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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:Whither Social Science Institutions in Africa: A Prognosis
Author:Bujra, Abdalla S.ISNI
Year:1994
Periodical:Africa Development: A Quarterly Journal of CODESRIA (ISSN 0850-3907)
Volume:19
Issue:1
Pages:119-166
Language:English
Geographic term:Africa
Subjects:social research
research centres
Bibliography/Research
Education and Oral Traditions
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/24486835
Abstract:This paper analyses the historical evolution of social science institutions in Africa during the last three decades, identifies the main actors involved in this evolution and the major trends emerging for the future. The social science institutions are examined according to their classification into four categories: government led national institutions; regional institutions sponsored by the UN; subregional/regional institutions led by the African social science community; and donor community led institutions. The author argues that the externally imposed 'solutions' to the economic and political crises of African countries during the 1980s, and the changes in the international environment in the first half of the 1990s, have led to the intellectual domination of African social science by the neoclassic school of economics as represented by the World Bank and the IMF. While most of the traditional universities and the UN supported regional institutions are in the process of being restructured and perhaps of withering away, newly created parallel institutions focusing exclusively on policy analysis and economic management and some of the old universities with World Bank programmes are expected to dominate the social science scene in Africa for the rest of the decade and the next. An evaluation of the role and impact of Codesria (Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa), established in 1973, leads the author to reflect on the long-term strategy of this and similar institutions for facing the future. Bibliogr., notes, ref.
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