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This paper explores foreign involvement in Africa as part of energy security. As the international players seek to secure the flow of oil at reasonable prices using sometimes approaches of stark contrast between the West and the East, we look at what is left from this game for Africa. The paper seeks to find out how international energy-related involvements impact the African states where internal institutions are too weak to manage abrupt changes that associate with the large oil sector such as political and fiscal reforms and the economic shocks. Africa is tremendously abundant in oil. Although Africa is just waking up as the new energy powerhouse, it has experienced intensive foreign engagement in other resources including slavery and raw materials long before the colonial era began. This paper argues that history of foreign exploitation for resources is accountable for Africa's failure to perform well despite its promising resource endowment but will remain so as long as Africa supplies resources for the world as crucial as oil. Liberal economists argue that resource industries bring foreign investments needed for states' economic development. Oil companies and foreign government resonate this argument as they claim to build infrastructure projects, provide aid and assist transparency and democratic progress in the places they operate. While external investors reap large commercial benefits, Africa has continued to suffer with wars, abject poverty and bad governance. This paper looks closely whether the approaches they use contribute to Africa's resource curse. It begins with brief discussion of the definition and causes of the resource curse existing in the literature. It then moves onto foreign involvements in Africa for oil security, the focus of this study, provided as part of the cause to the resource curse in the region. In this sector, it explains how Africa has stepped up as a strategic location for international energy, who involves in the African oil game and what approaches they employ by economic, political and military means. By this, the paper sheds light on the unaddressed relations between foreign resource extractions and the resource curse discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) has made it increasingly important to determine their effects on trade flows. At the center of the debate over the impact of these agreements are the questions of whether they are trade diverting or trade creating (Rahman et al 2006) and whether they are on balance trade-liberalizing or protectionist (Krueger 1999). Goldstein et al (2007) find the impact of nonreciprocal PTAs to be negative, contradictory to the underlying goals for such agreements. This paper seeks to further test this and other studies that have found a negative relationship between nonreciprocal trade agreements, preferences, and trade using a recently implemented non-reciprocal trade agreement between the U.S. and Sub-Saharan Africa, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) of 2000. The AGOA seeks to promote trade, investment, and economic cooperation between the U.S. and AGOA countries by offering 36 eligible African countries duty-free access for most goods, providing coverage for additional commodities above and beyond those covered under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). U.S. non-oil imports under the AGOA have become the largest category of trade for eligible countries. A traditional gravity model is employed to test whether the AGOA is trade creating for eligible countries targeting the U.S. market. The findings of this study suggest that AGOA membership or eligibility for AGOA textile benefits have no significant impact on trade. The uncertainty of the life span of preferences, eroding preferential margins, and the inability for African producers to respond adequately to preferences are theoretical explanations for these results. The importance of this paper is to advance our understanding of the effect of PTAs, specifically those between a major economic power and less developed countries at a time when preferences are eroding yet remain at the center of debate in the current Doha Round. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although regionalism has proliferated in sub-Saharan Africa since the advent of decolonization, success in terms of economic development are not promising. Examining intra- regional trade shows that there has been an increase as a result of regional trade integration; however the rate of increase differs among 4 key blocs in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper examines and test factors that affect the level of intra-regional trade among four regional trading blocs in sub-Saharan Africa: the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The main thesis of this paper is to reviewing and confirming the argument that multiple memberships in various regional trade agreements adversely affect intra-regional trade of a specific agreement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Post-Colonial African state, which was largely created in the image of the colonial state, had very weak links with the interests, institutions and values of citizens. This paper examines how globalization is impacting the state-society fragmentation in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of hegemonic governance on economic development, measured in terms of gross national income (GNI) per capita and exports as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Specifically, we test two sets of competing hypotheses drawn from neo-liberal institutionalist ?Washington Consensus? and world systems scholarship to address the question: does hegemonic power increase ? or decrease ? economic development? We utilize King?s Amelia software to address the grievous missing data issues in the World Bank?s World Development Indicators 2002 data collection. We also use comprehensive, multidimensional indicators (from Sacko 2003) to conduct a cross-national, cross-time, empirical