<p> This study examines the relationship between higher education (HE) and economic development. Through the use of Algeria as a case study, this study specifically addresses how the Algerian economy needs to integrate HE to promote the country&rsquo;s competitiveness and reduce its dependency on oil. Although the country has adopted European educational paradigms, such as the LMD (Licence, Master, and Doctorate) model, this adoption does not necessarily promote change and progress if the people do not perceive HE as a wealth creator. Thus, although economic investments in HE are essential and economic diversification policies are needed in Algeria, they will remain ineffective without addressing total integration of HE into the economy. Drawing upon existing literature and original qualitative research with key participants in Algerian HE, this study concludes with recommendations on how to make HE a significant contributor to Algeria's economic progress.</p><p>

<p> West African Women writers are constantly looking for ways to maneuver the patriarchal system within their indigenous cultures. To say maneuvering implies the dilemma in consciously navigating patriarchal epistemology as West African women, which in reality is not exotic to other feminist struggles outside the continent. To deal with the dilemma of constantly maneuvering, this thesis suggest for an indigenous framework. It suggests <i>Osun </i>&ndash;a Nigerian goddess&ndash; as a response to the theoretical problems and as a methodology to navigating a postcolonial patriarchal worldview in order to express West African feminist discourse. The specificity of <i>Osun</i> is essential, but the fluidity of <i>Osun</i> across borders cannot be undermined as it paves the way for flexibility within feminist and gender discourse and draws upon various gender oppressed experiences. The idea of specificity and fluidity is fundamental to developing <i> Osun</i> as West African feminist discourse because of her ability to transcend space. The combination of specificity and fluidity are necessary within any feminist discourse as it allows for women from different regions to relate and align the tenets to their specific struggles found in the diversity of <i>Osun</i>.</p><p>

Doctor of Philosophy / Security Studies / Emizet F. Kisangani / Why are states sometimes unable to avoid the occurrence of civil war? Most existing theories of civil war focus on rebels’ motivation and capabilities, while taking government’s actions as givens. Not only is the government a key player in the process leading up to civil war, but it is also a non-unitary actor composed of individuals and groups with diverging aspirations. Thus, understanding civil war requires an explanation of the conditions that facilitate or impede what governments do to provide political order. To fill this gap, this dissertation proposes a state-centered theory that explains civil war as an indirect function of state environment, defined in terms of structural and institutional conditions under which governments operate. The argument is that state environment determines the scope of leaders’ consensus on accommodation and coercion, two strategies that governments rely on to provide political order. Specifically, harsh socioeconomic conditions reduce leaders’ strategic consensus. Moreover, leaders’ divisions in socioeconomically poor societies is further exacerbated by democratic institutions. In turn, the lack of consensus on accommodation and coercion increases the risks of civil war. Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to test the theory. The quantitative analysis relies on mediation techniques and on a cross-sectional time series of 162 countries from 1960 to 2007. The results support the theoretical argument. Socioeconomic development is indirectly and inversely related to civil war. About two-thirds of its effect is transmitted through accommodation, while one-third occurs through coercion. Moreover, democratic institutions are positively associated with civil war. When socioeconomic development is low, states with open institutions are the least accommodative and the most coercive. The qualitative methods of “structured, focused comparison” and “process tracing” are used to investigate three cases (Côte d’Ivoire, Romania, and Benin). The findings show that the emergence of sociopolitical dissidence often results from changes in the structure of the state’s socioeconomic or political environment. However, the risks of escalation into civil war are highest when leaders lack consensus about a strategy to resolve the issue at stake. In turn, leaders’ disunity about a bargaining strategy is found to be a product of calculations for political survival.

