Lusophone Africa Research Articles

Biography and contributions of Joaquim do Espírito Santo (1901-1984) to the botany of Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe

A biography of Joaquim Viegas da Graça do Espírito Santo (1901–1984) is provided by integrating information from botanical collections and from his record as a civil servant. Born in São Tomé Island (São Tomé and Príncipe), he finished his studies in Portugal in 1924, spent most of his career as an agricultural technical engineer in Guinea-Bissau (1927–1956), and after retiring continued collecting, mostly in São Tomé. He collected at least 5 412 herbarium specimens, including 23 types of plant names. He remains the most prolific plant collector in Guinea-Bissau and is a somewhat neglected collector in São Tomé and Príncipe. He also produced 22 publications. Finally, these contributions are contextualised, taking into consideration that he was one of the few non-white plant collectors from the Portuguese colonial period, while being a member of a family that was pivotal in the inception of independence movements in Lusophone Africa.

Conciliating Subaltern and Liminal Geopolitics: Reggio Emilia’s City Diplomacy and the Geographies of Lusophone Africa’s Decolonisation

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the story of a generous popular mobilisation that made possible a peculiar experience of transnational cooperation since the early 1970s. That is, the campaigns in solidarity with Mozambican anticolonial resistance that made the small town of Reggio Emilia (Italy) a key place in the processes of Lusophone Africa decolonisation, to the point that an often-told anecdote reports that many Mozambican people sympathetic with anti-colonialist organisation Frelimo believed that Reggio Emilia was the ‘capital’ of Italy. Indeed, it was mostly from the Emilian town that concrete aid arrived from Italy to Frelimo’s clandestine guerrilla bases between Tanzania and Northern Mozambique. Based on the exceptional archives surviving in Reggio, which abundantly document the Reggio-Africa solidarity experience showing that it was not limited to Mozambique, and on original interviews with surviving protagonists, this paper extends and connects for the first time literature on city diplomacy with scholarship on critical, subaltern and liminal geopolitics of decolonisation. I especially argue for giving more consideration to a ‘radical city diplomacy’, which provides examples for constructing geopolitical challenges form below to the state and the territorial models that have dominated mainstream geopolitics hitherto.

The Politics and Aesthetics of Liberation: Revolution and Its Aftermath in Contemporary Artistic Practice from and about Lusophone Africa

Abstract This essay explores the ways in which artistic practices have revisited histories and memories of anti-colonial struggle, socialist revolution, and decolonization in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, and Portugal, while also addressing apartheid South Africa and the global Cold War. The cartography drawn here follows the histories and geographies of anti-colonial and anti-apartheid friendship without losing sight of several forms of imperialism, old and new. This essay examines the archival and historiographical potential of contemporary art in remembering histories of revolution and decolonization, notably those pertaining to cultural production and especially film, in the globalized, neoliberal present. My case studies are distinct but related works by Ângela Ferreira (Mozambique, 1958), Filipa César (Portugal, 1975), and Kiluanji Kia Henda (Angola, 1979), which include installation, video, photography, and performance for the camera. What sort of insights do the archival imaginations of pasts, presents and futures at play in these works offer? And how far can the ethics and politics of their aesthetics go?

Antifascist geopoetics, anticolonial dissidence and feminism: engaging with Joyce Lussu’s transnational stories

ABSTRACT This paper addresses matters of anticolonialist, anti-fascist and feminist geopoetics, analysing a case that is virtually unknown to Anglophone geographical readerships, namely the transnational trajectories and literary works of Italian activist, writer and translator Joyce Lussu (1912–1998). Drawing upon recent literature on geopoetics and literary geographies that commit to produce and analyse ‘hybrid texts’, I extend and put in communication for the first time scholarship on antifascist transnational geographies and literature on decolonial and feminist geopoetics, by discussing Lussu’s exceptional biographical and literary experience, one that first shows the importance of coherence between life and texts. Lussu practiced plural, multilingual and transnational ways to construct (feminist and radical) non-elitist knowledge by taking part in anti-fascist exile and resistance in the 1930s and 1940s. Later, she supported ‘Third World’ anticolonial and revolutionary movements by translating and internationally circulating poems from politically committed authors, especially from Western Asia and Lusophone Africa. Finally, I contend that Lussu’s nonconformist feminism, that she understood as an inclusive antiauthoritarian notion for the construction of a renewed society by deconstructing masculine institutions such as the State, the Church and the Army, can speak powerfully to current debates on scholarly and political dissidences.

