{"title":"African Police and Soldiers in Colonial Zimbabwe 1923-80 by Timothy Stapleton (review)","authors":"D. Killingray","doi":"10.1353/afr.2013.0028","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2013.0028","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115074320","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 Women's War of 1929: a history of anti-colonial resistance in eastern Nigeria by Toyin Falola and Adam Paddock (review)","authors":"C. J. Korieh","doi":"10.1353/afr.2013.0036","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2013.0036","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125605016","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":"Congo Masquerade: the political culture of aid inefficiency and reform failure by Theodore Trefon (review)","authors":"John F. Clark","doi":"10.1353/afr.2013.0030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afr.2013.0030","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132356378","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}
Pub Date : 2013-05-01DOI: 10.1017/S0001972013000077
R. Law
This is a translation of a book published in Italian in 2002; it is also said to have been abbreviated, although the nature and extent of changes from the original version are not specified. It deals with the Nzema, an Akan-speaking group located at the western end of the Gold Coast, straddling the boundary between the modern states of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. More specifically, it studies processes of political change among the western Nzema, between the rivers Tano and Ankobra. The name ‘Appolonia’ (or ‘Apollonia’) for this region derives from Cape Saint Apolonia, so named by the Portuguese navigators who first reached this section of the coast in 1471. The author’s account of political developments is situated within the context of the recurrent intrusion of more powerful African states in the interior –Denkyira, Wassa, Aowin, Asante – as well as of European commercial engagement. European trade here was initially for gold, brought from the interior, but in the eighteenth century also for slaves, many of whom were captured in local wars. The main centre of European commerce was the fort of São Antonio at Axim, just east of the Ankobra, established by the Portuguese in 1552, but taken over by the Dutch from 1642. Other Europeans also sought to insert themselves into the trade of the region from time to time; in the long run the British were most successful, in 1765 establishing Fort Apollonia at Beyin, within the western Nzema region itself. The characterization of the process of change as ‘state formation’ is not intended to imply a transition from a ‘stateless’ condition, since it is acknowledged that societies organized in ‘some form of state’ (p. 4) existed from the earliest period of recorded history of this region. It is a question rather of an expansion of territorial scale, in effect of political unification. Originally the Nzema area was fragmented politically, with a large number of micro-states, whose fluctuating fortunes are reconstructed in meticulous (indeed, occasionally wearying) detail. In the first half of the eighteenth century, however, it was consolidated into a single state, called by Europeans the ‘Kingdom of Appolonia’; this European usage is adopted by the author in preference to its indigenous name Amanahea, as the latter is not documented before the nineteenth century. The establishment of the British fort at Beyin, freeing the local rulers from the commercial dominance of the Dutch at Axim, is seen as crowning their achievement of independent authority. Yet even this new enlarged kingdom, with a population estimated at no more than 20,000, was small by comparison with other African (including Akan) states. Methodologically, the study is based on a combination of contemporary European documents and local traditional sources, deftly collated, and informed by a deep understanding of the recent anthropology of the region. The analysis stresses the critical role in the mobilization of political support of ‘associative net
{"title":"Power and State Formation in West Africa: Appolonia from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century by Pierluigi Valsecchi (review)","authors":"R. Law","doi":"10.1017/S0001972013000077","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0001972013000077","url":null,"abstract":"This is a translation of a book published in Italian in 2002; it is also said to have been abbreviated, although the nature and extent of changes from the original version are not specified. It deals with the Nzema, an Akan-speaking group located at the western end of the Gold Coast, straddling the boundary between the modern states of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. More specifically, it studies processes of political change among the western Nzema, between the rivers Tano and Ankobra. The name ‘Appolonia’ (or ‘Apollonia’) for this region derives from Cape Saint Apolonia, so named by the Portuguese navigators who first reached this section of the coast in 1471. The author’s account of political developments is situated within the context