Islamic Eco-Theology and Hadith on Justice: A Theological Critique of Colonialism and Environmental-Economic Exploitation in Africa

While the coloniality of power underpins the continuity of colonial situations in postcolonial Africa, (neo)liberal thinking attempts to dismiss its place in Africa’s contemporary challenges, blaming instead anti-colonial struggles and the quest for complete decolonisation as the cause of these challenges. A focus on this neoliberal cum pro-colonial perspectives, at the expense of a corpus of post-, anti- and de-colonial writings that expose and challenge coloniality, however, inhibits our understanding of the consolidation, problematic place and impact of the coloniality of power in postcolonial Africa. Analysing the presence of colonial situations in policy choices and governance patterns, which link Africa’s postcolonial present to their colonial past, this paper claims that the coloniality of power retains its salience in postcolonial Africa. Illustrating with experiences from Nigeria, I show how this continues to structure the state of affairs in Africa even after formal colonialism has ended. This article contributes to the discourse on the legacies of colonialism in Africa.

This article analyzes the development legacies of Italian colonialism in Africa. The comparative-historical analysis shows that colonial Italy pursued “settler colonialism” in areas conducive to colonial settlement and large-scale exploitation, and “plantation colonialism” in areas with fewer resource endowments and settlement opportunities. In the immediate aftermath, while settler colonialism had a positive influence and plantation colonialism exerted a negative impact on economic prosperity, both types of Italian colonialism had strong negative effects on human development. In the post-1960 period, whereas the colonial legacy of plantation colonialism led to persistent poverty in Somalia, long-run development in Eritrea and Libya was contingent on critical junctures, which variously reinforced, destabilized, and/or transformed the institutional and developmental legacies of settler colonialism. I draw on the comparative-historical tradition emphasizing national orientation of European colonizers and natural conditions in colonized areas as key determinants of European colonialism and long-run development. However, I emphasize “factor endowments” as one such condition that defined Italian colonization strategies and institutions, finding little empirical support for factor endowments per se or precolonial ethnic centralization as principal determinants.

Rural livelihoods and agricultural commercialization in colonial Uganda: conjunctures of external influences and local realities

The effect of the tsetse fly'; Bloom and Sachs, 'Geography, demography and slow growth'; Frankema, 'Biogeographical roots'; Nunn, 'Long-term effects'; Nunn and Wantchekon, 'The slave trade and the origins of mistrust'; Michalopoulos and Papaioannou, 'Precolonial ethnic institutions'.

Post-Twentieth-Century Eritrea Irma Taddia University of Bologna These are some reflections on present Eritrea in the light of its colonial past. I am aware that if the present can only be understood in relation to the past, the colonial past can be analyzed in terms of the present. These reflections are stimulated by various visits to Eritrea in the last years after the change ofpolitical regime in May 1991 and by historical research. If we consider the case of Eritrea and its path towards independence, some differences and analogies emerge in comparison with other former African colonies. The Eritrean experience is taking place today in a very specific context in postcolonial Africa. It is not, I believe, simply a case of delayed decolonization , postponed by 30 years with respect to other former African colonies. I will attempt to identify some récurrent elements and some differences between the Eritrean case and other decolonization models that characterized Africa in the 1960s. Differences/Analogies between Eritrea and Other African Colonial States An event which could have taken place in the 1950 and '60s actually happened only in 1993: the independence of Eritrea and the creation of an autonomous state in the Horn of Africa. This leads us to develop some reflections on the nature of the Eritrean state at the end of the twentieth century and to make a comparison between the Eritrean case and the African decolonization experiences of the 1960s. The history of Eritrea must be studied within the colonial context in which, however, certain differences emerge. Eritrea was a colonial state in the nineteenth®Northeast African Studies (ISSN 0740-9133) Vol. 5, No. 1 (New Series) 1998, pp. 7-29 8 Irma Taddia and twentieth centuries. Like other African colonies it was created during the scramble for Africa. Within this process it achieved a form of identity during the years of colonialism. Colonialism can be analyzed as a crucial and lasting process in the development of a new economic and political structure expressed in the form of a new territorial framework and developed by means of the politics of the colonial state. The colonial state imposed a "national" identity on all African areas of influence through a new territorial politic. Colonial borders were no longer questioned during decolonization. Since Eritrea's experience reflected that of other African colonies, it should have become an independent state during the decolonization process. But Eritrea is a colony that did not become an independent state. This phenomenon can be attributed to various causes I will try to underline. Regarding the colonial process, a strong analogy emerges between Italian Eritrea and other examples of African colonies. It is the same mechanism of colonial power which molded different precolonial systems of power and societies into a unique political body. Eritrea, like the other African colonial states, achieved this unity and identity during the years of colonialism. The idea is widespread in the literature. "Eritrean nationalists describe significant economic and social changes under Italian colonialism, supporting arguments that Eritrea's experience mirrored that of other African colonies."1 The creation of the colony was a premise for a new sense of unity and identity. Colonialism is seen by Eritrean nationalists as a condition for establishing a national identity, while at the same time Ethiopians define Eritrea as an artificial creation.2 It is clear that Eritrea is a political construction of colonialism. However, according to Markakis's viewpoint, Eritrean nationalism is not a product of anti-colonialism, but develops after the fall of the Italian colonial government in 1941. "Eritrean nationalism did not emerge as a reaction to the colonial situation . It made its appearance after the collapse of Italian rule, when the fate of the former colony hung in the balance."3 And nationalism is not—again according to Markakis—"a purely ideological phenomenon," but it is "in the first instance ... a struggle for state power,"4 for the political power inherited by the colonial state. Within the fight for political independence after the 1940s, Italy played a complex and contradictory role which historians have yet to analyze in depth. We have very few studies on this period.5 Post-Twentieth-Century Eritrea...

