Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Article (15685)
- Part of Periodical (2814)
- Working Paper (2351)
- Doctoral Thesis (2053)
- Preprint (1958)
- Book (1736)
- Part of a Book (1071)
- Conference Proceeding (750)
- Report (471)
- Review (165)
Language
- English (29245) (remove)
Keywords
- taxonomy (738)
- new species (441)
- morphology (173)
- Deutschland (142)
- Syntax (125)
- Englisch (120)
- distribution (116)
- biodiversity (100)
- Deutsch (98)
- inflammation (97)
Institute
- Medizin (5323)
- Physik (3722)
- Wirtschaftswissenschaften (1906)
- Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) (1660)
- Biowissenschaften (1543)
- Center for Financial Studies (CFS) (1485)
- Informatik (1391)
- Biochemie und Chemie (1085)
- Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE) (1065)
- House of Finance (HoF) (708)
Regional Integration in Africa Bridging the North-Sub-Saharan Divide came about as a research project conducted by the Africa Institute of South Africa and examines the North African countries' strategies of involvement in the African continent, and their integration initiatives. The book looks at major issues involving Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania. These countries, in most cases, have been treated as separate from sub-Saharan Africa. However, the historical reality and economic and political interests indicate that the North African countries have been and still are closely connected with the rest of the African continent. Egypt, for example, was one of the leading countries in the African unity movement, and, together with Libya, has contributed to the restructuring of the African continental organisation and the establishment of the African Union. The book consists of two parts. The first part includes five chapters written in English, the second part of the book comprises six chapters written in Arabic.
Leading the Night
(2010)
Deprived of being heard, people still have a voice. They make it heard in ways that disturb the status quo. This book is an engagement with such voices. Can Deni, Wairi, Yaadi, matatu people, militia people and taxi drivers in Kenya also ask 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' as Nelson Mandela did. Why do two men wearing bling bling turn into two snakes dancing in Rika's imagination? The web of corruption is intricate. No-one can lead this night alone. It takes many constellations, each one twinkling in its own radius. Many rays of light dispel darkness. The peoples' good leadership alone can check politicians' terrible ways. Philo Ikonya is the author of two poetry anthologies, This Bread of Peace and Out if Prison.
Getting Heard: (Re)claiming Performance Space is the third in a series of publications on art, culture and society released by Twaweza Communications. The aim is to bring to the fore conversations taking place in Kenya about identity, creativity, nationalism and the generation of knowledge. The series is also about the pursuit of freedom through arts, media and culture. In Getting Heard the performance space is shown to offer wider possibilities for knowledge creation. It shows that in post-colonial Africa political leaders have consistently performed over their subjects at local and national levels. There is discussion of: Kenya National Theatre, Story Telling, Radio Theatre, Translation, African Languages, Music, Media and Mungiki This volume opens a window to our understanding of post-colonial Africa through performances.
In most of Africa, there is evidence of politicised inter-ethnic rivalry and ethnic mobilisation to acquire, maintain or monopolise power as competition for resources intensify. This volume demonstrates how ethnic diversity can be managed at a number of levels in order to improve the lives of citizens. As the contributors show, ethnicity as an identity is fluid and malleable. It can be deconstructed in order to reduce its saliency. Evidently, strong ethnic affliation has also been viewed as a major barrier to human and economic development although ethnically bound welfare organisations do influence the economic and social life of citizens especially in the rural areas, In most of Africa, it is through ethnic identification that competition for influence in the state and in the allocation of resources becomes apparent. Occasionally, governments have sought to address this challenge through ethnic and regional balancing in political appointments. But this does not always work. Drawing on experiences from Eastern Africa and beyond, the contributors discuss how ethnic diversity can be a resource for the region.
This book brings together multiple voices and positions from Africa. These voices, assembled during a 2003 Soap Summit held in Nairobi, are powerful and varied and suggest ways in which issues of health could be tackled in an entertaining manner. The summit organised by Population Communications International - Africa. highlighted the critical role that the arts can play in ensuring better health, especially among the youth. It resulted from the recognition that young people in Africa are faced with a myriad of problems and complications as they struggle to deal with growth and identity formation, within a globalising social and economic setup. They are in dire need of information on their own sexuality and how to deal with it and are getting conflicting signals from the mass media, as well as their immediate environment. The youth are under intense pressure from their peers to engage in premarital sex, which is in most cases unprotected. The HIV/AIDS epidemic presents frightening challenges and all health programs should look for ways of dealing with it. Of great to concern is the vulnerability of women and girls in Africa due to rising poverty, gender violence, lack of access to youth-friendly reproductive health facilities, and lack of a conducive infrastructure especially in informal settlements and in the rural areas. The myriad problems presented by the pandemic require a multi-sectoral approach. This book brings together a number of strategies being undertaken in Africa that combine entertainment and education in a positive way. The voices from the Soap Summit are interspersed with those of the Editor to create a dialogue on entertainment-education that contributes to the discussion on the way social change might be undertaken.
