EPA’s & Problematizing Development: Discourse, Design, Values

Sammanfattning: This thesis investigates and problematizes the notion of development in the context of the EU-ACP EPA agreements with a particular focus on Kenya. Official statements, documents, empirical observation and qualitative interviews conducted in Nairobi and Kagwe, Kenya in April of 2009 provide empirical data. Applying the concepts of international trade theory, capacity developments complex adaptive systems approach and supplementing these concepts with an underlying thread of axiology, this paper seeks to explore the drastically divided and widely differing definitions of the situation, world views and casual beliefs in viewing the EPA development tool for what it is vs. what it means. By problematizing the notion of development, the findings suggest that it seems as though much of the dissonance between what constitutes development, what the ‘problem’ is, why it exists, and what the ‘solution’ is, is the result of a clash between theoretical models and the informal concepts of how things get done in a particular context. Thus, it is difficult seeing the EPAs functioning as a tool for a form of development that would suit the values, norms, and voices involved in conceptualizing development.