Contemporary sub-Saharan Africa Research Articles

Past and present biomass consumption by herbivores and fire across productivity gradients in North America

Herbivores and fire are important consumers of plant biomass that influence vegetation structure, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity globally. Departures from historic biomass consumption patterns due to wild herbivore losses, livestock proliferation, and altered fire regimes can have critical ecological consequences. We set out to (i) understand how consumer dominance and prevalence responded to spatial and temporal moisture gradients in Holocene North America and (ii) examine how past and present consumer dominance patterns in North America compare to less altered consumer regimes of modern Sub-Saharan Africa. We developed long-term records of bison abundance and biomass burning in Holocene midcontinent North America and compared these records to reconstructions of moisture availability and vegetation structure. We used these reconstructions to characterize bison and fire prevalence across associated moisture and vegetation gradients. We found that bison herbivory dominated biomass consumption in dry settings whereas fire dominated in wetter environments. Historical distributions of herbivory and burning in midcontinent North America resemble those of contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa, suggesting disturbance feedbacks and interactions regulate long-term consumer dynamics. Comparisons of consumer dynamics in contemporary North America with Holocene North America and Sub-Saharan Africa also reveal that fire is functionally absent from regions where it was once common, with profound ecological implications.

Researching post-independence Africa in regional archives: possibilities and limits in Benin, Cabo Verde, Ghana and Congo-Brazzaville

AbstractAfrica’s regional archives offer crucial records to explore the continent’s postcolonial past. Although these archives are often difficult to locate and access and are exposed to several challenges that might even threaten their existence, this article presents a solid case for reconsidering their importance. Recent trends, aptly labelled ‘postcolonial African archival pessimism’, have mainly pointed to problems and often to the limited accessibility of state archives in some regional and local contexts. This article instead engages with their potential, discussing four case studies in Benin, Cabo Verde, Ghana and Congo-Brazzaville. Results stemming from these case studies are brought into contact with wider debates on custodial cultures and the regional archives’ role in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. The intention is to provide a more positive and empirically based overview of research possibilities at regional archives and ultimately to change the nature of our approach to these resources.

Migration in sub-Saharan Africa: The Somali refugee and migrant experience

Abstract:This forum contributes to debates on migration, displacement, and place-making in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. We bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to move the existing literature beyond the dominant focus on thecausesof displacement to a rich and granular exploration of itsconsequences. The forum focuses on Somali refugees and migrants for two reasons. First, Somalia is one of the largest refugee-producing countries in the world. Second, depending on the host states in which they find themselves, Somali migrants and refugees can encounter many different fates, ranging from living in refugee camps to migrating to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa to a small minority being resettled in countries of the global north. These varied circumstances make it possible to study strategies of place-making among Somali communities from several different perspectives. A central theme of this forum is to highlight the agency of migrants and refugees and to emphasize the fact that these groups are more than mere victims of their circumstances. The articles in this volume will be of interest to scholars of African studies, anthropology, comparative politics, migration studies, peace studies, and Somali studies.

African traditional beer: changing organization and spaces of South Africa’s sorghum beer industry

ABSTRACT Scholarship on the geographies of beer is concentrated mainly in the global North. Sub-Saharan Africa is the most undeveloped region in terms of international beer focused research. This neglect must be set against the growing attention on the region by the world’s leading brewing enterprises. Within beer research geographies, one distinctive facet of Africa’s beer economy is the manufacture of a variety of traditional or indigenous beers which are quite unlike the barley based clear beers and multiplying varieties of craft beers as consumed in the Global North. Indigenous beers formed an important part of the rural African social fabric and undertaken by mainly women brewers. The objective here is to address the limited extant knowledge about fermentation geographies of Africa. The focus is on South Africa’s sorghum beer industry and the commodification of traditional beer, interrogating the changing organization and associated spaces of production of this sector. Using archival sources and the industry press two historical phases are unpacked in the chequered development of the sorghum beer industry in South Africa. The study demonstrates the shrinking spaces of production of the formal economy of sorghum beer as the industry moved from serving narrow localized markets to concentrated production for wider regional and national markets. Arguably, recent struggles surrounding the ownership and control of South Africa’s sorghum beer industry represent an integral facet of the increasingly competitive economic landscape of beer across contemporary sub-Saharan Africa.

