Future Of Africa Research Articles

Energy for food, livelihoods, and resilience: An integrated development agenda for Africa

This article explores the real-time interactions between agriculture, energy, economy, trade, climate resilience, and livelihoods across sub-Saharan Africa and the implications for 2050. It explains the opportunities for an intersectional approach to interventions at the food-energy nexus and provides recommendations for near-term actions urgently needed to safeguard Africa's future.

Introduction

Introduction Vincent Bouchard (bio) and Amadou Ouédraogo (bio) Paulin Soumanou Vieyra (1925–1987), one of the first African filmmakers, is a key component to all the early cinematographic activities in West Africa. He is a multifaceted pioneer known as a prominent filmmaker, producer, and scholar. He served as mentor and production manager for several renowned filmmakers, including Ousmane Sembène. His expertise and prolific contributions as a film specialist coincide with his insights as an intellectual who was deeply sensitive to the predicament of the continent and was dedicated to the social and cultural rehabilitation and emancipation of his people. His film criticism is constantly infused with his reflections on how to provide a better future for Africa. Consequently, his work and intellectual reflections are in line with the vision laid out by key historical figures who contributed to the emancipation of the continent in various regards. More than thirty years after his passing, his work remains strikingly relevant in its visions, including in its perception of cinema as a powerful instrument for social, political, economic, and cultural changes, and eventually as a tool to build awareness and self-reliance: a process that implies breaking away from the ideology of dependence and self-denial promoted throughout the colonial experience. Ultimately, his vision is encapsulated in his statement that "cinema should help create a new African humanism." There is, however, a lack of general understanding of this outstanding figure's legacy, which demonstrates a need to promote knowledge regarding one of Africa's cinema pioneers and make it accessible to the general public. This Black Camera Close-Up assesses Vieyra's intellectual legacy through a variety of academic approaches (historical, political, film, literary, cultural, etc.) and indicates avenues for future research surrounding this key figure of early West African film. It brings together a host of studies that reflect upon the various aspects of Vieyra's work, thus displaying the extent to which he stands as a seminal contributor to both African cinema and African cinema studies. [End Page 295] Underlying this Close-Up, among other motivations, is the articulation of Vieyra's trajectory as an artist and an intellectual deeply committed to the well-being of his continent. In this regard, it is made clear how Vieyra's early writings and film production after the Second World War are spurred by the anticolonial struggle, especially focused on denouncing and rejecting the racist misrepresentations emerging from Western movie production and from biased intellectual reflections on Africa. Then, with independence, and his appointment by President Léopold Sédar Senghor as the first director of the Senegalese National News Service, Vieyra's artistic and intellectual quest clearly shifts toward the necessity to communicate with the general population in Senegal and in West Africa about the stakes faced by the newly formed states, including the following: • the necessity to build a postcolonial vivre ensemble, as well as a common ground between the vernacular tradition and the challenges of the modern world, • the need to change the collective imaginary, and decolonize the system of representation, and • the necessity to organize both film production (technical support, funding, training, etc.) and movie distribution (film festivals, criticism, cinemas, public training, etc.) in Africa. On the issues addressed, Vieyra articulated various insightful views that make him stand as a prolific, inventive, and highly dedicated intellectual. This Close-Up emerges from an innovative and sustained research endeavor conducted by a group of young and active researchers whose arguments are supported by very precise archival information, showing both the extreme richness of the subject and the vital necessity to have access to more sources. Adequate resources are provided, first and foremost, by the Paulin S. Vieyra archives, managed by Vieyra's son Stéphane Vieyra, and recently acquired for transfer and digitization by the Black Film Center & Archive at Indiana University. Other sources include the French colonial and post-independence archives, and archives in Francophone West African countries. This Close-Up is divided into two parts, titled, respectively, "Early Years: Postcolonial Vision before Independence" and "Education and Nation Building at the Time of Independence." In "Vieyra's Vision of Cinema on the Verge of Independences," Odile Goerg details Vieyra...

