Politics of development in Africa

Politics of Development

Master 1

2024-2025

S2

Thursdays 10 am – 1 pm

D634 Sorbonne

Teacher: Florence Brisset-Foucault

Florence.brisset-foucault@univ-paris1.fr

 (credit image: Bodys Isek Kingelez, La Ville Fantôme)

This course aims at familiarising students with critical approaches to development. Articulating the sociology of public action and the history and anthropology of development, it does not seek to assess development plans’ efficiency or to provide ‘solutions’ to ‘problems’. It aims, instead, at reaching a better understanding of the ways in which the definition of both problems and solutions reflect transnational and local relations of power as well as socially situated forms of knowledge. We will study the ways in which ‘development’ projects are concretely conceived, set up, and how they are received, understood and appropriated by their ‘beneficiairies’. 

The course is organized in 8 sessions of 3 hours each. The work is based on readings, their critique, and the analysis of case studies.  

Students are not expected to be already fluent in English and will not be assessed on their mastery of the language. However: everyone is expected to take this opportunity to practice their written and oral skills. My role will be to help you process and formulate your thinking in English, diversify your vocabulary, and hopefully feel more confident when taking the floor. I will also take particular care in making sure there is a balance between students’ levels of participation. The level of involvement in the discussions will be part of the evaluation (20% of the mark). We are all here to learn together.  

Students have to carefully and critically read one text per week, starting week 2 (13^th Feb). Each week, you will prepare a one or two pages max essay on the text (please bring it in print, or bring a manuscript). I will collect randomly some of them (30% of the mark). You are expected to acquire an intimate knowledge of the text, situate the approach, assess its strengths and weaknesses and engage in a critical debate with the author and other members of the class. The texts are also here to help you in your own work (see below).

CAREFUL !!! THERE IS NO CLASS ON THE 6^TH FEBRUARY AND ON THE 3^RD OF APRIL

LIST OF MANDATORY READINGS:

13 Feb: James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine. « Development », Depoliticization and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho, University Minnesota Press, 1994, chapter 9. 

20 Feb: Fred Cooper, “Modernizing Bureaucrats, Backward Africans and the Development Concept”, in F. Cooper and R. Packard, Development and the Social Sciences. Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge, University of California Press, 1997, p. 62-92.

6th March: Thandika Mkandawire to be determined

13^th March: Graham Harrison, « Post-conditionality politics and administrative reform: Reflections on the cases of Uganda and Tanzania », Development and Change, 32 (4), 2001, p. 657-679.

20^th March: Duffield Mark, « Risk-Management and the Fortified Aid Compound: Everyday Life in Post-Interventionary Society », Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 2010, vol. 4, no 4, p. 453‑74.

27^th March: Rama Salla Dieng, ‘Adversely Incorporated yet Moving up the Social Ladder?’: Labour Migrants Shifting the Gaze from Agricultural Investment Chains to ‘Care Chains’ in Capitalist Social Reproduction in Senegal. Africa Development. 47, 3 (Nov. 2022), 133–166. 

10^th April: Ruth Prince Ruth, 'Tarmacking' in the Millenium city: spatial and temporal trajectories of empowerment and development in Kisumu, Kenya. Africa, 83 (4), 2013, pp. 582-605.

The sessions are organized around the discussion of the text, and then the discussion of the work of students on a development project, on which they will reflect all along the semester. Students will work in pairs or trios (depending on the number of people attending the class). Each team will send a 5-pages essay on the project of their choosing no later than the 13^th April (50% of the mark). The methodology of the note will be explained during class. 

Teams can pick a project in the list below: 

The Addis Abeba Master Plan

The Groundnut scheme in Tanganyika/Tanzania

Biometrics and elections in Chad

The Lake Turkana windfarm (Kenya)

The Great Green Wall initiative (Sahel)

The LAPSSET Corridor Program (Kenya-Ethiopia) (or other ‘corridors of development’ projects)

The East African Crude Oil Pipeline Project (EACOP)

Biometric money: the e-Zwich in Ghana

The fight against sleeping sickness in Cameroun (or elsewhere)

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (or another dam in Africa or the Middle East, for instance the Aswan Dam in Egypt)

The imagination of the Sahel

Urban planning in colonial Casablanca

The malaria vaccine

The Mwanamugimu nutrition rehabilitation program (Uganda)

The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) initiative (on HIV/Aids)

Vision City, Kigali (Rwanda)

Radio as a ‘tool for development’

Plumpy’Nut and the fight against acute malnutrition