Hypertension (HTN) is the primary cause of preventable cardiovascular-related deaths globally, representing the most important modifiable risk factor for preventing such deaths. Nearly 700 million of the 1.3 billion adults with HTN worldwide remain untreated, most of whom live in low-and middle-income countries, including East Africa. Barriers to the diagnosis of HTN also impact treatment adherence after diagnosis and the initiation of treatment. This scoping review used a qualitative synthesis method to describe studies examining the cultural and contextual factors influencing HTN treatment adherence in East Africa and the lived experiences of patients with HTN to gain a better understanding of these factors in the region. A total of 34 studies, 25 qualitative and 9 mixed-methods designs from five East African nations were included in the final review. Reported influencing factors are classified into individual, structural, and social factors. Lack of HTN literacy and limited risk perception were often cited as individual barriers to adherence, along with mental health challenges, including fear of stigma, while trust and HTN literacy enhanced adherence. Inconsistent healthcare delivery, lack of access, and financial constraints were the most reported structural factors. Social norms surrounding health behaviours and attitudes towards HTN treatment were identified as key determinants of adherence at the social level. The findings underscore the complex interplay of individual, structural, and social factors associated with HTN treatment adherence in East Africa, offering practical ways to enhance adherence in the region at all three levels.

This article examines women’s storytelling and nanga (harp) performances in nineteenth- and twentiethcentury western Uganda to investigate how these songs shaped community identity and norms. Drawing on musical recordings, archival sources, and interviews, this article demonstrates that these performances functioned as important public histories, teaching audiences about past famines, droughts, climate change, and cattle events. These narratives both chronicled regional histories and provided the shared intellectual material from which community norms and a shared identity could be articulated. Extant scholarship has focused overwhelmingly on how male intellectuals contributed to ideas of race, nation, or ethnicity. This article thus provides an important alternative by showing how women produced histories that contributed to group identity—yet this historical production occurred through musical performances rather than in books, tracts, or petitions. In doing so, this article reintegrates western Ugandan women into narratives of imperial encounters and intellectual history.

This article is a case study of the Kasarani Stadium in Kenya as a heuristic through which to understand President Daniel Arap Moi’s political style and priorities during the first decade of his regime. Drawing primarily from national and international newspapers, the archives of national and international sporting organizations and associations, records of the Kenyan government and biographies of Moi, I explore how Moi gave political meaning to sport to advance his populist politics at home and project Kenya on(to) the international stage. At home, he used sports to define himself as a leader of the ordinary mwananchi (citizen), in touch with the experiences, challenges, and visions of the common Kenyan. Internationally, he used sports to chart Kenya’s foreign policy and fashion himself as an international political personality. The article concludes that the study of sports and sporting infrastructure offers a productive way to write social, political, and cultural histories of postcolonial Africa.

This paper examines the life trajectories, social contexts and living conditions of women of uncertain status in post-slavery, colonial-era Tabora, with a focus on those involved in the production and consumption of beer. It thereby searches insights into the aftermath of slavery in this region, particularly for women. It reflects on the persistent social unease surrounding slavery and its aftermath, and on the way it shapes and limits sources, arguing that a focus on post-slavery is nevertheless productive. Set in context, brewers’ life stories provide a vivid illustration of a competitive urban environment, the chances for self-emancipation that it offered, and the concomitant challenges and dangers. They thereby also enable fresh insight into the social history of alcohol and of urban women in colonial Africa. We find evidence of more successful brewing careers than existing studies would predict, but also of very stark vulnerability and persistent quests for safety in family networks. This spread of outcomes highlights the contingent nature of emancipation and the endlessly varied ways in which social constraints and personal motivations combined in individual lives.

This study assesses the seroprevalence of Rift Valley fever (RVF) in ruminants in Dhobley, Somalia, following a 2021 outbreak in Kenya. Among 142 ruminants sampled, 4.9% were seropositive for RVF virus (RVFV) antibody, with IgM antibodies (1.4%) indicating recent exposure, though no cases were RT-PCR-positive. Unregulated livestock movement and limited surveillance pose significant risks for future outbreaks, underscoring the need for enhanced surveillance systems and One Health strategies.

This study examines Swahili-language Islamic marital booklets (vijitabu) written between 1932 and 2020, focusing on their gendered chronotopes and nostalgic elements. These booklets, written by and for Muslim men, offer advice on marriage, sexuality, and related topics, reflecting societal changes and the influence of reformist Islam in East Africa. The analysis identifies four prominent chronotopic formulations: the contemporary East African context, the time and place of the Prophet Muhammad, the pre-Islamic world (jahiliya), and the modern West. A potential fifth chronotope, the afterlife (akhera), is contingent on adherence to the first four. The booklets valorize the Prophet Muhammad’s era while criticizing other temporal and spatial contexts, advocating for a return to early Islamic gender norms and marital practices to achieve happiness in the afterlife. This study highlights the booklets’ role in shaping gender norms and religiopolitical ideologies, revealing the interplay between nostalgia, religious authority, and sociopolitical context in East African Muslim communities.

Independent Christian Churches were an important aspect of African anticolonial activism, but the political afterlives of these movements in the immediate postcolonial period have been broadly overlooked. This article studies the African Independent Pentecostal Church, focusing on its entanglement with the politics of reconciliation and state-building in a decolonising Kenya. During the 1950s Mau Mau uprising, the church lost its entire portfolio of land, churches, and schools. The article explores how church adherents sought to re-establish themselves on these holdings. These contests reveal that churches were political agents engaged in debates about the boundaries of postcolonial political community and the nature of post-conflict reconciliation. Churches’ roles as landowners and education providers meant denominational rivalries masked political struggles over justice for past violations. Embedded in intra-ethnic conflicts, churches negotiated with elites seeking to establish ethnic constituencies. Through this conflict and compromise, the brokered nature of the postcolonial nation-building project is revealed.

This article explores the development of the Safari Rally in the context of intertwined trends in mobility, sports, and consumerism at local, global and intermediate levels. The first section briefly presents the Safari Rally. The second section discusses the significance and development of the sport of rallying in the context of global automobility and changes in the motor industry, highlighting in particular the professionalisation of sport and the forces driving it. The third section analyses why the Safari became relevant to so many stakeholders in Africa and across the globe, and how these shaped its development from its colonial origins through decolonisation and beyond. Highlighting the factors accounting for the rise, and decline, of the Safari as a sporting event of global significance contributes to understanding how mobility, sports, and consumerism were interlinked across continents in the second half of the 20th century.

This essay is a study in bureaucratic knowledge production using the example of the postal system in German East Africa. There is a great deal of historical literature that focuses on bureaucratic-knowledge-as-power: bureaucracies produced information that was used to quantify and, ultimately, to control populations both in the metropole and the colony. In this piece I want to emphasize another kind of bureaucratic knowledge production: namely, information about the bureaucratic system that was created through bureaucratic practice — what I call “studied bureaucratic knowledge.” Beyond understanding German attempts to translate (linguistically, administratively, and culturally) one understanding of bureaucracy, the historian who pays attention to the users of colonial bureaucratic structures can uncover bureaucratic knowledge created by those who encountered those structures in their daily lives — and how that information in turned shaped their use of the bureaucratic system.