Paper short abstract:

Taking the security sector reform arena in Guinea-Bissau as an example, this paper intends to show the multilayerdness and ambiguity relating to different logics of planning and implementing the reform, analysing how the implied knowledge transfer is interpreted and envisioned.

Paper long abstract:

Colonialism pretended to contribute to the "civilization" and "assimilation" of supposedly "backward" and "underdeveloped" African societies. Even after the independence of Europe's colonies, the one-way transfer of "global North" values to the "South" did not come to an end. Decades after decolonisation the question of how African countries can and should be "developed" continues to fuel debates among resident citizens, development practitioners, and politics. The implementation of security sector reform in Guinea-Bissau is no exception: Development policies normatively demand "local ownership" and thus seem to subscribe to the translation and negotiation of "Western" concepts into local approaches, thus stressing the idea of exchange among equals. By contrast, practice shows that, to a large extent, security project implementers often prefer a one-to-one-transmission of "Western" knowledge. However, these approaches are only partly successful, and security sector reform projects take different paths than originally planned from "Western" point of views. Contrariwise, local citizens reveal a variety of opinions and demands in this regard, oscillating between negotiated translation and top-down diffusion.

Taking the security sector reform arena in Guinea-Bissau as an example and based on several month of field research on-site, this paper intends to show the multilayerdness and ambiguity relating to different logics of planning and implementing the reform, expressed by competing discourses. It will be analysed how "development" and "security sector reform" are imagined and contested by different actors and how the implied knowledge transfer is interpreted and envisioned while memorizing/revitalizing colonial discourses in present-day postcolonial settings.