God was African
(2014)
When Kendem, a varsity instructor, returns to his native Lewoh countryside where he spent his childhood, he is seeking relief from the complexity of human civilization after attending the Fulbright Institute in the United States. Instead, he is confronted with two seething issues: how to reveal to his sick and troubled mother the situation in which he finds his elder brother, the successor of Mbe Tanju-Ngong's household, who travelled to the United States many years before and had never returned and the dispute over Fuo Beyano's funeral which is tearing the land apart, whether the deceased village chief, should be given a Christian burial or he should, according to the age-old tradition of Lewoh people, go through a ritual to enable him return and continue ruling his people.
Before the Rainbow
(2014)
Emmanuel Fru Doh, a native of Cameroon, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. He taught at the University of Yaounde (E.N.S. Bambili) for almost a decade-the 90s-before leaving for the US. He then had a brief stint as an Adjunct Professor at the University of Minnesota before settling into the Department of English at Century, a College within the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) System. Poet, novelist, social and literary critic, Emmanuel Fru Doh is the author of Nomads: The Memoir of a Southern Cameroonian.
In the 1980s, the University of Cape Town s social anthropology department was predominantly oriented by an expos style of critical scholarship. The enemy was the apartheid state, the ethical imperative was clear and a combative metaphor for doing research motivated the department. Andrew David Spiegel, known affectionately as Mugsy by his students and colleagues, has been a central, if understated, figure of this history and helped to frame the theoretical charge of a generation of students looking to counter apartheid from inside . In a series of interviews between the senior professor and one of his students Jessica Dickson Spiegel offers a unique perspective from the centre of anthropology s recent history in South Africa.
Between Rhetoric and Reality : The State and Use of Indigenous Knowledge in Post-Colonial Africa
(2015)
Since time immemorial, indigenous peoples around the world have developed knowledge systems to ensure their continued survival in their respective territories. These knowledge systems have always been dynamic such that they could meet new challenges. Yet, since the so-called enlightenment period, these knowledges have been supplanted by the Western enlightenment science or colonial science hegemony and arrogance such that in many cases they were relegated to the periphery. Some Euro-centric scholars even viewed indigenous knowledge as superstitious, irrational and anti-development. This erroneous view has, since the colonial period, spread like veld fire to the extent of being internalised by some political elites and Euro-centric academics of Africa and elsewhere. However, for some time now, the potential role that indigenous peoples and their knowledge can play in addressing some of the global problems haunting humanity across the world is increasingly emerging as part of international discourse. This book presents an interesting and insightful discourse on the state and role that indigenous knowledge can play in addressing a tapestry of problems of the world and the challenges connected with the application of indigenous knowledge in enlightenment science-dominated contexts. The book is not only useful to academics and students in the fields of indigenous studies and anthropology, but also those in other fields such as environmental science, social and political ecology, development studies, policy studies, economic history, and African studies.
Blot On The Landscape
(2015)
On March 8, 2007, one of Cameroon's foremost scholars died in a ghastly traffic accident barely hours after launching his most forthright and acerbic collection of poems: Disgrace: Autobiographical Narcissus. Dr. Bate Besong was a social activist, a critic, troubadour, and playwright; an avant-garde, steeped in the tradition of the absurd, who fought against the corrupt system of governance that transmuted Cameroonians into a comatose and apathetic citizenry neutered by fear engendered by the workings of an existing Gestapo. For the first time, Emmanuel Fru Doh has gone beyond an analysis of Besong's plays into giving an in-depth appraisal of his poems which have, for a long time, held back critics because of their opacity. Doh examines each of Besong's plays and collections of poems in separate sections and succeeds in setting Besong's work in perspective - mindful of their concerns and
The Pan African Anthropological Association (PAAA) marked the 10th anniversary of its creation by holding its 9th Annual Conference in Yaounde, Cameroon - the city and country of its birth, from 30 August-2 September 1999. The conference, themed 'The Anthropology of Africa: Challenges for the 21st Century', was attended by some seventy participants, mostly African. Among the international participants was Dr Sydel Silverman, President of the Wenner Gren Foundation at the time, a long term partner of the PAAA who was present at the inaugural conference in 1988. The conference proceedings were initially published in 2000 with very limited circulation. Given the continued relevance of the papers presented, and in view of the call by the President of the PAAA for African anthropologists to reunite anthropological theory and practice in the teaching programmes of African universities, the PAAA has republished the proceedings of its landmark 9th Annual Conference. The book consists of forty three divided into eight parts, namely: teaching anthropology in the decades ahead; Health Challenges: HIV/AIDS Anthropological Perspectives; NGOS: Use and Misuse of Anthropology; Anthropological Focus on Environment; Some Applied Issues in Anthropology; The African Family in Crisis; Ethnicity and Ethnic Conflicts; and Population issues and anthropology: Fertility Crisis. Paul Nkwi concludes his introduction to the volume with these words: 'The Anthropology of Africa will remain for a long time, fundamentally applied if it is to meet the challenges of the 21st Century.'
