Africa Today最新文献

{"title":"\"When a Father Speaks, the Child Cannot Answer Back\": Patriarchal Anxiety, Gender Equality, and Malian State Authority","authors":"Bruce Whitehouse","doi":"10.2979/at.2023.a905850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/at.2023.a905850","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: In long intertwined constructions of political and household authority, the figure of the domestic patriarch has served as an analogy for the centralized postcolonial state of Mali, even as it clashes with discourses of natural rights stemming from the European Enlightenment. In early twentyfirst-century Mali, anxieties ran rampant among senior men who feared losing their status and privileges. These anxieties came to a head during efforts by the Malian government and civil-society groups to eliminate gender discrimination from Malian family law in the early 2000s. A broad coalition of patriarchal interests emerged to defend senior males' prerogatives against the perceived threats posed by gender equality. This backlash challenged the legitimacy of Mali's governing elite and exposed its weaknesses in the run-up to Mali's 2012 political collapse.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135347218","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rifle, Pen, and Prayer Beads: Constructing Political Legitimacy in Mali","authors":"Dorothea E. Schulz","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.70.1.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.70.1.01","url":null,"abstract":"Rifle, Pen, and Prayer Beads:Constructing Political Legitimacy in Mali Dorothea E. Schulz (bio) Introduction On August 18, 2020, after months of popular unrest targeting the increasingly unpopular presidency of Ibrahim Boubacar Keita and rallies coordinated by Imam Mahmoud Dicko, a leading figure of Muslim opposition, a group of colonels from the Kati military base seized power and forced President Keita's resignation. Ignoring international calls for an immediate return to civilian rule, the leaders of the coup d'état underlined their determination to \"put state politics on new foundations\" before the next elections so as to reestablish law and order and put a stop to a general economic malaise brought about, in their account, by an increasingly corrupt civilian political elite under the previous presidencies of Alpha Oumar Konaré, Amadou Toumani Touré, and Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Only nine months later, in May 2021, a transitional government put into place by the military leaders to signal their intention to return to civilian rule was terminated by another coup (the third one within a decade), when Colonel Assimi Goita, then vice president and leader of the 2020 military coup, arrested President Bah N'Daw and Moctar Ouane, the prime minister of the transitional government, and had himself installed as the head of state. The military leaders then retracted their promise to ensure a transition to civilian rule within the next eighteen months and hold presidential elections in February 2022—a move to which the country's long-standing allies in the Euro-American West responded by rallying other members of the West African bloc ECOWAS1 to impose economic and financial sanctions on Mali in January 2022. This special issue brings together studies that aim at historically grounded empirical investigations of political legitimacy in Mali.2 Many scholarly accounts and reports by foreign donor agencies have depicted the rising level of insecurity and political instability in Mali's different regions since the 2012 coup d'état as a sudden and somewhat surprising disruption of the country's role as a beacon of democratization in Africa (Bergamaschi 2007, 2014; Gavelle, Siméant, and Traoré 2013; Wing 2008, 2013). This special issue seeks to add analytical and empirical nuance to this view by [End Page 1] proposing a three-pronged intervention. First, we read the precarity and instability of present-day political institutions and procedural legitimacy as mirroring long-standing trends of asserting and contesting public authority. We thus seek to understand the instability that has shaped Malian politics since the toppling of President Touré in 2012 in light of the precarious legitimacy of political institutions and actors that has shaped political dynamics throughout Sahelian West Africa for decades. Second, in contrast to studies of the \"Malian crisis\" that center on either \"the north,\" the \"central region,\" or \"the south\" and Bamako, its political epicente","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135688488","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Coups d'État, Political Legitimacy, and Instability in Mali","authors":"Susanna D. Wing","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.70.1.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.70.1.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: Mali, once argued to be a democratic model for Africa, is in a state of perennial crisis, the result of poor governance, unmet democratic expectations, and competition for domestic political legitimacy among the political class, the military, and religious leaders. After the 1991 revolution, international donors poured money into Mali to promote democratization. Meanwhile, most Malian citizens were becoming increasingly disconnected from a growing political class dependent on these funds. This article shows how popular protests led to both the reversal of family-law reform and the instigation of military coups d'état. The lack of accountability of the political class and the influx of donor money have contributed to increased popular perceptions of state corruption and impunity. Peace and security are impossible amid governance failures and serial coups d'état. This article explains the political consequences of the breakdown of popular trust and political legitimacy of the ruling elite and argues that restoring trust and legitimacy is a critical element to rebuilding Mali.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135688170","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"From Militia to Army: Ganda Koy's Struggle for Political Legitimacy in Mali","authors":"Andrew Hernández","doi":"10.2979/at.2023.a905849","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/at.2023.a905849","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: In response to the occupation of northern Mali in 2012, Ganda Koy, a primarily Songhay militia, has attempted to increase its political legitimacy within and beyond Mali, in part through more formalized integration within the Malian army. To justify such integration, many of its leaders have highlighted its combat and surveillance prowess while portraying it as supportive of a racially and ethnically unified Mali, thereby contrasting it with more Tuareg- or Arabseparatist militias based in the Sahara Desert. It has presented itself as a grassroots organization; however, many in its ranks publicly argue for a more Songhay- and Blacknationalist approach to Malian politics. While such an attitude might privately resonate among much of the political elite in Bamako, it contrasts with Mali's postcolonial myth as a harmonious ethnic melting pot and serves to undermine Ganda Koy's integration in more formal state institutions.