| 1. |
- Nilsson, David, 1968-, et al.
(författare)
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Research Aid Revisited : a historically grounded analysis of future prospects and policy options
- 2017
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Rapport (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This report examines the historical path as well as current tendencies of the Swedish government’s support to development research and research capacity building in low-income countries, or simply “research aid”. It also presents some ideas for future policy options.Research aid was institutionalised in the 1970s as part of Sweden’s growing ambitions on the international development aid scene. This ambition was driven by several motives, such as international solidarity but also economic and foreign policy motives, and can be understood as part of a movement to find, and strengthen, Sweden’s geopolitical niche in the Cold War landscape. It also tapped into longer global political movements on civilisation, decolonisation and development, as well as international scientific discourses on economic growth, over-population and environmentalism. The process which led up to the establishment of SAREC (Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries ) in 1975 echoed many of the ideas and initiatives at international level in the 1960s, mainly within the sphere of the United Nations, that underscored the importance of science and technology for development. In short, science and research capacity was needed to meet challenges in the South, which was seen as lagging behind in terms economic and social development level.A Swedish framework for research aid developed in the formative period of the 1970s and early 1980s, which after that has largely persisted:bilateral cooperation for capacity building based on partnerships with Swedish universities, PhD and Master education through sandwich-programmes, and infrastructure support;support to global and regional research organisations, with a handful of organisations getting the bulk of the funding;research in Sweden of relevance to developing countries through a science council function, where a handful of universities attract most of the funding;a relatively stable funding regime with 3-4 % of government aid allocations going to research, divided into streams of 25-30% to bilateral support, 50-60% to global and regional organisations, and 10-15% to Swedish university research. In relative terms, a downward funding trend is noted over the past decade.Right from the beginning, the outspoken aim was to take a point of departure in the needs and demands of developing countries, and to give priority to developing research capacity. Supporting political and economic independence in the South had become one of the key objectives of Swedish aid, and increasing the research capacity was well in line with this. From around 1985 the framework was largely in place, and SAREC entered a pragmatic growth phase which seems to have lasted well into the 2000s. The main framework, and the underlying thinking, in Sweden’s research aid model have since then not been substantially altered. Within the framework certain changes, adaptations and initiatives have been made to improve performance over time. Several organisational changes have taken place, notably the merging of SAREC and SIDA in 1995 and the transfer of responsibility for grants to Swedish universities from Sida to Swedish Research Council VR in 2013. Both SAREC’s and Sida’s research aid activities have enjoyed a good reputation and from what we have seen, many evaluations have been positive.Our historical analysis exposes some contradictions in the early Swedish research aid. First: research aid was not in demand from Sweden’s partner countries in the 1970s. As Sweden’s policy of country-programming dictated that aid should only be given where there was an expressed demand for it, SAREC was formed as an independent agency in order to bypass this policy. Second: while the focus on capacity building in the South has been strong, less than 30% of the spending has gone to the bilateral programmes which make up the main platform for capacity building. And third: the impact on the Swedish research arena at large appears to have been small despite the fact that a re-orientation of research capacity in Sweden was a stated objective early on. At policy level, over the years we have seen very few attempts for a closer alignment and coordination between Sweden’s research aid and national research policy. This third contradiction has continued to be visible even after the adoption of the Policy for Global Development (PGU) in 2003, although we note some moves towards increased integration in the past few years, notably the closer involvement of VR and the recent revitalisation of the PGU.The key questions we raise in this report are not just about why and how SAREC and Sida worked the way they did until now. They also concern how the mission of research aid can be conceived from now on. In our study, one can fairly easy discern that the Swedish model for research aid was formed to respond to certain human, developmental, scientific and political needs of the 1970s. It is also quite clear that since then, the geopolitical map as well as the global problem catalogue has changed dramatically. Essentially, the problem at hand is not any longer, at least not only, about poor countries “catching up” with the rich countries. We argue that as humankind’s challenges have become increasingly of shared and international character (climate change, global flows of refugees, security, shared natural resources etc) we need a shared regime of knowledge production, one which does not presuppose a one-way transmission of knowledge or academic know-how from Swedish or international research organisations to the poor countries.A new model for international research collaboration is needed which goes far beyond the current scope and volume of research aid. Such collaboration, we have good reasons to believe, will benefit the global South, the entire Swedish research and innovation arena as well as the wider society, and may hold potential for increasing Sweden’s competitiveness in the - more sustainable - future. We propose that such a new and