The article examines the role of ethnic favoritism in maldistribution of national resources in Kenya and discusses two broad proposals for attacking such corruption. Evidence drawn from research in Kenya disproves the view of Chabal and Daloz, who argue that Africans prefer to distribute goods according to ethnic ties, and shows that frustration with the lack of alternatives to such a system, rather than enthusiasm for it, drives cooperation with corrupt maldistribution. One solution to the problem is to decentralize government (...) so that resources are retained locally. A second solution is to attack the culture of appropriation and push for a fair evaluation of needs and the equitable distribution of national resources to where they are needed most. Drawing on the ideas of Hannah Arendt, the article proposes a modified federalism where government is small enough to enlist the help and support of locals but powerful enough to provide funds to impoverished sectors of the country. (shrink)

. This paper raises a question that is fundamental in the relationship between Euro-Western knowledge as a system of knowing, spawned and refined under particular historical circumstances, and the methodologies that are attached to it. I argue that Euro-Western knowledge gains its hegemonic status precisely because it is a political tool with political implications. As such, it is argued that the methodologies attached to it cannot be modified to subvert the very foundational motivations and spirit that inform Euro-modern knowledge. The (...) paper shows the politics of such knowledge and of the knowledge resulting from its methodologies. In this vein, then, I argue that chances for those placed on opposite sides of the “colonial difference” to engage in scholarly conversations that give equal respect to their ontological and epistemological concerns are non-existent. Heretofore marginalized ways of knowing and, thus, of being, need to be restored to an equal plane of recognition and affirmation for such conversations to be realized. The pervasive understanding of what came to be known as “African AIDS” is used as a case to substantiate the main argument. (shrink)

This paper seeks to address the problem of strangeness within the context of migration in Africa. I draw on historical realities that inform existing international and African discourses on migration. I hope to show that most African countries have unconsciously bought into international arguments that drive the legitimacy of building walls, visible and invisible, and the promotion of stringent migration policies that minimise the influx of African immigrants. I draw on political and philosophical positions of African thinkers like Kwame Nkrumah, (...) among others, in my theorisation of strangeness and the need to dispel the potential negative conception of strangeness within Africa’s migration policies. I juxtapose these positions with Western political theories with the hope of emphasizing African humanism as a key conception worth considering when decolonising borders. (shrink)

This article seeks to synthesise three fields of inquiry – management studies, linguistics and cognitive psychology – to explore an arguably emerging phenomenon of global management knowledge impoverishment. To this end, three literatures are reviewed and interrogated for the insights they may provide into the underlying factors affecting global MK: trends in knowledge production, Englishisation of management scholarship and the culturally determined differences in cognition. Arguments are developed through descriptive investigation, discussion and analysis. The central proposition of this article is (...) that the politics of knowledge production, the hegemony of English as the dominant language of management studies and the variations in thinking styles are synergistically interlinked in a way that facilitates Anglophone homogenisation of management research and potentially leads to global MK impoverishment. The ways of addressing the situation are discussed. (shrink)