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Positing the notions of coloniality of ignorance and geopolitics of ignorance as central to coloniality and colonisation, this book examines how colonialists socially produced ignorance among colonised indigenous peoples so as to render them docile and manageable. Dismissing colonial descriptions of indigenous people as savages, illiterate, irrational, prelogical, mystical, primitive, barbaric and backward, the book argues that imperialists/colonialists contrived geopolitics of ignorance wherein indigenous regions were forced to become ignorant, hence containable and manageable in the imperial world. Questioning the provenance of modernist epistemologies, the book asks why Eurocentric scholars only contest the provenance of indigenous knowledges, artefacts and scientific collections. Interrogating why empire sponsors the decolonisation of universities/epistemologies in indigenous territories while resisting the repatriation/restitution of indigenous artefacts, the book also wonders why Westerners who still retain indigenous artefacts, skulls and skeletons in their museums, universities and private collections do not consider such artefacts and skulls to be colonising them as well. The book is valuable to scholars and activists in the fields of anthropology, museums and heritage studies, science and technology studies, decoloniality, policymaking, education, politics, sociology and development studies.
Child of earth
(2010)
Child of Earth is the story of Achu, a young African boy who loses his mother when he is still a baby. He is raised by his father in a household teeming with wives and children. Then the father dies and the task of raising Achu devolves on his aunt, his father's sister, who is married to one of the richest and most powerful men in the country. But the aunt is jealous because Achu is doing better in school than her own children . . .
Intimate strangers
(2010)
Intimate Strangers tells the story of the everyday tensions of maids and madams in ways that bring together different worlds and explore various dimensions of servitude and mobility. Immaculate travels to a foreign land only to find her fiancé refusing to marry her. Operating from the margins of society, through her own ingenuity and an encounter with researcher Dr Winter-Bottom Nanny, she is able to earn some money. Will she remain at the margins or graduate into DUST - Diamond University of Science and Technology? Immaculate learns how maids struggle to make ends meet and madams wrestle to keep them in their employ. Resolved to make her disappointments blessings, she perseveres until she can take no more.
Les murmures de l'harmattan
(2010)
The author of Harmattan Whispers reproduces life in such a harmonic order enveloped with dreams carefully filtered and balanced. As a keen observer of his society, he describes with passionate fervour movements that give existence its density. Emmanuel Matateyou in this poetic cocktail of his takes the reader through an African society where Harmattan, this North East trade wind, destroys as it sweeps along the ugly, the vicissitudes and the shredded pieces of life to leave place to a new kind of drunken quest. In the flux of his words and imagery, he gives life to dreams, fantasies and the Utopian visions of this lover of life, all of which are brought to the limelight through poetically revealing correspondences all rooted in passion and hope.
This is a very engaging book based on compelling stories of human triumph over adversity coming out of Africa, Asia and America. Gideon's personal journey and his account of his mother and uncle in this book exemplify what it means to be truly resilient. The book is moving, well thought out and masterfully structured, a most riveting Read. Gideon For-mukwai draws on local wisdoms from his native Cameroon to tell a universal story. It is a book written in evidence of a mind in tune with the heart. Its stories, strategies, and metaphors provide incredible wisdom relevant to any society and explicitly remind readers that our circumstances may be different, but the strategies to overcome are the same. If a widow can make a legendary success story in Africa, then almost anybody can. What makes this book special is the fact that it is based on the stories of modest human beings.
Konglanjo : (Spears of Love without Ill-fortune) and Letters to Ethiopia with Some Random Poems
(2010)
This collection of poems evolves as a network and satellite of an expressive pursuit of justice with a difference. For, though this poetry simultaneously shapes global and grassroots smiles and tears, its corpus is no matter for laughter or weeping. In familiar but not identical voices, the poet tackles social evils as parasites while cross-examining cultural assumptions in the same vein. Triple form -title poem, Letters to Ethiopia and Some Random poems, explores nightmares of colonial mission civilisatrice by dint of two decades of inspirational events from 1965 as invitations into a more serene world emerging from post-discoveries.
The forces of nature warranted that these two English speaking poets, linguists, translators cum academics and researchers be born in Ndop, Ngoketunjia Division, in the North West Region of Cameroon. The one is based in the USA and other in Australia. Disgusted by the rotten political clime in their country as well as the political stance of politician vis-à-vis the English speaking minority, these two poets in their poetry explore the ins and outs of the problems of existence, not only of the minority English speaking Cameroonian but those of minorities in a modern world with a push for globalization. To them art is not only a weapon for survival but one for resistance.
Rock of God (Kilán ke Nyùy)
(2010)
Rock of God centres on a significant war that Nso fought with Bamoun in the 1880s, and which war resulted in a devastating defeat for the Bamouns. During this war, a major Nso combat rule was broken: the Sultan (king) of Bamoun was decapitated. Both local story tellers and historians have indicated that the Sultan was only supposed to be captured alive. The play explores some very compelling reasons for this violation. It mocks any attempt at categorization because the events involved are as historically relevant as they are anthropologically profound; as literarily dense as they are linguistically compelling. It surely stands on its own because it clearly combines concepts of docu-drama, morality play, classical theatre, historical drama, and much more. But beyond all else, it is great artistry that demonstrates the genius of experimentation.
The call of blood
(2010)
Efenze, the President of the Board of Directors of government companies and a member of the Central Committee of the Ruling Party, eliminates his erstwhile business contractor, Sancheu, with the complicity of the latter's wife. His aim is to inherit Sancheu's widow and wealth and to forge his way into the Political Bureau of the Party. The Call of Blood is a dramatization of evil in its multifaceted dimensions including treachery, infidelity, greed, hypocrisy, double-crossing and vaulting ambition in a postcolonial society where those who wield political and financial power thrive or perish by their involvement in obscure schemes. The play is enriched by a great sense of dramatic economy and poetic style evident in the preponderant use of local imagery.
Kinsmen of the President
(2016)
Being a journalist in Nigeria is very risky business especially when you decide to go against the grain and print the truth. Jerry comes to see just how risky his job is when he is whisked away to jail after publishing a particularly scathing article. While in custody we see the prison system through his eyes and he takes us back as he feeds us with anecdotes of his former life.
Insights into Uganda
(2016)
Insights into Uganda' is a selection of newspaper articles written by columnist Kevin O'Connor for the Sunday Monitor, drawn almost entirely from 2007 to 2015. Divided into 13 chapters ranging from sex to religion and from inequality to the environment, the 193 articles are always thoughtful, often provocative and sometimes humorous. The text is further enlivened by Moses Balagadde's cartoons. Kevin provides a multitude of insights into Ugandan society, which amply reflect both the title of his column, Roving Eye, and his catchphrase, 'For the observer of human behaviour every scene has its interest'.
This book explores the emergent character of social orders in Sudan and South Sudan. It provides vivid insights into multitudes of ordering practices and their complex negotiation. Recurring patterns of exclusion and ongoing struggles to reconfigure disadvantaged positions are investigated as are shifting borders, changing alliances and relationships with land and language. The book takes a careful and close look at institutional arrangements that shape everyday life in the Sudans, probing how social forms have persisted or changed. It proposes reading the post-colonial history of the Sudans as a continuous struggle to find institutional orders valid for all citizens. The separation of Sudan and South Sudan in 2011 has not solved this dilemma. Exclusionary and exploitative practices endure and inhibit the rule of law, distributive justice, political participation and functioning infrastructure. Analyses of historical records and recent ethnographic data assembled here show that orders do not result directly from intended courses of action, planning and orchestration but from contingently emerging patterns. The studies included look beyond dominant elites caught in violent fights for powers, cycles of civil war and fragile peace agreements to explore a broad range of social formations, some of which may have the potential to glue people and things together in peaceful co-existence, while others give way to new violence.