wider model for collaboration is built on the understanding of a world where problems and challenges are shared, although unevenly and unpredictably distributed. In this world, the production and distribution of wealth and its environmental, health and social consequences is rapidly becoming a more critical and pervasive concern than the remaining and clearly deeply distressing cases of poverty. Building capacity in the global South will for the foreseeable future continue to be an important task. But in this current world the research agenda should be increasingly shaped by managing and mitigating the risks following from wealth creation and how it affects the very idea of development in the twenty-first century. The question of wealth is rather unconventional for development aid, but it must be asked seriously in a world where economic growth is spreading and technology-driven on a pace that seems to continue unabated. How can global wealth become sustainable and at the same time be promoted and grow in low-income countries? Taking this question seriously and carving out a responsible way forward would imply an increased attention on a new set of issues. We suggest that it is high time for a revitalised and bold discussion regarding Sweden’s future role in knowledge development in the global South, which could take its point of departure in the following propositions:Challenges and problems are shared. Moving away from the notion of ‘development’ as an issue for the global South, today’s and tomorrow’s global problems affect also the global North. As we now increasingly take stock of a supercomplex world, the idea of research aid will have to change.Global challenges are local. In dealing with local and regional manifestations of the broader, often global challenges, it may be called for research aid to take a different form, engaging researchers and institutions in the developing world in broader constellations.Wealth is becoming a greater problem than poverty. While the 2030 agenda to eliminate poverty must continue, the questions of transgression of planetary boundaries, environmental justice, wealth and welfare distribution open up vast new fields of global enquiry. Future research aid would take as its cue the challenges rising in a world with much less poverty and much more wealth.Research agendas should be formed in dialogue. Common agendas need to be reconsidered in a South-North dialogue supported by new alliances of change agents in universities, funding agencies, the business community, recipient countries, international fora, in civil society, and the EU. The knowledge base is widening. Integrative and challenge-driven approaches bridging multiple disciplines, including the social sciences and humanities, that have hitherto played marginal roles in research aid, are needed to deal with the supercomplexity challenges of the emerging world order.Institutions remain essential. The research capacity of institutional actors such as universities is set to be a critical lever for low-income countries to participate in, and benefit from, the massively expanding global knowledge production. Sweden can here build upon its sustained track record of supporting institution building in the South.Change of scale is required. The massive challenges we are facing at combined planetary, regional and local scales require responses of a completely different scale and character than what aid has been able to muster within the - predominantly nation-based – paradigm of development aid.Research aid should be linked closer to knowledge and research policy at large. Research aid can just be one small part of a wider agenda to address global challenges, implying a much closer alignment between research policy and research aid. History demonstrates the difficulties of effecting this alignment, which now prompts an organized re-thinking, a re-structuring of funding
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| 2. |
- Nilsson, David, 1968-
(författare)
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Water for a few : a history of urban water and sanitation in East Africa
- 2006
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This licentiate thesis describes and analyses the modern history of the socio-technical systems for urban water supply and sanitation in East Africa with focus on Uganda and Kenya. The key objective of the thesis is to evaluate to what extent the historic processes frame and influence the water and sanitation services sectors in these countries today. The theoretical approach combines the Large Technical Systems approach from the discipline of History of Technology with New Institutional Economics. Throughout, urban water and sanitation service systems are regarded as socio-technical systems, where institutions, organisation and technology all interact. The thesis consists of three separate articles and a synthesis in the form of a framework narrative. The first article provides a discussion of the theoretical framework with special focus on the application of Public Goods theory to urban water and sanitation. The second article describes the establishment of the large-scale systems for water supply and sanitation in Kampala, Uganda in the period 1920-1950. The third article focuses on the politics of urban water supply in Kenya with emphasis on the period 1900-1990.The main findings in this thesis are that the socio-technical systems for urban water and sanitation evolve over long periods of time and are associated with inertia that makes these systems change slowly. The systems were established in the colonial period to mainly respond to the needs and preferences of a wealthy minority and a technological paradigm evolved based on capital-intensive and large-scale technology. Attempts to expand services to all citizens in the post-colonial period under this paradigm were not sustainable due to changes in the social, political and economic environment while incentives for technological change were largely absent. History thus frames decisions in the public sphere even today, through technological and institutional inertia. Knowing the history of these socio-technical systems is therefore important, in order to understand key sector constraints, and for developing more sustainable service provision.