Discussions of Asante stools in Western literature and museum records have focused exclusively on their association with male chiefs. My research, which combines archival and oral histories, and sets the existing literature and documentation on stools in comparative perspective, reframes existing thinking by asserting that asese dwa (sing. sese dwa), or conventional Asante stools, are intimately connected with women, and especially, queen mothers. Although the stool today is known widely as a symbol of male chieftaincy, chiefs do not sit on them in public. They use them only in very specific private spheres. It is queen mothers who sit on stools publically as seats of authority. The physical form of the stool, especially the mmaa dwa or "woman's stool" is a powerful symbol of female fecundity and the propagation of the Asante peoples. By exploring queen mother’s archives of stools and their dynamic uses of them, I present a more expansive history of these important cultural objects that challenges the taxonomies established by R. S. Rattray (1927) and others during the twentieth century. Contrary to the clearly defined hierarchies of symbolism, materials and structure that have informed assessments of historical stools in the West, Asante queen mothers have commissioned and used stools in an ongoing and context-dependent process of negotiation for at least a century. In this dissertation I explore the history of Asante stools since the late-nineteenth century through the lens of queen mothers’ perspectives. / History of Art and Architecture

<p> This dissertation explores the structure of political attitudes on the political parties&rsquo;, as well as mass public levels in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. I present the dimensionality, nature and structuration of political ideologies in these countries. In doing so, I describe the determinants, constituents, and components constructing parties&rsquo; and citizens&rsquo; political maps that are constantly competing for electoral, as well as actual, relevance within all societal domains. This work provides the first systematic empirical analysis of party systems in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. It explores three basic characteristics of the party system in each case: the number of relevant parties, level of ideological polarization and the degree of parties&rsquo; institutionalization. </p><p> The dissertation begins with analyzing political parties&rsquo; policy positions obtained from a content analysis of their manifestos. The content analysis measure parties&rsquo; political preferences on thirty political issues distributed on seven policy domains: foreign relations, democracy, economy, religion, culture, welfare and social groups while party politics literature in the Arab World is increasingly attempting to identify the most relevant political conflicts in the region, the empirical investigation of parties&rsquo; policy preferences in the region is non-existent. I provide evidence that political parties&rsquo; attitudes structure, political ideology, is organized on two dimensions: an economic, as well as a cultural one. The extent to which the economy should be regulated and whether Islam should play an active role in organizing politics and society constitute the main conflicts constructing the attitudes structure of Arab political parties in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco. </p><p> Next, I analyze the attitudes structures of mass publics in Algeria, Egypt, Jordan and Morocco to compare these to their political parties&rsquo; counterparts. Using the Sixth Wave of the World Values Survey, 2010&ndash;2014, the dissertation concludes that mass publics&rsquo; attitudes structures in these four Arab nations are differ from their parties&rsquo; equivalents&rsquo;. Ordinary citizens in the Arab World seem to structure their attitudes according to four dimensions: Welfare, Religion, Economy and Culture. Despite the extensive literature arguing that political elites and actors, mainly political parties, influence the structure of attitudes on the mass level, this dissertation presents evidence that contradicts such an assessment. This result indicates that elite political preferences may prove irrelevant in shaping mass publics political ideologies in certain contexts such as the Arab World. It also corroborates the assumption suggesting that political parties compete on a different ideological space than citizens. The attitudes structure on the mass level is shown to be more complex than that on the parties&rsquo; level. </p><p> Finally, I present an in-depth analysis of Algerian, Egyptian, and Jordanian and Moroccan party systems. The evidence indicates that party systems&rsquo; number of relevant actors, level of ideological polarization and the degree of institutionalization differ across countries. Morocco reflects the most stable system with few stable parties, medium level of ideological polarization and parties&rsquo; with strong organizations and deep roots in society. On the other hand, Jordan exhibits the weakest party system with a single relevant mass party, absent ideological polarization and weak parties. Algeria and Egypt withered similar political histories producing party systems with a strong state backed party and few strong opposition actors, high ideological polarization between Islamists and liberals and few highly institutionalized parties.</p><p>

Abstract not available.

This dissertation evaluates the applicability of Elinor Ostrom's theory of the commons to other forms of collective action by mapping it on a case study of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union in Ethiopia and its efforts to overcome the vast disparities that have long structured the global coffee commodity chain (the "Coffee Paradox"). The conclusions I draw are the following. While Ostrom's theory has serious omissions, it also sheds much needed light on the struggles of Ethiopia's coffee farmers to overcome their poverty. Both the design principles that Ostrom identifies for governance rules and her list of predictors for successful common property resource management institutions suggest that Ethiopia's coffee cooperatives could be in peril. However, by expanding Ostrom's governance framework to incorporate a broader enabling role for governments as well as supportive roles for civic organizations, NGOs, and social movements, we see greater potential for the success of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union.

