Author: Program Director

Research Africa News: November 22, 2019

Academic Opportunities
1. Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program
The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP) is a scholar fellowship program for educational projects at African higher education institutions. Offered by IIE in collaboration with the United States International University-Africa (USIU-Africa), the program is funded by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY). A total of 395 African Diaspora Fellowships have been awarded for scholars to travel to Africa since the program’s inception in 2013. CADFP exemplifies CCNY’s enduring commitment to higher education in Africa. IIE manages and administers the program, including applications, project requests and fellowships. USIU-Africa provides strategic direction through the Advisory Council.
Read the details in this link here

2. CFP: ‘The Home in Modern History and Culture’
University of Nottingham 27 January 2020, Council Room, Trent Building
Keynote speaker: Professor Jane Hamlett, Royal Holloway
CFP deadline: 22 November 2019
The University of Nottingham’s AHRC-funded project ‘Florence Nightingale Comes Home for 2020’ (see www.florencenightingale.org) is arranging the second of a series of three thematic project workshops. Following the first successful event on nineteenth-century healthcare, this second workshop seeks to examine, from multiple disciplinary perspectives, the broad theme of ‘Home’ and its applicability as a prism through which to understand historical change.
For more details, visit the website:
Website: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/Conference/fac-arts/Humanities/History/The-Home-in-History/index.aspx.aspx
Email: nightingale2020@nottingham.ac.uk

3. The American University in Cairo (AUC)
The 15th EURECA Conference takes place on April 5-9, 2020, under the umbrella of the AUC Research and Creativity Convention (RCC). EURECA is an opportunity for students of different disciplines to present their original research and creative work to their peers, faculty and the public. Participating in the conference is an excellent way for students to practice scholarly argument and presentation skills. This year EURECA is inviting students from international universities to participate as well, so the interaction and networking promises to be worthwhile and great fun.
The deadline for application is December 10, 2019. As the students complete their final research papers for Fall 2019, please encourage (perhaps require) them to participate as presenters in EURECA, under the appropriate activity:
• RHET first year students participate in FYRE – the First Year Research Experience oral presentations
• RHET upper division students participate in the Research Excellence across the Disciplines oral presentations
• RHET students in the Creative track of the Writing Minor participate in – Creatopia: Literary Salon
• ELI students participate in ELI Explorers
ALI/CASA students participate in the Research Excellence across the Disciplines oral presentations
Here is the conference website and application link
If students have inquiries, email eureca@aucegypt.edu

News
African Union Tells U.K. to Withdraw From Chagos Islands After Deadline Passes
By Pauline Bax November 22, 2019

The African Union urged the U.K. to comply with a United Nations resolution calling for it to withdraw from the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which is considered part of Mauritius. The U.K. is under increased international pressure to give up its last territory in Africa since the International Court of Justice ruled that the 1965 excision of the islands from Mauritius had been unlawful. The UN General Assembly affirmed the ruling in May and set a six-month deadline that expired Friday.
Read the details in this link

NEW BOOKS ‫كتب جديدة

Karafu: A Freed Slave
[ كارافو: الرقيق المحرّر]
Author: Nahida Esmail

In 1838, 14-year old Samuel, a domestic worker in the United States, is excited to accompany his boss, Mr Wilson, on a voyage to East Africa. Mr Wilson plans to search for the source of the river Nile. During the long voyage, many unexplained events turn Samuel’s life upside down. On his arrival in Zanzibar, Samuel is horrified to be sold into slavery. He faces many challenges, which he records in his diary, and applies his wits and education to overcome them. Follow Samuel’s ordeal as he struggles to obtain his freedom.
Publisher:Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, Tanzania, 2019

The Kenya Socialist No. 1 2019
[كينيا الاشتراكية]
Author/ Editor: Shiraz Durrani, Kimani Waweru

The study of class remains one such topic and Kimani Waweru’s article, Class and Class Struggle in Kenya, fills this gap. Waweru also contributes a briefing on ideology as a weapon of oppression or liberation. He will continue his theoretical explorations in the next issue with an article on gender and women’s oppression and liberation. History is never far from any liberation struggle. Nicholas Mwangi looks at Mau Mau and the origin and meaning of the term ‘Mau Mau’. Njoki Wamai’s contribution is her presentation at the All African Peoples’ Conference in Accra in 2018. Linking up with the launch of the Ukombozi Library, the question arises, ‘What is the role of information in liberation?’ Shiraz Durrani answers some question from Julian Jaravata on various aspects of information. Finally, Durrani looks at the challenge by Wakamba wood carvers to the information embargo under President Moi.
Publisher: Vita Books, Kenya, 2019

Mobile Africa: Human Trafficking and the Digital Divide
[موبايل أفريقيا: الاتجار بالبشر والفجوة الرقمية]
Author: (Editor): Mirjam van Reisen, Munyaradzi Mawere, Kinfe Abraha Gebre-Egziabher

What happens at the nexus of the digital divide and human trafficking? This book examines the impact of the introduction of new digital information and communication technology (ICT) – as well as lack of access to digital connectivity – on human trafficking. The different studies presented in the chapters show the realities for people moving along the Central Mediterranean route from the Horn of Africa through Libya to Europe. The authors warn against an over-optimistic view of innovation as a solution and highlight the relationship between technology and the crimes committed against vulnerable people in search of protection. In this volume, the third in a four-part series ‘Connected and Mobile: Migration and Human Trafficking in Africa’, relevant new theories are proposed as tools to understand the dynamics that appear in mobile Africa. Most importantly, the editors identify critical ethical issues in relation to both technology and human trafficking and the nexus between them, helping explore the dimensions of new responsibilities that need to be defined. The chapters in this book represent a collection of well-documented empirical investigations by a young and diverse group of researchers, addressing critical issues in relation to innovation and the perils of our time.
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2019

Ouafa and Thawra: About A Lover from Tunisia (Poetry, Drawings, Essay).
[(وفاء وثورة: عاشق من تونس (أشعار ورسومات ومقال]
Author: Arturo Desimone

“Ouafa and Thawra is a nomadic collection: well-travelled and restless, but with roots firmly in revolutionary Tunisia, a tumultuous country “where people are sweet/ where even the hypocrisy is sweet.” Arturo Desimone travels fearlessly between genres, too, with sketches deepening the reading experience and a postscript essay on Tunisia before and after the ‘Arab Spring’ adding context to the poems (and offering the controversial but sound claim that the Arab Spring was catalysed by the events of 2003 in Iraq). Desimone is wholly original: his poems simultaneously draw on a breathtaking, freewheeling sense of linguistic innovation, and on a timeless well of imagery and mythology.”
Publisher: Mwanaka Media and Publishing, Zimbabwe, 2019

Regime Stability, Social Insecurity and Bauxite Mining in Guinea: Developments Since the Mid-Twentieth Century
[استقرارية النظام وانعدام الأمن الاجتماعي وتعدين البوكسيت في غينيا]
Author: Penda Diallo

This book explores how bauxite mining has affected local and national political dynamics in Guinea over the past 55 years, providing an overview of mining interactions with social, economic and political spheres. Guinea is amongst the world’s top producers of bauxite, and the country’s rich mineral presence has numerous implications on local communities and national policy. Guinea is an interesting and highly relevant case study in assessing the impact of bauxite mining on regime stability and social insecurity. The author offers a clear understanding of the role of mining during the Touré and Conté regimes and analyses how changes since the election of Condé in 2010 have affected the socio-political and economic development of Guinea. The author also offers analysis on how bauxite mining has led to the emergence of new forms of social contracts, sustained by mining companies instead of the state. Finally, the book argues that understanding the stabilising and destabilising potential of mining is key to ensuring long-term, sustainable, stable and inclusive growth of mineral-resource-rich countries. The book concludes by highlighting the relevance of the findings in Guinea for the wider African extractives sector.
Publisher: Routledge, 2019.

The Ghosts of Gombe: A True Story of Love and Death in an African Wilderness
[أشباح غومبي: قصة حقيقية عن قضايا الحب والموت في أدغال أفريقيا]
Author: Dale Peterson

On July 12, 1969, Ruth Davis, a young American volunteer at Dr. Jane Goodall’s famous chimpanzee research camp in the Gombe Stream National Park of Tanzania, East Africa, walked out of camp to follow a chimpanzee into the forest. Six days later, her body was found floating in a pool at the base of a high waterfall. With careful detail, The Ghosts of Gombe reveals for the first time the full story of day-to-day life in Goodall’s wilderness camp—the people and the animals, the stresses and excitements, the social conflicts and cultural alignments, and the astonishing friendships that developed between three of the researchers and some of the chimpanzees—during the months preceding that tragic event. Was Ruth’s death an accident? Did she jump? Was she pushed? In an extended act of literary forensics, Goodall biographer Dale Peterson examines how Ruth’s death might have happened and explores some of the painful sequelae that haunted two of the survivors for the rest of their lives
Publisher: University of California Press, 2018.

Roaming Africa: Migration, Resilience and Social Protection
[جولات في أفريقيا: مسائل في الهجرة والمرونة والحماية الاجتماعية]
Author/ (Editor): Mirjam van Reisen, Munyaradzi Mawere, Mia Stokmans, Kinfe Abraha Gebre-Egziabher

What happens when digital innovation meets migration? Roaming Africa considers how we understand modern-day mobility in Africa, where age-old routes strengthen the resilience of people roaming the continent for livelihoods and security, assisted by mobile communication. Digital mobility expands connectivity around the world, and also in Africa. In this book, the authors show that mobility, resilience and social protection in the digital age are closely related. Each chapter takes a close look at the migration dynamics in a specific context, using social theory as a lens. This book adopts a critical perspective on approaches in which migration is regarded merely as a hazard. Edited by distinguished scholars from Africa and Europe, this volume, the second in a four-part series Connected and Mobile: Migration and Human Trafficking in Africa, compiles chapters from a diverse group of young and upcoming scholars, making an important contribution to the literature on migration studies, digital science, social protection and governance.
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2019

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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.

Research Africa News: October 15th, 2019

We write what we like about Steve Biko

By Dan Magaziner

What does it mean for a dead man to live through us, as we chant his name and claim him?

Had he not died, Steve Biko would have amongst us, speaking for himself. But since the Apartheid South African police murdered him two months shy of his 31st birthday, we the living are left once more to think, through Biko, about what could have been.

Read the story in this link

If Germany atoned for the Holocaust, the US can pay reparations for slavery By Bernd Reiter

The idea of paying reparations for slavery is gaining momentum in the United States, despite being long derided as an unrealistic plan, to compensate for state violence committed by and against people long dead. The topic saw substantive debate in the July 30 Democratic primary debate, with candidate Marianne Williamson calling slavery “a debt that is owed.” Some Democratic congressional representatives are also pushing for financial recompense for the descendants of enslaved people.

Read the story in this link

From Sudan to Mali, how climate wars are breaking out across the Sahel

By Kaamil Ahmed, 19 September 2019

The bus to Khartoum delivered Maryam, and those of her neighbours who had survived with her, an escape from siege. For months they had been hounded by horse-mounted gunmen roaming their village in central Darfur, forcing them inside and away from their farmlands until some of them could bear their imprisonment no longer and left their homes to confront their tormentors. Maryam’s brother, Adam, was shot and his ear cut off. Her parents were killed.