Divining the Future of Africa : Healing the Wounds, Restoring Dignity and Fostering Development
(2014)
This book explores the relationship between Africa, the West and China. It notes that while Africa is a continent of diverse cultures, raw materials, human resource, indigenous knowledges, and above all the biggest recipient of foreign aid globally, it continues to lag behind all regions of the world in terms of socio-economic development. The book grapples with the important question on why this has been the case. It provides crucial critical insights on how Africa's situation could be reversed and the tapestry of its socio-economic problems eased. The book draws a link between culture, globalisation and socio-economic development, breaking new grounds in the discourse on development in post-colonial Africa. This is an incisive clarion call to bypass the outlandish claims and sterile discussions on the parodying of Africa by Euro-centric scholars. It is a contribution on the imperative to re-think the future of development in Africa. It makes a compelling argument by self-reliant development processes in which Africans reclaim their voice, independence and autonomy unapologetically. The book provides some grist for the mills of policy makers, institutional planners, practitioners and students of anthropology, political studies, sociology, economic history, local governance, cultural economics, and gender, development, African, heritage and international studies.
One of the central theoretical and practical issues in post-colonial Africa is the relevance, nature, and politics at play in the management of museum institutions on the continent. Most African museums were established during the 19th and 20th centuries as European imperialists were spreading their colonial tentacles across the continent. The attainment of political independence has done little to undo or correct the obnoxious situation. Most African countries continue to practice colonial museology despite surging scholarship and calls by some Afro-centric and critical scholars the world over to address the quandaries on the continent's museum institutions. There is thus an unresolved struggle between the past and the present in the management of museums in Africa. In countries such as Zimbabwe, the struggle in museum management has been precipitated by the sharp economic downturn that has gripped the country since the turn of the millennium. In view of all these glitches, this book tackles the issue of the management of heritage in Zimbabwe. The book draws on the findings by scholars and researchers from different academic orientations and backgrounds to advance the thesis that museums and museology in Zimbabwe face problems of epic proportions that require urgent attention. It makes insightful suggestions on possible solutions to the tapestry of the inexorably enigmatic amalgam of complex problems haunting museum institutions in Zimbabwe, calling for a radical transformation of museology as a discipline in the process. This book should appeal to policy makers, scholars, researchers and students from disciplines such as museology, archaeology, social-cultural anthropology, and culture and heritage studies.
The Rising Sun and Boma
(2014)
The Rising Sun and Boma interrogate social evils such as moral decadence, corruption, and greed that are rife in the Cameroonian society. In both plays, Ipah, Paddy, Dinna, and Boma, for example, exemplify how waywardness and avarice can subvert moral integrity. At the same time, the plays problematise the intersection of tradition and modernity, articulating the tension inherent in both visions of life. Although the moral landscape of the drama appears sordid, characters like Abu Ipah and Joseph enkindle hope. Initially performed seventeen years ago, the plays are still as poignant as they are didactic and hilarious as they are refreshing. The characters are credible and compelling partly because of the felicitous language that is anchored in the local imagery.
From his first research there in 1959 until shortly before his death in 2010, Victor Le Vine was a major Cameroon scholar. What he wrote during Cameroon's first half-century of independence carries implications for the years ahead. This volume introduces and presents eight of his short writings, 1961-2007, five never previously published. They demonstrate his mastery of the intricacies and the sweep of the country's governance history, and both his own and Cameroon's importance for African Studies at large.
Searching for Bate Besong
(2014)
The future of the country in Searching for Bate Besong is compromised by irresponsible leadership, falsehoods, blind tyranny, waste, and lawlessness. Visionaries like Dockinta (a literary incarnation of Bate Besong, one of Cameroon's most fiery and revolutionary authors) who try to question or expose the status-quo are incarcerated and tortured by the brute forces of dictatorship. It however only needs the strong will and audacity, the messianic self-sacrifice and determination (which are the values Dockinta incarnates), to expose, ridicule and destroy power drunkenness. This play is sine qua non to searching for the collective memory of a community marginalized and subjugated by successive regimes of exploitation and repression. It promises the rediscovery of the dignity and destiny of an active volcano wrongfully rendered docile. The Search will liberate a people who agonized from the whips by the Germans, the hypocrisy of the British, the outright exploitation of the French and the eternal domination of La Republique du Cameroun. The search will culminate in liberating not only Cameroonians, but Africa from corruption, nepotism, tribalism, organized crime, wars and the abuse of basic human rights and freedoms.
