Are the debates on water privatization missing the point? Experiences from Africa, Asia and Latin America

This paper has two principal aims: first, to unravel some of the arguments mobilized in the controversial privatization debate, and second, to review the scale and nature of private sector provision of water and sanitation in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Despite being vigorously promoted in the policy arena and having been implemented in several countries in the South in the 1990s, privatization has achieved neither the scale nor benefits anticipated. In particular, the paper is pessimistic about the role that privatization can play in achieving the Millennium Development Goals of halving the number of people without access to water and sanitation by 2015. This is not because of some inherent contradiction between private profits and the public good, but because neither publicly nor privately operated utilities are well suited to serving the majority of low-income households with inadequate water and sanitation, and because many of the barriers to service provision in poor settlements can persist whether water and sanitation utilities are publicly or privately operated. This is not to say that well-governed localities should not choose to involve private companies in water and sanitation provision, but it does imply that there is no justification for international agencies and agreements to actively promote greater private sector participation on the grounds that it can significantly reduce deficiencies in water and sanitation services in the South.

'Agricultural poverty' and the expansion of artisanal mining in sub-Saharan Africa: Experiences from southwest Mali and southeast Ghana

Why do people engage in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) – labour-intensive mineral extraction and processing activity – across sub-Saharan Africa? This paper argues that ‘agricultural poverty’, or hardship induced by an over-dependency on farming for survival, has fuelled the recent rapid expansion of ASM operations throughout the region. The diminished viability of smallholder farming in an era of globalization and overreliance on rain-fed crop production restricted by seasonality has led hundreds of thousands of rural African families to ‘branch out’ into ASM, a move made to secure supplementary incomes. Experiences from Komana West in Southwest Mali and East Akim District in Southeast Ghana are drawn upon to illustrate how a movement into the ASM economy has impacted farm families, economically, in many rural stretches of sub-Saharan Africa.

Safeguarding livelihoods or exacerbating poverty?: Artisanal mining and formalization in West Africa

In recent years, policy mechanisms to support a formalized artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector in sub-Saharan Africa have gained increasing currency. Proponents of formalization argue that most social and environmental problems associated with the sector stem from the fact that ASM is predominantly unregulated and operates outside the legal sphere. This paper critically examines recent efforts to formalize artisanal and small-scale mining inWest Africa, drawing upon recent fieldwork carried out in Sierra Leone, Ghana and Mali. In exploring the sector’s livelihood dimensions, the analysis suggests that bringing unregulated, informal mining activities into the legal domain remains a considerable challenge. The paper concludes by confirming the urgent need to refocus formalization strategies on the main livelihood challenges and constraints of small-scale miners themselves, if poverty is to be alleviated and more benefits are to accrue to depressed communities in mineral-rich regions.

'Your secret language': classics in the British colonies of West Africa

What were the cultural politics of classics in British colonies? Did classical education operate as a sign of oppression, or as a tool for forging an anti-colonial politics? Why did Europeans bring the classics to West Africa, and how did they manage the developing dynamic when West Africans laid independent claim to the classical heritage? This ground-breaking study examines the ways in which European colonisers and West African nationalists clashed, or collaborated, over the uses of Latin, Greek and the classics.

Considering heteroglossia in language and development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Countries throughout the sub-Saharan (SSA) region have a complex linguistic heritage having their origins in opportunistic boundary changes effected by Western colonial powers at the Berlin Conference 1884-85. Postcolonial language-in-education policies valorizing ex-colonial languages have contributed at least in part to underachievement in education and thus the underdevelopment of human resources in SSA countries. This situation is not likely to improve whilst unresolved questions concerning the choice of language(s) that would best support social and economic development remain. Whilst policy attempts to develop local languages have been discussed within the framework of the African Union, and some countries have experimented with models of multilingual education during the past decade, the goalposts have already changed as a result of migration and trade. This paper argues that language policy makers need to be cognizant of changing language ecologies and their relationship with emerging linguistic and economic markets. The concept of language, within such a framework, has to be viewed in relation to the multiplicity of language markets within the shifting landscapes of people, culture, economics and the geo-politics of the 21st Century. Whilst, on the one hand, this refers to the hegemony of dominant powerful languages and the social relations of disempowerment, on the other hand, it also refers to existing and evolving social spaces and local language capabilities and choices. Within this framework the article argues that socially constructed dominant macro language markets need to be viewed also in relation to other, self-defined, community meso- and individual micro- language markets and their possibilities for social, economic and political development. It is through pursuing this argument that this article assesses the validity of Omoniyi’s argument in this volume, for the need to focus on the concept of language capital within multilingual contexts in the SSA region as compared to Bourdieu’s concept of linguistic capital.  

Issues in language and development in multilingual settings: a case-study of knowledge exchange and teacher education in South Africa

The quality of a country’s human-resource base can be said to determine its level of success in social and economic development. This study focuses on some␣of the major human-resource development issues that surround the implementation of South Africa’s policy of multilingualism in education. It begins by discussing the relationship between knowledge, language, and human-resource, social and economic development within the global cultural economy. It then considers the situation in South Africa and, in particular, the implications of that country’s colonial and neo-colonial past for attempts to implement the new policy. Drawing on the linguistic-diversity-in-education debate in the United Kingdom of the past three decades, it assesses the first phase of an in-service teacher-education programme that was carried out at the Project for Alternative Education in South Africa (PRAESA) based at the University of Cape Town. The authors identify key short- and long-term issues related to knowledge exchange in education in multilingual societies, especially concerning the use of African languages as mediums for teaching and learning.

Benefits from Bt cotton use by smallholder farmers in South Africa

This paper describes the results of research conducted in the Makhathini region, Kwazulu Natal, Republic of South Africa, designed to explore the economic benefits of the adoption of Bt cotton for smallholders. Results suggest that Bt cotton had higher yields than non-Bt varieties and generated greater revenue. Seed costs for Bt cotton were double those of non-Bt, although pesticide costs were lower. On balance, the gross margins (revenue - costs) of Bt growers were higher than those of non-Bt growers.

Farm-level economic impact of biotechnology: smallholder Bt cotton farmers in South Africa

This paper describes the method and findings of a survey designed to explore the economic benefits of the adoption of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton for smallholder farmers in the Republic of South Africa. The study found reason for cautious optimism in that the Bt variety generally resulted in a per hectare increase in yields and value of output with a reduction in pesticide costs, which outweighed the increase in seed costs to give a substantial increase in gross margins. Thus, these preliminary results suggest that Bt cotton is good for smallholder cotton farmers and the environment.