China in Ghana: Easing the Shift from Aid Dependency to Oil Economy?

The author examines recent changes in the Ghanaian aid and investment landscape as China has stepped up its relations with this donor ‘darling’. Recent oil discoveries further transform the financing scenarios and more established donors are concerned about the riskiness of this. These tensions reveal wider differences in approaches to development and the desires of many African governments which could herald big changes in the ethos and practice of development. These are interesting times for Ghana. The country is a long-standing donor ‘success’, transitioned smoothly to democracy, and the economy has been performing reasonably well. Recently the Chinese have stepped up diplomatic relations, largely through aid, as they have with many African countries that serve their geopolitical and economic ends. But with the discovery of oil things have changed quickly. The Chinese and other Asian investors are seeking deals backed by oil revenues which could see Ghana moving away from being aid dependent. Moreover the ‘established’ donors of the OECD are worried about Ghana’s turn to these seemingly riskier and un-transparent forms of finance which they see as destabilising hard won efforts at donor harmonisation. Yet the Ghana story suggest deeper tensions between approaches to development –one centred on ‘softer’ institutional agendas and the other on ‘harder’ economic ones of infrastructure and growth–. The Chinese approach favours the latter, which is also something African governments are keen to pursue, so the changing aid and investment landscape may presage major changes in the ethos and direction of African development

The disappointments of civil society: the politics of NGO intervention in northern Ghana

During the 1990s, civil society emerged as the prime political force in the policy agenda of the major lenders and development agencies. An active civil society, it was believed, would enable choice, scrutinise errant governments, and ultimately lead to regularised, plural democracy. This article subjects this policy discourse to theoretical and empirical scrutiny. Theoretically, civil society is treated as a space of freedom, separate from the state, and constituted by Non-governmental organisations (NGOs). This ignores the reciprocal linkages between state and society, the constraining effects of market forces, and the underlying ideological agenda of the major lenders. As a result, some political scientists working on Africa dismiss civil society as a useful analytical category. However, I follow Mamdani's call for examining 'actually existing civil society' through a case study of NGO intervention in Northern Ghana. It shows that tensions exist between the Northern NGO and its partners, that the local NGOs create their own fiefdoms of client villages, and some officers use the NGO for personal promotion. Additionally, the single-minded strengthening of civil society undermines efforts at decentralisation. The conclusion suggests that the 'Third Way' programmes serve a neo-liberal policy agenda which enhances factionalism and promotes highly circumscribed visions of development

Embedded cosmopolitanism and the politics of obligation: the Ghanaian diaspora and development

The paper analyses how identities and obligations operate within the spaces of transnational communities and how this affects development. Within spatially diffuse communities identities are fluid and overlapping, as are the obligations to multiple others - be that kin, ethnic group or nation – in different localities. The paper is concerned with the institutions through which these identities are formed and obligations are realised. These include families, clans, hometown associations, and religious organisations, which link people ‘abroad’ to people ‘at home’. I understand these spaces as a form of public sphere involving a ‘deterritorialised’ citizenship, which has been termed ‘embedded cosmopolitanism’. In this way obligations are not legally defined but operate as part of the moral universe of those concerned. The case study is based upon recent fieldwork on Ghanaians in the UK and their connections to other Ghanaians outside Ghana and to those at home. Research reveals how these complex networks of affiliation operate as well as the ways in which the state seeks to ‘capture’ support from them and how migrants selectively redefine both ethnic identities and family boundaries

Participatory development

Over the past twenty years a wide range of organisations, with very different ideological agendas, has started involving local people in their own development (Peet and Watts, 1996). This chapter begins by looking at different definitions of participatory development and goes onto examine through what sorts of organisations it is achieved. As there are a myriad possible approaches I have included case studies which demonstrate different facets of participation. This brings us onto a critique and an overview of where things might go in the future

