Senegal experienced much political turbulence under President Macky Sall. Journalists and observers regularly make two claims. The first is that Senegal has long been a haven of stability and democracy in Africa. The second is that the anti-democratic and repressive moves by President Sall led to an institutional crisis without precedent. We partially correct these two popular claims. With minor caveats, Senegal has indeed been a haven of political stability since independence. However, the political system only became democratic around 2000. Democratization is ongoing and has faced serious setbacks. Sall’s attempt in 2024 to postpone the presidential election is indeed without precedent. However, we examine his predecessors’ legacies to show that political repression, attempts to overstay in power, and even delays in parliamentary elections are not uncommon. Finally, we contend that democratic resilience in Senegal is the result of social norms such as dialogue and tolerance that are widely shared and of bottom-up pressure on incumbents, in addition to the autonomy of key institutions such as the judiciary. These same reasons suggest that Senegal could become a consolidated democracy even in a regional context of democratic backsliding and military coups.
{"title":"Senegal: Between Political Instability and Democratic Consolidation","authors":"Alioune Wagane Ngom, Joan Ricart-Huguet","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adaf025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf025","url":null,"abstract":"Senegal experienced much political turbulence under President Macky Sall. Journalists and observers regularly make two claims. The first is that Senegal has long been a haven of stability and democracy in Africa. The second is that the anti-democratic and repressive moves by President Sall led to an institutional crisis without precedent. We partially correct these two popular claims. With minor caveats, Senegal has indeed been a haven of political stability since independence. However, the political system only became democratic around 2000. Democratization is ongoing and has faced serious setbacks. Sall’s attempt in 2024 to postpone the presidential election is indeed without precedent. However, we examine his predecessors’ legacies to show that political repression, attempts to overstay in power, and even delays in parliamentary elections are not uncommon. Finally, we contend that democratic resilience in Senegal is the result of social norms such as dialogue and tolerance that are widely shared and of bottom-up pressure on incumbents, in addition to the autonomy of key institutions such as the judiciary. These same reasons suggest that Senegal could become a consolidated democracy even in a regional context of democratic backsliding and military coups.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"379 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-11-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145553563","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2010, the BBC broadcast a salacious story about child sacrifice in Uganda. A ‘witchdoctor’, who had become a Christian preacher, was the charismatic leading character, and claims were made that thousands of children were being sacrificed for purposes of witchcraft. The journalist won a major prize, and versions of his tale were heard and seen in Uganda on radio and television. Despite his account being substantially fictitious, it helped trigger a moral panic. A host of NGOs and activists became involved, and vigilante groups targeted alleged perpetrators. In 2021, as if existing legislation did not already make killing and mutilating people a crime, a Bill was approved by the Ugandan Parliament, making human sacrifice illegal. This occurred in the same month as a new Bill further criminalizing homosexuality. Legislation against human sacrifice and homosexuality has been presented as complementary by the Ugandan government and has been defended as responding to widespread concerns about child safety. The article discusses these developments, and comments on how promoting moral panic about child sacrifice is more likely to lead to the mistreatment of spuriously accused individuals than to improve accountability for heinous acts.
