Ordinary Africans Research Articles

African traditional institutions and support for democracy

ABSTRACT Existing research emphasizes popular support for democracy as a key ingredient of democratic regime consolidation. Both formal and informal institutions are commonly seen as the key actors that generate the requisite attitudinal shift, socializing ordinary citizens to adopt democratic values. It is thus puzzling that existing studies of attitudes towards democracy in the developing world have neglected to consider the impact of widely prevalent traditional institutions. Not only do these institutions vary considerably in their own democraticness, they also play a prominent role in the daily lives of many citizens. Filling this lacuna in extant knowledge, this study links a continent-wide dataset of the institutional features of contemporary traditional institutions in Africa with over fifty thousand survey respondents. The results indicate that the degree of democraticness exhibited by traditional institutions is a robust if weak predictor of ordinary Africans’ support for democracy.

African Vernacular Symbols of Black Intersex Children in Sinethemba Ngubane's Installations (2007-2016)

African Vernacular Symbols of Black Intersex Children in Sinethemba Ngubane's Installations (2007-2016)

Early Statehood and Support for Autocratic Rule in Africa

Recent work highlights the importance of pre-modern political practices for explaining persistent institutional features, including representative democracy. Typically, this argument is institutional in nature—pre-industrial practices are hypothesized to either bolster or retard the transmission of democratic institutions. This article proposes a separate channel through which legacies of early statehood continue to impact the prospects of democratic governance. Using survey data from Africa, we document a positive relationship between early statehood development and support for autocratic rule among ordinary Africans. This finding is robust to a wide range of pre- and post-treatment covariates, country and survey round fixed effects, as well as an instrumental-variable design. The identified relationship is particularly prominent in respondents from precolonially centralized ethnic groups in former British colonies, suggesting the importance of locally surviving traditional institutions for propagation of norms that owe their origins to precolonial autocratic socialization.

Africans' Durable Demand for Democracy

The "supply" of democracy in Africa is under threat not only from the covid-19 pandemic, but also from rising insurgencies in parts of the continent, the growing influence of China with its indifference to democratic governance, and the internal challenges facing some Western democracies. Much of Africa remains caught up in a struggle between leaders who would circumscribe democracy and retreat from democratic openings and individuals who lay themselves on the line to defend and extend them. Data from recent Afrobarometer surveys confirm that most ordinary Africans remain unflinching in their preference for democracy and core democratic norms and institutions.

Presence through absence? Understanding the role of capital in the African Human Rights Action Plan

AbstractThis study examines the African Human Rights Action Plan (AHRAP) through the lens of Upendra Baxi's germinal theory on the emergence in our time of a ‘trade-related, market-friendly human rights’ (TREMF) thesis that is challenging the specific understandings of ‘people-centric’ human rights that are predicated in the letter and spirit of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDH). Baxi contends, instead, that the dominant strands of the contemporary understandings of human rights are – for the most part – designed to protect the interests of global capital. That said, human rights frameworks in low-income countries need to be studied with a view to what they say and don't say about global capital. Despite its attempt to facilitate a progressive realisation of human rights in Africa, the AHRAP does not rise far enough above the TREMF paradigm to re-locate itself within the UDH one. This is due to the AHRAP not adequately theorising and analysing the role of capital in the (non)realisation of human rights in Africa. By allowing trade and market practices to slip to a significant extent beyond its purview, the AHRAP privileges – to a significant degree – the needs/interests of capital over the human rights of ordinary Africans. That is, the victims of the excesses of capital in Africa are reincarnated in the AHRAP document by the fact of their exclusion from it.

Anti-Afropolitan ethics and the performative politics of online scambaiting

ABSTRACT Online scambaiting problematises the identity of the 419 scammer whose virtual labours connect significantly to the digital dimensions of Afropolitanism. When examined through the photographic practices demanded of 419 scammers in several Internet communities, scambaiting, a form of Internet vigilantism that is targeted at online scammers to avert scam, produces epistemic violence which evacuates the black male body of human dignity. Although scambaiting is potentially an ethical project, it embeds a system of oppression that generates Afropolitan masculinities, caricatured performances of the bodies of 419 scammers exhibited online as objects of shame. As a philosophical and aesthetic response to translocality and mobility, Afropolitanism stresses the cultural experiences and agency of ordinary Africans who assert a global sense of awareness. As both the Afropolitan subject and the 419 scammer are entangled in the assertion of agency, the globalism of both is shown to converge at the intersection of the digital. Building on Lisa Nakamura's essay on dogshaming, I argue that the sexual exploitation of black bodies on scambaiting websites gestures at technology's complicity in interpellating digital subjects and circulating social injustices. Unlike Nakamura, I foreground the performative aspects of scambaiting and connect these to Afropolitanism's intrinsic digitality.

