{"title":"Nollywood -- le phénomène video au Nigeria (review)","authors":"F. Ugochukwu","doi":"10.1353/AFR.2007.0039","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AFR.2007.0039","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"28 23","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"113937208","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":"Ogun's Children: The Literature and Politics of Wole Soyinka Since the Nobel (review)","authors":"F. Ugochukwu","doi":"10.1353/AFR.2007.0038","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AFR.2007.0038","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116340255","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":"Writing Ghana, Imagining Africa: Nation and African Modernity (review)","authors":"J. Gibbs","doi":"10.1353/AFR.2007.0023","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AFR.2007.0023","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130858056","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":"Ethnic Federalism: The Ethiopian Experience in Comparative Perspective (review)","authors":"C. Young","doi":"10.1353/AFR.2007.0043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AFR.2007.0043","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126731331","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":"A Life in Political History: Memoirs of Alhaji Mumuni Bawumia (review)","authors":"Jeff D Grischow","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0024","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"13 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116318278","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}
missions to Saudi Arabia before returning to Tamale to take up farming in 1986. He returned to politics in 1989, serving as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1989–92) and Chairman of the Council of State (1992–2000) (Chapter 11). In 2000, Bawumia left the national political scene for the last time when he was elected Kpeli Naa, Paramount Chief of the Kperiga Division of Mamprugu. The chieftaincy brought Bawumia full circle, from his youth as a herdboy for his father to the chieftaincy of an important traditional area (Chapter 13). Reflecting on his life in the book’s conclusion, Bawumia presents a final defence of his political career: ‘I owe no apology to anybody for my politics’, he writes, ‘which I am satisfied, served my constituency and Ghana well’ (p. 276). To strengthen his defence, Bawumia includes excerpts from primary sources, including memoirs, press releases and official minutes, all of which seek to demonstrate his public service to Mamprugu and Ghana. Beyond defending his politics, however, Bawumia also presents his life as an example to the youth of the north to work for educational and agricultural development. To this end, Chapter 13 recapitulates Bawumia’s narrative with a specific moral purpose, a lesson to young northerners, through the example of the herdboy from Mamprugu who rose to become Chairman of the Council of State. Bawumia’s career path makes this an important memoir, and it deserves to be read in Ghana and beyond.
{"title":"The Debt Trap In Nigeria: Towards a Sustainable Debt Strategy (review)","authors":"J. S. Omotola","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0033","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0033","url":null,"abstract":"missions to Saudi Arabia before returning to Tamale to take up farming in 1986. He returned to politics in 1989, serving as Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1989–92) and Chairman of the Council of State (1992–2000) (Chapter 11). In 2000, Bawumia left the national political scene for the last time when he was elected Kpeli Naa, Paramount Chief of the Kperiga Division of Mamprugu. The chieftaincy brought Bawumia full circle, from his youth as a herdboy for his father to the chieftaincy of an important traditional area (Chapter 13). Reflecting on his life in the book’s conclusion, Bawumia presents a final defence of his political career: ‘I owe no apology to anybody for my politics’, he writes, ‘which I am satisfied, served my constituency and Ghana well’ (p. 276). To strengthen his defence, Bawumia includes excerpts from primary sources, including memoirs, press releases and official minutes, all of which seek to demonstrate his public service to Mamprugu and Ghana. Beyond defending his politics, however, Bawumia also presents his life as an example to the youth of the north to work for educational and agricultural development. To this end, Chapter 13 recapitulates Bawumia’s narrative with a specific moral purpose, a lesson to young northerners, through the example of the herdboy from Mamprugu who rose to become Chairman of the Council of State. Bawumia’s career path makes this an important memoir, and it deserves to be read in Ghana and beyond.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"41 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116121755","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}
resources are managed by clans rather than by the community as a whole. Difference between the two groups extends to the ways in which they interpret and seek to deal with misfortune. While Pokot make a clear connection between internal strife and external threat and stress the importance of community rituals in maintaining social harmony and cohesion as a defence against disaster, Himba tend to accept that natural hazards are largely unfathomable and must simply be endured with the support of patrons and lineage. Pokot see themselves as active agents, responsible for their own fate and able up to a point to predict and ward off misfortune. They raid and are raided by the ‘enemies’ that surround them, and their perception of the world is shaped by a recognition of its volatility. Himba, however, see themselves as peaceable people inhabiting a stable environment that is threatened only by the incursions of others and the unpredictability of nature. One disadvantage of the comparison is that, despite their wide geographical and cultural distance, both societies share a common marginality. This tends to exclude consideration of