Dr. Chika Charles Aniekwe

On various continents, intergovernmental organizations resort to legal engineering in order to promote democratic governance in their member states. Those legal efforts operate in a fluctuating political and societal environment, which they seek to transform but which, in turn, shapes the authority, the effectiveness and even the very nature of the legal instruments. As this Special Issue shows, this process of mutual influencing between law and context as interdependent variables also applies to the African Union's (AU) landmark instrument for democratic governance promotion. Roughly one decade after the adoption of the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance (ACDEG), fascinating developments, challenges and questions have emerged, some of which were arguably not anticipated by its drafters. For example, who envisaged that the ACDEG might become a justiciable instrument before the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights? In the wake of popular uprisings in res...

... of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and almost 9 years since Doha, the outcome of ignoring Adam Smith's warning is ... and this is equated to 5% of global trade in rice (Griswold, 2006, p 5). Ghanaian rice farmer Al-Hassan Abukari lamented the ...

African elections are usually highly contested and competitive because of the winner takes all making of most of the political systems on the continent. Since the third wave of democracy (Huntington, 1991), due to the competitive nature of these elections, attention is usually focused on making these elections peaceful and often relatively credible. Little attention has been paid to documenting good practices across these retinue of elections with the bid to providing election practitioners opportunity to learn from good practices that could be applied in similar context and circumstances. This paper is an attempt at that. It chronicles some of the important measures deployed by different stakeholders towards successful 2016 General Elections in Ghana. It recommends that managing electoral competition in African election requires commitment of political stakeholders, development of mechanisms and measures for both political and judicial redress and commitment to rule of law through independence of the judiciary.

African elections are usually highly contested and competitive because of the winner takes all making of most of the political systems on the continent. Since the third wave of democracy (Huntington, 1991), due to the competitive nature of these elections, attention is usually focused on making these elections peaceful and often relatively credible. Little attention has been paid to documenting good practices across these retinue of elections with the bid to providing election practitioners opportunity to learn from good practices that could be applied in similar context and circumstances.  This paper is an attempt at that. It chronicles some of the important measures deployed by different stakeholders towards successful 2016 General Elections in Ghana. It recommends that managing electoral competition in African election requires commitment of political stakeholders, development of mechanisms and measures for both political and judicial redress and commitment to rule of law through independence of the judiciary

Between 1989 and 2013, the African Union (AU) observed 423 elections in Africa. However, these election observation missions were inconsistent at best in terms of approach, methodology, framework and status. The first, which was in Namibia in 1989, was deployed within the framework of the United Nations (UN) statute in terms of which the UN invited the AU. The subsequent election observation missions have to date been deployed either as diplomatic or mediation missions or a combination of diplomatic and independent technical missions. This article shows that the election observation journey of the AU has passed through several stages and regimes. While we recognise the challenges, we also point towards improvement, and identify the missing links that the AU needs to complete to become a truly independent actor in its election observation missions.

The world's agricultural system has become globalized, income distribution asymmetrical, and poorer and small-scale households in rural areas turned into net buyers of food, which has heightened the threat to food security and livelihoods, especially for the poorest people in developing countries. Yet, controversy still surrounds the extent to which agricultural market liberalization has impacted on smallholder farmers, especially in developing countries of the global South. The mainstream assumption is that liberalization has benefited small-scale farmers through cooperatives and farmers' associations, better infrastructure, credit facilities and other capacity-building activities. Using a descriptive qualitative approach and focusing on the west African rice farmers, this paper argues that contrary to mainstream assumptions, agricultural trade liberalization has retrogressed smallholder rice farmers' development in west Africa through biased policies such as domestic subsidies, dirty tariffication, 1 commodity standardization, bilateral trade agreements and other policies that favor rich and industrialized farmers in developed countries over poor agro-ecological smallholder farmers in developing countries, and also through the stripping of public support from the farmers. Introduction Were those high duties and prohibitions taken away all at once, cheaper foreign goods of the same kind might be poured so fast into the home market as to deprive all at once many thousands of our people of their ordinary employment and means of subsistence. The disorder which this occasion might (present) no doubt (will) be very considerable (Smith, 1776). Ignoring the warnings of Smith, the neoliberal orthodoxy came with promises of prosperity for developing countries' farmers through liberalization in agriculture. Underpinning this idea is that developing countries would export through agricultural liberalization since they hold comparative advantage over the industrial countries. However, with over three decades since the neoliberal market paradigm, 15 years after the transition from the General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to the World Trade Organization (WTO), and almost 9 years since Doha, the outcome of ignoring Adam Smith's warning is telling a disastrous tale on the world's agriculture and poorest farmers. Gradually, the local market of the smallholders is eroding and shifting unrestricted into the grips of the rich industrial countries' farmers, yet market fundamentalists still hold the view that unrestricted agricultural markets could reduce poverty by 15% before the Millennium Development Goals deadline (Aksoy and Beghin, 2005) and that India could reduce poverty by 75 million through agricultural liberalization (Cline, 2004). It was equally argued that economies that open up for liberalization could double their size in 16 years, while closed economies would take nearly a hundred years to attain the same level (Sachs et al., 1995) Underpinning the fundamentalist assumption is the idea that since developing countries are agriculture based they command a comparative advantage over the developed countries. Presumably, agricultural liberalization will drive more production of crops for export and as a result ensure food security and the development of small-holding through collective action of cooperative groups, communication and technologies, credit facilities and better infrastructure associated with investment. A similar assumption is that through increased production, firms will enjoy economies of scale, and competition will ensue, resulting in quality and efficiency of production and cheaper commodities for the poorest in the society. Conversely, rather than act as a pathfinder for a robust agricultural sector, liberalization jeopardized the development capacity of the smallholders. Through liberalization, the smallholder lost food and market sovereignty in the domestic and local market, while struggling for entry into regional and international markets. The commitments of developed countries are hollow and concession is not within sight. While agricultural liberalization has already made developing-country markets porous, developed countries are demanding more porosity as a condition for concession to attain a fairer, inclusive and human-centered agricultural trade. This has not only undermined the capacity of developing-country farmers to expand, but has made the future of smallholder farmers worse, as it serves to intensify pre-existing problems of poverty, trade inequity and inequality that truncate the possibility of the global South following alternative agricultural development trajectories.

