Lecture - Degrading Development, Subverting Democracy: Social Assistance and Policy Merchandising in Africa

Jimi Adesina is Professor and the DST/NRF SARChI Chair in Social Policy at the College of Graduate Studies, University of South Africa in South Africa. Educated at the University of Ibadan (Nigeria) and Warwick University (UK), Prof Adesina taught at the University of Ibadan (Nigeria), was Professor of Sociology at Rhodes University (South Africa) and at the University of the Western Cape (South Africa). The turn to the relief of poverty as the prime concern of ‘development’ has shaped international ‘development’ discourse in the last three decades. The concern diminishes the initial, broader, understanding of development, which linked improvements in human wellbeing to growth with structural transformation of an economy and society. At the same time, it erodes what is considered the acceptable threshold for a decent living. In doing so, it decouples wellbeing from the broader concerns with macroeconomic functioning, redistribution of proceeds of economic performance, and employment. It obscures the social and economic processes that create the vulnerability for which social assistance is offered as a panacea. The turn is central to social assistance merchandising.

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