New Books In African Studies

As we saw with the Ebola outbreak--and the disastrous early handling of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic--a lack of preparedness, delays, and system-wide problems with the distribution of critical medical supplies can have deadly consequences. Yet after every outbreak, the systems put in place to coordinate emergency responses are generally dismantled. One of America's top biomedical researchers, Dr. Pardis Sabeti, and her Pulitzer Prize-winning collaborator, Lara Salahi, argue that these problems are built into the ecosystem of our emergency responses. With an understanding of the path of disease and insight into political psychology, they show how secrecy, competition, and poor coordination plague nearly every major public health crisis and reveal how much more could be done to safeguard the well-being of caregivers, patients, and vulnerable communities. A work of fearless integrity and unassailable authority, Outbreak Culture: The Ebola Crisis and the Next Epidemic (Harvard UP, 2021) seeks to ensure that

Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa (Indiana University Press, 2021) by Brian J. Peterson is a thoroughly researched biography of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso. Peterson sketches Sankara’s rise to power in the early 1980s and focuses specifically on how his military experiences, educational background, and community of mentors, family, and friends shaped his radicalism. Peterson frames Sankara within a second-generation of anti-colonial radicals who both admired anti-colonial luminaries like Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere, but also refined their anti-colonial perspective to critique the limits of their leadership. We learn that during this moment of late-Cold War and decolonization, Sankara used his international platforms to resist and condemn neo-colonialism, imperialism, and European-American networks of surveillance and subterfuge while tackling corruption, poverty, gender discrimination, and environmental issues in Burkina Faso. Sankara’s fierce commitment to r

Africa is often portrayed in terms of dictators, starvation, corruption, tribalism, war, disease, poverty and crime. In this podcast Professor James A. Robinson of the University of Chicago who is co-author (with Daron Acemoglu of Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (Currency, 2013) explains why those stereotypes are often wrong and why he believes Africa has a brighter future than many think. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/african-studies

Singing the same song is a central part of the worship practice for members for the Cherubim and Seraphim Christian Church in Lagos, Nigeria. Vicki L. Brennan reveals that by singing together, church members create one spiritual mind and become unified around a shared set of values. She follows parishioners as they attend choir rehearsals, use musical media—hymn books and cassette tapes—and perform the music and rituals that connect them through religious experience. Brennan asserts that church members believe that singing together makes them part of a larger imagined social collective, one that allows them to achieve health, joy, happiness, wealth, and success in an ethical way. Brennan discovers how this particular Yoruba church articulates and embodies the moral attitudes necessary to be a good Christian in Nigeria today. Singing Yoruba Christianity: Music, Media, and Morality (Indiana UP, 2018) makes an important contribution to understanding the complex religious landscape of Lagos, which includes variou

In The Child Soldiers of Africa's Red Army: The Role of Social Process and Routinised Violence in South Sudan's Military (Routledge, 2022), Dr. Carol Berger examines the role of social process and routinised violence in the use of underaged soldiers in the country now known as South Sudan during the twenty-one-year civil war between Sudan’s northern and southern regions. Drawing on accounts of South Sudanese who as children and teenagers were part of the Red Army—the youth wing of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)—the book sheds light on the organised nature of the exploitation of children and youth by senior adult figures within the movement. The book also includes interviews with several of the original Red Army commanders, all of whom went on to hold senior positions within the military and government of South Sudan. The author chronicles the cultural transformation experienced by members of the Red Army and considers whether an analysis of the processes involved in what was then Africa’s longest c

Imaging Culture: Photography in Mali, West Africa (Indiana University Press, 2021) is a sociohistorical study of the meaning, function, and aesthetic significance of photography in Mali, West Africa, from the 1930s to the present. Spanning the dynamic periods of colonialism, national independence, socialism, and democracy, its analysis focuses on the studio and documentary work of professional urban photographers, particularly in the capital city of Bamako and in smaller cities such as Mopti and Ségu. Featuring the work of more than twenty-five photographers, it concentrates on those who have been particularly influential for the local development and practice of the medium as well as its international popularization and active participation in the contemporary art market. Imaging Culture looks at how local aesthetic ideas are visually communicated in the photographers' art and argues that though these aesthetic arrangements have specific relevance for local consumers, they transcend geographical and cultural

