Laura Mann

Understanding the Political Motivations That Shape Rwanda's Emergent Developmental State

Twenty years after its horrific genocide, Rwanda has become a model for economic development. At the same time, its government has been criticised for authoritarian tactics and the use of violence. Missing from the often polarised debate are the connections between these two perspectives. Synthesising existing literature on Rwanda in light of a combined year of fieldwork, we argue that the Government of Rwanda is using the developmental infrastructure to deepen state power and expand political control. We first identify the historical pressures that have motivated the ruling Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) to reimagine the political landscape. Sectarian unrest, political rivalry, wider regional insecurity and aid withdrawal have all pressured the RPF to identify growth as strategic. However, the political transformation extends beyond a prioritisation of growth and encompasses the articulation of ideologies and new mindsets, the provision of social services and infrastructure and the reordering of the social and physical layout of the territory. Growth and social control go hand in hand. As such, this papers main contribution is to bring together the two sides of the Rwandan debate and place the country in a broader sociological literature about the parallel development of capitalist relations and transformations in state power.

The Domestic Turn: Business Processing Outsourcing and the Growing Automation of Kenyan Organisations

ABSTRACT After observing the growth of the Indian and Filipino Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) sectors, Kenyan policy-makers and managers made substantial investments in international internet infrastructure and BPO marketing campaigns. While observers continue to discuss the sector in terms of its international work opportunities, in recent years the sector has increasingly focused on contracts sourced from Kenyan and other East African clients. The government has also refocused efforts on attracting international BPO companies. This domestic turn signals both the difficulties of gaining access to overseas work due to the power of incumbents and the increasing use of the internet and ICT-enabled automation within Kenyan organisations. In effect, better connectivity has enabled a two-way globalisation of services: Kenyan BPO companies can access international work opportunities but connectivity has also contributed to the inflow of international business practices into Kenya. The conclusion examines what these shifts might entail for the sector and its workers in future.

Sellers on the street: the human infrastructure of the mobile phone network in Kigali, Rwanda

This paper looks in detail at the social and economic background of mobile airtime sellers on the streets of Kigali. While informal networks have proved to be an invaluable resource for large multinational telecommunication companies seeking to penetrate African markets, changing technological capabilities may soon displace them. As Rwanda develops its Internet and payment systems, companies and institutions hope to provide airtime and services directly. The paper draws on interviews with airtime sellers in three neighbourhoods of Kigali to ask what this temporary source of employment has done to their long-term career prospects. While the Rwandan government information and communication technology (ICT) strategy has hereto focused on high-end ICT and business process outsourcing, this paper uses the experiences of airtime sellers to advocate for a more bottom-up approach to entrepreneurship and economic development in Rwanda. We stress that planners and researchers need to think more critically about value chains at the bottom of the pyramid, not just in terms of how informal networks can be used as temporary appendages to further the reach of formal multinational corporations, but how these new kinds of chains and networks can be re-engineered to provide permanent and sustainable livelihoods to workers and business owners at the base of the economy.

Introduction: Global Economic Inclusion and African Workers

Abstract This introductory article explores the transformative potential of global connections for African workers. It challenges recent claims that African workers have become functionally irrelevant to the global economy by examining the shift of global demand for African workers from formal to increasingly informalised labour arrangements, mediated by social enterprises, labour brokers and graduate entrepreneurs. Focusing on global employment connections initiated from above and from below, we consider why global labour linkages have tended to increase rather than reduce problems of vulnerable and unstable working conditions within African countries, and consider the economic and political conditions needed for African workers to capture the gains of inclusion in the global economy.

Wasta! The long-term implications of education expansion and economic liberalisation on politics in Sudan

By tracking the changing nature of wasta, or personal intermediation, in the Khartoum labour market, this paper examines the impact of Islamist policies on state–society relations in Khartoum, Sudan. It argues that economic liberalisation and higher education expansion weakened sectarian control over the economy, replacing the former institutionalised system of privilege with a much more decentralised, private and transnational structure. The conclusion asks whether these policies have laid the groundwork for long-term political transformation. While education expansion and liberalisation should theoretically allow a regime to broaden patronage networks, they may also reduce the capacity of both the regime and the private sector to exercise power and establish predictability outwards.

‘We Do Our Bit in Our Own Space’: DAL Group and the Development of a Curiously Sudanese Enclave Economy

The family firm, DAL Group, is Sudans largest and most diversified company. Its growth has concentrated on consumer goods, rather than on state concessions or exports. It has developed its own training programmes, construction units, transportation networks and market research departments to manage the unstable environment outside its business walls. This paper focuses on the companys recruitment policies, demonstrating how the firm relies on its own internal family structure and a transnational network of Sudanese professionals in order to grow and prosper. Such self-reliance contributes to growing political frustration among young unemployed people. Graduates from ‘marginal’ areas rely more heavily on public advertisements and on information obtained from state bodies, not the private channels of wasta (personal intermediation) that cut through contemporary business. The paper concludes by comparing DAL with similar business networks in Ethiopia and Rwanda, arguing that DAL is a unique and interesting form of ‘enclave economy’, shaped by a displaced transnational elite operating in a hostile political environment. Within the wider political context of Sudan, there is a limit to what similar businesses can achieve.

Digital Control in Value Chains: Challenges of Connectivity for East African Firms

Abstract In recent years, Internet connectivity has greatly improved across the African continent. This article examines the consequences that this shift has had for East African firms that are part of global value chains (GVCs). Prior work yielded contradictory expectations: firms might benefit from connectivity through increased efficiencies and improved access to markets, although they might also be further marginalized through increasing control of lead firms. Drawing on extensive qualitative research in Kenya and Rwanda, including 264 interviews, we examine 3 sectors (tea, tourism, and business process outsourcing) exploring overarching, cross-cutting themes. The findings support more pessimistic expectations: small African producers are only thinly digitally integrated in GVCs. Moreover, shifting modes of value chain governance, supported by lead firms and facilitated by digital information platforms and data standards are leading to new challenges for firms looking to digitally integrate. Nevertheless, we also find examples in these sectors of opportunities where small firms are able to cater to emerging niche customers, and local or regional markets. Overall, the study shows that improving connectivity does not inherently benefit African firms in GVCs without support for complementary capacity and competitive advantages.

Liberation movements and stalled democratic transitions: reproducing power in Rwanda and South Africa through productive liminality

ABSTRACT The lack of convergence towards liberal democracy in some African countries reflects neither a permanent state of political aberration, nor necessarily a prolonged transitional phase through which countries pass once the “right” conditions are met. Examining the cases of two ruling parties, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the African National Congress in South Africa, we develop the concept of productive liminality to explain countries suspended (potentially indefinitely) in a status “betwixt and between” mass violence, authoritarianism, and democracy. On the one hand, their societies are in a liminal status wherein a transition to democracy and socio-economic “revolution” remains forestalled; on the other hand, this liminality is instrumentalized to justify the party’s extraordinary mandate characterized by: (a) an idea of an incomplete project of liberation that the party alone is mandated to fulfil through an authoritarian social contract, and (b) the claim that this unfulfilled revolution is continuously under threat by a coterie of malevolent forces, which the party alone is mandated to identify and appropriately sanction.