Over the past few weeks, KFN has carried a healthy, and splendidly civilised, debate on the World Bank’s new Development Gateway initiative. Behind the candid commentary, though, are some rather bitter issues, many of them directly relevant to African politics.

First, the theory. Colonisation and ‘development’ need knowledge in order to prop up the rather shaky rationalisations upon which they rest. The World Bank has spent a great deal of time and money cornering the market in ‘development’ knowledge for precisely this reason. The tragedy is that there’s a great deal of subversive work being done by African academics, policy analysts, teachers and activists that rarely gets the coverage that headline Bank projects do.

This ‘African silence’ works to the advantage of those trying to secure the status quo. For those concerned with active democracy rather than ‘good governance’, with redistribution rather than ‘poverty’, with justice rather than ‘law’, the Bank’s site is bad news. It is hard enough, given the neoliberal domination of Africa, to shift public debate to questioning social fundamentals, much less changing them.

Now, to practice. Many comrades in the NGO world here are forced to adopt a different kind of language in order to get themselves heard not only by donors, but by governments too. The adoption of ‘the master’s tools’ is precisely the sort of compromise that many hoped would be unnecessary after decolonisation. That our politicians remain beholden to these rhetorics and policies, whether GEAR in South Africa, structural adjustment in Zimbabwe, HIPC conditions in Mozambique or PRSPs in Uganda, bears witness to the very limited extent of African decolonisation. That people believe that there are no alternatives is *precisely* because neoliberalism cannot allow the space imaginatively to entertain these alternatives. Hence the importance of the Development Gateway.

So what to do? Sadly, ignoring the World Bank doesn’t make it go away. Meeting the Bank’s knowledge offensive (and offensive is the right word) demands action. Activists have only limited resources, though, and firefighting new neoliberal initiatives takes time and energy. This time, we’re in luck. In challenging the Bank website, we can not only to reject the Bank, but do it by actively getting creative with other projects.

There are already many African organisations that have taken a stand. The MWENGO website, at for example , is a recently launched Southern African regional hub. Among the positions there are some that are openly critical of neoliberal colonial economics, and supportive of land redistribution. The chances of challenges to property rights being disseminated by the Bank? Slim.

(Although the Bank’s PR machine has swung into gear to defend its openness to other positions, there are already reasons to be suspicious. Even before the official launch, the site has already refused to post correspondence from one legal scholar, and there is reason to think merely by looking at the titles of the topic areas that some comments are liable to be more ‘on topic’ than others.)

Initiatives similar to MWENGO’s, that fly in the face of this ideological intimidation, exist elsewhere on the continent. It is our responsibility actively to support them, and to create spaces in which alternatives are thinkable not only by ourselves, but also the people with whom we work, and whom we may claim to represent.

To sign the declaration against the Bank, send an email to [email][email protected] with your Name and organisation in the subject line (no organisational endorsement is assumed).