The development of Kurdistan’s de facto statehood: Kurdistan’s September 2017 referendum for independence

This research aims to analyse the drivers which informed the decision and timing of Kurdistan’s independence referendum on 25 September 2017. Here we argue that any proper examination of these drivers must begin by investigating the relationship between the fight to counter the Islamic State begun in 2014, the disputes arising as a result of Kurdistan’s presidential election issue in 2015 and the internal political rivalry exacerbated by the question of whether to hold a referendum. The findings of this article highlight the centrality of de facto entities’ internal governance in their struggle towards statehood. The fight against IS served as a primary driver in influencing the timing and the approach of the September 2017 referendum. While the 2015 political deadlock resulting in the illegal extension of Barzani’s presidency was not a determining factor leading to the referendum, nonetheless it quickened the process and influenced the timing.     

Africa and the export of China’s clean energy revolution

The spectacular scale and speed of China’s domestic renewable energy capacity development and technology catch-up has in recent years been followed by the ‘go out’ of Chinese clean energy technology firms seeking new markets and opportunities in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper explores the growing involvement of China in the development and transfer of renewable energy technologies in Africa and examines the key drivers and obstacles shaping Chinese renewable energy investments and exports. Far from there being some kind of grand or harmonious strategy directed by a single monolithic state, we argue that fragmented and decentralised state apparatuses and quasi-market actors in China are increasingly pursuing their own independent interests and agendas around renewable energy in Africa in ways often marked by conflict, inconsistency and incoherence. Moving beyond the state-centric analysis common in much of the research on contemporary China–Africa relations, we examine the motivations of a range of non-state and quasi-state actors, as well their different perceptions and constructions of risk, policy environments and political stability in recipient countries. The paper explores the case study example of South Africa, where Chinese firms have become increasingly significant in the diffusion of renewable energy technology.     

A future,but at what cost? Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s quest for sustainable development

This paper looks at the question of development by focusing on both Cuba and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. At the heart of the project is the notion of sustainability, and how to achieve well-being even in the most challenging conditions, isolated economies and sanction-laden realities. This is done by tracing both countries’ engagement and development in the fields of health and education. We suggest that political engagement with these countries should be prioritised, without challenging an established political order but with its consent, and with the hope that future generations are socialised to a culture of openness.     

From ‘gender equality and ‘women’s empowerment’ to global justice: reclaiming a transformative agenda for gender and development

The language of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ was mobilised by feminists in the 1980s and 1990s as a way of getting women’s rights onto the international development agenda. Their efforts can be declared a resounding success. The international development industry has fully embraced these terms. From international NGOs to donor governments to multilateral agencies the language of gender equality and women’s empowerment is a pervasive presence and takes pride of place among their major development priorities. And yet, this article argues, the fact that these terms have been eviscerated of conceptual and political bite compromises their use as the primary frame through which to demand rights and justice. Critically examining the trajectories of these terms in development, the article suggests that if the promise of the post-2015 agenda is to deliver on gender justice, new frames are needed, which can connect with and contribute to a broader movement for global justice.     

Cultural heritage and development: UNESCO’s new paradigm in a changing geopolitical context

In the 1980s, the process of convergence between culture and development began to emerge in the context of post-colonialism and changing geopolitical realities. Later on, along with increasing multilateralism, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) eventually became the main actor in promoting culture as a fourth pillar of sustainable development. The paradigm shift in the heritage-development agenda is examined in the context of growing aspirations of non-Western states to play an active role in the global heritage regime, and the interests and strategies of UNESCO’s secretariat and the member states. At first, heritage and development were perceived as separate or opposed fields. Recently, a sustainable development framework emerged as a new global development model. UNESCO has engaged in the shaping of the United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda, and advocated a pragmatic approach to heritage. This paper examines the evolution of ideas and concepts linking ‘development’ and ‘heritage’ forged at the forum of UNESCO as part of its Culture and Development framework. The role of the Global South in the paradigm change is highlighted.     

When ‘development’ devastates: donor discourses,access to hiv/aids treatment in Africa and rethinking the landscape of development

If globalisation is the mighty tremor shaking the landscape of the ‘project of development’, then, in certain regions of the world, hiv/aids is surely its epicentre. Nonetheless, for all the burden of the disease, Western donor policy on hiv/aids still remains largely silent about the provision of anti-retroviral treatment. This paper seeks explanations for this pervasive medical neglect and donor preference for prevention programmes over treatment. The postcolonial approach taken in the paper is to regard donor policy on hiv/aids—as illustrated by the UK's Department for International Development and the Norwegian Agency for Development Co-operation—as cultural and political exchanges framed by prevailing representations of Africa. The different ‘logics’ which skew policies towards prevention are identified. For donors and African states alike, hiv/aids policies—like development interventions more generally—would benefit immensely by foregrounding the human right to health, including, critically, promoting treatment within a genuine ‘prevention–care–treatment’ policy continuum.     

