Suchergebnisse

"In Kahe lässt sich beobachten, wie ein funktionierendes, in die Gesellschaft integriertes Bewässerungssystem mit dem Verlust der lokalen politischen Selbstbestimmung allmählich zerstört wurde. Von den Handlungsoptionen, Widerstand gegen Wasserkonkurrenten zu leisten, auszuwandern oder eine regenabhängige Landwirtschaft zu betreiben, wurde in Kahe die letzte gewählt. Widerstand schien unter einem repressiven Staat gefährlicher zu sein als eine risikoreiche Wirtschaftsweise, und attraktive Gebiete, in denen sich eine Neuansiedlung gelohnt hätte, gab es nicht. Es bestehen grundsätzliche Unterschiede zwischen den lokalen Formen der Bewässerung und den von außen importierten Formen des Lower Moshi Irrigation Project. In Fragen der Legitimation von Wasserrechten besteht ein Widerspruch zwischen der Vorstellung der lokalen Bevölkerung, Wasserrechte seien ihnen von ihren Ahnen verliehen worden, und der Vorstellung, dem Staat stehe alles Wasser zu. Doch der Staat schafft es nicht, die auftretende Konkurrenz um das Wasser zu lösen. Die vom ihm beanspruchte Rechtsauffassung bezüglich des Bewässerungssystems steht mit seinem Zentralismus im Widerspruch zur Selbstverwaltung der Bewässerungsgräben. Ein weiterer Widerspruch liegt in der Wirtschaftsweise des von außen importierten Bewässerungswesens und der lokalen Wirtschaftsweise, die auf einem komplizierten ökologischen System, in dem verschiedene Pflanzen überwiegend für den eigenen Bedarf angebaut wurden, basiert. Dieser Subsistenzwirtschaft steht die Cash-Crop-Ökonomie der Entwicklungshilfegeber gegenüber. Hier wird in Monokultur nur ein Produkt angebaut, von dessen Verkauf alle anderen Bedürfnisse der Bauern finanziert werden sollen. Am Beispiel Kahe zeigt sich, wie seit Beginn der Kolonialzeit die lokale Kontrolle über die Ressource Wasser zunehmend verloren ging." (Textauszug)

Du point de vue des grands blocs économiques tels que l'Europe, le Japon et les Etats-
Unis, l'Afrique ne joue plus aucun rôle significatif. Son déclin est visible non seulement à la
faible part qu'elle a dans le commerce extérieur, mais surtout au niveau extrêmement faible de l'investissement extérieur direct. Même en tant que marché, l'Afrique ne présente
pratiquement pas d'intérêt en raison de son faible revenu par habitant. L'Afrique fait partie des Etats du groupe ACP (Afrique-Caraïbes-Pacifique) qui, depuis 1975, sont liés par des liens de coopération à la Communauté européenne dans le cadre de la convention de Lomé. Dans cette contribution, je vais examiner deux aspects de la convention de Lomé : les relations commerciales et le système préférentiel de Lomé (y compris les résultats des accords de l'Uruguay Round) et les systèmes de subventions du Stabex et du Sysmin (pour les produits agricoles et miniers).

Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) in Sub-Saharan Africa: the missing middle in post-school education; Cross-country comparison of TVET systems, practices and policies and employability of youth in Sub-Saharan Africa. Both focus on the current situation of school graduates in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This session highlights the basics of Vocational Education and Training (VET). Each university has its own characteristics. The contributions seek to encourage various forms of VET. Challenges for universities and other institutions are emphasised. The contributions help draw conclusions for the Further structuring of VET in Sub-Saharan Africa. Other country-specific articles from the session concentrate on the characteristics and orientation of VET systems, thereby helping create an overall picture of the status of VET in all participating countries. The participants endeavored to analyze the current situation of VET in Sub-Saharan Africa by exploring the character and individual design of the current VET systems in the participating countries.

The globalized Western culture of innovation, as propagated by major aid institutions, does not necessarily lead to empowerment or improvement of the well-being of the stakeholders. On the contrary, it often blocks viable indigenous innovation cultures. In African societies and African Diasporas in Latin America, cultures of innovation largely accrue from the informal, not the formal sector. Crucial for their proper understanding is a threefold structural differentiation: between the formal and informal sector, within the informal sector, according to class, gender or religion, and between different transnational social spaces. Different innovation cultures may be complementary, mutually reinforcing, or conflicting, leading in extreme cases even to a 'clash of cultures' at the local level. The repercussions of competing, even antagonistic agencies of innovative strategic groups are demonstrated, analyzing the case of the African poor in Benin and the African Diasporas of Brazil and Haiti.

