Going with the Grain in African Development?

Abstract

In view of the disappointing performance of the Good Governance agenda in Africa, policy‐makers are asking whether better results could be obtained with approaches that attempt to ‘work with the grain’ of African societies. This article explores what this might mean. It identifies a core set of beliefs and values – concerning power, accountability and social morality – that have proved extremely durable and remain powerful drivers of behaviour across sub‐Saharan Africa. It finds that, in general, Western institutions sit ill with these traditions. The question is, therefore, how to redirect development efforts so that they stop working against, and start to build upon, the extant notions of moral obligation and interpersonal accountability in the region.

The White Gold: The Role of Government and State in Rehabilitating the Sugar Industry in Mozambique

“…But the literature on neo-patrimonialism is not univocal, despite its circulation around the same concept. Some, like Mills (2010), make the behaviour and attitude of the state elites or political leaders both the problem and the solution; others argue that it is a deep-rooted African culture of exchange and consumption that locks leaders of states into neopatrimonial relations of rent seeking (Kelsall, 2008); and there is a strand which claims that neopatrimonialism rules because of the 'foreign' nature of imported Western political institutions (Chabal and Daloz, 1999).…”

“…This article will draw on the approach and findings of the state-business literature as it challenges externalist positions that argue that all policy decisions in Africa, and Mozambique in particular, are enforced by the pressure of well-meaning donors and/or ignorant international financial institutions (IFIs) enforcing neoliberal policies (see, for example, Plank, 1993;Villalo´n and Huxtable, 1998). In certain respects the state-business literature also challenges the neo-patrimonial explanations that have become dominant when explaining (away) how political authority in Africa in general is based on prebendal patronage forms of rent seeking (see Chabal and Daloz, 1999;Kelsall, 2008).…”

Challenges to the elite exclusion–inclusion dichotomy — reconsidering elite capture in community-based natural resource management

“…Kelsall suggests that the post-colonial government makes use of the authority of the chieftains in resource management because they have already enjoyed legal legitimacy. 78 As a result, Marfo et al argue that national constitutions often blur the distinctions between customary and statutory laws and between 'ownership' and 'political leadership'. 79 These ambiguities have provided local elites with opportunities to further strengthen their domination.…”

Bureaucratic manoeuvres and the local politics of climate change mitigation in China and India

“…Wild, Booth, and Valters () make a similar point by highlighting the links with work on adaptive management in the 1980s and 1990s. There are also overlaps with other literature that focuses on the role of alliances and context‐specific approaches from the perspective of domestic politics such as on “hybrid public action” (Spink & Best, ), “growth coalitions” (Brautigam, Rakner, & Taylor, ), “going with the grain” (Kelsall, ) and “institutionalised co‐production”, which Joshi and Moore (, p. 32) use to refer to “unorthodox organisational arrangements [that] constitute (smart) adaptations to prevailing local circumstances.”.…”