Read the story in this link

Bold Women. Scandalized Viewers. It’s ‘Sex and the City,’ Senegal Style.
DAKAR, Senegal — In the most controversial scene of “Mistress of a Married Man,” a hugely popular new television series in Senegal, the show’s protagonist, Marème, dons a daring magenta pantsuit and heads out for a date with a married man — but not before pointing below her belt.
Read the story in this link

In a Sudan Where Literature is Often Smuggled, the Short Story is a Perfect Form

By Marcia Lynx Qualey September 27, 2019

It was June 2, 1934, when a group of young men published the first issue of al-Fajr. This twice-monthly magazine followed the short-lived Nahda, which closed after its founder’s death in 1933. Al-Fajr’s core was formed out of study groups and friendships at Khartoum’s Gordon Memorial College in the late 1920s and early 1930s. At the time, possession of Egyptian literary magazines was an “incriminating act,” according to Sudanese scholar Yousif Omer Babiker, who wrote that the young men smuggled Arabic periodicals into the English school under their clothes.

Read the story in this link

Refuting that precolonial Africa lacked written traditions

By Daivi Rodima-Taylor, Mustapha H. Kurfi and Fallou Ngom,

Ajami, the centuries-old practice of writing other languages using the modified Arabic script, is deeply embedded in local histories and socio-cultural practices in West Africa. Grassroots Ajami literacy has been historically high in the communities and across countries in the region.

Read the story in this link

NEW BOOKS ‫كتب جديدة

Breweries, Politics and Identity: The History Behind Namibia’s Beer

[علاقة التخمير بالسياسة والهوية: تاريخ تخمير الجعة في ناميبيا]

Author: Tycho van der Hoog

Namibian beer is celebrated as an inextricable part of Namibian nationalism, both within domestic borders and across global markets. But for decades on end, the same brew was not available to the black population as a consequence of colonial politics. This book aims to explain how a European style beer has been transformed from an icon of white settlers into a symbol of the independent Namibian nation. The unusual focus on beer offers valuable insight into the role of companies in identity formation and thus highlights an understudied aspect of Namibian history, namely business–state relations.

Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Namibia, 2019

The Lived Nile Environment Disease and Material Colonial Economy In Egypt

[الأمراض البيئية المتواجدة في النيل وأدوات الاقتصاد الاستعماري في مصر]

Author: Jennifer l. Derr

In October 1902, the reservoir of the first Aswan Dam filled, and Egypt’s relationship with the Nile River forever changed. Flooding villages of historical northern Nubia and filling the irrigation canals that flowed from the river, the perennial Nile not only reshaped agriculture and the environment, but also Egypt’s colonial economy and forms of subjectivity. Jennifer L. Derr follows the engineers, capitalists, political authorities, and laborers who built a new Nile River through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The river helped to shape the future of technocratic knowledge, and the bodies of those who inhabited rural communities were transformed through the environmental intimacies of their daily lives. At the root of this investigation lies the notion that the Nile is not a singular entity, but a realm of practice and a set of temporally, spatially, and materially specific relations that structured experiences of colonial economy. From the microscopic to the regional, the local to the imperial, The Lived Nile: Environment, Disease, and Material Colonial Economy in Egypt (Stanford University Press, 2019) recounts the history and centrality of the environment to questions of politics, knowledge, and the lived experience of the human body itself.

Publisher: Stanford University Press 2019

Languages and Culture in Nigeria: A Festschrift for Okon Essien

[اللغة والثقافة في نيجريا]

Author: (edited) by Ozo-mekuri Ndimele

Language and Culture in Nigeria contains 97 papers from a wide range of areas in Language and Linguistics written by colleagues, friends and former students of Professor Okon Essien. The collection fulfills a gap in the quest for a documented piece of work on the general pattern and structure of Nigerian names and is an invaluable material for comparative purposes. There are 19 papers in section A focusing mainly on various aspects of sociolinguistics and the role of language in society. Section B comprises 24 papers which fall in the area of stylistics, literature and gender studies. Section C contains 21 papers focusing on applied areas of linguistics. Section D comprises 11 papers on information science and communication studies. Section E contains papers that focus on the formal areas of linguistics, i.e. phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax & semantics. Section F is on Okon Essien as a celebrity. It comprises papers which not only x-ray the contributions of the celebrity to the study of languages and linguistics in Nigeria, but also situate him in the context of other linguistic celebrities globally. Section F is rapped up with a collection of brilliant poems dedicated to Professor Okon Essien by the ‘Ode Grandmaster’, Dr. Obed Ojukwu. There is also an appendix at the end of the work which is Professor Okon Essien’s intimidating curriculum vitae.

Publisher: M & J Grand Orbit Communications, Nigeria, 2019

Necropolitics

[سياسة الموتى الأحياء]

Author: Achille Mbembe

In Necropolitics Achille Mbembe, a leader in the new wave of francophone critical theory, theorizes the genealogy of the contemporary world, a world plagued by ever-increasing inequality, militarization, enmity, and terror as well as by a resurgence of racist, fascist, and nationalist forces determined to exclude and kill. He outlines how democracy has begun to embrace its dark side—what he calls its “nocturnal body”—which is based on the desires, fears, affects, relations, and violence that drove colonialism. This shift has hollowed out democracy, thereby eroding the very values, rights, and freedoms liberal democracy routinely celebrates. As a result, war has become the sacrament of our times in a conception of sovereignty that operates by annihilating all those considered enemies of the state. Despite his dire diagnosis, Mbembe draws on post-Foucauldian debates on biopolitics, war, and race as well as Fanon’s notion of care as a shared vulnerability to explore how new conceptions of the human that transcend humanism might come to pass. These new conceptions would allow us to encounter the Other not as a thing to exclude but as a person with whom to build a more just world.

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2019

In Pursuit of Peace in Africa: An Autobiography

[نحو تحقيق السلم في أفريقيا: سيرة ذاتية]

Author: Daniel Opande

Lieutenant General Daniel Opande, in his autobiography In Pursuit of Peace in Africa, shares his experiences in childhood, education, family and military career until his retirement. He wore many hats: soldier, military leader, peacemaker, humanitarian, peace ambassador and mediator. Notable highlights include his role in Kenya’s Shifta Campaign of the 1960s and engaging with rebels during peace operations he led in Namibia, Mozambique, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. In retirement, General Opande has occasionally mediated conflicts; among them the 2007, 2008, 2013 and 2017 election crises in Kenya and the aftermath of the 2015 upheavals in South Sudan. This book is a rich inspirational resource for aspiring leaders.

Publisher: East African Educational Publishers, Kenya, 2019.

Les Pleurs du Mal

[نحيب الشر]

Author: Nsah Mala

Que faire face à la stagnation de l’Afrique ? Comment l’écrivain peut-il affronter les multiples maux qui gangrènent le monde d’aujourd’hui ? Dans ce recueil de poèmes, Nsah Mala adopte le genre poétique pour illustrer son engagement social et politique en évoquant des thématiques actuelles de son pays natal le Cameroun, de l’Afrique, et du monde entier. Ces thèmes sont, entre autres, la corruption, la déchéance de l’État et du pouvoir, la dérive de la démocratie, la protection de la nature, la promotion de la jeunesse, la marginalisation socio-politique, les ténèbres, et la liberté. Malgré l’ampleur des maux affrontés, Nsah Mala garde son optimisme et démontre que la poésie peut servir de moyen pour corriger et améliorer la société humaine et non-humaine. Faisant preuve de l’expérimentation et de l’innovation poétique, ce recueil trace une cartographie intéressante suivant son auteur à travers ses voyages infinis en Afrique, en Europe, et ailleurs. C’est aussi un moyen d’entrer en conversation avec les auteurs et les cultures de l’Afrique et du monde. Cette poésie organique et vitale, qui prend sa source dans l’humanité et la nature, donne la voix à tous les sans-voix et devra ainsi occuper une place importante dans toutes les bibliothèques du monde.

Publisher: Spears Media Press, Cameroon, 2019

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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.

Research Africa News: October 29th, 2019

The Socialist Agronomist Who Helped End Portuguese Colonialism

AN INTERVIEW WITH PETER KARIBE MENDY

Before his assassination in 1973, Amílcar Cabral was one of Africa’s leading anti-colonialists — a brilliant agronomist and socialist whose leadership of the armed struggle against Portuguese rule brought the empire to its knees.

Read the story in this link

Scholarship offers driving China’s soft-power play in Africa

Jevans Nyabiage,, 28 Sep, 2019

Since the late 1990s, Beijing has chalked up a broad list of successes in Africa, driven by a “going global” strategy that encourages domestic enterprises to invest more abroad. Under that plan of action, China in 2009 toppled the United States to become Africa’s biggest trading partner.

Read the story in this link

Letter from Africa: How not to mangle African sports stars’ names Ade Daramy, 23 October 2019

As I watched coverage of the World Athletics Championships in Qatar, like most Africans, it was a case of tutting: “Oh, no, not again…” when someone from the continent was victorious. This was not because I did not glory in their performance but because of how their name was mangled beyond recognition in the commentary and medal ceremonies. Many non-African commentators seem to have a particular thing against West African names, as these seem to be the ones that come in for the most savaging.

Read the story in this link

The rising popularity of African art has led to a growing market for forgeries
Gerard de Kamper, October 23, 2019
The art world has been dealing with fakes for more than 2,000 years, with perhaps the most notorious case being the forgeries of Dutch master Johannes Vermeer’s paintings by artist Han van Meegeren during the Second World War. A dishonest scrivener covertly changed the US Constitution’s impeachment clause Now African art is becoming a larger and larger target. Fakes are flooding the South African market and while a range of artists is affected, it’s mostly the black modernists (1960-1990) whose legacy is suffering.

Read the story in this link

NEW BOOKS ‫كتب جديدة

Administrative Law: Cases and Materials

[القانون الإداري: قضايا ولوازم]

Author: Collins Parker

Administrative Law: Cases and Materials is an important and comprehensive contribution to the legal literature on Namibian law. It will contribute to the development of Namibia’s jurisprudence. Experienced author and judge of the Namibian High Court, Dr Collins Parker discusses key principles of administrative law applicable to Namibia under the common law as developed and broadened by article 18 of the Namibian Constitution. To support propositions of law discussed in the text, he presents carefully selected extracts of judgments delivered in important cases. The book offers a rich source of judicial pronouncements as precedent that are not readily available to many students and teachers of law. The selected cases are from the superior courts in Namibia, South Africa, England, and Canada, all common law countries. There are also footnote references to cases from other common law countries like India, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Practitioners of law at the Bar or on the Bench, law researchers and other professionals in public authorities, including parastatals, private companies and other ord this book useful in the performance of their professional tasks.

Publisher: University of Namibia Press, Namibia, 2019

The Women Went Radical: Petition Writing and Colonial State in Southwestern Nigeria, 1900-1953

[عندما تمردت النساء]

Author: Mutiat Titilope Oladejo

Woman in twentieth century colonial Africa experienced a loss of power in their social-economic status. The Women Went Radical provides a narrative of radical expressions extracted from the numerous petitions written to advance and advocate the cause of Yoruba women through individual and collective action. This analyses the impact and implication of petition writing on the administration of traditional and modern governments in colonial Yorubaland. The political context accurately projects the roles of women in influencing, resisting, negotiating and counteracting policies within the political system. The research argues that petition writing is a form of politics and radicalism that is not limited to national issues but also to their manifestation from the actions of the citizens—that is ‘politics from the grassroots’.

Publisher: BookBuilders Editions Africa, Nigeria, 2019

Amílcar Cabral A Nationalist and Pan-Africanist Revolutionary

[أميلكار كابرال: قائد ثوري من أنصار الرابطة الأفريقية]

Author: Peter Karibe Mendy

Amílcar Cabral was an agronomist who led an armed struggle that ended Portuguese colonialism in Guinea-Bissau and Cabo Verde. The uprising contributed significantly to the collapse of a fascist regime in Lisbon and the dismantlement of Portugal’s empire in Africa. Assassinated by a close associate with the deep complicity of the Portuguese colonial authorities, Cabral not only led one of Africa’s most successful liberation movements, but was the voice and face of the anticolonial wars against Portugal. A brilliant military strategist and astute diplomat, Cabral was an original thinker who wrote innovative and inspirational essays that still resonate today. His charismatic and visionary leadership, his active pan-Africanist solidarity and internationalist commitment to “every just cause in the world,” remain relevant to contemporary struggles for emancipation and self-determination. Peter Karibe Mendy’s compact and accessible biography is an ideal introduction to his life and legacy.