“Liminal Figures of Futurity”: Mohale Mashigo’s Use of Speculative Fiction in Intruders

In her collection of short stories, Intruders (2018), the South African writer Mohale Mashigo uses a speculative lens to consider the future of Africa in a time of impending crisis. While her stories illustrate the postcolonial other as a potential future victim in a perspective suggested by Agamben’s state of exception, they also demonstrate a balancing of the global with the local and a sense of agency that are specific to the author and to the situation of post-transitional South Africa.

Looking into Africa's Future: The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Role of ICT Education

Looking into Africa's Future: The Fourth Industrial Revolution and the Role of ICT Education

Post-COVID-19 Action: Guarding Africa's Crops against Viral Epidemics Requires Research Capacity Building That Unifies a Trio of Transdisciplinary Interventions.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown that understanding the genomics of a virus, diagnostics and breaking virus transmission is essential in managing viral pandemics. The same lessons can apply for plant viruses. There are plant viruses that have severely disrupted crop production in multiple countries, as recently seen with maize lethal necrosis disease in eastern and southern Africa. High-throughput sequencing (HTS) is needed to detect new viral threats. Equally important is building local capacity to develop the tools required for rapid diagnosis of plant viruses. Most plant viruses are insect-vectored, hence, biological insights on virus transmission are vital in modelling disease spread. Research in Africa in these three areas is in its infancy and disjointed. Despite intense interest, uptake of HTS by African researchers is hampered by infrastructural gaps. The use of whole-genome information to develop field-deployable diagnostics on the continent is virtually inexistent. There is fledgling research into plant-virus-vector interactions to inform modelling of viral transmission. The gains so far have been modest but encouraging, and therefore must be consolidated. For this, I propose the creation of a new Research Centre for Africa. This bold investment is needed to secure the future of Africa’s crops from insect-vectored viral diseases.

Contemporary Wars in Africa or 21st Century Competition for Power

Lately the African continent has been the focus of global attention and discussions on the present and future of Africa, especially with regards to the highly topical questions concerning the global and African state of peace and security. As multiple extremely complex armed conflicts continue to cause chronic instability and vulnerabilities in several African states and regions, they also directly affect the state of international security in the 21st century in an intensively interconnected and globalized world from an economic, political and peace/security perspective. Accordingly, this research article offers an in-depth analysis of some of the major causes and explanations of the existing wars in Africa related to the illicit exploitation of resources, vulnerability, and control. The goal of this work is to reveal and analyze the complexity of 21st-century wars in Africa and their deep interrelated causes by applying the example of the long and banal armed conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Thus, the authors argue that the destabilization of the political and socio-economic situation in Africa, and DRC in particular, is directly connected to local and regional conflicts over access to various forms of resources, influence, and power, but also to the artificially created chaos by various interested power parties for expansion, profit, and hope for further profit. In this sense, it has been emphasized that conflicts of so-called ‘low intensity’, artificially maintained over a long period of time, pose no lesser degree of threat to the regional state of peace and security.

Carceral Repair

This article, based on ethnographic fieldwork in 2016–2019, examines methane extraction operations in Lake Kivu on the Rwanda/DRC border as a lens into understanding how energy futures in Africa are imagined and enacted within national projects of post-war reconstruction. In 2005, scientists suggested that the lake’s dissolved methane risked oversaturation within the century. This spurred state-backed projects to simultaneously prevent a natural disaster and harness the methane to meet Rwanda’s rising electrification needs. Two companies are currently building and operating methane-fuelled power plants. The article suggests that these energy projects, an integral part of the overall architecture of social repair in Rwanda, reproduce and generate forms of captivity and entrapment that are central to understanding the lived politics of ‘carceral repair’, a generation after genocide.

Urban resilience in climate change hotspot

Past and ongoing research shows that African cities remain one of the vulnerable zones of climate change, yet the least prepared. With an expected increase in climate change impacts coupled with rapid urbanization in African cities, this paper inquires: what if more attention is devoted to urban planning in the efforts towards addressing climate change issues and building resilient urban futures in Africa? Using available and relevant literature and Ghana as a case study, it argues that it is about time African cities begin to address climate change through urban planning. This paper anayzes the unexplored potentials of urban planning in addressing issues of climate change in the continent, and makes recommendations for the engagement of urban planning in developing resilient African cities.

