Corporate Scramble for Africa? Towards a postcolonial framework for transglocal development governance

Abstract

Building on postcolonial critical organization and development studies, this paper explores the neo-colonial drive of a global development initiative. The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NA) was launched in 2012 and provides a governance framework for partnerships between donors, governments, and companies that applies principles and practices of market-led growth as means to the end of inclusive development. Through an in-depth, multilevel analysis that juxtaposes the NA’s stipulated framework with the lived experiences of smallholder farmers in Malawi, one of ten African countries to participate in NA, the paper shows how local consequences are decoupled from global goals through governance gaps in both the horizontal and vertical dynamics of implementation. This decoupling of intention and consequence, we argue, happens at the national level of translating global principles into local practices. On the basis of this analysis, we suggest that vertical and horizontal governance must be integrated in one framework. Thus, we contribute to ongoing efforts to improve the theory and practice of the organization of development by introducing a framework of transglocal governance.