This paper explores the continuous role that science has played in the establishment of a colonial and post-colonial "development regime" in Africa. Examining development schemes that flourished between 1930 and 1970, the paper shows how African agrarian societies became objects of both state intervention and expert knowledge. In pursuing large scale social engineering and social experiments, these schemes constituted a particular--colonial?--way of managing the African environment and of crafting knowledge on African societies. In constructing development ideologies and practices in the late colonial and post independence periods, they also played an important part in the construction of the African state. Their approaches shaped the future of tropical medicine, agriculture, and development studies. Ironically, they also created the preconditions for later interest in the values of indigenous knowledge.

Climate change, acid rain, depletion of the ozone layer, species extinction—all of these issues point to one thing: environmental health is a global issue that concerns all nations of the world. Now add environmental justice to the list. From South Bronx to Soweto, from Penang to El Paso, communities all over the world are finding commonality in their experiences and goals in seeking environmental justice. Environmental justice was defined by Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center at Clark Atlanta University, in his seminal 1990 work Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class, and Environmental Quality as “the principle that all people and communities are entitled to equal protection of environmental and public health laws and regulations.” In countries around the world, the concept of environmental justice can apply to communities where those at a perceived disadvantage—whether due to their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, immigration status, lack of land ownership, geographic isolation, formal education, occupational characteristics, political power, gender, or other characteristics—puts them at disproportionate risk for being exposed to environmental hazards. At a global scale, environmental justice can also be applied to scenarios such as industrialized countries exporting their wastes to developing nations. In either case, “environmental and human rights have no boundaries, because pollution has no boundaries,” says Heeten Kalan, senior program officer of the Global Environmental Health and Justice Fund of the New World Foundation in New York City. “Environmental justice organizations are starting to understand that they are working in a global context.”

From the period of the “Scramble for Africa” in the 1880s to the era of decolonization that began in the 1950s, culture and media played essential roles in constructing images of the colonized subject as well as governing newly conquered empires. In the struggle for political independence, Africans used film, music, literature, journals, and newspapers to counter European ideas about African society as well as to provide the foundations for postcolonial national identities. With sovereignty largely realized across Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, the roles of culture and media were critical in forging the bonds of nationhood and solidifying the legitimacy of the new states. However, those official efforts increasingly clashed with the aspirations of cultural activists, who desired a more thorough transformation of their societies in order to transcend the colonial legacy and construct progressive communities. Media and culture became a forum for political conflict whereby governments increasingly restricted creativity and subsequently sought complete control of the means of cultural creation and diffusion. Both the aspirations of public officials and opposition activists suffered during a period of prolonged economic crisis in Africa, which began in the 1970s and stretched into the 1990s. The sinews of governance as well as the radical pretensions of culture workers were torn asunder as many parts of Africa suffered state collapse, civil war, famine, and epidemic diseases (including the HIV/AIDS and Ebola crises). The dawn of the new millennium coincided with the age of neoliberal globalization that, for many African countries, was synonymous with structural adjustment programs and oversight from such international lending institutions as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. This often required the privatization of media across Africa and included the greater prominence of non-African media sources on radio, television, and the cinema throughout the continent. It also was reflected in a shift among African culture workers, who frequently centered on the impact of globalization on African societies in their work. Filmmakers, musicians, and writers often use their platforms to speak to the wider world beyond Africa about the place of African societies in the globalized world.