Independent Publishing in Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and Guinea-Bissau

AbstractFocusing on the work of independent publishers in Lusophone Africa, this article investigates the strategies undertaken by the publishers to develop their catalog and run a publishing house in challenging environments. My examples will be drawn from ongoing initiatives by Filinto Elísio and Márcia Souto (Rosa de Porcelana, Cape Verde), Miguel de Barros and Tony Tcheca (Corubal, Guinea-Bissau), Abdulai Sila (Kusimon, Guinea-Bissau), Luiz Vicente (Nimba Edições, Guinea-Bissau/Portugal), Ondjaki (Kacimbo, Angola), Mbate Pedro, Jessemusse Cacinda, Sandra Tamele, and Dany Wambire (Cavalo do Mar, Ethale Books, Trinta Zero Nove, and Fundza, respectively, Mozambique). Although most scholarship on Luso-African writing has been devoted to the form and content of these literatures, there has been scant attention to the socio-history of publishers.

Reorganizing the Escudo Zone: Portuguese Monetary Policy and Empire-Union in Africa in the 1960s

AbstractIn the 1960s, the escudo zone, comprising Portugal and its African colonies, countered the trend of European decolonization. The Portuguese state reorganized monetary relations in the empire-state with the help of a new legal framework. The aim of this imperial economic reorganization was to establish a balance of payment relations which was expected to facilitate Portugal’s economic modernization and the country’s association with liberalizing economies in Western Europe that were experiencing rapid economic growth. However, the escudo zone soon became dysfunctional. Mata explains why the designs of economy building in a Portuguese empire-state could not be realized, given the trend toward independent political and economic development in Lusophone Africa.

On the margins of adaptation: writers and cinema in Lusophone Africa

En el presente trabajo se examina la participación de escritores en la creación y desarrollo de las cinematografías de los Países Africanos de Lengua Oficial Portuguesa (PALOP), sin entrar en la cuestión de la adaptación cinematográfica de textos literarios. Esta participación se ha llevado a cabo de maneras muy diversas: desde su presencia en instituciones encargadas de la política cinematográfica y en empresas hasta la creación de argumentos originales, la escritura de guiones e incluso, excepcionalmente, la dirección de películas. El trabajo, finalmente, se plantea en qué medida esta colaboración de escritores ha podido propiciar, o no, alternativas a los modelos cinematográficos canónicos, tanto en el ámbito de la ficción como en el de la no ficción.

“Dominating the Man’s Cock”? (Re)Imagining Femininities and Masculinities in Selected Francophone and Lusophone Literary Texts

This article focuses on selected literary texts from francophone and lusophone Africa, parts of the continent that are often dwarfed and marginalised by anglophone literary production. The article analyses the following texts: Infidels by Abdellah Taïa (Morocco), Femme nue femme noire by Calixthe Beyala (Cameroon), Niketche by Paulina Chiziane (Mozambique) and O Último Voo do Flamingo by Mia Couto (Mozambique). The article examines how female protagonists find agency in and through sex and sexuality. Female protagonists in the selected novels use their voices as well as the physical and the erotic potentialities of their bodies to destabilise, resist and challenge patriarchal notions of women’s sexuality as subservient to, and serving the pleasure of, men. These texts show that hegemonic masculinity is not as untouchable and sacrosanct as is commonly considered. Theoretically, this article draws on Kopano Ratele’s ideas on contested masculinities and Pumla Dineo Gqola’s thoughts on dismantling patriarchy. Through comparative analyses, this article imagines how women can liberate themselves from the oppressive yoke of patriarchy by undermining the perceived dominance of masculinity.

