Search results for ""Author Kenneth King""

China's increasing role as an education donor in Africa, and the significance of this both economically and politically. Why does China run one of the world's largest short-term training programmes, with plans to bring 30,000 Africans to China between 2013 and 2015? Why does it give generous support to 31 Confucius Institutes teaching Mandarin and Chinese culture at many of Africa's top universities from the Cape to Cairo? Why is China one of the very few countries to increase the number of full scholarships for Africans to study in its universities,a total of 18,000 anticipated between 2013 and 2015? China claims to have been involved for 60 years in South-South cooperation of mutual benefit to China and Africa. While its dramatic economic and trade impact, particularly on Africa, has caught global attention, little focus has yet been given to its role as an education donor - and especially to the critical role of China's support for training and human resource development for Africans inChina, and within Africa itself. It is vital that we understand what is going on, and why education is so important in China-Africa relations. Here is hard evidence from Ethiopia, South Africa and Kenya of the dramatic growth ofChina's soft power and increasing impact in capacity-building, and of the implications of this for Africa, China and the world.

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In 1996, the World Bank President, James Wolfensohn, declared that his organization would henceforth be 'the knowledge bank'. This marked the beginning of a new discourse of knowledge-based aid, which has spread rapidly across the development field. This book is the first detailed attempt to analyse this new discourse. Through an examination of four agencies -- the World Bank, the British Department for International Development, the Japan International Cooperation Agency and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency -- the book explores what this new approach to aid means in both theory and practice. It concludes that too much emphasis has been on developing capacity within agencies rather than addressing the expressed needs of Southern 'partners'. It also questions whether knowledge-based aid leads to greater agency certainty about what constitutes good development.

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Unpacks the histories, actors and geopolitics of India's soft power and evolving engagements with Africa. Since independence India has deployed its soft power in Africa, with educational aid and capacity-building at the heart of its Africa policy. However, following economic liberalisation and in a quest for greater global influence, India's geopolitics have changed. The country's discourse on Africa has shifted from the mantras of post-colonial solidarity and South-South Cooperation, and there is now a growing sense of Indian exceptionalism, as the country reimagines its past and future against the growing influence of the political right. In this book scholars from India, Africa, Europe and North America show how India's soft power has been implemented by the diaspora, government and private sector. Research documents how India's 'aid' has been re-thought in major schemes such as e-global education and health, Gandhi statuary and Covid-19 diplomacy in Africa.

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