Publisher: Ohio University Press 2019

In The Heat of Africa’s Underdevelopment: Africa at the Crossroads -Time to Deliver

[في صميم النضال من أجل التقدم في أفريقيا: أفريقيا في مفترق الطرق]

Author: John W. Forje

The ever-growing disparity in living standards between the developed and developing polities constitutes a striking feature of life on Planet Earth. This publication is an attempt to highlight some of the factors dividing the worlds apart. A new North-South synergy is needed in creating a balanced world at peace with itself. As long as more than half-the population of the world go to bed hungry there can be no peace. A sting rich world and a sting poor world cannot cohabit peacefully. How to build a more equitable and balanced world is the challenge facing us. We need to embrace and practice our long-aged concepts of ‘ubuntu’, ‘harambee’ and ‘batho pele’ among others in creating, and consolidating the new world order. Africa is underdeveloped. It requires serious structural modification in our current mindset, thinking and actions which calls for total involvement of every citizen. The ideas advanced in this book are strategies and pathways for dealing with the problems of poverty, corruption, the distribution of power, deterrence, good governance, health, human capacity building and the challenge of bringing about a systemic structural-functional governance construct for the African continent.

Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2019

Terry Adkins Infinity Is Always Less Than One

[تيري آدكنز: في حتمية اللامتناهي]

Author: Gean Moreno and Alex Gartenfeld

One of the great conceptual artists of the twenty-first century, Terry Adkins (1953–2014) was renowned for his pioneering work across mediums, from sculpture, drawing, and site-specific installation to photography, video, and performance. Terry Adkins: Infinity is Always Less Than One accompanies the first institutional posthumous exhibition of Adkins’s sculptural production. While Adkins is often recognized for his musical and performative practice, this exhibition focuses on his complex memorials and monuments to historical figures. The exhibition showcases four of his major series, dedicated to four distinct figures: Bessie Smith, John Brown, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jimi Hendrix. These series are presented alongside a group of early sculptures to reveal the development of the Adkins’s mature practice.

Publisher: A Publication of ICA Miami Distributed by Duke University Press, 2019

Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the Decolonisation of Africa

[داغ همرشولد : الأمم المتحدة ، وإنهاء الاستعمار في أفريقيا]

Author: Henning Melber

Dag Hammarskjold was such a dynamic secretary-general that for years, the motto about him was simply “Leave it to Dag.” Only the second person to hold that post when he was elected, Hammarskjold did a great deal to shape perceptions of the UN. Consequently, evaluations of his legacy have tended to run the gamut, from extremely positive to bitingly critical. This book looks at Hammarskjold’s legacy. Melber offers no apology when he states that he deeply admires Hammarskjold, though he does also clarify that Hammarskjold was imperfect. Moreover, while Hammarskjold was a person of deep integrity, his life nevertheless reveals many of the shortcomings of the UN and the difficulty of forcing the great powers to accept justice for the Global South.

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2019

The Unfamous Five

[الأشرار الخمسة]

Author: Nedine Moonsamy

Seeking adventure during the school holidays, five teenagers from the Indian suburb of Lenasia accidentally witness a violent crime that has a lasting impact on their lives. Starting in June of 1993, the novel follows the Five through the next decade as they confront, both as individuals and as a group, questions of who they are, who they are allowed to be, and who they are expected to be in the New South Africa. They must query what role they will allow tradition, ancestry, sexuality, skin colour, love, money and culture to play in their lives as they attempt to forge new paths, sometimes stumbling along the way, but always willing to give one another a helping hand.

Publisher: Modjaji Books, South Africa, 2019

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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.

Research Africa News: September 6th, 2019

Call for Papers

Roundtable on Religion, Economy, and Class in Global Context

Kirsten Wesselhoeft and Deonnie Moodie are seeking 8,000-10,000-word contributions to a roundtable on religion, economy, and class in global context to submit to a leading US journal in Religious Studies. In particular, they seek contributions examining the ways that religion and economy co-produce one another in non-Western and non-Christian contexts in the current moment of late capitalism.

300-word abstracts are due on October 15, 2019 and full articles are due April 1, 2020. They expect the roundtable to be published by early 2021.

Please email the editors Kirsten Wesselhoeft (kwesselhoeft@vassar.edu) and Deonnie Moodie (dmoodie@ou.edu) with submissions and questions.

Read the details in this link here–Abstract

News and Issues

1. Ibram X Kendi on why not being racist is not enough

By Owen Jones, Aug 14, 2019

There is a moment that disturbs Ibram X Kendi to this day. It was the 90s, and Kendi – then in his final year of high school – was scheduled to deliver a speech at a public-speaking contest held in Martin Luther King’s honour.

Read the story in this link.

2. Hamdok: Man of the moment on Sudan’s future

By Fred Oluoch, Aug 28, 2019

As the new Sudan Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok took office on August 21, the biggest hope among the Sudanese was that he will turn around the economy, which was part of the motivation for protests that led to the ousting of strongman Omar al-Bashir. Dr Hamdok, 65, comes with over 30 years of a distinguished international career, having worked with financial and non-financial multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and the African Development Bank.

Read the story in this link.

3. At age 15, this Ethiopian general with powerful afro hair helped free his people from Italian fascists

By Mildred Europa Taylor, March 24, 2019

Jagama Kello was only 15 when he took to the bush and the battlefield to defend his country, Ethiopia, from the Italian invasion of 1935. In October 1935, fascist Italian war leader Benito Mussolini launched his invasion of Ethiopia. Held at bay by Emperor Haile Selassie’s troops, Mussolini would eventually enter Addis Ababa on May 5, 1936, declaring the country as part of the Italian empire and Italian East Africa.

Read the story in this link.

4. The 1619 Project

By Dannielle Bowman, Aug 14, 2019

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and places the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are.

Read the story in this link

5. How Slavery Changed the DNA of African Americans

By Michael White, Dec 20, 2017

Our genetic make-up is the result of history. Historical events that influenced the patterns of migration and mating among our ancestors are reflected in our DNA — in our genetic relationships with each other and in our genetic risks for disease. This means that, to understand how genes affect our biology, geneticists often find it important to tease out how historical drivers of demographic change shaped present-day genetics.

Read the story in this link.

NEW BOOKS ‫كتب جديدة

Digitalization and the Field of African Studies

الرقمنة ومجال الدراسات الأفريقية))

Author: Mirjam de Bruijn

Urbanization in Africa also means rapid technological change. At the turn of the 21st century, mobile telephones appeared in urban Africa. Ten years later, it covered large parts of rural Africa and – thanks to the smartphone – became the main method for accessing to the internet. This development is part of technological transformations in digitalization that are supposed to bridge the urban and the rural. These technological transformations bridge urban and rural through the creation of economic opportunities, the flow of information and by influencing people’s definition of self, belonging and citizenship. These changes are met with huge optimism and the message of Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D) for Africa has been one of glory and revolution. In practice, however, technological transformations may not be entirely good. Increasingly, academic publications show that we are facing a new form of digital divide, in which Africa is (again) at the margins. These technological transformations influence the relation between urban and rural Africa, and between ‘Africa’ and the World. Hence, technological transformations influence the field of African Studies and its forms of knowledge production.

Publisher: Basel Namibia Studies Series, 2019

Nhakanomics: Harvesting Knowledge and Value for Re-generation Through Social Innovation

( Nhakanomics: ترميم المعرفة والقيم لإعادة الاصلاح من خلال الابتكار الاجتماعي )

Author: Munyaradzi Mawere, Daud Taranhike, Ronnie Lessem

The study argues that the process and substance of nhakanomics, with its pre-emphasis on the relational South, provides a robust and holistic approach to social innovation and social transformation, grounded in relational networks and ‘meshworks’. The central idea is a call to re-GENE-rate society, through local Grounding and Origination, while tapping into local-global Emergent Foundations via a newly global Emancipatory Navigation, while ultimately culminating in global-local transformative Effects in four recursive cycles of re-GENE-rating C(K)umusha, Culture, Communication, and Capital after re-Constituting Africa-the 5Cs. With a novel and radical approach, this book is an interrogation of neo-liberal economics in the Global South.

Publisher: Africa Talent Publishers, Zimbabwe, 2019

Telecommunications Law and Practice in NIGERIA: Perspectives on Consumer Protection

(قوانين وممارسات الاتصالات السلكية واللاسلكية في نيجيريا: وجهات نظر حول حماية المستهلك)

Author: Jacob Otu Enyia

Telecommunications Law and Practice in Nigeria: Perspectives on Consumer Protection is intended primarily to provide a new source of information on the theoretical and legal frameworks of telecommunication regulation in Nigeria with respect to how such legal frameworks assists in addressing the consumers’. The book covers the evolution of telecommunications across the world in addition to Nigeria, raising a variety of issues including the early organizations, regulatory regimes, the deregulation era, interconnectivity and privacy law, telecommunications and intellectual property, international trade and drafting international trade contracts, encryption technology and privacy in telecommunications.

Publisher: Malthouse Press, Nigeria, 2019

Postcolonial Automobility Car Culture in West Africa

(ثقافة السيارات في غرب أفريقيا في فترة ما بعد الاستعمار)

Author: Lindsey Green-simms

Cars promise freedom, autonomy and, above all, movement. However, they leave whole cities stuck in traffic, breathing polluted air, create deadly crashes, and dependent on vast the vast infrastructures of road networks and oil production. Postcolonial Automobility: Car Culture in West Africa (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) examines the paradoxes and ambivalences of automobiles through the lens of West African films, novels, plays, and poems. From the melodramas of Nollywood to the socialist realism of Ousmane Semebene, African artists have delved into the pleasures and anxieties of the road to theorize capitalist development, globalization, patriarchy, and the ethics of accumulation. In this episode of New Books in Anthropology, Lindsey Green-Simms joins host Jacob Doherty to discuss how West African entrepreneurs appropriated colonial technologies, how stalled cars embody the crises of structural adjustment, and what emerges from the pages, screens, and stages of West African popular and literary culture.

Publisher: University of Minnesota Press, 2019

The Origins of Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Politics and Violence in Darfur, Oromia, and the Tana Delta

(جذور الصراعات العرقية في إفريقيا: السياسة والعنف في مناطق دارفور وأوروميا ودلتا تانا)

Author: Tsega Etefa

Are ethnic conflicts in Africa the product of age-old ancient hatreds? Tsega Etefa’s new book, The Origins of Ethnic Conflict in Africa: Politics and Violence in Darfur, Oromia, and the Tana Delta, provides an answer, arguing that elites mobilize their co-ethnics for political gain. To do so, Etefa analyzed the historical roots of three different cases of ethnic conflict in Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya. Not only does his new book tell us why elites mobilize ethnically, Etefa also provides a series of recommendations to escape colonial legacies of identity politics.

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillian, 2019

Righteous Indignation

(نقمة الصالحين)

Author: Jabulani Mzinyathi

“When I vision through the seas of oppression and the grinding poverty I write not out anger but righteous indignation.” Jabulani Mzinyathi is the child of isiNdebele- and ChiShona-speaking parents in the Midlands Province of what was then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). He has published pieces in various journals and anthologies over the years and his maiden collection of poetry, Under The Steel Yoke, was published in 2018.

Publisher: Mwanaka Media and Publishing, Zimbabwe, 2019.

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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.

