What factors determine the ownership of development process in Africa, and what does the traditional conception of ownership reveal about donors’ and recipients’ power relationships? Harper-Shipman’s gripping narrative on Rethinking Ownership of Development in Africa delves into the challenging task of succinctly explaining the concept of ownership and determining its ubiquitous roles in the analysis of development process in Africa. Selecting Burkina Faso and Kenya as the analytical contexts, Harper-Shipman addresses two salient questions: “What is ownership of development, and how do local stakeholders in different African countries define and navigate ownership?” (2).
Harper-Shipman applies critical discourse analysis for data collection and two case studies (Burkina Faso and Kenya) to explore the two questions. Harper-Shipman argues that “the putative version of ownership in contemporary development discourse is distinct from previous renderings of ownership because the current version is better understood as a development paradigm” (2). Furthermore, the author demonstrates that...
University of California Press