Dr Laura Mann, CON.7.10

This course is available on the MRes/PhD in International Development. This course is not available as an outside option.

Taking the work of the late Thandika Mkandawire as its inspiration, DV418: African Development applies a critical lens to questions of economic and social development in African countries. It focuses on the role that knowledge and technology play in development and takes a multi-disciplinary approach, combining theory from economics, economic sociology, and science and technology studies (STS) to the topic. Students are not required to have any background in economics to follow and enjoy the course.

The first two weeks explore why foreign scholarship and donor agendas have become so dominant in framing how development is understood in African countries, and how the more transformative visions of the independence era were dismantled by structural adjustment policies and the attack on African civil servants, middle class professionals, business owners and institutions of higher education and science. We encourage students to look beyond the donor-led vision of poverty reduction and think about development as ultimately being autonomy and self-determination. Students are then given a solid foundation into some of the core processes that strengthen this autonomy; 1) domestic resource mobilisation (or the strengthening of domestic sources of finance in place of aid), 2) structural transformation (or the shifting of the workforce out of commodity production into more knowledge-intensive activities) and 3) transformative social policy (or the linking of poverty reduction to broader nation-building and development goals). Students are asked to grapple with the challenges and contingencies of such policy-making: the difficulties of balancing competing demands across regions and class interests, the pressures of domestic political contestation in shaping long-term planning and the risks posed by the global economy in the form of price swings and long-term commodity cycles. The final weeks of the course confront new emerging trends such as the growing penetration of digital technology firms and connectivity into African markets as well as the emergence of new donors such as China, Korea and Brazil. In all cases, we ask students to scrutinise how these new developments reshape the task of structural change.

15 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the WT.

Student on this course will have a reading week in Week 6.

Students will be expected to produce 1 piece of coursework in the WT.

A plan for the research paper (1500-2000 words) on which the student will receive feedback and topic approval

A detailed weekly reading list will be provided at the first course meeting. The following readings provide an introduction to the course:

1. Thandika Mkandawire and Charles Soludo, (1999) Our Continent, Our Future: African Perspectives on Structural Adjustment. Dakar/Trenton, NJ: CODESRIA / African World Publications.

2. Mkandawire, T. (2001) "Thinking About Developmental States in Africa." Cambridge Journal of Economics, 25(3): 289-313.

3. Mkandawire, T. (2005) “Targeting and Universalism in Poverty Reduction” Geneva: UNRISD. Available electronically here. Pages 7-23.

4. Mkandawire, T. (2010) "On Tax Efforts and Colonial Heritage in Africa" Journal of Development Studies 46(10): 1647-69.

5. Mkandawire, Thandika (2014) "The Spread of Economic Doctrines and Policymaking in Postcolonial Africa." African Studies Review 57(01):171-98.

6. Mkandawire, Thandika (2015) "Neopatrimonialism and the Political Economy of Economic Performance in Africa: Critical Reflections." World Politics:1-50.

7. Mkandawire, Thandika. (2017) “State Capacity, History, Structure, and Political Contestation in Africa.” In M. A. Centeno, A. Kohli, D. J. Yashar, & D. Mistree (Eds.), (pp. 184-216).

8. Mann, L. (2014) “Wasta! The long-term implications of education expansion and economic liberalisation on politics in Sudan” Review of African Political Economy 41(142): 561-578.

9. Mann, L. (2017) ‘Left to Other Peoples’ Devices? A Political Economy Perspective on the Big Data Revolution in Development’ Development and Change 49(1): 3–36.

10. Mann, L. and G. Iazzolino (2019) “See, nudge, control and profit: Digital platforms as privatized epistemic infrastructures” Platform Politick, A Series, ITforChange, March 2019. Available electronically here.

11. Khan, M. H. (2000) “Chapter Two: Rents, efficiency and growth” In Rents, rent-seeking and economic development: Theory and evidence in Asia, 21-68.

12. Oqubay, A.  (2015) Made in Africa: Industrial Policy in Ethiopia Oxford: Oxford University Press.

13. Young, A. (2018) Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

14. Mamdani, M. (2007) Scholars in the Marketplace: The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989-2005. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA.

15. Gray, H. (2018) Turbulence and Order in Economic Development: Economic Transformation in Tanzania and Vietnam. Oxford: OUP.

