‘When we launched the government's agenda…’: aid agencies and local politics in urban Africa

Abstract

Political realities in the capital cities of impoverished countries emerging from violent conflict illustrate how local actors can be hindered in conducting political affairs independently from the interests and influence of national governments as well as international agencies. This experience problematises the argument that the main cause of political impasse in African cities governed by opposition parties is incomplete decentralisation, whereby a devolution of responsibilities is not matched by a downward reallocation of resources. Although resulting competition constrains local governments' opportunities to deliver basic services, we need to look beyond the national scale to uncover the drivers of institutional change and gauge the promise of donor-driven local political empowerment. Urban politics in Africa continues to be shaped by global aid discourses, which are translated into local policy frameworks through interest convergence between international and national actors. The case of Freetown, Sierra Leone provides an illustration of such macro-level alignment and resulting local frictions. At the same time, it also demonstrates how local politics have challenged the technocratic, apolitical reinvention of urban governance in the global South perpetuated by the international aid industry.

The Political Economy of Post-invasion Kabul, Afghanistan: Urban Restructuring beyond the North–South Divide

“…Yet rapidly increasing land values as the basis for private accumulation amid major international 'peace' missions are not a novel phenomenon (see Sidney, 2009). Similar dynamics have been reported from other conflict-afflicted cities in the global South such as Dili in Timor-Leste (Fitzpatrick, 2001;Patrick, 2001; see also Moxham and Carapic, 2013), Monrovia in Liberia (Unruh, 2009), Freetown in Sierra Leone (Esser, 2012) and Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Büscher and Vlassenroot, 2010; see also Vlassenroot and Büscher, 2013). Some of these studies-in particular that of Moxham and Carapic-also note concerns about a narrowing of local political agency in these cities, akin to the trade-off between local accumulation and local deliberation described here in relation to post-invasion Kabul.…”

State-Movement Partnership in Uganda: Co-Producing an Enabling Environment for Urban Poverty Reduction?

“…Ideas held by powerful elites about the role of cities and the image a city projects internationally can be critical, with the pursuit of 'world-class city' status often prioritised above the needs of the urban poor (Esser, 2012). Patrimonialism and political clientelism 3 may pose significant challenges for securing political will to engage in co-produced initiatives with the urban poor, although there is also evidence historically (Adams, 2005) and in recent analyses of certain African states that patrimonial systems can be wielded in developmental directions in some cases (Kelsall and Booth, 2010).…”

The three institutionalisms and institutional dynamics: understanding endogenous and exogenous change

“…These expenditure increases, however, have as much to do with the exogenous developments of ageing and declining fertility rates as with the internal structure of the pension system. Some of the changes that are characterised as endogenous, then, turn out to be little different from processes of institutional transposition: in the case of transposition, institutions start working differently because the structure they are embedded in changes; in many examples of negative feedback processes, an institution does not work as it is intended because it does not match the structure in which it is embedded (Galvan and Sil 2007; Erk and Koning 2010; Esser 2012).…”