other factors, such as the differential access to ‘national’ political or economic resources, to wider markets and to non-pastoral options that are now characteristic of more incorporated and stratified pastoral communities. However, the book is structured in such a way as to make it possible for readers familiar with other societies to include these factors and ask their own questions of them. Pastoral specialists will probably find Bollig’s conclusions solidly based and well-argued rather than surprising, but some challenge more widely held assumptions about the fate of pastoralism. The discussion of the difficulties of resource protection should be required reading for environmental NGOs, and Bollig is surely right in downplaying wealth as a factor in itself. Poorer herders seem able to survive as well as the rich. Indeed, the fact that poorer households are not expelled from pastoralism may be an important cause of the population pressure and proliferation of small units that is perhaps the major threat to Pokot survival. Specialists will also find the sheer mass of detail in the case studies intriguing and valuable, but more general readers will appreciate the first and last chapters that provide first a lucid discussion of the concepts of risk, hazard and uncertainty on which much recent discussion has centred and then a balanced comparative overview of pastoral risk management. While aimed at specialists, the book is accessible to aid personnel – a not unimportant consideration since one of the hazards faced by pastoralists is development initiatives that ignore, bypass or undermine the coping strategies that Bollig discusses. The book would, however, have benefited from tighter editing to eliminate omissions and repetitions and to focus the short summary sections more sharply.
{"title":"Crisis and Decline in Bunyoro Population and Environment in Western Uganda, 1860-1955 (review)","authors":"J. Willis","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0041","url":null,"abstract":"resources are managed by clans rather than by the community as a whole. Difference between the two groups extends to the ways in which they interpret and seek to deal with misfortune. While Pokot make a clear connection between internal strife and external threat and stress the importance of community rituals in maintaining social harmony and cohesion as a defence against disaster, Himba tend to accept that natural hazards are largely unfathomable and must simply be endured with the support of patrons and lineage. Pokot see themselves as active agents, responsible for their own fate and able up to a point to predict and ward off misfortune. They raid and are raided by the ‘enemies’ that surround them, and their perception of the world is shaped by a recognition of its volatility. Himba, however, see themselves as peaceable people inhabiting a stable environment that is threatened only by the incursions of others and the unpredictability of nature. One disadvantage of the comparison is that, despite their wide geographical and cultural distance, both societies share a common marginality. This tends to exclude consideration of other factors, such as the differential access to ‘national’ political or economic resources, to wider markets and to non-pastoral options that are now characteristic of more incorporated and stratified pastoral communities. However, the book is structured in such a way as to make it possible for readers familiar with other societies to include these factors and ask their own questions of them. Pastoral specialists will probably find Bollig’s conclusions solidly based and well-argued rather than surprising, but some challenge more widely held assumptions about the fate of pastoralism. The discussion of the difficulties of resource protection should be required reading for environmental NGOs, and Bollig is surely right in downplaying wealth as a factor in itself. Poorer herders seem able to survive as well as the rich. Indeed, the fact that poorer households are not expelled from pastoralism may be an important cause of the population pressure and proliferation of small units that is perhaps the major threat to Pokot survival. Specialists will also find the sheer mass of detail in the case studies intriguing and valuable, but more general readers will appreciate the first and last chapters that provide first a lucid discussion of the concepts of risk, hazard and uncertainty on which much recent discussion has centred and then a balanced comparative overview of pastoral risk management. While aimed at specialists, the book is accessible to aid personnel – a not unimportant consideration since one of the hazards faced by pastoralists is development initiatives that ignore, bypass or undermine the coping strategies that Bollig discusses. The book would, however, have benefited from tighter editing to eliminate omissions and repetitions and to focus the short summary sections more sharply.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"134544518","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}
bulk of his paper is about the new diseases and new therapies introduced during and after the colonial era. The volume concludes with three essays on themes of great importance for contemporary African history. In the longest essay in the book, Celestin Monga, a senior economist at the World Bank, sketches some of the theoretical debates behind the programmes of structural adjustment; his conclusion that these failed to take proper account of ‘exogenous variables’ will surprise nobody. Cyril Daddieh makes a more lucid attack on an equally broad and complex subject: the reasons behind the failings and collapse of the hopes which the freedom generation placed in the centralized state. The concluding essay is rather more interesting and original: Brian Larkin and Birgit Meyer compare the spread of Christian Pentecostalism with that of Salafi-inspired Islamism, and argue that both have won support by directly confronting established cultural norms and practices. Readers are bound to find any volume of this sort something of a ‘lucky dip’; in my opinion the best prize here was the last one in the barrel.