16. Nyabola, N. (2018) Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet is Transforming Kenya London: Zed Books.

17. UNCTAD. Economic Development in Africa: From Adjustment to Poverty Reduction: What is New? Geneva: United Nations, 2002.

18. Vishnu Padayachee (ed), The Political Economy of Africa. London: Routledge, 2010.

19. Whitfield, L., et al. (2015). The Politics of African Industrial Policy: A Comparative Perspective. Cambridge, Cambridge Univ Press.

20. Obamba, M. O. (2013) “Uncommon knowledge: World Bank policy and the unmaking of the knowledge economy in Africa” Higher Education Policy 26(1): 83-108.

21. Naidu, V. (2019) “Knowledge Production in International Trade Negotiations is a High Stakes Game” Africa at LSE Blogpost, June 14th 2019. Available electronically here.

22. Cramer, C. and Johnston, D., Oya, C. and J. Sender (2015) “Fairtrade Cooperatives in Ethiopia and Uganda: Uncensored” Review of African Political Economy 41 (1): 115-S127. (9 pages)

23. Perez, C. (2009) “Technological revolutions and techno-economic paradigms” Cambridge Journal of Economics, 34(1): 185–202.

24. Murphy, J. T., Carmody, P. P. and B.B. Surborg (2014) ‘Industrial transformation or business as usual? Information and communication technologies and Africa’s place in the global information economy’, Review of African Political Economy, 41(140): 264–283.

25. UNCTAD (2007) “Reclaiming Policy Space: Domestic Resource Mobilisation and Developmental States” Geneva: UNCTAD. Available electronically here. Pages 6-54.

26. Di John, J. (2005) "The Political Economy of Taxation and Resource mobilisation in sub-Saharan Africa," in Padazachee (Ed.) The Political Economy of Africa. London: Routledge. Pages 110-131.

27. Ndikumana, L. and J. K. Boyce (2003) "Public debts and private assets: explaining capital flight from sub-Saharan African countries" World Development 31(1): 107-130.

28. Usman, Z. (2018) “The ‘Resource Curse’ and Constraints to Reforming Nigeria’s Oil Sector“ In Levan and Ukata (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 520-545.

29. Selolwane, M. D. (2007) "Statecraft in Botswana: Renegotiating Development, Legitimacy and Authority," In Agbese and Ge Kieh Jr. (Eds.) Reconstituting the State in Africa Basingstoke: Palgrave. Pages 33-47.

30. Clapham, C. (2018) "The Ethiopian developmental state" Third World Quarterly 39(6): 1151-65.

31. Saunders, R. and A. Caramento (2018) "An extractive developmental state in Southern Africa? The cases of Zambia and Zimbabwe." Third World Quarterly 39(6): 1166-90.

32. Hickey, S. (2008) “Conceptualising the Politics of Social Protection in Africa,” in  Social Protection for the Poor and the Poorest:  Concepts, Policies and Politics Barrientos, A. and D. Hulme (Eds.) Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Pages 247-263.

33. Ouma, M. and J. Adesina (2019) “Solutions, exclusion and influence: Exploring Power Relations in the Adoption of Social Protection Policies in Kenya” Critical Social Policy 39(3): 376–395.

34. Ulriksen, M. S. (2012). "Welfare Policy Expansion in Botswana and Mauritius: Explaining the Causes of Different Welfare Regime Paths." Comparative political studies 45(12): 1483-1509.

35. Gabor, D. and S. Brooks (2016) “The digital revolution in financial inclusion: international development in the fintech era” New Political Economy 22(4): 423-436.

36. Dafe, F. (2019/2020) “Ambiguity in international finance and the spread of financial norms: the localization of financial inclusion in Kenya and Nigeria” Review of International Political Economy. In press.

37. Suri, T. and W. Jack (2016) “The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money” Science 354(6317): 4–9.

38. Bateman, M. Duvendack, M. and N. Loubere (2019) “Is fintech the new panacea for poverty alleviation and local development? Contesting Suri and Jack’s M-Pesa findings published in Science” Review of African Political Economy. In press.

39. Breckenridge, K. (2005) “The Biometric State: The Promise and Peril of Digital Government in the new South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 31(2): 267-282.

40. Murphy, J. T., Carmody, P., and Surborg, B. (2014) “Industrial transformation or business as usual? Information and communication technologies and Africa's place in the global information economy” Review of African Political Economy 41(140): 264-283.

Essay (100%, 5000 words) in the ST.