Gengenbach, Comé, and Nhabinde historicize women’s responses to an agricultural “value chain” in Zavala, Mozambique. Inspired by the Green Revolution for Africa (GR4A), the initiative aims to reduce hunger by converting cassava to industrial use for SABMiller’s Impala beer. Women chafed at the proposed remaking of an agrarian foodway long anchored by this edible commodity. Cassava’s inseparable dietary and market value in precolonial times intensified under Portuguese rule even as colonizers disdained it as a feminine “subsistence” crop and then claimed its commercial potential. Weaponizing this gendered binary yet needing women’s support, the Impala scheme has struggled to achieve GR4A food security goals.

Focusing upon the daily lives of young female Muslim apprentices in the sewing shops of Accra’s zongo communities, Cassiman argues that the sewing workshop may be understood as a playground in which young women may experiment with the normative chronologies shaping women’s lives, and with ideals of female respectability, self-making, and autonomy. Opening up the possibility to subvert the chrononormativity of apprenticeship and marriage, young seamstress apprentices carve out a platform from which they can exert specific forms of agency, by suspending marriage or hastening it, while trying out various possible futures.

Women’s social groups and gatherings in Malawi, whether physical or virtual, are often dismissed as something not to be taken seriously, as they are imagined to be places where nothing useful but chitchat and gossip will emerge. Nevertheless, these spaces, as sites of leisure where women can engage in macheza (play), continue to play an important role in how urban women variously experience pleasure. Mtenje considers social media groups for women and bridal showers not only as spaces where women are free from male interference, which, in itself, invokes pleasure, but also as spaces where patriarchal norms can be and often are reinforced.

Autoethnography—a methodology that foregrounds personal experience both during research and in writing about it—is a useful keyword for scholars working in Africa and the diaspora. Mara and Thompson argue that by exploring new forms of writing and engaging in critical self-reflexivity regarding (shifting) positionalities, autoethnography—particularly collaborative approaches—is vital to ongoing efforts to decolonize African Studies. Mara and Thompson propose changes necessary for the development of Africanist autoethnography as a Keyword, and some hopeful indicators that these changes are already underway, including a small but growing body of Africanist autoethnographic work.

Diabate examines images and news reports about rampant sexual permissiveness in Abidjan and its online environs. Attention to the visual dimension of this pleasure explosion highlights the presence of homines economici. Considering buyers of aphrodisiacs or butt/breast-enhancing products not as uninformed agents, but instead as rational actors who are sensitive to images leads makers and retailers to invest in branding and marketing. Thus, these images and products of pleasure have evolved in an economy of producing, promising, purchasing, and satisfying needs. Analyzing the entanglement of visuality and economic calculus enables a move beyond the moralizing tendency in discussions of pleasure.

Africanist scholars continue to debate how best to frame Christian-Muslim encounters. Examining literary fiction that portrays interreligious conflict and dialogue in northern Nigeria, Suhr-Sytsma opens up an exchange between social scientists and Nigerian writers including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Uwem Akpan, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, and E. E. Sule. Suhr-Sytsma argues that, as social thinkers, Nigerian writers explore interreligious solidarity through forms of doubling and critique forms of sacrifice that authorize scapegoating. Consequently, contemporary Nigerian fiction raises fundamental questions not only about the relation of text to reality but also about the making and crossing of boundaries identified as religious.

In the context of shifting global geographies of labor and political volatility, Nigerian migrant associations play a significant role in organizing diasporic life. Yet, far from being a culturally static feature, Igbo Nigerian associations emerge through diasporic agitations, or dynamic mobilizations around particular events, crises, and projects that deliberately engage the postcolonial state. Lu first reconsiders the significance of 1970s post-civil war reconstruction in southeastern Nigeria before tracing subsequent transformations in flexible diasporic organizations within Global South locations such as China and Dubai. These agile and multi-scalar diasporic mobilizations enable their members to negotiate the nexus of postcolonial politics and transnational capitalism.

Traditional communicators known as kanyeleng have increasingly taken on roles in climate change adaptation in The Gambia. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted from 2018 to 2019, McConnell and Jallow show that kanyeleng performers contribute to disseminating information about climate change adaptation while also creating the social conditions necessary for citizens to hear and respond effectively to that information. Understandings of climate change in The Gambia intersect with broader concerns about loss of traditional and religious values. Through their performances, kanyeleng work as mediators to resolve tensions associated with climate change adaptation and integrate Indigenous environmental knowledge and climate science.

Sudan’s decision to normalize relations with Israel sparked controversy about its reasons for doing so and the potential impact on the country’s fragile political transition. The decision was mostly attributed to American pressures, new regional alliances, and Sudan’s economic crisis. Tawfik offers a different perspective by linking Sudan’s normalization with Israel to domestic power rivalries, suggesting that Sudanese political actors at critical historical moments have sought Israeli patronage to strengthen their power positions and exploring the potential implications of normalization on civil-military relations. In addition to relying on secondary sources, Tawfik draws conclusions based on official documents and interviews with Sudanese officials published by various news outlets.

