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Short abstract

Analyzing Swedish climate ODA in Eastern Africa, this paper traces how integration mandates are rendered technical and transformed through translation. We argue that integration work, although partial, produces relevant contextual adaptations that rigid standardization risks foreclosing.

Long abstract

Climate adaptation aid carries its own risk profile. When donor fragmentation, misaligned objectives, and insufficient localization converge, interventions meant to strengthen resilience may instead exacerbate vulnerabilities through maladaptation (Reckien et al. 2023; Schipper et al. 2020; Persson 2009). Justice considerations, diverse epistemologies, and cross-cutting issues like gender and conflict introduce complexity that can generate policy coherence or produce adverse unintended consequences. Integrated aproaches and mainstreaming are a response to this challenge. Since 2015, Swedish aid authorities have mandated such integration across all Sida-funded operations (Brodén Gyberg & Mobjörk 2021). This paper analyzes how these mandates function as a technology of government in Swedish climate aid to Eastern Africa. Drawing on Li's (2007) concept of rendering technical and Actor-Network Theory's understanding of translation (Callon 1984; Latour 1987), we trace how mandates circulate from overarching strategies to operational toolboxes and reporting, combining policy analysis with interviews with aid staff. We find that integration is rendered technical through procedural mechanisms that narrow the transformative ambitions they are designed to serve. As mandates travel across organizational levels, concepts drift, priorities shift, and the same mandate is differently constituted at each node. Together these dynamics produce a paradox: integration, designed to coordinate overlapping crises, generates its own coordination demands. We argue, however, that partial integration is not a failure, it keeps gender, conflict, and climate in view where siloed approaches risk losing them. Translation, however messy, produces relevant contextual adaptations that rigid standardization risks foreclosing.