In the past few years, adaptation to climate change has emerged as a dominant new theme in development politics, to an extent that it can almost be considered as a new development paradigm. Yet, this new paradigm and its effects are not unproblematic, as the empirical research in three East African countries presented in this article indicates. The article argues that the current transformation of environmental governance reflects not only climate change as such, but also – and perhaps even more so – the discourse of a changing climate and its effect on development politics. The empirical evidence shows that African farmers, politicians and government officials often respond to the new ‘adaptation paradigm’ more readily than to directly felt phenomena caused by a changing climate. We therefore argue that the ontology of the concept of adaptation to climate change needs to be readjusted. Epistemologically, our concern is to trace the discourse of adaptation to climate change across multiple sites, i.e. how it ‘travels’ between global epistemic communities and adaptation projects in developing countries. Drawing on actor‐network theory and its concept of translation, we provide an alternative view of adaptation to climate change by highlighting the contested and multi‐sited narratives and practices that bring adaptation into being.
Internal migration in rural Benin is not directed to the southern coastal regions as in many neighbouring countries. Instead, peasants from the densely populated and environmentally critical northwest of Benin are engaging in a process of agricultural colonization of the central region. Consequently, the predominant approach to understanding these processes of internal population movement in Benin is to focus on environmental degradation. But why do people stay in degraded areas while others leave? Why do migrants again leave the environmentally still stable destination areas and why does migration itself becomes causation for new migration? It is obvious that one needs a structural understanding of the environment in the political and cultural context of this region to understand its role as a driver for migration. On the basis of an empirical case-study the impact of progressive deterioration of environmental conditions is embedded in social and cultural structures. Being aware of this is necessary in order to really understand a migration pattern that at first glance could be misconstrued as being purely environmentally induced. Since migration theories are somehow overlooked in the debate on environment and forced migration the empirical findings will be embedded in a theoretical approach that places greater emphasis on a cumulative causation of migration and on the inter-temporal dimension of migration.
During the last ten years, adaptation to climate change has emerged as a prominent new paradigm in environmental politics in developing countries in general and in Africa in particular. Yet, this new paradigm and its effects are not unproblematic, as the empirical research in Rwanda presented in this paper indicates. The paper analyses why forced resettlement of farmers is considered an innovative action among the climate change adaptation efforts and argues that the concept of adaptation to climate change is a travelling idea that is constantly translated and used politically to frame environmental and developmental interventions in concrete places that heavily impact the everyday lives of rural dwellers. Drawing on actor-network theory and its concept of translation, we provide an alternative view of adaptation to climate change by providing a critical assessment of the linkages between global climate change governance and concrete local adaptation measures, revealing that adaptation to climate change does not always have positive effects on people's livelihoods.
This article addresses the changing role of higher education in Africa from the pre-colonial time up to the 1990s. The basic argument is, though higher education institutions are a product of socio-economic and political dynamics of the society in the course of history, these interactions have always been imperfect in Africa since universities did not originally evolve out of social interactions. The introduction of European education during colonial period also did not serve the interests of African societies; instead education was used as a means of extending colonial ideology. After independence, African countries inherited fragile institutions which did not have social legitimacy from the public. The donor-client dependency relationship had inhibited the development of African institutions and the capacity of Africans to develop educational policies which are socially relevant and financially feasible. Thus, higher education institutions in Africa have been carrying out various roles of economic development, Africanization, nation-building, and engines of knowledge economy; at the same time executing foreign roles which have not been owned by African societies.
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