Religious Environmental Stewardship, the Sabbath and Sustainable Futures in Africa: Implications for Sustainability Discourse

In terms of goals and approaches, the potentials of religion and faith communities have had a prolonged marginalisation from the rather intense academic and political engagements in the suitability discourse with a consensus on the concept of sustainability as both an approach and a goal. In this paper, I argue that the highly religious African context would require a religiously inspired and phrased recourse towards a comprehensive sustainability, rather than a solely secular concept of environmental sustainability. This is much more so when environmental sustainability is largely a secular vision of a religious one – environmental stewardship. Ignoring the beliefs, norms and values that faith communities generate in motivating human decisions and practical responsibilities that religious stewardship impose on the religious, would be working against any contextually pragmatic sustainability discourse in Africa. Therefore, using the Sabbath, this article suggests that the religious concept of environmental stewardship provides promise for a viable and workable moral framework for sustainability discourse in Africa. The paper concludes that this is practically realisable in two main ways (i) religious groups themselves as individuals or institutions/groups developing environmental sustainability norms and values, such as those of the Sabbath, as a moral duty, and (ii) religious norms and values, such as that of the Sabbath, serving as eco-dimensional resources for sustainable thinking.

The need for a more inclusive science of elephant conservation

AbstractLargely absent from the current scientific dialog is recognition of which voices should contribute to decisions on the future of Africa's elephants, particularly those living in the Kavango‐Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area. We argue that elephant conservation policy must take into account the voices of the people bearing the cost of living with wildlife, as well as the nations with the responsibility of hosting elephant populations. Southern African elephant conservation is a 'wicked problem', which is best addressed through small wins approaches. Specifically, research on changes in local political and governance dynamics resulting from community conservation programs is needed, to identify new modalities for community level engagement. Additionally, research into policy implications, as well as seasonal resource needs of humans and wildlife, from zoning and corridor development to facilitate landscape level movement is needed. A modular approach to research for ensuring functional social–ecological landscapes within the KAZA context could help sustain both wildlife and communities in the region.

Eating game: proteins, international conservation and the rebranding of African wildlife, 1955-1965.

Around 1960, leading figures in the international conservation circuit - such as Julian Huxley, Frank Fraser Darling and E. Barton Worthington - successfully propagated new visions about the value of undomesticated African mammals. Against traditional ideas, they presented these mammals as a highly efficient source of protein for growing African populations. In line with this vision, they challenged non-interventionist ideals of nature preservation, and launched proposals for active management through game 'ranching' and 'cropping'. As such, they created a new socio-technical imaginary for Africa's future, in which the consumption of wildlife meat took up a central position. This article explores the motivations of Western conservationists for this drastic rebranding. It argues that the rationale of considering African wildlife in terms of protein played an important symbolical role at various levels. It was crucial in the reorganization of the transnational networks of conservation, but also in the boosting of their scientific reputation, in the restructuring of their institutional ties, and in their attempts to maintain an authoritative position for Western ecologists in a rapidly decolonizing world.

From Russia with love: medical modernities, development dreams, and Cold War legacies in Kenya, 1969 and 2015

AbstractIn 1966, a new hospital was being built in western Kenya with Soviet aid. Designed by Soviet architects and planners, with equipment transported from the USSR, it was to be the largest hospital in Kenya. Still referred to today by Kenyans as ‘Russia’, it was the pet project of Oginga Odinga, the central figure of political opposition in postcolonial Kenya, who cultivated friendship with the USSR. Like the training offered to African students at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, the hospital was a gift of the Soviets, a material embodiment of medical modernity, socialist internationalism and Africa's hopeful future. However, it soon became deeply embroiled in Kenya's Cold War politics. This article explores the remains and legacies of these Soviet gifts, tracing their connections to visions of progress and development, decolonization and struggles for political freedom in postcolonial Kenya. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, archival material, newspaper reports and interviews with Kenyans who were educated in the Soviet Union, I trace how, in institutional, bureaucratic, affective and biographical remains, diverging dreams and anticipations of progress and development converged and collided. Russia, like the city of which it forms a part, emerges as a palimpsest: a site of hopes and dreams, violence and disappointment, and the anticipation of futures.

