This project critically examines the advancement, projection, and negotiation of "values" by Western aid donor officials in Africa. Defined here as ethical and normative principles that influence and inform political beliefs, interactions, and policies, "values" have always undergirded Western aid relationships with Africa. They have, however, recently received renewed emphasis in the policies of many Western states. Prominent among these is the UK - the focus of this study - where ministers have presented the promotion of values - "British" or otherwise - as a key plank of ensuring that post-Brexit "Global Britain" retains international influence. For "frontline" UK officials in Africa - in the case of "national" staff, African citizens themselves - this presents fundamental challenges. Donor officials are expected to uphold international aid effectiveness norms on partnership and recipient "ownership" of aid. The same officials are also, however, under domestic (UK) pressure to champion (notional) UK values abroad. In some cases, these values may be shared by African interlocutors. In others, however, UK - and other Western - officials and African stakeholders may take directly oppositional stances, departing sharply from a partnership approach. Moreover, some non-Western powers have sought to undercut Western influence through presenting their own engagement as respectful of African sovereignty. This has intersected with criticisms by African leaders of Western value promotion as "neo-colonial meddling", inconsistent, and hypocritical, which resonate with many African peoples. A recent example of how these pressures play out can be found in the international response to Uganda's draconian 2023 "Anti-Homosexuality Bill". Western officials' public condemnations were rejected by Ugandan policymakers as "arrogant" and "imperialist", while rumours of Western aid cuts were met with assurances from Beijing that Chinese aid would remain without "political strings". This project will interrogate how UK officials in Africa experience and seek to balance such challenges, constraints, and countervailing forces in their everyday work and interactions. Drawing on research in Cameroon, Kenya, Rwanda, and South Africa, the research will combine interviews, oral history, focus-group discussions, (non-/)participant observation and archival research to answer the following questions: How are "values" understood by UK officials in Africa - and by African host governments, NGOs and civil society groups, and other aid donors? How do both UK officials and their in-country interlocutors assess the effectiveness, or even desirability, of value promotion? Moreover, how does the meaning, significance, and prioritization of different values evolve for UK officials themselves, and with what implications? The research will significantly advance our knowledge of the critical role of frontline diplomatic and development staff in the negotiation of deeply sensitive and consequential areas of policy (dis)agreement and exchange. In doing so, it will refocus scholarly attention on the normative and relational dimensions of UK-Africa policy, including the wider question of what kind of "partner" post-Brexit Britain wishes to present itself as in Africa - a continent which receives over half of UK bilateral aid. Informed by an on-going engagement with practitioners from Africa, the UK, and elsewhere from inception, the research will illuminate the circumstances under which UK - and, by extension, wider Western - donor engagement can effectively amplify the work of African activists. Equally, the research will underline how and when UK and Western value promotion can not only be problematic, but actually backfire, undermining the interests of both the UK and African partners.

This project will deliver major new benefits and capitalise on the AHRC Leadership Fellowship awarded to Dr Toby Green under the Early Career Route in 2016 for the project Money, Slavery and Political Change in Precolonial West Africa (AH/N004485/1). There were two major impacts associated with this project as funded, both in the education sector: the first was the development and initial promotion of the OCR A level option "African Kingdoms, c. 1400-1800", and the second the development of a new online textbook freely available to all Senior Secondary schoolchildren in English-speaking West Africa sitting the West African Senior Secondary School Examination (WASSCE) in History. This follow-on funding allows the development of a much fuller take-up of these projects than was initially envisaged in the impact funding for the first project. Regarding the WASSCE textbook, this funded the production of the text, the setting up of the website, and the launching of the textbook at the West African Education Council (WAEC) meeting in Banjul in March 2018. Regarding the OCR course it funded a summer school and website. However no teacher training in the WAEC countries delivering this resource was envisaged. Nevertheless, since the project was launched, it has become clear through dialogue with African partners that a full suite of teacher training programs is required for the project to be fully successful, and to reach the maximum number of users, and hence the need for this funded expansion of the original impact is necessary. This follow-on bid is now made with Dr Vincent Hiribarren as co-Investigator. Dr Hiribarren is a colleague of the PI's in the History department at King's College London. His participation as Co-Investigator derives from the heavy participation he has had in the project to date, since he designed the website, wrote two of the chapters, and attended both project meetings in Freetown and Banjul. As website designer, a historian of West Africa, well known to participants in the project from all 4 participant countries, and someone with extensive pedagogical experience at secondary and tertiary levels, he is an ideal participant in the teacher training aspects of the project. The impact of this follow-on funding will be extensive. The launching of these projects has enabled the PI to develop a much fuller suite of new connections and a framework to now ensure full take-up of these projects and training in their implementation, which will be secured by the follow-on funding. In the WASSCE case, the PI and Co-I will co-lead pedagogy workshops in each of the 4 countries which contributed to the development of the new resource, in collaboration with West African partners. These workshops will train teachers in the delivery of the textbook, in new pedagogical models, and in designing new course materials. In the OCR case, a new partnership with the Royal African Society's Education office will enable full connection with a range of schools not previously reached through the promotion related to this option. Both impacts will therefore be radically extended through the follow-on funding. The WASSCE impact will also significantly build towards the development of the Global Challenges Research Fund framework through developing new pedagogical resources and expertise in West Africa, while the OCR textbook helps to deliver on the recognised importance of expanding diversity of perspectives and histories taught in UK schools. Indeed it's to be noted in the latter case that this is something of growing importance to the Historical profession, following the launch of the Royal Historical Society's report on Race, Ethnicity and Equality in October 2018 (https://royalhistsoc.org/racereport/).

