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One of the fundamental challenges in rethinking and remaking development in Africa from a Pan African perspective is that too much “mere talk” and “blame game” have played out at the expense of “real action”. The blame game and mere talk on Africa’s poverty and underdevelopment jam have remained printed in bold on the face of the continent, yet Africa’s dire situation warrants nothing less than real emphatic action. This book focuses on the empirics of the production and reproduction of poverty and underdevelopment across Africa in a fashion that warrants urgent pragmatic policy attention and quest for workable homegrown solutions to persistent predicaments. The volume advances the need to recognise the realities of global inequalities and move swiftly in a most informed and transparent manner to address the poverty and underdevelopment conundrum. The book sets the tempo and pace on the need for praxis and pragmatism on the African situation. It is handy to students and practitioners in African studies, poverty and development studies, global studies, policy studies, economics and political science.
Violence in its various proportions, genres and manifestations has had an enduring historical legacy the world over. However, works speaking to approaches aimed at mitigating violence characteristic of Africa are very limited. As some scholars have noted, Africans have experienced cycles of violence since the pre-colonial epoch, such that overt violence has become banalised on the African continent. This has had the effect of generating complex results, legacies and perennial emotional wounds that call for healing, reconciliation, justice and positive peace. Yet, in the absence of systematic and critical approaches to the study of violence on the continent, discourses on violence would hardly challenge the global matrices of violence that threaten peace and development in Africa. This volume is a contribution in the direction of such urgently needed systematic and critical approaches. It interrogates, from different angles and with inspiration from a multidisciplinary perspective, the contentious production and resilience of violence in Africa. It calls for a paradigm shift an alternative approach that forges and merges African customary dispute resolution and Western systems of dispute resolution towards a framework of positive peace, holistic restoration, sustainable development and equity. The book is a welcome contribution to students and practitioners in security studies, African studies, development studies, global studies, policy studies, and political science.
Arguably, one of the most polarising figures in modern times has been Robert Gabriel Mugabe, the former President of the Republic of Zimbabwe. The mere mentioning of his name raises a lot of debate and often times vicious, if not irreconcilable differences, both in Zimbabwe and beyond. In an article titled: Lessons of Zimbabwe, Mahmood Mamdani succinctly captures the polarity thus: It is hard to think of a figure more reviled in the West than Robert Mugabe and his land reform measures, however harsh, have won him considerable popularity, not just in Zimbabwe but throughout southern Africa. This, together with his recent stylised ouster, speaks volumes to his conflicted legacy. The divided opinion on Mugabes legacy can broadly be represented, first, by those who consider him as a champion of African liberation, a Pan-Africanist, an unmatched revolutionary and an avid anti-imperialist who, literally, spoke the truth to Western imperialists. On the other end of the spectrum are those who seemingly paying scant regard to the predicament of millions of black Zimbabweans brutally dispossessed of their land and human dignity since the Rhodesian days have differentially characterised Mugabe as a rabid black fascist, an anti-white racist, an oppressor, and a dictator. Drawing on all these opinions and characterisations, the chapters ensconced in this volume critically reflect on the personality, leadership style and contributions of Robert Mugabe during his time in office, from 1980 to November 2017. The volume is timely in view of the current contested transition in Zimbabwe, and with regard to the ongoing consultations on the Land Question in neighbouring South Africa. It is a handy and richly documented text for students and practitioners in political science, African studies, economics, policy studies, development studies, and global studies.
It is common knowledge that development without security is like a runaway horse. Yet, development in Africa has been plagued by insecurities since the extractive periods of slave trade and colonialism. In spite of political independence and the euphoria of sovereignty as states, Africa has failed to address insecurity, which continues to loom large and to threaten aspirations towards truly inclusive and sustainable development. A consequence has been Africa’s development naivety vis-à-vis the monopolisation of development by the predatory elite actors of the global North and their local facilitators. To salvage the continent from such predation and the insecurities engendered requires novel and innovative imagination and praxis. This book draws from both the haunted landscapes and bitter memories of past exploitations and from the feeding of the insatiable North with African resources and humanity. It brings together essays by a concerned generation of scholars driven by the urgent need for radical decolonisation of African development and its legacies of insecurities. It is handy to students and practitioners in economics, policy studies, political science, development studies, global and African studies.
