Preface and Acknowledgements
This volume arises out of a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant for the project entitled African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns and Port Cities in Transition (AFRIGOS) [ADG-2014–670851]. Paul Nugent was the principal investigator for the project hosted at the University of Edinburgh which has, at various times employed Sidy Cissokho, Elisa Gambino, Hugh Lamarque, José-María Muñoz, Wolfgang Zeller and Tim Zajontz, with Isabella Soi from the University of Cagliari participating as a research affiliate. Under the architecture of the project, Cissokho was mandated to research the role of international institutions, while the doctoral project of Gambino was focused on the Chinese involvement in corridor development. All the other researchers were mandated to deal with one or more sub-region and a specific corridor within it. When it came to compiling a book for the project, we wished to bring out the richness from each of these sets of case studies. But we were also conscious of the fact that we needed to offer a more rounded view and to address some case studies that were not part of the original project design. We are fortunate, therefore, to have been able to enrich the volume by including contributions from Sergio Oliete and Francesc Magrinyà, Bruce Byiers and Sean Woolfrey, Jérôme Lombard, Nina Sylvanus and Yunnan Chen.
The editors are grateful to all of the above. In addition, we would like to acknowledge three individuals who offered advice at various stages and facilitated the field research: Ziad Hamoui of the Borderless Alliance in West Africa, Michael Ojatum of TradeMark East Africa and Lovemore Bingandadi of the SADC Secretariat. Finally, we are indebted to our ethics advisor, Karine Bennafla and the other members of the advisory board, Mohamadou Abdoul, Gregor Dobler and Olivier Walther. Many thanks are also extended to Brooks Marmon and Simon Dix for outstanding editing work.
This title is available under the Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-ND. The ideas developed in this work reflect the authors’ views alone. The ERC is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
Hugh Lamarque and Paul Nugent