{"title":"‘IS THIS LIVER HUMAN?’: CHILD SACRIFICE AND MORAL PANICS IN UGANDA","authors":"Tim Allen","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adaf024","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf024","url":null,"abstract":"In 2010, the BBC broadcast a salacious story about child sacrifice in Uganda. A ‘witchdoctor’, who had become a Christian preacher, was the charismatic leading character, and claims were made that thousands of children were being sacrificed for purposes of witchcraft. The journalist won a major prize, and versions of his tale were heard and seen in Uganda on radio and television. Despite his account being substantially fictitious, it helped trigger a moral panic. A host of NGOs and activists became involved, and vigilante groups targeted alleged perpetrators. In 2021, as if existing legislation did not already make killing and mutilating people a crime, a Bill was approved by the Ugandan Parliament, making human sacrifice illegal. This occurred in the same month as a new Bill further criminalizing homosexuality. Legislation against human sacrifice and homosexuality has been presented as complementary by the Ugandan government and has been defended as responding to widespread concerns about child safety. The article discusses these developments, and comments on how promoting moral panic about child sacrifice is more likely to lead to the mistreatment of spuriously accused individuals than to improve accountability for heinous acts.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-10-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145295581","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The literature on the Zanzibar Revolution highlights contested views of events leading up to a short period of violence in 1964. Other studies have followed the paths of those who fled the islands of Zanzibar in the aftermath of the revolution, many of whom lost property to government confiscations. How the confiscations impacted and still inform the relation of their previous owners to Zanzibar, however, has received rather little scholarly attention. This article introduces a dataset of georeferenced property confiscation orders, originally published in the Zanzibar Gazettes between 1964 and 1987. The data contribute to our understanding of the Zanzibar Revolution by showing that the temporal arc of the Revolution was decades long and that property confiscations went beyond urban houses in Stone Town and large plantations. Property confiscations, effected by revolutionary decree, persisted into the 1980s on both Pemba and Unguja islands. By bringing the data into conversation with family histories and previous literature on the aftermath of the revolution, this article illustrates the relevance of Revolutionary era property losses for questions of identity, belonging, desire for restitution, and ongoing development efforts.
{"title":"PROPERTY CONFISCATION IN THE ZANZIBAR REVOLUTION","authors":"Sandra F Joireman, Julia Verne","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adaf022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf022","url":null,"abstract":"The literature on the Zanzibar Revolution highlights contested views of events leading up to a short period of violence in 1964. Other studies have followed the paths of those who fled the islands of Zanzibar in the aftermath of the revolution, many of whom lost property to government confiscations. How the confiscations impacted and still inform the relation of their previous owners to Zanzibar, however, has received rather little scholarly attention. This article introduces a dataset of georeferenced property confiscation orders, originally published in the Zanzibar Gazettes between 1964 and 1987. The data contribute to our understanding of the Zanzibar Revolution by showing that the temporal arc of the Revolution was decades long and that property confiscations went beyond urban houses in Stone Town and large plantations. Property confiscations, effected by revolutionary decree, persisted into the 1980s on both Pemba and Unguja islands. By bringing the data into conversation with family histories and previous literature on the aftermath of the revolution, this article illustrates the relevance of Revolutionary era property losses for questions of identity, belonging, desire for restitution, and ongoing development efforts.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"102 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-09-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145089655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines gendered patterns of cabinet appointments and shuffles by African heads of state. While a handful of previous studies have systematically analysed how regime type influences cabinet reshuffles in African autocracies, the gender dynamics of cabinet survival and replacement in the region remain underexplored. Using a cross-national dataset of 3,829 ministerial appointments from 1990 to 2021, I model the impact of individual-level factors on survival probabilities and cabinet shuffles. The findings reveal that women serve shorter tenures than men, even in high-prestige portfolios, but survival probabilities are not statistically related to gender when controlling for age, credentials, and political and socioeconomic factors. However, when cabinets are shuffled, women are significantly more likely than men to be succeeded by someone of the other gender. This study contributes to research on gender and cabinet politics by showing that, beyond political and socio-economic variables, individual-level factors significantly shape cabinet survival and shuffles in Africa.