Beyond participation: strategies for deeper empowerment

This chapter has two major aims. The first is to critique existing participatory practices, especially the ways in which local knowledge is generated as a necessary first-step in reversing the 'top down' approaches of many development initiatives. This critique is realised largely through the use of concepts derived from postcolonial studies. In order to do this effectively, the following section outlines some of the major themes within postcolonial studies as it is a relatively recent and poorly defined area of the social sciences. These critical insights are then used in section two to examine the ways in which participatory research methods tend to reinscribe relations of authority between the outside facilitator and the grassroots. The second aim, which is dealt with in section three, is to re-work approaches to participatory development in light of the preceding criticisms. This is done through both theoretical considerations and a case study of a small NGO working in West Africa. While not wanting to portray the NGO as having overcome all barriers to participation, it is instructive in demonstrating how a reflexive, 'outside' organisation can deal with problematic power relationships at the local level

Chinese migrants in Africa: bilateral and informal governance of a poorly understood South-South flow

The paper examines the social and political dynamics of Chinese migrants in Africa. Implicit in much of the literature on ‘China in Africa’ is a power relation in which the Chinese hold the whip hand. Moreover analytical attention has focussed overwhelmingly on aggregate ‘South-South’ flows of trade or FDI, or bilateral projects as opposed to the activities of the myriad independent Chinese entrepreneurs that have migrated to Africa. While we do not want to reverse the structuralist lens to say that Africa/ns have endless options we want to examine how African social and political agency plays into these unfolding relationships. Our argument is that the increased Chinese presence in Africa does not represent some form of harmonious ‘South-South’ cooperation but Africans are managing the relationship in ways that create significant opportunities for their development. Based on recent fieldwork in Angola, Ghana, and Nigeria, the paper addresses a number of key dimensions around the governance of this migration. Our data show African state institutions, firms and individuals contesting and shaping these engagements in ways that benefit them. Much of the relationship is brokered, and subsequently governed, by pacts between Chinese and African elite state actors. These tend to be relatively unaccountable and non-transparent processes with the Chinese investments bolstering the legitimacy of African regimes. These relationships are presented by the Chinese as ‘win-win’ and not interfering in domestic political processes, yet they do intervene and increasingly so in contexts where security of investments and personnel are threatened. This was amply demonstrated in the recent Libyan evacuation though this only covered labour migrants on official contracts and not independent migrants. That said where the quality of Chinese investment is held to account by African states and civil societies we generally see better developmental impacts. Central to much of this are the differences in the national laws and enforcement regimes of the ‘host’ societies, around labour, immigration and investment. This holds a potential lesson for managing ‘China-Africa’ relations in that a strong legislative base with effective enforcement can deliver development dividends from small scale investments besides the big infrastructure projects heralded in the press. Beyond these more formal inter-state relations we see migration and investment governed in a number of informal ways, notably organisations such as local associations of market traders. It is often these forms of agency that spark the formal governance system into action. Many successful Chinese firms have local patrons who give credibility, contacts and protection. We have evidence of African firms employing Chinese labour, expertise and technology. African entrepreneurs actively encouraging Chinese investment outside of the formal, bilateral arrangements drive some of this. In this sense governance of Chinese-African migration is national and/or informal rather than regional

Human rights and development in Africa: moral intrusion or empowering opportunity?

Throughout the 1990s the debates about human rights and development have increasingly converged. The article asks whether the emerging human rights-based approach to development, honed in the period of revisionist neo liberalism, can deliver meaningful improvements to the African crisis? It begins by outlining the evolution of the rights-based development agenda in order to understand how the present agenda is defined. The next section examines the theoretical underpinnings of the current rights-based development agenda and summarises two recent reports which place such concerns at their centre. From there we examine the implementation of rights-based procedures in Africa. The next section assesses the moral and practical implications of the rights agenda for Africa and we conclude by arguing that the emphasis on economic and developmental rights should be welcomed, because it raises the possibility of cementing the right to a decent standard of living. However, the potential exists for the rights-based agenda to be used as a new form of conditionality which usurps national sovereignty and by handing the responsibility for defending rights to authoritarian states the process does little to challenge the power structures which may have precipitated rights' abuses in the first place. Finally, the emphasis on universal rights, as defined through largely Western experiences, limits the relevance of rights to local circumstances and thereby effects another form of Eurocentric violence which seeks to normalise a self-serving social vision. Hence, only by embedding discussions of rights in the locally meaningful struggles that confront impoverished Africans and by promoting broader and direct participation which, crucially, promotes self-determination can a rights agenda more thoroughly promote African development

