In this thesis, I critically analyse power relations between donors and the government of Malawi (GoM) under the new aid architecture and argue that this new configuration represents a shift away from domination, with donors attempting to impose policies, and towards more subtle interactions, through which donors seek to transform the GoM into a self-disciplined, entrepreneurial, neoliberal subject by shaping its aspirations and promoting specific norms of conduct, ‘truths’ and policy-related techniques. The research focuses on funding for AIDS and draws on forty interviews with representatives from the GoM, donors and civil society, conducted in Malawi 2008, as well as discursive analysis of secondary sources. I use Foucault’s concept of governmentality, a form of productive power focused on the care of the population and working through individuals’ subjectivities, and extend it to the relation between donors and the GoM. I show that the agency of the GoM is both elicited by the principle of country ownership, and re-worked through the increased involvement of donors in the policy sphere. I explore how these interactions are legitimised by a discourse that presents donors and the GoM as equals, while casting the GoM as technically deficient and requiring donors’ intervention. I analyse how donors instrumentalise dialogue with the GoM to instil an ethos of self-responsibility.I also investigate how AIDS funding has been made reliant on public financial management reforms, which re-code social domains according to an economic logic, by subordinating government activities to macroeconomic imperatives and creating new undemocratic accountabilities based on market rationalities. I argue that by restructuring the GoM according to this neoliberal rationality, the new aid architecture has programmatic effects, allowing donors to rule at a distance. I also examine avenues for resistance, particularly the potential residing in the intrinsic contradictions of this rationality.

This dissertation represents a year-long (August 2004-August 2005) ethnographic case study of 15 adolescent schoolgirls attending a secondary school in a poor, rural area of Masaka District, Uganda which explores the challenges, opportunities and potential for future identities that were associated with secondary level education. This study includes an extensive analysis of the degree to which the global objective of gender equity in education, prioritized in UNESCO’s Education For All initiative as well as the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, is promoted and/or achieved in the National Strategy for Girls’ Education in Uganda (NSGE). I consider various ideological understandings of international development in general as well as development theory specifically related to gender, and I draw on the Capabilities Approach (as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum) and Imagined Communities and Identities (Benedict Anderson, Bonny Norton) to interpret my findings. My research reveals that girls’ educational opportunities are constrained by many “unfreedoms” (Sen, 1999), such as extreme poverty, sexual vulnerability and gender discrimination, that are deeply and extensively rooted in cultural, historical, and socioeconomic circumstances and contexts, and that these unfreedoms are not adequately addressed in international and national policies and programme objectives. I propose several recommendations for change, including: a safe and secure “girls’ space” at school; mentorship roles and programmes; counselors; comprehensive sexual health education and free and easy access to birth control and disease prevention products, and sanitary materials; regular opportunities for dialogue with male students; employment opportunities; closer community/school ties; and professional development opportunities for teachers.

Canada supports developmental efforts in Ghana through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). This dissertation investigates how Canada partners with Ghana to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for education by 2015. The study focuses on achieving equity and access to education in Ghana, and examines how far Ghana’s policy and Canada’s aims and objectives (through CIDA) for adressing these developmental issues converge or diverge. The principal methodology for accomplishing this study includes literature review and a content analysis of CIDA programmes and documents related to education in Ghana. The study concludes that CIDA programmes and operations in education in Ghana have a clear focus on issues relating to equity and access to education, and complement governmental efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for Education in Ghana. The thesis ends with recommendation for further study on using spirituality and indigenous knowledges to enhance and provide holistic education in Ghana.

Canada supports developmental efforts in Ghana through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). This dissertation investigates how Canada partners with Ghana to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) for education by 2015. The study focuses on achieving equity and access to education in Ghana, and examines how far Ghana’s policy and Canada’s aims and objectives (through CIDA) for adressing these developmental issues converge or diverge. The principal methodology for accomplishing this study includes literature review and a content analysis of CIDA programmes and documents related to education in Ghana. The study concludes that CIDA programmes and operations in education in Ghana have a clear focus on issues relating to equity and access to education, and complement governmental efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for Education in Ghana. The thesis ends with recommendation for further study on using spirituality and indigenous knowledges to enhance and provide holistic education in Ghana.