{"title":"Shuffled and Shortchanged? The Gender Gap in Cabinet Shuffles in Africa","authors":"Saaka Sulemana Saaka","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adaf017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf017","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines gendered patterns of cabinet appointments and shuffles by African heads of state. While a handful of previous studies have systematically analysed how regime type influences cabinet reshuffles in African autocracies, the gender dynamics of cabinet survival and replacement in the region remain underexplored. Using a cross-national dataset of 3,829 ministerial appointments from 1990 to 2021, I model the impact of individual-level factors on survival probabilities and cabinet shuffles. The findings reveal that women serve shorter tenures than men, even in high-prestige portfolios, but survival probabilities are not statistically related to gender when controlling for age, credentials, and political and socioeconomic factors. However, when cabinets are shuffled, women are significantly more likely than men to be succeeded by someone of the other gender. This study contributes to research on gender and cabinet politics by showing that, beyond political and socio-economic variables, individual-level factors significantly shape cabinet survival and shuffles in Africa.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"144 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144712335","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2016, Ghana’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) adopted innovative anti-rigging strategies as part of its successful campaign to defeat its main rival. This electoral vigilance system included a nationwide deployment of party agents, digitized parallel tabulation of results, and novel fundraising schemes. The move has been recognized in media and scholarly discussions. However, we still lack a deeper understanding of the NPP’s strategy and the conditions that enabled the party to implement it successfully. Analysing the key logistical, organizational, and procedural aspects of the NPP’s efforts, I argue that electoral vigilance can best be understood as a bundle of tactics that must be adopted and implemented simultaneously on a large scale to have substantive democratic impacts. The NPP honed and fully deployed its already extensive organizational capacities to support its vigilance interventions. This suggests that only parties with established bureaucratic structures, large membership, and professionalized staff, among other features, can translate their existing organizational resources into effective electoral vigilance interventions. Moreover, the NPP’s efforts worked because Ghana’s democratic environment supported these attempts to improve electoral quality. This shows that effective strategizing against manipulation is a product of organizationally complex parties operating in favourable political settings.
{"title":"Strategizing for quality elections in Africa: party capacity and the politics of vigilance in Ghana","authors":"Samuel Koranteng Anim","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adaf014","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf014","url":null,"abstract":"In 2016, Ghana’s New Patriotic Party (NPP) adopted innovative anti-rigging strategies as part of its successful campaign to defeat its main rival. This electoral vigilance system included a nationwide deployment of party agents, digitized parallel tabulation of results, and novel fundraising schemes. The move has been recognized in media and scholarly discussions. However, we still lack a deeper understanding of the NPP’s strategy and the conditions that enabled the party to implement it successfully. Analysing the key logistical, organizational, and procedural aspects of the NPP’s efforts, I argue that electoral vigilance can best be understood as a bundle of tactics that must be adopted and implemented simultaneously on a large scale to have substantive democratic impacts. The NPP honed and fully deployed its already extensive organizational capacities to support its vigilance interventions. This suggests that only parties with established bureaucratic structures, large membership, and professionalized staff, among other features, can translate their existing organizational resources into effective electoral vigilance interventions. Moreover, the NPP’s efforts worked because Ghana’s democratic environment supported these attempts to improve electoral quality. This shows that effective strategizing against manipulation is a product of organizationally complex parties operating in favourable political settings.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The roots of aggression and revolt in Nigeria, as in many African countries, can be traced to urban areas. Cities have also become vibrant environments where citizens openly express humour about their everyday lives, engage in ridicule regarding their economic and social challenges, and share jokes about society, government, and the credibility of institutional agencies in safeguarding lives and property. Urban Onitsha, a city populated by migrants in Anambra State, Southeast Nigeria, stands as a troubled metropolis characterized by both criminals and armed community groups seeking to control crime. The latter, predominantly made up of frustrated civilians, regularly engage in the unlawful practice of gbaa ya ọkụ (burn him/her/them), which involves capturing and burning alleged criminals with car tires (necklacing) and gasoline, while also maintaining humorous expressions at the locations where the act was performed. This article argues that the humorous use of gbaa ya ọkụ is an active expression in Onitsha that underscores necklacing as a performative act used to attract government attention to economic and social issues, entertain the public on how to treat victims’ bodies, and raise inquiries about the prevailing social order within the contemporary African urban context. The research investigates the choice of locations and spaces where acts of necklacing occur in Onitsha and questions their significance in exploring their use as hashtags on social media. The research, while using Onitsha city as a study area to examine violence as a humorous graphic display and postcolonial governance in Africa, draws on autoethnography, eyewitness accounts, ethnography, and interviews in Onitsha to further understand the context within which this public violence happens, and why the police and other armed forces are unable to quell it.