Transforming international development

THE SUSTAINABLE FUTURES IN AFRICA (SFA) NETWORK<br/> The Sustainable Futures in Africa (SFA) Network is an interdisciplinary collective that brings together researchers, educators, and communities of practice that acknowledge the situated and complex nature of practices and conceptions of sustainability. The Network aims to build understanding, research, and practice in socio-ecological sustainability in Africa.<br/> Specifically, the Network includes the participation of researchers (from geography and earth sciences, community and adult education, applied social arts, health sciences, and engineering); third-sector organisations (working with environmental and social sustainability, with arts and cultural practice, and with community engagement in African contexts); and community stake-holders (living and working in areas of focus). Participants currently span the Uganda, Botswana, Nigeria, Malawi, and the UK, and the reach of the network continues to expand.<br/> THE NETWORK'S AIMS ARE:<br/> To address the relationship between social, cultural, and ecological factors in sustainability in Africa through interdisciplinary research initiatives To discover opportunities in the disparities between ontologies of the global north and the global south inherent in international collaborations and global endeavours To shape and support new opportunities for impact and inquiry that address locally-articulated, socio-ecological challenges The Network’s current infrastructure includes a website (https://sustainablefuturesinafrica.com/) and social media platforms; a growing base of research, funding to support knowledge sharing and capacity strengthening (ESRC, EPSRC & SFC); and a core group of scholars, practitioners, and support staff who are providing the leadership and administration of this initiative.

Urban Africa’s futures: perspectives and implications for agenda 2063

Purpose The implications of Africa’s growth and urbanisation are the subject of much interest and speculation, and are central to the vision of the African Union’s Agenda 2063. The purpose of this paper is to compare the dominant perspectives on urban futures in Africa to emerging directions in futures and urban thinking, suggesting alternative policy approaches for Africa’s urban agenda. Design/methodology/approach The paper scans and sorts through how Africa’s growth and urbanisation are being understood and framed by various futurists and other futures-commentators. It takes the form of a discussion of the issue of how, why and by whom a series of data points, trends and their implications are being computed and combined, and with what validity, so to inform policy and planning responses. Findings The paper argues from its findings that futuring about urban Africa has been intense, but not particularly objective, neutral or even empirically grounded. Emerging directions in anticipation theorisation and experimental approaches such as “urban tinkering” are proposed as possibly offering alternative approaches to how nations and policymakers might think and act on urban Africa’s futures. Originality/value This original interrogation of which and how actors anticipate Africa’s urban futures could be used to expand beyond the urban visions, assumptions and futuring conventions reflected in Africa’s Agenda 2063, as well as processes advancing the global sustainable development goals and UNHabitat’s new urban agenda.

Rapid Pleistocene desiccation and the future of Africa's Lake Victoria

The effects of precipitation changes on tropical East African ecosystems and human populations is poorly understood due to the complex interplay between global and regional processes and missing data from key regions and time periods. We generate a water-budget model for Lake Victoria, the largest tropical lake in the world, the source of the White Nile, and a region that supports some of the densest human populations in Africa, that assesses the impact of changing climate on lake levels and the rate of lake level change. Model results demonstrate that significant changes in the size and volume of Lake Victoria are possible in response to changes in temperature, precipitation, and orbital forcing. This modeling indicates that Lake Victoria can transition back and forth between modern lake levels and complete desiccation in centuries to a few millennia, which is rapid enough to allow for two previously observed desiccation events between 14-18 ka, during which time the lake drained and refilled twice. Combined observations from modeling and estimates of paleoprecipitation indicate that Lake Victoria was likely desiccated between 94-36 ka. This dry interval partially overlaps the megadrought (140-70 ka) identified in Lakes Malawi and Tanganyika further south, and the cooler, drier conditions identified in the Gulf of Aden between 75-50 ka. This prolonged desiccation was probably driven by eccentricity-enhanced precession and high-latitude forcing that affected the Congo Air Boundary convergence. Using future climate projections, our model also predicts that at current rates of temperature change and previous rates of lake level fall, Lake Victoria could have no outlet to the White Nile within 10 years, and Kenya could lose access to the lake in <400 years, which would significantly affect the economic resources supplied by Lake Victoria to the East African Community.

