Research Africa: May 25, 2018

News and Issues

1. Africa’s Pulse

Report by the World Bank, 2018

Economic growth in sub-Saharan Africa is estimated to have risen to 2.6 percent in 2017 from the prior growth rate of 1.5 percent in 2016. This upswing reflected rising oil and metal production, recovering commodity prices, and improved agricultural conditions following droughts. Further, on the demand side, growth was supported by a rebound in consumer spending due to subsiding inflation and a recovery in fixed investment with economic activity increasing alongside oil and metals exporters. The featured topic of this issue of “Africa’s Pulse” explores options for accelerating electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa. This report discusses the role of innovation in facilitating such expansion and the implications of achieving rapid electrification for inclusive economic growth and poverty reduction in the region. Countries’ national electrification plans typically have focused on the expansion of the national electricity grid using large-scale fossil fuel and hydroelectric generation facilities. More recently, some grid-scale investments in solar and wind power generation have been made while off-grid solutions have been limited.

Read the report in this link: https://sites.duke.edu/researchafrica/files/2018/05/World-Bank-Africas-pulse.pdf

2. Why Replacing Politicians with Experts is a Reckless Idea

By David Runciman, May 1, 2018

Democracy is tired, vindictive, self-deceiving, paranoid, clumsy and frequently ineffectual. Much of the time it is living on past glories. This sorry state of affairs reflects what we have become. But current democracy is not who we are. It is just a system of government, which we built, and which we could replace. So why don’t we replace it with something better?

Read the story in this link:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/may/01/why-replacing-politicians-with-experts-is-a-reckless-idea

3. The Last Slave Ship Survivor’s Interview from the 1930s

By Becky Little, May 3, 2018

Roughly 60 years after the abolition of slavery, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection. She located the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the United States. Hurston, a known figure of the Harlem Renaissance who would later write the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, conducted interviews with the survivor. However, she struggled to publish the accounts as a book, given the contexts of the early 1930’s. In fact, her collected interviews are only now being released to the public in a book called Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” which will be released on May 8, 2018.

Read the story in this link:

https://www.history.com/news/zora-neale-hurston-barracoon-slave-clotilda-survivor?utm_campaign=Echobox&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#link_time=1525373347

4. China is Developing a Media Footprint Across Africa

By Dani Madrid-Morales, April 27, 2018

June 17, 2015 was the date set by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) for countries in Europe, parts of the Middle East, and Africa to finalize the migration from analogue to digital television broadcasts. This date purposefully coincided with the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals. The transition from analogue to digital, which optimizes the use of frequencies, has been widely presented as having the potential to diversify the choice of audiences across the continent. Despite the increased use of digital devices to access online media, television remains a staple in media consumption for millions of Africans.

Read the story in this link:

https://africasacountry.com/2018/04/going-out-china-in-african-media?utm_source=ZNewsletter&utm_campaign=0495604167-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_05_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1c44d7f0c4-0495604167-250885085&mc_cid=0495604167&mc_eid=6a33a678a6

5. Nigeria Fashion Finds a Market at Home and Abroad

By Hamza Mohamed, May 9, 2018

In Lagos, Nigeria, the roads are empty; the only signs of life are birds chirping and foremen working the courtyards. It is early morning in Lagos’ affluent Lekki area, and a makeup artist is rushing to get Sandra Tubobereni ready for a busy day ahead. Tubo, as she and her clothing line are popularly known, is an up-and-coming designer in Nigeria, and her clothes and fashion services are in high demand. The phone rings constantly in the all-white reception room, and clients sit patiently under a sparkling chandelier, waiting to see the 26-year-old.

Read the story in this link:

https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/nigeria-fashion-finds-market-home-180403081205868.html

6. From War Room to Boardroom: Military Firms Flourish in Sisi’s Egypt

By Reuters Staff, May 16, 2018

In the four years since former armed forces Chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi became Egypt’s president, companies owned by the military have become more powerful.

Some Egyptian businessmen and foreign investors say they are unsettled by the military’s push into civilian activities and complain about tax and other advantages granted to military-owned firms. The International Monetary Fund warned that private sector development and job creation “might be hindered by involvement of entities under the Ministry of Defense.” This is a concern given the fact that Egypt’s economy has been struggling ever since the popular uprising that toppled Mubarak in 2011. Notable, Egypt’s crucial tourism industry has been damaged by political instability and Islamist violence.

