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Associational life in African cities : popular responses to the urban crisis
No full textThis book is about the multitude of associations that has emerged in African cities in recent years. In many cases, they are a response to mounting poverty, failing infrastructure and services, and more generally, weak and abdicating urban governments. Some associations are new, in other cases existing organisations are taking on new tasks. Associations may be neighbourhood-based, others may be city-wide and based on professional groupings or a shared ideology or religion. Still others have an ethnic base.CONTENTS -- Coping through informal network -- Religion and Identity -- Land and Housing -- Services -- Emerging initiative
Identity and beyond : rethinking Africanity
No full textThis Discussion Paper presents the plenary presentations by the three main speakers during the Nordic Africa Days, with an introduction offering an overview and comment on the various approaches on Gender and Power in African Contexts, Africanity as an Open Question and Rethinking Power in Africa.CONTENTS -- Beyond Africanity? An Introduction/Henning Melber -- Challenging Subjects: Gender and Power in African Contexts/Amina Mama -- Africanity as an Open Question/Souleymane Bachir Diagne -- Concluding Reflections on Beyond Identities: Rethinking Power in Africa/Francis B. Nyamnjo
The new African initiative and the African Union : a preliminary assessment and documentation
No full textDuring the year 2000 an initiative among the African states to transform the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) into the African Union (AU) gained momentum. It resulted in the ratification of the Constitutive Act and its adoption at the 36th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of Heads of State and Government in July 2001 in Lusaka. Parallel to this process of reorganisation towards closer inter-state collaboration on the African continent in the spirit of Pan Africanism emerged the systematic effort to redefine developmental priorities and to claim a new common position of African states in the globalised world. The "African Renaissance" initiative of South Africa's President Thabo Mbeki resulted in a "Millenium Africa Recovery Programme", which was finally revised and presented as the "New Africa Initiative" (NAI). Adopted at the same OAU Summit in Lusaka in July 2001, the NAI serves as a blueprint for Africa's development strategy at the beginning of the 21st century. It was presented to the G8 summit in Genoa, where the leaders of the world's powerful countries decided on a follow up by appointing individual special advisers to explore support to the NAI and future collaboration on the basis of this document. This paper offers a preliminary assessment of the New Africa Initiative within the context of the transformation of the OAU into the AU. It identifies and summarises essential new aspects advocated, critically examines the degree of realism and points at the possible limitations. The analysis also considers first reactions to the initiatives and reflects on the perspectives.Contents: NAI and AU – A Preliminary Assessment: From the African Renaissance to the New African Initiative -- Essentials and Effects of the New African Initiative -- The African Union: Scope and Perspectives -- NAI and AU: Old Wines in New Bottles? -- Documentation: Appendix I: A New African Initiative -- Appendix II: Constitutive Act of the African Union</p
Politics, property and production in the West African Sahel : understanding natural resources management
No full textUnderstanding natural resources management requires an interdisciplinary approach. Through a number of case studies from the West African Sahel, this book links and explores natural resources management from the perspectives of three distinct but interrelated spheres (politics, property and production) and within a broad and empirically based political ecology. Natural resources management is first of all profoundly political. Seen from above, it is constantly the object of planning efforts where one 'master-plan' follows another, each sponsored by one of the major international donors. Policies and plans are again informed by global discourses of 'decentralisation', 'disengaging the State', 'democratisation' or 'desertification'. Seen from below, natural resources management is always the object of power struggles and politicisation