Explaining China’s popularity in the Middle East and Africa

Abstract

China enjoys considerable popularity in the Middle East and Africa, not only among elites but also at street level. This article draws on international relations theories to explain this general pattern, as well as intra- and interregional variation. Every approach has something to contribute, but international political economy more so than realism. Constructivist theories are particularly useful in explaining China’s popularity in the Middle East and Africa.     

Quasilegality: khat,cannabis and Africa’s drug laws

Abstract

This article explores the concept of ‘quasilegality’ in relation to two of Africa’s drug crops: khat and cannabis. It argues that the concept is useful in understanding the two substances and their ambiguous relation to the statute books: khat being of varied and ever-changing legal status yet often treated with suspicion even where legal, while cannabis is illegal everywhere in Africa yet often seems de facto legal. The article argues that such quasilegality is socially significant and productive, raising the value of such crops for farmers and traders, but also allowing states to police or not police these substances as their interests and instincts dictate. It also argues that there is no clear link between the law on the statute book and the actual harm potential of these substances. Finally, it suggests that the concept has much wider use beyond these case studies of drugs in Africa in a world where global consensus on drug policy is cracking, and where many other objects of trade and activities find themselves in the blurred territory of the quasilegal.     

Soviet Scientists Take the Initiative: Khrushchev’s Thaw and the Emergence of the Scientific Centre in Chernogolovka

This article explores the emergence of Chernogolovka, a scientific town near Moscow, during Khrushchev’s thaw. Nikolai Semenov, the founder of the town, relied on the Khrushchev regime’s fascination with modern science, its interest in expanding the scientific enterprise, and the more relaxed atmosphere of the thaw to transform what the Soviet state intended to be a military testing ground into a renowned scientific centre. This case study demonstrates that there was space for individual initiatives in the post-Stalinist system, as long as they came from well-connected individuals and conformed to the political and ideological objectives of the state.     

Understanding contested women’s rights in development: the Latin American campaign for the humanisation of birth and the challenge of midwifery in Mexico

This article builds on the recent debates on human rights and development to discuss the case of reproductive rights and midwifery activism as part of the broader mobilisation for the humanisation of birth and against obstetric violence in Latin America and Mexico. Drawing on extensive fieldwork, the analysis shows how human rights continue to form a significant contentious and constructed terrain among women in the global South. The mobilisation for the humanisation of birth and against obstetric violence indicates how the clinical developmental view of reproductive rights is challenged by these activists as not necessarily safeguarding the rights of women during birth. In Mexico this campaign is essentially linked to the struggle to bring back and strengthen midwifery as a way of ensuring improved human rights in birth. The article concludes, however, that this campaign might be challenged by Indigenous rights in the near future.     

Airlines and Empires: Great Britain and the “Scramble for Africa,” 1919–1939

This study examines the dynamics of female African immigration and settlement in the United States and discusses the research and policy implications for these processes. It highlights a significant surge in female immigration from African compared to non-African countries in recent years. This surge is driven by female immigration from Africa's most populous countries, from countries affected by civil conflicts, and from English-speaking countries in the region. African women are also more likely to arrive as unmarried singles than other female immigrants. In addition, they have the highest prevalence of bachelor's, master's, and doctorate degrees among women in the US. African females are also about twice more likely to be enrolled in US educational institutions compared to other women. Those in the labor force are more likely to work as nursing professionals than in technical occupational groups such as engineering and computing. The study concludes by discussing the research and policy implications of these findings for countries in the developing world.     

Deconstructing the multi-layered nature of citizen participation in Vietnam: conceptual connotations,discourses of international development,and the country’s institutional context

ABSTRACT

Citizen participation is challenging to define in terms of meaning and application. This article begins with setting out the multi-dimensional nature of citizen participation in development. Through conceptual and contextual explorations, this article deconstructs the layers in the following ways: First, citizen participation is embedded with several conceptual connotations, therefore it is manifested to varying degrees and in different scopes of opportunity for citizens to affect policy decisions. Varieties of participation become more diverse when it comes to the power dynamics of different stakeholders, ranging from the government to citizens. Furthermore, its substantive presentation is intimately linked with the variables of citizen empowerment and government responsiveness. The second layer concerns the participatory development approaches of external development agencies. This article articulates how development discourses have integrated and developed the concept of participation, exploring the trajectory and critical concerns raised. The final layer concerns context, particularly Vietnam’s legal and policy frameworks, which explores consistencies and discrepancies between institutional settings and the presentation of citizen participation.     

African biomedical scientists and the promises of “big science”

Abstract

An ongoing genomic revolution in biology has exponentially increased the rate, possibilities, scope and cost of biological research. Infectious disease genomics are often justified by the potential they have to ameliorate Africa’s disease burden. The molecular biology revolution that preceded genomic science widened the gap between the skill sets of many African biologists and their contemporaries elsewhere. Gap closure through genomics and the application of genomic data to health problems requires participation of, and leadership from, African scientists. However, few African scientists participate in genomics, and providing biological samples is their predominant contribution. Health-related applications are emerging from genomic activity for some infectious diseases that are endemic in Africa but not for many others. This article argues that the arrival of next-generation diagnostics, surveillance tools, drugs and vaccines could be accelerated by improving the nature and degree of participation of African scientists in genomic and post-genomic inquiry.     

