TAFACDP75U Optional course: Critical Development Planning and Policy Analysis: Focus on Africa

Volume 2016/2017
Education

MA programme in African Studies

Content

This course aims to provide students with a combination of analytical and practical skills for engaging critically with the challenges of development planning and policy analysis in relation to African contexts. It will include at least three dimensions: firstly, it will introduce critical theoretical approaches to the very notion of ‘development’ and the politics of ‘doing good’; secondly, it will prepare students for analysing different kinds of development policies in their historical-political-social-economic contexts; and thirdly, it will provide students with critically conscious yet practical skills for planning concrete development projects and undertaking critical readings of policy.

Learning Outcome

Students will gain insights and selected practical skills in relation to:

  • Interdisciplinary and critical approaches to development in general
  • Critical analysis of actual policies and policy making processes
  • Critical development planning
The course will be run as an intensive Compact Course with a bacth of sessions during selected periods in September and October 2016. It will incorporate the following teaching and learning methods:
- Lectures on key theoretical aspects of development, policy analysis and planning
- Group-work on critical policy analysis
- Workshopping of country-focused planning portfolios
- Guest lectures by development practitioners and policy makers
- Round-table panel of development experts working on/in Africa

Students will be encouraged to draw on and share their own previous experience of working in ‘development’ settings where relevant but such experience is not a pre-requisite for the course.
  • Category
  • Hours
  • Class Instruction
  • 28
  • Total
  • 28
Credit
7,5 ECTS
Type of assessment
Written assignment
Marking scale
7-point grading scale
Censorship form
External censorship
Exam period

January 2017

For more information please see here: https://intranet.ku.dk/africanstudies_ma/examination/examinationtimeschedule/Pages/default.aspx

Criteria for exam assesment

The grade of 12 is given at the exam when the student demonstrates:

  • Confident ability to identify and define a sub-topic and an issue of relevance to the overall theme of the optional course.
  • Confident ability to independently and critically select relevant literature on the sub-topic to be studied.
  • Confident ability to independently and critically analyse the sub-topic in question and the chosen literature.
  • Confident ability to conduct an interdisciplinary analysis of the sub-topic in question and to place it within the overall theme of the optional course in question.
  • Confident ability to communicate academic material in a clear, concise and well-argued manner.