According to Fossungu, we need healthy competition for progress. Competition that is not geared toward progress is negative competition. No competition or the absence of self-help is negative competition. With factories competing healthily, consumers have a variety of quality goods and services from which to choose. The entire community benefits when people in any grouping are competing positively; thus making the rules of competition graphical. The central focus of this book is the extent to which Canadian regulations apply without discrimination to all of Canada and to everyone, individuals and corporations alike. A swift answer is affirmative. But is that really it? The book is also about voluntary slavery, which is worse than forced enslavement. Drawing on Ignorance Theory, the book argues that the worst thing that can happen to anyone is to be ignorant of one's ignorance. He who does not know what he does not know will never know. Voluntary African slaves generally employ 'One Has No Choice' (On n'a pas le choix) to cloak their having chosen not to secure their rights. Fossungu demonstrates why he considers this an escapist way of shying away from doing the normal thing, thus giving the dictator or oppressor reason to dictate and oppress with impunity. This is Fossungu at his provocative and controversial best.
One Eternal Sleep
(2015)
In this volume Bill F. Ndi portrays life, death, and dying as one great adventure through which one would explore the limitless bounds of Life. At its best, the collection echoes the words of anthropologist Francis B. Nyamnjoh when he underlines that, 'one is only dead to particular context as a way of making oneself alive to prospective new contexts.' Ndi in this collection invites the reader to learn the art of living through the art of dying and accepting death.
In Chains for My Country is an account of the struggle of the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), a nonviolent liberation movement, to wrestle British Southern Cameroons from the colonial claws of la République du Cameroun. It is an epic and thrilling account of the life of British Southern Cameroons, which passed from colonial rule to foreign domination through annexation and attempted assimilation into neighbouring la République du Cameroun. Under British trusteeship, British Southern Cameroons graduated to self-government in 1954 with all hopes of independence. Instead, the Trust Territory was doomed to subservience in a contested union with la République du Cameroun. Failure to implement United Nations Resolution 1608 of April 1961 to establish the envisioned federation of two states equal in status facilitated la République du Cameroun's annexation and colonial occupation of a defenseless United Nations Trust as Britain withdrew all its personnel and forces. The territory has been reduced to two provinces of la République du Cameroun under the rule of proconsuls backed by an imperial occupation force with an agenda of nipping in the bud any resistance.
This prolific collection of essays, with contributions from scholars from across several disciplines, on the practice and implications of naming 'Nomenclatural Poetization and Globalization' explores diverse concerns in onomastics, such as cultural and ethnic implications as well as individual identity formation processes in the age of Globalization and extends these to a variety of contemporary theories of appreciation and internationalization.
What does it mean to be marginal? For residents of Cape Town?s Langa Township, being considered marginal is subject to a host of social, physical and sometimes materialistic qualifications ? not least of which is owning a mobile phone. Through various presentations of unique aspects of township life revealed through ethnographic snapshots, this book reveals the complex realities of marginalization experienced by some residents in Langa Township, located in Cape Town, South Africa. Mobile phones have been embraced and accommodated by both local South Africans and African immigrant residents living and working in Langa. Among other things, the technology has become a way of challenging (real and imagined) marginalities within the township in particular and South Africa in general. The book provides empirical data on the role of technology in regards to migration and notions of belonging; specifically the ways that technology has mitigated distance for residents, provided opportunities for development, facilitated the negotiation of various marginalities, and offered new ways of belonging for Langa residents.
Africa's dynamic security environment is characterized by great diversity - from conventional challenges such as insurgencies, resource and identity conflicts, and post-conflict stabilization to growing threats from piracy, narcotics trafficking, violent extremism, and organized crime taking root in urban slums, among others. This precarious environment jeopardizes security at the societal, community and individual levels. In a globalized and interconnected world, millions of people worldwide are affected by some form of human insecurity. Infectious and parasitic diseases annually kill millions. Internally displaced persons number millions, including 5 million in Sudan alone. In Zambia 1 million people in a population of 11 million are reported to be HIV-positive, a situation much worse in other countries. Potable water crisis looms almost everywhere. In this book Tatah Mentan points out the need to shift the focus away from a state-centric and military-strategic emphasis on security to an interdisciplinary and people-centric approach that embraces notions like global citizenship, empowerment and participation. The primary elements of economic, food, health, environment, personal, community and political security all comprise the broader understanding of human security in an intricately interconnected world.