Analysing three cases of British colonial violence that occurred in the latter half of the 19th century, this book argues that all three share commonalities, including the role of racial prejudices in justifying the perpetration of extreme colonial violence. Exploring the connections and comparisons between the Perak War (1875–76), the 'Hut Tax' Revolt in Sierra Leone (1898–99) and the Anglo-Egyptian War of Reconquest in the Sudan (1896–99), Gordon highlights the significance of decision-making processes, communication between London and the periphery and the influence of individual colonial administrators in outbreaks of violence. Michelle Gordon's book Extreme Violence and the ‘British Way’: Colonial Warfare in Perak, Sierra Leone and Sudan (Bloomsbury, 2020) reveals the ways in which racial prejudices, the advocacy of a British 'civilising mission' and British racial 'superiority' informed colonial administrators' decisions on the ground, as well as the rationalisation of extreme violence. Responding to a

In Fine Boys: A Novel (Ohio University Press, 2021), Ewaen is a Nigerian teenager, bored at home in Warri and eager to flee from his parents’ unhappy marriage and incessant quarreling. When Ewaen is admitted to the University of Benin, he makes new friends who, like him, are excited about their newfound independence. They hang out in parking lots, trading gibes in pidgin and English and discovering the pleasures that freedom affords them. But when university strikes begin and ruthlessly violent confraternities unleash mayhem on their campus, Ewaen and his new friends must learn to adapt—or risk becoming the confras' next unwilling recruits. In his trademark witty, colloquial style, critically acclaimed author Eghosa Imasuen presents everyday Nigerian life against the backdrop of the pro-democracy riots of the 1980s and 1990s, the lost hopes of June 12 (Nigeria’s Democracy Day), and the terror of the Abacha years. Fine Boys is a chronicle of time, not just in Nigeria, but also for its budding post-Biafran gene

Thousands of stories are given voice by Marissa Mika in Africanizing Oncology: Creativity, Crisis, and Cancer in Uganda (Ohio UP, 2021), a fearless, warm, and humane history of the Uganda Cancer Institute’s first half century. Mika treads carefully but surely through the fields of colonial and post-colonial medical research and politics while never losing sight of the individuals who worked, planned, improvised, suffered, survived and died at the UCI. The book is a fascinating contrast to the global north history of pediatric oncology as told, for example, by former National Cancer Institute director Vincent DeVita Jr. in The Death of Cancer. As Mika makes abundantly clear, there is no such wild optimism surrounding cancer in Uganda. There is, though, resourcefulness, commitment, and an ability to adapt to extraordinary circumstances on a daily basis. This richly researched book undoubtedly has significant academic merit in fields including, but not limited to, the history of medicine. It should appeal equall

Guest host Chris Holmes sits down with Booker Prize winning novelist Damon Galgut and Andrew van der Vlies, distinguished scholar of South African literature and global modernisms at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Andrew and Damon tunnel down into the structures of Damon’s newest novel, The Promise to locate the ways in which a generational family story reflects broadly on South Africa’s present moment. The two discuss how lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic invoke for some the limitations on movement during the Apartheid era in South Africa. The Promise is a departure from Damon’s previous two novels, which were peripatetic in their global movement and range. Damon describes the ways in which this novel operates cinematically, as four flashes of a family’s long history, with the disembodied narrator being the one on the move. Damon provocatively divides novels into two traditions: those that provide consolation, and those that can provide true insight on the world but must do so with a cold distan

