Governing the ungovernable : donor agencies and the politics of development in Africa

The failure of development in Africa, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, since the beginning of the post-independence era, has resulted in intense discourse both in academia and in the public domains. The blame game between the so-called “developing countries” and their donor counterparts has, over the past six decades, been an area of intense analysis due to the conditions often imposed by donor agencies on their recipients. The unequal relationship between the recipient and the donor has influenced the success and/or failure of donor-funded development programs. This article is theory-based; and, it examines the skewed relationship between sub-Saharan African governments and international donor agencies and its influence on success and/or failures of such interventions. Data was gathered using a systematic review of the literature with specific focus on themes related to donor agencies and their relationship with Africa. The analysis was thematic; isolating key issues relevant to the topic. The article argues that states in sub-Saharan Africa should manage and govern the seemingly ungovernable donor agencies. Importantly, politicisation of foreign development assistance for Africa should be eliminated through approaches that develop solid resource-base and increased African state capacity manage and govern own affairs with minimal, if any, external influence of the stultifying donor agencies

Adapting an Online Learning Quality Assurance Framework in a Developing Country Setting: The Case of a HEI in Malawi

Covid-19 prompted many higher education institutions (HEIs), even in developing countries like Malawi, to abruptly shift from their traditional face-to-face mode of delivery to online learning. However, quality issues with online learning remain one of the greatest challenges to acceptance of online learning by many students and stakeholders. This paper presents an action research based study at the Malawi University of Science and Technology, in which an online learning quality assurance framework is adapted to a developed country setting. The adapted framework builds on the Online Learning Consortium (OLC) Quality Scorecard for the Administration of Online Programs. The contextualization and validation of the framework is done using a modified mini-Delphi technique. Validation of the adapted framework identified key issues including financing of online learning, IT infrastructure challenges, lack of faculty training in online teaching and need for proper quality assurance instruments for monitoring online learning

Water under troubled bridge: the (ir)relevance of Development Studies pedagogies in African universities

The demand for “methodologies of education and learning” is very significant in the current FeesMustFall discourse. This is not just because it is necessary to consider education methodologies, but in the broader scheme of things, it is also a call to both mental and ideological transformation. It challenges university lecturers and educators alike to question their own preconceived pedagogies and engage in an introspection - a 2 reflective moment in their teaching. I will come back to this later in my presentation. The point I am trying to emphasis is that the call for “The-Fall-in-Fees” is a development issue. It is a development issue because it gravitates around access to [Higher] education. We just need to remind ourselves by what Nelson Mandela once said: “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. We all know-education is a fundamental human right; so too is development (United Nations, 1986). The denial to education is an act of injustice. But like Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” (Luther King Jr, 1963). In this regard, there is a lot of development injustice to which my lecture this evening alludes to

The Routledge Handbook of Global Development

This Handbook provides a comprehensive analysis of some of the world’s most pressing global development challenges – including how they may be better understood and addressed through innovative practices and approaches to learning and teaching. Featuring 61 contributions from leading and emerging academics and practitioners, this multidisciplinary volume is organized into five thematic parts exploring: changes in global development financing, ideologies, norms and partnerships; interrelationships between development, natural environments and inequality; shifts in critical development challenges, and; new possibilities for positive change. Collectively, the handbook demonstrates that global development challenges are becoming increasingly complex and multi-faceted and are to be found in the Global ‘North’ as much as the ‘South’. It draws attention to structural inequality and disadvantage alongside possibilities for positive change. The Handbook will serve as a valuable resource for students and scholars across multiple disciplines including Development Studies, Anthropology, Geography, Global Studies, Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies, Political Science, and Urban Studies

Introduction

This chapter provides the introduction to the Handbook. It provides a broad overview of global development. It notes that while progress has been made on some development challenges, this progress has been uneven, and has been accompanied by the emergence of new challenges. Following this, it makes a case for the shift from international to global development, and then outlines the key contributions made by this Handbook. The effort to provide pedagogical insights is stated

Higher education institutions and the global agenda of poverty reduction

For a long time, Higher Education Institutions have been seen as breeding grounds for individual intellectual capacity, less sensitive to the plight of millions living on less than two dollars a day. Recently, there has been a shift in thinking on the role of Higher Education Institutions as instruments for poverty reduction. However, the debate has so far been confined to a scrutiny predominantly centred on issues of curriculum development in, say, Development Studies, International Development, Community Development and, to a lesser extent, Social Work. If any, the philosophical viewpoints posited in the arguments have also been massaged with issues of social justice. While these areas of inquiry have found their way into the mainstream debate, there is less conversation on how teachers of institutions of higher learning make a difference towards social change and poverty reduction. There is less reflection on whether we are part of a global polity of 'experts' and less sensitivity to how our pedagogical approaches affect prospective and/or practising development practitioners, let alone how our intellectualism fails to engage with the real world. This chapter aims to tackle one of the silent issues in development discourse - the role of Higher Education Institutions in poverty reduction. The chapter focuses on analysing the current trends and issues in these institutions and argues that unless we 'learn to unlearn' and crack out of the cocoon of 'expert', teachers in institutions of higher learning can propagate 'pedagogies of mass destruction' which, ultimately, lead to mass production of development practitioners who are less sensitive to issues that matter, including making poverty history. Crucially, the chapter posits that teachers in Higher Education Institutions can directly contribute to poverty reduction through the manner they engage in their research, besides teaching. However, this can only happen if communities are the major focus of research and pedagogical thinking

Development? Freedom? Whose development and freedom?

Development? Freedom? Whose development and freedom

The politics of community capacity-building: contestations, contradictions, tensions and ambivalences in the discourse in indigenous communities in Australia

The recent hype and ascendancy in the discourse of community capacity building has generated a lot of heated debate among development and policy experts on ots applicability in various contexts. In particular, questions have been raised on the presuppositions inherent on the discourse and, more so, the tension that exists between theory and practice

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and participatory development in basic education in Malawi

This article critically examines the extent to which one emerging NGO facilitates the participation of its beneficiaries and other stakeholders in the decision-making processes at the identification, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of basic education programmes in Malawi. The author argues that despite the comparative advantage of this NGO[1], the participation of their stakeholders, including local community members, is tokenistic as decisions are largely top-down. The author recommends that NGOs learn to relinquish their grip on power and develop confidence in their beneficiaries as well as other stakeholders