ABSTRACT This paper explores the discursive construction of climate change in the narratives of the Doma, an indigenous community in the Zambezi Valley in Zimbabwe. It adopts a qualitative methodology that involves in-depth interviews with members of the Doma community. The data were analysed thematically, and the focus is on how the narratives of the Doma construct meaning around the causes and solutions to climate change and how cultural and historical contexts and entanglements shape these meanings. The findings reveal that the Doma have a rich and complex understanding of climate change, both in terms of its causes and response, based on their intimate relationship with the natural environment. Their narratives construct meanings around the causes and solutions to climate change that differ from the dominant scientific and prevailing political discourses. The meanings in such narratives emphasise the interconnectedness of social and ecological systems and the agency of non-human actors in shaping the environment. Overall, the paper concludes that it is important to include indigenous knowledge systems in the discourse around climate change, and there is a need for a more holistic and inclusive understanding of the global challenge of climate change.

ABSTRACT This article explores the dynamic terrain of African decolonisation via the interracial diplomacy of a right-wing Southern Rhodesian politician, Winston Field. Initially a parliamentarian in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Field became the Southern Rhodesian prime minister as that Federation collapsed. Despite his conservative views, Field enthusiastically pursued dialogue with the region’s anti-colonial nationalists. His most substantial outreach was with Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the Malawian nationalist leader, but he encountered anti-colonial nationalists throughout the Federation and British officials discreetly attempted to connect him to Tanganyika’s president, Julius Nyerere. Ultimately, Field’s diplomatic outreach exerted minimal impact on the region’s political affairs. However, his efforts illuminate several critical issues, including inter-white political competition in Rhodesia; the rise of Field’s successor, Ian Smith; Banda’s tolerance of reactionary white governments; the blinkered nature of Britain’s Rhodesia policy; and the consequences of a split in Zimbabwe’s nationalist movement.

ABSTRACT The oral tradition of any given community provides a rich source of information on its history, culture and indigenous knowledge that guide the people on local approaches towards handling various situations that may or may not be detrimental to human survival. This study explores the role of folktales in advancing environmental conservation among the Kusaas of Ghana. Using frameworks such as literary anthropology and environmental ethics, it demonstrates how these oral literary narratives convey indigenous approaches to environmental education paying particular attention to biodiversity preservation and ecological balance. Employing qualitative methods, the study investigates folktales that were collected from six Kusaal-speaking districts in Ghana, exhibiting their potentials as tools for cultural education, eco-consciousness, and environmental activism. The stories mirror a blend of anthropocentrism, biocentrism and theocentrism, offering invaluable insights for community-based climate resilience strategies in Ghana and beyond. The research emphasises the relevance of decolonial approaches to environmental education that engage grassroots communities through culturally relevant mediums.

Africa has the lowest electricity access rate in the world today. About six hundred million of its estimated 1.4 billion population (or 43 percent) are still waiting to experience reliable electricity supply, according to a recent estimate. Yet, unlike other forms of Western technological inventions, such as in communications (telegraph or the telephone) or rail transportation, historians have demonstrated that the infrastructure of large-scale electricity production made its way to Africa not long after it was developed in Europe and the United States. Electricity became a tool for modern life during the late 1870s through the work of scientists, notably Thomas Edison, who invented the incandescent bulb. By 1882, the mining city of Kimberly in South Africa had become the first African municipal area to have electric lights. Kimberly’s coal-fired central power station was also the second in the world (after Pearl Street Station, New York). Ethiopia reportedly had its first electricity generator, powered by diesel, as a gift from the German government to the emperor in the 1890s; while in Nigeria, electricity supply commenced in Lagos in 1898. In nearly all of Africa, the electrification timeline was intertwined with European colonialism. The main sites of electricity consumption during the years before the Second World War were the mines and cities where the European and African political and economic elite resided. As a result, the motives of colonial investments have been debated among scholars, and the main issues have ranged from economic exploitation to racial discrimination. The 1940s was the era of colonial development, and electricity began to gain increasing prominence in the industrial policy deliberations within the colonies. As African states approached independence, nationalists also imagined hydroelectric dams as indispensable for economic growth. Despite the optimism and grand strategies of the 1950s and 1960s, Africa’s electricity consumption per capita remains the lowest rate of any world region. African governments and international financial institutions have invested billions to increase supply capacity. However, allegations of public-sector corruption and mismanagement are prevalent. The national grid frequently collapses, load shedding is endemic, and millions of Africans often fall back on small generators. Global dialogues on climate change have also spurned an interest in exploring green alternatives, particularly solar energy, as the future of electrification in Africa.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the underlying factors for the recent emergence of statehood claims from Mzimba district of Malawi which were sparked by the government land reform exercise. In the 2016 sitting of Malawi parliament, ten land bills were passed by Parliament but attracted national wide resistance. However, the protest from Mzimba district of Malawi was unique. Chiefs from the district claimed that based on the 1904 agreement between British colonialists and Mzimba leaders, Mzimba is not part of Malawi but merely a development partner. The findings of this paper are based on interviews with Malawian government officials, political leaders, chiefs and civil society organisations leaders and as well as other stakeholders. An interesting puzzle unravelled by findings from this paper is that although the tone from Mzimba had been agitation for statehood there has been no indication for secession. The Mzimba case has unique characteristics of ‘defiance within compliance’.

