About APPP
Africa Power and Politics (APPP) brings together research centres and think-tanks in France, Ghana, Niger, Uganda, the UK and the USA to work on four main issues:
- Moving from a ‘best practice' to a ‘best fit' approach to governance
- A realistic take on elections, citizen empowerment and public goods
- The leadership factor - and the politics of it
- Implications for aid effectiveness.
More about the aims of APPP research
Who we are
Africa Power and Politics (APPP) is a five-year programme of research and policy engagement. We aim to identify ways of ordering politics and regulating power and authority that might work better than those now in place. We want to do that on the basis of a careful and critical look at what has worked well in Africa itself in the recent and not-so-recent past.
We work across 17 African countries and this website is available in both English and French .
APPP is led by staff of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London:
- David Booth, Programme Director
- Sonia Sezille, Programme Manager.
Crucial to making neo-patrimonialism work for development in Africa has been a system for centralising economic rents and gearing their management to the long term
Tim Kelsall
On target in their critique of partial, incomplete, efforts to supersede the 'best practice' narrative with advocacy of ‘good fit’ and enhanced accountability
Brian Levy on APPP synthesis report, October 2012