Big Man Rule in Africa: Are Africans Getting the Leadership They Want?

Abstract Despite the flurry of democratic transitions in the 1990s, the African political arena continues to be dominated by Big-Man rulers who have appropriated and embraced many of the personalistic traits of their predecessors. This is demonstrated, among others, by leaders who seek to circumvent the new constitutional rules to prolong their hold on power. The perpetuation of personalism and deep-rooted presidentialism has led numerous observers to contend that these powerful and personalized forms of rule are reflective of the wider African political culture that is disposed to accept personal rule. Thus far, the argument that ordinary Africans are supportive of personal rule has been based primarily on the inability of elections to dislodge many of the Africa’s strongmen from power without directly testing the attitudes and opinions of ordinary Africans about the type of leadership that they have and want. Using data from five waves of surveys covering a total of 15 countries that were carried out in 2002, 2005, 2008, 2012 and 2014, we examine popular attitudes on the type and nature of leadership that is preferred by ordinary African citizens. The findings show that while most Africans recognize the prevalence of powerful and personalistic rule, they nonetheless overwhelmingly reject these forms of leadership. Africans, in other words, are not getting the type of leadership they want.

Ethnically Biased? Experimental Evidence from Kenya

Abstract Ethnicity has been shown to shape political, social, and economic behavior in Africa, but the underlying mechanisms remain contested. We utilize lab experiments to isolate one mechanism—an individual's bias in favor of coethnics and against non-coethnics—that has been central in both theory and in the conventional wisdom about the impact of ethnicity. We employ an unusually rich research design involving a large sample of 1300 participants from Nairobi, Kenya; the collection of multiple rounds of experimental data with varying proximity to national elections; within-lab priming conditions; both standard and novel experimental measures of coethnic bias; and an implicit association test (IAT). We find very little evidence of an ethnic bias in the behavioral games, which runs against the common presumption of extensive coethnic bias among ordinary Africans and suggests that mechanisms other than a coethnic bias in preferences must account for the associations we see in the region between ethnicity and political, social, and economic outcomes.

Can the poor fight back? A multilevel analysis of corruption, poverty and collective demand for accountability in Africa

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the effects of the perceptions of corruption and personal experience of bribery on the propensity for ordinary Africans to support collective action-based anti-corruption tactics. It also evaluates how poverty shapes the association between corruption and support for collective civic action against corruption. The paper bases its findings on the multilevel level regression analysis of public opinion data from 35 African countries. The results show that an increase in experience of paying bribes increases poor people’s preference for anti-corruption tactics based on collective action. Furthermore, individuals who perceive corruption to be widespread are significantly more likely to support collective action as their country’s poverty level rises. These findings strongly challenge the view recently expressed in some of the literature that high levels of corruption erode the willingness of especially poor Africans to bring corruption under control.

“The Bag Is My Home”: Recycling “China Bags” in Contemporary African Art

“The Bag Is My Home”: Recycling “China Bags” in Contemporary African Art

Africa is on the verge of a major health crisis and the need for nutrition and health surveys is imperative.

The African region may be reaching a tipping point for a major health crisis. Over the last few decades for example, there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of obesity and associated comorbidities. This alarming trend is attributed to the rapid urbanization, increase in income, and unhealthy lifestyles among many others. Most importantly, managing and treating non-communicable diseases (NCDs) is expensive and proving to be beyond the reach of ordinary Africans. Interestingly, Africa has not fully eradicated undernutrition particularly micronutrient malnutrition especially among women and children. Additionally, HIV/AIDs, malaria, diarrheal diseases and other preventable infectious diseases continue to pose serious threat to the health of the populace. The management of NCDs is challenging and costly as most healthcare systems on the continent are largely built for the provision of curative care for communicable diseases. This article proposes the institution of nutrition and health surveys in individual countries to monitor trends. We believe this approach, in addition to addressing lifestyle and behavioral factors, may be effective in curbing the rising phenomenon of obesity and NCDs.

Ancestor-reverence as a Basis for Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance’s Quest to Re-humanise the World: An African Philosophical Engagement

Pan-Africanism is an ideological framework whose emphasis is on unity and liberation of all Africans who were colonised on the African continent, and those in the diaspora who were forcibly dislocated from Africa and dispersed as slaves. The African Renaissance is a pan-Africanist project that seeks to restore to the Africans the spiritual and material values that were dented by colonialists and enslavers. In 1963, a number of African states that had gained independence formed the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to pursue the goals of pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance. One of the major criticisms against the OAU and its successor, the African (AU), was and continues to be that their pan-Africanism is reduced to an elite project by reducing pan-Africanism to a government-to-government relationship, instead of a people-to-people relationship. This means that ordinary Africans are excluded from being directly engaged in finding solutions to the spiritual, political, economic and social ills that continue to haunt the African continent in their quest to re-humanise themselves following the dehumanising colonialism and slavery. Through a philosophical approach, an argument is made that a serious, critical examination of Ancestor-Reverence will expose its potential to give expression to a highly desired sense of African solidarity, people-to-people pan-Africanism, and a fulfilment of the African Renaissance’s quest for re-humanising not only Africans but the human race as a whole.

