Global development actors such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund claim that the shift to the poverty reduction strategy framework and emphasis on local participation address the social cost of earlier adjustment programs and help put aid-receiving countries back in control of their own development agenda. Drawing on the case of Ghana, Lord Mawuko-Yevugah argues that this shift and the emphasis on partnerships between donors and poor countries, local participation, and country ownership simultaneously represents a substantive departure from earlier versions of neo-liberalism and an attempt by global development actors and local governing and social elites to justify, and legitimize the neo-liberal policy paradigm. This book shows how the new architecture of aid has important implications in three distinct but related ways: the discursive construction and production of post-colonial societies; the changing focus of Western aid and development policy interventions; and the reproduction of the politics of inclusive exclusion. The author provides detailed and original research on the new development paradigm and develops a critical theoretical approach to re-think conventional analyses of the new discourses on aid whilst offering a fresh, alternative interpretation of changes in international aid relations.

Global development actors such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund claim that the shift to the poverty reduction strategy framework and emphasis on local participation address the social cost of earlier adjustment programs and help put aid-receiving countries back in control of their own development agenda. Drawing on the case of Ghana, Lord Mawuko-Yevugah argues that this shift and the emphasis on partnerships between donors and poor countries, local participation, and country ownership simultaneously represents a substantive departure from earlier versions of neo-liberalism and an attempt by global development actors and local governing and social elites to justify, and legitimize the neo-liberal policy paradigm. This book shows how the new architecture of aid has important implications in three distinct but related ways: the discursive construction and production of post-colonial societies; the changing focus of Western aid and development policy interventions; and the reproduction of the politics of inclusive exclusion. The author provides detailed and original research on the new development paradigm and develops a critical theoretical approach to re-think conventional analyses of the new discourses on aid whilst offering a fresh, alternative interpretation of changes in international aid relations.

All over the world, there is growing concern about the ramifications of globalization, late-modernity and general global social and economic restructuring on the lives and futures of young people. Bringing together a wide body of research to reflect on youth responses to social change in Africa, this volume shows that while young people in the region face extraordinary social challenges in their everyday lives, they also continue to devise unique ways to reinvent their difficult circumstances and prosper in the midst of seismic global and local social changes. Contributors from Africa and around the world cover a wide range of topics on African youth cultures, exploring the lives of young people not necessarily as victims, but as active social players in the face of a shifting, late-modernist civilization. With empirical cases and varied theoretical approaches, the book offers a timely scholarly contribution to debates around globalization and its implications and impacts for Africa's youth.

All over the world, there is growing concern about the ramifications of globalization, late-modernity and general global social and economic restructuring on the lives and futures of young people. Bringing together a wide body of research to reflect on youth responses to social change in Africa, this volume shows that while young people in the region face extraordinary social challenges in their everyday lives, they also continue to devise unique ways to reinvent their difficult circumstances and prosper in the midst of seismic global and local social changes. Contributors from Africa and around the world cover a wide range of topics on African youth cultures, exploring the lives of young people not necessarily as victims, but as active social players in the face of a shifting, late-modernist civilization. With empirical cases and varied theoretical approaches, the book offers a timely scholarly contribution to debates around globalization and its implications and impacts for Africa's youth.

AFRICAN TIME In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Lord Mawuko-Yevugah explores the challenges of political reform and democratic governance in Africa at the beginning of the 21st century, focusing largely on Ghana's experience. The inspiration for the title of the collection, AFRICAN TIME, comes from Kwame Nkrumah's pan-African optimism as well as from recent discourses around "African Renaissance," "Africa's Century," "Africa Rising," etc. At Ghana's founding in 1957, Nkrumah proclaimed: 'Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent. Today, from now on, there is a new African in the world...That new African is ready to fi ght his own battles and show that after all, the black man is capable of managing his own affairs'. That historic declaration, Mawuko-Yevugah argues, did not only set the tone and direction for Ghana's pan-African foreign policy but it has also made the country a reference point for Africa's postcolonial tragedy in the form of political instability and economic decay. Exploring Ghana's recent strides in democratic consolidation within the context of fresh attempts to reinvent pan-Africanism and mainstream good governance on the continental development agenda, this book offers incisive, critical and a rare refl ection on the changing landscape of contemporary African politics and governance through the eyes of a political journalist.

This work draws on a wide range of postcolonial and critical development scholars to construct a critical theoretical framework and to provide productive lens through which to make sense of the changing language, content and practice of Western aid interventions in Africa and other postcolonial societies, and to reveal continuities and discontinuities in the global architecture of aid. In particular, the study locates recent discourses on development and poverty reduction within the broader historical continuum of power inequalities in relation to international development cooperation and global governance generally. Mawuko-Yevugah argues that the new multilateral poverty reduction framework does not represent a rupture in Western discourses, policies, representations in Africa and other postcolonial settings and that, conceptions such as civil society, partnership, ownership or participation in the poverty reduction discourse produces new technologies of governance where a IFIs- elites consensus legitimizes the neoliberal hegemonic agenda.

Since it achieved independence in 1957, the West African state of Ghana has become the torchbearer of African liberation, as well as a laboratory for the study of endemic problems facing the African continent. In terms of democratic consolidation, the country holds a unique position on the continent as beacon of stability and democracy. Politics, Governance, and Development in Ghana takes critical stock of the landmark themes that have dominated its history since independence. The contributors address issues such as citizenship, civil society, the military, politicians, chiefs, transnational actors, the public sector and policies, the executive branch, decentralization, the economy, electoral politics, natural resources, and relations with Asia and the diaspora. These themes support “mobilizing for Ghana’s future,” which is the theme for the diamond jubilee celebration of Ghana’s independence. Edited by Joseph R.A. Ayee, this book will deepen the literature on studies on Ghana especially in the areas of politics, governance, economy and development; serve as a resource for academics, students, practitioners; and commemorate the diamond jubilee celebration of Ghana’s independence.