Silences in NGO Discourse: The Role and Future of NGOs in Africa

<p>One of the most articulate critics of the destructive effects of neoliberal policies in Africa, and in particular of the ways in which they have eroded the gains of independence, Issa Shivji shows in two extensive essays in this book that the role of NGOs in Africa cannot be understood without placing them in their political and historical context. As structural adjustment programs were imposed across Africa in the 1980s and 1990s, the international financial institutions and development agencies began giving money to NGOs for programs to minimize the more glaring inequalities perpetuated by their policies. As a result, NGOs have flourished—and played an unwitting role in consolidating the neoliberal hegemony in Africa. Shivji argues that if social policy is to be determined by citizens rather than the donors, African NGOs must become catalysts for change rather than the catechists of aid that they are today.</p>

Business & Money

Shivji, Issa G.

Economics

Pambazuka Press

Fahamu Books

Hitherto the human rights debate in Africa has concentrated on the legal and philosophical. The author, Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, here moves the debate to the social and political planes. He attempts to reconceptualise human rights ideology from the standpoint of the working people in Africa. He defines the approach as avoiding the pitfalls of the liberal perspective as being absolutist in viewing human rights as a central question and the rights struggle as the backbone of democratic struggles. The author maintains that such a study cannot be politically neutral or intellectually uncommitted. Both the critique of dominant discourse and the reconceptualisation are located within the current social science and jurisprudential debates.

The Concept of Human Rights in Africa (Codesria Book Series)

History

Africa

Codesria

The Concept of Human Rights in Africa

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Conseil Pour Le Developement De LA

Not yet democracy: Reforming land tenure in Tanzania

Faculty of Law, University of Dar es Salaam

The neoliberal project, led by the IMF and World Bank, promised to correct many of the distortions in the African postcolonial environment and pledged to engineer liberalization and expand democratic space through competitive multiparty elections. Decades later, few people, if any, can testify to the success of the envisaged reforms. Instead, neoliberalism failed to guarantee a sustainable basis for freedom, rights and prosperity. This compilation shows that the reform period opened the continent to greater privation by a more emboldened local political class who, under pressure from or by acquiescing to foreign imperialist forces, undermined the struggles for democratic transformation and economic empowerment. Examining the rewards of multiparty politics, the dividends from a new constitutional dispensation, the processes of land reform, women's rights to property, or the Pan-Africanist project for emancipation shows that all have suffered severely. Through these essays, Issa Shivji calls for a new, Africa-centered line of thinking that is unapologetic of the continent's right to self-determination and sets out examples of how such thinking should proceed.

Where Is Uhuru?: Reflections on the Struggle for Democracy in Africa

The "Washington consensus" which ushered in neo-liberal policies in Africa is over. It was buried at the G20 meeting in London in early April, 2009. The world capitalist system is in shambles. The champions of capitalism in the global North are rewriting the rules of the game to save it. The crisis creates an opening for the global South, in particular Africa, to refuse to play the capitalist-imperialist game, whatever the rules. It is time to rethink and revisit the development direction and strategies on the continent. This is the central message of this intensely argued book. Issa Shivji demonstrates the need to go back to the basics of radical political economy and ask fundamental questions: who produces the society's surplus product, who appropriates and accumulates it and how is this done. What is the character of accumulation and what is the social agency of change? The book provides an alternative theoretical framework to help African researchers and intellectuals to understand their societies better and contribute towards changing them in the interest of the working people.

Accumulation in an African Periphery. A Theoretical Framework

Mkuki na Nyota Publ.

The Pan-Africanist debate is back on the historical agenda. The stresses and strains in the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar since its formation some forty years ago are not showing any sign of abating. Meanwhile, imperialism under new forms and labels continues to bedevil the continent in ever-aggressive, if subtle, ways. The political federation of East Africa, which was one of the main spin-offs of the Pan-Africanism of the nationalist period, is reappearing on the political stage, albeit in a distorted form of regional integration. It is in this context that the present study is situated. Backgrounding the major dramas of the union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar this book studies the personalities involved and their politics, and includes an account of the Dodoma CCM conference that toppled President Jumbe. It is also a detailed legal analysis of the union incorporating powerful new material.

Pan-Africanism or Pragmatism. Lessons of the Tanganyika-Zanzibar Union

Mkuki Na Nyota Publishers

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Books by Shivji, Issa G.