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Browsing Seminar Series by Subject "Africa"
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Item Capital, Class, and Belonging in Africa(University of Ghana, 2019-03-21) Garba, F.Beginning in the late 1950’s, independent African states like other ex-colonized societies in the rest of the Third World, embarked on state-led social provisioning to mitigate the systematic deprivation wrought by colonialism and to meet what Paul Zeleza calls the triple promise of independence – decolonization, democracy and development. With varying degree, the immediate post-colonial state in Africa took on the provision of education, healthcare, water, public transportation and employment through the establishment of import substitution industries (ISIs). The ISIs were established and or capitalized with loans from International Finance institutions (IFIs) - principally the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). A host of structural inequalities - from unequal terms of trade to lopsided international and local power arrangements meant that many of the ISIs were in crisis by the middle of the 1970’s. Having incurred large amounts of debt and larger debt servicing costs, many African states again turned to the IFIs for further loans. In return, they were forced to undergo severe cuts to crucial public services like education and healthcare and privatize strategic state owned enterprises and parastatals. The cumulative social outcome was mass impoverishment and the reversals of gains against preventable diseases and illiteracy. Consequently, the informal sector experienced a boom as a source of livelihood. Migration to neighbouring countries and those far afield became commonplace. In the context of state withdrawal from social provisioning, those in power increasingly adopted a posture of help relative to ordinary people. Prior-existing and new lines of social demarcations were heightened in order to entrench the new power relations. Traditions of eternal difference were invented to gain and consolidate (in the case of the powerful), and cope with the effect of power (on the part of ordinary people). Drawing on instances from Nigeria and South Africa this paper traces the role of capital in social differentiation in Nigeria and South Africa and the implications of such demarcations on class formation and class relations and the instrumentalization of identity and belonging in contestations over resources. The paper is situated at the intersection of the movement of global capital and the ordering of society, polity and culture. It identifies potentials for counter movement in formations solidarity of ordinary people involved in contradictory struggles for livelihood, security and cultural integrity.Item Firm Productivity in the Presence of Binding Fiscal Constraints in Africa(2016-04-22) Bokpin, G.We examine two key questions in this paper. First, we investigate the implications of fiscal indiscipline or otherwise on firm productivity in Africa. Fiscal policy is known to boost growth by altering work and investment incentives, promoting human capital accumulation, and enhancing total factor productivity at the micro-level (IMF, 2015). Many factors have been studied in explaining total factor productivity in Africa or its sub-regions but the role of fiscal policy in explaining firm productivity remains understudied. Yet fiscal policy is considered a binding constraint in Africa. Fiscal indiscipline is known to crowd-out the private sector and seriously undermines private sector leadership in ensuring all inclusive, broad-based growth. We measure firm-level total factor productivity using a Cobb-Douglas production function, when we regress on firm characteristics and fiscal policy indicators. In estimations with controls for country and year fixed effects, we find results that suggests firms reporting finance as a severe obstacle have relatively lower productivity levels, productivity declined with age, and audited firms are more productive than those not audited. The level of government debt to GDP, we found, had significant implications for the relation between access to finance severity and firm productivity. Fiscal Indiscipline (in its various forms) severely constraints firm productivity. The implications are that fiscal mismanagement has implications for firm-level productivity.Item Highlife and taarab ‘revisited’(2016-09-15) Coester, M.In this presentation I will talk about my roughly 10-years of Highlife research – Highlife in a trilocal and transnational perspective (that led to my habilitation thesis at the University of Bayreuth) - and then draw a comparative line to (the history) of popular music in East Africa, the so called Taarab music of the Swahili Coast, that can also be revisited as a modern, cross-boundary cultural formation of popular music.Item Making West African languages relevant in the development process(2016-09-16) Omoniyi, T.; Amfo, N.B.A.Africa is home to over one-third of the world’s languages, i.e. 2000+ languages. Africa also plays ‘home’ to indigenised varieties of major European languages. Launching her Lordina Foundation in the US recently, the FLOTROG said ‘There is a direct link between poverty and lack of education’. I say, there is a direct link between non-exploration and mobilisation of indigenous values and knowledges conveyed