Shopping cartAfrican and Asian Studies
For more content, see Journal of Asian and African Studies.
Volumes & issues:
-
Examining Personal Values and Entrepreneurial Motives of Vietnamese Entrepreneurs in the 21st Century: Two Empirical Studies
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
In Study 1, Vietnamese entrepreneurs (N = 17) were surveyed about their personal values and motives as well as their business outcomes. We found that Vietnamese entrepreneurs' top five life goals included happiness, a sense of accomplishment, a comfortable life, family security, and national security. They endorsed instrumental values such as intellectual, capable, responsible, self-controlled, and honest. Their values were to some extent similar to those of American counterparts as reported in Fagenson's (1993) study. Among entrepreneurial motives reported, there were some non-economic ones which lent credence to the concept that Vietnamese entrepreneurial motives were multi-dimensional. In Study 2, we used the "grounded theory" approach (Locke, 2001) to induce a conceptual framework of Vietnamese entrepreneurial motives from interview data (N = 9). As predicted, we found that Vietnamese entrepreneurs mainly founded their businesses (1) to meet market demands; (2) to gain control over their work and/or financial aspects; (3) to lift others off unemployment, and (4) to pursue a desire or fulfill their capability.
-
The Exogenous Effect of Geography on Economic Development: The Case of Sub-Saharan Africa
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
This article examines the relevance of geography and climate in the economic development and underdevelopment of Sub-Saharan African countries. We conceptualize geography and climate as exogenous factors determining a country's overall economic welfare. By employing the newly compiled G-econ dataset with a better measurement of geography, we found that, even controlling for institutional and social factors, geography plays a substantial role in explaining some aspects of Africa's poverty. This finding indicates that we need to partly reformulate the policy prescriptions for African economic development that are based heavily on institutionalist explanations of bad governance and corruption.
-
Microfinance and Poverty Reduction in the Mekong Delta in Vietnam
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
One common solution to resolve poverty is providing microfinance to the poor. Microfinance has been claimed to positively impact the livelihoods of the poor through accumulation of social, human, financial, natural, and physical assets. This paper empirically examines if microfinance contributes to the reduction of poverty in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam. Analysing household survey data collected in 2006, from Hoa An commune in the Mekong Delta area, it investigates if microfinance leads to accumulation of assets. It further investigates how poor women are enabled to adopt livelihood strategies that lead to poverty reduction. Information is collected by implementing a household survey. This is further supplemented with qualitative information from Participatory Rural Appraisal, interviews with key informants and focus group discussions with members and non-members of the microfinance programs in the area. The main findings suggest that the process of accumulation of assets, leads to creation of livelihoods that result in increased household income and poverty reduction.
-
Island Microstates and Political Contention: An Exploratory Analysis of Cape Verde and Comoros
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
Microstates, and especially island microstates, are routinely absent in cross-national studies of political contention, despite several structural conditions that seem to make anti-state action more likely in these countries. Through a structured comparative analysis of two African island microstates, Cape Verde and Comoros, this paper intends to uncover correlations between structural and institutional conditions and levels of political contention. While several structural factors may make contention more probable in island microstates, this analysis suggests that four variables – international aid, representative institutions, emigration opportunities, and political stability are correlated with levels of contention.
-
Dealing Land in the Midst of Poverty: Commercial Access to Communal Land in Zambia
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
Customary tenure in Africa has tended to be marginalized in favour of statutory control and privatisation, including public areas protected for wildlife and forest conservation. Zambia has retained a significant proportion of customary land controlled by traditional authorities (chiefs), although access to wildlife and other natural resources is controlled by the state. Recent private sector investment in the agricultural and tourism sectors has potential to support local livelihoods but, equally, land could become alienated to the private sector at low value. The outcome hinges on the responses of individual chiefs, and on how far communities can hold them accountable. This paper, which is based on participant observation, interviews of community members and government officials in rural Zambia, contextualises the general problem of the privatisation of the African and Zambian 'commons'. It then uses two contrasting case studies of chiefdoms that have negotiated commercial investment by the private sector on their communal land. Additionally, the paper presents an experiment in establishing participatory common property regimes designed to manage private investment in communal lands and temper patriarchal rule with downward accountability. It argues that a reliable positive result depends on the extent to which local people can hold their chiefs accountable, as well as a new holistic policy and legislative environment, accompanied by sound extension services.
-
A Matter of Identity: Africa and Its Diaspora in America Since 1900, Continuity and Change
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
Using Africa and its Diaspora in America as a paradigm, this article looks at the triple manifestations of consciousness in the dialectic of relationships between the two groups since 1900, and notices both continuity and change that can be traced back to the 1700s. In Africa, this consciousness is reflected in the conflicting demands of continental Pan-Africanism or Mega-Nationalism, Racial or Black Pan-Africanism (in a multi-racial continent), and Mezzo-nationalism of the continent's present multi-nation states. In America it also has always had three faces (and not two as DuBois said) – American, Black-American and African. Studying these complex relationships that often contradicted one another and cut across class and ideological lines is a difficult and frustrating task. The article therefore suggests that a more rewarding effort is to focus attention on such issues as cultivating mutual respect, stressing common historico-cultral heritage, emphasizing economic cooperation, and putting in place coordinated, effective political action between the groups that hopefully will lead to their solidarity and empowerment in the 21st century. The African Union should assume the initiative of constructing a more relevant and realistic Pan-African ideology based along the lines sketched above to achieve this goal. To start with, however, it must first publicly express, on behalf of Africa, remorse and apologise to the descendants of enslaved Africans wherever they may be for African participation, to whatever degree, in the Saharan, East African, and trans-Atlantic slave trade.
-
A Historical-Cum-Political Overview of Ghana's National Health Insurance Law
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
In 2003, the Parliament of Ghana passed the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) bill, which was signed into law by President John A. Kufuor. The law provides health coverage for most illnesses of all residents of Ghana. The fact that this relatively small and materially-poor country in West Africa has been able to enact such a law is, in itself, a great feat because it is probably one of the few, if not the only, African country to have enacted such a law. Additionally, it is also a feat that has eluded a materially-rich nation like the United States of America for a considerable length of time. The purpose of this essay is to explore how Ghana was able to pass the NHIS bill into law. Scholars, who have looked at why several major countries, including the U.S., do not have comprehensive health care programs for their citizens have attributed the failure to several factors, including the distinctive political cultures or what some scholars have called the "exceptionalism" of the countries concerned, the impact of interest groups in the internal politics, and the prevailing political institutions. Consequently, we argue that the passing of Ghana's NHIS into law is largely because of the country's current political institutions, particularly the special provisions incorporated into the Fourth Republican Constitution to strengthen the law-making powers of the head of the executive branch of government, headed by a very strong executive President.
-
Encyclopedia of the Middle Passage
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
-
Imperialism and Human Rights: Colonial Discourses of Rights and Liberties in African History
- + Show Description - Hide Description
-
back to top