Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Research in Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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JICA And the Authoritarianism in Maputo, Mozambique
Dr. Ginisty Karine
ABSTRACT:
This paper looks back on the experience of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in the governance of the waste collection in Maputo. In the 2010’s, JICA planned to follow the success story of GIZ, which had previously implemented the first waste collection management at the scale of the council. JICA developed a cooperation project based on the “3Rs” concept from 2013-2017, with the aim of proposing a master plan in 2018. Following pilot projects from 2013 to 2017 and innovative waste management methods in the city, inspired by the concept of smart city, JICA’s workers developed a first version of the master plan in summer 2018. The drafting of this master plan has been defeated internally by public officers. This paper offers a socio-political analysis of this failure and the political and urban issues of a cooperation with JICA. The author did various fieldworks in Maputo during the JICA project between 2015 and 2018 on the political pratices at different scales of the council. Since 2019, the conflict about the master plan within the municipality oblige JICA to reconstruct the narrative of its cooperation project and his evaluation. The author made observations and interviews on JICA’s methodology for implementing new government techniques to manage waste in a municipality assessed as inclusive. The author begins by the municipal context in which JICA arrived in Maputo and the conditions which neoliberalism circulated in the waste governance sector. The author then looks back at the master has been achieved by GIZ and the political rationality debated during the previous mandate. The discussion will focus on the criticism of the authoritarian power practices of Frelimo factions at municipal level by the process of approval this Master Plan and JICA’s ignorance of the professional and political sanctions that followed. The second part looks at the daily of JICA workers in an authoritarian space built by a socio-political group resistant to public action that would bring greater spatial justice to the city. The paper offers a discussion on the cooperation in an authoritarianism context based on the political issues built around neoliberal government techniques in Maputo.
keywords: Neoliberalism, Cooperation, Development, Governance, Africa