This book is an ethnographic study of a group of migrants in Cape Town from Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa. It seeks to understand how migrants overcome structural exclusion by forming and maintaining convivial relationships through the Bay Community Church and how this is facilitated by Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). The book argues that ICTs are implicated in the negotiation of conviviality. ICTs allow for a negotiation of intimacy and distance; although their functions may facilitate more contact than is desired or further distance those already separated physically. This book interrogates the strict division between 'insiders' and 'outsiders' and highlights that migrants are able to sustain multiple networks and relationships, linking their home and host countries. Despite increasingly strict border control and animosity from host communities, migrants are able to overcome imposed identities such as 'outsider'. They do so by using ICTs such as cell phones and Facebook to emphasise their Christian identity, which is one of the main factors for inclusion in church-based networks. Membership with a mixed denominational church such as the Bay further challenges the notion that migrants stick to themselves. Inclusive communities such as the Bay and everyday desires for conviviality evoke the need to reconsider policies too narrowly articulated around the dichotomisation of 'foreigners' and 'nationals', 'home' and 'away', 'us' and 'them'.
Cameroon's Predicaments
(2014)
This book deals with a variety of socio-cultural, economic and political problems facing Cameroon and the rest of Africa, with particular reference to unemployment, corruption, poverty, criminality, violence, insecurity, and moral decadence. It presents a critical analysis of government policies from the colonial era to the present time; arguing that most of these policies have been stalled by an uncommitted leadership. The regime in Cameroon has drifted away from basic managerial and democratic principles in in favour of the ethnicisation of politics, sterile consumption, clientelism and patronage. The book contends that corruption has become the main instrument of governance whereby the political and economic elites control the wealth of the nation at the expense of a majority who wallow in abject poverty and misery. Faced with the difficult economic and political situation, most youth and the intelligentsia have adopted ?official and ?unofficial? means to circumvent all immigration rules to travel to affluent Western countries, the consequences notwithstanding. Brain drain is often the outcome. Further, it examines issues of social exclusion, political representation and marginalization with special focus on the predicament of Anglophone Cameroonians as a socio-cultural community. The inclusion of examples and case studies based on empirical and secondary data from Africa is intended to foreground the importance of comparison, and attract the interest of both academic and non-academic readership.
Faith conversion experiences are first of all personal before being universal. While biblical history records relatively few conversion encounters as dramatic and as explosive as Saint Paul's on the road to Damascus, it is not rare for individuals in the throes of a religious conversion to fall prey to intensely agonizing confusion. That is what happened to Martin Jumbam when he marched for peace in his country alongside the charismatic and irrepressible Emeritus Archbishop of Douala in Cameroon, Christian Cardinal Tumi. He joined the prelate as a secular journalist but went back home more than ever conscious of his state as a fallen Christian, the first step in his journey of faith. Since then, all his writing, be it secular or religious, now bears the fruits of that encounter, characterized by intense empathy for the human person. This book recounts the myriad ways Jumbam's encounters with Christian Cardinal Tumi have activated, nourished and inspired his faith.
This book is about home. With Malawi as its focus, it seeks to understand ideas about home as expressed through poetry written by Malawians in English. Although African Literatures are studied those of Malawi have not received agreeable attention. This book surveys poetry by five Malawian writers - Felix Mnthali, Frank Chipasula, Jack Mapanje, Lupenga Mphande, and Steve Chimombo. The discussion negotiates scribed experience of exile, engendered by Dr. Banda's regime, and shows that the selected poets effectively converse with a sense of home, reflecting on its transformations in their work. Interrogating the strict definitions of home, the argument highlights that far from home-less exiles in fact clarify the sense of what 'home' is. The manoeuvre is one of thinking towards an unboundaried 'home'. This book will be of value not only to readers interested in the cultures of Africa but to all those with an interest in worldwide literary phenomena, and ideas therein of home and exile.
The Last Of The Virgins
(2015)
Evelyn Ndangeh, a pretty Cameroonian teenager brought up in a strict Christian home, vows to preserve her maidenhood until she gets married to a man she truly loves. While in Our Lady of Lourdes College Mankon, she is approached by Lesley Njapa a student of Cameroon Protestant College Bali, after a student of CCAST Bambili. Evelyn turns him down only to find later that she can't stay alone without a man who must be none other than Lesley. Evelyn begins frantic moves to entice Lesley but on meeting him it seems too late though she gets close to his heart. Tragedy strikes when Lesley is involved in a motor accident. Evelyn arrives Bamenda general hospital wailing and settles beside Lesley to console and comfort him in his agony. Anxiety builds up to a crescendo and a medical team is mobilised to save Lesley's life.
Touring Girls
(2014)
Touring Girls tells the story of Jacob Mbuy a young Cameroonian whose primary objective in life is having affairs with as many women as possible. He is obsessed with abusing young girls as well as instilling hopeless hope in adult women. His demise comes when he changes his world from the Christian to the Moslem world where he confronts a new type of women who behave strangely and cannot dance to his tunes. Protected by Islamic traditions and strict government laws, Jacob lands into a hell of unprecedented problems.