This article claims that the legacy of European imperialism and colonialism in Africa can be conceptually compared to the legacy of Russian and Soviet imperialism and colonialism in the former USSR republics and the nations of Central and Easter Europe that were under Soviet dominations. Despite the obvious fact that the historical conditions and paths of African nations that were colonized, repressed and ruled by the European empires differ significantly from the experience of the nations of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, that were conquered and colonized by the Russian Empire and later on were subjects to the Soviet rule, it is suggested in this article, that the conceptual lessons drawn from the vast literature dedicated to the studies of the aftermath of colonialism in Africa can enrich the scholarly efforts aimed at understanding the post-soviet spaces and different processes in it. What is meant by “conceptual lessons” is methodological opportunity for a different perspective or even a different lens through which the legacy of the Soviet rule and the current Russian neo-imperial foreign politics can be better understood. Much is written about the European imperialism and its colonial policies, however there is still some reluctance in applying the methodological framework of postcolonial studies to the former Soviet Union and present day Russia. Scholars all over the world studied the colonial legacies that African nations struggled to overcome and there are topics of particular relevance to the study of the post-soviet space: the processes of post-colonial nation building, the roles of new national elites, the ideological choices in foreign policies of newly independent nations, the aftermath of the policies of assimilation, the imperial “ideologies of superiority”, the economic consequences of colonialism, the role of churches and religious organizations in supporting colonial suppression – as conceptual topics, all of them can be studied critically, also in a comparative perspective, to have a much better understanding of the former soviet and current Russian foreign politics and policies.

Colonialism in Africa, 1870–1960. Volume 2, The History and Politics of Colonialism, 1914–1960, edited by L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan; Volume 3, Profiles of Change: African Society and Colonial Rule, edited by Victor Turner. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1970; 1971. Pp. x, 563; viii, 455. $17.50 each. Get access Colonialism in Africa, 1870–1960. Volume 2, The History and Politics of Colonialism, 1914–1960, edited by Gann L. H. and Duignan Peter; Volume 3, Profiles of Change: African Society and Colonial Rule, edited by Turner Victor. New York: Cambridge University Press. 1970; 1971. Pp. x, 563; viii, 455. $17.50 each. Marcia Wright Marcia Wright Columbia University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 77, Issue 4, October 1972, Pages 1164–1166, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/77.4.1164 Published: 01 October 1972

In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the prevalence of mental health issues could be greater than in other low-income and middle-income countries because of major risk factors related to armed conflicts and poverty. Given that mental health is an essential component of health, it is surprising that no systematic evaluation of mental health in the DRC has yet been undertaken. This study aims to undertake the first systematic review of mental health literacy and service provision in the DRC, to bridge this gap and inform those who need to develop an evidence base. This could support policymakers in tackling the issues related to limited mental health systems and service provision in DRC. Following Cochrane and PRISMA guidelines, a systematic (Web of Science, Medline, Public Health, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar) search was conducted (January 2000 and August 2023). Combinations of key blocks of terms were used in the search such as DRC, war zone, mental health, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, sexual violence, war trauma, resilience, mental health systems and service provision. We followed additional sources from reference lists of included studies. Screening was completed in two stages: title and abstract search, and full-text screening for relevance and quality. Overall, 50 studies were included in the review; the majority of studies (n = 31) were conducted in the Eastern region of the DRC, a region devastated by war and sexual violence. Different instruments were used to measure participants’ mental health such as the Hopkins Symptoms Checklist (HSCL-25), The Harvard Trauma Questionnaire, Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9); General Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7), and Positive and Negative Symptoms Scale (PANSS). Our study found that wartime sexual violence and extreme poverty are highly traumatic, and cause multiple, long-term mental health difficulties. We found that depression, anxiety, and PTSD were the most common problems in the DRC. Psychosocial interventions such as group therapy, family support, and socio-economic support were effective in reducing anxiety, depression, and PTSD symptoms. This systematic review calls attention to the need to support sexual violence survivors and many other Congolese people affected by traumatic events. This review also highlights the need for validating culturally appropriate measures, and the need for well-designed controlled intervention studies in low-income settings such as the DRC. Better public mental health systems and service provision could help to improve community cohesion, human resilience, and mental wellbeing. There is also an urgent need to address wider social issues such as poverty, stigma, and gender inequality in the DRC.

