Journal•ISSN: 0001-9720
Africa
Cambridge University Press
About: Africa is an academic journal published by Cambridge University Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Population & Politics. It has an ISSN identifier of 0001-9720. Over the lifetime, 3430 publications have been published receiving 51880 citations. The journal is also known as: African continent & Ancient Libya.
Topics: Population, Politics, Colonialism, Kinship, Sierra leone
Papers published on a yearly basis
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that important continuities link the religious thinking of traditional Africa and the theoretical thinking of the modern West, and they show how this view helps us to make sense of many otherwise puzzling features of traditional religious thinking.
Abstract: In Part I of this paper, I pushed as far as it would go the thesis that important continuities link the religious thinking of traditional Africa and the theoretical thinking of the modern West. I showed how this view helps us to make sense of many otherwise puzzling features of traditional religious thinking. I also showed how it helps us to avoid certain rather troublesome red herrings which lie across the path towards understanding the crucial differences between the traditional and the scientific outlook.
850 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors define the "exercise du pouvoir dans les etats africains depuis l'lndependance" as "a ete marque par un penchant for les ceremonies and par un esprit d'apparat plus surprenant quand le caractere and combien illusoire sont des grands travaux realises par ces etats".
Abstract: L'exercise du pouvoir dans les etats africains depuis l'lndependance—generalisee ici sous le terme de “post-colonisation”—a ete marque par un penchant pour les ceremonies et par un esprit d'apparat plus surprenant quand Ton considere le caractere et combien illusoire sont des grands travaux realises par ces etats. De plus, le pouvoir est applique a un degre de violence et de pure exploitation dont l'on trouve les antecedents dans les precedents resgimes coloniaux. Le peuple reagit par la voie de l'indecence qui s'exprime dans des festivites obscenes. La question generate est de comprendre la raison pour laquelle ce pouvoir, en depit de ses limites evidentes, a semble-t-il autant de portee. Et plus precisement, pourquoi la population joue-t-elle apparemment le jeu de son gouvernement? Comment peut-elle a la fois se moquer des simagrees de ses gouvernants et toutefois prendre part a leur celebration? L'argumentation soutenue ici, d'apres les faits tires principalement du Cameroon et du Togo, explique que, si l'on centre l'analyse sur les precedes detailles et les rituels de cette concertation, il devient clair qu'il se produit une intimite, un lien presque familial, dans la relation entre gouvernants et gouvernes, ce qui desarme emcacement les deux camps et met le jeu du pouvoir en representation.
594 citations
TL;DR: For over a decade African economies have been plagued by recurrent food shortages, economic decline and growing disparities between the living standards of rich and poor as discussed by the authors, and to a large extent food shortages and rural impoverishment may be attributed to external shocks such as world recession, oil price shocks, deteriorating terms of trade and mounting debt service obligations.
Abstract: For over a decade African economies have been plagued by recurrent food shortages, economic decline and growing disparities between the living standards of rich and poor. To a large extent food shortages and rural impoverishment may be attributed to external shocks—world recession, oil price shocks, deteriorating terms of trade and mounting debt service obligations—compounded in the 1970s and early 1980s by drought and war. In addition government policies have exacerbated the effects of adverse environmental and world market trends, aggravating rather than alleviating food shortages and depressing rural output and incomes.
459 citations
TL;DR: From the time when I first became entangled with the Third World, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I have been fascinated by those contemporary ways of life and thought which keep growing out of the interplay between imported and indigenous cultures as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: From the time when I first became entangled with the Third World, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, I have been fascinated by those contemporary ways of life and thought which keep growing out of the interplay between imported and indigenous cultures. They are the cultures on display in market places, shanty towns, beer halls, night clubs, missionary book stores, railway waiting rooms, boarding schools, newspapers and television stations. Nigeria, the country I have been most closely in touch with in an on-and-off way for some time, because of its large size, perhaps, offers particular scope for such cultural development, with several very large cities and hundreds if not thousands of small and middle-size towns. It has a lively if rather erratic press, a popular music scene dominated at different times by such genres as highlife, juju and Afro-beat, about as many universities as breweries (approximately one to every state in the federal republic), dozens of authors published at home and abroad, schoolhouses in just about every village, and an enormous fleet of interurban taxicabs which with great speed can convey you practically from anywhere to anywhere, at some risk to your life.
457 citations
TL;DR: This article suggests that representation through local government can be the basis of general and enduring participation by society in public affairs in Burkina Faso and Mali.
Abstract: Colonial relations of political administration are being reproduced in the current era of participation and decentralisation. In natural resource management, participation and decentralisation are promoted on the basis that they can increase equity, yield greater efficiency, benefit the environment and contribute to rural development. Reaping these benefits is predicated on (1) the devolution of some real powers over natural resources to local populations, and (2) the existence of locally accountable authorities to whom those powers can be devolved. However, a limited set of highly circumscribed powers are being devolved to locally accountable authorities, and most local authorities to whom powers are being devolved are systematically structured to be upwardly accountable to the central state, rather than downwardly accountable to local populations. Many of the new laws being passed in the name of participation and decentralisation administer rather than enfranchise. The article examines the historical legal underpinnings of the powers and accountability of state-backed rural authorities (chiefs and rural councils), the authorities through which current natural resource management projects in Burkina Faso and in Mali represent local populations, and the decisions being devolved to local bodies in new natural resource management efforts. Without reform local interventions risk reproducing the inequities of their centralised political-administrative context. Rather than pitting the state against society by depicting the state as a negative force and society and non-state institutions as positive—as is done in many decentralisation and participatory efforts—this article suggests that representation through local government can be the basis of general and enduring participation by society in public affairs.
439 citations