This book is a timely humanistic touch to memory studies. It uses literature as a laboratory for the workings of the mind, and characters as the subjects of human experimentation and diagnostics. This book considers authors from different societies and historical periods. The book is a refreshing illumination on the functioning of human memory. It complements the work of neuroscientists who seek to rationalize the workings of the same. Drawing from various ideas on memory, this rich and authoritative volume results from wide-ranging endeavors centered on the common fact that tracking memory in literature provides an astounding vista of orientations covered in its separate chapters. The writers examined in the various chapters become mediums for unleashing memory and its reconfiguration into artistic images. The ten separate chapters investigate different aspects of memory in such memoric associations as power, music, resistance, trauma, and identity. It is therefore no surprise that the editors should consider this book as 'a veritable menu for everything needed for an unforgettable memory banquet'.
A Nose for Money
(2006)
Set in the fictional and reluctantly bilingual land of Mimbo in contemporary Africa, this story revolves around the tragedy of the haunting Prosp?re, a semi-literate Mimbolander who is searching for the finer things in life. The novel presents a graphic picture of the frustrations engendered by a society that values wealth over love.
The Junkyard Blues
(2013)
In Cameroon life isn't only like living in limbo, it is like living in the very centre of a hellish junkyard where dreams are dumped and wishes shattered at will by forces which can barely be controlled or understood. It is in this junkyard of dreams that Jude Maimo finds himself after years of studies and obtaining a university degree that could not even procure him a decent job. Reluctantly living under his brother's care after having failed grossly in an attempt to be independent, and doing a job that is more than an insult to him, he still hopes to one day live his simple dream; furthering his education long enough to have a respectable and decent job that could make him truly independent. Entangled in a relationship he can barely understand and weighed down by the daily temptations of natural life, a long lost friend from back in his school days suddenly appears as a light to lead him to the end of the tunnel. But a little too late, he discovers that the promised light of salvation is just another face of darkness, a darkness that wants more than his soul, a darkness that can only lead to tragedy.
This crowning collection brings together seven of Bole Butake's finest plays since 1984, namely: Dance of the Vampires; Family Saga; Lake God; Betrothal Without Libation; And Palm Wine Will Flow; The Rape of Michelle; and Shoes. More than an academic, Butake has distinguished himself as a playwright, unearthing and foregrounding the ills, travails and predicaments of a land and people trapped by the blood-dripping impunities of vampires in power. In his rich repertoire of over ten plays, Butake takes sides with the downtrodden, the wretched of the earth, the deprived and the underdogs. His jabs and jibes, aimed at the rulers, are scathing, at times vitriolic. He has excelled at a stubborn determination to ignore the sinecures, lure and allure of power without responsibility.
In Nomads, Emmanuel Fru Doh combines historical fact, legend, and rumour to emerge with a memoir charged with nostalgia. In the process, he merges scenes and events from several lives and the process of nation building as they all unfold and mature with the passing of time. It becomes obvious that these are somber moments in Doh's life and that of the Cameroon nation, a nation that in recent decades selfish and reckless leaders without goodwill, foresight, or true love for the fatherland have succeeded in destroying. It all boils down to one fact: indeed, there has always been a socio-political agenda by the Francophone-dominated regimes, but it had nothing to do with building a truly united Cameroon. The plan has always been to tactfully subdue and eventually neutralize the Anglophone dimension of the union.
This is a complex volume that combines a good deal of survey data on Bakassi and its populations with more ethnographically based insights into the conditions of the Bakassi communities. The book is the outcome of research carried out by Fongot Kini between 2004 and 2009. The work is intended to serve as first hand exhaustive information on the live situation in the contested Bakassi Cameroon-Nigeria border region. The term Bakassi engenders multiple meanings loaded with many conflicting emotional, spiritual and material interests. Native inhabitants are systematically disinherited of their ancestral cultural heritage and socio-economic resources. They are bastardised, humiliated and scammed by unscrupulous opportunists who deliberately misidentify them with intentions of dispossessing them of their ancestral lands and natural resources. Overall the author is in sympathy with the Bakassi who he argues have been marginalised and neglected by the Cameroon state. In particular, the value of the indigenous communities in terms of local economies as well as securing this vital border area has not been recognised and various external groups have been either allowed or encouraged to settle there to both the detriment of local populations and to the security of the region.
The Black Man and his Visa
(2013)
Tardif is the son of a medical practitioner, an herbalist and a spiritual healer in northwestern Cameroun. When his father eventually gives up his practice, his mother struggles to put him and four of his sisters through high school. But financing university is a challenge. Tardif works for seven years in the farms and as a school teacher and seeks help from all quarters of the globe to try to raise money for university in his home country. Then one day he finds himself in China - studying Chinese medicine - and hoping for a better life than the one he had in Cameroon. The predicaments are as challenging as they are profoundly instructive. Tardif poses as a Dutchman and as an American to get jobs teaching English and survive in his host country. He ends up earning the respect of his students and employers, but not without everyday encounters with precarity. Just as one problem is resolved, another always seems to be brewing on the horizon. Tardif autobiographically opens his adventures, his transformations and his musings on Chinese and African ways of thinking and living to those interested in intercultural mobility and learning about life. His story reads like a dairy and keeps one wondering what will happen next.