Monetary coordination is high on the agenda of different regional organizations in Africa. Economic benefits of a common currency, like lower transaction cost, increased macroeconomic stability, or the shielding of central banks against political pressure from nationalist elites and their inclination for excessive spending are undoubtedly expected. But the most important underlying aim of monetary integration in Africa is derived from its history, particularly the legacy of the slave trade and colonialism, and the subsequent strive for pan-African ideals, which has become manifest in the promotion of African unity in a crisis prone continent. However, whether it is feasible to achieve this ambitious political aim with economic means of regional economic and monetary cooperation, is open to question. Experts and the international donor community periodically caution about diverting attention from the most pressing needs of African countries by pursuing over-ambitious monetary policies. African governments should get the priorities right, i.e. they ought to implement first sustainable solutions to the problems of crisis resolution and prevention, the fight against corruption and rent-seeking elites, in order to promote good governance, transparency and accountability. The realities of African economies suggest that the grand new projects of monetary unions are unlikely to succeed. In addition, it is questionable whether economic, result-orientated reasoning and the discussion of monetary concepts (e.g. that of the Optimum Currency Area or of the Original Sin), which might be duly applied to Western or Latin American societies, have the same relevance in the African context.

Research from different parts of Africa indicates that to grasp the HIV/AIDS catastrophe, an in-depth understanding of conjugal relationships is crucial. In casual, short-term sexual interactions, safer sex practices, foremost condom use, have become more and more prevalent. This does not hold true for long-term relationships. Marriage rates have substantially declined in many parts of southern Africa. Without marriage as a possible frame for conjugal relations meanings and practices of 'love' have become the structuring concept of conjugality. Love relations are perceived as based on trust. This contradicts the use of condoms, a visible sign of mistrust. Based on long-term ethnographic field research in rural northwest Namibia we analyse the interconnections between conjugal relations, perceptions of risk and practices of safe sex in detail.

"Post-conflict reconstruction is understood as a complex system that provides for simultaneous short-, medium- and long-term programmes to prevent disputes from escalating, avoid a relapse into violent conflict and to build and consolidate sustainable peace. Post-conflict reconstruction is ultimately aimed at addressing the root causes of a conflict and to lay the foundations for social justice and sustainable peace. Post-conflict reconstruction systems proceed through three broad phases, namely the emergency phase, the transition phase and the development phase; however, they should not be understood as absolute, fixed, time-bound or having clear boundaries. Post-conflict reconstruction systems have five dimensions: (1) security; (2) political transition, governance and participation; (3) socio-economic development; (4) human rights, justice and reconciliation; and (5) coordination, management and resource mobilisation. These five dimensions need to be programmed simultaneously, collectively and cumulatively to develop momentum to sustainable peace. While there are processes, phases and issues that can be said to be common to most countries emerging from conflict, one should recognise the uniqueness of each conflict system, in terms of its own particular socioeconomic and political history, the root causes and immediate consequences of the conflict an the specific configuration of the actors that populate the system. Further, as most intra-state conflicts in Africa are interlinked within regional conflict systems, country specific post-conflict reconstruction systems need to seek synergy with neighbouring systems to ensure coherence across regional conflict systems. The nexus between development, peace and security have become a central focus of post-conflict reconstruction thinking and practice over the last decade. The key policy tension in the post-conflict setting appears to be between economic efficiency and political stability. While the need and benefits of improved coherence is widely accepted, there seems to be no consensus on who should coordinate, what should be coordinated and how coordination should be undertaken." (author's abstract)

Throughout the year the controversial legislative elections dominated the political landscape. Huge anti-government demonstrations that called in vain for political alternance. The legislative elections of 20 December 2018, boycotted by the major opposition parties, resulted in an easy victory of the ruling party, however without the expected constitutional amendment majority. Therefore, the prime minister and his cabinet were replaced. The local elections, crucial for democratization at the grass-roots, but postponed time and again since 1987, were again postponed in December 2018 sine die. Economic growth remained stable at about 5% per annum. Public investment in infrastructure (e. g. roads, harbour) and increases in agricultural productivity, notably of export crops, had been the key drivers of economic growth. Moreover, money-laundering, illegal money transfers and trafficking grew alarmingly. Unemployment and lacking political change caused increasing migration.

The theory of epigenetic developments in evolution rests upon two assumptions. First, it refers to developmental processes that decouple biological from genetic evolution. Decoupling evolutionary processes from genetic evolution is even more important for social evolution. Second, it claims that the development of an organism plays a vital role in evolution. It takes into account the specific role individual development plays in evolution. Thus epigenesis refers to definite evolutionary processes unintelligible within Darwinian theory (Ho and Saunders, 1982). This special characteristic of epigenetic processes restricts the field of random developments in evolution. The Darwinian processes of variation and selection are seen as of secondary relevance for evolution to take place. The logic of evolution is decoupled from Darwinian logic, which thus loses its pre-eminent role in explaining evolutionary sequences. An epigenetic system that organizes individual development as cognitive learning processes (as does the epigenetic system underlying social evolution) changes evolutionary processes in several respects. It changes (1) the tempo of evolution (2) the internal structures that restrict the relevance of selection processes and (3) the conditions that favour learning processes and therefore the innovations that are necessary for social evolution. The central characteristic of social evolution is that society is produced by such cognitive learning processes. Learning processes allow for the self-production (Touraine, 1973) of society. Of central importance to the process of self-production is a special type of cognitive learning, namely moral learning (Fairservis, 1975). Moral development emerges in learning processes specific to the human species, and is therefore considered to be the key variable in a theory of social evolution (Eder, 1976, 1984; Habermas, 1981).