African Affairs

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has concluded his four day visit to four African countries that took him to Egypt, Nigeria, Namibia, and Angola. This was his first official trip to the continent and the second in three years by a Russian president. While several energy, nuclear, and commercial agreements were signed, Russia sought to bolster its stragetic position on the continent vis-as-vis the new Asian powers of China and India and the old Atlantic powers of Western Europe and the United States. 

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The African Competitiveness Report was released earlier this month preceding the official opening of the World Economic Forum on Africa held in Cape Town, June 10-12. Jointly produced by the African Development Bank, the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum, the report discusses the short- and long-term challenges facing African economies including the current global economic crisis, as well as the successes that have been registered in recent years and how they can be spread and deepened.

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As I currently travel through Asia doing research on African diasporas, I have become more convinced than ever that we need to de-Atlanticize the histories of African diasporas. For the field to grow it is critical that the Atlantic model of African diaspora studies be provincialized rather than universalized as is the tendency among scholars in the U.S.  read more »

Scattered and less known communities of African descent in the Indian sub-continent, Sri Lanka and the nearby islands in the Indian Ocean are generally known as Sidi or Siddi.  read more »

First, the grim description of someone familiar to most of us:  read more »

The Ping Pong of Police Reforms in Kenya By Godwin Murunga

Keen observers of the Kenyan security sector will have noticed the willingness of the police to publicly rebut accusations directed at them. This would be refreshing if the content of the rebuttals portray an understanding of the challenges facing police reforms and help change the image of the force. But they have been couched in unrewarding arrogance that is also aimed at casting aspersions at perceived enemies of the force.  read more »

Many Africans, including Nigerians and foreigners alike, rightly or wrongly, describe Nigerians as overly abrasive and unscrupulous while its leadership, in general, is irredeemably greedy and corrupt.  The list goes on!  read more »

Haiti occupies a special place in the Pan-African imagination as the first country to gain independence in the Americas under Black rule. The Haitian revolution profoundly altered the history of the Americas, brought to an end slavery in Haiti itself and expedited its demise elsewhere in the Atlantic world, and inspired nationalist revolutions across the Caribbean and South America.  read more »

While western commentators obsess over the role of hollywood stars in Africa, the iconic purveyors of the Euroamerican mercy industrial complex, from Madonna to Jolie, Clooney to Bono, many of whom are hardly known in the continent, African audiences themselves are obsessed by Nollywood stars as Jibrin Ibrahim found out on his recent visit to Malawi as part of the Commonwealth monitoring group to observe the recently concluded elections in the country. In a little over a decade the Nollywood video film industry has grown to become the second largest in the world aft  read more »

When Professor Zeleza first introduced this site to me, I got so excited to write often, as the Obama era was unfolding right before our eyes. Then, I got so consumed by my new teaching and administrative duties, as the new chair of the international studies at my institution. This was a serious challenge for me as I was freshly coming out of graduate school with no prior knowledge of such things as: Departmental Assessment Plan, Students Learning Objectives and Outcomes, Course Rotation, Adjunct Hiring, Various Academic Committees, Budget Management, and so forth...  read more »

Like most Malawians at home and in the diaspora, last night and this morning I have been glued to one of the country's radio stations on the Internet listening to the results of the presidential and parliamentary elections held yesterday. These are the country's fourth elections since the onset of the new democratic dispensation in 1994. By all indications the turnout was heavy and the elections were peaceful, free and fair, although there are reports that the state-owned media did not acquit itself well in its blatant support for the ruling party.  read more »

After reading Godwin Murunga's response to my tirade on Kenyan masculinity, I could not help but remark that I find it uninteresting that Murunga's arguments depend on the exception to the rule rather than the sequence of reasoning that he seeks to refute.  read more »

(Dedicated to – and inspired by - an absolutist African historian who thumbed his nose at “stories” because he deals with “facts” and “real people”)  read more »

When the G10, a group of Kenyan women leaders from civil society, yesterday called on womenfolk to abstain from sex with their husbands for 7 days as a fast to force the bickering Kenyan leaders to act like they have some sense, I dismissed it as a poor reenactment of the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata. I thought the call was inappropriate and irrelevant, and even dreamed that Kenyans would ignore it or joke about it. I was in for a surprise.

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Background to unseriousness  read more »

SOUTH AFRICA goes to the polls today. All indications are that the turnout is probably the heaviest since the 1994 elections that brought to an end the nightmare of apartheid. The outcome of the elections is not in doubt: the ANC will win, the only question is by what percentage; whether it will win by more or less than two-thirds majority that allows it to change the constitution. Also not in question is that Mr. Jacob Zuma will be South Africa's fourth post-apartheid president.  read more »

Oju l’oro wa! The face is the abode of discourse. When and how did the Yoruba genius come up with this adage?  read more »

Restoring a radical discourse on Africa - these words, I felt, had gone awry right from the moment they escaped my tongue; or rather, as soon as with great effort I rolled them down my tongue, and into the microphone only to see them spill at the feet of the audience.  Caution - Enter at your own Risk.

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Easter came with the usual greetings and exhortations from the rulers of Nigeria. Religious holidays always provide an occasion for the Nigerian ruling class to issue robotic and wooden exhortations asking the people to emulate the exemplary lives of Jesus or Mohammed.  I’ve had to deal with such exhortations my entire life. This year, I have decided not to listen to President Yar’Adua and the thirty-six state Governors. Let them sell their exhortations to the marines.  read more »

Public Lecture presented as part of the Associated Students of Michigan State University (ASMSU) "Last Lecture Series." Following the "Last Lecture" given by the late Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch, the ASMSU, the university's student government, has invited Michigan State University professors to come up with their own versions of a hypothetical "last lecture." Steve Sharra's lecture is the third and last in the series for the 2008-2009 academic year.

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