Three Varieties of Africa's Industrial Future

Three Varieties of Africa's Industrial Future

'AFRICOM: Neo-colonialism Impacts the Class Struggle of Africans?'

In this paper, the objectives and mission of AFRICOM will be examined in comparison to its actual practices to assess the true nature of its presence in Africa and its impact on the class struggle of Africans. To fully understand the interest of the United States in Africa; US foreign policy, and the establishment of United States’ Africa Command (AFRICOM), one must examine these concepts for understanding. Discussing the history of the United States capabilities, intentions and motivations is necessary for insight for interpreting the past, present, and future of Africa and its’ relationship with the US. This research will help examine if AFRICOM is an instrument of US foreign policy in the form of neo-colonialism or diplomacy and the impact to the class struggle to Africans. Kwame Nkrumah stated that neo-colonialism: “…is a greater danger to independent countries than is colonialism. …In neo-colonialism, however, the people are divided from their leaders and, instead of providing true leadership and guidance which is informed at every point by the ideal of the general welfare, leaders come to neglect the very people who put them in power and incautiously become instruments of suppression on behalf of the neo-colonialism.” Also, this paper will offer insight on if the interests of Africans and African Americans are really served by Africans. Peter Pham’s research concluded that AFRICOM has been viewed by some policymakers and commentators as a US foreign policy used to colonize Africa. Tsenay Serequeberhan concluded that the United States is plays apart in neo-colonialism. He stated: “Today, in the last decade of the twentieth century, the United States is the dominant superpower and the harbinger of a new ‘new world order’ dominated by the West (i.e., NATO). In fact, paraphrasing Lenin and Nkrumah, one could describe this ‘new world order’ as the latest, if not the highest, stage of neocolonialism in which the United States, under the guise of the United Nations, rules the world, and smart bombs enforce ‘international law’.” AFRICOM should be examined and analyzed to see if the mission of AFRICOM is meeting its objectives. Concluded by Peter Pham, AFRICOM was established to “bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote US common goals of development, health, education, democracy and economic growth in Africa by strengthening bilateral and multilateral security of cooperation with African states and creating new opportunities to uplift their capabilities.” From Pham’s research, there are concerns from the people of Africa and within the United States that the interest of Africa is not the same under AFRICOM. To know if AFRICOM is an instrument of US foreign policy, one must analyze the US foreign policies of post-colonial United States administration with Africa and the interest in Africa to find patterns, trends, and underlying economic interests. The theoretical framework of which this research will be analyze through is the theories of power elite and dependency. The power elite theory is used as a lens to examine the interactions between Africa and its’ people and individuals of business, government, and military who are powerful and influential to make decisions concerning Africa’s cultural, economic and social well-being. The dependency theory will help explain the how developing nations, such as Africa are economically exploited by advanced nations, such as the United States. The theories will help gain insight into AFRICOM, to understand its’ true intentions and motives with Africa and its’ people. In order to understand the purpose of class struggle, and its’ connection to Africa, the history and intent must be analyzed and examined. The class struggle will be viewed through the lens of Karl Marx, Pierre Bourdieu, Kwame Nkrumah, W. E. B. Du Bois, Jacob Carruthers, Julius Nyerere, Frantz Fanon, Ali Mazrui, Claude Ake, and Chairman Mao Tsetung.

THE DYNAMICS OF AFRICA IN WORLD AFFAIRS: FROM AFRO-PESSIMISM TO AFRO-OPTIMISM?

