DV418      Half Unit
African Development

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

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Taking the work of the late Thandika Mkandawire as its inspiration, DV418: African Development applies a critical and contemporary lens to questions of economic and social development in African countries. It focuses on the role that knowledge and technology play in development and asks how African growth and development can be climate-conscious, inclusive and transformative. It takes a multi-disciplinary approach, combining theory from economics, economic sociology, and science and technology studies (STS) to the topic. Students are not required to have any background in economics to follow and enjoy the course.

The first week explores why foreign scholarship and donor agendas have become so dominant in framing how development is understood in African countries, and how the more transformative visions of the independence era were dismantled by structural adjustment policies and the attack on African civil servants, middle class professionals, business owners and institutions of higher education and science. We encourage students to look beyond the donor-led vision of poverty reduction and think about development as ultimately being autonomy and self-determination.

Students are then given a solid foundation into some of the core processes that strengthen this autonomy; 1) domestic resource mobilisation (or the strengthening of domestic sources of finance in place of aid), 2) structural transformation (or the shifting of the workforce out of commodity production into more knowledge-intensive activities) and 3) transformative social policy (or the linking of poverty reduction to broader nation-building and development goals), and 4) strategic trade policies and regional integration.

Students are then asked to grapple with the challenges and contingencies of such policy-making: the difficulties of balancing competing demands across regions and class interests, the pressures of domestic political contestation in shaping long-term planning, the risks posed by the global economy in the form of price swings and long-term commodity cycles and the challenges of the climate crisis and the green protectionism of high income countries. The final weeks of the course confront new emerging trends such as the growing penetration of digital technology firms and connectivity into African markets as well as the emergence of new donors such as China. In all cases, we ask students to scrutinise how these new developments reshape the task of structural change.

As indicated by the readings, this course foregrounds African scholarship on African development, and interrogates how a skewed knowledge system has framed how development has been conceptualised and pursued.  

As part of the course, students are encouraged to apply course insights to their own research interests by focusing more deeply on one of the following cutting edge issues facing African countries: green industrial policies, universal social policy (either health or education) and digital industrial policies. We only have student presentations on three weeks of the course to give students the opportunity to get feedback on their research topics. Otherwise students are instead invited to take part in seminar activities designed to apply the week’s theory in practical ways. The course also features some of the ‘World’s Most Exciting Gameshows’ to make some of the more technical topics fun. These include gameshows on 1) ‘Savings, Taxes and Investment’, 2) African trade and integration and 3) Chinese investments in Africa. Past students have really enjoyed these weeks of the course! Overall, the course aims to provide students with a really solid understanding about the challenges of African development in the world today, taking a critical yet still optimistic vision for the future. We take African agency and policy choices seriously on this course!

15 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the Winter Term.
1.5 hours of help sessions in the Spring Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Winter Term.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars in the WT. Seminars will be of 90 minutes duration and lectures will be of 90 minutes duration. There will also be a revision session in early ST.

Student on this course will have a reading week in Week 6.

Presentation

Students will work in teams of four within their seminar groups to present a short presentation on one of the following topics: 1) Green industrial policies, 2) The Challenges of expanding universal free health/education, 3) Digital structural transformation. These presentations will allow students to get feedback on their ideas for their assessed essays (which will be based on the same topic).

A detailed weekly reading list will be provided at the first course meeting. The following readings provide an introduction to the course:
 