This is an eloquent, engaged and extremely well informed narrative of the environmental and natural resource conservation and management issues in Mozambique. While the topics in this volume are diverse, they are all explicitly designed to move beyond the routinized blame of natural resource mismanagement and environmental degradation on local communities, and to rethink ecosystem destruction, land degradation and natural resource over-exploitation in Africa and beyond. Never losing sight of the major causes of environment and resource mismanagement in Mozambique, the book advances the thesis that environment and resource problems are a result of compound factors such as poor governance, poverty, corruption, low education levels, and disregard of endogenous conservation epistemologies. A combination of all these factors makes the whole terrain of conservation even more complicated than ever; hence the need for urgent action by all social actors. This is a valuable book for environmental conservationists, land resource managers, social ecologists, environmental anthropologists, environmental field workers and technicians, practitioners and students of conservation sciences.
Proceedings of the 7th World Congress of African Linguistics, Buea, 17-21 August 2012 : Volume One
(2016)
Proceedings of the 7th World Congress of African Linguistics, Buea, 17-21 August 2012 : Volume 2
(2016)
Knell.Ashes.Seppuku
(2017)
A delinquent son, a barren woman, troubled marriages, a reunion between old childhood friends, and all manner of family drama. This novel's sudden twists and turns have all the makings of a relatable African saga. Tinashe is an intelligent and vibrant young man who is sent to the city of Gweru to further his education at Midlands State University by his father. He is staying with his aunt Margaret who is always fighting with her son Cephas. Tinashe is looking forward to enjoying life and having a great time in the city but things do not seem to be in parallel with his expectations. He later realises this when he is wrongly accused of murdering his aunt, Margaret.
In view of the resilience of Africa's underdevelopment, what do Africans make of their determined aspirations for development? The continent of Africa has constantly drawn global attention, most especially for both human and natural evils. Underdevelopment, it appears, is one of the most eminent threatening evils. It has plunged and promises to maintain the majority of Africa in abject poverty, insecurity, and vulnerability. What perpetuates the ghost and gory of underdevelopment in Africa, despite a proliferation of development rhetoric and initiatives? How do ordinary Africans react to repeated talk and claims of development with little evidence of transformation for the better in their material circumstances? This book interrogates the tenacity of underdevelopment amid calls for Africa to rise from its slumber and reclaim its position in global affairs as the mother continent of humankind. It contributes to the ongoing debates on why Africa remains trapped in the clutch of underdevelopment many decades after the purported end of colonialism. The book comes at a critical time in human history; a time when the talk on Africa's [under-]development is louder due to the ravages of economic downturns and dysfunctional conflicts. It poses a challenge to development practitioners, civil society activists, statesmen, economists, political scientists and theorists to rethink and reconsider their role as technocrats, experts and ambassadors of positive change in Africa and the world beyond.
Despite all the talk about African Renaissance, much of the continent is plagued by poverty and instability. To break out of that cycle, the guardians of African heritage (the old independence freedom fighters turned political leaders and their successors) and much of Afrocentric literature rightly promotes African ideas and solutions for African problems. While the idea in itself is noble, the danger is for Africa to close itself off and ignore 'outside' technical and intellectual innovations that it desperately needs to advance further. Africa through Structuration Theory - ntu-joins the discourse by attempting to restore intellectual freedom and convincingly defends structuration theory not only as the way forward for Africa but also as a legitimately African concept. It is innovative, refreshing and deserves to be heard across the world and appreciated especially by African graduates,'current and future'leaders of various African institutions or businesses, non-Africans who might hesitate to refer to such a theory when trying to understand and deal with African problems and the wider public who constitute the audience for this book. New in this edition: All chapters have been tightened up to make a clearer and more robust case. Chapter three, in particular, has been developed further in an attempt to demonstrate how Ubuntu is an African version of structuration theory. Overall, having both approached the subject from a rational perspective and presented Ubuntu in its preferred version, it became imperative to discuss the status/role of the African body in the expression of human agency and characterise different leadership practices in Africa that do not necessarily reflect the ideals of Ubuntu. Hence, Chapter 6: Body sociology and Africa and Chapter 7: The FS (fear and self-scrutiny) methodology of Ubuntu: a mapping of the field.
