Presentation: The Politics of Neoliberal Moral Restructuring in East Africa, Jul. 19 2018 @ BIEA


Date: July 19, 2018
Venue: British Institute in Eastern Africa
Time: From 5.00 pm to 7.00 pm

Over the past three decades, neoliberal reforms have not just restructured the economies and polities but also the moral-economic orders of African countries. While there is a scholarly debate about aspects of moral economy on the continent, issues such as;
(i) the link between the reforms and moral change, and
(ii) the interaction between political economy and moral economy (and respective change dynamics) have received little analytical attention to-date.

This paper addresses this lacuna via an analysis of the politics of neoliberal moral restructuring. It is structured as follows: First, it makes some general points concerning the comparative analysis of this phenomenon across countries in Africa and beyond. It then uses a major exemplar of neoliberal transformation on the continent, Uganda, to advance and illustrate the analysis of the making of a neoliberal moral-economic order in a given country.
Finally, it calls for enhanced efforts to gather empirical data concerning matters of (the politics/political economy of) moral change in capitalist Africa.