1. Mkandawire, T. (2004) “Disempowering New Democracies and the Persistence of Poverty” In Globalisation, Poverty and Conflict Dordrecht: Springer. Pages 117-153.Mkandawire, T. (2014) “The Spread of Economic Doctrines and Policymaking in Postcolonial Africa” African Studies Review 57(1): 171-198.
2. Mkandawire, T. (2001) "Thinking About Developmental States in Africa." Cambridge Journal of Economics, 25(3): 289-313.
3. Oqubay, A.  (2015) Made in Africa: Industrial Policy in Ethiopia Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 241-277.
4. Cramer, C., and S. Chisoro-Dube (2021) “The industrialization of freshness and structural transformation in South African fruit exports” In Structural Transformation in South Africa (pp. 120-142). Oxford University Press.
5. Davy, E., Hansen, U. E., and I. Nygaard (2022) “Localizing the solar value chain in Kenya?” Innovation and Development, 1-24.
6. Vandome, C. (2024) ‘How Can African States Benefit from the EU Critical Raw Material Act and the UK Critical Minerals Strategy’ African Research Policy Institute Blogpost, September 11th, 2024.
7. Lebdioui, A. (2024) Chapter 6: Kicking Away the ‘Green Ladder’: Green Protectionism, Broken Pledges and Double Trade Standards’ In Survival Of the Greenest: Economic Transformation in a Climate-Conscious World. 63-70
8. Sasmal, S. (2024) ‘A Stacked Deck that Keeps Getting Higher: The Relationship between Critical Raw Materials, the WTO and ‘Strategic’ Partnerships. UKTPO Briefing Paper 79: 1-14.
9. Kleibert, J. M. and L. Mann (2020) “Capturing value amidst constant global restructuring? Information-technology-enabled services in India, the Philippines and Kenya” The European Journal of Development Research, 32(4): 1057-1079.
10. Naidu, V. (2019) “Knowledge Production in International Trade Negotiations is a High Stakes Game” Africa at LSE Blogpost, June 14th 2019.
11. Obamba, M. O. (2013) “Uncommon knowledge: World Bank policy and the unmaking of the knowledge economy in Africa” Higher Education Policy 26(1): 83-108.
12. Mamdani, M. (2007) Scholars in the Marketplace: The Dilemmas of Neo-Liberal Reform at Makerere University, 1989-2005. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA. Pages 255-269.
13. Ngutuku, E. (2022) Education as future breakfast: children’s aspirations within the context of poverty in Siaya Kenya, Ethnography and Education, 17(3): 224-240.
14. Abebe, T. and T. Biswas (2021) Rights in education: outlines for a decolonial, childist reimagination of the future – commentary to Ansell and colleagues. Fennia 199(1): 118–128.
15. Ndikumana, L. and J. K. Boyce (2003) "Public debts and private assets: explaining capital flight from sub-Saharan African countries" World Development 31(1): 107-130.
16. UNCTAD (2007) “Reclaiming Policy Space: Domestic Resource Mobilisation and Developmental States” Geneva: UNCTAD. Pages 6-54.
17. Usman, Z. (2018) “The ‘Resource Curse’ and Constraints to Reforming Nigeria’s Oil Sector“ In Levan and Ukata (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pages 520-545.
18.  Carbone, G. (2011) “Democratic demands and social policies: the politics of health reform in Ghana” The Journal of Modern African Studies 49: 381-408.
19. Mkandawire, T. (2005) “Targeting and Universalism in Poverty Reduction” Geneva: UNRISD. Pages 7-23.
20. Ouma, M. and J. Adesina (2019) “Solutions, exclusion and influence: Exploring Power Relations in the Adoption of Social Protection Policies in Kenya” Critical Social Policy 39(3): 376–395.
21. Adesina, J. O. (2020) “Policy Merchandising and Social Assistance in Africa: Don't Call Dog Monkey for Me” Development and Change, 51(2): 561-582.
22. Andreoni, A. and S. Roberts (2020) “Governing data and digital platforms in middle income countries: regulations, competition and industrial policies with sectoral case studies from South Africa. Digital Pathways at Oxford Paper Series; no. 5. Oxford, United Kingdom.
23. Mann, L. and G. Iazzolino (2021) “From Development State to Corporate Leviathan: Historicizing the Infrastructural Performativity of Digital Platforms within Kenyan Agriculture” Development and Change, 52(4): 829-854.
24. Azmeh, S., Foster, C. and J. Echavarri (2020) “The International Trade Regime & the Quest for Free Digital Trade” International Studies Review 22(3): 671-692.
25. Akolgo, I. A. (2023) ‘On the contradictions of Africa’s fintech boom: evidence from Ghana’ Review of International Political Economy, 1-21.
26. Bateman, M. Duvendack, M. and N. Loubere (2019) “Is Fintech the New Panacea for Poverty Alleviation and Local Development? Contesting Suri and Jack’s M-Pesa Findings Published in Science” Review of African Political Economy 46(161): 480-495.
27. El Kadi, T. (2024) ' Learning along the Digital Silk Road? Technology transfer, power, and Chinese ICT corporations in North Africa", The Information Society, 40(2), 136–153. 
28. Brautigam, D. and T. Xiaoyang (2011) ‘African Shenzhen: China’s Special Economic Xones in Africa’, The Journal of Modern African Studies, 49(1), pp. 27–54.
29. Cheru, F. and A. Oqubay (2019) ‘Catalysing China–Africa Ties for Africa’s Structural Transformation: Lessons from Ethiopia’, in China-Africa and an Economic Transformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Exam (60%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period

Essay (40%, 2000 words)