This two-volume set charts a cross-disciplinary discursive terrain that proffers rich insights about deceit in contemporary postcolonial Sub-Saharan African politics. In an attempt to produce a nuanced and multifaceted academic dialoguing platform, the two volumes have a particular focus on the aspects of treachery, fear of difference (oppositional politics), and discourses/semiotics of mis/self-representation. The major aim of the proposed volumes is to contribute toward the often problematised conversations about the unfolding (post)colonial Sub-Saharan world which is topical in decolonial and Pan-African studies.The volumes seek to place political thinking and postcolonial political systems under the scholarly gaze with the view to highlight and enhance the participation of African cross-disciplinary scholarship in the postcolonial political processes of the continent. Most significantly, it is through such probing of the limitations of our own disciplinary perspectives which can help us appreciate the complexity of the postcolonial Sub-Saharan African politics. The first volume uses Zimbabwe as a case study, while the second volume examines postcolonial politics in Sub-Saharan Africa more broadly.The first volume uses Zimbabwe as a case study, while the second volume examines postcolonial politics in Sub-Saharan Africa more broadly.The first volume uses Zimbabwe as a case study, while the second volume examines postcolonial politics in Sub-Saharan Africa more broadly.
For over twenty-five years, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has been depicted by the media as a nation in turmoil. Armed militias and armies ravage villages, stealing crops and minerals, while proxy wars displace countless citizens. Political violence, corruption, and social insecurity plague the nation, leading to a humanitarian crisis where fundamental human rights are routinely violated. This book delves into the harrowing realities of life in Congo, where public education and healthcare are in shambles, and most people live on less than two dollars a day. Amidst this, political leaders enjoy exorbitant salaries while public servants endure poverty. This empirical research critically examines the gap between the constitutional provisions of human rights and their implementation, presenting stark indicators of a failed state. By analyzing the human rights situation from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to the current state Constitution, the book reveals the Congo’s descent into chaos and calls for accountability for its violations.
Unravelling the mysteries of Africas underdevelopment presents an Afrocentric ideological understanding of the continents fragmentation; a scientific and objective (Mijadala) discourse as well as an approach of how to move progressively and sustainably Africa forward. The breadth and depth of the book shows the unwavering impoverishment and urgent need for the continent to stand up and take the bull by the horn. It offers an inspiring means of grappling with the continents problems to build the change we want An African Wealth of Nation not the continent of collapsed, failed states under the governance construct of centralised authoritarian regimes It is a thought-provoking discourse that challenges us all to be inherent participants in the reconstruction of a Brave New Africa far beyond the 21st Century.
This book brings to the fore some critical and fundamental issues plaguing the continent of Africa. It is a symbolic microcosm of challenging issues that Africa has and must address. Can Africa reverse the dark odds and can it move towards a united and integrated whole? The book explores the untold events and negative trends on the economic, social, political, humanitarian and environmental scene in Africa which leaves the international community perceiving Africa through darkened lenses. It tells the dark tragedy of a people ? the economy of alienation and disempowerment as it also injects an encouraging metaphor that the key to the solution of Africas perennial socio-economic-politico transformation rests primarily and decidedly in the hands of African governments and people. Africans are challenged to stop tinkering with the problem but take a progressive Afro-centric approach to effectively address the fate of democracy, management and development in Africa which are closely intertwined. A wide range scope of issues is covered in the preface and the various chapters. The book puts the reader and people in the mode of the tenacity of maintaining a vision of remaining live to the ideals of a progressive Afro-centric agenda that continuing fighting for African development. JOHN W. FORJE is an African peace scientist, educator and peacemaker from Bali Nyongo, North West Region, Cameroon.
This book examines the connections between poverty and innovation in Africa. Through case studies and theorizations from a distinctly African perspective, it stands in contrast to current theoretical works in the field, which remain very much rooted in Western-orientated thinking. The book investigates the application of methodologies which explain numerous African contexts in connection with issues of poverty and inequality. It reflects on comparative practices and praxes on the African continent, including commonplace traditions and practices in alleviating poverty, taken against a background of the failure of current prescriptions for poverty alleviation, such as the Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP). There is a dire need for new practical perspectives which move Africa forward using its indigenous knowledge. Owing to a general lack of recorded African theories and methodologies on poverty, inequality and innovation, this book represents a pioneering corpus of African knowledge addressing poverty and inequality through local innovations. Adopting a transdisciplinary approach, it is relevant to students and scholars in development studies and economics, African studies, social studies, political history and political economy, climate studies, anthropology and geography.
This book makes a significant contribution by initiating debate on the state of human rights, freedoms and civil liberties in the context of emergencies such as pandemics in general and Covid-19 in particular. It is without doubt that as the world was preoccupied with combating the Covid-19 pandemic, issues of rights, freedoms and liberties in the context of this struggle increasingly came under close scrutiny. The book is for students and practitioners across fields, but most especially in history, law, political science, development studies, philosophy, social anthropology and sociology.