Pio Gama Pinto was born in Kenya on March 31, 1927. He was assassinated in Nairobi on February 24, 1965. In his short life, he became a symbol of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles in Kenya and India. He was actively involved in Goa's struggle against Portuguese colonialism and in Mau Mau during Kenya's war of independence. For this, he was detained by the British colonial authorities in Kenya from 1954-59. His contribution to the struggle for liberation for working people spanned two continents - Africa and Asia. And it covered two phases of imperialism - colonialism in Kenya and Goa and neo-colonialism in Kenya after independence. His enemies saw no way of stopping the intense, lifelong struggle waged by Pinto - except through an assassin's bullets. But his contribution, his ideas, and his ideals are remembered and upheld even today by people active in liberation struggles. This book does not aim or claim to be a comprehensive record on Pio Gama Pinto, just the beginning of the long journey necessary to record the history of Kenya from an anti-imperialist perspective. It introduces readers to voices of many people who have written about Pinto to build up as clear a picture of Pinto as possible. In that spirit, it seeks to make history available to those whose story it is - people of Kenya, Africa and progressive people around the world.
This is the fourth in a series of publications on Zambian languages and grammar. The intention of the series is to boost the meagre scholarship and availability of educational materials on Zambian languages, which became particularly urgent in 1996, following the decision of the Zambian government to revert to the policy of using local languages as media of instruction. Kaonde (or more correctly Kikaonde) is spoken in the part of the North-Western Province of Zambia to the east of the Kabompo River, in adjacent parts of Mumbwa and Kaoma Districts to the south, and in the Katanga Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo to the North.
This book is divided into eleven chapters. Chapters 1, 2 and 3 present analyses of the concepts of public health, sustainability and policy change. Chapters 4 and 5 describe the stakeholder analysis and national health accounts frameworks. These chapters determine the attributes, characteristics and other features of these concepts and frameworks. The aim is to improve general clarity and understanding of these concepts and frameworks that contribute to the Sustainability Impact Assessment framework and the case study methodological approach that exemplifies its role in sustainability assessment of policy change in immunization systems. Chapter 6 outlines the Sustainability Impact Assessment framework itself, setting out the steps involved in a typical SIA with examples of methodologies used in the case study. Chapter 7 describes the case study methodological approach including its rationale and components. Chapter 8 outlines the application context of the case study with emphasis on the country's immunization system. Chapters 9 and 10 describe the application scenarios of the methodological approach, detailing the stakeholder analysis and resource map assessment processes. The summary and conclusions of the book are provided in Chapter 11. This chapter reviews the contributions of the Sustainability Impact Assessment framework and case study methodological approach, providing additional discussion of relevant issues and some directions for future work.
African visionaries
(2019)
In over forty portraits, African writers present extraordinary people from their continent: portraits of the women and men whom they admire, people who have changed and enriched life in Africa. The portraits include inventor, founders of universities, resistance fighters, musicians, environmental activists or writers. African Visionaries is a multi-faceted book, seen through African eyes, on the most impactful people of Africa. Some of the writers contributing to the collection are: Helon Habila, Virginia Phiri, Ellen Banda-Aaku, Véronique Tadjo, Tendai Huchu, Solomon Tsehaye, Patrice Nganang and Sami Tchak.
Between 1992 and 1994 Malawi underwent a remarkable transition from dictatorship to democracy. Truly a transformation of power! Yet this period of profound change raised many issues of power and accountability. In this book some of the key questions are explained and addressed from a theological perspective. The work originated as a case study on the World Council of Churches 'Theology of Life' programme. It was then presented as a Kachere Monograph in the belief that it will not only contribute to the reconstruction of politic in Malawi but also be an important resource for all those concerned with the formation of a viable theology of power for today's world. It is now presented here again as a Luviri Reprint. The contributors are all drawn from the University of Malawi Department of Theology and Religious Studies. Kenneth Ross has written on 'The Transformation of Power in Malawi 1992-94: the Role of the Christian Churches' and 'A Practical Theology of Power for the New Malawi'; Felix Chingota on 'The Use of the Bible in Social Transformation'; Isabel Apawo Phiri on 'Marching, Suspended and Stoned: Christian Women in Malawi 1995'; James Tengatenga on 'Young People: Participation or Alienation? An Anglican Case'; J.C. Chankanza and Hilary Mijoga on 'Muslim Perspectives on Power'; Hilary Mijoga on 'Christian Experience in Malawi Prisons'; and Klaus Fiedler on 'Power at the Receiving End: the Jehova's Witnesses' Experience in One-Party Malawi' and 'Even in the Church the Exercise of Power is Accountable to God'
The green building evolution
(2019)
The Green Building Evolution illuminates global examples and makes use of case studies mainly from South Africa. This book is in five parts: Part I is a single introductory chapter centred on the evolution of the green building movement; Part II addresses the green building terrain; Part III presents selected case studies; Part IV focuses on chapters that address pushing the boundaries in the green building space; while Part V presents emerging trends and policy perspectives. Further details are contained in the main body of the book. It is our sincere hope that readers will experience the book as an informative and ground-breaking adventure. Written by 14 authors from different academic disciplines and areas of specialisation, the book comes as the sixth in a series that addresses global and national concerns on climate change, sustainable development and the green economy transition agenda. The book series is conceptualised and coordinated by the Exxaro Chair in Business and Climate Change, led by Prof. Godwell Nhamo and hosted by the Institute for Corporate Citizenship (ICC) at the University of South Africa (UNISA). The books are published by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) through the Africa Institute of South Africa.
Seeking Urban Transformation. Alternative Urban Futures in Zimbabwe tells the stories of ordinary peoples struggles to remake urban centres. It interrogates and highlights the principle conditions in which urban transformation takes place. The main catalysts of the transformation are social movements and planning institutions. Social movements pool resources and skills, acquire land, install infrastructure and build houses. Planning institutions change policies, regulations and traditions to embrace and support a new form of urban development driven by grassroots movements. Besides providing a comprehensive analysis of planning and housing in Zimbabwe, there is a specific focus on three urban centres of Harare, Chitungwiza and Epworth. In metropolitan Harare, the books examines new housing and infrastructure series to the predominantly urban poor population; vital roles played by the urban poor in urban development and the adoption by planning institutions of grassroots-centered, urban-planning approaches. The book draws from three case studies and in-depth interviews from diverse urban shapers i.e. representatives and members of social movements, urban planners, engineers, surveyors, policy makers, politicians, civil society workers and students to generate a varied selection of insights and experiences. Based on the Zimbabwean experience, the book illustrates how actions and power of ordinary people contributes to the transformation of African cities.
The inability to eradicate poverty among societies demands a synergistic approach. This calls for the development of multi-pronged pathways for transitioning towards sustainable development goals. Many of these have been developed and tested across the world. Some have proved to be effective in illuminating the underlying cause of the world's inability to eradicate poverty. This is being driven by the fact that sustainable development, as a global development concept, represents a multidimensional phenomenon that includes many different indicators of human development. This volume, which derives from the papers presented at the seventh Africa Unity for Renaissance Conference that was held at Freedom Park, Pretoria, South Africa, seeks to supplement existing pathways by highlighting Africa's approach to poverty alleviation, which can possibly be attained through enhanced nutrition, food security, energy and gender equity. Evidence presented reflects strengths, weaknesses and opportunities on how Africa can transition towards sustainable development goals. The information provided is useful to countries interested in assisting Africa to develop pathways for achieving sustainable development goals within the scope of Agenda 2063. The book is a good reference for policy makers, academics, government authorities and students interested in research and developmental studies.
