Research Africa News: May 26th, 2021
Matters of Obsession: A Sudanese artist’s journey to find his place in the world By Mary Corrigall, 20 May 2021
The fifty-something Sudanese artist, Hussein Salim, attributes the paucity of texts about him to his terrible grasp on English. He has shied away from interviews. In truth, the unique turns of phrase he utters and his economy of language in relaying the essence of his life journey – there are no spare words for idle chatter – add to his charm and make his story more compelling.
Read the rest of the article here.
Cairo in crisis: The Republic of False Truths,
By Alaa Al Aswany, reviewed The story of Egypt’s 2011 revolution is seen through the eyes of various Cairenes, both for and against
From magazine issue: 15 May 2021
Certain novels complicate the very notion of literary enjoyment. This, by the author of the international bestseller The Yacoubian Building, is such a one. Despite its gripping narrative, compelling structure and vivid characters, every time I picked it up it was with a sinking heart. In telling the story of the Egyptian revolution of 2011 through the viewpoint of a variety of Cairenes both for and against, Alaa Al Aswany holds out the slender straw of hope against the slashing shears of repression.
Read the rest of the article here.
The Marathon Men Who Can’t Go Home
In the north Bronx, a small group of elite Ethiopian runners struggle to survive. The persecution they fled was far more harrowing.
By David Alm, Photography by George Grullon, May 21, 2021
Tadesse Yae Dabi lined up with around three dozen other runners at the foot of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge in Staten Island. He held his arms close to his chest and bounced on his toes to stay warm. Even after three and a half years, he wasn’t used to the chill of a mid-fall morning in the American Northeast. Back home, in the farmland of central Ethiopia, it never got so cold. Overhead, helicopters filled the air with their deafening whir. Behind him, more than 50,000 people waited to chase the elite field through the five boroughs in the 2019 New York City Marathon.
Read the article here.
NBA teams up with Dikembe Mutombo and former stars to form NBA Africa, which will run Basketball Africa League Basketball Africa League is currently in its inaugural season Jasmyn Wimbish
By Jasmyn Wimbish, May 24, 2021.
The NBA on Monday announced the creation of a new entity called NBA Africa. It will be in charge of the league’s business in Africa, including the Basketball Africa League (BAL), which is in the midst of its first season after getting postponed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The league has partnered with several high-profile investors to form NBA Africa, including former players Dikembe Mutombo, Junior Bridgeman, Luol Deng, Grant Hill and Joakim Noah.
Read the research article here.
Yet More Proof That Academic Publishing Has Become a Scam
By Daniel Lattier, May 25, 2017.
In it, I pointed out what is commonly known among university professors today, namely, that most of the “peer-reviewed” essays and books they write are read by an extremely small handful of people (like 5-10, half of whom are probably sycophantic graduate students). The principal reason they keep churning them out is the familiar maxim of “publish or perish”—a publication provides two lines on a CV that helps ensure tenure, or at the very least a vanity hit to convince professors of their continued relevance.
Read the rest of the story here.
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
Best “New” African Poets Anthology, 2020
[مختارات الشعراء الأفارقة “الجدد” لعام 2020]
Author: (Editors)/ Tendai Rinos Mwanaka, Balddine Moussa, Lorna Telma Zita
Best New African Poets 2020 Anthology has over 352 pieces from 140 African poets from among other African countries: Nigeria, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa, Egypt, Tunisia, Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Comoros, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Cameroun, Namibia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Ghana etc, and those of African Diasporas in Portugal, Brazil, the UK, USA, China, etc.
Publisher: Mwanaka Media and Publishing, Zimbabwe, 2021.