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135346988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria by Daniel Jordan Smith (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.2979/at.2023.a905854","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/at.2023.a905854","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria by Daniel Jordan Smith Chikezirim Nwoke Smith, Daniel Jordan. 2022. Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 232 pp. $26.95 (paperback). Nigeria is a site of staggering paradoxes. The country is regarded as Africa's largest economy and yet is home to dire deprivation. On one hand, it is famed for its political vibrancy and popular consciousness; on the other, it presents a reality of perpetual government inadequacy. Standing on years of disappointment occasioned by the inability or unwillingness of the state to provide the essentials of life, or what Nigerians like to call the dividends of democracy, citizens must devise strategies to meet their own needs. [End Page 105] It is against this backdrop that Daniel Jordan Smith draws parallels among infrastructure, governance, and everyday experiences of citizenship. In Every Household Its Own Government, his fourth book, he foregrounds infrastructure in its conceptuality and materiality as being focal to the Nigerian experience. With insights drawn from ethnographic research spanning more than three decades in southeast Nigeria, he explores, in commendable depth, six areas of infrastructure—water, electricity, transportation, communication, education, and security—to show how state failure creates innovative informal systems of sustenance, adapted mostly on the household level, which he claims operates as (and are colloquially called) local governments. However, not all individuals or households are equal. The rich can wield economic and sociopolitical power to shield themselves from the harshness of government neglect by purchasing comfortable alternatives, but the poor must make do with risky, time-consuming, labor-intensive improvisations, which often end up worsening their condition. Remarkably, Smith does not stop at merely capturing these improvisations: he goes a step further to detail the political economic cost. Nigerians across various social strata, by participating in this thriving economy of improvised infrastructure, are implicated in a system that perpetuates inequality. The book is organized in a manner such that each chapter examines one of the six infrastructural domains that Smith chose for this book. To begin with, chapter 1, \"Empty Pipes and H2O Entrepreneurs,\" highlights the often onerous task of acquiring water for daily use—which, in Smith's argument, offers a special insight into \"the ways that infrastructure is central to how [citizens] experience and understand politics and inequality\" (30). Because existing state-installed waterpipes, designed to service homes in urban centers, hardly ever supply water in any but a few elite neighborhoods, ordinary Nigerians must look to water entrepreneurs, who set up and run private ventures, navig","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"132 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135346997","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Fragments of Legitimacy: Symbolic Constructions of Political Leadership in Twenty-First-Century Mali","authors":"Souleymane Diallo, Dorothea E. Schulz","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.70.1.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.70.1.02","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: This article examines official constructions of political legitimacy since the introduction of multiparty democracy in Mali and asks how some segments of the population have responded to them. We argue that these constructions evolved in the context of three symbolic repertoires, symbolized by the rifle, the ballpoint pen, and prayer beads. In this process, politicians have mobilized repertoires in selective and changing ways, subject to continuous reformulation, bricolage, and rearticulation. We end with the proposition that the result of these constructions, a cross of the pen and the rifle repertoires favored by the military regime of Colonel Assimi Goita, high-lights the popularity of the imagery of military strongmanship in Mali—and in sub-Saharan Africa more widely.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"2013 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135688281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria by Saheed Aderinto (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.70.1.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.70.1.07","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria by Saheed Aderinto Odinaka Kingsley Eze Aderinto, Saheed. 2022. Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa: The Human and Nonhuman Creatures of Nigeria. New African Histories. Athens: Ohio University Press. 261 pp. $80.00 (hardcover), $36.95 (paperback). Since the 1990s, African historians have been encouraged to investigate the complexities of the colonial past, the intricacies of its operation and imagination, and the interplay of power beyond the locale in a more extensive manner, one that would demonstrate the connectivity of Africa's past with global history while writing for African audiences. Saheed Aderinto's Animality and Colonial Subjecthood in Africa not only answers this call, but charts innovative and groundbreaking terrain in African historiography. In only a few books on African history will readers find interactions between humans and animals, involving symbolism, representation, and embedded characterization of animal personae in historical narratives, as Aderinto has done—which compels us to rethink and reimagine what we know about history, how we interpret it, why we choose a particular narrative over another, and the implications of what we decide to write about in the present. Indeed, Aderinto's prescient inclination makes this book capable of stimulating other scholars to undertake further research in this field. Moreover, writing a history that includes animals not only assigns agency to them, but lifts them from their position as objects to subjects, whose place is not \"at the nibbling edge\" in the footnotes of African historical texts, conferences, and journals (5). Aderinto boldly seeks to challenge the conceptualization of history as a discipline that has concentrated on the human past, sidelining animals despite ubiquitous relationships forged between them and humans since time immemorial. Therefore, Aderinto insists that \"we may not truly comprehend the extent of imperial domination until we bring animals into our understanding of colonialism\" (3). He uses animals to portray familiar themes in African historiographies, such