The emergent technoscientific New World Order is being legitimised through discourses on openness and inclusivity. The paradox is that openness implies vulnerability and insecurities, particularly where closure would offer shelter. While some actors, including NGOs, preach openness of African societies, Africans clamour for protection, restitution and restoration. Africans struggle for ownership and access to housing, for national, cultural, religious, economic, and social belonging that would offer them the necessary security and protection, including protection from the global vicissitudes and matrices of power. In the presence of these struggles, to presuppose openness would be to celebrate vulnerability and insecurities. This book examines ways in which emergent technologies expose Africans and, more generally, peoples of the global south to political, economic, social, cultural and religious shocks occasioned by the coloniality of the global matrices of power. It notes that there is the use by global elites of technologies to incite postmodern revolutions designed to compound the vicissitudes and imponderables in the already unsettled lives of people north and south. Particularly targeted by these technologies are African and other governments that do not cooperate in the fulfilment of the interests of the hegemonic global elites. The book is handy to students and practitioners in security studies, African studies, development studies, global studies, policy studies, and political science.
Thorns and Roses: A Play
(2017)
'When a pen which drips woman, academic, mother, wife, teacher and administrator proposes to visit the stage, we expect the product to be as complex as the person. And we will be entirely justified in our expectation given that the stage more often than not is that place which captures and dramatizes our core selves in all their complexity. Thorns and Roses is produced by just that kind of pen. But in spite of her multi-layered identity, Frida Mbunda has succeeded in writing a play whose greatest attractions lie in its unassuming, down-to-earth appeal. It is the story of a single-parent home where a mother dedicates her life to her loving but vulnerable single daughter. As its title suggests, the play employs the allegorical archetype to colour the stage with characters and issues of immediate relevance. Womanhood is at the centre of Mbunda's dramatic quest. She knows that being a woman means being exposed to the attractions of shortcuts to happiness.' - Professor George Nyamndi, novelist, playwright and literary scholar, University of Buea, Cameroon.
Zimbabwe: The Blame Game
(2013)
The Blame Game is a cycle of creative non-fiction pieces, pulling the readers through the politics of modern day Zimbabwe. Like in any game, there are players in this game, opposing each other. The game is told through the eyes of one of the players, thus it is subjective. It centres on truthfully trying to find who to blame for Zimbabwe's problems, and how to undo all these problems. Finding who to blame should be the beginning for the search of solutions. It encourages talking to each other, maybe about the wrongs we have done to each other, and genuinely trying to embrace and forgive each other. In trying to undo the problems in Zimbabwe, it also offers insight or solutions on a larger platform - Africa: particularly South Africa; that it might learn from other African countries that have imploded before it, how to solve its own problems.
Since the mid-1980s, there has been much federalism talk in Cameroon where federation (said to have been created in Foumban in 1961) had supposedly been 'overwhelmingly' rejected in 1972 by Cameroonians. 'Confusioncracy' is the one good term that could conveniently explain it. Written with the trilogy of criticism, provocation, and construction in mind, this book aims at reconstructing a new and vigorous society in Cameroon that ensures respect for fundamental human rights and certain basic shared values. Much as the book centres on the Anglophone Problem; it is principally about human rights and their excessive violations - the direct result of the absence of separation of powers and constitutionalism. It largely condemns Cameroon's government for incessantly singing democracy and rule of law at the same time as it is massively torturing and wantonly killing citizens that dare to question the confusion. While sharing the position that a state like Cameroon must be seen to ensure that its laws and other practices accord with its international commitments, the book nonetheless strives to apportion the blame for Cameroon's human rights catastrophe accordingly; showing how the English-speaking minority itself, generally speaking, contributes to a large extent in propping up the dictatorship that is oppressing not only that minority but Cameroonians at large. The book challenges Cameroon to assume a leadership role in uniting Africans through meaningful federalization rather than further splitting them into incapable mini-states on the challenging world stage.
Greener from a Distance
(2013)
Albert?s life dream is to immigrate to the USA, to seek greener pastures. After several failed attempts, he finally gets a visa. Then he arrives the USA hoping for a bright and easy future. Before long he hears stories of desperation, struggles and a few successes. Desperation is portrayed by Mola aka Mboma who adopts a dead man?s identity in order to stay in the USA and by Bruno who marries a US-born woman as his ticket to the USA, knowing fully well that she was leading a double life. Struggles are seen in Paul and Matt who have to work more than two times harder to barely survive in the USA. However, Samson, the surgeon is an example of a success story. Albert has to decide whether to stay in the USA, concoct a story for asylum and chase the dream that has proven elusive for many, or go back to his reality in Cameroon. Though the pasture may actually be greener on the other side for some, it takes a tremendous amount of work and dedication to keep it that way. Realising that the life in the Diaspora is not a bed of roses as portrayed by some Cameroonians, he decides to return to his modest job in Cameroon. Although this book could be considered a cautionary tale about immigration, it is also about the corruption that has overtaken Cameroon and its people.