African Affairs最新文献_第7页

Public Governance and Technological Capabilities in the Kenyan Leather Industry 肯尼亚皮革行业的公共治理和技术能力

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2022-07-19 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adac025

Giovanni Pasquali, Valentina De Marchi

{"title":"Public Governance and Technological Capabilities in the Kenyan Leather Industry","authors":"Giovanni Pasquali, Valentina De Marchi","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac025","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article focuses on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya’s leather sector. It explores how public governance impacts SMEs’ technological capabilities and access to global value chains (GVCs). By public governance, we mean all government regulations and interventions set in place to shape the organization of value chains. Drawing on interview data, the article compares Kenya’s leather handbag and footwear manufacturers. On the one hand, handbag SMEs have succeeded in upgrading and entering GVCs through a combination of foreign knowledge and partnership with local universities. Despite meeting with public governance barriers, this process has enabled the transfer of technological capabilities from foreign-owned firms to a number of emerging SMEs owned by Kenyan nationals. On the other hand, leather footwear production was developed during the 1970s by large firms under state support. As protectionist measures were lifted in the 1990s, firms shut down and producers moved into the informal economy, replicating outdated capabilities in a context of price-driven competition, thereby limiting upgrading and participation in GVCs. The article concludes by comparing these findings with the experience of Kenya’s apparel manufacturers and highlighting the critical need for GVC research to account for the role public governance in shaping firms’ technological capabilities and access to global markets.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48066088","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 1

Logistics Contracts and the Political Economy of State Failure: Evidence from Somalia 物流契约与国家失败的政治经济学:来自索马里的证据

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2022-07-09 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adac024

C. Elder

{"title":"Logistics Contracts and the Political Economy of State Failure: Evidence from Somalia","authors":"C. Elder","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac024","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Scholars have long sought to understand how economic rents may inhibit the formation of effective and accountable government. Prevailing interpretations of empirical state failure do not adequately account for economic connections and rents. Based on in-depth ethnographic fieldwork and original source material from the Somalia context, this study shows how the dominance of the logistics economy, as a system of ‘graft’ endogenous to state-building, has contributed to empirical state failure. Empirical state failure is characterized by intra-elite struggle, endemic political violence, and insecurity including the threat posed by Islamic extremism. Contributing to the study of political settlements, political clientelism, and business–state relationships in Africa, findings from this study offer new insights for understanding how the dominance of logistics rents and lead firms within a political system may prevent the establishment of legitimate, centralized authorities. These findings contribute to the broader study of Africa’s political economies which have experienced protracted civil war and post-conflict reconstruction. In conclusion, it argues how economic development, procurement reform agendas, and efforts to withhold or withdraw aid through economic sanctions fail to resolve endemic conflict and governance issues due to vested interests, elite fragmentation, and polycentric aid practices. Instead, both government policy and foreign interventions continue to empower lead logistics firms (as skilful political entrepreneurs) that destabilize the Federal Government of Somalia.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-07-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44404011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 1

Reading Mozambique’s mega-project developmentalism through the workplace: evidence from Chineseand Brazilian investments 从工作场所解读莫桑比克的大型项目发展主义：来自中国和巴西投资的证据

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2022-06-29 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adac019

Eric Cezne, U. Wethal

{"title":"Reading Mozambique’s mega-project developmentalism through the workplace: evidence from Chinese\u0000and Brazilian investments","authors":"Eric Cezne, U. Wethal","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac019","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Propelled by a commodities boom and expanding South–South investment, mega-projects have reshaped the politics of labour in many African settings. Reflecting on such dynamics, this article critically engages with questions of employment, skills development, and contestation re-configuring capital–labour encounters in the ‘Chinese’ and ‘Brazilian’ workplace in Mozambique. We analyse two mega-projects: the Maputo Ring Road, implemented by the China Road and Bridge Corporation, and the Moatize Coal Project, led by the Brazilian mining company, Vale SA. Engaging with the complex realities at project ground level, the article unpacks how workplace regimes and outcomes reflect an intricate, multi-scalar array of spatial encounters, sector-specific characteristics, and national political economies. For both cases, this is associated with common promises of development and prosperity for Mozambique. While such promises take on different ideational guises, we show that the Chinese and Brazilian workplaces expose, nonetheless, overlapping patterns of inequality, contention, and hostility, reinforced by broader vulnerabilities and imbalances in global production networks and the Mozambican political economy. By providing a ground-level reading of the multi-scalar forces at play in the workplace, this article sheds light on the relationship between emerging South–South global encounters, national political realities, and labour geographies in African contexts shaped by mega-projects.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49398893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 7

Virtual issue: elections 虚拟议题:选举

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2022-06-27 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adac018

Justine Davis

引用次数: 0

Ruling Party Patronage, Brokerage, and Contestations at Urban Markets in Harare 哈拉雷城市市场的执政党赞助、经纪和竞争

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2022-06-22 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adac017

M. Oosterom, S. Gukurume

{"title":"Ruling Party Patronage, Brokerage, and Contestations at Urban Markets in Harare","authors":"M. Oosterom, S. Gukurume","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adac017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adac017","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This study contributes to debates on varieties of clientelism through an analysis of brokerage and ruling party patronage at urban markets in Harare, Zimbabwe. Urban markets are sites of contestation between the opposition-dominated city council and actors aligned with the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union—Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). Based on qualitative case study research at two designated markets, the article demonstrates how ruling party brokers are central to organizing patronage and political mobilization, thus sustaining authoritarian politics. While ruling party patronage is a deliberate strategy to control urban spaces, the article demonstrates how it is being negotiated. Factionalism within ZANU-PF shifted the power of brokers, and the lockdown enforced in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic in 2020 caused a rupture, offering the city council and opposition-aligned youth the opportunity to (re)claim control over vending spaces. This article contributes to debates on clientelism in authoritarian regime settings, by showing the imbrication of coercion and patronage in the role of the broker and demonstrating how patronage is organized vertically through brokerage. This study extends the study of clientelism beyond electoral politics, since brokers are not always politicians, but nonetheless are part of the systems of ruling party patronage.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2022-06-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44300029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

引用次数: 3

OUP accepted manuscript OUP接受稿件

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2022-01-01 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adac013

引用次数: 2

OUP accepted manuscript OUP接受稿件

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2022-01-01 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adac007

引用次数: 0

OUP accepted manuscript OUP接受稿件

IF 2.8 1区社会学

African Affairs Pub Date : 2022-01-01 DOI: 10.1093/afraf/adac010