Between poverty and prosperity: China’s dependent development and the ‘middle-income trap’

Despite China’s rapid economic growth in the past three decades, Chinese officials and experts are increasingly worried that the country is slowly heading towards the ‘middle-income trap’. The fear is that China might suffer the same stagnation and turbulence as Latin American economies did in the 1980s and 1990s. Will China be able to avoid this trap? Building on the insights of world-systems theory, this paper argues that China’s dependent development, although enabling it to escape the ‘poverty trap’, is likely to bog it down in the ‘middle-income trap’. China’s heavy reliance upon foreign technologies and investment has harmful effects on its economy. Dependent development not only increases China’s economic vulnerability but also truncates domestic industries. To escape the trap, the Chinese state should play a more active role in shifting its growth model away from low-end commodity manufacturing to knowledge-based, high value-added activities.     

The ‘girl effect’: liberalism,empowerment and the contradictions of development

The ‘girl effect’ – the idea that investment in the skills and labour of young women is the key to stimulating economic growth and reducing poverty in the global South – has recently become a key development strategy of the World Bank, the imf, usaid and dfid, in partnership with corporations such as Nike and Goldman Sachs. This paper examines the logic of this discourse and its stance towards kinship in the global South, situating it within the broader rise of ‘gender equality’ and ‘women’s empowerment’ as development objectives over the past two decades. Empowerment discourse, and the ‘capability’ approach on which it is based, has become popular because it taps into ideals of individual freedom that are central to the Western liberal tradition. But this project shifts attention away from more substantive drivers of poverty – structural adjustment, debt, tax evasion, labour exploitation, financial crisis, etc – as it casts blame for underdevelopment on local forms of personhood and kinship. As a result, women and girls are made to bear the responsibility for bootstrapping themselves out of poverty that is caused by external institutions – and often the very ones that purport to save them.     

A home of one’s own: women and home ownership in the borderlands of post-apartheid South Africa and Lesotho

This study explores women’s practice of acquiring, “growing” and multiplying a “home of one’s own” in the borderlands of the Free State province of South Africa and Lesotho. It shows how a home of one’s own confirms that one is a person proper (motho, p. batho), thus distinguishable from any other entity (ntho, p. dintho). A woman establishes a home of one’s own as a domain of autonomy (ha ka) where she can reproduce persons for whom she provides a home (heso). After her death, such a home remains an incubator of personhood. As a process of apprehending self, this gendered practice does not necessarily require men’s involvement, which is important in a social landscape of many female-headed households. Their gendered conception of residential property, alongside the possibility to let or sell homes, enables women to support theirs and others’ aspirations as the crisis of unemployment in the borderlands deepens.     

Neoclassical and structural analysis of poverty: winning the ‘Economic Kingdom’ for the poor in Southern Africa

In situations characterised by historical injustice in the distribution of economic resources, such as in many southern African ‘settler’ countries, there is a powerful intuitive case that ameliorative and palliative public policy is insufficient to significantly affect poverty reduction. This is because of the dulling effects on growth caused by significant structural inequality in the distribution of resources. However, the proposition that inequality is a problem for poverty reduction is contentious. This article reviews the neoclassical and structuralist literatures on the relationship between growth, inequality and poverty. It argues that the first is inconclusive and, furthermore, can only be so, while the second requires to be made more relevant to the discussions of how redistribution and inequality relate in legitimate policy and practice. The concept of property regimes can help here, within a more contextual understanding of development in practice as not necessarily involving growth and economic progress, but as being subject to periodic phases of ‘de‐development’, or well‐being retrogression. The paper concludes that state‐sponsored redistribution policy has an important role to play in changing underlying property regimes for the benefit of the poor in southern Africa. Inequality does matter, and a consideration of radical, redistributive social change is worth rehabilitating as an efficient means of reducing poverty, particularly in situations of low or fluctuating growth. This consideration, in turn, requires a political acceptance of the legitimacy of a broader role for economic public policy and state action.     

Administrative practices of the Aztecs,Incas, and Mayas: lessons for modern development administration ∗

Some of the policies and practices of the ancient civilizations of the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas are reviewed in this paper. Although the author finds them inadequate as a model for development in the modern world, he suggests that some of the developing countries could learn form the rational administrative systems of these ancient civilizations. Five characteristics of countries that are experimenting a process of development administration are reviewed in the context of these ancient civilizations. These characteristics are: (a) Unorganized and inefficient bureaucracy; (b) Inadequate and unfair tax collection system; (c) Nugatory agricultural practices; (d) A warped judicial order: (e) A poor educational system.