Abstract:

Over the past fifteen years, African states have revised and adopted new public procurement laws in response to international
demands for trade liberalization. The devolution of core public functions to private entities (profit and non-profit) is undoubtedly one
of the major policy changes in the twentieth century that reconfigures the mechanisms and modalities of governance, the sources of
knowledge about Africa, and state-citizen relationships. This presentation will outline in broad strokes the laws, politics and
economics of outsourcing schemes in Africa with regard to the public provision of works, goods, and services. It squarely places the
conversation about reconfiguring African studies within global epistemologies about the market and its presumed “ethical efficiency”
in mediating the ways and means of economic development. A survey of major regional trading blocs in Africa puts to scrutiny their
politics and practices of gender equity within public procurement schemes to outline the premises, contradictions, and limitations of
market-based approaches to gender equity in Africa. The presentation calls attention to the tensions and new relational axes through
which (re)distributive politics and equity are permitted or foreclosed in the governance of people and resources in Africa.

Dr. Nyeck is a Research Fellow at the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa, University of Ghana and a Visiting Scholar at
the Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative, Emory School of Law, Emory University in the United States. She holds a Ph.D.
in Political Science from the University of California Los Angeles with a specialization in international relations and comparative
politics. To date, she has pursued two research streams. The first stream is centered on the political economy of development,
governance and public procurement reform with an interest in social justice and gender responsive schemes. The other stream
reflects on gender, sexuality and politics in comparative perspectives. Nyeck also writes about religion and social imagination.