Based on religious ethnography, in-depth interviews and archival data, Afe Adogame, Indigeneity in African Religions: Oza Worldviews, Cosmologies and Religious Cultures (Bloomsbury, 2021) explores the historical origins, worldviews, cosmologies, ritual symbolism and praxis of the indigenous Oza people in South West Nigeria. The author's locationality and positionality plugs the book within decolonizing knowledges and indigeneity discourses, thus unpacking the complexity of “indigeneity” and contributing to its conceptual understanding within socioreligious change in contemporary Africa. The future of Oza indigeneity in the face of modernity is illuminated against the backlash of encounters, contestations with multiple hegemonies, transmissions of Christianity and Islam and indigenous (re)appropriations. Thus, any theorizations of such encounters must be cognizant of instantiations of indigeneity politics and identity, culture, tradition and power dynamics. Through decolonizing burdens of history, memory and m

In recent years, the media has depicted Rwanda as a model of unity, development, and recovery. Dr. Cantrell II argues that not all is as it seems in Revival and Reconciliation: The Anglican Church and the Politics of Rwanda (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). The book argues that, from the start, the founders of the church accepted erroneous myths about Rwanda and its people and, as a result, were too closely aligned with whomever was in power. As such, the church endorsed the ruling authorities’ misleading account of Rwanda’s history and failed to take account of its own history in exacerbating ethnic tensions prior to genocide. The book takes a critical look at the church's complicity with authoritarian rule—from the Tutsi monarchy to the Rwandan Patriotic Front. Drawing from new archival materials as well as on-the-ground field research, this research is a Rwanda-centered account of the country's ecclesiastical and national historiography. Most ominously, the book argues that the present Anglican author

Since the beginnings of African cinema, the realm of beauty on screen has been treated with suspicion by directors and critics alike. In Ethics and Aesthetics in Contemporary African Cinema: The Politics of Beauty (Bloomsbury, 2019), James S. Williams explores an exciting new generation of African directors, including Abderrahmane Sissako, Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Fanta Régina Nacro, Alain Gomis, Newton I. Aduaka, Jean-Pierre Bekolo and Mati Diop, who have begun to reassess and embrace the concept of cinematic beauty by not reducing it to ideological critique or the old ideals of pan-Africanism. Locating the aesthetic within a range of critical fields - the rupturing of narrative spectacle and violence by montage, the archives of the everyday in the 'afropolis', the plurivocal mysteries of sound and language, male intimacy and desire, the borderzones of migration and transcultural drift - this study reveals the possibility for new, non-conceptual kinds of beauty in African cinema: abstract, material, migrant, er

In light of the discrepancy between Britain’s and France’s postcolonial security roles in Africa, which seemed already determined half a decade after independence, this book studies the making of the postcolonial security relationship during the transfer of power and the early years of independence (1958-1966). It focuses on West Africa, and more specifically the newly independent states of Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire, which rapidly evolved into key players in the postcolonial struggle for Africa.  Based on research conducted in fourteen archives in Africa, Europe, and the United States, Postcolonial Security: Britain, France, and West Africa's Cold War (Oxford UP, 2021) comparatively investigates the establishment of formal defence relations, the disintegration of the Anglo-Nigerian ‘special relationship’ and the Franco-Ivorian ‘neo-colonial collusion’, the provision of British and French military assistance to their former colonies and the competition they faced from West Germany and Israel respectively, and

In Making the World Safe for Dictatorship (Oxford University Press, 2021) Dr. Alexander Dukalskis looks at the tactics that authoritarian states use for image management and the ways in which their strategies vary from one state to another, using both "promotional" tactics of persuasion and "obstructive" tactics of repression. Using a diverse array of data, including interviews, cross-national data on extraterritorial repression, examination of public relations filings with the United States government, analysis of authoritarian propaganda, media frequency analysis, and speeches and statements by authoritarian leaders, Dukalskis looks at the degree to which some authoritarian states succeed in using image management to enhance their internal and external security, and, in turn, to make their world safe for dictatorship. The book looks closely at three cases, China, North Korea, and Rwanda, to understand in more detail how authoritarian states manage their image abroad using combinations of promotional and obs