This book questions colonial and apartheid ideologies on being human and being African, ideologies that continue to shape how research is conceptualised, taught and practiced in universities across Africa. Africans immersed in popular traditions of meaning-making are denied the right, by those who police the borders of knowledge, to think and represent their realities in accordance with the civilisations and universes they know best. Often, the ways of life they cherish are labelled and dismissed too eagerly as traditional knowledge by some of the very African intellectual elite they look to for protection. The book makes a case for sidestepped traditions of knowledge. It draws attention to Africa's possibilities, prospects and emergent capacities for being and becoming in tune with its creativity and imagination. It speaks to the nimble-footed flexible-minded 'frontier African' at the crossroads and junctions of encounters, facilitating creative conversations and challenging regressive logics of exclusionary identities. The book uses Amos Tutuola's stories to question dualistic assumptions about reality and scholarship, and to call for conviviality, interconnections and interdependence between competing knowledge traditions in Africa.
Marginality does not mean isolation. In Africa where people are permanently on the move in search, inter alia, of a 'better elsewhere', marginality means disconnection to obvious possibilities and the invisibility of the myriad connections that make life possible for the ordinarily sidestepped. This book is about the workings of networks of the mobile in Africa, a continent usually associated with the 'global shadows' of the world. How do changes in the possibilities for communication, with the recent hype of mobile technology, influence the social and economic dynamics in Africa's mobile margins? To what extent is the freedom associated with new Information and Communication Technologies reality or disillusion for people dwelling in the margins? Are ordinary Africans increasingly Side@Ways? How social are these emergent Side@Ways? Contributions to answering these and related questions are harvested from ethnographic insights by team members of the WOTRO funded 'Mobile Africa revisited' research programme hosted by the African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands.
This rich conversational auto-biography tells the story of the political life of Ndeh Ntumazah who was born in Mankon in 1926, spent the best part of his life suffering and sacrificing for the freedom of Cameroon, and died in London on January 21, 2010, at the age of 83, as President of the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC). Ntumazah was a political activist for nearly 60 years. He joined the UPC around 1950 and remained a militant of the party until his demise. When the UPC was banned in French Cameroon in 1955, he was advised by his comrades to create another party in the Southern Cameroons, which would be the UPC in disguise. The party was called 'One Kamerun Movement - OK', with Ndeh Ntumazah as its President. Following its banning, the UPC started a war of liberation in French Cameoon, so Ntumazah from the safety of Southern Cameroons, liaised with his comrades in French Cameroon to carry out their underground operations. Ndeh Ntumazah left Cameroon to seek political asylum abroad in 1962. He stayed in Ghana, Guinea, Algeria and finally in Britain where he spent most of his time sensitising the world about the plight of Cameroon using various avenues like writing, conferences and deputations. Ntumazah is dead, but he lives on because his life stands out as a point of focus.
The volume draws from René Devischs encounters with groups in southsaharan Africa, primarily. The author had the privilege to immerse himself, around the clock, in the Yakaphones activities and thoughts in southwest DR Congo from 1972 to 1974, and intermittently in Kinshasas shanty towns, from 1986 to 2003. The author first examines what sparked his choice to come to Congo, and then to pursue research among the Yakaphones in the borderland with Angola. He then invites us to follow the trajectory of his plural anthropological view on todays multicentric world. It leads us to his praise for honorary doctor Jean-Marc Elas work. He then examines the proletarian outbursts of violence that rocked Congos major cities in 1991 and 1993. These can be read as a settling of scores with the disillusioning colonial and missionary modernisation, along with president Mobutus millenarian Popular Movement of the Revolution. Furthermore, after considering the morose reduction of a major Yaka dancing mask into a mere museum-bound curio in Antwerp, the book unravels the Yakaphones perspectives on spirits and sorcerys threat. It also analyses their commitment to classical Bantu-African healing cults, along with their parallel consulting physicians and healers. By sharing the Yakaphones life-world, the analysis highlights their body-group-world weave, interlaced by the principle of co-resonance. A phenomenological and perspectivist look unfolds the local actors views, thereby disclosing the Bantu-African genius and setting for a major reversal of perspectives. Indeed, seeing 'here' from 'there' allows the author to uncover some alienating dynamics at work in his native Belgian Flemish-speaking culture. To better grasp the realm of life beyond the speakable and factual reasoning, the approach occasionally turns to the later Lacans focus on the unconscious desire, the body and its affects. The book addresses students and researchers in the humanities and, more broadly, all those immersed in the heat of the encounter with the culturally different.
In a tribute to Hon. Justice Iorhemen Hwande CFR, Chief Judge of Benue State this book includes contributions from a variety of scholars from Nigeria. 14 essays cover a wide range of topics such as: Insider Dealing by Company Directors and the Nigerian Capital Market; United Nations Conventions on the Law of the Sea as a Tool for the Resolution of Climate Change Disputes; Is a Practicing Christian Lawyer/Judge in Nigeria an Anachronism?; The Justiciability and Enforcement of Social Rights; and International Economic Law and Development.
Vestiges
(2013)
The poems in this collection are adequate, with great lines. The rhythm is stimulating to all the five senses thanks to the use of multiple images. A lot of imagery in Vestiges gives a picture of a war front after a ferocious battle. The objects, animals, and images in the poems disorient and lead the reader to focusing on putting flesh to the bones than just getting the juice of the poems... The rhythm more than anything else carries the reader through this chaotic tableau painted in Vestiges. In a way, this comes across as a substantiation of the poet's vision of our world and an explanation as to why he considers this collection as a skeleton; and precisely skeletons left by the ravages of war. Is the poet's world and ours a field of ruins and topsy-turvydom to which we are all blind? The answer is yours.
Captive of Fate
(2007)
Captive of Fate is the moving story of Ann, a victim of her own need for genuine love, and her gullibility in falling head over heels into the traps of lust set up by clever men. As Ann's biographic narrative unfolds, the reader is faced again and again with the haunting question: 'Do all men want only one thing from a woman?' Hidden between the lines and yet hammering constantly at the reader's conscience are issues pertaining to gender violence and the plight of women in Africa.
The Green Cross of Kafira
(2013)
In his last play published posthumously the late Francis Imbuga presents the dramatic dialogue of his characters as mind games. In addition to using a narrator, Sikia Macho, to fill us in on the broken politics of Kafira, centring around detention without trial, Imbuga deliberately delays the inciting action, the formation of the Green Party of Kafira which then challenges the hitherto political monolith called the National Party. The candidate of the new party, former detainee Pastor Mgei, wins the election, and thereby dethrones the so-called Chief of Chiefs. In The Green Cross of Kafira, Imbuga, with a renewed sense of urgency, addresses the theme of dictatorship in Africa, and completes his trilogy of the Kafira plays which begins with Betrayal in the city followed by Man of Kafira.
Mohammed Chris Alli is a retired Nigerian Army Major General who served as Chief of Army Staff from 1993 to 1994 under General Sanni Abacha's regime and was military governor of Plateau State Nigeria from August 1985 to 1986 during the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida. Many years later, he was appointed interim administrator of the state during a 2004 crisis in the state following ethno-religious killings in Shendam, Yelwa Local Government. In this anthology, organized as a symposium on Mohammed Christopher Alli?s work, he is identified as one of those critical and rational thinkers, philosophers, albeit, a General in the Nigerian Army, whose work finds a befitting logical space in the contemporary African philosophical tapestry. The book also captures the elements of military misrule in Nigeria and its undue influence on the body polity; it is a critical survey of past military misadventures, and a satire against false federalism, it is a firm warning against future corruption and impunity in the military.
This book addresses itself to mobilisation and involvement of rural people in development projects. It describes an imperfect but, nonetheless, exciting and thought-provoking exercise that drew social science researchers and students from four public universities in Kenya into an experiment in participatory research, community education and development in two locations. The experiment was grounded on the assumptions that the people of Kenya are a primary resource and that given proper roles and contribution of planners, researchers and programme implementers, self-sustainable development can become a reality. The contributors of this book have focused on the potential of the university to facilitate participation of the people in development. They have given specific suggestions on how this might be accomplished.