of the recurrent intrusion of more powerful African states in the interior –Denkyira, Wassa, Aowin, Asante – as well as of European commercial engagement. European trade here was initially for gold, brought from the interior, but in the eighteenth century also for slaves, many of whom were captured in local wars. The main centre of European commerce was the fort of São Antonio at Axim, just east of the Ankobra, established by the Portuguese in 1552, but taken over by the Dutch from 1642. Other Europeans also sought to insert themselves into the trade of the region from time to time; in the long run the British were most successful, in 1765 establishing Fort Apollonia at Beyin, within the western Nzema region itself. The characterization of the process of change as ‘state formation’ is not intended to imply a transition from a ‘stateless’ condition, since it is acknowledged that societies organized in ‘some form of state’ (p. 4) existed from the earliest period of recorded history of this region. It is a question rather of an expansion of territorial scale, in effect of political unification. Originally the Nzema area was fragmented politically, with a large number of micro-states, whose fluctuating fortunes are reconstructed in meticulous (indeed, occasionally wearying) detail. In the first half of the eighteenth century, however, it was consolidated into a single state, called by Europeans the ‘Kingdom of Appolonia’; this European usage is adopted by the author in preference to its indigenous name Amanahea, as the latter is not documented before the nineteenth century. The establishment of the British fort at Beyin, freeing the local rulers from the commercial dominance of the Dutch at Axim, is seen as crowning their achievement of independent authority. Yet even this new enlarged kingdom, with a population estimated at no more than 20,000, was small by comparison with other African (including Akan) states. Methodologically, the study is based on a combination of contemporary European documents and local traditional sources, deftly collated, and informed by a deep understanding of the recent anthropology of the region. The analysis stresses the critical role in the mobilization of political support of ‘associative net","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"102 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2013-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121907324","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}
Pub Date : 2012-11-01DOI: 10.1017/S000197201200054X
M. Epprecht
Bravo! Here is a book about Africans, published in Africa, and mostly written by Africans. Literally dozens of established scholars, activists and artists explore the diverse aspects of sexualities in Africa. They employ empirical case studies and reflections upon pedagogy and activist strategies, research ethics andmethodology.They consider the theorization of sexual diversity and its relationship to gender, race, ethnicity, tourism, the political economy, biomedical science, and much more. There is something here for almost everyone – provided, that is, that readers are engaged by the underlying theoretical premises. Indeed, the Reader can almost stand alone as a university course, challenging by its breadth, interdisciplinarity, and passion the many stereotypes and silences that still encumber sexuality studies in Africa. The underlying premises (politics) are: feminism, anti-colonialism, human rights, and sex positivity. The authors persuasively argue that none of these is a Western import. On the contrary, much of the book’s overall optimism stems from the conviction that these concepts are embedded in African traditional cultures and can, therefore, be nurtured without inciting a patriotic backlash, while proceeding with sensitivity to local context. Sylvia Tamale is a legal scholar based at Makerere University. Among her previous contributions has been her vigorous defence of human rights for sexual minorities in Uganda. She brings that boldness to this collection as well, launching the volume with a judicious critique of Western constructions of a singular and mostly pathological ‘African sexuality’. That construct reaches back to some of the very earliest travel and anthropological writing about Africa but, as Tamale notes in a chilling account of a Google search on ‘black lesbian rape’, continues in the present. In stressing the need for Africans to deconstruct this pathology, and to envision sexualities free from the pernicious, lingering influences of colonialism, apartheid and imported religions, Tamale does not promote nativist opposition to the West. On the contrary, she makes a compelling and reasonable case for building upon the insights of Western pioneers in sexuality research. The influence of Foucault, Butler and Rubin especially is evident in many of the chapters. The bottom line, however, is that no amount of reference to the Western canon can by itself replace the hard ethnographic, archival, and other face-to-face work in Africa that is necessary for good scholarship on this topic. The chapters that follow (and there are too many to describe individually) are organized into nine sections. Not all of these cohere very well, but all close off with a set of questions designed to focus classroom discussion on key concepts and how these might be applied to personal or local knowledge. Scholars will recognize many of the chapters from previously published versions. Bringing them together in conversation within one volume is a v
