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A decolonial institutional analysis showing that smallholder exclusion in African agri-food markets is a structural, postcolonial field institutional arrangement. Using an East African case, the paper outlines directions for alternative local architectures that enhance farmer agency.

Paper long abstract

Efforts to integrate African smallholders into commercial agri-food markets—through contracts, standards, digital platforms, cooperatives, and financial inclusion—have intensified over the past two decades. Yet most farmers remain in precarious, low-return positions. Conventional deficit framings attribute this marginality to weak farmer capacity. This paper challenges such interpretations by combining constructionist institutional theory with a decolonial political economy perspective and insights from a large-scale systematic review.

Drawing on Fligstein’s conception of markets as fields, Beckert’s emphasis on coordination and expectations, and Zelizer’s analysis of classificatory schemes, the paper conceptualises markets as historically contingent field settlements shaped by power, culture, and institutional rules. Integrating Stefan Ouma’s analyses of global agri-food capitalism and the racialised spatial ordering of value chains extends this framework, revealing how African market fields remain embedded in colonial geographies of extraction and control. Departing from these theories, the paper argues that smallholder exclusion is best understood as a postcolonial field outcome: a systemic rationing of participation produced by architectures that externalise risk while concentrating coordination and value capture.

To illustrate the challenges of reconfiguring such entrenched structures, the paper presents an East African case in which the author sought to assemble alternative infrastructures—a digital farmer database, a community-based barter exchange, and a logistics and aggregation centre—intended to enhance smallholder agency. The difficulties encountered highlight both the possibilities and constraints of building new market configurations from below.

The paper concludes by outlining directions for reimagining market architectures that move beyond deficit-based inclusion toward decolonial and equitable forms of participation.

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Using 2024 Afrobarometer data, this paper examines Ugandans’ views on inequality, governance, and colonial legacy. It finds concerns over public services, higher trust in the president, less favour for the UK than China or India, and economic dissatisfaction mixed with hope.

Paper long abstract

Decades after independence, many African countries continue to grapple with economic inequality, raising questions about the weight of colonial legacies. In this paper, I investigate how Ugandans themselves view inequality, governance, and foreign influence in the shadow of the country’s colonial past. Using nationally representative Afrobarometer data from 2024, I find that people consistently highlight shortages in healthcare, education, water, and infrastructure; place greater trust in the president than in parliament or local councils; and view the United Kingdom, the former colonial power, less favorably than China, India, the United States, and African-led organizations. I also find that many Ugandans are dissatisfied with current economic conditions, yet remain hopeful about the future, with a sizeable minority considering emigration in search of better opportunities. These results show that while the legacies of colonialism continue to weigh heavily, the choices made by today’s policymakers will be crucial in shaping whether those inequalities are reinforced or overcome.

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Moving beyond technical implementation gaps, the paper employs a post-colonial perspective to analyse the progress of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa. It explores whose values are prioritised, and how neocolonial patterns continue to influence the contemporary development trajectory.

Paper long abstract

The SDGs are an ambitious, universal framework designed to address the world’s challenges of poverty and climate change through 17 integrated goals that balance economic, social, and environmental dimensions. However, with just five years to go before the 2030 target, more than half of African countries are off track to achieve the SDGs. Despite a decade of efforts to achieve the SDGs, African countries face acute challenges, with overlapping issues of debt burdens, climate emergencies, and historical structural inequalities that have hampered progress. As such, the implementation of SDGs raises fundamental questions about power, knowledge, and agency in the development enterprise. The central research question of this paper addresses whether the SDGs represent a neo-colonial agenda that perpetuates Global North hegemony and ascertains the opportunities for authentic African agency and alternative development pathways. This paper employs a post-colonial discourse analysis to critically examine the implementation of SDGs in Africa. While the SDGs aim to universalise sustainable development, their conceptual framework, operational mechanisms, and underlying assumptions require scrutiny through the lens of coloniality and power relations. The research analyses how the SDGs often perpetuate neo-colonial dynamics through universalised standards, epistemic hierarchies, and economic structures that marginalise African agency. Conversely, it also explores spaces for resistance and adaptation through frameworks like Agenda 2063. Findings reveal substantial tensions between the SDG transformations and their potential to reinforce Global North hegemony. The paper suggests decolonising development practice by centring African knowledge systems and priorities.

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Africans who embrace "development" as a universally sound means of measuring their place in the world have "developmental psychosis". They must reject development altogether and embrace an ontology of the undeveloped so as to craft a new “supraordinate telos”.

Paper long abstract

Development isn’t just a matter of politics and economics. It also has a distinctly cognitive, or develop-mental, component. This paper argues that Africans who embrace development as a universally sound means of measuring their status in the world have developmental psychosis. The paper begins by explaining how the coloniser-colonised dichotomy made it clear that the West alone would be sovereign and reap the benefits of extractionism, and that development discourse (and its correlative developed-undeveloped dichotomy) has obfuscated this dynamic. To this end, the paper shows that the coloniser-colonised dichotomy is functionally indistinguishable from the one found between the developed and undeveloped. Guided by the work of African psychologists, psychoanalysts, critical race theorists, Marxists and other critical scholars, it will argue that developmental psychosis is comprised of both false consciousness and 'Folie à Deux'. Having advanced these arguments, the paper will consider how African people can break free of developmental psychosis by rejecting development altogether and embracing an ontology of the underdeveloped. The paper will briefly explain what the ontology of the underdeveloped is and how its embodiment could herald the end of Western dominance.

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Borderland counties of Kenya face a multitude of challenges. There has been a significant deployment of security agencies to manage the situation. Prevailing mistrust obstruct community engagement in peace initiatives and developmental endeavors led by or associated with security agencies.

