Nepad, land and resource rights

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) is an overarching programme for revitalising Africa’s fortunes. It has a visionary tone, yet the way that it proposes to overcome Africa’s underdevelopment uncritically adopts neo-liberal policy prescriptions that have repeatedly been shown not to work in Africa. Because it has been designed around promoting international foreign investment and attracting Western donors, Nepad may not address the real needs of the African rural poor or deal with the core problems hindering Africa’s development. By supporting the interests of multinational corporations, Nepad risks opening the continent up to further exploitation and degradation. Other problems that have been identified include the lack of civil society participation in its formulation. In spite of all of the problems associated with the programme, it is incumbent upon civil society to engage with Nepad and influence its development and ensure that land and resource rights for the poor are enhanced

Securing land and resource rights in Africa: Pan-African perspectives

Across the African continent the land and resource rights of the rural poor are threatened by inappropriate policies and institutions (including global treaties); unequal social, political and economic relations; the actions of powerful vested interests (wealthy national or local elites, international aid organisations, multinational corporations); and the weakness of grassroots organisations. It is against this background that the Pan-African Programme on Land and Resource Rights (PAPLRR) Network’s initiative to analyse, understand and engage with these issues was conceptualised by four African centres of excellence that subsequently developed the programme in 2001. The unique contributions Africa can make are seldom taken seriously in international natural resource policymaking debates. One reason could be that the African voice on land and resource rights is perhaps not as strong in international forums as it should be. By coming together in forums such as PAPLRR, Africans are able to share their concerns and develop capacity to articulate their opinions and influence outcomes in the international arena. Defining an agenda for advocacy and strategic engagement with governments, and building links across divides between scholars, practitioners and advocacy groups, is an emphasis of PAPLRR into the future. A key focus of the programme is the role of land and resource rights in the struggle against poverty, exploitation and oppression as well as their contribution in solving real world problems of African people, not as academic objects to be studied, but as key components of the struggle

Constructing and deconstructing the democratic developmental State: the challenges of democratization in Nigeria and South Korea

In Nigeria, the state, which, ought to be central to the development and democratization project, remains as repressive, undemocratic and oriented to zero-sum politics as ever. The state does not really have development on its agenda. This is not to assume that the state has not formulated development plans, policies and projects; rather they only mimic the development models of the West, which cannot be replicated in Nigeria due to historical factors among others [Ake: 1985; Omoweh & Boom: 2005, Omoweh: 2005, 2006, Kaiser and Okumu: 2004]. South Korea is far from being a liberal democracy not because of its relative economic growth, but due mainly to its model of post-colonial authoritarian and undemocratic state. The kind of development promoted by such state can hardly be sustained as evident in the economic crisis of 1997/8 from which it is yet to recover [Bang-Soon: 2003, Omoweh: 2005]. Adequate scholarly and policy attention has to be paid to so many false starts that have characterized the construction of the developmental state, especially as the debate now emphasizes its democratic component

The Paradox of Water Crisis and Rural Poverty in the Niger Delta of Nigeria

Introduction This paper is primarily concerned with water crisis as both a resource and an infrastructure, and its linkage with rural poverty in Bayelsa State within the larger context of the path the Nigerian state took to the governance of natural resources, particularly the production of petroleum and the consequences for water resources. Within this framework, it critically looks into how Bayelsa State, which is 90 percent water, 10 percent land, and located in the heart of the third larg..

Feasibility of the Democratic Developmental State in the South

This work is dedicated to all critical thinkers who contend that the prospect of recovery from protracted and deepening social, political and economic crises of the countries of the South and the ability of these countries to place themselves on the path of sustainable development do not reside with the market. Africa’s protracted failure to develop makes sharing of experiences with Asia and Latin American countries a key issue in the discourses on the prospects of the DDS in the South. It was, therefore, timely for APISA-CLACSO-CODESRIA to launch the tri-continental collaborative joint research on the ‘Feasibility of the Democratic Developmental State in the South’

Eaux, pauvreté et crises sociales

Au Nord comme au Sud, l’accès à l’eau, que celle-ci soit à usage domestique ou agricole, devient de plus en plus difficile pour les populations pauvres, alors que les différents types d’exclusion se combinent pour accentuer les inégalités. Pour comparer les processus actuellement en cours sur les cinq continents et tenter d’inverser ces tendances, l’IRD a organisé en 2005 des rencontres à l’université d’Agadir avec l’appui du CRDI et de la Ford Fondation. Les chercheurs, décideurs et responsables d’ONG réunis à cette occasion proposent dans le présent CD un cadre d’action et invitent les pouvoirs publics à renouveler les politiques publiques et répondre aux revendications locales