All three countries have been paradigmatic in terms of donor visions for the continent and have attracted some of the largest aid packages that specifically target ‘civil society’. It focuses on Ghana, South Africa and Uganda during the late 1990s. It does this by looking at three quite distinct national contexts and investigating the relationship between the dominant development project in each, undertaken by the government in ‘strategic collaboration’ with donors and civil society. This article examines the extent to which this form of civil society is being constituted in Africa, in particular, through Northern government support to African policy‐oriented organisations. It also constitutes an arena in which states and other powerful actors intervene to influence the political agendas of organised groups with the intention of defusing opposition. This article seeks to remind us that, as originally theorized by Antonio Gramsci, civil society is a potential battleground. The current discourse on ‘civil society’ in Africa, conducted by Northern governments, international NGOs, activists and academics, often presents civil society as the locus sine qua nonfor progressive politics, the place where people organise to make their lives better, even a site of resistance.
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