同许多非洲国家一样，尼日利亚的侵略和叛乱的根源可以追溯到城市地区。城市也成为充满活力的环境，市民们在这里公开表达对日常生活的幽默，嘲笑自己面临的经济和社会挑战，分享有关社会、政府和机构机构在保护生命和财产方面的可信度的笑话。奥尼察城市是尼日利亚东南部阿南布拉州的一个移民城市，是一个麻烦不断的大都市，其特点是犯罪分子和寻求控制犯罪的武装社区组织。后者主要由沮丧的平民组成，经常从事焚烧他/她/他们（gbaa ya ọkụ）的非法行为，其中包括逮捕和用汽车轮胎（项链）和汽油焚烧被指控的罪犯，同时在进行这种行为的地点保持幽默的表情。本文认为，幽默地使用gbaa ya ọkụ是Onitsha的一种积极表达方式，强调项链作为一种表演行为，用于吸引政府对经济和社会问题的关注，娱乐公众如何对待受害者的尸体，并提出对当代非洲城市背景下主流社会秩序的质疑。这项研究调查了在奥尼察发生项链行为的地点和空间的选择，并质疑了它们在社交媒体上作为标签使用的重要性。这项研究以奥尼察市为研究区域，检视暴力作为幽默的图形展示和非洲后殖民统治，并利用自身民族志、目击者叙述、民族志和在奥尼察的访谈，进一步了解这种公共暴力发生的背景，以及为什么警察和其他武装部队无法平息暴力。
{"title":"Dark humour, social media, and everyday violence in Nigeria: gbaa ya ọkụ in Onitsha city","authors":"Mathias Chukwudi Isiani","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adaf013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf013","url":null,"abstract":"The roots of aggression and revolt in Nigeria, as in many African countries, can be traced to urban areas. Cities have also become vibrant environments where citizens openly express humour about their everyday lives, engage in ridicule regarding their economic and social challenges, and share jokes about society, government, and the credibility of institutional agencies in safeguarding lives and property. Urban Onitsha, a city populated by migrants in Anambra State, Southeast Nigeria, stands as a troubled metropolis characterized by both criminals and armed community groups seeking to control crime. The latter, predominantly made up of frustrated civilians, regularly engage in the unlawful practice of gbaa ya ọkụ (burn him/her/them), which involves capturing and burning alleged criminals with car tires (necklacing) and gasoline, while also maintaining humorous expressions at the locations where the act was performed. This article argues that the humorous use of gbaa ya ọkụ is an active expression in Onitsha that underscores necklacing as a performative act used to attract government attention to economic and social issues, entertain the public on how to treat victims’ bodies, and raise inquiries about the prevailing social order within the contemporary African urban context. The research investigates the choice of locations and spaces where acts of necklacing occur in Onitsha and questions their significance in exploring their use as hashtags on social media. The research, while using Onitsha city as a study area to examine violence as a humorous graphic display and postcolonial governance in Africa, draws on autoethnography, eyewitness accounts, ethnography, and interviews in Onitsha to further understand the context within which this public violence happens, and why the police and other armed forces are unable to quell it.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"656 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513269","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
An enduring feature of rural Tanzanian political life has been the organization of villages down to the 10-house cell (nyumba kumi kumi). The cell system was established in 1963 as the smallest unit of the single-party state to eradicate rural isolation and facilitate communication, security, and self-help. Even after the 1992 turn to multipartyism, the cell has endured as a salient (though not static) feature of rural government. Existing scholarship has theorized the cell’s significance for political linkage, state spatialization, and party entrenchment, highlighting ongoing state appropriation of this party structure. But the cell has also been central to how rural Tanzanians experience and produce the functionality of the rural state to ensure the conditions for meeting basic needs. Based on a case study from the Singida region, and comparative perspectives from other parts of Tanzania, this article argues that the 10-house cell is both an infrastructure of rural statecraft but also of rural citizenship, enabling vital functions such as communication, adjudication, security, surveillance, taxation, development, and claims-making. Tracing how Tanzanians have used nyumba kumi kumi to exercise (and grow) the functionality of the state from below expands notions of state-building in Africa beyond notions of ‘reach’ and ‘capture’ from above.
