Eroding Local Capacity: International Humanitarian Action in Africa

The book is very much a collective endeavour, growing out of a three-year research
project supported by the Norwegian Development Agency (NORAD) through the
Chr. Michelsen Institute, Bergen. The substantive themes and tentative conclusions
were discussed at three seminars held in the second half of the 1990s: in Dar es
Salaam, hosted by the Centre for Foreign Relations; in Cape Town, organised by the
School of Government at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town; and in
Oslo, organised by the Chr. Michelsen Institute. Participants included African and
Nordic scholars as well as practitioners from government and private aid organisations.
All the participants—too numerous to be named individually—contributed to
the project by forming, in effect, a constructive and critical panel of experts that
helped develop ideas and reacted to the papers presented.