Civilising the Ex-Colonisers? Counter-Hegemonic Discourses at Workplaces in Maputo

This article follows the call in decolonial research to recognise other ways of knowing. It explores a specific kind of knowledge: namely, what we describe as ‘counterhegemonic civilising discourses’, or everyday efforts by the ex-colonised to civilise the ex-coloniser. In the article, we analyse Mozambican workers’ discursive attempts to teach what they see as ‘proper’ or ‘moral’ behaviour to Portuguese bosses and managers whom they meet at workplaces in Maputo. We have chosen to discuss this transmission of knowledge as a civilisation process, and we focus on forms of knowledge that concerns knowing how to do, or practical competences. This constitutes a break with the (post-)colonial civilising mission. The ‘white man’s burden’ of civilising the unwilling colonial worker is implicitly turned on its head when Mozambicans describe their strong dislike of uneducated Portuguese people’s behaviour and their own attempts at correcting this. Research on labour relations in colonial Mozambique is extensive and established, but this article moves the focus to contemporary relations of coloniality. It brings up three different sets of counter-hegemonic civilising discourses. The first concerns language and the use of blasphemies; the second has to do with social and moral norms and values in relation to sickness and death; the third concerns civic integration or the compliance with Mozambican rules and regulations. The everyday character of these discourses is important, and we see them as emerging from people’s struggle to challenge the abyssal line separating the epistemologies of the global north and south. The delineation of these inconspicuous discourses of civilisation is our contribution to the field of decolonial studies in lusophone Africa and to post-abyssal research on ‘emergence’.

Internationalization as an integrated process: Evidence from SMEs in Lusophone Africa

This study focuses on extant internationalization theories, attempting to elucidate the entry modes adopted by Lusophone African SMEs. It offers a critical overview of the leading frameworks, focusing on their primary attributes, challenges, and pitfalls in depicting similarities in the internationalization process and shortfalls in entry mode predictions. Based on the author’s challenges when investigating 29 Lusophone African SMEs in Mozambique and Angola in 2016, an integrated and more holistic framework for internationalization is proposed. It considers advancements in ICT and business digitalization via the internet, web-enabled tools, and platforms, including social media and online professional communities of practices.

The Place of Socialism in African Art

The Place of Socialism in African Art

Lusophone Africa: Past, Present and Future

Lusophone Africa: Past, Present and Future

The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) and the Luso-African identity

The article aims at searching for the correlation between the Luso-African identity, understood as a form of cultural identity based on the concept of Lusophony, and The Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), an international organisation that brings together countries whose official language is Portuguese. The CPLP is considered as an institutional emanation of the idea of Lusophony. However, for almost 25 years since its creation it still receives a lot of criticism. Despite the multiplicity of initiatives that it proposed, for a long time it seemed that the CPLP did not really move beyond the concept phase. Furthermore, until recently the organisation has focused mainly on cultural and political cooperation, leaving behind its enormous economic possibilities and provoking questions about an untapped potential of the CPLP. The paper attempts to reflect on the hypothesis that the limited capacities of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries regarding the African continent are, at least partially, related to the problem with Luso-African identity. The considerations presented in the article are based on the critical reading of the literature of the subject, qualitative analysis of the already existing data (official documents and the press, available statistics), as well as the author’s reflections drawn from observations, interviews and informal talks conducted during field research in Mozambique (2015) and Guinea-Bissau (2016), along with multiple study visits to Portugal (2011-2016), while realizing the research project devoted to the problem of state dysfunctionality in the Lusophone Africa.

