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The organisations
The Africa Power and Politics Programme is led by an experienced and multi-skilled consortium of research organisations and policy think-tanks in France, Ghana, Niger, Uganda, the UK and the USA. The member organisations are:
- Overseas Development Institute, London, UK, with associates in Malawi, Uganda and Tanzania.
- Center for African Studies, University of Florida at Gainesville, USA.
- Center for Democratic Development, Accra, Ghana.
- Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, UK.
- Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherches sur les Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local (LASDEL), Niamey, Niger, and Parakou, Benin.
- Sociologie, Histoire, Anthropologie des Dynamiques Culturelles (SHADYC) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Marseille, France.
- Development Research and Training, Uganda.
The consortium has been constructed in a very deliberate way. It starts from a basic commonality of perspective. Although we have different views on many issues, we share an excitement about Africa, and the conviction that a deeper understanding of its politics, including at the level of everyday social relationships, is one of the keys to more effective national and international action for development. Members and advisers of the consortium include some leading thinkers on the political economy of African development (Patrick Chabal, Richard Crook, Göran Hyden and Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan).
Our organisations have a strong track-record in fieldwork-based research on the kind of topics with which we wish to contend - the everyday realities of public service delivery, low-level corruption, the functions and dysfunctions of accountability structures at national and local levels, and the dynamics of clientelistic democracy. The consortium purposely spans Anglophone and Francophone Africa.
The Overseas Development Institute is an internationally renowned policy think-tank, with a large and varied staff of applied researchers and communication specialists. Its particular contribution is based on locking together high-quality applied research, practical policy advice, and policy-focused dissemination and debate. ODI's Poverty and Public Policy Group, led by Dr Alison Evans, brings together researchers with backgrounds in African history, sociology/anthropology, international relations and political science as well poverty analysis, aid policy and public financial management. David Booth, who directs the programme, has 40 years of experience of research and advisory work on institutions and policy reform in Africa and Latin America. Other researchers on the programme with ODI are Diana Cammack, Alina Rocha Menocal, Tam O'Neil, Edge Kanyongolo (Malawi) and Frederick Golooba-Mutebi (Uganda). top
The Center for African Studies at the University of Florida, Gainesville, is directed by the political scientist, Prof Leonardo Villalón. Center affiliates and staff include doctoral students and some 100 Africanist scholars, including Prof Göran Hyden - whose writings are a key source on the informal moral economy of African politics - Staffan I. Lindberg, Renata Serra, Brian Child and Brenda Chalfin. The Center's interests range across Anglophone and Francophone Africa and include democratic consolidation, religious organisations, political clientelism and corruption. Center staff have expertise in both intensive local studies and large-scale sample surveys. top
The Center for Democratic Development in Accra, Ghana, is led by the distinguished political scientist Prof E. Gyimah-Boadi. It is one of the leading politics think-tanks in west Africa, influential in Ghana and responsible for a range of regional and international programmes, including Afrobarometer. Prof Gyimah-Boadi holds a Chair at the University of Ghana and has published extensively on civil society and democratisation in Africa. CDD's activities include dialogues, focus groups and validation workshops/seminars with policy makers, academics, civic advocacy groups, media and development partners. It has ten years of corporate experience in bridging research and policy. top
Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Brighton, UK. The Institute of Development Studies is a leading global organisation for research, teaching and communications on international development. Professor Crook is a professorial fellow at IDS Governance team, he was previously the Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (University of London). He has been actively involved in the APPP research since the RPC infancy. His areas of specialisation include: governance and administration (particularly decentralisation); state-civil society relations, public service reform and access to justice and land rights particularly in West Africa and South Asia. top
The Laboratoire d'Etudes et de Recherches sur les Dynamiques Sociales et le Développement Local (LASDEL) is directed by political scientist Dr Mahaman Tidjani Alou from its headquarters in Niamey, Niger. Together with SHADYC (below) LASDEL has recently finished a large joint programme of research on "everyday corruption" in West Africa (Blundo and Olivier de Sardan 2006). This is a pioneering example of the type of fieldwork-based comparative enquiry into the realities of governance in Africa towards which our programme aspires. LASDEL is currently engaged in comparative research on the everyday workings of African bureaucracies in four West African countries (Benin, Ghana, Mali and Niger). The States at Work Programme is jointly run by Dr Tidjani Alou and Prof Thomas Bierschenk at the University of Mainz in Germany. top
The research centre on Sociologie, Histoire, Anthropologie des Dynamiques Culturelles (SHADYC), is jointly supported by the Marseille branch of France's Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and the Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS). Through Prof Jean-Pierre Olivier de Sardan and Dr Giorgio Blundo, members of the centre, SHADYC has close links with LASDEL, where Olivier de Sardan is based. Blundo is currently the president of APAD (Euro-African Association for the Anthropology of Social Change and Development), a well-established network bringing together researchers and development workers from African and European countries. It aims at promoting social change as a domain of research in anthropology. top
Development Research and Training (DRT),was established in 1997, as Ugandan Non-Profit Organisation to undertake Policy Research and Analysis in Uganda and other East African countries. DRT promotes institutional capacity building, micro and macro analysis and also promotes policy engagement on a wide range of social, political and economic issues in Uganda and neighbouring countries. Rosemary Awino Kaduru is currently the Executive Director, DRT and Charles Lwanga-Ntale is a social researcher with previous training in Demography, Economics, Statistics and Sociology. top
The funders
The programme has funding for five years from the Central Research Department of the UK Department for International Development (DFID). It also has a two-year financial contribution from the Advisory Board for Irish Aid.
These sponsorships provide an assured core of support for programme activities. However, the proposed research is of very wide interest and the scope for making fuller use of the potential of the consortium and its associated researchers is considerable. We are therefore seeking the support of other funding agencies for specific additions to the programme's research and training components. Broadening our support base will help to build an alliance of thinkers and policy actors that is substantial enough to make an impact.
Latest Downloads
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APPP E-newsletter Eng More Info |
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APPP Discussion Paper 6, Elites, governance and the public interest in Africa: working with the grain?, David Booth, August 2009 Eng More Info |
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Discussion Paper 3: A research design fit for purpose, David Booth, September 2008 Eng More Info |
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Discussion Paper 2: Institutions, power and policy outcomes in Africa, Goran Hyden, June 2008 Eng More Info |
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