News and Issues
1. On the Whiteness of Anthropology
By Girish Dasani, July 8, 2019
When studying sociology as an undergraduate student at the National University of Singapore, I was introduced to the work of three seminal thinkers of modern social theory, who are considered to be the founding fathers of sociology: Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. My teachers at the time, while educating me on the impact of these men’s theories and their applications for an understanding of “modernity”, also emphasized that these theories emerged from a Eurocentric and Androcentric perspective.

Read the story in this link.

2. Britain Is Hoarding a Treasure No One Is Allowed to See
By Daniel Trilling, July 9, 2019
In a storeroom of the British Museum sits a collection of 11 wood and stone tablets that nobody is allowed to see. They are Christian plaques, or tabots, that represent the Ark of the Covenant, and they belong—though belong in this case is a contested term—to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which believes only its priests should view them.

Read the story in this link.

3. After Global Fact in Cape Town, the conversation around ‘Africa’ continues
By Daniela Flamini, June 27, 2019
When the International Fact-Checking Network decided to host Global Fact 6 in South Africa this year, the idea was to counter the Western-centric tendency of conferences past, which have consistently overrepresented Europe and North America. The IFCN believes part of this goal was reached; among more than 250 participants, the fact-checking annual summit welcomed six fact-checking organizations from Africa, three of which were new to the event.

Read the story in this link.

4. From Sudan to Kaepernick, Cartoonist Calls for Joint Fight Against Oppression
By James Reinl, July 12, 2019
On the face of it, the Sudanese protest movement and the American football star Colin Kaepernick, who kneeled during pre-match renditions of the US national anthem, do not have much in common. Think again, says Khalid AlBaih. The Sudanese cartoonist’s new exhibit opened in Manhattan this week, featuring his sharp takes on everything from his country’s political crisis to the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback. The way AlBaih tells it, Kaepernick and the crowds massed on Sudan’s streets are both examples of the have-nots of the world – often discernible by their darker skin tone – challenging the mighty

Read the story in this link.

5. Mapping Illicit Small Arms Flows in Africa
By Nicolas Florquin, Sigrid Lipott, Francis Wairagu, July 19, 2019
In the first-ever continental analysis of illicit arms flows in Africa, the African Union Commission and the Small Arms Survey identify the scale, availability, characteristics, and supply patterns of illicit small arms in Africa. The report finds that cross-border trafficking by land is the most prominent type of illicit arms flow on the continent.

Read the story in this link.

NEW BOOKS ‫كتب جديدة

Land, the State & The Unfinished Decolonisation Project in Africa: Essays in Honour of Professor Sam Moyo
الأرض والدولة ومشروع التحررغير المكتمل في إفريقيا))
Author: (Editors) Horman Chitonge, Yoichi Mine
This book focuses on the work of one of the leading African scholars on the land question and agrarian transformation in Africa—Sam Moyo. It offers a critical discussion, in conversation with Sam Moyo, of the land question and the response of African states. Since independence, African states have been trying to address the colonial legacy on land policy and governance. After six decades of formulating and implementing land reforms, most countries have not succeeded in decolonising approaches to land policy and the administrative framework. The book brings together the broader debates on the implications of decolonisation of Africa’s land policy. Through case studies from several African countries, the book offers an empirical analysis on land reforms and the emerging land relations, and how these affect land allocation and use, including agricultural production.
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2019

The African Roots of Marijuana
(جذورأعشاب الماريجوانا الأفريقية)
Author: Chris S. Duvall
There’s so much discussion in the contemporary United States about marijuana; debates focus on legalization and medicalization. Usually, Reefer Madness, Harry Anslinger, and race are brought into the conversation. But a big part of the larger marijuana story is missing. In Chris S. Duvall‘s new book, The African Roots of Marijuana, a distinctly non-American story is told that nevertheless has important lessons for current debates. Duvall helps us understand cannabis as a crop, commodity, and tool in African culture and in the history of slavery. He showcases the plant-person relationship and offers valuable lessons about colonialism and rise of ‘big marijuana’ in 2019.
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2019

Rethinking Black German Studies Approaches, Interventions, and Histories
(إعادة النظر في مناهج الدراسات الألمانية الأفريقية: اعتراضات وتواريخ)
Author: (editors) Tiffany Florvil and Vanessa Plumly,
Examining black German studies as a critical, hermeneutic field of inquiry, the contributions are organized around three thematically conceptualized sections: German and Austrian literature and history; pedagogy and theory; and art and performance. Presenting critical works in the fields of performance studies, communication and rhetoric, and musicology, the volume complicates traditional historical narratives, interrogates interdisciplinary methods, and introduces theoretical approaches that help to advance the field.
Publisher: Peter Lang, 2018

The Bavino Sermons
(مواعيظ بافينو)
Author: Lesego Rampolokeng
Born in Orlando West, Soweto, in Johannesburg, Lesego Rampolokeng is a poet, novelist, playwright, filmmaker and writing teacher who rose to prominence in the 1980s, a turbulent period in South Africa’s history. Originally published in 1999, The Bavino Sermons includes memorable poems such as ‘Lines for Vincent’, ‘Riding the victim train’, ‘To Gil Scott-Heron’, ‘Crab attack’,‘Rap Ranting’ and ‘The Fela Sermon’.
Publisher: Deep South, South Africa, 2019

Globalizing Morocco Transnational Activism and the Postcolonial State
(عولمة المغرب: الأنشطة الحركية عبر القارات ودولة ما بعد الاستعمار)
Author: David Stenner
David Stenner’s Globalizing Morocco enriches our understanding of Morocco’s nationalist movement. Stenner examines a collection of previously poorly-studied activists whose work began in the international zone in Morocco and then filtered out into the Arab world, France, and to the United States. Stenner shows how this was accomplished, namely via a decentralized system of activists who worked to win over sympathizers and transform them into allies. One consequence of this was that it was highly effective: Morocco became a global issue for a time, even amidst the competing issues of the early Cold War. At the same time, this approach had a number of weaknesses. The fact that it was decentralized and had no hierarchies also made it relatively easy to co-opt, and many important activists found themselves sidelined in the period after independence.
Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2019

Revelations of Dominance and Resilience: Unearthing the Buried Past of The Akpini, Akan, Germans and British at Kpando, Ghana
(حكايات الهيمنة والصمود: نيش ماضي مجموعات أكبيني وأكان والألمان والبريطانيين في كباندو، دولة غانا)
Author: Wazi Apoh
In this volume chronicling the complex imperial and colonial entanglements of the Kpando region in eastern Ghana over recent centuries, the lions have found their proverbial historian. Drawing on an array of sources—archaeological, oral historical and documentary—Wazi Apoh brings locally nuanced perspective to the complex social political economic entanglements among Akpini, German and British actors. His illumination of previously silenced histories provides a rich platform from which to provoke us to imagine and act on the possibilities for restorative repatriation in the present. Its novel combination of historical study with analysis of ongoing dialogues over repatriation is a unique contribution to African studies.
Publisher: Sub-Saharan Publishers, Ghana, 2019

Foreign Policy as Nation Making: Turkey and Egypt in the Cold War
(حين تتحول السياسة الخارجية الى بناء أمة: حالات تركيا ومصر أثناء الحرب الباردة)
Author: Reem Abou-El-Fadl
After the Second World War, Turkey and Egypt were among the most dynamic actors in the Middle East. Their 1950s foreign policies presented a puzzle, however: Turkey’s Democrat Party pursued NATO membership and sponsored the pro-Western Baghdad Pact regionally, while Egypt’s Free Officers promoted neutralism and pan-Arab alliances. This book asks why; what explains this divergence in a shared historical space? Rethinking foreign policy as an important site for the realisation of nationalist commitments, Abou-El-Fadl finds the answer in the contrasting nation making projects pursued by the two leaderships, each politicised differently through experiences of war, imperialism and underdevelopment. Drawing on untapped Turkish and Arabic sources, and critically engaging with theories of postcolonial nationalism, she emphasises local actors’ agency in striving to secure national belonging, sovereignty and progress in the international field. Her analysis sheds light on the contemporary legacies of the decade which cemented Turkey’s position in the Western Bloc and Egypt’s reputation as an Arab leader.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2019

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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.

Research Africa: June 30th, 2019

Research Africa Survey Update

The preliminary Research Africa Demographic Survey Results can be found here. The survey will be run again with hopes of reaching a greater percentage of our 1,400 subscribers. We’d appreciate your future participation in our study.

News and Issues

1. Quand le rap français était Noir

18 janvier 2018

Quand le rap français était Noir revient sur l’épopée des groupes de rap français des années 1990 et 2000. Ou quand les rappeurs noirs étaient les maîtres de ce style musical, qu’ils faisaient à eux seuls tourner cette industrie et tentèrent même de la conquérir.

Read the story in this link.

Quand le rap français était Noir: I/ L’art de la revendication
www.nofi.media
Quand le rap français était Noir revient sur l’épopée des groupes de rap français des années 1990 et 2000. Ou quand les rappeurs noirs étaient les maîtres de ce style musical, qu’ils faisaient à eux seuls tourner cette industrie et tentèrent même de la conquérir. Entre passion et professionnalisme; talent et désillusions, ce dossier est l’occasion

2. Dark is Divine: A Photographer Uses his Camera to Challenge India’s Obsession with Fairness

By Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri, January 18, 2018

The unrelenting obsession with fair skin in India has been a subject of discussion for years. It has inspired campaigns, such Dark is Beautiful and #BinTheTube, which encouraged women to discard their fairness creams. And yet, the tendency to see fair people on television, in films and to uphold them as the standard for beauty remains strong. Apart from popular culture, there is also a bias over skin colour in religious iconography. The myriad of Hindu gods and goddesses – Lakshmi, Ganesh and Shiva – are often fair-skinned in their visual representation.

Read the story in this link.

Dark is Divine: A photographer uses his camera to challenge India’s obsession with fairness – Scroll.in – Latest News, In depth news, India news, Politics news, Indian Cinema, Indian sports, Culture, Video News
scroll.in
Photography Dark is Divine: A photographer uses his camera to challenge India’s obsession with fairness Chennai-based Naresh Nil’s images depict gods and goddesses as dark-skinned.

3. Africa Helping to Shape the World

By: Kingsley Ighobor, June 4, 2019

Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, was on 4 June elected President of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly. His tenure will begin in September 2019. In this interview with Africa Renewal’s Kingsley Ighobor, Prof. Bande talks about his vision, Africa’s socioeconomic challenges including eliminating poverty, addressing climate change, promoting gender equality, and deploying multilateralism to achieving global agenda. These are excerpts.

Read the story in this link.

4. “I am Omar ibn Said”

By David Cecelski, June 27, 2019

In 1903, British colonial administrator Sir Charles Norton Edgecumbe Eliot made a bold statement: “It is not uncommon for a country to create a railway, but it is uncommon for a railway to create a country.” The country was Kenya. The railway became known as the Lunatic Express. Now 116 years later, another railway line has been built almost parallel to those same tracks in a bid to transform this part of Africa, but this time by a different world power: China.

Read the story in this link.

NEW BOOKS ‫كتب جديدة

The Doctrine of Atonement for Building Human Rights in Malawi

(نحو اطار فقهي لحقوق الإنسان في ملاوي)

Author: Joseph Andrew Thipa

This study is a critical investigation of a theological basis for believers and the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian in Malawi to support a culture of human dignity and human rights, and specifically in line with the classic Reformed doctrine of atonement, as reflected in the works of Calvin and Barth and also the Westminster Confession. It is argued in this study that the very essence of public recognition and consistent implementation of human rights is far reaching when understood in light of the Reformed view of the atonement.

