AIDS and Development in Africa demonstrates the human consequences of AIDS and the efforts being made by governments, individuals, families, villages, communities, and non-governmental organizations to respond to the pandemic. You will read beyond the usual analysis of demographics and receive much more substantial assessments and analyses of the burden on people, economies, and health care systems of the African countries.

This third part of the AWLAE series on HIV/AIDS and agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa focuses on the epidemic as a challenge to human development in general and rural development in particular. In the face of the impact of the epidemic as described in parts one and two of the series, the agricultural sector can play an important role in mitigating some of its effects. Strategies for agricultural intervention are of particular importance in sub-Saharan Africa, given the fact that most of the countries hardest hit by the epidemic are heavily reliant on agriculture. Different agricultural sector based mitigation strategies are discussed. It is further argued, however, that such interventions need to be complemented by interventions from the health and other sectors, in particular by treatment regimes including access to anti-retroviral drugs. The text is followed by an annotated bibliography.

This book compares the rapid development of South Korea over the past 70 years with selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa to assess what factors contributed to the country’s success story, and why it is that countries that were comparable in the past continue to experience challenges in achieving and sustaining economic growth. In the 1950s, South Korea’s GDP per capita was $876, roughly comparable with that of Cote d’Ivoire and somewhat below Ghana’s. The country’s subsequent transformation from a war-ravaged, international aid-dependent economy to the 13th largest economy in the world has been the focus of considerable international admiration and attention. But how was it that South Korea succeeded in multiplying its GDP per capita by a factor of 23, while other Less Developed Countries continue to experience challenges? This book compares South Korea’s politics of development and foreign assistance with that of Ghana, Nigeria, and Zambia, which were also major recipients of the U.S. aid, to investigate the specific contexts that made it possible for South Korea to achieve success. Overall, this book argues that effective state capacity in South Korea’s domestic and international politics provided an anchor for diplomatic engagement with donors and guided domestic political actors in the effective use of aid for economic development. This book will be of interest to researchers and students working on development, comparative political economy, and foreign aid, and to policy makers and practitioners looking for a greater understanding of comparative development trajectories.

This open access book introduces the theoretical frameworks and academic debates concerning sexual cultural practices and HIV/AIDS in Africa. It shows how these frameworks have been applied in a practical sense in Africa to investigate sexual cultural practices and their link with HIV/AIDS. The author provides an overview of both the field of study and the methods used during fieldwork. Finally, it assesses the implications of the findings for the conceptualization and provision of current and future HIV/AIDS policies and programs in Africa. This monograph will appeal to policy makers and practitioners working in the field of HIV/AIDS in the Global South as well as academics and students.

China’s rise as an aid provider in Africa has caught global attention, with China’s activity being viewed as the projection of soft power of a neo-colonialist kind in an international relations context. This book, which focuses on China’s education aid—government scholarships, training, Confucius Institutes, dispatched teachers, etc., reveals a much more complicated picture. It outlines how the divide between the Chinese Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Education hinders China’s soft power projection, how much of China’s aid is bound up with an education-for-economic-growth outlook, mirroring China’s own recent experiences of economic development, and how China’s aid—prioritized to reflect the commercial sector’s interests—is out of step with most international development aid, which is dominated by education agendas and the campaigns of international organizations and traditional donors; this leaves China easily exposed to the charge of neo-colonialism. This situation also reveals insufficient knowledge production of China and in South-South Cooperation. Substantial production of Southern knowledge should recognize the international development cooperation architecture as an open system by which both traditional donors and Southern countries transform.

This book deals with Israeli development aid to Sub-Saharan Africa countries as a part of Israeli foreign policy. The analysis is framed by the concept of soft power: an assumption that development cooperation increases attractiveness of the donor and contributes to constructive bilateral and multilateral relations. Israel is a particular case of a donor, as it concentrates on technical aid and its aid is motivated by a particular set of ideological and pragmatic motives.Covering the period since the 1950s till today, the book analyses particular Israeli resources relevant for African development and the system and contents of Israeli development aid, with a particular focus on a new phenomenon of the engagement of businesses and NGOs.Zielińska explores the geopolitical context of Israeli aid for Sub-Saharan countries and the recipients’ perception of Israeli aid; asking if and how these attitudes influence the recipients’ behaviour towards Israel within their bilateral relations as well as on multilateral forums. Contributing to the knowledge of development diplomacy as a form of expression of soft power and as a tool of foreign policy, it will be of interest to international relations’ students and faculty as well as to other people professionally dealing with Israeli foreign policies.

This book offers an original analysis of the long-term impact of western and Chinese economic and development cooperation policies in Africa. It argues that western Official Development Assistance (ODA) has failed to create viable and autonomous economies in beneficiary countries not (only) because of corruption, inefficiencies and cultural differences, but because it was never meant to do so. Raudino demonstrates, rather, that it was always designed to provide relief measures and nurture political relations rather than create genuinely industrialized and self-reliant economies. Similarly, by analyzing the nature of Chinese economic investments in Africa the author shows that China’s governmental policies hardly represent a revolutionary departure from the cooperation standards set by the West. In making these observations he also taps into the broader question of why wealth continues to be generated unequally across the world. Based on extensive fieldwork, quantitative economic analysis and historical qualitative research, this thought-provoking work will appeal to students and scholars of politics, economics and development studies, as well as to those involved more directly in the aid process.