The marginalisation of voice in the fight against climate change: The case of Lusophone Africa

Disregarding research not published in English may pose a risk to finding solutions for urgent global concerns, such as biodiversity loss, or climate change. To assess the extent of this ‘missing voice’, we compared the representation of 22 languages in scientific publications on climate change in Africa, indexed by widely used databases. Between 87 % and 95 % of publications were in English, with a small, but noteworthy, number in languages of the former European colonisers of Africa. We then assessed undergraduate monographs, master’s dissertations, doctoral theses, and peer-reviewed papers derived from the doctoral theses, that are about Lusophone Africa and written in Portuguese, and found this research largely not accessible in English on online databases. If the goal of researchers, practitioners and policy makers is to obtain climate change information on, or present solutions for, individual developing countries, cultures, or localised issues, then searching in English may exclude local, context specific knowledge. This may prevent global assessments from being truly global, or locally down-scalable, by biasing science towards a single world view that marginalises key local stakeholders.

Internationalisation as an Integrated Process: Evidence from SMEs in Lusophone Africa

Internationalisation as an Integrated Process: Evidence from SMEs in Lusophone Africa

Geopolitics of decolonisation: The subaltern diplomacies of Lusophone Africa (1961–1974)

This paper addresses the global engagement of certain African intellectuals who strove for the independence of Lusophone Africa. It does so using geopolitical lenses based on new and multilingual archives. Extending current scholarship on subaltern geopolitics, cultures of decolonisation, and critical development studies, I show the performance of the subaltern diplomacies deployed by political leaders such as Amílcar Cabral, Mário Pinto de Andrade, Agostinho Neto, Eduardo Mondlane, and Marcelino dos Santos in capturing international sympathy for their cause from other scholars, activists, and politicians at different levels (from grassroots movements to state leaders and international organisations) across the divides between Cold War blocs and the fields of the ‘First’, ‘Second’, and ‘Third World’. I argue that these endeavours disrupted mainstream narratives of development and Euro-centred ideas of assimilation, partly due to their emphasis on education and the production of subaltern histories and geographies that were instrumental to the national construction of new decolonised countries from so-called ‘Portuguese Africa’. In the 1960s and early 1970s, these intellectuals used the weapons of culture, public communication, and transnational networking as devices that were as important as the accomplishments of their fellow guerrilla fighters in the battlefield. Additionally, these stories confirm the importance of the archive for tracing cosmopolite, multilingual, and diasporic networks and their spatiality, as well as for doing critical geopolitics from perspectives other than Anglo- or Western-centred ones, thus decolonising geography.

The Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics of Migration in Contemporary Art from Angola and Its Diaspora

The Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics of Migration in Contemporary Art from Angola and Its Diaspora

Descolonização e resistência: a UNILAB e a formação de professores de História para o Brasil e a África.

Como conceber e pôr em prática um curso que atenda as expectativas e necessidades para a formação de professores para atuar no Brasil e na África Lusófona? É essa a questão que orienta as reflexões deste artigo. Nele, tomo como objeto a elaboração e a execução do Projeto Pedagógico Curricular (PPC) do Curso de Licenciatura em História da Universidade da Integração Internacional da Lusofonia Afro-Brasileira (UNILAB), refletindo sobre os desafios e as perspectivas de uma formação que visa a preparar professores para atuar no Brasil, em Angola, Cabo Verde, Guiné Bissau, Moçambique e Angola. Seu objetivo é problematizar a formação pensada no PPC e como esta foi posta em prática nos primeiros anos de existência do curso. A análise é dividida em dois eixos distintos e complementares, o primeiro deles aborda a formação histórica, refletindo sobre o esforço em construir e executar o currículo com base em princípios de recusa às narrativas eurocêntricas e de busca por uma abordagem descolonizada da História. O segundo eixo aborda a formação pedagógica, dedicando-se a pensar sobre os conteúdos obrigatórios da área da Pedagogia para os cursos de licenciatura e a execução do estágio supervisionado, analisando como o currículo proposto dialoga com a legislação brasileira para área de Formação de Professores, e em que medida essa legislação cria entraves à proposta formativa e aos objetivos o curso.

