3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Food security and the politics of development partnership: A case of the world bank-assisted FADAMA III in Nigeria(2018) Orievulu, Kingsley StephenThis dissertation lies at the intersection of global governance scholarship and the emerging paradigms of development partnership and development ownership as experimental modalities. It mounts a solid critique of the various implications, for African agency, of the conceptual, institutional and policy dimensions of these paradigms both in their reproduction of common mechanisms of economic and political dependency and disciplining, and their actualization of a number of new normativities through the implementation of ever-changing development frameworks. In this sense, this study contributes and further extends scholarship on the nature of governance from a supranational perspective especially as it pertains to the dynamics of power relations as they persist in donor-led development interventions in Africa- whether aimed at food security, poverty reduction and or grassroots empowerment. The dissertation uses a case study approach to examine important power relations underlying development interventions and the dynamics of 'partnership' that frame external intervention in the area of food security in developing countries in general and Africa in particular. It applies a neo-Gramscian world order hegemonic approach and a neo-Foucauldian governmentality approach to interrogate the nature of institutional power dynamics between multilateral donors such as the World Bank and African aid-dependent countries such as Nigeria. This relates to the conceptualisation and implementation of the National Fadama Development Programme (NFDP) in Nigeria. The dissertation also critiques the adoption of participatory development models in the implementation of the Fadama project at two levels. Firstly, as it pertains to the extent to which local targets of this project were integrated into the conceptualisation and implementation; and secondly the philosophy behind the adoption of these models and discourses - which is the entrenchment of the mainstream neo-liberal economic rationality within the local/rural economy. The findings in this dissertation draw on qualitative data from policy documents from government and external institutions, newspaper articles, nonparticipant observation and in-depth and semi-structured interviews with representatives of the World Bank, the Fadama project and local beneficiaries of the Fadama project in Rivers state. The findings point to entrenched institutional or macro-level power imbalance between multilateral donors and African aid-dependent countries. Beyond institutional level, the study's findings also suggest a flawed implementation of the Fadama project relative to the stated principles of inclusive development, especially when weighed against theories of participation.Item Natural resources and the crisis of nation-building in Africa: the case of oil and violence in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria(2012-03-13) Orievulu, Kingsley StephenThe preponderance of intrastate violent conflicts in natural resource rich states has been attributed to a number of causal mechanisms. Theorists of conflicts thus tend to explain these conflicts using different approaches, notably path dependency and rational choice. These approaches examine issues such as ethnicity and political marginalization, weak but repressive state capacity, strategic dilemmas, foreign instigators of conflict, and the very pervasive theory of the resource curse. Natural resources usually lie at the heart of many of these conflicts and the resource curse theory has helped explain the effects of states’ dependence on the primary resource sector. This resource curse is therefore corroborated by the rational choice approach which insists that economic incentives explain the upsurge in rebellious activities within natural resource rich but poor and dependent states, especially in Africa. This research interrogates the rational choice approach of Collier and Hoeffler against the backdrop of issues in the Niger Delta conflict. It argues that the greed versus grievance theory remains inadequate in the light of the historical and sociological circumstances underlying political struggles in the region. The research report concludes that an integrated but eclectic approach be applied in the study of this crisis.