African Studies Blog

The World Bank today announced a $1.1 billion expansion of its malaria-fighting programs in Africa at the United Nations Special Session on the Millennium Development Goals in New York. Full story.

From ELDIS:

This Country Report gives a brief account of the approaches adopted and activities carried out by the various stakeholders, relevant Government and Non-Governmental organisations in the five years since the 2002 Second World Assembly on Ageing in Madrid and the adoption of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing (MIPAA).

The report describes various policies that the Ghanaian government have implemented to take care of the issue of the aged, including the National Social Protection Strategy 2006, Ghana National Disability Policy and National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). The report also describes the Draft Policy on Ageing.  The main goal of the Draft Policy is to promote the social, economic and cultural re-integration of older persons into mainstream society, to enable them participate fully and as far as practicable in national development and social life, while recognising their fundamental rights.

Some of the strategies of the draft policy on ageing include:

• creating a National Co-ordinating Institution on Ageing
• providing comprehensive health care programmes including professional age carers for older persons at both national and community levels
• promoting employment of older persons
• promoting community care facilities such as day care centres for older persons

The report looks at the demographic and socio-economic profile of ageing in Ghana, and goes on to describe the range of programmes that have been implemented to assist the elderly.

The report concludes that :

Whilst Ghana has made modest progress in the implementation of the Madrid International Plan of Action on Ageing, there are some challenges that should be addressed. These challenges include:

• the need to finalise the policy on aging and develop appropriate action plans for its implementation
• the need to strengthen and resource the Ministry of Manpower Youth and Employment (MMYE) and other institutions to effectively co-ordinate the implementation of the MIPAA
• modernisation is impacting both positively and negatively on traditional values. There is the need to project the positive elements of modernisation to benefit the aged

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Welcome to Ohio University, I take this opportunity to wish you all an excellent academic year. I have already met a few of you during graduate students orientation and will meet the rest of you next week at the INST 601 class on Tuesday and Thursday.

Some of you have had problems retrieving one of the citations on your reading list.  The volume number should be 49 not 29. The correct citation is;

Abena P. A. Busia, “What is Africa to me? Knowledge possession, knowledge production and the health of our bodies politic in Africa and the Africa diaspora. African Studies Review, v. 49, #1, (April 2006), pp. 15-30.

From African Affairs

Across Africa, many countries have taken initiatives to increase the participation and representation of women in governance. Yet it is unclear what meaning these initiatives have in authoritarian, single-party states like Rwanda. Since seizing power in 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front has taken many steps to increase the participation of women in politics such as creating a Ministry of Gender, organizing women’s councils at all levels of government, and instituting an electoral system with reserved seats for women in the national parliament. This article explores the dramatic increase in women’s participation in public life and representation in governance and the increasing authoritarianism of the Rwandan state under the guise of ‘democratization’. The increased political participation of women in Rwanda represents a paradox in the short term: as their participation has increased, women’s ability to influence policy making has decreased. In the long term, however, increased female representation in government could prepare the path for their meaningful participation in a genuine democracy because of a transformation in political subjectivity.

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From ELDIS:

“Is there a rationale for conditional cash transfers for children in South Africa,” this paper assesses the rationale behind Conditional Cash Transfers (CCT) in South Africa. It looks at evidence of the reach and impact of major CCT programmes, particularly in Latin America, and the Child Support Grant (CSG) in South Africa.

Cash transfers (CTs) are one of a range of measures for addressing poverty. A regular amount of money is allocated directly to particular groups such as the elderly, the unemployed, or children. The nature and extent of cash transfers that a country provides can be viewed as a reflection of its welfare regime. In an unconditional CT programme, once a person qualifies to enter the scheme, the amount is an entitlement, for a fixed period. The current South African CSG is an example of a means tested unconditional social assistance transfer in respect of children. This review of the evidence suggests that introducing behavioural inducements to poor people in South Africa to ensure the best educational and health outcomes for their children should not be the main focus of attention for policy makers.

Key points include:

• the new South African government has done much to redress the racism and repressive aspects of apartheid – it has introduced the ‘Batho Pele’ set of principles into administration to ensure fairer and more transparent service to the public, and an Administrative Justice Act, yet procedures in the implementation of the CSG contradict both
• the CSG in South Africa has rolled out very rapidly; by stealth, some of the policy intent is being subverted by administrative action – patterns of take-up suggest that the means test is an unnecessary and ineffective measure, and it should be lifted altogether or be replaced by a far simpler measure
• a universal categorical grant for children would sit with greater ease in what on paper appears to be a social democratic policy agenda.

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From ELDIS

Eight countries in sub-Saharan Africa  Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia have been given emerging country status by the International Finance Corporation. The term emerging markets is used to identify countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have financial markets and attract investor interest. The following are found to encourage emerging market status:

• group takeoff in growth
• growth led by the private sector
• public policy embracing market-led growth
• financial markets in which to invest

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From The Economist:

The UN says that 3.2m Somalis (out of about 8m) now need aid just to stay alive: a 77% rise on last year. A sixth of Somali infants are at risk of starving to death. Due to what aid organisations call “intolerable insecurity”, almost all international charity workers have left. Offshore, Somali pirates are as bold as ever. They are holding around ten vessels, including three large tankers with 130 crewmen captured this week.

From The Economist:

This article gives an interesting analysis of Kenya six months after the bloody election crisis.  Even though the  joint administration of Kibaki and Odinga is hanging together the country has nothing to celebrate and  is still struggling to return to normalcy.

The Kenya Tourism Board says the country lost $191m in revenue in the first half of the year, with visitors down 36% to 561,000 compared with the first six months of 2007. Agriculture is struggling due to poor rains, a tripling in the cost of fertiliser and pesticide, and land disputes linked to the election crisis have wrecked this year’s maize harvest. The Kenya Cereal Growers’ Association says production will slump from 34m bags of maize to 24m.