{"title":"African Sexualities: a reader (review)","authors":"M. Epprecht","doi":"10.1017/S000197201200054X","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S000197201200054X","url":null,"abstract":"Bravo! Here is a book about Africans, published in Africa, and mostly written by Africans. Literally dozens of established scholars, activists and artists explore the diverse aspects of sexualities in Africa. They employ empirical case studies and reflections upon pedagogy and activist strategies, research ethics andmethodology.They consider the theorization of sexual diversity and its relationship to gender, race, ethnicity, tourism, the political economy, biomedical science, and much more. There is something here for almost everyone – provided, that is, that readers are engaged by the underlying theoretical premises. Indeed, the Reader can almost stand alone as a university course, challenging by its breadth, interdisciplinarity, and passion the many stereotypes and silences that still encumber sexuality studies in Africa. The underlying premises (politics) are: feminism, anti-colonialism, human rights, and sex positivity. The authors persuasively argue that none of these is a Western import. On the contrary, much of the book’s overall optimism stems from the conviction that these concepts are embedded in African traditional cultures and can, therefore, be nurtured without inciting a patriotic backlash, while proceeding with sensitivity to local context. Sylvia Tamale is a legal scholar based at Makerere University. Among her previous contributions has been her vigorous defence of human rights for sexual minorities in Uganda. She brings that boldness to this collection as well, launching the volume with a judicious critique of Western constructions of a singular and mostly pathological ‘African sexuality’. That construct reaches back to some of the very earliest travel and anthropological writing about Africa but, as Tamale notes in a chilling account of a Google search on ‘black lesbian rape’, continues in the present. In stressing the need for Africans to deconstruct this pathology, and to envision sexualities free from the pernicious, lingering influences of colonialism, apartheid and imported religions, Tamale does not promote nativist opposition to the West. On the contrary, she makes a compelling and reasonable case for building upon the insights of Western pioneers in sexuality research. The influence of Foucault, Butler and Rubin especially is evident in many of the chapters. The bottom line, however, is that no amount of reference to the Western canon can by itself replace the hard ethnographic, archival, and other face-to-face work in Africa that is necessary for good scholarship on this topic. The chapters that follow (and there are too many to describe individually) are organized into nine sections. Not all of these cohere very well, but all close off with a set of questions designed to focus classroom discussion on key concepts and how these might be applied to personal or local knowledge. Scholars will recognize many of the chapters from previously published versions. Bringing them together in conversation within one volume is a v","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"139 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122653885","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 Land Has Changed: history, society and gender in colonial eastern Nigeria (review)","authors":"Wale Adebanwi","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-3421","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-3421","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"82 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-08-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130589607","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":"African Market Women: seven life stories from Ghana (review)","authors":"D. Zeitlyn","doi":"10.5860/choice.48-2841","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.48-2841","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"81 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130245275","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}
Pub Date : 2010-11-14DOI: 10.3366/E0001972010000823
Filip De Boeck
{"title":"The Intestines of the State: youth, violence and belated histories in the Cameroon Grassfields (review)","authors":"Filip De Boeck","doi":"10.3366/E0001972010000823","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/E0001972010000823","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126136308","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}
