Mireille Manga Edimo (University of Yaoundé II)

Mireille Manga Edimo is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Yaoundé II in Cameroon. She is the Vice-President at the International Public Policy Association and the Regional Representative of the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Gender, Women, and Policies (RC32). Former PhD fellow at Sciences Po / CEVIPOF in Paris, France, her PhD analysed the “Virtual Citizenship of Cameroonian Immigrants in France”. She teaches various courses on Public Policies, Migration and Diaspora Policies, Dynamics of Political Participation, and International Political Economy and has participated in various programs related to these thematics. She has authored several articles on expertise, migration governance, diaspora politics, “democracy mending”, and development politics in Africa. Additionally, she has co-edited two significant books published by Palgrave Macmillan: *New Nationalisms and China’s Belt and Road Initiative: Exploring the Transnational Public Domain* (2022) and *China’s Belt and Road in Africa: Aid Policies and Economic Development* (February 2025). Furthermore, she has contributed chapters on public policy in the handbooks *Political Science in Africa: Freedom, Relevance and Impact* (2023) and the *Handbook of Teaching Public Policy* (2024) and on African Union’s Governance of Irregular Migration, in *Mireille Paquet et al. Forthcoming in 2025.

Course: Governments and their Partners in Public Policy Processes

This course suggests grounding the relationships between African governments and their public and private partners as one of the public policy methods to address research on policy instruments. It expands the theoretical and methodological frameworks for examining public policy instruments, taking into account the socio-political and historical contexts in which governmental solutions develop. More specifically, the course enhances frameworks for analysing and studying public policy instruments by thoroughly investigating the concept of ‘‘partnership’’. Additionally, the course aims to achieve several objectives, with four key goals mentioned below, which are to be accomplished during the seasonal school program.

• • The course first examines the long- and short-term sociopolitical motivations behind the public actions of governments engaged in partnerships to address domestic policy issues.

• • Secondly, it aims to offer a typology of public and private partnerships utilized by governments and their collaborators, particularly in Africa, to tackle domestic issues identified as political priorities or problems to solve.

• • Third, the course enhances awareness of the diverse range of public and private knowledge and policy resources. This includes the contributions of diasporas, private companies, multinational firms, foreign banks, and capital, as well as diplomats, chancelleries, and a wide array of individual and collective actors—both formal and informal—who participate in public policy processes and serve as strategic instruments for governments.

• • Finally, the course enhances the study of public action by integrating insights from political sociology, along with constructivist and pragmatist perspectives on public policy processes. Additionally, it incorporates political economy insights to illuminate various aspects of African policy contexts.