Salafism and Political Order in Africa
[السلفية والنظام السياسي في أفريقيا]
Authors: Sebastian Elischer
Violent Islamic extremism is affecting a growing number of countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In some, jihadi Salafi organizations have established home bases and turned into permanent security challengers. However, other countries have managed to prevent the formation or curb the spread of homegrown jihadi Salafi organizations. In this book, Sebastian Elischer provides a comparative analysis of how different West and East African states have engaged with fundamentalist Muslim groups between the 1950s and today. In doing so, he establishes a causal link between state-imposed organizational gatekeepers in the Islamic sphere and the absence of homegrown jihadi Salafism. Illustrating that the contemporary manifestation of violent Islamic extremism in sub-Saharan Africa is an outcome of strategic political decisions that are deeply embedded in countries’ autocratic pasts, he challenges conventional notions of statehood on the African continent, and provides new insight into the evolving relationships between secular and religious authority..
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Naked Agency: Genital Cursing and Biopolitics in Africa.
[التفويض الأعزل: لعنة اللأعضاء التناسلية والحياة السياسية في إفريقيا]
Author: Naminata Diabate
What provocations are posed by a naked woman’s body? What does it mean to those who see her? And what does it signify for the woman herself, in the moment and in memory? In this book, Naminata Diabate recovers the deep historical roots for women’s embodied agency in political action across the African continent. She examines instances of women’s insurgent disrobing in 23 African countries from 1920-2018 and considers the multivalence of ‘genital cursing’ as a means of protest. Diabate’s intervention incorporates visual arts, narrative films and documentaries, alongside newspaper coverage and literary fiction in many languages, to reconstruct the significance of women’s embodied agency and the threat that nakedness posed to established authorities..
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2020.
Dynamism in African Languages and Literature: Towards Conceptualisation of African Potentials
[الحيوية في الآداب واللغات الأفريقية]
Author: (Ediors) Keiko Takemura, Francis B. Nyamnjoh
The book provides novel perspectives towards conceptualisation of African Potentials. It explores diverse and dynamic aspects of linguistic communications in Africa, ranging from convivial multilingual practices to literal and musical arts. The book reflects the diversity and ever-changing dynamism in the African sociolinguistic sphere, that is, metalinguistic discourse in East Africa, sociolinguistic dynamism in Angola, conflict reconciliation speech performed in Ethiopia, and syncretic urban linguistic code called Sheng in Kenya. The volume also explores multi-dimensional relationships between literary arts and the society by investigating such topics as traditional Swahili poetry, publication of children books in Benin, and transformation and reconstruction of Yoruba popular music. The book elucidates dynamic process of creation through mixing of traditional and foreign elements of culture
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2021.
France’s Wars in Chad
[حروب فرنسا في تشاد]
Author: Nathaniel K. Powell
Examining the continuous French military interventions in Chad in the two decades after its independence, this study demonstrates how France’s successful counterinsurgency efforts to protect the regime of François Tombalbaye would ultimately weaken the Chadian state and encourage Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi to intervene. In covering the subsequent French efforts to counter Libyan ambitions and the rise to power of Hissène Habré, one of postcolonial Africa’s most brutal dictators, Nathaniel K. Powell demonstrates that French strategies aiming to prevent the collapse of authoritarian regimes had the opposite effect, exacerbating violent conflicts and foreign interventions in Chad and further afield. Based on extensive archival research to trace the causes, course, and impact of French interventions in Chad, this study offers insights and lessons for current interveners – including France – fighting a ‘war on terrorism’ in the Sahel whose strategies and impact parallel those of France in the 1960s–1980s.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
Becoming Rwandan: Education, Reconciliation, and the Making of a Post-Genocide Citizen.
[كيف تصنع رواندا: التعليم والمصالحة الوطنية وصياغة نوعية المواطن فيما بعد الإبادة الجماعية]
Author: S. Garnett Russel.
argues that although the Rwandan government makes use of global discourses in national policy documents, the way in which teachers and students engage with these global models distorts the curricular intentions of the government, resulting in unintended consequences and an undermining of sustainable peace. She is assistant professor of international and comparative education and the director of the George Clement Bond Center for African Education at Teacher’s College, Columbia University.
Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2020.
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