Read the story in this link:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/egypt-economy-military

NEW BOOKS ‫كتب جديدة

Garfield Todd: The End of the Liberal Dream in Rhodesia

[غارفيلد تود: ونهاية حلم الحكم الليبرالي في روديسيا]

Author: Susan Woodhouse

Prime minister Garfield Todd of Southern Rhodesia developed a reputation outside the country in January 1958 when his Cabinet rebelled against him and resigned. Within the country, the public grappled with how he became Prime Minister in the first place. This book traces the development, triumph, and failure of the man who unexpectedly found himself at the center of political life in Southern Rhodesia during the explosive years of 1953 to 1958. Todd was born in New Zealand and sent to Southern Rhodesia in 1934 by the Churches of Christ to take over their small mission station near Shabani in Matabeleland. After assisting with the development of this region and the expansion of church and school services, Todd entered Parliament in 1946 in Sir Godfrey Huggins’ United Party. Here, he established a reputation as a sound, intelligent M.P. Todd’s missionary years formed the foundation of his premiership, the basis of his close relationship with blacks (many of whom would become leaders of their people), and his understanding of the frustrations and ambitions black citizens.

Publisher: Weaver Press, Zimbabwe

The Rise of the African Novel: Politics of Language, Identity, and Ownership

[ظهور الرواية الأفريقية: سياسات اللغة والهوية والملكية الفكرية]

Author: Mukoma Wa Ngugi

The Rise of the African Novel is the first book to compare South African and African-language literature from the 1880s to 1940s with the literature of decolonization that spanned the 1950s through the 1980s. This work also highlights the contemporary generation of established and emerging continental and diaspora African writers of international renown. This book will become a foundational text in African literary studies, as it raises questions about the very nature of African literature and criticism. The author considers the ways in which critical consensus can be manufactured and rewarded at the expense of a larger and historical literary tradition. It will be an essential reading for scholars of African literary studies as well as audiences seeking a greater understanding of African literary history.

Publisher: University of Michigan Press

Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the Problem of Capacity in Postcolonial Senegal

[على حافة الهاوية: علم التسمم واشكالية البنية التحتية في السنغال لما بعد الاستعمار]

Author: Noémi Tousignant

In the industrialized nations of the global North, well-funded agencies like the CDC attend to citizens’ health. These groups are able to monitor and treat patients for toxic poisons like lead. How do the under-resourced nations of the global South meet such challenges? In Edges of Exposure, Noémi Tousignant traces the work of toxicologists in Senegal as they have sought to advise citizen about toxins and remediate the presence of heavy metals and poisons in their communities. Situating recent toxic scandals within histories of science and regulation in postcolonial Africa, Tousignant shows how decolonization and structural adjustments have impacted toxicity and toxicology research. Ultimately, as Tousignant reveals, scientists’ capacity to conduct research, in terms of working conditions and public investment, affects their ability to keep equipment, labs, projects, and careers ongoing.

Publisher: Duke University Press

‘Dignity of Labour’ for African Leaders: The Formation of Education Policy in the British Colonial Office and Achimota School on the Gold Coast

[“نحو الاعتراف بخدمة قادة الأفارقة: سياسات التعليم في مكاتب المستعمرات البريطانية :مدرسة أكيموتا في ساحل العاج نموذجا]

Author: Shoko Yamada

From 1910 to the 1930’s, educating Africans was a major focus in the metropole and in the colonies of imperial Britain. This book critically examines the discourse on education for African leaders, which involved diverse actors such as colonial officials, missionaries, European and American education specialists or ideologues in Africa and diaspora. The analysis is presented around two foci of decision-making: one is the Memorandum on Education Policy in British Tropical Africa and the other is the Achimota School’s establishment on the Gold Coast Colony. The author presented ideas from various sources to analyze and demonstrate where the motivations of actors coincided. The local and the global was linked through the chains of discourse, which involved global economic, political and social spheres. Additionally, the book vividly describes how the ideals of colonial education were realized in Achimota School.

Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon

Ontological Terror: Blackness, Nihilism, and Emancipation

[منابع الخوف: مشاعرالسود ، ونكران الذات ، وهواجس التحرر]

Author: Calvin L. Warren

In Ontological Terror, Calvin L. Warren intervenes in Afro-pessimism, Heideggerian metaphysics, and black humanist philosophy by positing that the “Negro question” is intimately related to questions of being. Warren uses the figure of the Antebellum free black as a philosophical paradigm for thinking through the tensions between blackness and being. He illustrates how blacks embody a metaphysical nothing; this nothingness serves as a destabilizing presence. This status is what whiteness defines itself against. Thus, the function of blackness as giving form to nothing presents a terrifying problem for whites: they need blacks to affirm their own existence, even as they despise the nothingness they represent. By pointing out how all humanism is based on relating blackness with nonbeing (a logic which reproduces anti-black violence and precludes any realization of equality, justice, and recognition for blacks), Warren urges the removal of the human from its metaphysical pedestal and the exploration of ways of existing that are not predicated on a grounding in being.

Publisher: Duke University Press, 2018

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Research Africa welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in next week’s edition.