linked to property rights to land. Property may in fact be one of the most comprehensive, yet at the same time most elusive, concepts in the natural resources debate. To say that someone has a 'right' to land is to summarise in one word a complex and highly conditional state of affairs. African and Sahelian land tenure is a field where property relations are multifarious, overlapping and competing. The prospects for African and Sahelian production systems and their influences on the environment are also contested. The conventional belief says that these systems are marked by agricultural stagnation and environmental degradation, but this is increasingly being questioned or qualified. Under certain policy environments production systems and resources seem to follow more optimistic paths. Such emerging experiences which cut against the grain of conventional perceptions of the Sahelian environment should encourage us to rethink both Sahelian research and policy formulation.Contents: Politics, Property and Production: Understanding Natural Resources Management in the West African Sahel / Tor A. Benjaminsen, Christian Lund -- Part 1: Politics -- Transformations Informelles et Marchés Fonciers Emergents en Afrique / Paul Mathieu -- Politics in a Sahelian Town: Dori and the Art of Alliance / Christian Lund -- Power, Pastures and Politics: Boreholes and the Decentralization of Local Resource Management in Northern Senegal / Kristine Juul -- Politics, Development and Custom: People’s Struggle for Evasion in Yatenga, Burkina Faso / Lars Engberg Pedersen -- Inside Government Extension Agencies: A Comparison of Four Agencies in the Sikasso Region of Mali / Tove Degnbol -- History, Continuity and Change in Fulani Resource Regime / Trond Vedeld -- Part 2: Property Questioning some Assumptions about Land Tenure / Christian Lund -- Droit de Communage (“Commons”), et Pastoralisme au Sahel: Quel Avenir pour les Eleveurs Sahéliens? / Brigitte Thébaud -- Tuareg Notions of Space and Place in Northern Mali / Gunnvor Berge -- Fishing at Home and Abroad: Access to Waters in Niger’s Central Delta and the Effects of Work Migration / Eyolf Jul-Larsen and Bréhima Kassibo -- Part 3: Production -- Overcoming Variability and Productivity Constraints in Sahelian Agriculture / Michael Mortimore -- The Malian Cotton Zone: Economic Success, but Environmental Failure? / Tor A. Benjaminsen -- The Dynamics of Inequality in the Sahel: Agricultural Productivity, Income Diversification, and Food Security among the Fulani Rimaïbe in Northern Burkina Faso / Simon Bolwig -- Agricultural Expansion and Animal Husbandry in a West African Savannah Environment / Peter Oksen</p
Again at the crossroads : Rwanda and Burundi, 2000-2001
No full textThis report is the third overview by Filip Reyntjens on recent developments in Rwanda and Burundi. The first one "Talking or Fighting?" (published 1999) covered the period 1998-1999, the second one "Small States in an Unstable region"covered the period 1999-2000. In the new publication the political evolution of Rwanda and Burundi is investigated in a broader regional geopolitical context
Afrika i det tjugonde seklet
No full textNy omarbetad upplaga. Afrikas moderna politiska och sociala historia presenteras här insiktsfullt och översiktligt på ett sätt som gör den till ett standardverk i sig och en oundgänglig bakgrund till de enskilda afrikanska ländernas historia. Boken har skrivits i skuggan av de kriser som många afrikanska samhällen och institutioner drabbades av i slutet av 1900-talet och som fortfarande pågår. Bokens författare, den kände afrikaexperten Basil Davidson, diskuterar orsakerna till sönderfallet och de afrikanska staternas sårbarhet. Men han tar också itu med de industrialiserade ländernas misslyckanden att förändra förhållandet mellan de rika länderna i nord och de fattiga i syd. Boken avslutas med en diskussion om hur Afrika idag söker sina egna lösningar. I boken finns ett detaljrikt och praktiskt index och flera specialritade kartor. Den är lämplig som studie- och referensbok på gymnasiet och i vuxenutbildningen. Basil Davidson är en brittisk journalist och historiker som skrivit ett 20-tal böcker om Afrikas historia. Han har nått en stor publik i sina strävanden att framställa Afrikas historia ur ett afrikanskt perspektiv med afrikanska källor.2nd ed
Same and other : negotiating African identity in cultural production