investigation of the effects of hegemonic power of the United States (1960-1992) on economic development in five (5) regions: Latin America, Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. We find that for the Latin American region, hegemonic power has a statistically significant negative effect on GNI per capita across all of our model specifications. Hegemonic power, however, has no statistically significant effect on GNI per capita in the Middle East and North Africa region, the South Asia region, or the sub-Saharan Africa region. For the Latin American region, hegemonic power also has a statistically significant negative effect on exports as a percentage of GDP. In contrast, hegemonic power has a statistically significant positive effect on exports as a percentage of GDP in the Middle East and North Africa region and the sub-Saharan Africa region. Thus, while, in Latin America, we find some support for Wallerstein?s world systems theory and the work of scholars focused on the deleterious effects of hegemony (neo-imperialism), we also find support for the neo-liberal institutionalist / Washington Consensus hypothesis that hegemony can serve to augment economic development ? at least in the Middle East and North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much has been written about regional cooperation in Africa as a means of achieving development and growth and ending its marginalisation in the world economy. Within the last four decades almost two hundred African regional arrangments have been more or less unsuccessful according to their intended aims. Nowadays, the promises of regional cooperation vary from the best possibility to get fast access to the global market; the chance to preserve partial autonomy; to being the fundament of an alternative hegemonic project. Most approaches try to explain the present economic, political and social African reality with the help of suitable empirical facts that are proving the rightness of their analysis and are giving the sound basis for the knowledge about the right things to do. But this ignores both that there isn’t a world out there which we only have to discover in order to know what is right or wrong as well as the complexity of social arrangements. As a result, at the beginning and at the end of such talks are complaints: surprisingly people don’t do what they are ought to do. In our paper we will focus on some categories of rules and rule which can be found within the international (institutional) environment and the structures of national societies. Alltogether they constitute present forms of regional cooperation in Africa, e.g. the SADC, and choices for their future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South African Development Community (SADC)’s Protocol on Shared Watercourse Systems is unique in that, more than a multilateral regime focused on a particular transboundary river basin, it presents a regional management framework and regulatory structure for the use fifteen international watercourses in the fourteen country SADC. Seemingly, watercourse management, typically difficult to move beyond the bilateral cross-boundary to the basin-wide approach, has gone beyond-the-basin. What is interesting about the SADC protocol, however, is that, rather than having grown beyond the basin, beyond the basin (in some respects beyond the SADC region) is where cooperation began. Future development of the regime rests on solidifying it at the regional level and bringing it downward from the regional and upward from the bilateral to also include multi-country basin-wide management. This essay examines the process of how a regime can begin at the macro-level and diffuse downward. It highlights the role of international norms and powerful actors in the development of a regional level regime based on globally derived principles in the form of the SADC Protocol. Having examined the demand and supply of the regime, the essay draws on liberal theories of interdependence and reciprocity to explore how the regime may be able to at once solidify its status as a regionally functioning regime and diffuse downward to yield functioning basin level regimes in the SADC watercourses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In October 2001, the New Partnership for Africa?s Development (NEPAD) was released as the blue-print for addressing Africa?s development crisis. In the period since its release NEPAD has faced the curious dilemma of being hailed as a visionary document, especially in the West, and being severely criticised by a range of African civil society institutions. Much of the criticism of NEPAD has focused on procedure?the lack of consultation in its drafting?and its neoliberal policy orientation. The latter underscores the sense of betrayal that comes through much of the civil society resistance to NEPAD. The question though is this: Why would a group of African leaders, who seem genuine in their con-cerns, take responsibility for such a policy framework? We argue that the explanation lies in the complex interaction between a set of developments since 1980: the neoliberal hegemony at the level of State policymaking, the internal policy atrophy, the co-ercive power of compliance, but equally the new constituencies (class forces) that have been thrown up in the last two decades?within the state, economy, and importantly the civil society in sub-Saharan Africa. It is in this sense that we speak of the structural adjustment of African politics and civil society. Much of the latter is premised on the ?death of the emancipatory project? and the domi-nant politics of the petty bourgeois class in Africa. These constitute the class and ideological premises of NEPAD and the need to understand NEPAD as a class project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that foreign aid to Kenya in the period from 1960 to 2002 can be divided into three stages, each with its own aid trend and form of governance. These characteristics and the transition between phases result from a combination