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| 3. |
- Nilsson, David, 1968-
(författare)
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Closure and Innovation in urban technologies in the age of Development Aid
- 2015
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Urban networked technologies of water supply and sanitation have been transferred from the global North to produce “development” in the South first through colonial structures, and later through the machinery of development aid. While some “development” has been produced by means of such imported systems and practices, they have also entrenched social injustice in African cities. The African urban environment and its technosphere cannot be seen outside its system of values and power hierarchies, meaning that the innovation and change dynamics of urban technology is heavily influenced by the political economy context particularly of the urban elites. While European water technologies came to represent modernisation and progress in colonial contexts it appears as they continued to serve a similar symbolic purpose also after de-colonisation. By discussing the trajectories of these technologies in the South through the use of the “closure” concept, I argue that the symbolic purpose of infrastructure may have been more crucial for African political leaders and system builders than previously understood. Problems and controversies that have been identified by key actors are predominantly of fiduciary nature, while influential external actors like donors have had small incentives for technological change. In terms of technological development the water and sanitation large-scale systems have continued to be in a state of closure and any major innovation activity within them is likely to require a shift in power and accountability structures.
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| 4. |
- Appelblad Fredby, Jenny, et al.
(författare)
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From "All for some" to "Some for all"? : A historical geography of pro-poor water provision in Kampala
- 2013
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Ingår i: Journal of Eastern African Studies. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1753-1055 .- 1753-1063. ; 7:1, s. 40-57
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article discusses the historical mechanisms and geographical factors that have formed the current structure of urban water provision in Kampala, the capital of Uganda. The formation of the urban geography of Kampala dates back to the early colonial period. The high- and middle-income earners have settled on the hills while the poorest part of the population lives in the low-lying areas, dispersed as pockets of unplanned and informal settlements. Public services are underdeveloped in these informal pockets. The government has pledged to improve services for the poor and this article analyses whether the efforts made are likely to lead to a lasting change, seen in a longer time perspective. The public water supply in Kampala has ever since its opening in 1930 focused on the middle- and high-income groups while poor people have been marginalised. Water provision to low-income groups has continued to rely on standpipes since the colonial period. There has also been organisational continuity, with a single centralised organisation in charge of urban water supply in all larger towns. Institutional changes, such as the new connection policy from 2004, have perpetuated the emphasis on middle- and high-income groups. This article argues that the traditional focus on private connections is creating a barrier for expansion of services in informal areas. Pre-paid water distribution, which was tried already in the 1920s, has in recent years seen a revival. This technology offers an important avenue for rectifying inequalities of public services that has been reproduced since the colonial period.
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| 5. |
- Nilsson, David, 1968-
(författare)
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The Unseeing State : How Ideals of Modernity Have Undermined Innovation in Africa’s Urban Water Systems
- 2016
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Ingår i: NTM. International Journal of History and Ethics of Natural Sciences, Technology and Medicine. - : Springer. - 0036-6978 .- 1420-9144. ; 24:4, s. 481-510
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In contrast to the European historical experience, Africa’s urban infrastructural systems are characterised by stagnation long before demand had been saturated. Water infrastructures have been established as predominantly exclusive service provision systems, with millions of poor people lacking basic services in the cities. What is puzzling is that so little emphasis has been placed on innovation and adaptation of the colonial technological paradigm to better suit the local and current socio-economic context. Based on historical case studies of Kampala and Nairobi, this paper argues that the lack of innovation in African urban water infrastructure can be understood using the concept of technological closure (Pinch & Bijker 1987), and by looking at water technology from its embedded values and ideology. Large-scale water technology became part of African leaders’ strategies to build prosperous nations and cities after decolonisation and the ideological purpose of infrastructure may have been much more important than previously understood. Water technology had reached a state of closure in Europe and then came to represent modernisation and progress in the colonial context. It has continued to serve such a similar symbolic purpose after independence, with old norms essentially being preserved. Recent sector reforms have defined problems predominantly as of economic and institutional nature while state actors have become ‘unseeing’ vis-á-vis controversies within the technological systems themselves. To induce socio-technical innovation towards equality in urban infrastructure services, it will be necessary to understand the broader incentive structure that govern the ‘relevant social groups’, such as governments, donors, water suppliers and the consumers, as well as power-structures and accountability.
