African Affairs - current issue

Between 'Dirty Money' and 'Development Capital': Somali Money Transfer Infrastructure Under Global Scrutiny

Lindley, A. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

Money transfer infrastructures have come to play a prominent role in the Somali regions, connecting war-torn cities, refugee camps, and remote rural areas with the rest of the world. Drawing on primary research, this article provides the first detailed history of the development of Somali money transfer infrastructure since the civil war, including its response to international intervention. The account raises issues of wider significance relating to recent debates on migrants’ remittances, informal economies and conflict. In particular, the money transfer story demonstrates how crisis can become an opportunity for adaptive commercial actors using social ties to navigate the dangers of civil war. Meanwhile, the international community's attempts to define Somali money transfers as either dirty money or development capital demonstrate a more general ambivalence towards ‘actually existing developments’ in conflict-affected Africa.

Chieftaincy, Diaspora, and Development: The Institution of Nksuohene in Ghana

Bob-Milliar, G. M. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

This article is about the institution of the Nk suohene/hemaa and how it relates to African Americans. The Nk suo stool was created in 1985 by the late Asantehene, Otumfuo Opoku Ware II, as a catalyst for development in Kumase and beyond. Since the 1990s, hundreds of African Americans and some white Westerners have been honoured with various royal titles. Do African Americans understand the Akan conception of slavery and a person of slave origins? Conversely, is the diasporan concept of slavery understood by Akans? In general, and using the case of the Nk suohene/hemaa, this article sets out to show how fluid the chieftaincy institution is in Ghana. Its continuous importance is seen in the development agenda that it has adopted to serve new needs and aspirations. The article makes a case for African Americans to look beyond the Akan regions of Ghana in search of their roots, and argues that such studies can advance understanding of slavery and its legacies in Ghana.

Science, Politics, and the Presidential Aids 'Cure'

Cassidy, R., Leach, M. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

In early 2007 the President of a small African country announced his ‘cure’ for AIDS based on herbal, Islamic, and traditional medicine, resulting in the enrolment of several hundred people testing HIV-positive. This unleashed an ongoing yet remarkably silent controversy around AIDS treatment. The emergence of the presidential treatment can be understood in the political and scientific context of recent global AIDS funding and programming, and longstanding tensions between ‘foreign’ and local concerns with biomedicine and research. Framed in terms of appeals to tradition, ethnicity, religion, nation, and pan-Africanism, the President's programme appears diametrically opposed to mainstream scientific discourses. Yet in promoting and garnering support for his claims, this President has successfully co-opted and harnessed key elements of biomedical AIDS treatment discourse: in claims to identity as a doctor, and in deploying CD4 and viral load counts and personal testimonies as evidence of treatment efficacy. Uncertainty over how to interpret such evidence amongst vulnerable people living with HIV has encouraged many to volunteer. Such politics of science, along with the threatening political and security practices of this particular state, help explain why to date there has been so little overt criticism of the President's programme either within the country or internationally.

'No Raila, No Peace!' Big Man Politics and Election Violence at the Kibera Grassroots

de Smedt, J. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

This article investigates the relationship between national politics and local violence in the aftermath of Kenya's 2007 election. Focusing on the Kibera slum, the article shows that while the area's ‘big man’ Raila Odinga at times appeared to have a strong hold over his constituents at the grassroots, patrimonialism and big man politics cannot provide a full explanation of the post-election violence. Instead, local socio-economic factors played a key role and lent the conflict its own specific dynamics. The article also shows that while Raila's strong patron–client relationship with Kibera residents has empowered him as a national politician, in his current role as Prime Minister this relationship restricts his political room for manoeuvre. Thus the focus on Raila's ‘big man’ status in Kibera illustrates the pressures faced by Kenyan politicians in mediating between their public roles and the demands of their constituents.