In How ISIS Fights: Military Tactics in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Egypt (Edinburgh UP, 2021), Omar Ashour has written a detailed and data-rich analysis of ISIS's way of war. He analyzes the tactical and operational levels of war to depict what makes ISIS successful and unique. He reveals that ISIS was tactically and organizationally innovative, redefining not just what a terrorist organization is, but what it does. Not only did SIS pioneer a number of highly innovative tactical and procedural techniques, it also built an extremely cohesive and coherent personnel structure characterized by intense loyalty, delegation and creativity. This book is essential for anyone wanting to understand what ISIS did, exactly, to gain battlefield success and what happened to cause it to lose those gains once made. In our interview, we discuss the origin of this study, how ISIS franchises spread and cohered to the main body, its potential threats as an international terrorist organization and why it grew as quickly as it did. We

Erin Jessee, of the University of Glasgow, with her Rwandan co-author Jerome Irankunda, illustrator Christian Mafigiri, and translator Sylvere Mwizerwa, have published a graphic novel titled Nyiragitwa (Kigali: Mudacumura Publishing House, 2021). It tells the story of Nyiragitwa, a Rwandan woman who is thought to have lived in the 17th century. The first in a series of graphic novels about Rwandans living in the pre-colonial era, Nyiragitwa provides insight into how Rwandan women might have lived and contributed to their communities in the past. The story is based on the oral histories of Jan Vansina, of the University of Wisconsin, in the 1950s and 1960s. Nyiragitwa’s life history was shared with Vansina by a Rwandan elder named Ndamyumugabe. Erin and I had a wide-ranging conversation about publishing for Rwandans, the absence of women in Rwanda’s pre-colonial history and the value of collaborative work. Susan Thomson is an Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Colgate University. I like to in

Despite efforts to abolish slavery throughout Africa in the nineteenth century, the coercive labor systems that constitute "modern slavery" have continued to the present day. To understand why, Robin Phylisia Chapdelaine explores child trafficking, pawning, and marriages in Nigeria's Bight of Biafra, and the ways in which British colonial authorities and Igbo, Ibibio, Efik, and Ijaw populations mobilized children's labor during the early twentieth century. Drawing on a wealth of primary sources that include oral interviews, British and Nigerian archival materials, newspaper holdings, and missionary and anthropological accounts, Chapdelaine argues that slavery's endurance can only be understood when we fully examine "the social economy of a child"—the broader commercial, domestic, and reproductive contexts in which children are economic vehicles. The Persistence of Slavery: An Economic History of Child Trafficking in Nigeria (U Massachusetts Press, 2021) provides an invaluable investigation into the origins of

Saving the International Justice Regime: Beyond Backlash against International Courts (Cambridge University Press, 2021) is at the forefront of a new conceptualization of backlash politics. Dr. Courtney Hillebrecht brings together theories, concepts and methods from the fields of international law, international relations, human rights and political science and case studies from around the globe to pose - and answer - three questions related to backlash against international courts: What is backlash and what forms does it take? Why do states and elites engage in backlash against international human rights and criminal courts? What can stakeholders and supporters of international justice do to meet these contemporary challenges? This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad

In Quagmire in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020) Dr. Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl provides the first treatment of quagmire in civil war, moving beyond the notion that quagmire is intrinsic to certain countries or wars. In a rigorous but accessible analysis, he explains how quagmire can emerge from domestic-international interactions and strategic choices. To support the argument, Dr. Schulhofer-Wohl draws upon field research on Lebanon's sixteen-year civil war, structured comparisons with civil wars in Chad and Yemen, and rigorous statistical analyses of all civil wars worldwide fought between 1944 and 2006. Dr. Schulhofer-Wohl demonstrates that quagmire is made, not found. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts. Her qualitative work has examined the Angolan, Mozambican, and Lebanese civil wars, all of which fit Dr. Schulhofer-Wohl’s definitions of quagm