as colonial modernity and civilization, ideology and subjecthood, ethnicity, violence, resistance and hegemony, and colonial power and nationalism. For instance, discussing dogs, he contends that dogs owned by British colonial administrators enjoyed more privileges than their counterparts that belonged to Africans. [End Page 103] Similarly, Aderinto weaves donkeys, cattle, and horses into the tapestry of the colonial political economy. Donkeys and horses were significant for transportation—which made them accomplices in colonial conquest and consolidation, utilized by the British colonial power to exploit Nigeria's resources. Donkeys conveyed mineral resources and agricultural products, but horses were the most reliable means of moving across unmotorable topographies and a spectacle of imperial ","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"30 15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135688463","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria by Daniel Jordan Smith (review)","authors":"","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.70.1.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.70.1.08","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria by Daniel Jordan Smith Chikezirim Nwoke Smith, Daniel Jordan. 2022. Every Household Its Own Government: Improvised Infrastructure, Entrepreneurial Citizens, and the State in Nigeria. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 232 pp. $26.95 (paperback). Nigeria is a site of staggering paradoxes. The country is regarded as Africa's largest economy and yet is home to dire deprivation. On one hand, it is famed for its political vibrancy and popular consciousness; on the other, it presents a reality of perpetual government inadequacy. Standing on years of disappointment occasioned by the inability or unwillingness of the state to provide the essentials of life, or what Nigerians like to call the dividends of democracy, citizens must devise strategies to meet their own needs. [End Page 105] It is against this backdrop that Daniel Jordan Smith draws parallels among infrastructure, governance, and everyday experiences of citizenship. In Every Household Its Own Government, his fourth book, he foregrounds infrastructure in its conceptuality and materiality as being focal to the Nigerian experience. With insights drawn from ethnographic research spanning more than three decades in southeast Nigeria, he explores, in commendable depth, six areas of infrastructure—water, electricity, transportation, communication, education, and security—to show how state failure creates innovative informal systems of sustenance, adapted mostly on the household level, which he claims operates as (and are colloquially called) local governments. However, not all individuals or households are equal. The rich can wield economic and sociopolitical power to shield themselves from the harshness of government neglect by purchasing comfortable alternatives, but the poor must make do with risky, time-consuming, labor-intensive improvisations, which often end up worsening their condition. Remarkably, Smith does not stop at merely capturing these improvisations: he goes a step further to detail the political economic cost. Nigerians across various social strata, by participating in this thriving economy of improvised infrastructure, are implicated in a system that perpetuates inequality. The book is organized in a manner such that each chapter examines one of the six infrastructural domains that Smith chose for this book. To begin with, chapter 1, \"Empty Pipes and H2O Entrepreneurs,\" highlights the often onerous task of acquiring water for daily use—which, in Smith's argument, offers a special insight into \"the ways that infrastructure is central to how [citizens] experience and understand politics and inequality\" (30). Because existing state-installed waterpipes, designed to service homes in urban centers, hardly ever supply water in any but a few elite neighborhoods, ordinary Nigerians must look to water entrepreneurs, who set up and run private ventures, navig","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"91 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135688484","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Egyptian-Ethiopian Dispute over the Nile: Lessons from the Past for Future African Peace and Prosperity","authors":"Abeer Youssef, Victoria J. Mabin, Bronwyn Howell","doi":"10.2979/at.2023.a900110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/at.2023.a900110","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: Many African water-related conflicts have their roots in so-called colonial treaties. This article examines the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia regarding the construction and operation of an Ethiopian dam at the headwaters of the River Nile. We start by reviewing these countries' current political and economic circumstances as a prerequisite to assessing the severity of the conflict. We then trace the dispute back to the treaties used by each country to prove its rights to the Nile's water. We identify political circumstances that provide hidden motives behind the stalled negotiations. We conclude that current bilateral economic and political circumstances push decision makers away from reaching a concrete settlement of the dispute and argue that the treaties are only worsening the situation. Cooperation in the field of development in general is required to break the current deadlock, strengthen Egyptian-Ethiopian relations, and promote regional prosperity.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135142356","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Egyptian-Ethiopian Dispute over the Nile: Lessons from the Past for Future African Peace and Prosperity","authors":"Abeer Youssef, Victoria J. Mabin, Bronwyn Howell","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.4.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.4.05","url":null,"abstract":"Many African water-related conflicts have their roots in so-called colonial treaties. This article examines the dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia regarding the construction and operation of an Ethiopian dam at the headwaters of the River Nile. We start by reviewing these countries' current political and economic circumstances as a prerequisite to assessing the severity of the conflict. We then trace the dispute back to the treaties used by each country to prove its rights to the Nile's water. We identify political circumstances that provide hidden motives behind the stalled negotiations. We conclude that current bilateral economic and political circumstances push decision makers away from reaching a concrete settlement of the dispute and argue that the treaties are only worsening the situation. Cooperation in the field of development in general is required to break the current deadlock, strengthen Egyptian-Ethiopian relations, and promote regional prosperity.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135145580","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}