Practising 'Democracy' in Nigerian Films

Adesokan, A. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

This article discusses the response of ‘Nollywood’ to the transformation of Nigeria's social structure through the economic and political regimes of global neo-liberalism and Nigeria's military rule, and the aesthetic possibilities enabled by video and digital technologies. Approaching Nollywood as a new cinematic form which results from the collapse of the middle classes due to radical economic reforms, the article looks at two films, Akobi Gomina (‘The Governor's Heir’, 2002) and Agogo Eewo (‘The Sacred Gong’, 2002) to demonstrate the implications of this phenomenon in the changing socio-political structure crystallized with the advent of the Fourth Republic in 1999. In these works of explicit and oblique political commentary, which present us with intimations of the genre of ‘democracy films’, the idea of a public receptive to mutually recognized cultural or personal symbols is used to develop new aesthetic modes in films. But these film-making practices also circumscribe the possibilities of an ideologically progressive cinematic practice. Thus, a form originating partly from an economic context appears caught in an aesthetic impasse, but the article suggests that the tendency in Nollywood toward generic proliferation might represent one path out of the impasse.

'Change for a Better Ghana': Party Competition, Institutionalization and Alternation in Ghana's 2008 Elections

Whitfield, L. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

This article analyses the process and outcomes of Ghana's 2008 elections, which saw the National Democratic Congress replace the New Patriotic Party and thus an alternation of ruling party for the second time since (re)democratization in the early 1990s. It argues that Ghana's democratic political system survived the closeness and intensity of the 2008 elections because it has developed stabilizing characteristics: an independent Electoral Commission and transparent electoral processes, integration of the political elite alongside the creation of norms and institutions structuring elite behaviour, and the institutionalization of political parties. The closely competitive elections are the result of a two-party system where voters and political elites are mobilized around two political traditions. These political traditions provide ideological images, founding mythologies and political styles for the parties. Thus, Ghana is different from several African countries where parties split or form around leaders, who bring their popular support base with them. It is also different in that elections are not dominated by ethnic politicization, because the two main parties in Ghana have a strong political support base in most regions and party identification is based on cross-cutting social cleavages of which ethnicity forms only one part.

Africa and the Credit Crunch: From Crisis to Opportunity?

Cramer, C., Johnston, D., Oya, C. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

Mamdani's 'Settlers', 'Natives', and the War on Terror

Johnson, D. H. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

Global Citizens and Sudanese Subjects: Reading Mamdani's Saviours and Survivors

Edozie, R. K. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

Save Darfur: A Movement and its Discontents

Lanz, D. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

The Curse of Oil in the Gulf of Guinea: A View From Sao Tome and Principe

Weszkalnys, G. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

African Guerrillas: Raging against the machine, edited by Morten Boas and Kevin C. Dunn

Evans, M. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

Starved for Science: How biotechnology is being kept out of Africa, by Robert Paarlberg

Ouma, S. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

Under the Tree of Talking: Leadership for change in Africa, edited by Onyekachi Wambu

Omotola, J. S. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:29 PDT

Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone: The story of UNAMSIL, by Funmi Olonisakin

Richards, P. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:30 PDT

Ethnicity and the Making of History in Northern Ghana, by Carola Lentz

van den Bersselaar, D. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:30 PDT

'Brothers' or Others: Propriety and gender for Muslim Arab Sudanese in Egypt, by Anita H. Fabos

Pratt, N. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:30 PDT

The Order of Genocide: Race, power and war in Rwanda, by Scott Straus

Daley, P. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:30 PDT

The Humanitarian Hangover: Displacement, aid and transformation in western Tanzania, by Loren B. Landau

Bonne-Moreau, M. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:30 PDT

Dar es Salaam: Histories from an emerging African metropolis, edited by James R. Brennan, Andrew Burton, and Yusuf Lawi

Bjerk, P. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:30 PDT

A Problem of Presence: Beyond scripture in an African Church, by Matthew Engelke

Gunner, L. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:30 PDT

Gangs, Politics and Dignity in Cape Town, by Steffen Jensen

Hammett, D. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:30 PDT

Bibliography

Barringer, T. A. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:30 PDT

A Select List of Articles on Africa Appearing in Non-Africanist Periodicals: April to June 2009

Barringer, T. A. — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:35:30 PDT