ABSTRACT African architecture has historically been subjected to variants of appropriation and materialisation with multifarious effects on identity formation. In particular, its forced engagement with colonial powers followed by relatively repressive post-colonial regimes, left legacies of multi-layered elitist and totalitarian inscriptions. This article critically reviews the ways in which Zimbabwean iconic architecture has come about and how it produces identities. It specifically considers ancient, modern and postmodern architecture namely state owned and controlled buildings, museums and monuments, statues and cityscapes. The article argues that the various forms of architectural re-figuration do not necessarily signify collective historic memorialisation, heritage preservation and national identity formation but are part of a hegemonic statecraft. It concludes that power has significantly transformed iconic architecture into memory dispositifs.

ABSTRACT The deepening economic and cultural convergence of Africa and China have opened new routes of trade. Coming on the heels of China’s policy of reform and opening up, exports from Africa to the Chinese market have increased. This article breaks new ground by interrogating the innovative agency and artistic imaginaries of individual dancers as players in reassembling, exporting, restaging, and circulating Indigenous dances as transnational performances in China. Using cultural commodification as a framework of analysis, the essay dissects the innovative nuances and entrepreneurial savvy of individual dancers as a practice that has advanced the aesthetical and commercial value of dance beyond their cultural confines. I frame individual dancers as embodied interlocutors in establishing and navigating the transnational economic supply chains of the dances. The work also attempts a closer reading of the body as a constellation of reproductions, packaging, and distribution of the dances within the imaginaries of transnational circulation. Further examination of aesthetical performativities is made to unpack their re/assemblages and the links they hold to the commercial dynamics within the Chinese market. The article unveils insights that provoke a robust broadening of discourse and theorisation on China-Africa cultural and economic relations to consider the performing arts and artists as drivers in facilitating and diversifying points of contact between Africa and China.

ABSTRACT Complex historical contexts of post-colonial states expose state-led conflict resolution and peace-building efforts to elite manipulation, partisanship and exclusion, protracting conflict. Yet, the related debates fail to link state-led conflict resolution interventions to the broader structural transitions in post-colonial states to better understand the potential of sustained peace in some notorious conflicts-affected areas. This article examines how the 1957 Opoku-Afari Committee Report – the Ghanaian government’s first official response to the Bawku conflict in north-eastern Ghana – failed to promote sustained peace in the Bawku Traditional Area. A thematic analysis of in-depth interviews and documents survey reveals that the failure of the Opoku-Afari Committee to address the Bawku conflict revolves around two contested issues: the inability of the committee to fully address the critical issue of the history of ownership and settlement in Bawku, and the question of Nayiri’s jurisdiction. This weakened the political will and the legitimacy required for sustained conflict resolution process and outcome. The challenge in addressing the first large-scale Kusasi-Mamprusi conflict is rooted within the broader picture of the crisis of state- and nation-building in post-colonial Africa. This understanding poses vital implications for the growing discourse on contextualising African state politics to overcome deep-seated barriers to sustained peace and development.

ABSTRACT For almost three decades, Ghana had built and maintained an enviable feat of liberal democracy and press freedom among its peers in Africa and much of the developing world. However, recent developments in the media landscape seem to be rapidly eroding this exemplary record. This reinforces the question: To what extent is Ghana fulfilling its obligation in nurturing a liberal media atmosphere, three decades after political liberalisation? Accordingly, this study finds various violations of media freedom in Ghana including arbitrary or selective shutdown of media houses, physical attacks, seizure and destruction of equipment, arbitrary arrests and detentions, threat to life and even murder of journalists. Perpetrators of these abuses include members of the security services, ruling party supporters, public officials and unidentified assailants. Consequently, the study concludes that this creeping authoritarian repression violates the hitherto libertarian media ecology and undermine media freedom and democratic governance.