'In the West', claims Molefi Kete Asante in his recent History of Africa, 'the ignorance of Africa is palpable, like a monster that invades our brains with disbelief, deception, and disinterest, yet is everywhere around us. We are victims of probably the most uninformed educated people in the world on the subject of Africa'. It is hard to disagree, given many Western assumptions about the nature of life in any African country. So prevalent are these ideas that Binyavanga Wainaina, a Kenyan writer, offers in his essay 'How to Write about Africa', which struck such a chord with its readers it has since achieved iconic status, some sardonic tips to authors aspiring to write about the continent. 'Always', he advises, use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'.3 Such representations of Africa inform the background against which the annual Africa Bibliography is published. It seems appropriate, therefore, to look at them more closely. The Bibliography's range and inclusiveness, which embody a significant and compelling literature by Africans and non- Africans alike, reveal a nuanced, rich picture. But this picture is not consistent, by and large, with the perception of the continent from beyond its shores. The most common cliche about Africa is failure. In the very first sentence of Dark Star Safari (2002), Paul Theroux delivers his grim verdict on the state of the continent: 'All news out of Africa is bad.'4 He then proceeds to illustrate this verdict with a bleak account of his overland journey from Cairo to Cape Town. This dismissive view infuriated Barack Obama as he travelled aged twenty-six to Kenya, the land of his father, for the first time. On the flight from London to Nairobi, he records in his memoir, Dreams from My Father, he read a portrait of several African countries by a Western journalist who was 'an old Africa hand'. The first chapters of the book gave an account of colonialism and the early heroism of independence figures like Kenyatta and Nkrumah, followed by a drift towards despotism that was attributed to the politics of the Cold War. But by the third chapter, images from the present had begun to outstrip the past. Famine, disease, the coups and counter-coups led by illiterate young men wielding AK-47s like
“在西方，”Molefi Kete Asante在他最近的《非洲史》中说，“对非洲的无知是显而易见的，就像一个怪物，用怀疑、欺骗和冷漠侵入我们的大脑，但却无处不在。”我们可能是世界上最不了解非洲问题的受过教育的人的受害者。”考虑到西方对非洲国家生活本质的诸多假设，我们很难不同意这种看法。这些想法如此普遍，以至于肯尼亚作家Binyavanga Wainaina在他的文章《如何写非洲》中提出了一些讽刺的建议，给那些渴望写非洲大陆的作家。这篇文章引起了读者的共鸣，自那以后就获得了标志性的地位。他建议，“总是”在你的标题中使用“非洲”、“黑暗”或“狩猎”等字眼。字幕可能包括“桑给巴尔”、“马赛”、“祖鲁”、“赞比西”、“刚果”、“尼罗河”、“大”、“天空”、“影子”、“鼓”、“太阳”或“过去”等词。同样有用的还有“游击队”、“永恒”、“原始”和“部落”等词非洲的这种情况说明了每年出版《非洲书目》的背景。因此，更仔细地研究它们似乎是合适的。参考书目的范围和包容性，体现了非洲人和非非洲人的重要和引人注目的文学，揭示了一个微妙的，丰富的画面。但总的来说，这一图景与外界对欧洲大陆的看法并不一致。关于非洲最常见的陈词滥调是失败。在《黑暗之星》(Dark Star Safari, 2002)的第一句话中，保罗·塞鲁就对非洲大陆的现状做出了冷酷的判断:“所有来自非洲的消息都很糟糕。然后，他继续用他从开罗到开普敦的陆路旅行的凄凉叙述来说明这个结论。这种轻蔑的观点激怒了26岁的巴拉克•奥巴马，当时他第一次前往他父亲的故土肯尼亚。在从伦敦飞往内罗毕的航班上，他在回忆录《父亲的梦想》(Dreams from My Father)中写道，他读到了一位“非洲通”西方记者对几个非洲国家的描述。这本书的前几章讲述了殖民主义，以及像肯雅塔(Kenyatta)和恩克鲁玛(Nkrumah)这样的独立人物的早期英雄主义，随后被认为是冷战政治导致的专制主义。但到了第三章，现在的画面已经开始超越过去。饥荒，疾病，政变和反政变由挥舞着ak -47的文盲年轻人领导
{"title":"Ways of Seeing Africa","authors":"Susan Williams","doi":"10.3366/ABIB.2009.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ABIB.2009.0002","url":null,"abstract":"'In the West', claims Molefi Kete Asante in his recent History of Africa, 'the ignorance of Africa is palpable, like a monster that invades our brains with disbelief, deception, and disinterest, yet is everywhere around us. We are victims of probably the most uninformed educated people in the world on the subject of Africa'. It is hard to disagree, given many Western assumptions about the nature of life in any African country. So prevalent are these ideas that Binyavanga Wainaina, a Kenyan writer, offers in his essay 'How to Write about Africa', which struck such a chord with its readers it has since achieved iconic status, some sardonic tips to authors aspiring to write about the continent. 'Always', he advises, use the word 'Africa' or 'Darkness' or 'Safari' in your title. Subtitles may include the words 'Zanzibar', 'Masai', 'Zulu', 'Zambezi', 'Congo', 'Nile', 'Big', 'Sky', 'Shadow', 'Drum', 'Sun' or 'Bygone'. Also useful are words such as 'Guerrillas', 'Timeless', 'Primordial' and 'Tribal'.3 Such representations of Africa inform the background against which the annual Africa Bibliography is published. It seems appropriate, therefore, to look at them more closely. The Bibliography's range and inclusiveness, which embody a significant and compelling literature by Africans and non- Africans alike, reveal a nuanced, rich picture. But this picture is not consistent, by and large, with the perception of the continent from beyond its shores. The most common cliche about Africa is failure. In the very first sentence of Dark Star Safari (2002), Paul Theroux delivers his grim verdict on the state of the continent: 'All news out of Africa is bad.'4 He then proceeds to illustrate this verdict with a bleak account of his overland journey from Cairo to Cape Town. This dismissive view infuriated Barack Obama as he travelled aged twenty-six to Kenya, the land of his father, for the first time. On the flight from London to Nairobi, he records in his memoir, Dreams from My Father, he read a portrait of several African countries by a Western journalist who was 'an old Africa hand'. The first chapters of the book gave an account of colonialism and the early heroism of independence figures like Kenyatta and Nkrumah, followed by a drift towards despotism that was attributed to the politics of the Cold War. But by the third chapter, images from the present had begun to outstrip the past. Famine, disease, the coups and counter-coups led by illiterate young men wielding AK-47s like","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"15 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2010-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115283031","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}
