Africa Today最新文献

{"title":"Anglophone Conflict, New Institutions, and Women's Access to Political Power in Cameroon","authors":"Melinda Adams, Lotsmart Fonjong","doi":"10.2979/at.2023.a900109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/at.2023.a900109","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: In several African states, postconflict contexts provide opportunities for the expansion of women's political representation. Little is known, however, about the opportunities for enhancing women's participation in politics during ongoing conflicts. We examine the relationship between conflict and women's political representation in Cameroon, which has experienced conflict in its anglophone regions since 2017. The government has responded to the challenge by introducing several new institutions. Analysis of women's political representation and responses to an online survey demonstrates that while conflict has disrupted gender relations and contributed to the growth of women's movements, the new institutions have not created significant advances for women. The ongoing conflict has provided few opportunities for women activists to embed gender equity commitments in new institutions.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"33 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":"135142359","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":"Two Sides of the Coin: An Autoethnographic Analysis of a North-South Science Collaboration","authors":"Olayinka Osuolale, Babasola Fateye","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.4.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.4.03","url":null,"abstract":"We reflect on our experience during a ten-week fellowship at a university in the Global South. Colleagues who participate in such collaborations need to be culturally competent and adopt culturally relevant pedagogical practices as they engage their host institutions. Those returning from the diaspora can experience culture shock in the culture in which they grew up after being away. Collaborations and relationships take commitment and time to build, and this should start early. Culturally informed notions of care are important for both partners. Being well emotionally, socially, and physically enables one to research and teach effectively, as environmental and social factors will arise that can affect one's mental state. Autoethnographic methodology is a valuable way to begin to hear the perceptions and experiences of partners in the Global South.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"66 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":"135145581","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":"Paradoxes of Patrimony: Family Planning, Youth Volunteering, and Becoming \"Big\" in Uganda","authors":"Jeroen Lorist, Eileen Moyer","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.4.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.4.02","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the experiences and motivations of young volunteers engaged in the development domain of sexual and reproductive health and rights in Uganda. While promoting various family-planning projects, volunteers deftly navigated human-rights discourses of international donors, norms of religious leaders, and development narratives of national policymakers as they attempted to advance their own life projects. Through the creation of new narratives and their agency, the volunteers translated, reformed, and re-presented Global North development discourse as part of a situated theorization on development problems. Simultaneously these educated, middle-class youth embraced the discursively vague field of family planning as the likeliest avenue for social mobility by becoming \"big\" within national and local patrimonial and patriarchal systems. Although such family-planning programs do seem to allow some volunteers to achieve their goals, they paradoxically reproduce the patriarchal systems that gender-equality NGOs aim to dismantle.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"13 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":"135145583","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":"Regime Types, Regime Identities, and African Foreign Policies","authors":"John F. Clark","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.03","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Despite the common interests of African states vis-à-vis the rest of the world, African states display autonomy and variety in their foreign policies with one another. How can we account for this variation? This article advances the idea that regime type and regime identity frame the overall foreign policies of African states. It identifies three regime types: the competitive multiparty regime, the party-dominant regime, and the personalist regime. The latter two types have identities that reflect the dominant party's ideology or the ruler's predilections. One can find distinctive patterns of foreign policy associated with each regime type in areas such as relations with Western powers, adherence to African norms, and willingness to engage in continental peacebuilding missions.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"69 1","pages":"53 - 73"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48072530","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":"Corporate Responsibility in South Africa: Limited Success, Unfulfilled Promise","authors":"Olufemi Babarinde, S. Wright","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.05","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the most important mantras of global business today. Companies nowadays, if we believe them, are a paragon of virtue in global and local communities. International governmental and nongovernmental organizations and civil-society organizations outperform one another in promoting CSR guidelines for companies and promoting conscious capitalism. For critics, however, CSR is a tool used cleverly by corporations to keep from making meaningful concessions to labor, stave off state intervention or regulation, and spin irresponsible actions. This article analyzes CSR practices in South Africa, emphasizing the mining sector and relevant legislation. It argues that CSR performance in South Africa has been nothing short of missed opportunities and unfulfilled promises.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"69 1","pages":"115 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49435990","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 Impact of Institutions on the Salt Sector in Ghana","authors":"A. Atta-Quayson, Olufemi Babarinde, S. Wright, C. Rono, Ismaila Ouedraogo, R. Benedikter, Borlli Michel Jonas Somé, G. Diallo, P. Okpalaeke, Riti Sharma, Christi van der Westhuizen, Guido Nicolás Zingari, B. Riccio, P. Sakho, D. Cissokho, John F. Clark","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.04","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The effectiveness of the institutional framework—customs, traditions, laws, regulations, policies—that governs the salt sector in Ghana is here assessed using the political-settlement approach. This framework has minimal effects on the sector, which has been producing considerably below its potential for decades. The resulting pattern of a poor-distant-cousin characterization of the salt sector explains its historically poor performance. Politics, power, and institutional forms are characterized by different political processes and incentives to produce different economic outcomes; hence political-settlement literature can address weaknesses in the mainstream conceptualization of institutions.