{"title":"An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400-1900 (review)","authors":"Larry W. Yarak","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0042","url":null,"abstract":"bulk of his paper is about the new diseases and new therapies introduced during and after the colonial era. The volume concludes with three essays on themes of great importance for contemporary African history. In the longest essay in the book, Celestin Monga, a senior economist at the World Bank, sketches some of the theoretical debates behind the programmes of structural adjustment; his conclusion that these failed to take proper account of ‘exogenous variables’ will surprise nobody. Cyril Daddieh makes a more lucid attack on an equally broad and complex subject: the reasons behind the failings and collapse of the hopes which the freedom generation placed in the centralized state. The concluding essay is rather more interesting and original: Brian Larkin and Birgit Meyer compare the spread of Christian Pentecostalism with that of Salafi-inspired Islamism, and argue that both have won support by directly confronting established cultural norms and practices. Readers are bound to find any volume of this sort something of a ‘lucky dip’; in my opinion the best prize here was the last one in the barrel.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130077451","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}
Most controversial, perhaps, is Krikler’s explanation of the pogrom-like violence that white crowds directed at Africans (including women and children) in the three days before 10 March. They did this not because they viewed Africans as ‘scabs’; indeed, they did not consider Africans, despite their centrality in the production process, to be part of the working class at all. They did it because – psychologically traumatized by their rulers’ and employers’ treatment of them, and by the enormity of their imminent declaration of war on the rest of the white community – they frenziedly deceived themselves that it was not they but rather Africans, into whose despised underclass status they feared being cast, who were imperilling the social order. The massacres of Africans were a cry for help, a collective transference despairingly signalling white racial solidarity at the very moment it was about to be rent. In developing this interpretation, Krikler draws illuminating comparisons with the urban ‘race riots’ that occurred contemporaneously in the United States. Krikler strikes a good balance in explicating the contradictory mix of white-supremacist and class-conscious motives that animated the rebels of 1922. Some readers may find this a distinctly old-fashioned study given its preoccupation with whites and with labour struggles, and may feel that the title’s reference to ‘racial killing’ is a marketing ploy rather than a reflection of the book’s main emphasis. That would be unfair. This is a scrupulously researched and annotated analysis representing a new level of maturation in South African historical scholarship.
{"title":"Themes in West Africa's History (review)","authors":"J. Hargreaves","doi":"10.1353/afr.2007.0026","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2007.0026","url":null,"abstract":"Most controversial, perhaps, is Krikler’s explanation of the pogrom-like violence that white crowds directed at Africans (including women and children) in the three days before 10 March. They did this not because they viewed Africans as ‘scabs’; indeed, they did not consider Africans, despite their centrality in the production process, to be part of the working class at all. They did it because – psychologically traumatized by their rulers’ and employers’ treatment of them, and by the enormity of their imminent declaration of war on the rest of the white community – they frenziedly deceived themselves that it was not they but rather Africans, into whose despised underclass status they feared being cast, who were imperilling the social order. The massacres of Africans were a cry for help, a collective transference despairingly signalling white racial solidarity at the very moment it was about to be rent. In developing this interpretation, Krikler draws illuminating comparisons with the urban ‘race riots’ that occurred contemporaneously in the United States. Krikler strikes a good balance in explicating the contradictory mix of white-supremacist and class-conscious motives that animated the rebels of 1922. Some readers may find this a distinctly old-fashioned study given its preoccupation with whites and with labour struggles, and may feel that the title’s reference to ‘racial killing’ is a marketing ploy rather than a reflection of the book’s main emphasis. That would be unfair. This is a scrupulously researched and annotated analysis representing a new level of maturation in South African historical scholarship.","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"116 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122325446","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":"White Rising: The 1922 Insurrection and Racial Killing in South Africa (review)","authors":"Keith Shear","doi":"10.1353/AFR.2007.0037","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/AFR.2007.0037","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2007-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132754465","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}
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