of domestic and international factors. First, Kenya?s aid levels in the period 1960-78 remained relatively stable. As Britain?s initially high level of disbursement waned (a large part devoted to financing the transfer of land from departing Europeans to Africans), other donors increased their contributions. In fact, had the UK not cut its aid so dramatically in 1965-67, Kenya would have followed the trend elsewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa and the developing world of rising disbursements in the early 1970s. The US increased its attention to Kenya for its pro-Western stance in the unfolding Cold War dynamics and because of an increasing awareness of business opportunities for US capital. The World Bank saw in Kenya a model of high growth rates, in spite of rapid population growth, and a stable government much more committed to free market economics and international trade than other countries in the region. Donors appeared completely untroubled with the fact that Kenya was an authoritarian regime and that Jomo Kenyatta?s government committed significant human rights abuses and was characterized by significant high-level corruption. Then, during the period from 1978 to 1990, as the continent-wide economic crisis took root, donors steadily increased their aid disbursements to Sub-Saharan Africa and even more dramatically so to Kenya, whereas total aid to developing countries remained relatively constant. Increased repression and corruption after Daniel arap Moi came to power did not deter donor support, let alone attract any significant attention. Kenya retained a much more interesting investment climate than most other African countries and still met specific Western strategic interests. The World Bank responded to some economic reform (and sometimes only promises) by stepping up assistance, increasing tied to economic policy reform, though this failed to renew growth. Finally, between 1990 and 2002, aid to Kenya declined at a rate far exceeding the trend elsewhere. When donors began to resume increased levels of assistance to developing countries in the late 1990s, aid to Kenya did not follow suit. In 1990-91, donors suddenly grew disenchanted with the Moi?s regime?s corruption and autocracy. They acted in a rare degree of coordination and radically cut aid to Kenya. This was spurred in large part by the end of the Cold War and the decline in Western strategic interests in Africa?and corresponding rise in interest in democracy?, but also encouraged by Kenyan civil society pro-democracy movements. At the same time, good governance (a term introduced into donor discourse in 1989), defined to include greater political and economic freedoms, transparency and accountability, became widely accepted as a key ingredient to successful reform. This coordinated donor action forced Moi to permit multiparty competition, but a lack of commitment to see through the changes allowed Moi to retain power through elections that fell well short of free and fair. Between 1992 and 2002, donors repeatedly renewed and suspended aid, obtaining only very slow political and economic reform. At various times, fear of instability as well as donors? own economic and security interests outweighed their commitment to obtaining compliance for political and economic conditionality. In December 2002, KANU?s first-ever electoral defeat and the peaceful transfer of power the opposition marked an important new beginning in Kenya?s history. Like the previous three periods, aid during this period will depend on both internal policies and global trends, notably Kenya?s role in the ongoing US-led ?war on terror?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) concentrates the highest number of failed states and of aid-dependent states in the world in spite of the efforts of the international community to create functional states in the region. Statehood is central for understanding the integration of the non-Western areas into what today has become a global international society (IS) (Bull 1993[1986], Buzan 2004). The majority of the states comprised in the international society are in fact developing countries, fact which makes the developed statesâ€"developing states relationship a fundamental relation of the current international order. English School theory has paid significant attention to colonial relations, however it stops short of assigning meaning to the developed-developing dynamics. This paper takes Buzan’s (2004) account of the English School a step further by integrating development (aid) into IR theory. The paper argues that ‘development’ is a primary institution of the current international society and that through aid practices the nature of the ‘international’ has been substantially transformed (being diffused all the way to the very ‘local’). The paper addresses the link between the different but to some extent similar processes of expansion of international society (in non-Western areas) and that of development, and as such offers a meaningful reading of development (aid) practices for International Relations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China’s economic ties with the African continent attract increasing attention. Some charge that China is undermining efforts to improve human rights and spread democracy. On the other hand, some praise China’s model for economic development as more appropriate for Africa than the models Western states, the IMF, and the World Bank can provide. Underlying these larger debates is a competition for market access and presence in Africa. This is evident in the recent efforts of Chinese telecommunications companies to secure contracts to build infrastructure and wire Africa for the 21st century. What is China’s economic policy towards Africa? What role does this play in the headway that Chinese telecommunications companies have made across African markets? What impact does China’s growing presence have on the relationship between state-building and market-building in traditionally weak states across the continent? To answer these questions, we take our study to the sector and firm-level to investigate the growing presence of Chinese telecommunications equipment makers in Africa’s telecommunication markets. This paper bridges the fields of IPE and comparative politics to achieve two objectives. First, it characterizes China’s foreign policy on Africa and investigates the impact of this strategy on the varying effectiveness of Chinese market penetration across African countries. Second, the paper evaluates the political and economic impact of China’s growing power vis-à-vis the West in Africa. We problematize Africa’s “dependent development” relationship with China as China leverages foreign relations to gain a foothold in African markets. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent publication of the report of the Commission for Africa is the latest in a long line of blueprints for the continent?s development. Whilst elements of the report, such as the call for an end to aid conditionality, are to be welcomed, this paper suggests that contrary to its presentation as a ?new kind of development? for Africa, it remains based on a neo-liberal model of development. It is at best ?reformist? in its nature and in this respect it reflects the composition of the Commission. This model can be traced back as far as the Brandt Commission of the 1980s. It favours Western economic interests and the underlying theme of the report is one of a ?missionary? approach. It suggests that Africa still needs the advice of the West.This should all come as no surprise given the elite nature of the African members of the Commission and the continued dominance of neo-liberal development discourse within the global policy-making community. The paper also notes that there is a problem with devising plans for an entire continent. They ignore the great heterogeneity across Africa and grassroots initiatives for development. Moreover, the report will remain a mission impossible in a world where policies towards Africa continue to reflect the dominance of this neo-liberal model. The negotiation of Economic Partnership Agreements by the European Union with African regions is just one example of this. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature on modern African development, it is often assumed that significant differences existed between Great Britain and France with regards to their respective styles of colonial administration. Taking this further, some researchers have asserted that this difference in colonial administration has affected post-colonial economic and political development in Africa. This paper offers some theoretical, anecdotal, and econometric evidence questioning the validity of these assumptions. The evidence suggests that the British/French typology of colonial legacy may be inappropriate for understanding post-colonial development. This paper also examines some commonly encountered problems associated with econometric analyses of African development: namely, the availability and reliability of data, and the difficulty in operationalizing and measuring political development in Africa. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine China’s engagement in Africa, with special attention on China’s role in economic development and governance. China’s involvement in Africa has been consistent throughout the continent, although a majority of its attention has been ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With globalization and rising demand for resources, compulsory acquisition of communal lands by the state has become a growing occurrence in many African countries. The state extinguishes the ownership rights of rural communities purportedly to enhance development. It often awards the expropriated land as concessions to extractive industries. Several countries have experienced respectable resource-based economic growth. Often times, however, such growth has been accompanied by serious socioeconomic problems, including landlessness, unemployment, and impoverishment of rural dwellers, severe environmental problems, and growing social upheaval and violent conflicts. Using cases, this paper examines the social upheaval and violent conflicts associated with the expansion of extractive industries in Africa. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) framework is a serious attempt to put Africa into a global economy through close relationships with the G7/G8. The stated objective is to create conditions where levels of aid and private capital flows will increase and be sustained if Africa can develop strong democratic institutions to ensure the rule of law, good governance, and respect for minority rights and human rights in general. Among the five 'initiating members' - South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria, Senegal and Egypt, South Africa is the strongest, both in economic and political influence in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). NEPAD was designed by these five countries and sold to the G7/G8 as Africa's response to addressing regional economic transformation. However, many leaders elsewhere, NGOS and other civil society groups accuse the "five" of ditching the pan-Africanist model of universal solidarity (still advocated by the African Union (AU)) in favor of acceptance of western economic and political ideas in the globalized political economy. South Africa's role is increasingly being questioned elsewhere in Africa. Critics see South Africa's leadership in NEPAD as self-serving. They point to its activist foreign policy in the region; its peace-keeping forces and the pace and size of its investment in SSA as regional hegemony. Proponents view South Africa's role in NEPAD as necessary of a pivotal state that acts in the regional interest in collaboration with other countries. The paper argues that both positions contain a shade of realism, given the history of South Africa prior to 1994. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the intellectual property and the modern state in Africa. It states that global corporations provide a source of technology, market access and capital, all of which states seek driving economic growth, while states offer territory and set up the rules of the game by which firms may operate within that territory. It cites that the identity of Africa is affected by external forces as the indigenous intellectual property of the continent and its natural resources are targeted as a focal point in a global technological revolution.