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| 6. |
- Avango, Dag, et al.
(författare)
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Foreign Policy and Natural Resources : Swedish Neutrality from an Environmental History Perspective
- 2014
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The year 2014 marks the 200th anniversary of the last time that Sweden was technically at war. Since then, Sweden has built an international image of itself as a peace-loving and morally advanced country. This is in sharp contrast with earlier Swedish history, in which Swedish Vikings and famous warrior kings like Gustavus Adolphus and Charles XII caused havoc across much of the European continent. In Swedish history-writing as well as in the country's dominant social and political self-understanding, the 200 years of peace are typically attributed to a policy of neutrality, or non-alignment. The non-alignment policy has also been coupled - both in theoretical terms and in practical effect - with an expansive development aid policy towards former colonies and other developing countries in the South. The image of a benevolent and disinterested neutral country was further strengthened by high-profile international pro-activism, for example, through the United Nations and institutions like the Nobel Prize. However, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, a vivid debate among Swedish historians has led to reinterpretations Swedish neutrality during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This paper contributes to this debate by applying an environmental history lens to the analysis of political neutrality. Our hypothesis is that Sweden's non-alignment has been intimately linked to the country's role in the global natural resource system. Starting from the observation that Swedish non-alignment policy became firmly established precisely at the time of Sweden's resource-dependent industrial breakthrough in the late nineteenth century, we use primary and secondary sources to explore the intimate connections between two sets of actors: foreign policy actors and the rapidly expanding community of industrial actors. The latter sought to influence foreign policymaking both in the context of the need for secure access to natural resources not available domestically - of crucial importance for the country's growing production and export of steel, agricultural produce, and increasingly sophisticated technological artefacts - and in the context of investment in extractive industries abroad, particularly in colonial regions. At the same time, however, Swedish industrialists, engineers, and scientists active abroad were also eyed by the government as political tools.
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| 7. |
- Avango, Dag, et al.
(författare)
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Sweden and the Origins of Global Resource Colonialism : Exploring a Neutral Country's Natural Resource Interests in Africa, Caucasia and the Arctic
- 2014
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The quest for the world's remaining natural resources has intensified markedly in recent years. A salient and controversial point of debate in this context has become the extent to and ways in which old colonial relations are argued to live on in a new global “resource colonialism”. Although Sweden is rarely thought of as a colonial power, Swedish actors are currently very active when it comes to resource exploitation in many parts of the world. As a small, neutral country with an excellent international reputation and virtually without enemies, we argue that Sweden has been able to mobilize the international resource system to its benefit much more effectively than many other European countries. This paper takes an historical perspective on the present by exploring the origins of Swedish interests and activities in the colonial resource arena from around 1880 to 1945. More precisely, we analyze and compare Swedish natural resource interests in three colonial arenas: Africa, Caucasia and the Arctic. In the case of Africa, we explore Sweden's virtually unknown - but highly active - participation at the Berlin conference in 1884-85. In the Caucasus case, we reinterpret the Nobel brothers crucial role in creating Baku's oil industry as a salient example of Swedish involvement in Russian resource colonialism. In the Arctic, we explore the connections between state and private interests in coal mining in Spitsbergen. An essential research issue concerns the extent to which it is possible to discern a common Swedish 'style' with regard to the country's interests and activities in colonial areas.
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| 8. |
- Avango, Dag, 1965-, et al.
(författare)
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Swedish Explorers, In-Situ Knowledge, and Resource-Based Business in the Age of Empire
- 2018
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Ingår i: Scandinavian Journal of History. - : Taylor & Francis. - 0346-8755 .- 1502-7716. ; 43, s. 324-347
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The period from 1870 to 1914 plays a unique role in the history of natural resource exploration and extraction. This article analyses, from a Swedish viewpoint, the connections between two actor categories of special importance in this context: scientific-geographical explorers and industrial actors. The article examines their activities in three broadly defined regions: the Arctic, Russia, and Africa. We show that the Swedes generally had far-reaching ambitions, on par with those of the large imperial powers. In some cases, notably in Africa, Sweden was not able to compete with the larger imperial powers; but in other cases, such as the exploration of the Arctic – from Spitsbergen to Siberia – and the industrial exploitation of coal at Spitsbergen and petroleum in Russia’s colonial periphery, Swedish actors played a leading role, in competition with players from the larger European nations. Our paper shows that scientific exploration and industry were closely linked, and that foreign policy also influenced the shaping of these links. We distinguish different types of knowledge produced by the Swedish actors, pointing to local, situated knowledge as the most important type for many resource-based businesses, although modern, scientific knowledge was on the increase during this period.