Publisher: Kachere Series, Malawi, 2019

Entre Nous: Between the World Cup and Me

(عهد بيننا: قصتي مع كأس العالم في كرة القدم)

Author: Grant Farred

In Entre Nous, Grant Farred examines the careers of international football stars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez to theorize the relationship between sports and the intertwined experiences of relation, separation, and belonging. Additionally, he includes his own experience playing for an amateur township team in apartheid South Africa. Drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of relation and Heideggerian ontology, Farred outlines how various relationships—the significantly distinct relationships Messi has with his club team FC Barcelona and the Argentine national team; Farred’s shifting modes of relation as he moved between his South African team and his Princeton graduate student team; and Suarez’s deep bond with Uruguay’s national team coach Oscar Tabarez—demonstrate the ways the politics of relation both exist within and transcend sports. Farred demonstrates that approaching sports philosophically offers particularly insightful means of understanding the nature of being in the world, thereby opening new paths for exploring how the self is constituted in its relation to the other.

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2019

Une Jeune Femme sur Un Bateau IVRE Agathe Uwilingiyimana du Rwanda

(قصة شابة على متن قارب: رواية من رواندا)

Author : Innocent Butare

Très peu de personnes auront eu à traverser des temps aussi troublés que ceux que vécut Agathe Uwilingiyimana comme Premier ministre du Rwanda avant le génocide. Au sujet de cette femme de tête, ses idées et son action, bien des questions demeurent sans réponse. Qui l’a assassinée et pourquoi ? Aurait-elle tenté un putsch contre le Président Habyarimana ? Aurait-elle trempé dans le complot visant à assassiner ce dernier ? Comment entendait-elle sauver le pays du chaos et de la descente aux enfers après la disparition inopinée du Président de la République qu’elle avait si âprement combattu ? Était-elle maîtresse de ses décisions ou était-elle désinformée ou manipulée ? Pourquoi et comment cette enseignante récemment embarquée en politique a-t-elle été la cible privilégiée de la presse de caniveau, entre 1992 et 1994 ? Quel comportement exceptionnel a-t-elle eu pour que la patrie reconnaissante l’élève au rang des héros dans l’ordre d’Imena ? Son royaume d’enfance, son adolescence et sa jeunesse préfiguraient-ils un destin si singulier ?

Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2019

West Germany and Namibia’s Path to Independence, 1969-1990 Foreign Policy and Rivalry with East Germany

(قصة ااستقلال ناميبيا من المانيا الغربية 1969-1990 : قراءات في السياسة الخارجية والتنافسية مع ألمانيا الشرقية)

Author: Thorsten Kern

Namibia’s main liberation movement, the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), relied heavily on outside support for its armed struggle against South Africa’s occupation of what it called South West Africa. While East Germany’s solidarity with Namibia’s struggle for national self-determination has received attention, little research has been done on West Germany’s policy towards Namibia, which must be seen against the backdrop of inter-German rivalry. The impact of the wider realities of the Cold War on Namibia’s rocky path to independence leaves ample room for research and new interpretations. In West Germany and Namibia’s Path to Independence, 1969-1990: Foreign Policy and Rivalry with East Germany, Thorsten Kern shows that German division played a vital role in West Germany’s position towards Namibia during the Cold War. West German foreign policy towards Namibia at the height of the Namibian liberation struggle is investigated and discussed within its historical context. The two states’ deeply diverging policies, characterised by competition for infuence over SWAPO, were strongly affected by the Cold War rivalry between the capitalist West and the communist East. Yet ultimately the dynamics of rapprochement helped to bring about Namibia’s independence.

Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Namibia , 2019

White Masks

(أقنعة بيضاء)

Author: Ebi Yeibo

This collection of poetry both reflects and creates phenomena that we now regard as characteristic of our age – the crisis of nationhood and the burden of citizenship. Ebi Yeibo’s White Masks unambiguously exposes the dystopian nightmares of a nation and a people’s willing detachment from humanity. While some poets of his generation are content with dreaming of an ideal world, in White Masks, Yeibo, through the resources of memory, experiments with the idea of a better world.

Publisher: Malthouse Press, Nigeria, 2019

Wrapping Authority: Women Islamic Leaders in a Sufi Movement in Dakar, Senegal

(إيواء الايوان: القيادات الاسلامية النسائية في الحركات الصوفية في السنغال)

Author: Joseph Hill

Since 2000, a growing number of women in Dakar, Senegal have come to act openly as spiritual leaders for both men and women. As urban youth turn to the Fayḍa Tijāniyya Sufi Islamic movement in search of direction and community, these women provide guidance in practicing Islam and cultivating mystical knowledge of God. While female Islamic leaders may appear radical in a context where women have rarely exercised Islamic authority, they have provoked surprisingly little controversy. Wrapping Authority tells these women’s stories and explores how they have developed ways of leading that feel natural to themselves and those around them.

Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2018

Gender Terrains in African Cinema

(قضايا الجنسين في السينما الإفريقية)

Author: Dominica Dipio

Gender Terrains in African Cinema reflects on a body of canonical African filmmakers who address a trajectory of pertinent social issues. Dipio analyzes gender relations around three categories of female characters – the girl child, the young woman and the elderly woman in comparison to their male counterparts. Although gender remains the focal point in this lucid and fascinating text, Dipio focuses her discussion on African feminism in relation to Western feminism. With its broad appeal to African humanities, Gender Terrains in African Cinema stands as a unique and radical contribution to the field of African film studies, which until now, has suffered from a paucity of scholarship.

Publisher: NISC (Pty) Ltd, South Africa, 2019.

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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.

Research Africa: May 28th, 2019

News and Issues
1. The Brilliant Women Making A Difference In Sudan’s Female-Led Revolution
By Amel Mukhtar, May 24, 2019
For 155 days so far — almost half a year — protests against the Sudanese regime have taken over life in the country. It took 113 of those days to finally depose its president of 30 years, Omar Al-Bashir, in a phenomenal first win for its citizens. However, his regime remains and, since April 6, hundreds of thousands of the population have formed a sit-in demanding their democracy. Despite the oppressive Public Order Law, a moral prohibition that can arbitrarily punish women for “indecent acts” such as wearing trousers or walking alone, and despite government orders for militia to target them in shocking ways, women powerfully form the vast majority of protests. They have refused to let energy lull, instead becoming the loudest voices carrying out the most rebellious actions.

Read the story in this link.
The Brilliant Women Making A Difference In Sudan’s Female-Led Revolution
www.vogue.co.uk
Vogue speaks to three Sudanese women vital to the paradigm shift

2. African Samurai: The Enduring Legacy of a Black Warrior in Feudal Japan
By Natalie Leung, May 20, 2019
When feudal Japan’s most powerful warlord Nobunaga Oda met Yasuke, a black slave-turned-retainer, in 1581, he believed the man was a god.Oda had never seen an African before. And like the locals in Japan’s then-capital of Kyoto, he was awed by Yasuke’s height, build and skin tone, according to Thomas Lockley, the author of “African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan.”
“When Yasuke got to Kyoto (with Jesuit missionaries), there was a massive riot. People wanted to see him and be in his presence,” says Lockley, who spent nine years researching and writing the book, which was published last month.
Read the story in this link.

3. The Boy Abducted to Guide Blind Beggars in Nigeria
By Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, May 19, 2019

Samuel Abdulraheem has no recollection of the day he was abducted, aged seven, from his family home in the northern Nigerian city of Kano. Although he came from a large family – his father had 17 children by four wives – Samuel was on his own with a nanny that day. His family were told he had gone outside to ride his bicycle. They would not see him again for another six years.
“There is nothing we didn’t do to try to find him,” his older sister Firdausi Okezie recalls. Then aged 21, she was not made aware of his disappearance at first. Her brother had always enjoyed rushing to answer the phone and speak with her when she called home from university. But when other members of the household began answering it when she rang, she suspected something was wrong.

Read the story in this link.
The boy abducted to guide blind beggars
www.bbc.com
How a seven-year-old was stolen from his home in Nigeria and the chance encounter with his sister six years later.

4. A Legacy of Lunacy Haunts Kenya’s Old Railway.
By Jenni Marsh, May 21, 2019

In 1903, British colonial administrator Sir Charles Norton Edgecumbe Eliot made a bold statement: “It is not uncommon for a country to create a railway, but it is uncommon for a railway to create a country.” The country was Kenya. The railway became known as the Lunatic Express. Now 116 years later, another railway line has been built almost parallel to those same tracks in a bid to transform this part of Africa, but this time by a different world power: China. Will China’s $3.6B line be different? Kenya took on huge debt to buy a modern railway from Beijing that it hopes will boost its economy … despite the controversy it has attracted.

Read the story in this link.

5. Sekou Toure’s iconic 1963 speech on Africa’s endless possibilities as a united force
By Francis Akhalbey, May 24, 2019

May 25 of every year in Africa is Africa Day. The day is set aside by the African Union (AU) to commemorate the founding of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Throughout this week, which is also termed #AfricaWeek, Face2Face Africa will be sharing some iconic speeches by the founding fathers of the Organization of African Unity as a build up to Africa Day. Here’s the 1963 speech by the former president of Guinea and staunch pan-Africanist Ahmed Sekou Touré titled “The life of a man is counted in decades; the life of Africa is endless.”

Read the story in this link.

6. Being Black in Nazi Germany
By Damian Zane, May 22, 2019

Standing among her white classmates, who stare straight into the camera, she enigmatically glances to the side. Curiosity about the photograph – who the girl was and what she was doing in Germany – set the award-winning film-maker off on a path that led to Where Hands Touch, a new movie starring Amandla Stenberg and George MacKay. It is an imagined account of a mixed-race teenager’s clandestine relationship with a Hitler Youth member, but it is based on historical record.

Read the story in this link.
Being black in Nazi Germany
www.bbc.com
A new film explores the little-known story of Germany’s mixed-race population in the 1930s and 1940s.

NEW BOOKS ‫كتب جديدة

From African Peer Review Mechanisms To African Queer Review Mechanisms: Robert Gabriel Mugabe, Empire and the Decolonisation of African Orifices
( من آليات المحاسبة الندية إلى آليات الملاطفة الغرامية في أفريقيا: قراءات في أفكار روبرت غابرييل موغابي حول الإمبراطورية وإنهاء الاستعمار في الوسط الأفريقي)
Author/ (Editors): Artwell Nhemachena, Tapiwa Victor Warikandwa
This book juxtaposes economic liberalisation with the mounting liberalisation of African orifices. Reading land repossession and economic structural adjustment programmes together with what they call neoimperial structural adjustment of African orifices, the authors argue that there has been liberalisation of African orifices in a context where Africans are ironically prevented from repossessing their material resources. Juxtaposing recent bouts of Mugabephobia with discourses on homophobia, the book asks why empire prefers liberalising African orifices rather than attending to African demands for restitution, restoration and reparations. Noting that empire opposes African sovereignty, autonomy, and centralisation of power while paradoxically promoting transnational corporations’ centralisation of power over African economies, the book challenges contemporary discourses about shared sovereignty, distributed governance, heterarchy, heteronomy and onticology. Arguing that colonialists similarly denied Africans of their human essence, the volume problematises queer sexualities, homosexuality, ecosexuality, cybersexuality and humanoid robotic sexuality all of which complicate supposedly fundamental distinctions between human beings and animals and machines.
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2019

Connecting South-South Communities The Narrative of South African-Malaysian Relations
( ربط مجتمعات الجنوب مجتمعات الجنوب: سرد العلاقات بين جنوب إفريقيا وماليزيا)
Author: Muhammed Haron
In addition to offering a comprehensive overview and fair insight over more than twenty five years into the relations between two South Middle Powers, namely South Africa and Malaysia, this book also discusses them within their respective regional structures and evaluates their diplomatic and commercial connections. It also explores issues that have generally been neglected by international relations experts; in this regard, it gives attention to cultural contacts that bring the critical role of non-state actors into the forefront of international affairs. Since the ideas espoused by South Africa and Malaysia’s political leaders are rooted in their specific national and broad regional philosophies, the study also unpacks the notions of the ’African ways’ vis-à-vis the ‘Asian ways’ in maintaining and sustaining state-to-state relations within the two regions. This book, which uses Critical Theory as an appropriate framework takes full recognition of various developments in international relations and adds to the fields of social sciences and the humanities.
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018