Thousands of Cameroonian women played an essential role in the radically anti-colonial nationalist movement led by the Union of the Populations of Cameroon (UPC): they were the women of the Democratic Union of Cameroonian Women (UDEFEC). Drawing on women nationalists' petitions to the United Nations, one of the largest collections of political documents written by African women during the decolonization era, as well as archival research and oral interviews, this work shows how UDEFEC transcended ethnic, class, education and social divides, and popularized nationalism in both urban and rural areas through the Trust Territories of the Cameroons under French and British administration. Foregrounding issues such as economic autonomy and biological and agricultural fertility, UDEFEC politics wove anti-imperial democracy and notions of universal human rights into locally rooted political cultures and histories. UDEFEC's history sheds light on the essential components of women's successful political mobilization in Africa, and contributes to the discussion of women's involvement in nationalist movements in formerly colonized territories.
Combined together in three volumes are the author's writings on labour and employments relations in Nigeria spanning over three and a half decades. Volume three covers the dynamics of public sector employment relations and starts with a general review and critique of organised labour's perceptions of and contributions to the development crisis in Nigeria.
Professor Darah turned seventy on Wednesday November 22, 2017 and to celebrate his very productive career, his colleagues and many of those he has mentored thought it appropriate to mark his official exit from the university in a dignified way by commissioning for publication, in the now acceptable festschrift tradition, the highly compelling and outstanding collection of essays titled: Scholarship and Commitment: Essays in Honour of G.G. Darah. The book is a ground-breaking collection of essays; some are couched as tributes to the ebullient celebrant, there are others on more serious discourses in the areas of literary theories and criticism, language and linguistics, popular literature and politics, the African woman, identity and contemporary realities, oral literature, the news media and cultural studies. The essays, on their own, attest to the vivacity and liveliness as well as the encouraging state of health of publishing in the Nigerian academia, which in this collection alone, parades forty-two essays in different fields or discourses.
This is a story of Nigeria, told from the inside. After a successful career in the private sector, Nasir El-Rufai rose to the top ranks of Nigeria's political hierarchy, serving first as the privatization czar at the Bureau for Public Enterprises and then as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja under former President Olesegun Obasanjo. In this tell-all memoir, El-Rufai reflects on a life in public service to Nigeria, the enormous challenges faced by the country, and what can be done while calling on a new generation of leaders to take the country back from the brink of destruction. The shocking revelations disclosed by El-Rufai about the formation of the current leadership and the actions of prominent statesmen make this memoir required reading for anyone seeking to understand the dynamics of power politics in Africa's most populous nation.
All over Africa, an explosion in cultural productions of various genres is in evidence. Whether in relation to music, song and dance, drama, poetry, film, documentaries, photography, cartoons, fine arts, novels and short stories, essays, and (auto)biography; the continent is experiencing a robust outpouring of creative power that is as remarkable for its originality as its all-round diversity. Beginning from the late 1970s and early 1980s, the African continent has experienced the longest and deepest economic crises than at any other time since the period after the Second World War. Interestingly however, while practically every indicator of economic development was declining in nominal and/ or real terms for most aspects of the continent, cultural productions were on the increase. Out of adversity, the creative genius of the African produced cultural forms that at once spoke to crises and sought to transcend them. The current climate of cultural pluralism that has been produced in no small part by globalization has not been accompanied by an adequate pluralism of ideas on what culture is, and/or should be; nor informed by an equal claim to the production of the cultural - packaged or not. Globalization has seen to movement and mixture, contact and linkage, interaction and exchange where cultural flows of capital, people, commodities, images and ideologies have meant that the globe has become a space, with new asymmetries, for an increasing intertwinement of the lives of people and, consequently, of a greater blurring of normative definitions as well as a place for re-definition, imagined and real. As this book - Contemporary African Cultural Productions - has done, researching into African culture and cultural productions that derive from it allows us, among other things, to enquire into definitions, explore historical dimensions, and interrogate the political dimensions to presentation and representation. The book therefore offers us an intervention that goes beyond the normative literary and cultural studies' main foci of race, difference and identity; notions which, while important in themselves might, without the necessary historicizing and interrogating, result in a discourse that rather re-inscribes the very patterns that necessitate writing against. This book is an invaluable compendium to scholars, researchers, teachers, students and others who specialize on different aspects of African culture and cultural productions, as well as cultural centers and general readers.
There is a general agreement that piracy; counterfeiting and passing off are unfair. However, there is often surreptitious - or even open - sympathy for, say, those who purchase counterfeit designer fashions or the latest technical gadgets. The pirate is even sometimes represented as a daring evil hero. In this book, Prof. Dora Nkem Akunyili, Director General of Nigeria's National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control, presents a unique study of a global phenomenon in which law-breaking and profiteering prevail at the cost of human health and life - and of the ways in which this can be fought by appropriate legislation, regulation and enforcement.
The Botsotso literary journal started in 1996 as a monthly 4 page insert in the New Nation, an independent anti-apartheid South African weekly and reached over 80,000 people at a time largely politisized black workers and youth with a selection of poems, short stories and short essays that reflected the deep changes taking place in the country at that time. Since the closure of the New Nation in 1999, the journal has evolved into a stand-alone compilation featuring the same mix of genres, and with the addition of photo essays and reviews. The Botsotso editorial policy remains committed to creating a mix of voices which highlight the diverse spectrum of South African identities and languages, particularly those that are dedicated to radical expression and examinations of South Africa's complex society.
The Botsotso literary journal started in 1996 as a monthly 4 page insert in the New Nation, an independent anti-apartheid South African weekly and reached over 80,000 people at a time ? largely politisized black workers and youth ? with a selection of poems, short stories and short essays that reflected the deep changes taking place in the country at that time. Since the closure of the New Nation in 1999, the journal has evolved into a stand-alone compilation featuring the same mix of genres, and with the addition of photo essays and reviews. The Botsotso editorial policy remains committed to creating a mix of voices which highlight the diverse spectrum of South African identities and languages, particularly those that are dedicated to radical expression and examinations of South Africa's complex society.
Most Nigerians, when they talk about Nigeria, will always refer to her with bubbling jingoism as 'giant of Africa' or 'our great nation, Nigeria' but fail to ask 'giant of what?' Goodness or Evil? Productivity or Consumption? Success or Failure? Meritocracy or Mediocrity? Hollowness or Substance? Capturing the 'mood of the nation' this book offers diagnosis on the country which are broad-based, instructive and well presented. Part I outlines the developmental stages of Nigeria while Part II gives an in depth diagnosis of the major problems besetting Nigeria, following Part III gives examples of nations and leadership traits Nigeria could emulate.
An important feature of Ghanaian tertiary education is the foundational African Studies Programme which was initiated in the early 1960s. Unfortunately hardly any readers exist which bring together a body of knowledge on the themes, issues and debates which inform and animate research and teaching in African Studies particularly on the African continent. This becomes even more important when we consider the need for knowledge on Africa that is not Eurocentric or sensationalised, but driven from internal understandings of life and prospects in Africa. Dominant representations and perceptions of Africa usually depict a continent in crisis. Rather than buying into external representations of Africa, with its 'lacks' and aspirations for Western modernities, we insist that African scholars in particular should be in the forefront of promoting understanding of the pluri-lingual, overlapping, and dense reality of life and developments on the continent, to produce relevant and usable knowledge. Continuing and renewed interest in Africa's resources, including the land mass, economy, minerals, visual arts and performance cultures, as well as bio-medical knowledge and products, by old and new geopolitical players, obliges African scholars to transcend disciplinary boundaries and to work with each other to advance knowledge and uses of those resources in the interests of Africa's people.
Theatre and drama are very much part of our every day lives. These four plays: Belonging by Mirirai Moyo, When I Meet my Mother by Kathleen McCreery, In the Continuum by Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter, and Power Failure by Jide Afoylan reveal the dynamism and variety of theatre. They also reveal that from Zimbabwe to Brazil, Nigeria to the USA, societies despite their diversity share many common problems and challenges. Annotated for schools with questions and notes by Rory Kilalea, teachers and students will find this a richly accessible text.