Negotiating Contemporary African Architectures at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

African architecture is having a moment in European museums. Joining the crowd is AFRICA: Architecture, Culture, and Identity, an ambitious and contradictory exhibition at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Hummelbæk, Denmark, June 25, 2015–October 25, 2015. Divided into seven themes designed as points of entrée into the field of contemporary sub-Saharan Africa, the sprawling exhibition includes contributions by nearly eighty architects, writers, and artists either born in or working on the continent. With its kaleidoscope of images, Louisiana’s AFRICA provides many answers to the hows and whys of contemporary African architecture, ultimately succeeding in its intention to supplant media-based stereotypes of the continent with alternative narratives. Juxtaposing architecture’s two dominant global modes—that of the architect-designed structure with that of the user-built structure—AFRICA makes it clear that architectural modernity is an act of negotiation with no clear final outcome. Notwithstanding curatorial declarations that the exhibition would neither try to “pinpoint the specifically African” nor rely upon generalizations, too often the wall texts and labels rely on the tired tropes of the tribal and traditional to create fantastical pan-African architectural typologies, undermining genuine explorations of the local.

Perspectives on Africa from the Fourth American-Soviet Symposium on Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa

The fourth meeting of the U. S.-Soviet Symposium on Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa was held in Moscow, July 11-14, 1988. The American delegation is a national representation of American Africanists, led by Carl G. Rosberg, the Director of the Institute of International Studies, University of California, Berkeley. The symposium, which has been held bi-annually since 1982, alterately in the USA and the USSR, is an activity of the American Council of Learned Societies USSR Academy of Sciences, administered in the United States by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX). Approximately twenty host country scholars and ten from the visiting country participate in each symposium.

Re-theorising the role of the informal economy in Sub-Saharan Africa: some lessons from Gambia

This paper aims to evaluate critically the rival representations of the role of the informal economy which is variously portrayed as a leftover from an earlier mode of production, a direct by-product of late capitalism, an alternative to the formal economy or a complement to formal work. Reporting evidence from a survey of 500 participants in Gambia, the finding is that although each and every representation of its role is valid in relation to particular populations and/or specific types of informal work, no one representation fully captures the diverse and multiple roles played by the informal economy in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa. The consequent argument is that only by using all of them can a finer-grained and more comprehensive understanding of the multifarious roles of the informal economy be achieved. The outcome is a more multilayered and nuanced understanding of the role played by the informal economy in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa.

Do Leaders' Characteristics and Regime Transitions in Africa Matter for Citizens' Health Status?

Africa's quest to achieving improved health status and meeting the Millennium Development Goals targets cannot be effectively achieved without examining the quality of leadership, transitions and regimes and how they impact on the decisions and the policy effectiveness that bring about improved health and living standards of the citizenry. In this paper, we study the importance of leader characteristics and regime transitions on government's expenditure in health, and hence on infant mortality, as a development indicator. A unique dataset comprising 44 sub-Saharan African countries spanning from 1970 to 2010 was used for the study. To effectively analyze the impact of leader characteristics and regime transitions on the citizens' health status we control for leader fixed-effects since different leaders, among other things impact on outcomes differently and changes in policy to a large extent depend on the leader characteristics. The overall results are suggestive of a democratic advantage in the process of achieving effective health policy outcomes for promoting health and the wellbeing of the citizens in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa, at least in the long run. Whilst there is evidence of more private and public investments in the health sector under democratic leadership, Government's health policy is virtually non-existent under dictatorships and public sector investment in the health sector is on the decadence.

Land-related Conflicts and Traditional Authorities in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa: Foreword

Land-related Conflicts and Traditional Authorities in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa: Foreword

Cartooning Contemporary Sub-Saharan African Experiences: A New Perspectivei

Cartooning Contemporary Sub-Saharan African Experiences: A New Perspectivei Philip A. Ojo Abstract This essay critically analyzes the distinct meanings and aesthetics of three outspoken political cartoons that use haunting images and captions to picture contemporary sub-Saharan African issues--political corruption, social and economic privations, and conflicts. The selected cartoons--Jonathan Shapiro’s “Elections in Zimbabwe” (2005), Popa Mutumula’s “Conflicts and Corruption” (2004), and Tayo Fatunla’s “Still Waiting for a Better Nigeria” (2005)--criticize corrupt social conditions so uniquely that their undeniable rhetorical power overshadows concerns about aesthetics. Drawing upon a wide range of theoretical works, the paper argues that cartooning can be used as a springboard for criticism, mediation, and social change in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. Full Text: PDF DOI: 10.15640/rah.v4n1a8

Five challenges for disability-related research in sub-Saharan Africa.

Disability research in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa is developing rapidly, and this is something to be celebrated. This article reviews some contemporary developments and suggests that there are five central, and interrelated, challenges for the field. These challenges – experience, expertise, enumeration, evidence, and expectations – go to the heart of thinking about disability research in sub-Saharan Africa. An optimistic but appropriately critical approach to addressing these issues is suggested.

Economic Shocks and Democratization in Africa

The literature on the determinants of democratization has long been dominated by a view that claimed a central role for economic development (‘modernization’). Acemogluet al. (2008, 2009) have recently challenged the robustness of empirical support for the modernization hypothesis. As an alternative, they claim that democratization is likely to occur in moments of economic crisis. Brückner and Ciccone (2011) appear to offer strong support for this latter view, and claim that lagged adverse GDP shocks generated by poor rainfall generate ‘windows of opportunity’ for democratization in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa. The current article presents evidence that Brückner and Ciccone's provocative finding does not survive several sensible robustness checks, calling into question whether their claim in fact offers new insights into the process of democratization.