Introduction Bibliographies played a crucial role in education and research during the 'papyrocentric5 era (when publishing and written communication were solely paper-based) as tools that allowed people to maintain systematic awareness of published formal research outputs of interest, and of how to locate these. Actually accessing the content summarized in bibliographies was often, if not usually, a challenge for African academics, however, due to African institutions being generally beset by substantial resource scarcity (with the exception of the larger universities in South Africa, and a handful in other African countries). This resulted in the bibliography, even a national one, being something of an unfulfilled wish list for Africans rather than a guide to assist access to readily available content. Decades of underinvestment in higher education on the African continent, and less developed countries in general, partly due to a 55-year World Bank policy determining that higher education was unimportant for economic growth in developing countries,1 resulted in a global scholarly information divide already entrenched before the advent of the internet. Modern journal publishing is young within Africa, and essentially postcolonial. It suffered disproportionately from the crises in higher education in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The 1980s were also an economically difficult time for many developing countries, so recovery in African scholarly research and communication was stifled. Until at least 2000, 'the international development community encouraged African governments' relative neglect of higher education. The World Bank, which exercises significant influence over developing country governments, has long believed that primary and secondary schooling are more important than tertiary education for economic development'. The World Bank's global education-sector spending was 17 per cent on higher education from 1985 to 1989, but this figure dropped to just 7 per cent from 1995 to 1999.2
{"title":"Moving Africa away from the global knowledge periphery: a case study of AJOL","authors":"Susan R. Murray","doi":"10.3366/ABIB.2008.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/ABIB.2008.2","url":null,"abstract":"Introduction Bibliographies played a crucial role in education and research during the 'papyrocentric5 era (when publishing and written communication were solely paper-based) as tools that allowed people to maintain systematic awareness of published formal research outputs of interest, and of how to locate these. Actually accessing the content summarized in bibliographies was often, if not usually, a challenge for African academics, however, due to African institutions being generally beset by substantial resource scarcity (with the exception of the larger universities in South Africa, and a handful in other African countries). This resulted in the bibliography, even a national one, being something of an unfulfilled wish list for Africans rather than a guide to assist access to readily available content. Decades of underinvestment in higher education on the African continent, and less developed countries in general, partly due to a 55-year World Bank policy determining that higher education was unimportant for economic growth in developing countries,1 resulted in a global scholarly information divide already entrenched before the advent of the internet. Modern journal publishing is young within Africa, and essentially postcolonial. It suffered disproportionately from the crises in higher education in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The 1980s were also an economically difficult time for many developing countries, so recovery in African scholarly research and communication was stifled. Until at least 2000, 'the international development community encouraged African governments' relative neglect of higher education. The World Bank, which exercises significant influence over developing country governments, has long believed that primary and secondary schooling are more important than tertiary education for economic development'. The World Bank's global education-sector spending was 17 per cent on higher education from 1985 to 1989, but this figure dropped to just 7 per cent from 1995 to 1999.2","PeriodicalId":337749,"journal":{"name":"Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2009-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123746525","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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