The history of coffee cultivation on Mount Meru in northern Tanzania has been narrated by men and most scholars as a tale of extraordinary achievement and unfortunate decline. Meru women, however, associate coffee agriculture with gender inequality and social disorder. Complicating narratives of cash crop agriculture as a straightforward communal good, Williams uses oral histories to explore alternative renderings of Meru agricultural history, centering memories that highlight coffee’s role in reifying patriarchal power. Women’s concern with labor exploitation and emphasis on relational integrity challenge our understanding of what coffee represents in Meru history and our ideal models for pursuing sustainable growth through cash crop commodities.

Four theories are used to explain the causes and dynamics of violent conflict along the Oromia–Somali Border in eastern Ethiopia. Of these, political economy (greed versus grievance) and political ecology theories are instrumental in understanding the main drivers of violence. Politicization of ethnicity and the self-centered behavior of political elites have increased the complexity of the conflict. Fekadu Kenee demonstrates that peacebuilding efforts require respect for the outcomes of referendums on the disputed territorial units and revitalization of customary systems, among others. While customary institutions can resolve conflicts at least temporarily, sustained community dialogue needs to be part of the political reform to build lasting inter-regional peace.

Continued clashes between nomadic pastoralists and farmers generate concerns about the capacity of community-based civil society organizations to effectively navigate conflict resolution in Agogo Traditional Area (ATA), Ghana. The Agogo and Fulani associations ostensibly manage farmer-herder conflict but with mixed results. Setrana argues that, unlike foreign or international civil society organizations, community-based associations play important roles in managing conflict because they often have better cultural understanding. The success of such organizations, however, depends on whether they are perceived as indigenous or non-indigenous. This binary framework often leads to a winner-takes-all attitude and rarely results in sustainable conflict resolution.

In the pursuit of modernization, professors of architecture have adopted methods of teaching and professional practices which colonize building epistemes as exclusively European intellectual property, derived from scientific techniques. Students of architecture in the African academy are aware of this colonial bias, which encourages them to unlearn and to forget their African built environment heritage, and they are calling for inclusive reformed curriculums. Using okà, an Èkpèyè multidimensional, organic, aesthetic, discursive approach to celebrations and to solving complex problems as an example, Elleh advocates for integrated curriculums that approach the discipline without the ordering/othering distinctions between indigenous and modern built environment knowledge.

Guinea’s postindependence state (1958-84) discouraged ethnic identification in favor of national solidarity. In the decades since, ethnic groups have increasingly been mobilized as political interest groups in Guinea, a phenomenon that has been especially visible in recent multiparty elections. At the same time as ethnicity resurfaced as an explicit political force, young performing artists in Guinea’s capital city Conakry were inventing genres of dance and urban ceremony that de-emphasize ethnicity as a marker of belonging. Cohen engages with an interdisciplinary literature on publics to describe how the aesthetic practices of non-elite African youth constitute a crucial form of political engagement.

Studies of fake news have historically suffered from being primarily Western-centric and focusing on “news” emanating from formal media outlets. The Sahel has generated its own unique version of fake news, the authors refer to as Afrancaux News. Using nationwide public opinion surveys in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger, open-source online forum ethnographic research, and postcolonial epistemological predispositions, the authors suggest that although other historical instantiations exist, the most prominent contemporary example of Afrancaux News can be seen in the fake news stories related to the French counterterrorism presence in the Sahel.

In November 2016, Uganda’s armed forces raided the Rwenzururu kingdom palace in Kasese Municipality, arresting and detaining the king and other kingdom officials on treason and other charges. This was the climax to a puzzling wave of violence that was then unfolding in the Rwenzori Region. We consider this violence an unintended consequence of the deepening politics of fragmentation, which takes two forms: “kingdomization” and “districtization.” Through fragmentation, Uganda’s ruling elites seek to weaken subnational concentrations of power, resources, and legitimacy wielded by otherwise coalesced, potentially strong, subnational authority structures and sociopolitical groups. Fragmentation fractures preexisting intra-regional unity, generates new conflicts, and reopens old wounds, leading to violent encounters at the sub-national level, between regional sub-groups, and with the central state. This unfolding of violent encounters involving both state and non-state actors has important ramifications for managing national security within socially fragile contexts and a politically fragmented polity.

Bulambuli district in eastern Uganda suffered chronic insecurity arising from cattle rustling since the 1960s and recently became awash with escalating land conflicts. Focusing on the disputed ownership over Plot 94 in Bunambutye, Khanakwa examines the intersection between cattle rustling, land conflicts, and peace-building. While scholarship often overlooks the relationship between livestock theft and social conflict, evidence from Bulambuli highlights the efforts of affected communities vis-à-vis the failures of local political leadership to resolve tensions. The Ugandan government’s failure to enforce recommendations in a timely manner speaks to the urgency of arbitration and cancellation of fraudulent land titles.

In Médina, a crowded, working-class neighborhood in Dakar, disciples’ associations (dahiras) from the Murid Islamic Brotherhood turn city streets into spaces of participatory musical performance on a nightly basis. While the Brotherhood is frequently cited for its industriousness, scholars have generally focused on the agricultural and commercial aspects of Murid labor, rather than the creative aspect. This article examines how the Brotherhood’s valuing of creative activities as labor mitigates against the stigma that many young men in Médina face when they are expected to be productive members of society while largely being excluded from the prevailing global economic order.