Browsing by Author "Rugumamu, Severine M."

Now showing 1 - 13 of 13
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    Africa’s Debt Bondage: A Case for Total Cancellation
    (2001) Rugumamu, Severine M.
    From the early 1980s to the present, Africa’s external debt burden has become increasingly onerous and unmanageable. The continent’s inability to service its debt is vividly reflected not only by a massive build-up of arrears but most importantly, by the number and frequency of rescheduling. Although most concerned parties agree on the urgent need for creative and innovative approaches to resolve Africa’s debt crisis, opinions differ considerably as to what exactly needs to be done. Recent partial and often disjointed debt relief measures that have been tried to manage the debt crisis have been found largely inadequate. It is hereby proposed that debt should be cancelled for highly indebted poor countries. This is precisely because debt repayment is economically exhausting as it continues to block future development; it is politically destabilising as it threatens social harmony; and, it is ethically unacceptable as it hurts the poorest of the poor.
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    Capacity Development in Fragile Environments: Insights from Parliaments in Africa
    (2011) Rugumamu, Severine M.
    Capacity development in fragile environments in Africa has often proven to be a complex undertaking. This has largely been because of existing knowledge gaps on what exactly causes fragility of states, the economy and society. The liberal peace development model that generally informs post‐conflict reconstruction and capacity development has a limited conception of fragility by narrowly focusing on the national dimensions of the problem, promoting donor‐driven solutions, emphasizing minimal participation of beneficiary actors in the identification and prioritization of capacity development needs, and by subcontracting the design and management of projects and programs. The resulting capacity development impact has generally been disappointing. In the absence of homegrown strategic plans, stakeholder participation and ownership, international development partners have all too often addressed capacity gaps by financing training, supply of equipment and professional exchanges of parliamentarians and parliamentary staffers. These efforts usually achieved their presumed number targets but tended to ignore addressing the larger issues of political economy within which capacity development take place. However, the recent re‐conceptualization of parliamentary capacity development as a development of nationally owned, coordinated, harmonized, and aligned development activities seems to be gaining growing attention in Africa. As the experience of Rwanda eloquently demonstrates, capacity development is essentially about politics, economics and power, institutions and incentives, habits and attitudes – factors that are only partly susceptible to technical fixes and quantitative specifications. These structural factors have to be negotiated carefully and tactfully.
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    Conflict Management in Africa: Diagnosis of Current Practices and Future Prospects
    (2002) Rugumamu, Severine M.
    In the realm of peace and security in Africa, the 1990s witnessed dramatic and profound changes throughout the continent. With the conclusion of the Cold War, some of the major tensions between East and West over African battleground were markedly eased. South Africa and Namibia installed democratically elected governments. Relative peace and stability was established in Mozambique after three decades of confrontation between warring parties. Several dozens of African countries held democratic elections. Unquestionably, all these are positive and significant signs toward peace, stability and development. However, while many parts of the world moved toward greater stability and political and economic cooperation, Africa remained one of the cauldrons of instability. Political insecurity and violent conflicts became increasingly persistent realities of the development scene in Africa. Internal conflicts with deep historical roots flared in many countries on the continent. Ironically, while the international community paid less and less attention to African security affairs, the continent's institutional and organizational capacity to manage its pervasive conflicts was not developing at the same pace as conflict escalations. Against such a backdrop, peace and peace making in Africa emerges as one of the critical issues of great importance in global politics.
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    Does the UN Peacebuilding Commission Change the Mode of Peacebuilding in Africa?
    (2009) Rugumamu, Severine M.
    In December 2005, the United Nations created a high-profile Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) to serve as a dedicated institutional mechanism to fill the gap in the international architecture for post-conflict response. As such the PBC was mandated to link the political, security and economic functions of the United Nations in conflict and post-conflict situations. This paper analyzes the PBC’s own integrated strategies for peacebuilding in Sierra Leone and Burundi, through cumulative performance reports and views of practitioners.
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    Entrepreneurship Development in Africa : some reflections from Tanzania
    (DUP Ltd, 1996) Rugumamu, Severine M.; Mutagwaba, B. B.
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    Finnish Value-Added: Boon or Bane to Aid Effectiveness?
    (2012) Suoheimo, Maria; Rugumamu, Severine M.; Sharma, Sundhindra; Kanner, Jussi; Koponen, Juhani
    ‘Finnish value-added’ (suomalainen lisäarvo) and ‘aid effectiveness’ are relative new concepts in the development discourse in Finland. As with all concepts, they have many uses. In this study, it is argued that first of all they have to be understood as political concepts which in themselves entail many meanings and which can be used in many different ways. As such, their political usefulness varies. Even if they have been prominent in Finnish aid discourse during the last few years, that prominence may now be receding. Whereas ‘effectiveness’ still remains as one of the key principles guiding Finnish development policy, the concept of ‘Finnish value-added’ no longer appears in the new, 2012 Development Policy Programme. But it is also in the nature of political concepts that, even if they come and go, the underlying concerns are much more persistent. In our case, the question that is bound to remain is whether a small donor such as Finland can make a difference in its development cooperation by bringing in something extra beyond the sheer volume of aid – i.e. money – and what that extra might be. It is this question that in this study is seen as representing the crux of the notion of ‘Finnish value-added’ in a broader, more analytical sense, and this is how the concept is used here. The Finnish value-added is thus understood as that ‘something extra’ that Finland can bring to development cooperation.
