Rolling Back the African State: Implications for Social Development in Ghana

Abstract

The New Policy Agenda of the Reagan and Thatcher years has profoundly influenced aid flows from the industrialized countries of North America and Western Europe to the developing nations of sub-Saharan Africa. The application of neo-liberal principles to the disbursement of multilateral and bilateral aid for social development has resulted in the diversion of donor funding away from the public sector towards non-governmental organizations. The consequences of relegating the role of the public sector in social development is explored through qualitative research conducted in Ghana with state-employed community development workers. The study exposes how severe financial constraint within the state sector distorts the targeting of beneficiaries and social development activity. This differs from findings revealed by interviews with social development workers employed by international non-governmental organizations. These indicate that such agencies are able to sustain effectively resourced fieldworkers who are in a position to form positive working relationships with beneficiaries. The circumstances of the Department of Community Development and its relationships with non-governmental agencies in Ghana are used to explore the effects on state-building of the New Policy Agenda in the sub-Saharan region.

Sport and the fight against HIV/AIDS in Zambia: A ‘partnership approach’?

“…Laird, 2007), the development of effective partnerships within the Zambian sport-for-development sector was hindered by the high number of organizational stakeholders. There were no partnerships that encompassed the entire range of agencies involved in sport-for-development or that encouraged co-ordination of policy and practice in the sector.…”

An ‘international movement’? Decentring sport-for-development within Zambian communities

“…However, this approach may be incompatible with the evaluation of sport-for-development efforts as a whole across each of the two case study communities due to the range of outcomes desired and the difference of perspectives as to what may represent developmental means and ends. While a logic model approach may still have relevance in evaluating specific, single interventions, as Coalter (2009) suggests, practically doing so may only serve to reinforce the fragmentation that constrains development efforts across the Global South (Laird 2007) and specifically in communities such as Kamwala and Chawama. It may be that evaluation approaches that initially examine individual and community outcomes and then work back to explore the processes that contributed to them may be more appropriate given the multiplicity of concurrent development interventions operating in communities such as Chawama and Kamwala.…”

Zambia: government's role in colonial and modern times

“…The rationale for the preference for working with NGOs is based on the notion that such organisations are well placed to effectively enable aid reach the poorest members of society (see Bebbington and Riddell 1997;Zaidi 1999). It also reflects the perception that African governments are both failing and corrupt (Laird 2007;Zaidi 1999). As Zambia experienced its worst economic hardships during the Structural Adjustment Programme in the early 1980s, the government failed to effectively deliver most of its public services.…”