This article begins by tracking how the delineation of “New Cinema” in the recent work of Manthia Diawara differs significantly from the approaches that had been dominant when he published his initial study on African cinema in 1992. The changes lead us to position current filmmaking practices vis-à-vis Nollywood film, and to ask how the formation of the cinematic subject functions in contemporary “new waves” of cinema.

On May 7, 1970 the Fourth Dahomean Republic was inaugurated following a series of developments that snatched political stability from the jaws of civil anarchy, turned back the clock ten years, and gained the small West African state two questionable distinctions: the continent's first collegiate presidency and Africa's first head of state to bounce back to power after being toppled by the military.

As secession and civil war threatened the country following the aborted March 1970 elections, Dahomey had just completed a tortuous tenyear cycle of acute instability, during which every possible combination of political forces had tried and failed to govern the country. The political triumvirate of Dahomey--Ahomadegbe, Maga, and Apity--maintained a tight electoral stranglehold over their respective tribal fiefs in Abomey, the North, and Porto Novo, buttressed by their traditional claims to legitimacy. Intense regionalism and ethnic exclusiveness, dating to the precolonial era and perpetuated by the French administration, mitigated against the emergence of durable interregional political alliances. The period 1958-1965 was characterized by shifting coalitions between the three leaders that collapsed almost as soon as they were created as a result of continuous intrigues, plots, and jockeying for sole power (for a detailed analysis of this period, see Thompson 1963, Decalo 1968).

Among the more pressing and enigmatic challenges for Nigeria’s new civilian regime is the reconstruction of the nation’s benighted economy. The long-standing distortions of the petroleum-led economy have been exacerbated by more than a decade of misrule, international isolation, and economic decline. The current political transition offers Nigeria an opportunity to rejoin the global economy while establishing new foundations for economic revival. The legacy of decay from recent dictatorships weighs heavily on this process. The burdens of political repression and unaccountable governance have been compounded by stagnant economic performance, deepening popular immiseration, widening inequalities, and spiraling corruption.

This article focuses on how Hausa men in Niamey, Niger, use street side hira (“conversation”) groups to navigate their lives as migrants and to experience, negotiate, and create their own understandings of modernity. In Niamey, hira groups are the most important institution of public culture. More than any other aspect of Hausa social organization, hira groups bring together, in a concentrated fashion, circulating people and circulating ideas and thus offer a prime localized entry into the global reality of modernity.

At half past two, early in the morning of Thursday, November 22nd, 1962, 250 men carrying axes, pangas and various self-made weapons left the Mbekweni location and marched on Paarl, a small town in South Africa's Western Cape. On the outskirts of the city the marchers formed two groups, one destined for the prison where the intention was to release prisoners, the other to make an attack on the police station. Before the marchers reached Paarl's boundaries, the police received warning of their approach from a bus driver. Police patrols set out and one of these encountered the marchers In Paarl's Main Street. Having lost the advantage of surprise, the marchers in Main Street began to throw stones at cars, shop windows, and any police vans which they came across on their way to the police station. The police at the station were armed with Sten guns and rifles in anticipation of the attack. At ten minutes past four between seventy-five and a hundred men advanced on the station throwing stones. When the attackers came within twenty-five yards of the station the police opened fire killing two. The marchers then broke into smaller groups and several were arrested or shot during their retreat. Some of the men who had taken part in the assault on Paarl police station met up in Loop Street with the group that was marching on the prison. These men regrouped and embarked on an attack of the inhabitants of Loop Street, breaking into houses and assaulting people in the street. A seventeen year old girl and a young man were killed and four other people wounded. According to police evidence, five insurgents were killed and fourteen wounded. By five o'clock, the Paarl uprising was over; police reinforcements had arrived from Cape Town and the men from Mbekweni were in full retreat.

This paper has two purposes. One is to provide an analysis of the causes of the Paarl disturbance. In the literature on black South African opposition movements, the events in Paarl are scarcely mentioned. This is at least partly because the participants were not politically very sophisticated or articulate; they are consequently difficult to write about. The neglect of the events in Paarl can also be attributed to a bias in much of the relevant scholarship: the emphasis of historical studies has been on black ideological response and has tended to focus on the most fluent articulants of black aspirations.

Our students read magazines. Many of us, as professors, assign popular news magazines in our classes for the discussion of current events. This essay examines the coverage of Africa in Time and Newsweek to explore the images they present to their readers.