坦桑尼亚农村政治生活的一个经久不衰的特点是村庄的组织，小到10间房屋的单元（nyumba kumi kumi）。1963年建立的牢房制度是一党制国家中最小的单位，旨在消除农村孤立，促进通信、安全和自助。即使在1992年转向多党制之后，小团体仍然是农村政府的一个显著特征（尽管不是静态的）。现有的学术研究已经将细胞在政治联系、国家空间化和政党巩固方面的重要性理论化，并强调了国家对这种政党结构的持续挪用。但是，对于坦桑尼亚农村人民如何体验和产生农村国家的功能，以确保满足基本需求的条件，这个细胞也起到了核心作用。基于对辛吉达地区的案例研究，以及与坦桑尼亚其他地区的比较观点，本文认为，10户家庭既是农村治国之道的基础设施，也是农村公民的基础设施，实现了通信、裁决、安全、监视、税收、发展和索赔等重要功能。追溯坦桑尼亚人如何使用nyumba kumi kumi从下而上行使（和发展）国家的功能，扩展了非洲国家建设的概念，超越了从上而下的“到达”和“捕获”概念。
{"title":"state-building, infrastructure, and citizenship in rural tanzania: persistence and change in nyumba kumi kumi (the 10-house cell)","authors":"Kristin D Phillips, Aikande Kwayu","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adaf011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf011","url":null,"abstract":"An enduring feature of rural Tanzanian political life has been the organization of villages down to the 10-house cell (nyumba kumi kumi). The cell system was established in 1963 as the smallest unit of the single-party state to eradicate rural isolation and facilitate communication, security, and self-help. Even after the 1992 turn to multipartyism, the cell has endured as a salient (though not static) feature of rural government. Existing scholarship has theorized the cell’s significance for political linkage, state spatialization, and party entrenchment, highlighting ongoing state appropriation of this party structure. But the cell has also been central to how rural Tanzanians experience and produce the functionality of the rural state to ensure the conditions for meeting basic needs. Based on a case study from the Singida region, and comparative perspectives from other parts of Tanzania, this article argues that the 10-house cell is both an infrastructure of rural statecraft but also of rural citizenship, enabling vital functions such as communication, adjudication, security, surveillance, taxation, development, and claims-making. Tracing how Tanzanians have used nyumba kumi kumi to exercise (and grow) the functionality of the state from below expands notions of state-building in Africa beyond notions of ‘reach’ and ‘capture’ from above.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article investigates the strategies that members of a post-donor society devised to deal with the donor exit. The post-donor phenomenon describes complex and multiple dynamics that result from a dramatic reduction in the presence and funding of international donors or aid agencies. This phenomenon creates losers and winners in the face of changed opportunities, power, and authority. Gulu in northern Uganda provides an excellent example of this phenomenon. Once thronged by international humanitarian agencies, there was a mass exit of the same in the decade starting in 2013. I argue that to navigate the post-donor arena successfully, society needs significant levels of agency, both individual and collective (including) institutional agency. The lack of clear exit strategies and a sustainability plan on the side of this industry, as well as the incapacity and unwillingness of the government to fill the gap, determined how the post-donor period has played out. Established actors have had to devise new ways to access scarce donor funding, turn to the private sector, or face severe hardship. Simultaneously, the sudden departure of many international organizations and their funding freed space for new entrants, such as multilateral organizations and private companies, to exploit available resources. The article reveals the challenges in the successful navigation of the post-donor arena by individuals, organizations, and agencies, and how agency leads to an uneven mix of losers and winners.