Party unity and presidential dominance: parliamentary development in the fourth republic of Ghana

Political power in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa is often portrayed as being highly informal and heavily personalised. The assumption that personalised politics is how ‘Africa works’ has led to the neglect of the study of Africa's formal institutions, including parliaments. This article assesses the position of the Parliament of Ghana under the Fourth Republic. It displays evidence suggesting that over successive parliamentary terms parliamentary committees became increasingly adept at handling legislation, and inputting into the policy process. It also shows that the parliament was increasingly able to oversee the implementation of legislation. Although the findings of hitherto undocumented progress represent a valuable nuance, the argument that the parliament became increasingly able to input into the legislative process says exactly that; while the parliament became increasingly capable of amending legislation rarely was this witnessed. The article argues that parliamentary development in Ghana has been a function of three interacting structural factors: the constitution; unified government since 1992; and political party unity. The strong partisan identities of legislators from the two major political parties – the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) – provide the executive with extra leverage to control the parliament. Throughout the Ghanaian parliament is juxtaposed with the Kenyan National Assembly. More substantially, the article seeks to force a revision of the dominant narrative that generalises African party systems as fluid and fragmented, and African political parties as lacking any recognisable internal cohesion or ideology.

Book Review: Circular Migration in Zimbabwe and Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa

Book Review: Circular Migration in Zimbabwe and Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa

Borrowing from the past to sustain the present and the future: indigenous African urban forms, architecture, and sustainable urban development in contemporary Africa

Urban spatial expansion resulting from urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is not going to stop or stabilize in the near future. Efforts should therefore be concentrated on accommodating this phenomenon through the promotion of sustainable urban planning and development. Relying on secondary data, this paper examines models of indigenous African urban forms and architecture to understand these forms and their characteristics, and how these models and associated management, design, and planning principles can be adopted in contemporary SSA urban development in the quest to achieve sustainable urban development. This paper argues that planning is culturally and contextually defined and the specificities of a place are critical in planning. Developing strategies based on indigenous urban forms which embody local peoples’ culture, aspirations, experiences, and values is consistent with the concept of sustainable urban development. The article concludes that there exist clear elements of socially, politically, economically, culturally, and environmentally sound and responsive sustainable planning principles to be derived from indigenous urban forms and architecture which can inform current urban development process in SSA.

Circular Migration in Zimbabwe and Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa

Circular Migration in Zimbabwe and Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa

Concurrency is more complex than it seems

Concurrency is more complex than it seems

National Design and State Building in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article examines the political geography of state building in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. The absence of interstate war has produced a unique situation for contemporary state builders in Africa—they have inherited states with relatively fixed borders encapsulating a variety of environmental and geographic conditions, compounded by varying distributions of population densities. The author examines the effects of a variety of strategies that African rulers have employed to enhance their state-building efforts given the type of national design they inhabit. These strategies include the allocation of citizenship, interventions in land tenure patterns, and the adoption and management of national currencies. The author tests the effects of these strategies on several dimensions of state capacity in sub-Saharan Africa from 1960 to 2004 using a variety of statistical analyses. The results indicate that the strategies currently adopted by African rulers have generally failed to substantially augment their capacity.

Electoral Populism Where Property Rights Are Weak: Land Politics in Contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa

Comparative democratization scholars have devoted almost no attention to how property rights regimes shape the dynamics of electoral competition. This oversight is particularly problematic in African studies. In sub-Saharan Africa the absence or weakness of secure property rights regimes in the countryside can have powerful consequences for multiparty dynamics. Land can become a patronage resource in ways that ignite destabilizing redistributive conflicts and threaten minority rights. By ignoring the design and character of underlying property regimes—or by assuming that the rules governing property are fixed, neutral, or essentially liberal in character—analysts have overlooked a fundamental source of illiberalism in many of Africa's multiparty systems. Cote d'Ivoire, where land politics have contributed to system-wide political breakdown, serves as a case in point.

Building Up Goodwill: British Business, Development and Economic Nationalism in Ghana and Nigeria, 1945–1977

Contemporary sub-Saharan Africa presents a puzzle to many observers, and has generally been perceived as a hostile environment to modern business. It is indeed difficult to make sense of politics and business on the continent without understanding how African colonies turned into independent countries since the late 1950s, and how they evolved into postcolonial states from the 1970s onwards. Imperial business was witness to these fundamental changes in African societies and deeply affected by it. Although some economic indicators in the 1970s were relatively favorable (many commodity prices were high), this was the decade when the severe decline of Africa, both in relative and absolute terms, began.