The poems, stories and essays of Mphutlane wa Bofelo operate within a framework of thinking that is an amalgam of philosophies: that of black consciousness, humanistic Islam and socialism. His voice is both lyrical and satirical, expressing anger and tenderness even as his barbs are sharp and his kisses tender. His beats are complex polyrhythms that roll on in incantatory style or achieve mystical brevity. Bofelo entered the world of sociopolitical and cultural activism in the early 1980s through the black consciousness movement in Zamdela Township in Sasolburg. He lives in Durban, where he has built up an audience as a performer of poetry, a speaker and a facilitator. He has self-published two poetry collections and is represented in journals, newspapers and on web sites.
Understanding Confusion in Africa : The Politics of Multiculturalism and Nation-building in Cameroon
(2013)
Cameroon is often considered to be Africais legendary pathfinder. This book argues essentially that Cameroon cannot competently champion African unity and progress until it can correctly pursue its own multicultural nation-building. Cameroon's success continental-wise would depend on its theory and practice of multiculturalism, as particularly reflected in (1) the rejoicing in its historical diversity and the harmonious co-existence of its Systems of Education which must, of necessity, be linked to (2) effective federalization or decentralization of uniquely cultural matters. Critically examining history and education as components of culture, and therefore, of multiculturalism, the book makes some bold recommendations while demonstrating how nation-building is meaningless without the peopleis authentic history. It argues that Cameroon national culture cannot be a national culture without embodying the distinct culture of the English-speaking minority. Anything else is nothing but deliberate confusion of assimilation for multiculturalism, a confusion that is heavily tied to the countryis phoney independence. Hinging on education (and its associates of bilingualism and bijuralism), the book demonstrates that Cameroonis over-sung cultural dualism is a charade, epitomized by the 1998 Education Law. Rather than reaffirm Cameroonis biculturalism as it superficially avows, Cameroonis purported cultural dualism is really out to efface any semblance of cultural or educational dualism that may still be resisting assimilation. The continuous and persistent employment of terms such as biculturalism, bilingualism and bijuralism in legal texts in Cameroon is only to confuse the international community, especially from seeing exactly the kind of eethnic cleansingi which is taking place in the country.
The Cowrie Necklace is a graphic account of the struggle for meaning in life. The poems are a carefully woven sizzling and cracking attempt to mirror society. The poet runs a long and wide gamut of poetic themes which include the intricacies of joy and sadness, God and the devil, nature and nurture, good and evil, love, deceit and treachery. The narrative style is reminiscent of Wole Soyinka, Francesco Nditsouna and D.H. Lawrence. The Cowrie Necklace is a "must read".
Nhakanomics: Harvesting Knowledge and Value for Re-generation Through Social Innovation is a radical departure from the commonly held belief that neo-liberal economics from the US and the West is universal, and is the only solution to underdevelopment and poverty throughout the world. Instead, the book teases out and theorises the intellectually rutted terrain of development studies, and neo-liberal economics from a decolonial Pan-Africanist perspective. Following a path of social innovation, with perspectives drawn from social anthropology, economics, and business and management studies Nhakanomics is a unique socio-economic approach applicable in the Global South and in Southern Africa in particular. 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, and 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 the book is an interrogation of neo-liberal economics in the Global South. As such, this book is remarkably handy to students and practitioners in the fields of economics, development studies, political science, science and technology studies, business management, sociology, transformation studies, and development related non-Governmental Organisations working with grassroots communities.
In line with the federal structure of the Nigerian State, tax administration in the country is multi-tiered. The Federal Inland Revenue Service is responsible for assessing, collecting and accounting for tax and other revenues accruing to the Federal Government. The States Boards of Internal Revenue and the Local Government Revenue Committees perform similar functions at the State and Local Government levels respectively. This book attempts to chronicle the changes that have been taking place within the Federal Inland Revenue Service since 2004 and how these activities have contributed to the reforms in the Nigerian tax system. In terms of value, the book facilitates an understanding of the role played by the Service; its staff and stakeholders in repositioning the Nigerian tax system. It is an essential reference material for everyone that seeks an understanding of the processes that underscore the ongoing changes in the Nigerian tax system.
This book provides useful pointers to help journalists navigate the dilemmas they face in the professional practice. It provides an enlightening overview of the views of Mauritian journalists on their own industry and an in-depth look at the South African model for self-regulation. As part of the ethical approach, the book also reviews the main issues related to gender-sensitive reporting, in view of the significant role the media have to play in gender education. In an age of information overload, over-exposure to a hyper-mediated culture and the rise of user-generated content, journalists increasingly strive to remain relevant. The temptation to use lower standards, resort to sensationalism and even paycheck journalism is strong. Such examples of unethical practice can only further undermine the credibility of a profession which purports to act as a watchdog, a Fourth Estate. Claims that ethics is a private affair no longer hold good. Journalism is a public good and the need to a clear social contract is stronger than ever in a world where transparency and accountability are on the agenda. Mechanisms for ensuring ethical practice are essential and should be hailed as beacons for a stronger journalism.
The independence of Mozambique in 1975 and its decolonisation process attracted worldwide attention as a successful example of ìnational unityî. Yet, the armed conflict that broke out between the government and the guerrilla force in 1977 lasted for sixteen years and resulted in over a million deaths and several million refugees, placing this concept of ìnational unityî into doubt. For nearly twenty years, Sayaka Funada-Classen interviewed people in rural communities in Mozambique. By examining their testimonies, historical documents, previous studies, international and regional politics, and the changes that various interventions under colonialism brought to the traditional social structure, this book demonstrates that the seeds of ìdivisionî had already been planted while the liberation movement was seeking ìunityî in the struggle years. Presenting a comprehensive history of contemporary Mozambique, this book is indispensable for Mozambican scholars. It promises to serve as a landmark study not only for historians and the scholars of African studies but also for those who give serious consideration to the problems of conflict and peace in the world.
Tanzania has been independent in 2011 for 50 years. While most neighbouring states have gone through violent conflicts, Tanzania has managed to implement extensive reforms without armed political conflicts, Hence, Tanzania is an interesting case for Peace and Development research. This dissertation analyses the political development in Tanzania since the introduction of the multiparty system in 1992, with a focus on the challenges for the democratisation process in connection with the 2000 and 2005 elections. The question of to what extent Tanzania had moved towards a consolidation of democracy, is analysed by looking at nine different institutions of importance for democratisation grouped in four spheres: the state, the political, civil and economic society. Focus is on the development of the political society, and the role of the opposition in particular. The analysis is based on secondary and primary material collected between September 2000 to April 2010. The main conclusion is that even if the institutions of liberal democracy have gradually developed, in practice single-party rule has continued, manifested in the 2005 election when the CCM won 92% of seats. Despite impressive economic growth, poverty remains deep and has not been substantially reduced. On a theoretical level this brings the old debate between liberal and substantive democracy back to the fore. Neither the economic nor the political reforms have brought about a transformation of the political and economic system resulting in the poor majority gaining substantially more political influence and improved economic conditions. Hence, it is argued that the interface between the economic, political and administrative reforms has not been sufficiently considered in the liberal democratic tradition. Liberal democracy is necessary for a democratic development, but not sufficient for democracy to be consolidated. For that a substantive democratic development is necessary.
Conviviality in Bellville: An Ethnography of Space, Place, Mobility and Being in Urban South Africa
(2014)
This book provides insight into the experiences of mobility and migration in contemporary South Africa, contributing to a field of literature about multiculturalism and urban public space in globalizing cities. It takes into consideration the greater international political and local socio-economic factors that drive migration, relationships and conviviality, and how they are intertwined in the everyday narrative of 'insiders' and 'outsiders'. The Bellville central business district demonstrates the realities of interconnected local and global hierarchies of citizenship and belonging and how they emerge in a world of accelerated mobility. The book further demonstrates how the emergence of conviviality in everyday public life represents a critical field for contemplating contemporary notions of human rights, citizenship and belonging.