Thesis (Ph.D.). / Written for the Graduate Program in Communication Studies. Title from title page of PDF (viewed 2008/05/08). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Melbourne, School of Social and Political Sciences, 2010. By research. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 121-147)

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1997. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Tsarist Russia, the USSR and modern Russia have had unique perspectives on Africa and aid, due to geographical location, changing ideologies, non-colonial history with Africa, the Cold War, alternating aid status of recipient and donor, and a historic view of Africa in a tripartite relationship with the West. Western development discourse evolved to produce a large aid apparatus, accompanied by depoliticised discourse on Africa. The USSR’s discourse on Africa was political. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), Discourse Historical Approach (DHA) and a postcolonial approach, with a structural analysis of 262 pages of Soviet newspaper Pravda and discourse analysis of 54 articles, this thesis relates findings to the Russian, Soviet and Western contexts in which the discourses arose. It shows that Pravda used Africa and aid as discursive tools to establish the USSR’s position in the international hierarchy, used Africa as a rhetorical proxy, and carried a theme of “freedom as development”. Similarities between Soviet, Russian and Western representations of Africa, development and aid (for example Africa’s low status) were built on different motivations and assumptions, and used different tools. The USSR’s Cold War rhetoric conveyed a partial and incomplete construction of Africa, aid and development. Pravda conveyed assumptions that all countries, including the USSR, are developing, that the USSR and Africa are comparable and in some ways similar, and that freedom is an overriding aspiration. Constructing development as natural, Pravda constructed a weak link between development and aid, and in general Pravda presented aid as harmful Western aid. Russia’s legacy is an ideology in which Africa is still eternally “developing” but shares this activity with all countries, Africa is weak and yet is Russia’s friend and ally, competition continues between Russia and the West over Africa’s friendship, and aid has mainly humanitarian rather than development value. Socialist ideological discourse of equal nations remains in today’s Communist Pravda. This thesis explores the evolution of perceptions in Soviet Pravda discourse, and makes a substantive analytical contribution to the literatures on development and aid, Russian foreign policy and international relations, and postcolonialism. It increases knowledge of Cold War Africa, and the USSR’s and Russia’s self-perceptions and attitudes towards others. Russia’s status as a non-Western donor and recent aid recipient make its legacy and attitudes of particular interest.

This study focuses on women vendors' perspectives on plastic bag consumption in markets in Mali. It also investigates how women across the urban and rural divide are affected by plastic bag pollution and to what extent women in Mali are included in policy formulation addressing plastic bag issues. I interviewed thirty women vendors in three research sites: Bougouni, Koulikoro and Bamako. In addition, I interviewed five Mali Officials including the Prime Minister and the Minister of Environment. Plastic bags continue to be used widely in all African countries, including Mali. This has created increased environmental pollution as there is no recycling due to the lack of appropriate technology or political will. Reducing the use of plastic bags, and thus pollution, requires social and economic change that may be difficult to implement without involving one of the largest consumers of plastic bags, women, specifically those selling at the market.

Digital games have been used in the international development industry for over a decade, yet they have received little scholarly attention. This dissertation uses the Half the Sky Movement’s (HTSM) digital games as a case study to understand the production and use of games for development purposes. In doing so, it analyzes the games both as texts that extend the discourse of development, and as material objects with important political economic implications. Specifically, it looks at how the narratives embedded in these games disrupt or reinforce dominant narratives already at play in the development industry, and it considers how the private/public relationships created through the production of the games shape game content and impact both the gaming and development industries. The study uses critical qualitative methods, including textual analysis and in-depth interviews, and a political economic approach to complete this work.