History teaches us clearly that the battle against colonialism does not run straight away along the lines of nationalism. For a very long time the native devotes his energies to ending certain definite abuses: forced labor, corporal punishment, inequality of salaries, and limitation of political rights. This fight for democracy against the oppression of mankind will slowly leave the confusion of neoliberal universalism to emerge, sometimes laboriously, as a claim to nationhood. It so happens that the unpreparedness of the educated classes, the lack of practical links between them and the mass of the people, their laziness, and let it be said, their cowardice at the decisive moment of the struggle will give rise to tragic mishaps (Fanon 1963, 148).

Frantz Fanon's worries when he first published his book Les damnés de la terre in 1961 have been realized in Africa with a vengeance. Soon after political independence was won, most African countries degenerated into one-party authoritarianism and/or dictatorships and military rule. In many instances, one-party rule was justified or rationalized on the basis of the need for national unity or the need to devote national energies to economic development. In other instances, one party rule was said to reflect African traditional forms of democracy of consensus building, unlike western type democracy which encouraged opposition for its own sake, as reflected in the sharp divisions, class and otherwise, under capitalism (Nabudere 1989, 1-24). In some cases, one-party rule had been achieved due to the weakness of opposition parties at independence, and the ruling parties took advantage of their predominance either to legislate opposition parties out of existence, or simply make life difficult for the opposition.

This article addresses the question as to how Jane Guyer's seminal explorations of special traits of West African economies in Marginal Gains (2004) can help us understand variations within the region. This question acquires some urgency—for instance in the Cameroonian context, but elsewhere also—since the dimensions she emphasizes (reciprocity, gain, rank) play a crucial role in quite vicious ethnic stereotypes that increasingly dominate people's perceptions of economic developments. The challenge may be, therefore, to determine how an analysis in terms of disjunctures as an asset for marginal gains can steer clear of the ethnic stereotypes through which people themselves perceive discontinuities in everyday life. Starting from the historical example of the wild-rubber boom in southern Cameroon under German rule (1890–1913) and its chaotic effects at the local level, the article considers how Arjun Appadurai's notion of “tournaments of value” might help us understand such variations.

Africa is experiencing an educational crisis of unprecedented proportions in higher education. Having been hailed in the 1960s as agent of modernization, social mobilization, and economic growth, most African universities are now tumbling down under the pressures of diminishing financial resources. From all indications, Africa is lagging behind other developing regions in terms of public expenditures particularly on education, availability of educational facilities, equal access to education, adequate pools of qualified teachers, and sufficient numbers of professionals and skilled workers. Pertinent data show that most African governments in the 1960s and 1970s made comparable progressive accomplishments in higher education. However, these accomplishments steadily disappeared in the 1980s. What went wrong in the 1980s? Why is higher education now such a convenient target for African leaders/governments, when pressured to trim their overextended public sector? To what extent is the lack of multiparty democracies affecting the deteriorating state of higher education in Africa? Is the declining importance attached to education in sub-Saharan Africa a reflection of the lack of education among Africa’s tyrannical rulers, hence the low appreciation of education? What role did the foreign financial institutions play in the African educational system? How can we turn the educational crisis around? These questions not only address African educational issues but also help us to explain the scope of this crisis. In a comparative analysis, this study describes the main African higher educational problems, identifies the root causes of the problems, and finally examines the implications for the twenty-first century.

A large number of black workers from white-owned farms in the Albany and Bathurst districts have migrated to a small city, Grahamstown, in the Eastern Cape. In an attempt to illustrate the process by which people from rural areas settle in and adjust to urban life, this paper focuses on the manner in which migration presently occurs. From the 1940s farms in the Albany and Bathurst districts were rapidly losing labor, largely on account of mechanization and land rationalization. At that time many farm dwellers were migrating to Grahamstown and to some extent Port Elizabeth. The past few decades witnessed a massive further migration from these farms and this, together with natural increase, contributed to the 53.9 percent increase in Grahamstown's black population in the 1970-80 decade. Most of those who emigrated to the town have tried to establish themselves in the urban area even though their new places of residence have apparently impossible demands and challenges.

In South Africa many researchers (e.g. Wilson, F. 1972) have rightly highlighted the economic and administrative constraints which prevent many migrant workers from accepting town as their permanent home. This paper seeks some understanding of the basic motivation of people who emigrate to town and decide (usually quite unequivocally) to live there permanently. Since fewer studies have been made of small towns than of the large cities, the case reveals some of the lesser known aspects of urbanization in Southern Africa: the interdependence between town and country, the immigrants' overwhelming commitment to urban living, the relevance of chain migration, the role of the extended family in facilitating urban adaptation and the utilization of rural resources by those who are settling in town.