Researchers have frequently studied the effect of democracy on economic and social development and, for the most part, have only found indirect and relatively weak positive effects between the two indicators. Yet, many studies fall short in highlighting t ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractFrom Nigeria to Somalia to South Africa, the effects of the mobile phone in sub-Saharan Africa have been extraordinary. Individuals who previously had little access to banking services and no accounts are now opening 'm-bank accounts' and using their phones as debit cards anywhere there is cellular coverage (credits and debits get exchanged and confirmed via text message). In nearly any village or city one now finds entrepreneurs with multiple mobile phones who buy airtime in bulk and charge a small premium for the cellular-less to make calls. Others offer 'step messaging' where a client sends a message to the very limits of cellular coverage, then, for a fee, a runner takes the message the final distance on foot. Mobile phones are even being used in the fight against HIV/AIDS. New mobile software has been specifically developed so medical practitioners can feed into cellphones information about patients, from what symptoms they show to what medications they are on. And patients and care-givers receive information via text message on everything from drug adherence instructions to advice about how to provide home-based palliative care. In the African context, the mobile phone holds the promise of being a tool for widespread, sustained economic development from the grassroots level up. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have shown how countries with significant mineral or oil sectors have underperformed relative to other countries. They tend to have lower incomes, lower levels of growth, less diversification of their economies, higher corruption, lower levels of democracy, and even proclivity to civil strife and civil war (Auty 1993, Ross, 2001, 1999 Sachs and Warner 1999, Karl 1999, 1997; Ades and Di Tella 1999; Jensen and Wantchekon, 2004; Collier and Hoeffler 1998; Collier et al. 2003). By contrast, some scholars suggest that the ownership of resources may have some impact on these very same outcomes (Quinn 2002, 1999, 1993; Ross 1999; Jones-Luong and Weinthal 2004; World Bank 1999). Quinn (2002, 1999, 1993) holds that majority state ownership of mining or industries in Africa resulted in inward-oriented economic policies that led to lower economic growth and less political and civil rights inAfrica from 1966-1986 as a result of the nexus of political and economy preferences of these political elites who owned the most important sectors of the economy. Using a most similar design, we examine six mineral-dependent and sub-Saharan Africa countries to see if the resource curse affected each set of countries equally. Half of these countries feature majority state ownership, half do not. We, therefore, test to see if countries with "majority state ownership" of these mineral or oil sectorsexaggerated or worsened the mineral/ petroleum resource curse. We expect that many of the outcomes attributed to minerals per se are actually a function of, or greatly exacerbated by, majority state ownership. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine the role of Japan?s national economic identity as a foundation for its foreign economic policy towards Africa. From earlier research, it seems clear that Japanese officials and policy analysts believe that the Japanese development experience can provide important and relevant lessons to African countries. One lesson is the self-help perspective. Self-help refers to the recipient country?s ability and willingness to take responsibility for its economic problems and the initiative for their own development. Also, self-help implies reluctance for the Japanese government to directly involve itself in the domestic affairs of recipient countries. This largely explains Japan?s cautious stance towards conditionality. Moreover, at this time of Japan?s emerging ODA strategy, the government adhered to a ?request basis? position in which recipient countries first must request from the Japanese government for foreign aid. This principle embodies the idea that Japan will help only those countries that are willing to help themselves. A World Bank report noted that Japan tended to emphasize economic rather than social needs of a recipient country in applying the request-based assistance principle.Another lesson from Japan?s national identity targets its alternative view of economic development. The government pushed for its own economic policies that stood in contrast to other donor agencies or governments. In contrast to the views commonly referred to as the Washington Consensus, Japan relied on its own development experiences as a guide in assisting African countries. Its experiences suggest to the Japanese government that state administrative functions have a crucial role in the development process. In particular, the state role can facilitate needed economic production as it appeared to occur in Japan and other Asian countries. What the Japanese government has been promoting, in part, is the reduction of poverty through economic production instead of direct funding of poverty programs. From Japan?s perspective, this emphasis adheres to the concept of ownership. Ownership of the aid process has implied a relevant role for a ?developmental state;? in other words, that the state has a positive, facilitating role in the economy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]