A wealth of excellent films from Africa is readily available for classroom use, even if much of Anglophone Africa remains poorly represented. African films can serve to challenge students' assumptions and to foster a critical examination of Western films set in Africa. Extending the scope of conventional “African” courses to North Africa adds a substantial body of notable productions, some of which address current concerns such as Islamic fundamentalism. African films have to be contextualized; even when they are examined as works of art and as examples of world cinema, full appreciation requires that they be considered in their historical and cultural contexts. When films are used to introduce students to Africa, critical examination is imperative—audiences that have little factual information about Africa all too readily assume that fiction and fact coincide.

With the inclusion of the following commentaries, “Africa in the Age of Obama,” the African Studies Review breaks one of its cardinal rules of not accepting opinion pieces on current issues for publication. However, there is always an exception to any rule.These three articles, originally presented at the Plenary Session of the 51st Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, present ideas of sufficient significance and centrality to Africanist intellectual discourses at this historical juncture to warrant this exception. Both individually and as a collection, these informative and provocative articles decenter common shibboleths of twenty-first century Africanist scholarship and replace these with suggestions for new paths and new ways of seeing and constituting “Africa” in the world today.

As ASR editors, we have been grappling with some of these issues over the past decade while putting together a “mission statement” for the journal, and we are pleased to see these subjects and perspectives presented so eloquently in this coUection.Two perspectives from these narratives are of special interest to the mission of the ASR. First, they encourage a view of “Africa” not as an isolate, but rather as a nexus of complex global relationships in which Africa and Africans, as well as African ideas, practice, and voice—whether as subjects or objects of analysis—are the primary focus. Second, they give voice to, and encourage contributions from, an increasing number of scholars whose primary work, scholarship, and identity are on the continent. Implicitly they call upon these scholars to publish in the ASR and other journals and use these as a two-way conduit, whereby scholarship from the continent may continue to become a significant and integral part of twenty-first century global Africanist discourses.

This article interrogates the development of African diaspora studies. Based a global research project that seeks to map out the dispersals of African peoples in all the major regions of the world, compare the processes of diasporization, and examine the patterns of diaspora engagements, it offers a vigorous critique of the hegemonous Afro-Atlantic model in African diaspora studies. It focuses on two critical challenges that students of African diasporas must confront: the terms of analysis that are adopted, and the problems of historical mapping.

In spite of over a half century of interventions and waves of “reforms,” higher education in Africa today consists of institutions, systems, and practices that lack distinct values and goals, or a mission and vision connecting them to the major challenges of their local and global contexts. What is needed in African higher education is true transformation, which will involve practical and epistemological ruptures with previous ways of doing things and a reconstruction of structures, relations, cultures, and institutions. Of particular importance are initiatives that will ensure gender equity, changes in the organization and process of knowledge production, and a reenvisioning of universities' funding sources and mechanisms.

Research with people in highly politicized research settings illuminates the gap between the images that most African governments strive to represent and the sociopolitical realities of everyday life. This article discusses the opportunities and challenges of doing research in postgenocide Rwanda and is a useful resource for researchers contemplating their own projects under such conditions, whether in Rwanda or elsewhere. It discusses the importance of creating personal relationships and meeting people on their terms, as well as such topics as the identification of the research site, building rapport and trust with respondents, safeguarding anonymity and confidentiality, and working with local research assistants and partners.

The euphoria greeting the election of Barack Hussein Obama as the forty-fourth president of the United States seized the popular imagination in Africa, much as it did in the U. S. There was hope and enormous goodwill on the continent, derived from President Obama's special tie to Africa—the dreams from his father that he has translated so eloquently. There was hope that the Obama administration would initiate new policies based on mutual respect, multilateral collaboration, and an awareness that there will be no security unless there is common security—and also that security must be broadly defined, extending beyond the military to include the environment, the economy, and health, as well as political and social rights. Yet as many anticipated, given the enormous and wide-ranging problems confronting the new administration, Africa has not been front and center on its agenda. Although President Obama visited Egypt in June and Ghana in July 2009, only a few months into his presidency, Africa has not become a centerpiece of his foreign policy.

In his much-publicized speech in Accra, President Obama lauded Ghana for its “repeated peaceful transfers of power,” declared that “development depends on good governance,” and urged Africans to take responsibility for their continent: “to hold [their] leaders accountable, and to build institutions that serve the people.” He pledged that the United States would support their efforts and committed his administration to opening the doors to African goods and services in ways that previous administrations have not. He pledged $63 billion to a new, comprehensive global health strategy that would promote public health systems and combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, polio, and other devastating diseases. In the months that followed, he pledged to double American foreign aid to $50 billion a year and to develop a multilateral program to combat hunger.