Persistent and widespread coup d’état in Africa in the 1990s prompted the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to respond with the Declaration on Unconstitutional Changes of Government in 1999 in Algiers, which was subsequently followed by the 2000 Lomé Declaration on the OAU Response to Unconstitutional Changes of Government (UCG). As a clear shift from the OAU to a new dispensation underpinned by solidarity, democratization, integration peace and development, the OAU transformed into the African Union (AU) in 2000 with
a new vision embedded in the Constitutive Act of the Union. The vision proclaimed in the Act promoted further interrogation of how the AU could provide move away from its focus of an end to colonialism to democratisation and the development of other normative instruments that would ensure democratic consolidation on the continent as underpinned by the Constitutive Act. One of those instruments is the African Charter on Democracy Elections and Governance (ACDEG) 2007, which came into force in February 2012 after ratification by fifteen (15) Member States. The Charter paid important attention to unconstitutional changes of government in Chapter 8 from Art 23 to 26, outlining the definition of UCG as well as the mandate of the Peace and Security Council (PSC) and the lifting of sanctions. This paper argues that implementation
of the provisions of the Charter has been inconsistent. It rarely defends the rights of the citizens against constitutional abuse by incumbents. The paper further agues that AU’s response to cases of UCG has been rather reactive rather than proactive.

There is a renewed interest in research collaboration between NGOs and academics in
international development. International development, like many areas of public policy in
the UK, Europe and beyond, is increasingly framed by an evidence-based logic. The
evidence-based logic is inextricably tied in with a demand for demonstrable impact from
development interventions. A similar logic prevails within academic institutions – the need
for academics to be able to demonstrate how their research is having an impact upon
society. Consequently, spaces seem to be opening for more engagement between
academics and practitioners, whether it is within joint research projects or in sharing
expertise and knowledge on the framing and use of research.
In early 2012, the Development Studies Association of the UK and Ireland funded a small
project involving the International NGO Training and Research Centre (INTRAC), World
Vision UK and the John and Elnora Ferguson Centre for African Studies (JEFCAS) at the
University of Bradford. The project explored current thinking on research collaboration
between academics and practitioners in international development, drawing upon existing
literature and the experiences of a small sample of collaborative projects (annexed). A
workshop brought academics and practitioners together to tease out issues enabling and
prohibiting collaboration. The project was driven by questions such as: why do academics
and NGOs collaborate; what is required for successful collaboration; what institutional and
philosophical barriers exist to collaboration, and how can these be overcome? This working
paper draws together the thinking which emerged during this project. It provides an
overview of the literature and theoretical perspectives on collaboration, summarises a
range of approaches from the case studies explored, and considers how these relate to
existing conceptualisations of collaboration. It aims to provoke critical thinking and debate
on new trajectories for academic-NGO collaboration. The paper concludes with an
exploration of current challenges to collaboration. It calls for a more nuanced and robust
understanding of how collaboration between academic institutions and NGOs can lead to
better outcome in development interventions, programmes and projects.