Sino-African encounters in Ghana and Nigeria: from conflict to conviviality and mutual benefit

China’s renewed engagement with Africa is often framed as a form of imperialism, with the growing number of Chinese migrants on the continent seen as an exploitative presence. Such claims have generally been based on little evidence, and where more detailed empirical studies have emerged, they tend to emphasise the tensions and conflicts that have arisen. Our research on Chinese migrants in Ghana and Nigeria suggests that while there are concerns about Chinese competition in the informal retail sector and the treatment of local labour in Chinese enterprises, narratives of apparent tension and conflict are often much more nuanced than is generally recognised. Furthermore, more convivial and cooperative relations have also emerged and these have facilitated important opportunities for Africans to benefit from the Chinese presence. However, while the presence of Chinese migrants in African socio-economic life can be more integrated and mutually beneficial than is often assumed, the ability of African actors to benefit from this presence is highly uneven, placing the politics of class at the centre of any understanding of Sino-African encounters

The Geopolitics of South-South Infrastructure Development: Chinese-financed energy projects in the global South

Debates around infrastructure tend to focus on the global North yet in the global South demand for infrastructure is huge and we see new and emergent actors engaged in finance and construction; China being preeminent among them. China’s interests in the global South have grown apace over the past decade, especially in terms of accessing resources and securing infrastructure deals. The role of Chinese banks and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) in financing and building the projects reveals a blurring between geopolitical and commercial interests and processes. The paper situates China’s entry into the global South as part of a geopolitics that is simultaneously geoeconomic and interrogates these issues through case studies of Chinese-backed projects in Ghana and Cambodia. These projects are spatially and politically complex with China adopting a range of financing models – often including an element of resource swaps – in which bank finance is critical and marks the Chinese as different to western financiers. These international deals are secured at the political elite level and so by-pass established forms of national governance and accountability in the recipient countries, while the turnkey construction projects remain locally enclaved. The cases also show that wider developmental benefits are limited with ‘ordinary’ citizens – especially those in the rural areas - gaining relatively little from these major energy projects and the benefits accruing to urban-based elites

Globalisation from below: conceptualising the role of the African diasporas in Africa's development

In the past both African Studies and Development Studies have ignored questions of the African diaspora. This point was made by Zack-Williams back in 1995 but since then there has not been much work attempting to rectify this matter. In this article we put forward a framework for examining the role of diaspora in development. This centres on recognising that the formation of the African diaspora has been intimately linked to the evolution of a globalised and racialised capitalism. While the linkages between capitalism, imperialism and displacement are dynamic we should avoid a simplistic determinism that sees the movements of African people as some inevitable response to the mechanisms of broader structures. The complexity of displacement is such that human agency plays an essential role and avoids the unhelpful conclusion of seeing Africans as victims. It is this interplay of structural forces and human agency that gives diasporas their shifting, convoluted and overlapping geometry. Having established that we examine the implications of a diasporic perspective for understanding the development potential of both Africans in diaspora and those who remain on the continent. We argue that both politically and economically the diaspora has an important part to play in contemporary social processes operating at an increasingly global scale. The key issues we address are embedded social networks in the diaspora, remittances and return, development organisations, religious networks, cultural dynamics, and political institutions. We conclude by suggesting where diasporic concerns will take us in the next few years