Do we really understand life after genocide? A reflection on the construction of knowledge in and on Rwanda reveals that it is rife with contradictory assertions and images, and that there is a discrepancy between image and reality. This article attempts to map the center(s) of knowledge construction in postgenocide Rwanda, the place not only where policy is made, but also where knowledge is actively construed, managed, and controlled. It argues that an overall cultivation of the aesthetics of progress and a culturally specific communication code have contributed to an active interference in the scientific construction of knowledge. It stresses the need for scholars and observers to reveal the social and historical context for the knowledge being generated. It also urges them to physically and mentally move away from the center of society: to adopt a bottom-up perspective that captures the voices of ordinary people.

This article investigates issues of identity construction and public memorialization in postapartheid South Africa. It focuses on the Sunday Times Heritage Project, a unique private-sector initiative that involved the installation of thirty memorials throughout the country between 2006 and 2008. The article discusses the conceptualization and implementation of the project, pointing out important differences between this private initiative and the state-directed heritage effort. By interrogating the nexus between race, space, and memory in the construction of memorials, the article highlights the significance of placement and location in the formation of new identity discourses.

When I think about the extraordinary writing and speaking phenomenon by the name of Barack Obama, who also happens to be the President of the United States of America, the most powerful country in the world, I can't help asking myself, what can he do for Africa? I ask this not only because he is a son of Africa, but also because I hear in his speeches the words of a man deeply committed to human values, and therefore concerned with the predicament of Africa's people in this age of globalization.

As the first African American elected to the American presidency, Obama represents an extraordinary symbolic change in American politics. No one can underestimate the symbolic significance of his election. Nor should it be considered purely a matter of symbolism; a changing of the guard at the top necessarily involves—or should involve—implications of substantive change. There is the rub—can we expect substantive change of any significance from his election, given the nature and structure of American politics and society?

In connection with that question it is fair to ask: what does the Age of Obama portend for Africa? Two related questions arise concerning this: first, what should Obama do for Africa, and second, what can he do for Africa? As to the first question, what Obama should do for Africa is linked to Africa's need; and we can spend a whole day talking about that and not exhaust it. On the basis of Obama's speeches, including especially his Accra speech of July 11, 2009, and our own sense of Africa's needs, I offer three primary talking points that embrace a set of values or goals upon which all government systems should be based. The first is peace and stability, the second is sustainable economic development and social justice, and the third is democracy and good governance—not necessarily in that order.

In the last four decades, transnational movements of both skilled and unskilled labor from developing countries to the advanced industrial economies have witnessed an unprecedented growth. Motivated largely by deteriorating livelihood conditions in the developing world and increasing demand for wealthy and highly skilled professionals in the developed economies, these movements have attracted a great deal of research attention and inspired public policy debates on their implications and results. Like other countries, Ghana has had a long history of movement of her nationals to various parts of the world for various reasons. However, in terms of the goal of enhancing the benefits of such emigration for Ghana, there appears to be a policy void. This article contributes to filling this gap. It discusses the merits and problems associated with the transnational movements of Ghanaian health and educational professionals and proposes ways to enhance the benefits. It also suggests pathways for aiding future migration policy formulation in Ghana.

This article concerns Dr. Remmy Ongala, a Congolese-Tanzanian musician, and the making of postcolonial cosmopolitan music in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. It argues that Dr. Remmy's music is shaped by the postcolonial consciousness and conditions of contemporary Tanzania. It also shows Dr. Remmy's cosmopolitan citizenship in his songs that address political and social issues. Focusing on his involvement in worldbeat festivals, it argues that he, like other musicians, enters into the worldbeat system not as a fully autonomous individual but as a constituted postcolonial subject, compelled to shape his music in accordance with the demands of the worldbeat system.

However proud Africans must be to have a person of African descent in the White House, they should have no illusions as to how much President Barack Hussein Obama can do for Africa. Africans must put their own house in order for purposes of dealing successfully with the major challenges facing the continent, the most important of which is that of democratic and developmental governance. Obama's priorities are not necessarily those of Africans. They have to do with the role of the United States as a superpower in a global system in which the American military and business corporations play a hegemonic role. In this context, Africa is relevant to American and Obama's global priorities when its resources are needed to strengthen this role, on the one hand, or its humanitarian crises are likely to affect them in an adverse manner, on the other.