Os assuntos africanos contribuem para moldar o mundo, e a África, por sua vez, está sendo moldada pelas dinâmicas dos processos e das estruturas internacionais. A posição e o papel da África na política mundial tem sido objeto de várias interpretações, entre Afro-pessimistas e Afro-otimistas. O objetivo deste artigo é examinar, a partir de uma perspectiva histórica, a África nas relações mundiais, da escravidão ao colonialismo; soberania, Estados africanos e a política mundial; a África e a economia política global; a África e as organizações internacionais, particularmente a ONU; as relações africanas com as potências econômicas tradicionais e emergentes, e o futuro da África na política mundial. Os estudos sobre os assuntos africanos devem levar em consideração a realidade histórica da emergência da África no sistema mundial, sua existência e os elementos de continuidade e de transformação nas relações entre os Estados africanos e o resto do mundo. As relações internacionais da África se expandiram para um engajamento para além das grandes potências, como os Estados Unidos, a Grã-Bretanha e a França, para incluir potências emergentes, como a China e a Índia. Dessa maneira, a narrativa sobre a África está gradualmente mudando de um continente sem esperanças para uma ideia de ascensão africana. Dados estes desenvolvimentos, a África deve agir como uma unidade ao abordar seus diversos desafios, devendo buscar engajar a comunidade internacional como ator igualmente importante na política internacional. O artigo recomenda que a relação entre a África e a comunidade internacional deve igualmente passar por uma mudança. Esta relação deve ser enraizada nos princípios de igualdade das nações e dos povos, na colaboração mútua por interesses mútuos e no respeito pela habilidade e pelo direito dos africanos para liderar sua própria mudança.

Africa energy future: Alternative scenarios and their implications for sustainable development strategies

The long-term forecasting of energy supply and demand is of prime importance in Africa due to the steady increase in energy requirements, the non-availability of sufficient resources, the high dependence on fossil-fuels to meet these requirements, and the global concerns over the energy-induced environmental issues. This paper is concerned with modelling possible future paths for Africa's energy future and the related emissions. Future energy demand is forecasted based on socio-economic variables such as gross domestic product, income per capita, population, and urbanisation.The Long-range Energy Alternative Planning System (LEAP) modelling framework is employed to analyse and project energy demand and the related emissions under alternative strategies for the period of 2010–2040. Results of scenarios including business-as-usual (BAU) policies, moderate energy access and accelerate energy access policies, renewable energies promotion and energy efficiency policies and their environmental implications are provided.The study provides some policy insights and identifies synergies and trade-offs relating to the potential for energy policies to promote universal energy access, enable a transition to renewable energy, and mitigate climate change for a sustainable development.

Agricultural commercialisation models, agrarian dynamics and local development in Ghana

The renewed commitment of African states to modernising agriculture has reignited longstanding debates about different models of agricultural commercialisation. Which forms of commercialisation models will reduce land dispossession and the impoverishment of smallholders, and transform smallholder agriculture and the wider economy? Of the three broad models of agriculture commercialisation in this debate – plantation, contract farming and medium-scale commercial farming – contract farming has been identified as central to the future of Africa’s commercial agriculture. This paper provides empirical evidence from Ghana on the impacts of these three models on land, labour/employment, livelihoods and local economic linkages. Our findings show that the plantation and the commercial farming areas have highly commercialised land relations, land scarcity and high land prices, compared to the outgrower area where traditional systems of accessing land still dominate, enabling families to produce their own food crops while also diversifying into wage labour and other activities. Food insecurity was highest in the plantation area followed by the commercial area, but lowest in the outgrower area. Here, semi-proletarianised seasonal workers combine self-provisioning from their own farms with wages, and this results in better livelihood outcomes than for permanent workers in plantations and commercial farms. Due to the processing units in the plantation and the outgrower models, they provided more employment. However, the casualisation of labour and gender discrimination in employment and access to land occur in all three cases. All three models generated strong economic linkages mainly because they combined attributes such as processing, provided markets for nearby farmers, induced state infrastructural development and diffused technology in competitive ways. The effects of the models on household and local development are coproduced by their interaction with pre-existing conditions and wider national economic structures.