No full textThe idea of African Otherness has occupied a central role in discourses on cultural production in Africa, whether film, literature, music or the arts. These claims, articulated both by 'Western' and 'African' critics and consumers, means that particular criteria and standards are adopted in relation to cultural production in Africa. The claim to African Otherness is gaining new strength in the wake of globalisation, but it is also increasingly challenged by a number of contemporary artists. This book deals with the question of relevance and meaning of the signifier in various fields of contemporary cultural production in Africa: literature, film, sculpture, music, popular drama.Contents: Introduction: African Identity and the Postcolonial / Maria Eriksson Baaz -- Black Atlantics / Stefan Helgesson -- Musical Otherness and the Bhundu Boys: The construction of the 'West' and the 'Rest' in the discourse of 'world music' / Johannes Brusila -- Tourism industry and local music culture in contemporary Zanzibar / Annemette Kirkegaard -- In Search of Psychological Worlds On Yvonne Vera's and Chenjerai Hove's portrayal of women / Carita Backström -- Africa's Modern Cinematic Griots: Oral tradition and West African cinema / Eva Jørholt -- Sankofa and Modern Authenticity in Ghanaian Film and Television / Anne Mette Jørgensen -- "The shame of money": Criticism of modernity in Swahili popular drama / Siri Lange -- 'Imagined Families' in South African Women's Autobiographies / Maria Olaussen -- Questioning 'Authenticity': The Case of Contemporary Zimbabwean Stone Sculpture / Elin Skogh -- A Continent without Culture? / Mai Palmberg</p
Responsibility and partnership in Swedish aid discourse
No full textIn 1997 the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs elaborated a 'New Policy for Africa'. Its purpose was to co-ordinate the country's cultural assistance, trade and development aid to African countries by giving these activities a frame of common goals and an ideological rationale, emphasising 'partnership' rather than 'solidarity' or 'aid'. This paper analyses the metaphors and paradoxes of the rhetorical draping of the policy as presented in the main report and the speeches of various officials. Of particular concern is what image of moral and reciprocal relations the policy mediates.CONTENTS -- Swedish aid to Africa. The background -- Three decades of Swedish developmental debate -- The nature of partnership -- Agency and the worthy self -- Africans with agency: The new generation -- Conclusio
Afrikabild för partnerskap? : Afrika i de svenska skolböckerna
No full textSverige har initierat ett nytt kapitel i sina relationer med Afrika under benämningen "partnerskap". Mot den bakgrunden har författaren till denna studie granskat hur Afrika framställs i 62 aktuella högstadieböcker i SO-ämnen. Skolböckerna har en stor betydelse som formare av vår världsbild och som återspeglare av tidsandan, men undgår vanligtvis all kritisk granskning. Denna bok ger både ris och ros. Den varnar för generaliseringar och föreslår kompletterande material som kan ge en mer intressant och levande Afrikabild.Innehåll: 1. Vilket Afrika? -- 2. Afrikas historia -- 3. Hur Afrika blir ett u-land -- 4. Kultur och religion -- 5. Kvinnor och män -- 6. Demokrati och diktatur -- 7. Miljö -- 8. Ska det vara mångkulturellt? -- 9. Sydafrika -- 10. Vi och Afrika</p
Re-distribution from above : the politics of land rights and squatting in coastal Kenya
No full textUsing empirical evidence collected from the coastal district of Kenya, an area with a long history of private land ownership which is also situated in a country with one of the most comprehensive efforts at land tenure reform dating from the colonial period, this report challenges the key assumptions of the proponents of land indivualization. In so doing, the author not only points to the many dysfunctionalities associated with land privatisation, including the numerous conflicts it generates on account of the dispossessions and landlessness associated with it, it also reinforces the growing critique that customary land tenure is far more complex and flexible than its critics are prepared to concede.CONTETNS -- Chapter 1. Introducing the "Land Question Complex" -- Chapter 2. Perspectives on the Politics of Land Rights -- Chapter 3. Politics of Land Rights in Kenya -- Chapter 4. Independence Eve and After -- Chapter 5. The Coastal Land Question -- Chapter 6. The "Land Question Complex" in Kilifi -- Chapter 7. Land Rights, Accumulation and Social Dominatio