Dicklitch challenges the dominant discourse of neo-liberalism which places NGOs and civil society at the forefront of democratization and development in Africa. Based on nine months of field research in Uganda, the study draws on evidence from the 'successfully' liberalizing country and shows how NGO potential for democratization and development has been subverted by state directives, structural and historical conditions, as well as the internal limitations of NGOs.

This work challenges the dominant discourse of neo-liberalism which places NGOs and civil society at the forefront of democratization and development in Africa. Based on nine months field research in Uganda, the study draws on evidence from the successfully liberalizing country and shows how NGO potential for democratization and development has been subverted by state directives, structural conditions and historical conditions, as well as the internal limitiations of NGOs.

Claude E. Welch, Jr.

A claim and empirical demonstration that if human rights NGOs in Nigeria are to popularly legitimise themselves then almost all of them must undergo a fundamental revision of form, concept and activist methods. Legitimising NGOs in Africa will grant a greater achievement of influence to those organisations: this volume argues that only a transition to a mass movement model will ensure the legitimisation of most Nigerian and African human rights NGO communities. Okafor builds a list of recommendations designed to be used as a blueprint for successfully popularising NGOs.

Planning in contemporary democratic states is often understood as a range of activities, from housing to urban design, regional development to economic planning. This volume sees planning differently—as the negotiation of possibilities that time offers space. It explores what kind of promise planning offers, how such a promise is made, and what happens to it through time. The authors, all leading anthropologists, examine the time and space, creativity and agency, authority and responsibility, and conflicting desires that plans attempt to control. They show how the many people involved with planning deal with the discrepancies between what is promised and what is done. The comparative essays offer insight into the expected and unexpected outcomes of planning (from visionary utopias to bureaucratic dystopia or something in-between), how the future is envisioned at the outset, and what actual work is done and how it affects people’s lives.

This book examines the twin critical processes of state-building and nation-building in Africa and the confluence of major domestic and global issues that shape them. The book covers topics such as the expansive role of non-governmental organizations, the growing influence of charismatic Pentecostalism, ethnic conflicts in East Africa, the failure of the African Union’s peacekeeping efforts in Sudan’s Darfur region, and Africa's expanding relations with the European Union. It combines discussion of these frontier issues shaping contemporary African society with analysis from leading policy experts.