This series will be the first to systematically examine the legacy of Labour's efforts to transform British Africa policy and relations (1997-2010), exploring (dis)continuities between this period and the current coalition government. Working with leading scholars from across disciplines and partners in the policy community, including Chatham House, Institute for Public Policy Research and the All Party Parliamentary Group on Africa, we will provide the first in depth examination of contemporary Africa policy, analysing how UK Africa relations are managed, presented and justified in a context of financial austerity, coalition government and the increased public scrutiny resulting from ring-fencing aid budgets whilst making deep cuts to UK public spending. Africa is often seen as marginal to UK interests, yet it occupies a special place in the history, foreign policy, self-image and public imagination of the UK. During the Cold War African states were often battlegrounds for superpowers and their allies, but the collapse of the Soviet Union and the bipolar world order created space for new forms of international engagement with African states, based on different assumptions about the nature of Africa's challenges and the role and strategies of international actors to resolve them. In the UK, the opportunity to redefine relations with Africa and tackle challenges of poverty, underdevelopment, chronic conflict and international marginalisation, was taken up by Labour Governments (1997-2010). Often drawing on highly abstract images of the continent, Labour presented Africa as an area of special UK interest. Prime Minister Tony Blair argued the international community must assist Africa, reflecting moral obligation based on shared humanity and, in a new addition, links between underdevelopment and insecurity in Africa and security elsewhere in the world. Africa under Labour became a matter of national interest and national security. Labour sought to transform UK Africa policy domestically and approaches to Africa internationally. They created a ministry, the Department for International Development (DFID), and promoted a joined up approach to Africa across DFID, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Ministry of Defence. Internationally, they pushed for development goals, aid targets, debt relief, and building African capacity to manage conflict. The claim to be pursuing an 'ethical foreign policy' foundered however on the 'arms to Africa' scandal, and some argued that new rhetoric masked 'business as usual'. Nevertheless by the end of Labour's second term the UK had developed an international reputation for its focus on Africa; when the coalition government took power in 2010 it inherited a different relationship with Africa to that of 1997. Domestically it was underpinned by new ways of working and the role of DFID, but complicated by financial crisis and need for UK spending cuts. Internationally, UK attempts to establish a shift in approaches to Africa have also been challenged by rising powers (e.g. China and India). Providing in depth and thematic examination of contemporary British Africa policy, the series will engage with ongoing debates in policy and in UK and international scholarship, particularly in Europe and Africa, crossing Politics, Development, Political Economy, International Relations, History and Area Studies. Working closely with our non academic partners we will form a new network of scholars across these areas, prioritising early career researchers as speakers and participants. The series will contribute to ongoing and emerging debates with policy relevance, primarily focusing on: UK relationships with Africa; the role of foreign policy, especially on Africa, in UK self image; UK public attitudes to Africa and development; African agency in influencing UK policy; and the role of the UK in a changing global context, characterised by financial austerity and the rise of new actors in Africa and globally.

This project aims to bring a number of screenings of 'lost African film classics' to UK audiences, complemented by public and educational events and activities to contextualise the films for audiences, in collaboration with the five UK African film festivals - Africa in Motion in Scotland, Film Africa in London, Afrika Eye in Bristol, Watch-Africa in Cardiff, and the Cambridge African Film Festival. The project arose out of two unanticipated outcomes of our work on bringing 'lost African classics' to audiences during the 2006 and 2007 Africa in Motion Film Festival (supported by the AHRC in 2006): 1. The width and breath of classic African cinema, which was unknown to us as we started our work on recovering classic African films, but became evident from the edited collection we published on our research in this area, "Africa's Lost Classics: New Histories of African Cinema" (Legenda, 2014), and a desire to give more of these classic African films a new lease of life through making the films accessible to film festival audiences and film scholars alike. 2. The successful collaboration between the five UK African film festivals, which did not exist when we commenced with our work on recovering African film classics in 2006. Our ongoing work on recovering neglected and forgotten African film classics has always had innovation and public impact at its core, with a direct link between our research and publications on the one hand, and public engagement and knowledge exchange on the other. This follow-on funding will allow us to expand and extend the impact of the project through bringing a further selection of little-known African films to UK audiences, and providing an intellectual and historical context to the films which will open up discussions on African cinema among cinephile audiences, film practitioners, students, school children, researchers and scholars of African film, and develop new audiences for African cinema, scholarly and otherwise. This project builds on the achievements of our original AHRC-funded 'Recovering Lost African Film Classics' project, which screened four neglected/forgotten films from Francophone West Africa as part of the inaugural Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival in 2006. The aim of the project was to develop a more complex history of Francophone West African filmmaking and, in addition to screenings at AiM, we published a special dossier on these films for the prestigious film journal Screen in 2007. This modest AHRC project led to almost a decade of further research in this area: it was initially complemented in 2007 by a Carnegie-funded programme of films by female directors from across the continent (Algeria, Senegal and Angola), and the desire to uncover the lost histories of African filmmaking across the entire continent eventually led to the publication in 2014 of our edited volume. As our research over the past decade has revealed, indigenous cinematic production emerged at different times and at different speeds across the continent - 1920s for Egypt; 1950s for South Africa; 1960s for Francophone West Africa - and we propose to screen a further selection of classic African films drawn from across the continent and from different periods at the five UK African film festivals in Oct and Nov 2017. Our aim is thus to bring to a wider audience the full complexity of African film history, something of which we were only dimly aware of at the outset of the Lost Classics project, and to incorporate further innovative screenings, public events, and educational activities around the lost classics. These screenings and events will historically and culturally contextualise the films for our audiences, provide a space for discussion and debate about Africa, enhance audiences' understanding of the historical development of African cinema, and ultimately increase access to African cinema to cinema-going audiences and as such create new audiences for African film.