The adoption of Free Primary Education in 2003 has expanded access to millions of children in Kenya. However, large numbers of children are still out of school. The majority of the out-of-school children belong to ethnic minority groups and the rural and urban poor, who live in abject poverty. This situation is disturbing given that free primary education was intended to universalize access to primary education, particularly for the poor. In Kenya, where gender parity has been achieved in primary education, gender disparities become obvious when analyses include geographical region and high levels of poverty. The degree to which gender parity is met varies from region to region and across ethnic groups. However this experience is not unique to Kenya. Recent global assessments of education reveal that out-of-school girls are disproportionately represented in excluded groups. But what helps explain this disproportionate representation of poor marginalized girls among those who are out of school? Understanding and addressing discrepant rates of participation requires close examination of factors underlying poor educational participation among those at the margins of society. However, such investigation must take into account the unique ways in which culture, poverty, ethnicity, and gender interact to affect educational processes. This study adopts a feminist theory of intersectionality to argue, based on the experiences of urban poor and rural girls in Nyanza Province of Kenya, that the educational marginalization of poor girls can be understood as an outcome of intersecting, socio-political and economic processes that emerge from their social locations within sexism, poverty, ethnic chauvinism, classism, and the simultaneity of oppression related to multiple discrimination. Based on the perspectives of the poor girls themselves, the study argues that greater acknowledgment be given to the intersectional framework within which educational exclusion occurs, paying particular attention to the interactions of culture, economy, home, and school as domains of intervention.

This dissertation investigates labor demand constraints and labor supply barriers to informal employment opportunities in Johannesburg using a micro-macro linkage methodology. Existing literature often characterizes the “informal sector” as voluntarist, or as the result of rationing due to labor market imperfections. Such models acknowledge no explicit role for macroeconomic factors to affect employment outcomes. I argue that, far from being structurally disconnected, both formal and informal employment conditions, including those in street trading, are shaped by the macroeconomic environment. The results highlight mechanisms through which conditions in the informal economy, in which traders operate and make decisions, are shaped by macroeconomic policies, and how these policies affect employment security. Based on qualitative field research on self-employed street traders conducted in 2008, I develop an analysis of trading from the level of the macroeconomy, through the retail sector, to traders and their households. The macroeconomic analysis estimates a consumption function to model impacts of alternative fiscal policy to that adopted in the post-apartheid years. The analysis uses an input-output model to isolate the impact of deficit spending on consumption by industrial sector and assess earnings and employment effects in the retail sector. Interview-based survey data enrich and contextualize the analysis, incorporating traders’ experiences and perceived challenges to self-employment. I find evidence of multiple interacting constraints on labor demand and labor supply, which helps make sense of the South African paradox of high unemployment coincident with a small informal economy. Street traders have limited profitability due, in part, to constrained consumption demand, which provides some explanation for the persistence of the paradox despite low barriers to entry. Further, constraints have disproportionate impacts on certain groups: female traders perceive their self-employment as significantly more threatened by demand constraints because their households tend to rely more on trading income than do male traders' households.

This thesis examines the gendered and sexualised politics of a lesbian identity in contemporary Zimbabwe. Recent writings of well-intentioned scholars, memoirists, bloggers and LGBTQ+ activists that are writing about African lesbian women have largely constructed them as passive victims, trapped in a history of political homophobias and the abusive hegemony of Western ethnocentric discourses that have objectified, erased or even violated African women’s bodies. In these scenarios lesbian women are portrayed as passive bodies on which different forms of gendered and sexualised power act. While great injury and harm has indeed come to some lesbian women, such a limited reading of lesbian lives, and experiences belies the complex ways in which power operates in both liberating and disempowering ways and how it is navigated and resisted by those it is directed at. Drawing on extensive field work I demonstrate firstly how individual and unique the identity formation journeys are and how despite the extreme and in some cases violent force of compulsory heterosexuality individuals still come to same-sex identities. Secondly, I argue that by using a phenomenological approach, African sexualities can be reimagined and explored to generate more than just new data sets, and instead provide new information and understandings of lesbian identity. Finally, through in-depth examination of participant narratives I argue that there is no unitary understanding of lesbian identity and that only those who identify as such can define what the identity means to them as well as shed light on the ways in which the identity is negotiated and navigated. / Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2021. / Centre for Human Rights / DPhil / Unrestricted