through indigenous languages and snail-speed development or regression. My aim in this presentation is to demonstrate that a renaissance of indigenous languages is unfolding on the African continent. I shall draw illustrations from Tanzania, Malawi, Nigeria and Ghana policy debates, popular culture (Ghana’s Most Beautiful – tokenism?), film industries, and development in information technology. I shall propose that national politics and governance are in dire need of infusion exploration in order to transform the current 'democracy of the elite' in most of our countries to mass participatory and inclusive democracy.Item Publish and Perish: Exploring Issues of Predatory Outlets among African Researchers(2016-04-28) Andoh, H.; Amfo, N.A.The dependence of academic evaluation on one’s publications has resulted in the popularity of the expression “Publish or Perish” in academic institutions, over the decades. The expression is, in some sense, intended to serve as an impetus for young researchers to publish the findings of their research, and thus increase the research outputs of their respective institutions. In addition, the policy of most major universities in Africa and world is to increase their publications for a number of reasons, including the possibility of gaining favourable world university rankings. However, in most researchers’ quest to increase their publications, especially after their doctoral studies, they look for journals and other outlets with quicker and easier review processes than the traditional publishers. This has caused the emergence of predatory publishers. The number of “Predatory Publishers” increased from just five (5) in 2009 to over nine hundred in 2016. Their activities possess a great danger to young researchers and the research systems of African universities. In this presentation, I will report on my recent study which highlighted the extent of predatory publishing among Ghanaian researchers. Out of a total number of 600 publications by 30 Ghanaian researchers, over 60 articles were published in predatory journals. Also, of the 30 researchers only 7 had no publications from a predatory publisher in their list of articles and other research outputs. The outcome of this study provides the basis for informing researchers that, in spite of the need to publish to avoid perishing, one can actually publish and still perish if care is not taken to ensure that the processes and consequent outputs are credible. Thus the presentation will create awareness on the emergency of predatory publishers, how they can be identified and why their activities possess a great danger to the overall research system in African universities.Item The Underside of the Free Movement within the ECOWAS Bloc: Vulnerabilities and Policy Dimensions of Children on the Move(University of Ghana, 2019-04-10) Badasu, D.M.; Yeboah, T.; Asare, A.A.; Braimah, J.I.The ECOWAS Free Movement Protocol was enacted to facilitate intra-regional mobility and promote socio-economic development in the West African sub-region. It has an instrument titled ‘ECOWAS Support Procedures and Standards for the Protection and Reintegration of Vulnerable Children on the Move and Young Migrants’. While studies have examined different aspects of the free movement of persons and goods as well as the associated implementation challenges, little is known about the mobility trajectories of young people and children in the sub-region, including the complex underlying factors that shape their migration motives, opportunities and vulnerabilities as well as the policy dimensions of their movement. Drawing on different research works and experiences, this presentation focuses on three main inter-related issues on the movement of the young people/children within the context of free movement regime in West Africa. First, with reference to the migration infrastructures concept, we examine the different migration patterns of young people and the complex interplay of natural and demographic factors, social networks, and human agency, among other factors that account for the movement of young people within, out and into Ghana under the ECOWAS free movement regime. Second we examine the trafficking of children as a consequence of child migration and sustained socio-cultural practices such as child fostering. Ghana is often described as a source, transit and destination country for human trafficking. This means victims of trafficking, both adults and children are in the mix of the huge numbers of migrants within the country and in the sub region. Thirdly we examine the legal documents, laws and policies on migration that directly or indirectly affect young migrants. We suggest that current knowledge and perspectives regarding free movement in the ECOWAS Bloc largely exclude the dynamics of the movement of young people. While there are various migration-related policies to protect young people, there is no single comprehensive policy to facilitate, promote and protect the migration of young people with respect to the dynamics of child migration. We suggest the need for revision of existing legal frameworks and the development of innovative policies and interventions that take into consideration the dynamics of the movements, characteristics of the young people/children and the different actors involved in this migration stream instead of the simplistic and ad hoc approaches.