The fight against poverty in Africa has been one of the main drivers of international intervention on the continent since the late colonial times. After independence, emergency aid for fighting hunger and poverty, and wider plans for financing development initiatives, were often affected by the architecture of the Cold War international relations. More recently the same is happening within the new global framework of the 2000s. However, in sovereign African states, external interventions are entangled with the local political transformations: the development and strategic priorities set by local governments and leaderships contributed to shape models, practices and outcomes of the various plans for the fight against poverty

This panel, organised by the EADI Working Group ‘Europe and Transitions in (Southern) Africa’, examines the fight against poverty in Southern Africa through the lens of the region’s history of political transformation and international relations, and aims to grasp the relations between the various layers of the aid and development initiatives.

We are especially interested in historical and political analyses that trace the connections between local development strategies and the shifting patterns of regional and global governance. Contributions to the panel can take into consideration, but not be limited to, the politics of food security, agrarian reform, urban labour etc

This panel is organised by the EADI Working Group on "Europe and Transitions in (Southern) Africa"