Paper long abstract

The borderland counties of Kenya face a multitude of challenges, such as a relative lack of development compared to other regions, feelings of marginalization, perennial conflicts, violent extremism, and concerns regarding human rights violations. Considering the enduring instability within the region, there has been a significant increase in the deployment of security agencies to address and manage the situation. Poor coordination between the security agencies and the community has evolved, resulting in a fragile relationship. The prevailing mistrust and absence of cohesion significantly obstruct meaningful community engagement in peace initiatives and developmental endeavors, particularly those led by or associated with security agencies. This research analyses the frequently neglected but crucial roles that women play in the dynamics of civilian-security relations and the broader context of human security and development within the borderland counties of Mandera, Wajir, and Garissa in Kenya. This examination delves into the roles women play as mediators, information brokers, and architects of community resilience, highlighting their influence on local peace processes, even in the face of their underrepresentation within formal security and governance frameworks. Anchored on the frameworks of Liberal Feminism and Human Security theoretical perspective, the study produce recommendations aimed at enhancing gender-responsive security governance. The results are intended to guide Kenya’s National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security, while also bolstering wider regional initiatives to incorporate gender considerations into peacebuilding and human security frameworks.

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Ghanaian youth, often described as trapped in waithood, act as boundary actors across local, national, and global arenas. Through activism, digital networks, and transnational engagement, they negotiate power, challenge or reproduce development hierarchies, and reshape social and political futures.

Paper long abstract

African youth are often described as trapped in waithood — a liminal stage between education, employment, and adult autonomy. While this framing highlights structural challenges, it risks portraying young people as passive bystanders. This paper argues that Africa youth are better understood as boundary actors, actively navigating local, national, and transnational arenas to shape social, political, and normative change.

Based on planned fieldwork in Ghana (Feb 2026), including semi-structured interviews with youth activists, analysis of organizational communications, and digital ethnography, the study explores how youth: (1) create alternative civic spaces through protests, art, music, and grassroots organizing; (2) build transnational connections that influence identity, access to resources, and engagement with global movements on climate justice, racial equity, and decolonisation; and (3) circulate ideas, norms, and practices across borders, linking local activism to global debates on accountability, governance, and development.

By centering youth experiences in Ghana, this paper reconceptualizes waithood not as passive waiting but as a strategic, liminal negotiation of power, opportunity, and knowledge. It critically examines whether these boundary practices challenge entrenched global development hierarchies or reproduce them in new forms. Ultimately, the study contributes to debates on decolonising development and global governance, showing how Ghanaian youth act as conscious citizens and transboundary actors, shaping the social, political, and normative futures of their societies today.

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The paper challenges claims that LGBTIQ+ rights are “un-African” by tracing pre-colonial sexual diversity and examining how African NGOs - especially in Nigeria and Uganda - resist colonial legacies and contemporary anti-gender backlash, partially financed by US stakeholders, in repressive contexts.

Paper long abstract

Within many African societies, the struggle for LGBTIQ+ human rights is often framed as an “un-African” phenomenon and dismissed as a Western cultural import. This paper explores the agency of African LGBTIQ+ organizations that challenge this narrative by defending and reclaiming pre-colonial sexual and gender identities.

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, drawing on historical and anthropological scholarship, it demonstrates that numerous African societies historically recognized plural gender roles, non-binary identities, and diverse sexual orientations. Examples include the chibados in Angola, the mudoko dako in Uganda, and the acknowledgment of non-binary Orishas in Yorùbá culture. These indigenous sexualities and gender expressions were systematically marginalized and criminalized through European colonial governance and the influence of Christian missionaries. This colonial legacy persists to the present day: 30 out of 54 Commonwealth countries continue to criminalize homosexuality as a direct result of British colonial rule.

Second, the paper investigates the advocacy practices of local NGOs working to protect LGBTIQ+ rights in Africa, comparing approaches in Nigeria and Uganda. Drawing upon insights from two case studies, the paper addresses two key questions: How do LGBTIQ+ organizations operate within repressive political and legal environments? And which strategies do they employ to decolonize dominant gender imaginaries and reclaim indigenous epistemologies of sexuality and gender? Finally, the paper discusses the backlash faced by LGBTIQ+ advocates, particularly in the form of hostile anti-gender campaigns that are often financed by Western, especially US-based, organizations.

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Debates about development as a field of study ( disabled by its multi trans interdisciplinarity), theory or practice privilege structure and coloniality and modernity/rationality epistemology. This analytical paper debunks symbolic decoloniality of development in preference for actional options.

Paper long abstract

Imperial epistemology (domestic and global) and the reluctance to evolve Development Studies into a full discipline, I argue, is responsible for development to function as a blank space. Development as a blank slate has been and continues to be populated with notions such as it being an extension of colonial studies and I add preservation of white civilisation, being about anti-communism ideology or a logical ethical extension of the the Marshall plan to the rest of the world, a construction to birth industry for Geopolitical North, coloniality of being by Western imperial knowledge systems and culture, North-America-Western Europe double barreled narcissism, trilogy of dependent process of change-policy and practice-dominant discourse, and United Nation's behind time global sustainable development goals and Trump denied global development cooperation. Both the antiquated and contemporary debates about the development of so called late comers collapse into the solipsism of the theodicean of structure/ hierarchical agency dualism. This desktop analytical study found that contemporary efforts of decolonizing development either hold epistemic combat as a virtue and lifestyle, and deny development as a means and end of their scholarship in development studies; or celebrate parlance and difference as a school of thought while the lived experiences of every day people and the environment are worsening unabetted. This paper recommends, what I framed elsewhere as Authentic Decolonial Cultural Synthesis Praxis, as a means to a conversations inclined towards options of development as maturity that demands being actional (Fanon) with hallmarks of responsible development (Chambers).