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 of research and public dialogue on a number of selected topics 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. 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 groups that should be entitled to decent social care.
Elections provide a tremendous opportunity for national transformation and the pursuit of democratic practice. They can be a moment of national renewal. However, in most of Africa elections are often characterized by violent conflict as politicians seek to capture or maintain power through ethnic mobilization, propaganda and misrepresentation. Considering opportunities offered by information technology especially mobile phones and the discovery of extensive natural resources, Africa has an opportunity to significantly change the lives of ordinary citizens. But this transformation requires that youth are fully 'present' in the political, economic, social and cultural arenas. They will need to marshal their energies and stay focused on the things that are important for the continent of Africa. In the case of Kenya, youth should not wait to be invited to take up political leadership. Instead, they will need to invite themselves to the table and take advantage of the opportunity provided in Constitution and demand accountability and transparency in the conduct of national affairs. This book is part of ongoing work at Twaweza Communications in the pursuit of democracy, peace and justice. Themes covered include youth and leadership; elections and peace; youth as peace makers; family and global values among other topics.
From an exploration of the cooperative movement's various international iterations to a perspicacious survey of the history of cooperatives in Tanzania, Dr. Lyimo highlights the issues facing farmers and business people and illustrates the way in which cooperative effort- enterprises that put people, and not capital, at the center of their business- can not only improve members' economic power in bargaining for better marketing conditions and prices, but also to increase employment opportunities, thereby improving the standard of living for a large number of people.
It is the aim of this book while clarifying doubts and misconceptions, to provide a thorough reappraisal of the intellectual and rich cultural heritage of Islam with regards to the principles and practice of medicine and its representation to the world in the language of today. In nine chapters a range of topics are discussed including: The Promotion of Medical Education and Health Services; Personal and Environmental Hygiene; Circumcision; Manners of Eating; Social and Mental Heath; Curative Medicine; The Provision of Adequate and Potable Water; Magic, Witchcraft, Enchantments and Charms; Euthanasia; Suicide; The Rehabilitation of the Sick and the Needy; The Source of Human Creation; Sex Differentiation and Determination; Healing through Miracles; Magic and Soothsaying; HIV Infection and AIDS; Abortion; Females in Medical Practice; and The Challenges of Modem Medicine to Muslims.
Migration in the Service of African Development : Essays in honour of Professor Aderanti Adepoju
(2011)
Fifteen chapters are included here in this compendium in honour of the Nigerian migration scholar Professor Aderanti Adepoju. Though the authors come from diverse disciplinary backgrounds: geography, demography, sociology and law they all work within the fields of internal and international migration in Africa. Chapters on Uganda, Kenya, Botswana, Nigeria and Mali are devoted to aspects of internal migration, while those on African emigration to Mexico and migration between Burkina Faso and Côte d'Ivoire address various aspects of international migration. Migration issues in relation to women, students and climate change are also discussed.
The Millennium Development Goals address poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental degradation, and discrimination against women, by the year 2015. In this volume scholars and policymakers in the fields of population and health reflect on the attainments of some of these goals, on the basis of empirical evidence in the Ghanaian context. The eight paper, with an introduction by the editors, synthesises papers presented at a seminar held in Ghana on ?Population, Health and Development in Relation to the Millennium Development Goals?, organised by the Population Association of Ghana.
Critical Issues in Nigerian Property Law, a collection of writings in honour of Professor Jelili Adebisi Omotola, SAN, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, who died on the 29th of March 2006, has ten chapters that closely examine not only the current state of Property Law in Nigeria, but also recent developments and other challenges that have surfaced since the infamous Land Use Act of 1999. The book is clearly a useful contribution to a growing body of knowledge on property law and practice in Nigeria.
In 2009, Anglophone Cameroon literature celebrated its fifty years of existence. Now at the mature age of fifty plus this literature has a great deal to write home about even if it still has a lot to do in its pursuit of excellence. Part of its maturity resides in the fact that although the scale of literary creativity and literary criticism is skewed in favour of the former, Anglophone Cameroon literary criticism is gradually waking up from slumber in an attempt to catch up with the rapidly expanding creativity. The essays in this book comment practically on some aspects of all the genres of written literature that the Anglophone Cameroon creative writers have produced so far: the novel, drama, poetry, the short story, the essay and children's literature. The essays, on the whole, are a testimony of the transition and reality from the apparent drought of Anglophone Cameroon literary paucity to the actual fruitful period of Anglophone Cameroon abundance of literary creativity. The Anglophone Cameroonians have appropriated an imperial language, English, to serve their postcolonial Cameroonian vision. Their various literary texts are vehicles of representations that are essentially cultural and ideological constructs. The works examined are initially anchored on Cameroonian experiences to take on social significance. As they are grounded on moving human experiences, these works necessarily make references to the immediate Cameroonian environment of their authors before taking on universal human significance. The book abundantly evidences and crowns Shadrach Ambanasom's achievements and reputation as a skilled pedagogue on the art of practical literary criticism.
African land rights systems
(2014)
This book, from ethical, interdisciplinary, and African perspectives, unveils the root causes of the increasing land disputes. Its significance lies upon the effort of presenting a broad overview founded upon a critical analysis of the existing land-related disputes. It is a perspective that attempts to evaluate the renewed interest in evolving theories of land rights by raising questions that can help us to understand better differences underlying land ownership systems, conflict between customary and statutory land rights systems, and the politics of land reform. Other dimensions explored in the book include the market influence on land-grabbing and challenges accompanying trends of migration, resettlement, and integration. The methodology applied in the study provides a perspective that raises questions intended to identify areas of contention, dispute, and conflict. The study, which could also be categorized as a critical assessment of the African land rights systems, is intended to be a resource for scholars, activists, and organizations working to resolve land-related disputes.
Prevalent poverty and related problems in the East African region call for substantial action from various stakeholders, including social workers. This book, based on comprehensive empirical research, portrays an emerging yet powerful profession that has a significant role to play in the endeavour towards social development, social justice, human rights and gender equality. The book is the first of its kind to provide first-hand theoretical and empirical evidence about social work in East Africa.
The most popularised concept in the economics of innovation literature has been the national system of innovation (NSI). It was in the late 1980s that the concept that Frederik List coined as the National Political Economy of Production took off again with different thinkers writing about the peculiarities and distinctions of the Japanese, American, British, German, East Asian Tigers and other varieties of system construction. Freeman defines National System of Innovation as the network of institutions in the public and private sectors whose activities and interactions initiate, import, modify and diff use new technologies. Richard Nelson defines it as a set of institutions whose interactions determine the innovative performance of national firms. Lundvall defines the system of innovation as the elements and relationships which interact in the production, diffusion and use of new and economically useful knowledge and are either located within or rooted inside the borders of a nation state. The normative assumption is that those nations that succeeded in building economic strength relied on the science, engineering, technology and innovation capability that made them to achieve an innovation advantage to put them ahead in the world, acquiring national or regional economic leadership as the case may be depending on what level of analyses is selected to look at particular failure, success or progress they made.. In this volume we have a glimpse of how in different African economies from Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria specific cases have been taken to explore how systems of innovation is evolving.
In spite of its surging popularity with scholars and environment conservation and management aid experts, scientific environmental epistemology does not seem to be the answer to the forestry and environmental problems that Africa is facing. Due to the lasting impacts of colonialism and therefore Western scientism on Africa, at the core of the conservation dilemma lies the conflict between scientific conservation epistemologies and 'local'/'indigenous' conservation epistemologies with the latter being the locals' potential workable solution to the environmental problems haunting the continent. It is in view of these circumstances that this book was born. The book is a clarion call for the revival and reinstitution of indigenous conservation and management epistemologies, not as a challenge to Western scientific conservation epistemologies, but to complement efforts by Western science in easing the tapestry of environmental problems that haunt Africa and the rest of the world. This is a valuable book for environmental conservationists, land resource managers, political/social ecologists, environmentalists, environmental anthropologists, environmental field workers and technicians, and practitioners and students of conservation sciences.