Fictioning Namibia as a Space of Desire: An Excursion into the Literary Space of Namibia During Colonialism, Apartheid and the Liberation Struggle
(تخيل ناميبيا كفضاء للهوى والرغبات)
Author: Renzo Baas
Modern-day Namibian history has largely been shaped by three major eras: German colonial rule, South African apartheid occupation, and the Liberation Struggle. It was, however, not only military conquest that laid the cornerstone for the colony, but also how the colony was imagined, the ‘dream’ of this colony. As a tool of discursive worldmaking, literature has played a major role in providing a framework in which to ‘dream’ Namibia: first from outside its borders and then from within. In Fictioning Namibia as a Space of Desire, Renzo Baas employs Henri Lefebvre’s city–countryside dialectic and reworks it in order to uncover how fictional texts played an integral part in the violent acquisition of a foreign territory. Through the production of myths around whiteness, German and South African authors designed a literary space in which control, destruction, and the dehumanisation of African peoples are understood as a natural order, one that is dictated by history and its linear continuation. These European texts are offset by Namibia’s first novel by an African, offering a counter-narrative to the colonial invention that was (German) South West Africa.
Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2019

KENDA MŨIYŨRU: Rũgano rwa Gĩkũyũ na Mũmbi
Author: Ngugi wa Thiong’oAuthor
One particular night, Ngugi suddenly woke up
He felt like the eyes of his heart had been opened
He had got a revelation
He went to his living room and took a pen.
He started writing this story about Gikuyu and Mumbi
And their perfect nine.
So this is not history, it is a revelation;

A revelation of love
A revelation of hope
A revelation of perseverance
A revelation of bravery
A revelation of knowledge
Publisher: East African Educational Publishers, Kenya, 2018

Experiments with Empire: Anthropology and Fiction in the French Atlantic
(اختبارات تجريبية مع الإمبراطورية: الأنثروبولوجيا والخيال في ظل الحكم الفرنسي للمحيط الأطلسي)
Author: Justin Izzo
In Experiments with Empire, Justin Izzo examines how twentieth-century writers, artists, and anthropologists from France, West Africa, and the Caribbean experimented with ethnography and fiction in order to explore new ways of understanding the colonial and postcolonial world. Focusing on novels, films, and ethnographies that combine fictive elements and anthropological methods, Izzo shows how empire gives ethnographic fictions the raw materials for thinking beyond empire’s political and epistemological boundaries. In works by French surrealist writer Michel Leiris, filmmaker Jean Rouch, Malian writer Amadou Hampâté Bâ, and Martinican author Patrick Chamoiseau, anthropology no longer functions on behalf of imperialism as a way to understand and administer colonized peoples; its relationship with imperialism gives writers and artists the opportunity for textual experimentation and political provocation. Anthropology, Izzo also contends, helps readers to better make sense of the complicated legacy of imperialism and to imagine new democratic futures
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2019
——– ———— ———–
Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.

Research Africa: May 18th, 2019

Notes from the Research Africa Editorial Team

Dear Research Africa community members,

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News and Issues

1. Special Issue on Sudan. “Down with the Government of Thieves!” Reflection on the Sudanese Revolutionary Dynamics

By Clément Deshayes, Margaux Etienne and Khadidja Medani, May 7, 2019

Since December 2018, Sudan has experienced demonstrations calling for the fall of Omar al-Bashir, who has led the country since 1989, as well as the whole regime. In this special issue, dedicated to the Sudanese uprising, Noria offers an analysis of the socio-historical dynamics which underlie the unprecedented mobilizations of the past four months. This issue offers a unique collection of field-based analyzes on the Sudanese upraising.

Read the story in this link.

Special Issue on Sudan. “Down with the Government of Thieves!” : Reflection on the Sudanese revolutionary Dynamics – Noria
www.noria-research.com
Since December 2018, Sudan has experienced demonstrations calling for the fall of Omar al-Bashir, who has led the country since 1989, as well as the whole regime. In this special issue, dedicated to the Sudanese uprising, Noria offers an analysis of the socio-historical dynamics which underlie the unprecedented mobilizations of the past four months. This …
2. The Roots of Sudan’s Upheaval

By John Campbell, May 9, 2019

While the Sudanese military expelled President Omar al-Bashir from office, the people of Sudan are ultimately responsible for toppling his regime, and the leaders of the protest movement have promised not to let up until civilian rule is secured. They well know that any persistence of military control represents a continuation of the Bashir regime, and in particular, the Arabic-speaking population’s monopoly of power. For three decades they have endured the suppression of civil society, labor unions, freedom of press and religion, and any real measure of democratic expression or development. The Sudanese people have enough experience with the security apparatus Bashir created to know that exchanging one general with another does not represent improvement.

Read the story here.

3. To Develop Africa, Break with Capitalism

By Giovanni Vimercate, April 26, 2019

Guyanese historian, academic and political activist Walter Rodney was assassinated in 1980 at the age of 38. Yet almost 40 years after his death, Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa remains as relevant as when published: a call to arms in the class struggle for racial equality.

Walter Rodney examined the economics of colonialism and showed the profound connections between racial inequality and social injustice. Today, his ideas are as compelling as ever.

Read the story in this link.

‘To develop Africa, break with capitalism’
www.newframe.com
Walter Rodney examined the economics of colonialism and showed the profound connections between racial inequality and social injustice. Today, his ideas are as compelling as ever.

4. “Sudan gives us confidence,” What’s Next for Uganda’s Opposition?

By Sophie Neimanmay, May 9, 2019

Outside of the Chief Magistrate Court in Kampala, crowds of young people decked in red berets and clothing sing and cheer. They came here to support Bobi Wine at his bail application hearing and are now jubilantly celebrating his release. Others race down the road to the popular singer’s home, fighting police tear gas on the way, to give him a hero’s welcome. These scenes are evidence of how big a following Bobi Wine (real name Robert Kyagulanyi) has built up in Uganda today. Drawing on his rough upbringing in Kampala’s slums, the 37-year-old singer-turned-politician has styled himself as a warrior for ordinary people. His critiques of Uganda’s many ills in his speeches and songs have won him widespread support, particularly among a frustrated youth.

Read the story here.

“Sudan gives us confidence”: What next for Uganda’s opposition? – African Arguments
africanarguments.org
Uganda’s government is clamping down heavily on opposition figure Bobi Wine, but he and his supporters remain undeterred. Outside of the Chief Magistrate Court in Kampala, crowds of young people decked in red berets and clothing sing and cheer. They came here to support Bobi Wine at his bail application hearing and are now jubilantly celebrating his release. Others race down the road to the popular singer’s home, fighting police tear gas on the way, to give him a hero’s welcome. These scenes are evidence of how big a following Bobi Wine (real name Robert Kyagulanyi) has built up in …

5. The story of Oromo Slaves Bound for Arabia who were Taken to South Africa

By Fred Morton, May 13, 2019

In September 1888, the HMS Osprey serving in the Royal Navy’s anti-slave trade mission in the Red Sea based in Aden, intercepted three dhows embarked from Rahayta and Tadjoura on the Ethiopia coast. Aboard were 204 boys and girls bound for resale in Arabian markets. Other dhows with young human cargo were also apprehended. The children came from the highland area of Oromia Region of Ethiopia, and spoke the Oromo language.

Read the story in this link.

The story of Oromo slaves bound for Arabia who were taken to South Africa
qz.com
The story of the 204 boys and girls is captured in a new book laden with graphs, maps, charts and statistics.

NEW BOOKS ‫كتب جديدة

African Feminist Theology and Baptist Pastors’ Wives in Malawi

(الحركة النسائية الإفريقية: حالة دراسية للعلاقة بين علم الاهوت وزوجات القساوسة في ملاوي)

Author: Molly Longwe

This book presents a story of the experiences of the pastors’ wives within the Baptist Convention of Malawi (BACOMA). Formed in 1970 out of the missionary endeavors of the North American-based Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), BACOMA is a voluntary national association of Baptist churches. Molly Longwe‘s book presents a concise picture of African Feminist Theology and relates it to the lived experiences of pastors‘ wives in the Baptist Convention of Malawi.

Publisher: Luviri Press, Malawi, 2019

Children of Hope: The Odyssey of the Oromo Slaves from Ethiopia to South Africa

(أطفال الرجاء: مآسي المسترقين من قبائل أورومو الايثيوبيين المرحلين إلى جنوب إفريقيا)

Author: Sandra Rowoldt Shell

In Children of Hope, Sandra Rowoldt Shell traces the lives of sixty-four Oromo children who were enslaved in Ethiopia in the late nineteenth century, liberated by the British navy and ultimately sent to Lovedale Institution, a Free Church of Scotland mission in South Africa for their safety. Because Scottish missionaries in Yemen interviewed each of the Oromo children shortly after their liberation, we have sixty-four, structured life histories told by the children themselves.

Publisher: Ohio University Press, 2018

Citizenship in Motion: South African and Japanese Scholars in Conversation

(نحو تجديد المواطنة: حوار بين علماء من جنوب أفريقيا وعلماء من اليابان)

Author: (Editor) Itsuhiro Hazama, Kiyoshi Umeya, Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Anthropological reflections on citizenship focus on themes such as politics, ethnicity and state management. Present day scholarship on citizenship tends to problematize, unsettle and contest often taken-for-granted conventional connotations and associations of citizenship with imagined culturally bounded political communities of rigidly controlled borders. This book, the result of two years of research conducted by South African and Japanese scholars, provides a framework on citizenship in the 21st century and contributes to ongoing efforts to rethink citizenship globally, as informed by particular experiences in Africa and Japan. Central to the essays in this book is the concept of flexible citizenship, predicated on a recognition of the histories of human and cultural mobility and of the shaping and reshaping of places and spaces. In these discussions, the authors grapple with the ideas of being and belonging, core elements of humanity.

Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2019

Linguistics in Pursuit of Justice

(اللغويات: نحو تحقيق العدالة)

Author: John Baugh, Author

As a black child growing up in inner-city neighborhoods in Philadelphia and Los Angeles, John Baugh witnessed racial discrimination at a young age and began to notice correlations between language and race. While attending college he worked at a laundromat serving African Americans who were often subjected to mistreatment by the police. His observations piqued his curiosity about the ways that linguistic diversity might be related to the burgeoning Civil Rights movement for racial equality in America. Baugh pursued these ideas while traveling internationally only to discover alternative forms of linguistic discrimination in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean and South America. He coined the phrase ‘linguistic profiling’ based on experimental studies of housing discrimination, and expanded upon those findings to promote equity in education, employment, medicine, and the law. This book is the product of the culmination of these studies, devoted to the advancement of equality and global justice.

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2018

South Sudan: Elites, Ethnicity, Endless Wars and the Stunted State

(جنوب السودان: النخب والقبليات والحروب الدائمة والدولة الواهنة)

Author: (Editor): Peter Adwok Nyaba

South Sudan: Elites, Ethnicity, Endless Wars and the Stunted State is likely to achieve its objective of stimulating debate about the future of South Sudan as a viable polity. The hope is that readers, through the debate generated by this book, will rediscover the commonality that marked the struggle for freedom, justice, and fraternity, and abandon ethnic ideologies as a means of constructing a modern state in South Sudan. This work is a must-read for South Sudanese intellectuals who seek to reshape South Sudan’s socioeconomic development and political trajectory.

Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, Tanzania, 2019

Our Own Way in This Part of the World: Biography of an African Community, Culture, and Nation

(منهجنا في هذا القطر من العالم: سيرة مجتمع وثقافة وأمة أفريقية)

Author: Kwasi Konadu

Kofi Donko was a blacksmith and farmer, as well as an important healer, intellectual, spiritual leader, settler of disputes, and custodian of values for his Ghanaian community. Kwasi Konadu centers Donko’s life story and experiences in a communography of Donko’s community and nation from the late nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth, which were shaped by historical forces from colonial Ghana’s cocoa boom to decolonization and political and religious parochialism. Although Donko touched the lives of thousands of citizens and patients, neither he nor they appear in national or international archives covering the region. Yet his memory persists in his intellectual and healing legacy, and the story of his community offers a non-national, decolonized example of social organization structured around spiritual forces that serves as a powerful reminder of the importance for scholars to take cues from the lived experiences and ideas of the people they study.

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2019.

The Marks: An Anthology of Literary Works on Boko Haram

(البصمات: مختارات من الأعمال الأدبية المكتوبة عن بوكو حرام)

Author: (Editor) Tanure Ojaide, Razinat T. Mohammed, Abubakar Othman

This anthology is an outcome of literary writers’ reaction to the Boko Haram insurgency in the north-eastern region of Nigeria. Life has not only been extensively disrupted by the group’s violent tactics and its mind-numbing levels of physical destruction but also has become disturbed as the number of people dislocated and seeking refuge in urban centers reaches the millions. These refugees, classified as Internally Displaced Persons and living in camps guarded by Nigerian soldiers, have received worldwide attention. Writers in the affected areas and elsewhere in Nigeria have responded in poetry, short stories, and non-fiction some of which are collected here.

Publisher: Malthouse Press, Nigeria, 2019

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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.

Research Africa: April 21, 2019

In Memoriam: R.S. O’Fahey
The Research Africa community is deeply saddened to learn of the passing of its cofounder, Rex Seán O’Fahey, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Bergen, Norway. An internationally recognized authority on the history of the Sudan and a scholar of Sufism, Dr. O’Fahey died on April 9 in Oslo. O’Fahey obtained his B.A. in African and Middle Eastern history from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), followed by a PhD in 1973, also from SOAS, with a thesis on the history of the Keira Sultanate of Darfur (17th to early 20th centuries). He taught African history for three years at the University of Khartoum and for one year at the University of Edinburgh. In 1972, O’Fahey arrived at the University of Bergen as the first research fellow in non-European history. He remained in Bergen for the rest of his career, becoming Reader and then Professor (in 1985) and helping transform the university into a vital hub for Sudan studies and for the study of the Islamic societies of eastern Africa more generally.

Read more about this scholar here:
https://isita.buffett.northwestern.edu/about/in-memoriam-r.s.-ofahey.html?fbclid=IwAR3w6Et8Kk7FYLgcrWuqrjR1y9dT1SzpCoYsfjMOeHeiqCzF1A6ItPXhlkE

Fellowship and Conference Announcements
1. The “Africa Multiple” Cluster of Excellence at the University of Bayreuth (Germany) invites scholars with PhDs working in the field of African studies to apply for African studies fellowships in the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies. Apply here.(Apr. 30).

2. The African Network 2019 Conference: “Decolonizing the Classroom”
Smith College, Northampton Massachusetts- September 27-29, 2019

Africanist teaching and scholarship has long fought to bring African voices to the center of scholarly debate. However, structural inequality and prejudice has also allowed colonial hierarchies within the academy to remain. Following the lead of growing African social movements like #RhodesMustFall, the Africanist community in the West must now grapple with their own traditions of power, privilege and exclusion.

Read the story in this link:

AN 2019 Conference CFP- Decolonizing the Classroom

AN 2019 Conference CFP- Decolonizing the Classroom – The Africa Network
www.theafricanetwork.org
“Decolonizing the Classroom”Africa Network’s Biennial ConferenceSmith College, Northampton Massachusetts- September 27-29, 2019. Africanist teaching and scholarship has long fought to bring African voices to the center of scholarly debate. However, structural inequality and prejudice has also allowed colonial hierarchies within the academy to remain.
News and Issues
1. Ghana Must Go: The ugly history of Africa’s most famous bag
By Shola Lawal, April 5, 2019

In 1983, Nigeria expelled two million undocumented West African migrants, half of whom were from Ghana. The sturdy, checked bags into which they packed their belongings have become a symbol of exclusion and intolerance. Nearly four decades later, the region is yet to confront its emotional baggage.

Read the story in this link:
http://atavist.mg.co.za/ghana-must-go-the-ugly-history-of-africas-most-famous-bag
GHANA MUST GO: The ugly history of Africa’s most famous bag – atavist.mg.co.za
atavist.mg.co.za
In 1983, Nigeria expelled two million undocumented West African migrants, half of whom were from Ghana. The sturdy, checked bags into which they packed their belongings have become a symbol of exclusion and intolerance.

2. Archivists race to digitize slavery records before the history is lost Global Nation
By Rupa Shenoy, April 4, 2019

Abu Koroma is the archivist in training at the National Archives of Sierra Leone, and he’ll remain the archivist in training until one of the two senior professionals retire. “That is how it is done,” he laughed. When Koroma started at the archives in 2004, Sierra Leone was emerging from civil war. He was fresh out of high school and his parents had died, so he desperately needed the small salary. And the archives fascinated Korma; they date back to the first treaty regional leaders made with British colonists in 1788.

Read the story in this link:
https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-04-04/archivists-race-digitize-slavery-records-history-lost?utm_campaign=TheWorld&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow&fbclid=IwAR2SJSoVu9FIqMEW5yML0mRGkn7wfzijevBTvhBCTcm1vQBdLE3KXoIwBjQ
Archivists race to digitize slavery records before the history is lost
www.pri.org
The era of the trans-Atlantic slavery is documented in archives in former colonies around the world. Now, just as there’s the most potential to use those documents to fill in large gaps in history, some of those archives are at risk of being lost.

3. Protesters in Sudan and Algeria Have Learned From the Arab Spring
By Ismail Kushkush, April 13, 2019
A photograph has been floating around on social media recently featuring six Arab leaders at a summit meeting in 2010, all with red X marks on them. The first four, from left to right, were deposed during the Arab Spring in 2011: Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, Yemen’s Ali Abdullah Saleh, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. The two on the far right—Algeria’s Abdelaziz Bouteflika and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir—lasted longer, but it appears their day, too, has come.

Read the story in this link:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2019/04/protesters-sudan-and-algeria-have-learned-arab-spring/587113/?fbclid=IwAR1es-xuRb4xFIdVzNb5aUXIBVLvLIb9KHIsGlKq2fjD-EW05th_8px0hQA
Protesters in Sudan and Algeria Have Learned From the Arab Spring
www.theatlantic.com
The demonstrations have their own local characteristics, but there are several parallels.

4. The Handwritten Heritage of South Africa’s Kitabs
By Alia Yunis, March 2019

In an orange house along one of the sloped lanes of Bo-Kaap, Cape Town’s Muslim neighborhood, 92-year-old Abdiyah Da Costa deftly climbs the stairs to the second floor to what essentially has become a personal museum. Meticulously dressed and made up—she used to own what she describes as four “high-fashion” clothing shops. Outside her window is a view of Cape Town’s iconic, flat-topped Table Mountain, which overlooks the city and the Atlantic Ocean. Inside, her walls are covered with black-and-white photos of her husband, parents, siblings and other relatives long gone. Her beaded wedding dress is on display, as are souvenirs from her pilgrimage to Makkah as well as awards and certificates received over the years. But we didn’t come to see these things. We came to see her kitabs.

Read the story in this link:
https://www.aramcoworld.com/en-US/Articles/March-2019/The-Handwritten-Heritage-of-South-Africa-s-Kitabs?fbclid=IwAR3XOhU-LyE_8JqPaAGO2854SJ3RLDFIyGfQXF7JK8DQUz9iqVMThbrvbFk
The Handwritten Heritage of South Africa’s Kitabs – AramcoWorld
www.aramcoworld.com
One heirloom connects Muslim families of Cape Town to heritage more than any other: a kitab. Historians and linguists value them, too, as some preserve the

New Books ‫كتب جديدة

Traditional Leaders in a Democracy: Resources, Respect and Resistance
(دور الزعماء التقليديين في الديمقراطية: بين الموارد والاحترام والمقاومة)
Author: (Editor) Mbongiseni Buthelezi & Dineo Skosana

Post-1994, South Africa’s traditional leaders have fought for recognition and positioned themselves as major players in the South African political landscape. Yet their role in a democracy is contested, with leaders often accused of abusing power, disregarding human rights, expropriating resources, and promoting tribalism. Some argue that democracy and traditional leadership are irredeemably opposed and cannot co-exist. Meanwhile, shifts in the political economy of the former bantustans − the introduction of platinum mining in particular − have attracted new interests and conflicts to these areas, with chiefs often designated as custodians of community interests. This edited volume explores how chieftancy is practiced, experienced and contested in contemporary South Africa. It includes case studies of how those living under the authority of chiefs, in a modern democracy, negotiate or resist this authority in their respective areas.
Publisher: Mapungubwe Institute (MISTRA), South Africa

Dani Nabudere’s Afrikology – A Quest for African Holism
(داني نابوديري أفريكولوجيا – مسائل عن الشمولية الأفريقية)
Author: Sanya Osha

Dani Wadada Nabudere, the illustrious Ugandan scholar, produced a work that touches on the diversity of African culture, politics, and philosophy. Toward the end of his life, he formulated a theoretical construct that he termed “Afrikology.” Unlike most other Afrocentrists, who have failed to go beyond proving the primacy of the Egyptian past and its numerous cultural and scientific achievements, Nabudere strenuously attempts to connect that illustrious heritage with the African present. This, remarkably, is what makes his project worthy of careful attention. His corpus is multidisciplinary; his writings deal with critiques of imperialism, African political systems, processes of globalization and Africa’s location within them. The ideological and existential imperatives of Afrocentric discourse is critical to the work and its purpose.
Publisher: CODESRIA, Dakar, 2018

Counterterrorism Law and Practice in the East African Community
(قانون وممارسات مكافحة الإرهاب في مجتمع شرق إفريقيا)
Author: Christopher E. Bailey

This book examines the existing counter-terrorism laws and practices in the six-member East African Community (EAC) as it applies to a range of law enforcement and military activities under various international legal obligations. Dr. Christopher E. Bailey provides a comparative examination of existing national laws for EAC countries, including compliance with obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law, and offers a range of legal reform recommendations. This book addresses two primary, related researchquestions: To what extent do the current national counter-terrorism laws and practices of the EAC Partner States comply with existing international human rights safeguards? What laws or practices can the EAC adopt to achieve better compliance with human rights safeguards in both civilian and military counter-terrorism operations?
Publisher: Brill Publications

Challenges and Opportunities for Inclusive Development in Ethiopia
(تحديات وفرص التنمية الشاملة في إثيوبيا)
Author: (Editor) Dessalegn Rahmato, Meheret Ayenew

As part of its on-going public dialogue program on progress in Ethiopia’s development and public policy, the Forum for Social Studies is undertaking a project on the theme of ‘Prospects and Challenges for Inclusive and Participatory Development in Ethiopia’. The aim is to enable researchers and professionals to present evidence-based papers to stimulate debate and reflection on this topic. This first book in the program looks at the impact of development or lack of it, on specific social groups, namely women, young people and vulnerable sectors of the population that should be entitled to social care.
Publisher: Forum for Social Studies, Ethiopia, 2018

Boundaries, Communities, and State-Making in West Africa: The Centrality of the Margins
(الحدود والمجتمعات وبناء الدولة في غرب إفريقيا: نحو مركزية الأطراف)
Author: Paul Nugent

Border regions are often considered to be the neglected margins. In this book, Paul Nugent argues through a comparison of the Senegambia and the trans-Volta (Ghana/Togo) that the geographical margins have shaped notions of centers. This study surveys three centuries of history to demonstrate that states were forged through an extended process of converting a topography of settled states and slaving frontiers into colonial borders. It argues that post-colonial states and larger social contracts have been configured very differently as a consequence. It underscores the impact on regional dynamics and the phenomenon of peripheral urbanism. Nugent also addresses the manner in which a variegated sense of community has been forged amongst Mandinka, Jola, Ewe and Agotime populations who have both shaped and been shaped by the border. This exercise in reciprocal comparison motivates the audience to shuffle between scales, from the local and the particular to the national and the regional.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2019.