Today Africa is home to about 30 percent of global mineral reserves and a significant share of the worldwide production of economically important minerals and metals. This continent is the first- or second-largest producer of platinum, diamonds, gold, phosphate, and cobalt, for example. African countries are also among the world’s top producers of copper, uranium, and oil. Minerals account for around 70 percent of total African export value (for some countries this percentage rises above 90) and about 28 percent of aggregate gross domestic product, as well as a similar share of total foreign direct investments (in 2020). The main mining regions have been situated in Southern and Central Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Botswana), West Africa (Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Mali), East Africa (Tanzania), and North Africa (Morocco). The timing at which mining activities came to dominate the above-mentioned economies varies, and countries not mentioned here have mined metals and fuels as well, but mostly at a lower scale. The mining and smelting of very rich metal ores in Africa dates back to ancient times, and the encounter of gold in the coast of modern-day Ghana by 15th-century Portuguese colonizers resulted in this region becoming known as the “Gold Coast.” The late nineteenth century brought about the development of industrial mining with the discovery of rich gold and diamond deposits in South Africa. In due time, Western companies monopolized the large-scale, capital-intensive extraction of minerals. From the early twentieth century onward, explorations yielded substantial deposits of gold, diamonds, copper, tin, lead, iron, cobalt, phosphate, platinum, and other minerals in several African countries, which were exploited to meet the growing industrial demand for ores, metals, and diamonds in Europe. After the independence of most African colonies, the mining industry remained in the hands of foreign companies or was nationalized by the newly independent states in the 1960s to 1970s. In some cases, mineral production dwindled between the 1970s and 1990s due to the collapse of global mineral prices (noticeably copper), conflict, or white exodus. In certain regions, minerals that were previously extracted through industrial extraction continued to be mined, but at an informal artisanal level (e.g., in the Democratic Republic of the Congo), also involving women. After the early 2000s, Africa experienced a new mining boom, driven predominantly by Chinese demand. Mining has had important socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental consequences, including sectoral change, labor migration, urbanization, conflict, environmental degradation, and health problems. Moreover, a well-known body of academic research, the “resource curse” literature, has contended that the excessive reliance of developing countries on mineral production could result in poor political and economic performance.

The material foundations of a low-carbon economy

Domestic Violence and the Law in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa reveals the ways in which domestic space and domestic relationships take on different meanings in African contexts that extend the boundaries of family obligation, kinship, and dependency. The term domestic violence encompasses kin-based violence, marriage-based violence, gender-based violence, as well as violence between patrons and clients who shared the same domestic space. As a lived experience and as a social and historical unit of analysis, domestic violence in colonial and postcolonial Africa is complex. Using evidence drawn from Subsaharan Africa, the chapters explore the range of domestic violence in Africa’s colonial past and its present, including taxation and the insertion of the household into the broader structure of colonial domination. African histories of domestic violence demand that scholars and activists refine the terms and analyses and pay attention to the historical legacies of contemporary problems. This collection brings into conversation historical, anthropological, legal, and activist perspectives on domestic violence in Africa and fosters a deeper understanding of the problem of domestic violence, the limits of international human rights conventions, and local and regional efforts to address the issue.

Africa has celebrated five decades of independence. Yet the continent is neither free nor developed. Some scholars have argued that contemporary crises and contradictions of underdevelopment in Africa echo the path dependency of the continent's colonial legacies. Others question the propriety of blaming colonialism for Africa's contemporary woes given that the colonial experience was not exclusive to Africa, and that there were differences in the nature of colonialism within the continent. Against this background, this chapter interrogates the nature, character and dynamic of colonialism in Africa. It shows that though settler and non-settler colonial architectures appear seemingly heterogeneous, their divergent manifestations were but a result of strategic and tactic considerations. The chapter opines that, once the illusion of difference has been discarded, it is clear that colonialism across Africa was informed by the imperative to resolve the crises and contradictions of capitalism in Europe.