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"69 1","pages":"115 - 117 - 133 - 134 - 138 - 139 - 141 - 141 - 142 - 25 - 27 - 3 - 51 - 53 - 73 - 75 - 92 - 95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45846657","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":"Life Expectancy in Africa: Improving Public Health Policy, Augustine Adu Frimpong","authors":"P. Okpalaeke","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.08","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44925499","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 Hippocratic Oath, Illness, and Metaphors of Politics in Margaret Ogola's I Swear by Apollo","authors":"C. Rono","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.06","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This essay relates Margaret Atieno Ogola's I Swear by Apollo (2002) to Kenya's postcolonial context to signal the contribution of literary texts to the understanding of Kenya's sociopolitical and economic orientations. Particularly instructive are theoretical inspirations and epistemological insights from studies that locate literature on illness in medical humanities and narrative medicine, demonstrating the extent to which Ogola deploys illness and the Hippocratic Oath as emblems of sociopolitical convulsion. By focusing on how digressions act as bricks, not only for political-medical dialogue to help recontextualize medicine in literature, but also in converting medical signs into poetical elements, the article diagrams a reparative trajectory that can be taken in a politically apocalyptic scenario.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"69 1","pages":"117 - 133"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45483286","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":"Populism as African Fascism? Examining the Economic Freedom Fighters in Postapartheid South Africa","authors":"Christi van der Westhuizen","doi":"10.2979/africatoday.69.3.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/africatoday.69.3.01","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The twenty-first-century global resurgence in populism has raised academic contention over whether populism undermines or deepens democracy. This question is particularly relevant in postcolonial contexts such as South Africa. Populism can be of both the left and right. Fascism, one permutation of it, has been confined by leftist academics to right-radical nationalism. Contemporary South African populism in the form of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the country's third-largest political party, confounds neat categorization. An academic and political debate has ensued about whether the EFF presents a fascist threat to South African democracy. This article extends the scrutiny of the EFF beyond what has been undertaken thus far, to situate and analyze it in relation to economic, political, and social features of fascism, contextual and ideological conditions, and the use of rhetoric and violence.","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"69 1","pages":"25 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48401664","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":"Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost or Tshotsholoza by Dugmore Boetie (review)","authors":"Riti Sharma","doi":"10.2979/at.2023.a884139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2979/at.2023.a884139","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost or Tshotsholoza by Dugmore Boetie Riti Sharma BOOK REVIEW of Boetie, Dugmore. 2020. Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost or Tshotsholoza. Edited by Vusumuzi R. Kumalo and Benjamin N. Lawrance. With an introduction by Benjamin N. Lawrance and Vusumuzi R. Kumalo, foreword by Nadine Gordimer, and afterword by Barney Simon. Athens: Ohio University Press. 187 pp. $24.95 (paper). In this novel, the word tshotsholoza, meaning \"go forward,\" is the title of a South African song, sung by prisoners. Familiarity Is the Kingdom of the Lost is like a requiem for this song, as the protagonist is usually found amid acts that will help him go to a place he calls home. The heart of the text lies in the concept of home—its location and its history. Dugmore Boetie is a conman who serves time in South African prisons. Half his narrative is like a prison diary; the rest is paced like a thriller, incorporating elements of the satirical and the sentimental. It is in the style of a bildungsroman, which tells the tale of a boy in a world busy segregating human beings. The trials and twists in his life hinge on the fact that he has survived many years of racial prejudice and cultural hatred, but his job description makes life worse for him. Learning to be a conman when one is a Black South African in apartheid South Africa means flirting with death. Not just the crime, but being a criminal means having to carry this identity for the rest of one's life. But for Boetie, battling the so-called pass laws is a rite of passage. His nerves, brain, and just plain bad luck get him into and out of complicated predicaments. He comes to the reader as a runaway child who has dabbled in petty crimes. As an adult, he wants to escape the state-mandated social services, but he goes back to them when he needs work, unemployable on account of being physically disabled. \"If you were black, you'd see life. If you were white, life would see you\" (14). It would be betraying Boetie to say his story is summed up in these words, but they are evidence of his perspective on life. Whether he joins a gang, serves a prison sentence, sells marijuana, becomes a musician, or tries to be an honest husband, his skin color both makes him face extenuating circumstances and permits him to create a new sense of identity. The law in [End Page 141] South Africa works differently for Blacks and Coloreds, and Boetie is a man who understands its nuances. All the importance of identity comes to the final point: how does a person survive? His stories may seem like an act of lying, but autobiographies are not always whole truths. Boetie's contribution to the landscape of South African literature is through his method of telling, a testament to the oral tradition. Only a phenomenal storyteller can come up with phrases like \"ox-cart-wide alleys.\" That is how people remember Boetie—as a musician and a storyteller. Boetie's friendship with other conmen opens a world of p","PeriodicalId":39703,"journal":{"name":"Africa Today","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135532116","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}