The Role of History in the Restructuring of the Relational Triangle Portugal – China – Lusophone Africa

The Role of History in the Restructuring of the Relational Triangle Portugal – China – Lusophone Africa

The Cultural Production of Lusophone Africa

The Cultural Production of Lusophone Africa Claire Williams The Portuguese colonial presence in Africa stretched over five centuries, until Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Príncipe achieved independence in the wake of the 1974 Carnation Revolution. For much of the twentieth century, imperial literary and cultural production tended to objectify and exoticise the populations of these countries, with a few exceptions, amongst which are the seminal novels published between the late 1930s and 1950s by Angolan author Fernando Monteiro de Castro Soromenho. Two short story collections that had an immediate and lasting impact were Luandino Vieira's Luuanda (1963) and Luís Bernardo Honwana's Nós matámos o cão-tinhoso (1964). Luuanda led to a confrontation between the Portuguese Writers' Association and that country's dictatorial regime, and Nós matámos o cão-tinhoso foregrounded the situation of the assimilado (a legal category recognising a level of 'civilised' behaviour in Black African citizens) under colonial rule. The independence struggles of the 1960s and 70s galvanised authors and artists to express their protests and mobilize their people. Revolutionary leaders, such as Amílcar Cabral (Guinea-Bissau), Agostinho Neto (later the first President of an independent Angola), and Marcelino dos Santos (Mozambique), wrote rousing poetry, as did Alda Espírito Santo (São Tomé), Noémia de Sousa (Mozambique), and José Craveirinha (Mozambique). Many of them had met while studying abroad at the Casa dos Estudantes do Império in Lisbon. Their works were anthologised and translated, and, as more literature from Portuguese-speaking Africa became accessible, literary critics like Manuel Ferreira in Portugal, and Russell Hamilton and Gerald Moser in the United States, began to analyse and teach them on university courses.1 Writers' associations, such as the União dos Escritores Angolanos (founded in 1975) and the Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos (founded in 1982), became important sources of support for aspiring writers. However, brutal civil war wreaked havoc as the newly independent countries fought their way to peace. The inequality of colonial rule was a recurrent theme in pro-independence protest literature, but it was soon replaced with criticism of different kinds of injustice: the upheavals and atrocities resulting from war, poverty, and displacement became the subject of later works, often attempting to come to terms with the traumas of the past. As well as dealing with these traumas, Portuguese-speaking African regimes have embraced global capitalism from the early 1990s onwards, to the detriment of forging a more equitable society, especially in oil- and diamond-rich Angola. Political corruption and social inequality have therefore been topics covered by more contemporary writers. In their introduction to the first special issue of the journal Research in African Literatures to be devoted to Lusophone African and Afro-Brazilian Literatures (2007), Lúcia Helena Costigan and Russell Hamilton acknowledge that African literature in Portuguese has often been neglected in favour of the English and French equivalents. This is still true, to a certain extent, but in the decade and a half since then, although there has not yet been a Nobel Prize for African literature [End Page 451] in Portuguese, many more writers are getting published (in their own countries and/or Portugal), as well as being translated into different languages, while their works have been turned into films or plays. Some of them—like Mozambicans Mia Couto, Paulina Chiziane, and João Paulo Borges Coelho; Angolans Pepetela, José Eduardo Agualusa, and Ondjaki; or Cape Verdean Germano Almeida—now reach international readerships, winning prizes and becoming the subjects of academic monographs. The postcolonial turn in the 1990s gave literary critics new tools with which to read and interpret the writing emerging from African nations. African literature in Portuguese were published in Portugal in special series by Porto Editora and Caminho since the 1970s, and were already being taught at some universities. This paved the way for critical readings and literary analyses published by academics such as Pires Laranjeira, Manuela Ribeiro Sanches, Ana Maria Martinho, Ana Mafalda Leite, and Inocência Mata. International scholars also began working more closely with Lusophone Africa: Laura Cavalcante Padilha, and Carmen Tindó Secco in Brazil...