A Fallen Citadel and Other Poems is a powerful collection of over forty prose poems. The poems cover an array of issues ranging from the crisis that ensued after the 2007-2008 elections in Kenya to other social issues: loss of identity, poverty, hopelessness, and AIDs. These poems are powerful, vivid, full of imagery, and delightful. Some begin tragically, but end with hope; they begin with an everyday event, but end with a philosophical question about the meaning of life; and others are not only disturbing, but also thought provoking. Abala's poetic maneuvers in this collection are bound to delight and fascinate any reader.
Married But Available
(2008)
Married But Available ventures into a theme about which people say as much as they withhold. It explores intersections between sex, money and power, challenging orthodoxies, revealing complexities and providing insights into the politics and economics of relationships. During six months of fieldwork in Mimboland, Lilly Loveless, a Muzungulander doctoral student in Social Geography, researches how sex shapes and is shaped by power and consumerism in Africa. The bulk of her research takes place on the outskirts of the University of Mimbo, an institution where nothing is what it seems. Through her astounding harvest of encounters, interviews, conversations and observations, the reader gets a captivating glimpse into the frailty and resilience of human beings and society. Lilly Loveless comes out of it all well and truly baptized. And so does the reader!
The Sunbird
(2012)
The travails of day-to-day existence notwithstanding, Scolastica is an ordinary woman in Tobeningo who has struggled to carve a fairly successful life for herself. She is not a novice when it comes to putting out fires, thanks to a bubbling teenage daughter, a sugar-daddy chairman of the local Native Authority and the sudden re-appearance of a former sweetheart. But when her son sets out to commemorate his father's passing, on a false alarm, it is her life skills and sense of purpose that are tested to the limit. As the sole privy to the true situation, she is in a race against time to avert a calamity from befalling her son and her people. In her path, besides the vicissitudes of daily living, are the high-handedness and ineptitude of local politics, as well as the straightjacket and mysticism of both religion and tradition. How will she fare?
This book draws on years of rich empirical research on radio drama production in Cameroon to offer a strikingly new perspective in Development Theatre discourse in Africa. Chronicling the history and evolution of Development Theatre practice in Anglophone Africa and arguing for literary forms that address the basic everyday realities of ordinary people in a medium they understand, the book revisits the crucial question of utilitarian literature in a continent that continues to brandish a begging bowl even as it celebrates fifty years of independence. Radio Theatre's inherent latitude to reach the masses in a manner and matter that they identify with makes of it an invaluable albeit often neglected sub-genre in the universe of Development Theatre. Reaching an enlarged audience through radio drama productions - plays that address the rustic, ascetic and practical realities of the people - is liberating. Through radio plays and their capacity to provide for an enormous degree of authenticity, ordinary people are able to enhance their self-esteem. Like main stream Development Theatre, Radio Drama sets out to address the concerns of all in an all-embracing approach that explores interactive learning characterized by continuous questioning of and adaptation to reality. It disparages the omniscience of the superstructure meant to be perceived as indispensable and all-knowing. As a medium of development communication with unique aesthetic qualities found in and not limited to sound and silence, Radio Drama creates events and condenses reality into dramatic constellations with a high sense of authenticity that invites its audience to participate in the creation process with a strong sense of direction in a story, a plot and a moral. This people-oriented culture re-animation process is the fertile ground for grassroots empowerment. It is the point of departure for feasible development initiatives that this book explores.
Roselyne M. Jua has taught English and American Literature and Creative Writing at the Universities of Yaounde (1986-1993) and Buea (1993-2012). At the University of Buea, she served as Dean of Faculty of Arts from 2010 to 2012. She is Director of Academic Affairs at the University Bamenda, North West Region, since August 2012. Dr Jua has published articles in peer-reviewed journals and edited the plays of Victor E. Musinga among which+are The Barn+and+The Tragedy of Mr. No-Balance. She is co-author with Bate Besong of+To the Budding Creative Writer: A Handbook.
First Harvests are expressions of impressions on a variety of local and universal phenomena and states of being. It is the first ever poetry collection by a few sons and daughters of Nkongho-Mbo, a subgroup of the Mbo ethnic group of Cameroon, on which very little has been published. The poems however transcend the geographical, cultural and emotional landscapes that have inspired them.
During the 1990s, as the Internet in general and e-mail in particular grew in popularity as a means of communication, a number of Cameroonians residing in various parts of the world established a vibrant and lively electronic forum for the discussion of various issues related to their native land. The forum, known as Camnet, demonstrated that Cameroonians living abroad could actively participate in the political, economic and social processes taking place at home. This ability to remain actively engaged in the development of one's nation through the Internet is what Endeley calls 'virtual activism.' Camnet thus distinguished itself as the first and most influential breeding ground for Cameroonian 'virtual activism.' Although Camnet appeared to be dominated by political discussions, it was a truly multi-dimensional forum. No topic was explicitly forbidden and on some occasions the participants conducted extensive debates on issues that had nothing to do with Cameroon or with politics. In this publication, however, the author has chosen to present only a representative sample of his own contributions from the late 1990s with a direct bearing on Cameroon's development. Some of the contributions are in French and in order to reflect the bilingual nature of the debates that took place on Camnet, these have not been translated into English. The informed reader will be struck by the issues which were being debated over 15 years ago as well as by the fact that some of the predictions the author made in the 1990s are a reality today.
This book brings together twenty think-pieces on contemporary Human Rights issues at the international, regional and national level by one of Africa's foremost scholars of International Human Rights and Constitutional Law, J. Oloka-Onyango. Ranging from the 'Arab Spring' to the Right to Education, the collection is both an in-depth analysis of discrete topics as well as a critical reflection on the state of human rights around the world today. Taking up issues such as the African reaction to the International Criminal Court (ICC), the question of truth and reconciliation before the outbreak of post-election violence in Kenya and the links between globalization and racism, the book is a tour de force of issues that are both unique as well as pertinent to human rights struggles around the world.
Finding a Way Home
(2015)
Home is a place in ourselves where we are happy with ourselves, where we find peace with ourselves, where we are satisfied, fulfilled... The important theme coursing through all the stories in the novel, Finding a way home, is that we have to make the journey to find our homes, we have to find the path, and start walking in that path.
This book, the first of its kind on Anglophone Cameroon, brings significant local context into the practice of law particularly at a juncture when civil practice has been radically altered by Cameroon's ongoing effort at harmonization of both the substantive and procedural laws applicable in the courts. The book covers a wide spectrum of topics including: the commencement of civil actions, jurisdiction, simplified recovery procedures and measures of execution, provisional execution and stay of execution. It provides a detailed analysis of the relevant rules of court applicable in both the high court and court of appeal. One of its major strengths lies in its use of recent cases to demonstrate the way Cameroonian judges have dealt with local procedural laws, as well as how the differences between Cameroonian indigenous rules of practice and those imported particularly from Nigeria and England are reconciled.
Zimbabwe: The Urgency of Now
(2015)
Zimbabwe: The Urgency of Now, is a follow-up creative non-fiction book to Zimbabwe: The Blame Game. It goes further than The Blame Game and focuses on Zimbabwe in the GNU entity, the 2013 elections, post elections and post GNU Zimbabwe, and Now. They are a myriad number of problems, issues, limitations that still unbundles Zimbabwe's push towards multiparty democracy, social justice, economic sanity and growth, and The Urgency of Now focuses on the solutions to these. It also tackles the land reform in South Africa, how this could be its biggest problem going forward. It goes further and tackles the larger Africa problem toward democracy, growth, stability and unity, and why the progress towards the United States of Africa has been moribund.