This paper offers an empirical study of a weaving enterprise in the southern African nation of Lesotho. The objective of the study was to test the theory and prescriptions of the liberal women in development (or WID) approach within the World Bank model of development as a whole. That is, through the analysis of a real life situation for a specific group of women in a specific Third World context, we sought to determine whether employment “empowers” women (as WID predicts), exploits them (as some of its critics assert), or otherwise affects their lives and consciousness. Throughout the following discussion, we bear in mind that development strategies do not only succeed or fail, but can profoundly affect the political, social and economic structures in developing societies as they unfold, often in unwitting ways (Ferguson 1990, xiv). What effect does a WID-type business actually have in this specific instance, and what can it tell us about the relevance of mainstream development discourse and practice with regard to women's employment throughout Sub-Saharan Africa?

In the 1980s, the World Bank became disillusioned with the African state as a vehicle for development. A World Bank report argued that there was a

…widespread impression of political decline. Corruption, oppression, and nepotism are increasingly evident. These are hardly unique to Africa, but they may have been exacerbated by development strategies that concentrated power and resources in government bureaucracies, without countervailing measures to ensure public accountability or political consensus (IBRD 1989b, 22).

The focus of the Bank then shifted from assisting African governments to foster economic growth, and towards restructuring the governments and economies of Africa.

Lagos, at present the political capital of Nigeria and the nerve centre of the country's economy, has been the meeting point for the commercial talent of Yorubaland since the opening of the port to trade with Western Europe. From the start, that trade had inspired and depended upon the activities of a large number of middlemen who linked the expatriate merchant firms in the principal coastal market towns with the young but promising Nigerian market in the hinterland. These indigenous traders, the first generation to take advantage of the, new economic opportunities, came from all the main Yoruba subcultural groups. But, as several historical accounts have shown (see among others Johnson 1921, Forde 1951, Bauer 1954), the Ijebu have turned out more prominently in the process and have distinguished themselves as commercial entrepreneurs above other Yoruba subcultural groups.

Based on a classroom encounter of the author, this article explores the gendered nature of African university space. It discusses a 2007–8 policy that banned pregnant adult students from living in the student residence halls at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, South Africa. The policy was implemented despite protests from the university’s students and staff. The article argues that the more visibly reproductive a student’s body became, the more alien it was considered to be in spaces of knowledge production. This alienation was incongruous at a university widely considered as the most politically progressive in South Africa. It was rooted, however, in Western-oriented traditions of masculinist knowledge production in which there is no space for the female, let alone the pregnant, body in intellectual spaces; and in South African traditions of marginalization, exclusion, and “passing” in public space. Exploring ideas of “body language” and “bodies of knowledge,” the article concludes that there is a need for an interdisciplinary politics and epistemology of “seepage” in higher educational institutions that recognizes women’s minds and their bodies.

In the years following World War I, the black population in Britain's port cities increased as a result of an influx of West Indian and African seamen who had been discharged from His Majesty's Service. Many of these new arrivals, along with long-term residents, suffered as post-World War I economic conditions worsened, causing hostility from the host communities to increase. Blacks in cities such as Liverpool not only had to endure overt racial attacks, but they were also victims of hidden racism.

There was no legal segregation in Liverpool, and just as many whites as blacks lived within Toxteth, an area in the city's south end near the docks. Blacks and whites mixed freely in the area's numerous pubs, and black men often married white women. Despite the city's historical relationship with the slave trade and slavery, many of those who lived in Liverpool during the 1920s and 1930s accepted the pervasive myth of racial harmony in the city. However, some blacks who were more observant recognized that they were being denied adequate economic and social opportunities. Indeed, the city was not free of racial prejudice. In reality, the legacy of the slave trade and slavery and the negative stereotypes of blacks which had been developed over many years were so ingrained in the minds, hearts, attitudes and actions of many Liverpudlians that, wittingly and unwittingly, racism adversely affected the quality of life for black people in the city.

As the African Studies Association celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary, it is a good time to look back at the circumstances of its founding in 1957, and to acknowledge the key role played by the Carnegie Corporation and, in particular, by its President, Dr. Alan Pifer, in facilitating that event. For the Corporation, this was only one of a long series of constructive activities related to Africa, dating back to 1926. For American scholars concerned with that continent, the concept of an American African Studies Association was at first problematic, but in practice it has created new and fruitful opportunities for interaction with colleagues at home and abroad, stimulating the growth and maturity of African studies.

