On November 9th, 2018, I spoke on "Power relations in development work in Africa" at the Global Issues Network at Copenhagen International School - to 80 young people from Turkey, Spain, Denmark, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands. Quite a mouthful, quite a challenge. I used two stories framed in a bit of theory (the Powercube). First story about the female village president from Guinea-Bissau who withdrew from a formal power position, because she did not want to navigate in the imposed power structure in spite of having legitimacy in her position as village midwife. And second story from Mozambique, where China cleverly navigated in the national power structures, provided infrastructure development and established strong networks with government officials at different levels - and therefore benefitted in exploiting the country's natural ressources.

The presentation is anecdotal and personal - read it here.