Secrets, Silences, and Betrayals is an invitation to readers to consider factoring in the often discarded or censored but useful information held by the dominated. The books principal claim is that the unsaid weighs in significantly on the scale of semantic construction as that which is said. Thus, it legitimates the impact of the absentee in broadening and clarifying knowledge and understanding in most disciplines. In other words, just as exogenous epistemologies have underlain and explicated the basis for understanding diverse encounters-social, political, historical, cultural, literary, etc.-Secrets, Silences, and Betrayals challenges, from a pluridisciplinary angle, such highly dominant approaches to investigating the origin, nature, ways of knowing, and limits of human knowledge. It thus yields to the deontological basis to critically reexamine our understanding of the world around us. It is in this regard that the present volume points towards the need for human history to become a cumulative record and re-recording of every human journey and endeavor in life; it brings together disparate voices illuminating topical issues that would be or have been legated to posterity as nonexistent, partial, or half-truths.
Chieftaincy in Africa has displayed remarkable dynamics and adaptability to new socio-economic and political developments, without becoming totally transformed in the process. Almost everywhere on the continent, chiefdoms and chiefs have become active agents in the quest for ethnic, cultural symbols as a way of maximising opportunities at the centre of bureaucratic and state power, and at the home village where control over land and labour often require both financial and symbolic capital. Chieftaincy remains central to ongoing efforts at developing democracy and accountability in line with the expectations of Africans as individual 'citizens' and also as 'subjects' of various cultural communities. This book uses Cameroon and Botswana as case studies, to argue that the rigidity and prescriptiveness of modernist partial theories have left a major gap in scholarship on chiefs and chieftaincy in Africa. It stresses that studies of domesticated agency in Africa are sorely needed to capture the creative ongoing processes and to avoid overemphasising structures and essentialist perceptions on chieftaincy and the cultural communities that claim and are claimed by it.
The African conundrum... is rooted out of the historical, philosophical and cultural bastardisation, imbalances and inequalities which many post-colonial African governments have always sought to address, though with varying degrees of success, since the 1960s. Lamentably, this African conundrum is rarely examined in a systematic manner that takes into account the geopolitical milieu of the continent, past and present. This volume seeks to interrogate and examine the extent of the impact of the geopolitical seesaw which seems poised to tip in favour of the Global North. The book grapples with the question on how Africa can wake up from its cavernous intellectual slumber to break away from both material and psychological dependency and achieve a transformative political and socio-economic self-reinvention and self-assertion. While the African conundrum is largely a result of historic oppression and a resilient colonial legacy, this book urges Africans to rethink their condition in a manner that makes Africa responsible and accountable for its own destiny. The book argues that it is through this rethinking that Africa can successfully transcend the logic of post-imperial dependency.
Revolution: Struggle Poems
(2015)
Revolutionary as a way of solving problems bedevilling our place under the sun, revolutions we witnessed in The Middle East, revolutionary in writing, text, textiness of text, the poetic genre, attitude of mind, ideas, living. Poems in Revolution take the experimental approach as they deal with the above struggle issues and many others. They go further in bringing into focus how our revolutions have not delivered us across the line, and how to get across the line.
The relationship between police and the public in formerly colonised countries of Africa has never been smooth. It is plagued with clich's of suspicion, mistrust, and brutality which are all a result of the legacy of draconian policing in colonial Africa. This colonial hangover has chiefly been an upshot of sluggish switching from the mantra of colonial policing to community progressive policing advocated in democratic societies. This book, the result of five years of ethnographic and library research on the interaction and relationships between police and members of the public in Zimbabwe, is a clarion call for a generative progressive working together between the police and the public for a peaceful and orderly society. While it traces the historical trends and nature of policing in Africa and in particular Zimbabwe, the book demonstrates how law, morality and policing enrich one another. The book offers critical insights in the interpretation of contemporary policing in Zimbabwe with a view to inform and draw lessons for both police and the public. It should be of interest not only to legal anthropologists but also political scientists, members of the public, police instructors, police officers, and students and educators in academic disciplines such as criminal justice, criminology, law, sociology, African studies, and leadership and conflict management.
Moving beyond existing approaches that largely deal with the biophysical consequences of climate change realities in Africa, this book explores an alternative perspective that traces climate change as a travelling idea. It focuses on how globally constructed discourses on climate change find their way to the local level in the Bamenda Grassfields of Cameroon, thereby seeking to understand how these discursive practices lead to social transformations, and to new configurations of power. In the translation process from the 'global' to the 'local' level a continuous modification and appropriation of the idea of climate change takes place that finally leads to a concrete implementation of climate change related projects and sensitization campaigns. Hence, it is argued that in this increasingly interconnected and mediated world people in Africa (and elsewhere in the world) do not solely adapt to a changing climate, but also adapt to a changing discourse about the climate. Travelling between traditional rulers and their palaces, to the world of NGOs, journalists and ordinary farmers this study brings the reader on a captivating journey, that reveals how climate change engages in a variety of ways with different lifeworlds, revitalizes local cosmologies, gives birth to a new development paradigm, and moreover how it evokes apocalyptic anxieties and trajectories of blame at the grassroots level.
Urgency of a New Dawn is the cry of most Southern Cameroonians against those who they experience to be an oppressive, Machiavellian, hostile, parasitising, captor-like, secessionist, assimilationist, discriminatory, and dehumanising la République du Cameroun, to which they were annexed through misleading UN and UK politics and Politics as a condition toward their independence from the UK in 1961. Extrapolating only on these two territories, Urgency of a New Dawn is no less the sweeping story of one too many other peoples across Africa, tormented by the heedless partitioning of the continent by colonisers and the consequential neo-patrimonial and ethnic African Politics and politics of belonging. Forced either into spaces that were never theirs, or pushed out of spaces that they struggle to claim and/or prove theirs, many African peoples today find themselves engaging in endless battles, not against colonisers but against fellow black Africans, for the survival of their essence, their culture, languages, traditions, dignity, modes of being and identification, right to equality, and freedom.
There are milliards of off beam assumptions that Africa will always remain immobile in development of whatever type. This pseudo take has mainly been propounded by Western thinkers in order to dubiously make Africans internalise and reinforce this flimsy and flimflam dependency. Africa needs to embark on paradigm shift; and tweak and turn things around. Africa has what it take to do so quickly, especially now that new economic powers such as China and India are evolving as counterweight to the West. Shall Africa use these new economic forces to its advantage based on fair and win-win cooperation? To do so, Africa must make sure that it does not slink back into business as usual vis-a-vis beggarliness, dependence, frailty, gullibility, made-up backwardness, monkey business, and pipedreams, not to mention the nasty and narcissistic behaviours of its venal and navel-gazing rulers. Verily, Africa needs, inter alia, to use its God-given gifts, namely, immense resources, young population, abundance of vast and unexploited amounts of land. Equally, Africa must, without equivocation, invest copiously and earnestly in its people, the youth in the main. Most of all, Africa needs to shy away from all colonial carryovers and encumbrances. This volume shows many ways through and by which Africa can inverse the current imbroglio-cum-no-go it faces for the better; and thereby actualise the dream of being truly independent and prosperous.
Questions surrounding democracy, governance, and development especially in the view of Africa have provoked acrimonious debates in the past few years. It remains a perennial question why some decades after political independence in Africa the continent continues experiencing bad governance, lagging behind socioeconomically, and its democracy questionable. We admit that a plethora of theories and reasons, including iniquitous and malicious ones, have been conjured in an attempt to explain and answer the questions as to why Africa seems to be lagging behind other continents in issues pertaining to good governance, democracy and socio-economic development. Yet, none of the theories and reasons proffered so far seems to have provided enduring solutions to Africas diverse complex problems and predicaments. This book dissects and critically examines the matrix of Africas multifaceted problems on governance, democracy and development in an attempt to proffer enduring solutions to the continents long-standing political and socio-economic dilemmas and setbacks.