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This paper discusses my perceived positionality in an ethnographic research project on the contentious issue of female circumcision in Southwest Cameroon. My bicultural identity as a Western‐trained, African anthropologist is associated with power because of my perceived alliance with the ‘Whiteman’ (western, rational, scientific knowledge) showing how the anti‐female circumcision campaigns based on discursive practices of mortality and the harmful health effect paradigm have backlashed, suggesting the need to re‐evaluate and be aware of power dynamics between practicing and nonpracticing societies in the construction of the diverse reality of female circumcision. The ritual practice should rather be seen as opened to both rationalisation and modernisation, suggesting that there can be a synergy between local and global, rational science.

This paper aims to examine the dark flip side of the heightened dreams and wild expectations of development as a bright picture that accompanied the discovery of petroleum in politically unstable and donor-dependent Chad.

Data were elicited through local-level ethnography–participant observation, individual surveys and focus group discussion sessions with stakeholders on the impact of the Chad–Cameroon pipeline and petroleum development project.

While the “discourse of development” is about a better and new future, this new future, however, has a dark side: un/under-development, “backwardness”, corruption and patronage, leading to deeply entrenched poverty. Petroleum has become a discursive site where the competing discourses about development personified as the provision of material resources are played out.

The failure of petro-dollar-inspired development in Chad speaks to the mutually reinforcing nature of development decisions. Although firms need workers with specialized skills, workers will not acquire those skills in anticipation of employment opportunities. This disjuncture highlights the need for strategic complementarity in investment decision and coordination among economic agents. More than a decade later, the utopic dream of petro-dollar-inspired development as an aspiration is now characterized by a disconnect–environmental degradation, food insecurity, gendered and deeply entrenched poverty. This disjuncture demonstrates the need for a holistic impact assessment that involves different adaptive approaches and focus on a wide range of livelihood issues. Holistic evaluation on all programmes, plans, projects, policies and interventions will lead to the achievement of sustainable people-centred development that conserves the stewardship of nature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the structural factors responsible for why “donor darling” has not changed the pitfalls of stagnation and lifted post‐conflict Sierra Leone out of poverty.

The study adopts a bottom‐up approach (“through the eyes of the poor”) and a combination of primary and secondary research methods – substantial desk research to investigate and review documentation related to the project and field interviews with development stakeholders at the national, district, and community levels with humanitarian aid workers, local civil society organisations, international non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) and national government officials.

It is argued that aid without the necessary local institutional structure for effective coordination and stringent aid conditionality – and therefore narrow focus – has stifled sustainable socio‐economic development initiatives. The international community's narrow definition and support for liberal peace, in tandem with the overarching neoliberal economic paradigm and failure to embrace an inclusivist approach to peacebuilding, has further stonewalled effective reconstruction, growth and development.

The paper calls the attention of development NGOs to be self‐reflexive, “wear native spectacles”, coordinate their actions and avoid “development as dependence”, by prioritizing what matters most to the beneficiaries of development. The basis of effective and sustainable socio‐economic development is institutional building.

This paper aims to examine the socio-political factors and the influence of spatial reconfiguration and transformation orchestrated by the forceful migration of Bororo herdsmen – a nomadic ethnic group from the Central African Republic into east Cameroon where they are now subsistent farmers. This livelihood transition strategy led to conflict and competition over natural resources with the local inhabitants.

The study draws from ethnographic interviews and participant observation involving security officials and international relief agencies alongside their implementing partners. Data abducted from various stakeholders were further complemented by reports produced by various humanitarian agencies and desk research – evaluation and reinterpretation of what others have written on pastoral peoples.

The paper suggests that humanitarian agencies be aware of “transnational borderland identities” by considering the specificity of particular borderland regions-isolation, underdevelopment and prone to conflict in crises of forced migration. They further need to move from a spatialized “refugee-centric” approach to the conversion of refugee relief into local development projects for refugee hosting areas.

While the problem of resource use conflict caused by the influx of refugees might be local, it highlights regional and global security concerns and articulates the growing recognition of political and environmental factors for national and international security.

The study articulates the need to shift from a spatialized “refugee-centric” regime that directs attention only to one category of social actors in an emergency situation to a more integrative assistance programme so as to erase the fake division of identities as well as to acknowledge the importance of a “border identity” for a more peaceful development aimed at achieving better social interaction between hosts and refugees. While the problem of resource use conflict caused by the influx of refugees might be local, it highlights regional and global security concerns and articulates the growing recognition of political and environmental factors for national and international security.