{"title":"Navigating the post-donor arena in Uganda’s Gulu district","authors":"Sophie Komujuni","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adaf012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf012","url":null,"abstract":"This article investigates the strategies that members of a post-donor society devised to deal with the donor exit. The post-donor phenomenon describes complex and multiple dynamics that result from a dramatic reduction in the presence and funding of international donors or aid agencies. This phenomenon creates losers and winners in the face of changed opportunities, power, and authority. Gulu in northern Uganda provides an excellent example of this phenomenon. Once thronged by international humanitarian agencies, there was a mass exit of the same in the decade starting in 2013. I argue that to navigate the post-donor arena successfully, society needs significant levels of agency, both individual and collective (including) institutional agency. The lack of clear exit strategies and a sustainability plan on the side of this industry, as well as the incapacity and unwillingness of the government to fill the gap, determined how the post-donor period has played out. Established actors have had to devise new ways to access scarce donor funding, turn to the private sector, or face severe hardship. Simultaneously, the sudden departure of many international organizations and their funding freed space for new entrants, such as multilateral organizations and private companies, to exploit available resources. The article reveals the challenges in the successful navigation of the post-donor arena by individuals, organizations, and agencies, and how agency leads to an uneven mix of losers and winners.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"373 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-06-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144513331","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A growing body of research argues that development assistance bolsters authoritarian regimes in Africa, but its impact on regime dominance remains underexplored. This article traces the material legacy of an ambitious rural development project in Ethiopia, including its ideational elements, and reveals its consequences for the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the incumbent regime at the time. The Merhabete Integrated Rural Development Project, implemented by the non-governmental organization Menschen für Menschen between 1988 and 2009, built clinics, schools, a hospital, offices, roads, and other facilities in the Merhabete district of Ethiopia’s Amhara region. Based on original fieldwork conducted 10 years after the project closed, I show that the project’s infrastructure significantly extended the regime’s presence in the district. However, these same structures also helped shape local ideas of the state, by exemplifying what a good mengist (government or state) might look like; this acted to weaken people’s acceptance of EPRDF rule. These findings inform our understanding of the relationship between aid and authoritarianism and demonstrate the need to consider development schemes’ long-term material legacies.
{"title":"Building an idea of the state? Regime dominance and the material legacy of a development project in Ethiopia","authors":"Justin Williams","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adaf008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf008","url":null,"abstract":"A growing body of research argues that development assistance bolsters authoritarian regimes in Africa, but its impact on regime dominance remains underexplored. This article traces the material legacy of an ambitious rural development project in Ethiopia, including its ideational elements, and reveals its consequences for the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the incumbent regime at the time. The Merhabete Integrated Rural Development Project, implemented by the non-governmental organization Menschen für Menschen between 1988 and 2009, built clinics, schools, a hospital, offices, roads, and other facilities in the Merhabete district of Ethiopia’s Amhara region. Based on original fieldwork conducted 10 years after the project closed, I show that the project’s infrastructure significantly extended the regime’s presence in the district. However, these same structures also helped shape local ideas of the state, by exemplifying what a good mengist (government or state) might look like; this acted to weaken people’s acceptance of EPRDF rule. These findings inform our understanding of the relationship between aid and authoritarianism and demonstrate the need to consider development schemes’ long-term material legacies.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"2 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143945695","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Ugandan military has played an outsized role in Uganda’s national politics for decades. Since 1995, the Constitution of Uganda has allocated 10 seats in the Ugandan Parliament to members of the national army, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), which is considered one of several ‘interest groups’ represented in the legislature. The unusual arrangement of including soldiers in parliament raises important questions about democratization, political institutionalization, and civil–military relations in Africa. This article argues that in Uganda, the practice of having soldiers in parliament is rooted in the country’s civil–military relations, driven by ideology, patronage, and political influence, which are components of a broader strategy that helps maintain the stability and dominance of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement regime. Data are drawn from interviews with current and former UPDF officers and parliamentary officials, a review of government publications, articles in the Ugandan press, and reports by local civil society organizations.
{"title":"Soldiers in parliament: Military power and legislative authority in Uganda","authors":"Gerald Bareebe, Christopher Day","doi":"10.1093/afraf/adaf001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adaf001","url":null,"abstract":"The Ugandan military has played an outsized role in Uganda’s national politics for decades. Since 1995, the Constitution of Uganda has allocated 10 seats in the Ugandan Parliament to members of the national army, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), which is considered one of several ‘interest groups’ represented in the legislature. The unusual arrangement of including soldiers in parliament raises important questions about democratization, political institutionalization, and civil–military relations in Africa. This article argues that in Uganda, the practice of having soldiers in parliament is rooted in the country’s civil–military relations, driven by ideology, patronage, and political influence, which are components of a broader strategy that helps maintain the stability and dominance of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement regime. Data are drawn from interviews with current and former UPDF officers and parliamentary officials, a review of government publications, articles in the Ugandan press, and reports by local civil society organizations.","PeriodicalId":7508,"journal":{"name":"African Affairs","volume":"33 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.8,"publicationDate":"2025-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143576319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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