Discussions by an ad hoc committee on the potentialities of an American scholarly body concerned with the study of Africa took place intermittently in Alan Pifer's office from 1955 on. The group involved in these discussions was composed at various times of William Brown, Gwendolen Carter, Gray Cowan, William Hance, Ruth Sloan, Franklin Frazier, and George Carpenter. Pifer felt strongly that there should be a scholarly association concerned with Africa that would be free of government influences such as inevitably were affecting the African-American Institute because of its almost complete dependence on government agencies for support. The ad hoc committee ultimately agreed that it would be appropriate to call a meeting of scholars concerned with Africa in order to decide whether or not there was substantial support for such an association.

It was in the name of the ad hoc committee that the invitations went out to approximately thirty-six individuals from scholarly and other fields to attend what was called The African Studies Association Conference to be held at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York from March 22–24, 1957. The participants were selected with a view to geographical and disciplinary distribution as well as their reputation as Africanists. Their function was to decide whether or not an organization should be formed to promote the serious study of Africa. The cost of the conference was met by a discretionary grant of $6,500 from the Carnegie Corporation, but the management of the conference was left entirely in the hands of the conferees.

This article explores state/NGO/funder relations in Africa through an ethnographic case study of Malawi’s Readmission Policy. The Policy, which banned the permanent expulsion of pregnant girls from school in 1993, underwent a formal, government-led review in 2016. By focusing attention on the daily work of “middle figures”—the mid-level civil servants, NGO representatives, and consultants who participated in the policy reform process—this article shows how state disempowerment in Malawi was not wholesale, even as aid funding for development policymaking bypassed government. Rather, government actors deployed key strategies, including time (mis)management, to reclaim moral authority over Malawian schools.

1994 has witnessed the demise of apartheid in South Africa, thus signaling the end of an era in the history of Africa—the long night of European colonial rule. This momentous event, and the challenging process of transformation that it has set in motion, vividly illustrate the power of the rubric chosen for this year's annual meeting, Africa Reconfigured. But the reconfiguration of Africa is certainly not something new. So on this occasion I propose to look back selectively at some aspects of that reconfiguration as it relates to the European mapping and consequent representation of Africa; the political configuration of Africa; and, finally, the future of Africa and African Studies.

“Where is Africa?” asks Ali Mazrui in a characteristically provocative dissection of European ethnocentric projections about the mapping and perception of Africa (Mazrui 1986, 23-4). To which we might add, “And what do we know about it from maps?” For as Peter Barber emphasizes in his discussion of the European discovery of Africa, “it should always be borne in mind that maps show only what their makers wished to show and not necessarily all that they actually knew” (Barber 1987, 37). Indeed, the history of mapping Africa reflects virtually all of the problems one is likely to face in examining the representation of Africa. Ancient knowledge of the continent was limited to the Mediterranean, Red Sea and Indian Ocean coasts, as well as the Nile Valley. Bound up with the acquisition of commercial information about the products of Africa, and then with the staking out of colonial claims from as early as the first Portuguese explorations down the Atlantic coast of the continent in the fourteenth century, Africa was arguably more thoroughly misrepresented than it was accurately mapped during the first millennium and a half of the Christian era.

The constitutional tug-of-war between Great Britain and Rhodesia has been tentatively settled, primarily on Rhodesian terms. When Rhodesia unilaterally declared its independence in November 1965, the British initially assumed that Ian Smith's regime would collapse within a few weeks from internal pressure. This has proved to be incorrect. The British imposed stiffer economic sanctions to raise the costs of secession and thus encourage white dissatisfaction with government policy. These penalties evoked very little electoral dissatisfaction and may have strengthened the hand of Prime Minister Smith. After six years of sanctions, it was Great Britain that made the concessions.

The ability of Rhodesia to survive economic sanctions and get Britain to accept constitutional terms virtually guaranteeing permanent white rule was due mainly to the overwhelming support of the Smith regime by white Rhodesians. The government's ability to get around many sanctions moderated some discontent, but this circumvention could not have been accomplished without the active cooperation of major segments of the population, particularly the business community, a group which traditionally had aligned itself with the opposition party. If there had been disaffection toward the government, then the British sanctions could have created serious public morale and support problems.