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| 9. |
- Blomkvist, Pär, et al.
(författare)
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On the Need for System Alignment in Large Water Infrastructure : Understanding Infrastructure Dynamics in Nairobi, Kenya
- 2017
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Ingår i: Water Alternatives. - : Water Alternatives. - 1965-0175. ; 10:2, s. 283-302
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article we contribute to the discussion of infrastructural change in Africa, and explore how a new theoretical perspective may offer a different, more comprehensive and historically informed understanding of the trend towards large water infrastructure in Africa. We examine the socio-technical dynamics of large water infrastructures in Nairobi, Kenya, in a longer historical perspective using two concepts that we call intra-systemic alignment and inter-level alignment. Our theoretical perspective is inspired by Large Technical Systems (LTS) and Multi-Level Perspective (MLP). While inter-level alignment focuses on the process of aligning the technological system at the three levels of niche, regime and landscape, intra-systemic alignment deals with how components within the regime are harmonised and standardised to fit with each other. We pay special attention to intrasystemic alignment between the supply side and the demand side, or as we put it, upstream and downstream components of a system. In narrating the history of water supply in Nairobi, we look at both the upstream (largescale supply) and downstream activities (distribution and payment), and compare the Nairobi case with European history of large infrastructures. We emphasise that regime actors in Nairobi have dealt with the issues of alignment mainly to facilitate and expand upstream activities, while concerning downstream activities they have remained incapable of expanding service and thus integrating the large segment of low-income consumers. We conclude that the present surge of large-scale water investment in Nairobi is the result of sector reforms that enabled the return to a long tradition – a 'Nairobi style' – of upstream investment mainly benefitting the highincome earners. Our proposition is that much more attention needs to be directed at inter-level alignment at the downstream end of the system, to allow the creation of niches aligned to the regime.
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| 10. |
- Ernstson, Henrik, Dr. 1972-, et al.
(författare)
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Histories of Heterogenous Infrastructures : Negotiating Colonial, Postcolonial and Oral Archives in Kampala, Uganda
- 2019
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Critical infrastructure studies are growing in importance to understand how sociocultural, ecological, and ecological relations are inscribed, negotiated, and contested in urban spaces. A major effort has been to ground such work in experiences of the global South, moving beyond the “modern infrastructure ideal” a fully networked city, towards conceptualizations of incremental, peopled, and heterogenous infrastructure. However, there are still few historical studies that depart from these new conceptualizations. In this paper we draw upon our empirical work in Kampala, Uganda, in an attempt to historicize “heterogenous infrastructure configurations” (Lawhon et al. 2017) through combining (and constructing) three distinct historical archives: (i) the colonial archives (based on traditional archival work in Kew National Archives in London); (ii) the official postcolonial archives (which meant to crisscross through Kampala to assemble documents, reports, photos and legal notes); and (iii) oral histories (where we interviewed elderly women and men with a long family history in the city). This work has led to several pertinent questions about “what to make of the colonial archives when they systematically exclude or distort the wider heterogenous infrastructure reality that surely existed in parallel to the ‘European’ city?” “why are postcolonial archives so difficult to find and assemble?” and “how to draw upon the richness and texture of oral histories from particular places, families and persons.” This paper then, reflects on how we have grappled with working across these archives with the aim to contribute more general ideas of how to situate and historicize the study of contemporary infrastructures in a postcolonial world (in communication with postcolonial historians as in Mamdani, Chakrabarty, Lalu, and Benson). By pushing different narratives to confront and clash, and by critically looking at our own practice, new histories arise. But also new questions; some which should have been asked long ago. We argue here for an approach of heterodoxa; one that opens for different meanings, archives and locations from where to construct histories and futures about infrastructure and urban spaces.
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