring realities that shape urban governance within the global and neo-liberal context of postcolonial Africa. I draw upon comparative, qualitative and reflective exploratory research within the ream of socioanthropological, legal–political and architectural–geographical investigation. The article is hoped to invite further debate on this important phenomena