What are these global priorities, and how are they likely to affect Africa during Obama's tenure? Following is a brief examination of four major priorities. The first is limiting the spread of nuclear weapons. Operating on the premise that nuclear weapons should be limited to the few countries now possessing them (U.S., Russia, Britain, France, China, Israel, India, and Pakistan), the U.S. government has led an international campaign against the acquisition of nuclear weapons technology by other countries, particularly those deemed hostile to Western interests, such as Iran and North Korea. Since South Africa destroyed the nuclear arsenal of the former apartheid state and Libya gave up its nuclear ambitions, the only relevant issue with respect to Africa's role in the spread of nuclear weapons is the question of who has access to Africa's abundant supply of uranium. Denying access to African uranium to “rogue states” and terrorist organizations is an important foreign policy objective of any American government, including the Obama administration.

Barack Obama's election was an extraordinary event in American and world history, but already in his second year as president, the luster and the popularity of the Obama administration has faded, even among many who mobilized to elect him. In addition to righting two wars, Obama is attempting to fix a broken health care system in the context of a nationally contentious electorate and Congress. He also is coping with a mounting debt burden from seeking to recover from an economic collapse and public anger at an environmental disaster of mega proportions, requiring him to rein in the banks and corporations that were unleashed from public regulation during the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton years. In addition, he is commander-in-chief of the U.S. military and its rapidly expanding U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

This was an administration elected on “hope for change.” Indeed, Obama's election raised expectations across the U.S. and throughout Africa that a man of African heritage, indeed a global person, could be and had been elected. This quintessentially optimistic, intelligent, and gifted American is the product of a Kenyan father and an internationally engaged mother, a multicultural childhood, and a global education as graduate of a private secondary school and elite American universities, and he has been pinned simultaneously with American, biracial, African American, African, and even global identities (see Zeleza 2009).

Based on an analysis of original social network data collected from 407 households in an urban community in Northern Nigeria, this article evaluates whether patronage relationships between households have consequences for children's educational attainment. A “social resources” perspective suggests that patronage ties may serve as a form of social capital that activates upward social mobility for entire families, thereby yielding more than simple transitory returns on social connections. An alternative “social constraints” perspective suggests that patronage ties may have no effects (or negative effects) on the schooling of clients' children, since patron-clientage reflects prevailing social inequalities and exists for reasons other than the promotion of dynastic mobility among clients and their families. In the case study reported in this article, the latter pattern holds, and the results are interpreted with reference to the historical record, which shows that a latent function of patron-clientage is the preservation of intergenerational status immobility.

In Mozambique and Cape Verde, writing in Portuguese by African women has directly engaged political reconstruction by denouncing colonial oppression and embracing national freedom. This article addresses the recent history of Lusophone African women's fiction, which has been pivotal in inscribing the intimate arena of sexuality and motherhood into power relations and has also revealed ways in which the domain of violence intersects with private lives. By focusing on two novels that exemplify this trend, this article demonstrates links between the political and the intimate. It also shows how Lusophone African authors contribute to healing social conflict through their narratives, and draws some conclusions about gender relations in the Lusophone African experience and across the continent.

The “institutional turn” in contemporary development theory has emphasized the importance of facilitating the emergence of institutions that will improve citizens' abilities to make choices. More important, it has suggested that the effectiveness of these institutions depends upon their ability to “work with the grain” of the local sociocultural environment. This article argues that community-based organizations (CBOs), as one prominent embodiment of institutional blueprints guiding relationships between state and nonstate actors in development efforts, are a poor fit in the context of contemporary urban Tanzania. This is because they are not consonant with the norms that have long governed popular participation in either the development process or associational life. Although the specific conclusions are limited to Dar es Salaam, the study calls for a method of interrogation that is not only historically and sociologically grounded, but also broadly applicable to other development issues.

This article examines the effects of the post-2002 sociopolitical crisis in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire, on urban and peri-urban agriculture. Based on the case study of Abidjan, it argues for a conceptualization of sustainability that includes social as well as environmental dimensions and focuses on coping strategies of producers and merchants. In Abidjan, these strategies included internal migration within the city and its periphery, the use of organic fertilizers, and changes in market structure. The study illustrates how such strategies allowed producers to continue to supply produce to the market, despite the difficulties of war.

Twenty years ago, most African countries seemed permanently mired in malgovernance and repression. The end of the Cold War triggered two contrasting developments: governance improvement associated with the end of superpower competition, and deterioration caused by the resurgence of suppressed ethnic conflicts. Based on a variety of evidence, three subperiods can be identified: fragile governance progress from 1989 to 1995; backsliding associated largely with civil conflict between 1996 and 2002; and resumption of progress in recent years. These broad trends mask major intercountry differences—with Ghana the best-known case of improvement and Zimbabwe the worst case of reversal. Overall, African governance is now somewhat better than it was two decades ago. However, the progress is fragile, and improvements in administrative and economic governance have lagged behind those on the political front. Consolidating democracy will thus require institutional capacity building through a combination of appropriate civil society efforts and constructive external pressure to strengthen accountability.