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    Foreign Aid and the Poverty Menace in Tanzania : An overview of recent experiences
    (OSSREA, 2000) Rugumamu, Severine M.; Mutagwaba, Benjamin
    Most of the aid-poverty debate in the development studies literature is dominated by two diametrically opposed positions. On the one hand, there are those who argue that foreign aid can contribute markedly towards poverty reduction in the South. On the other hand, there is growing evidence to suggest that, in fact, there is little or no correlation between aid inflows to the South and GDP growth rates, let alone poverty reduction. The evidence so far available on Tanzania provides virtually no causal relationship between the amount of aid received and economic growth or poverty alleviation. If the amount of foreign aid received had any relationship with poverty reduction in Tanzania, then it should have long been eliminated. One of the major reasons why foreign aid failed to alleviate poverty in Tanzania was because the real needs and aspirations of the poor were ignored by those who purported to be helping them. There were hidden interests on both sides of the aid process, evidenced in aid-tying on the part of donors, the high proportion of concessional loans and the importance of the technical assistance personnel component in foreign aid packages, and concern with regime survival on the part of the recipient government. A wider focus on the way in which domestic and international political economy imperatives interact to produce a specific outcome is essential to an understanding of the failure of aid to reduce poverty in Tanzania.
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    Foreign Aid, Grassroots Participation and Poverty Alleviation In Tanzania: The Hesawa Fiasco
    (1999) Rugumamu, Severine M.
    The study set to examine foreign aid effectiveness in the poverty alleviation in rural Tanzania. More specifically, it sought to investigate the impact of the Health through Sanitation and Water (HESAWA) program among the rural population of Mwanza and Kagera Regions. Twelve villages were studied. HESAWA is an aid-supported program through SIDA and Sweden. The Government of Tanzania contributes marginally through annual budgetary allocations. Although the program's core objectives did not directly target poverty alleviation, its very emphasis on economic growth and social development among the rural poor presupposes poverty alleviation as an indirect final objective. Moreover, from the early 1990s, the objectives of international development cooperation by various donors largely shifted in favour of the war on poverty reduction. Thanks are largely to the conclusion of the Cold War and the end of the double standards behaviour among Western donor governments. In a similar policy shift, HESAWA's overall mandate was enlarged and focused more pointedly on the poverty reduction issues.
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    Globalization Demystified: Africa’s Possible Development Futures
    (Dar es Salaam University Press (DUP), 2005) Rugumamu, Severine M.
    This succinct and balanced monograph critically examines Africa's integration - or lack thereof - into the global capitalist system. From historical and interdisciplinary perspectives, it considers how encounters between structurally unequal economies and institutions have shaped the continent's past and exacerbated the exploitation and abject poverty suffered by the majority. Rugumamu analyses how Africa's continued marginalisation stems from the expanding and increasingly divergent international trading and investment systems, and disparities in technological progress. He counters orthodox neo-liberal arguments and unquestioned assumptions of failure to integrate into the world economy. Instead the author asserts that Africa has been asymmetrically integrated into the world economy from the beginnings of modern history, and that the march of global capitalism is further undermining the continent's ability to negotiate a more beneficial position. The author proposes alternatives of collective self-determination, democratically negotiated to empower the under- represented sections of society; but warns that such steps would require new modes of political and economic organisation and structural changes to established patterns.
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    Globalization, Democracy and Development in Africa: Challenges and Prospects
    (Taylor & Francis, Ltd, 2004-08) Assefa, Taye; Rugumamu, Severine M.; Ahmed, Abdel G. M
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    Lethal Aid: The Illusion of Socialism and Self-Reliance in Tanzania
    (Africa World Press, 1997) Rugumamu, Severine M.
    Despite massive infusions of financial and technical assistamce from the northern hemisphere, Africa is worse off today -- economically, societally, and environmentally -- than it was 30 years ago. But were economic development, poverty alleviation, and democracy ever actually the objectives of either donor or recipient states in the first place? To what extent was the limitless potential of the self-reliance strategy foreclosed by the corrupting power of foreign aid? As much as military power, propaganda, or diplomacy, "aid" -- realistically and essentially -- is one of the economic instruments of statecraft and, as such, has historically been used as a policy tool for various attempts at influence. While policies and strategies on both sides of the aid process may give primacy of place to development, actual practice almost invariably reveals the opposite, as donor and recipient alike employ aid resources to pursue their respective national, class, or even regime interests. Through the Tanzanian experience of "Big Brother's" helping hand, the author of this book examines the true role of foreign aid in the development process and exposes certain widely-held myths about that role.
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    Parliamentary Networking as an Instrument of Capacity Building: Insights from East Africa
    (2009) Rugumamu, Severine M.
    This study investigates the effectiveness of parliamentary networks in East Africa as a tool for capacity building. Given the circumstances prevailing in most African parliaments, there is growing consensus supporting the view that networks are one of the key capacity building instruments on the continent. To the extent that there are no dedicated formal colleges to train parliamentarians and parliamentary staff for their multiple functions, networking with sister institutions does serve as one critical mechanism for exchanging and sharing information, knowledge and internationally-acknowledged best practices in order to enhance institutional and individual capacities