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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.

Research Africa: March 31, 2019

News and Issues

1. Why do so many Egyptian statues have broken noses?

By Julia Wolkoff, March 20, 2019

The most common question that curator Edward Bleiberg fields from visitors to the Brooklyn Museum’s Egyptian art galleries is a straightforward but salient one: Why are the statues’ noses broken? Bleiberg, who oversees the museum’s extensive holdings of Egyptian, Classical and ancient Near Eastern art, was surprised the first few times he heard this question. He had taken for granted that the sculptures were damaged; his training in Egyptology encouraged visualizing how a statue would look if it were still intact.

Read the story in this link:

https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/egyptian-statues-broken-noses-artsy/index.html?utm_term=link&utm_content=2019-03-21T04%3A06%3A17&utm_medium=social&utm_source=fbCNNi&fbclid=IwAR1TLRdqzKoPY_3ArnJpvEF-S0vJYEae_sXza67hp6GD1xfqWRDmLMgI5FE

Why do so many Egyptian statues have broken noses?
edition.cnn.com
The pattern of damage to statues’ faces has led experts to believe it was both deliberate and widespread in the ancient world.

2. How Sudan’s uprising is inspiring a generation of Sudanese American teens

By Hana Baba, March 20, 2019

Nearly two dozen people gathered for a symposium in Hayward, California about the recent protests in Sudan. Those who come to these Sudan-related events are usually adults — first-generation Sudanese immigrants to the United States. But this gathering was different as the featured speakers were Sudanese American teenagers. The uprising in Sudan has inspired a new generation of Sudanese American youth to become politically engaged with their motherland for the first time.

Read the story in this link:

https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-03-20/how-sudan-s-uprising-inspiring-generation-sudanese-american-teens?fbclid=IwAR1lkjuWbl8NyWwST85SBKnOkPxtUYAisVVDgAKfJOGckv0UV0gy7JYmSTY

3. Is There a Future For American Universities in the Middle East? Why the U.S. Model is More Important Than Ever

By Lisa Anderson, March 22, 2019

On January 10, Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, delivered a contentious speech at the American University in Cairo (AUC). He ridiculed former president Barack Obama’s Middle East policy, thanked Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi for his “courage” in confronting extremism, and repeated calls for a tough stance against Iran. The university’s faculty were outraged, not only by the speech but also by Pompeo’s failure to engage with students. In February, the faculty voted to declare no confidence in the university president who had invited Pompeo, Francis J. Ricciardone, himself a former U.S. ambassador to Egypt.

Read the story in this link:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/egypt/2019-03-22/there-future-american-universities-middle-east

The Future of American Universities in a Changing Middle East
www.foreignaffairs.com
LISA ANDERSON is James T. Shotwell Professor Emerita of International Relations at Columbia University and former president of the American University in Cairo. On January 10, Mike Pompeo, the U.S. secretary of state, delivered a contentious speech at the American University in Cairo (AUC). He …

4. DNA on ancient tobacco pipe links Maryland slave site to West Africa Enslaved woman’s broken pipe still had her DNA after two centuries in the ground.

By Michael E Ruane, March 15, 2019

One day about 200 years ago, a woman enslaved on a tobacco plantation near Annapolis tossed aside the broken stem of the clay pipe she was smoking in the slave quarters where she lived. Clay pipes were soft and fragile, and the stem bore marks where she had clenched it in her teeth as she worked. But the stem bore something else she could never have imagined: her DNA.

Read the story in this link:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/03/15/dna-ancient-tobacco-pipe-links-maryland-slave-site-west-africa/?fbclid=IwAR23wxB5kDYmad7EeEtnsY4inMKmi3hkQlvDb-likrqUtV1qftthJQXaGS4&utm_term=.5c34dff88f6f

DNA on ancient tobacco pipe links Maryland slave site to West Africa
www.washingtonpost.com
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5. Britain’s Abandoned Black Soldiers « Le français n’a d’avenir en Afrique que s’il reconnaît les langues locales »

Par Fatoumata Diallo 20 mars 2019

D’ici 2050, 70% des francophones vivront sur le continent africain. Le philosophe Souleymane Bachir Diagne prévient cependant que l’évolution de la francophonie ne dépends pas du facteur démographique, mais reposera sur le plurilinguisme et la bonne santé de l’éducation en Afrique.

Read the story in this link:

https://www.jeuneafrique.com/751704/societe/le-francais-na-davenir-en-afrique-que-sil-reconnait-les-langues-locales/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=JeuneAfrique&utm_campaign=PostFB_20032019&fbclid=IwAR1HZvgpyvOc2dwczEZphgmqeOrytk-169OAPmh8ZI8LE1JISY0OIVfs4Es

NEW BOOKS ‫كتب جديدة

1. The Big Noise and Other Noises

(الهرج والمرج وأمثالهما)

Author: Christopher Kudyahakudadirwe

From the frightening Big Noise of the approaching caterpillars sent by government to build a new dam to the thundering Other Noises of the caterpillars, again sent by government to destroy their shacks, life for the average citizen has never been the same. Then the 93-year-old president, Robert Mugabe, was forced to announce his resignation, and Tonderai, one of his secret agents skips the country fearing for his life. Of course, that was after another big noise that saw armoured cars and many people filling the streets of the capital, rejoicing that the dictator had been deposed. Before that there were other noises that frightened people away from their homes, but this time the noises that frightened people were made by those who had silenced the big noise. A confusion reigned. Graduates were jobless. People fled the country to other countries to become political as well as economic refugees.

Publisher: Mwanaka Media and Publishing, Zimbabwe, 2019

2. Modernist Art in Ethiopia
(الفن الحداثي في إثيوبيا)

Author: Elizabeth Giorgis (Author), Elizabeth W. Giorgis (Author)

If modernism initially came to Africa through colonial contact, what does Ethiopia’s inimitable historical condition—its independence save for five years under Italian occupation—mean for its own modernist tradition? In Modernist Art in Ethiopia—the first book-length study of the topic—Elizabeth W. Giorgis recognizes that her home country’s supposed singularity, particularly as it pertains to its history from 1900 to the present, cannot be conceived outside the broader colonial legacy. She uses the evolution of modernist art in Ethiopia to explore the intellectual, cultural, and political histories of Ethiopia in a pan-African context.

Publisher: Ohio University Press, 2019

3. Dear President Obama: Letters from Kogelo and Beyond

(عزيزي الرئيس أوباما: رسائل من كوجيلو ومثيلاتها من المدن الكينية)

Author: Elizabeth Ochieng Onayemi

When Barrack Obama became the President of the United States of America, he captured the imagination of many Kenyans who consider him to be one of their own. In these letters, Kenyans share with the President their experiences and dreams for the future. The book begins with a letter from a child who expresses the pride that residents of Kogelo have in President Obama to whom they are all related in one way or the other. Subsequent letters are mostly from adults from varying socioeconomic groups who address a plethora of issues which affect ordinary Kenyan citizens. All of the narrative voices reflect a shared heritage with President Obama and view him as an effective channel for voicing their concerns about local issues of global significance.

Publisher: Mountain View Publishers, Kenya, 2015

4. Digitalization and The Field of African Studies

(الرقمنة في عالم الدراسات الأفريقية)

Author: Mirjam de Bruijn

Urbanization in Africa also means rapid technological change. At the turn of the 21st century, mobile telephony appeared in urban Africa. Ten years later, it covered large parts of rural Africa and – thanks to the smartphone – became the main access to the internet. This development is part of technological transformations in digitalization that are supposed to bridge the urban and the rural, thereby blurring their borders. They do so through the creation of economic opportunities, increased flow of information, and re-defining conceptions of self, belonging and citizenship. These technological transformations influence the relation within Africa via the urban and rural and also between ‘Africa’ and the World. In this lecture, Mirjam de Bruijn reflects on two decades of research collected in West and Central Africa and discusses how, for her, the field has changed.

Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Namibia, 2019

5. To Be or Not to Be: Sudan at Crossroads: a Pan-African Perspective

(أن نكون أو لا نكون: السودان على مفترق طرق، قراءات من منظور الرابطة الأفريقية)

Author: M. Jalāl Hāshim

To Be or Not to Be is an analysis of sociological factors which explain the intricate root causes of conflicts which have ravished Sudan. This text stands in stark contrast to the dominant simplification and distortions which have come to typify presentations of the region. Central to the book is an unapologetic explanation of Arabization. Often portrayed as individual choices of religious loyalty, Arabization in fact masks an intentional power-system which viciously corrupts Afrikan identities. By highlighting the detrimental complexities of manipulation, geopolitics, identity confusion and cultural imperialism, Hashim has written an authoritative book about Sudan in presenting a comprehensive case study that all of Afrika must learn from. Rarely are we presented with such a rich insider’s perspective to an area of Afrika which once was held in the highest civilizational esteem but has since been reduced to an ideological field of Arab-led terror, massacres, and disintegration.

Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, Tanzania, 2019

6. Reel Pleasures: Cinema Audiences and Entrepreneurs in Twentieth-Century Urban Tanzania

(زبانية المتعة: جماهير السينما ورجال الأعمال في القرن العشرين في تنزانيا)

Author: Laura Fair

Reel Pleasures brings the world of African movie houses and the public they engendered to life, revealing how local fans creatively reworked global media to speak to local dreams and desires. In this publication, Laura Fair focuses on Tanzanians’ extraordinarily dynamic media cultures to demonstrate how the public and private worlds of film reception brought communities together and contributed to the construction of gender identity and urban citizenship over time.

Publisher: Ohio University Press, 2018.

7. Violence, Peace & Everyday Modes of Justice and Healing in Post-Colonial Africa

(تأملات في مسائل العنف والسلام وعوائد العدالة والتعافي في إفريقيا ما بعد الاستعمار)

Author: (Editors) Ngonidzashe Marongwe, Fidelis Peter Thomas Duri, Munyaradzi Mawere

Violence in its various proportions, genres and manifestations has had an enduring historical legacy on the world. However, scholarly work which speaks to approaches aimed at mitigating violence as a characteristic of Africa is very limited. As some have noted, Africans have experienced cycles of violence since the pre-colonial epoch, such that overt violence has become banalised on the African continent. This has generated complex results, legacies, and perennial emotional wounds that call for healing, reconciliation, justice and positive peace. Yet, in the absence of systematic and critical approaches to the study of violence on the continent, discourses on violence are unable to challenge the global matrices of violence that threaten peace and development in Africa. This volume is a contribution to addressing such urgently needed, systematic approaches. It interrogates the contentious production and resilience of violence in Africa from a multi-disciplinary approach. Ultimately, the authors call for a paradigm shift to forge and merge African customary dispute resolution and Western systems of dispute resolution towards a framework of positive peace, holistic restoration, sustainable development, and equity.

Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2019

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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events,