Thabo Mbeki’s African developmental agenda through Pan-Africanism and the African renaissance

ABSTRACTIn 1996, the then South African deputy president thabo Mbeki opened parliament with his since then acclaimed ‘I am an African’ speech. Subsequently, Mbeki publicly persuaded Africans to embrace and advance the concept of an African renaissance for Africa’s development. While Mbeki’s African renaissance project was welcomed on the one hand; on the other, it was anticipated that it would be an elitist project. In this article, it is argued that to the contrary, the African renaissance as pursued by Mbeki has sought to benefit ordinary Africans in a practical sense. This article uses a historical narrative approach so as to give a historical context against which Mbeki’s African renaissance emerged, highlighting the successes, failures, constraints, setbacks and challenges that he had to confront. the argument is that African intellectuals and academics who correctly point out the absence of a mass-based African renaissance movement must not stand apart and merely point fingers, but must be actively engaged in the realisation of the African renaissance ideals.

ETHNOGRAPHIES OF MARGINALITY

Africanist discourse today displays a strong, widespread and growing sense of optimism about Africa's economic future. After decades of decline and stagnation in which Africa found itself reduced to the margins of the global economic stage, upbeat Afro-optimism seems fully justified. One only needs to consider African economies' solid growth rates, the emergence of new export markets earning unprecedented quantities of foreign exchange, and the rise of novel groups such as innovative African entrepreneurs (Taylor 2012) and urban-based middle classes (Simone 2004). Ironically, Africa's bright future stands in strong contrast to the stagnancy of European and American economic powers, once seen as superior to their African relatives. Deeply held feelings of Afro-pessimism, affecting intellectuals as well as ordinary Africans, are thus giving way to almost millennial expectations of Africa's economic future: the continent's imminent catching up with a degree of private and public prosperity so commonly registered elsewhere on the globe. Some go as far as to declare the rise of a proper African renaissance wherein Africa can (finally!) claim its rightful position on the global stage.

Representations of Ebola and its victims in liberal American newspapers

Abstract Combining critical discourse analysis and the cognitive theory of metaphor, the study analyses hard news on Ebola from two American newspapers of a liberal political orientation, The New York Times and The New York Daily News, to investigate metaphoric representations of the disease and portrayals of its victims. It is revealed that both newspapers heavily rely on a single conceptual metaphor of EBOLA AS WAR, with only two alternative metaphors of EBOLA AS AN ANIMATE/HUMAN BEING and EBOLA AS A NATURAL CATASTROPHE employed. All three metaphoric themes assign the role of a culprit solely to the virus, which stands in contrast to non-metaphoric discursive allocations of blame for the situation in Africa, assigning responsibility mainly to man-made factors. African victims tend to be impersonalized and portrayed as voiceless and agentless, rarely occupying the role of a “fighter” in the military metaphoric representation of the disease, which runs counter to the findings of recent studies detecting a change towards a more positive image of Africa in the media. Both newspapers fail to represent infected ordinary Africans as sovereign agents, hindering readers from reflexively identifying with them.

Feminist Empathy: Unsettling African Cultural Norms in The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives

Africa has produced some of the more exciting literary works of the 21st century, and most were written by women. One of the things that these women have in common is their preoccupation with the pain that the African woman's body is subjected to by her society due to her gender. The writers are not shy about being called feminists, quite in contrast to the generation of writers before theirs. How are we to understand the concerns of these writers? What is the relationship between their feminist concerns and those of their literary and intellectual foremothers in Africa? This article re-examines African feminism, and suggests feminist empathy as a theoretical approach to African women's writings. Using Lola Shoneyin's novel The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives as an example, I argue that the writers employ the riches of empathy as a social, liberatory virtue that not only throws light on the pains of ordinary Africans, but also can enhance human flourishing in African communities.

Guerrilla healthcare innovation: creative resilience in Zimbabwe’s chimurenga, 1971–1980

Drawing from the last five years of chimurenga, Zimbabwe’s war of self-liberation from the early 1960s to 1980s, this paper shows that the most important aspect of technology and innovation in Africa is not the technology and innovation itself, but the African spirit of creative resilience born of the specificities of struggles its people have endured. By creative resilience is meant a phenomenon whereby, even where death is the outcome, and where the situation is insurmountable, people do not just surrender to fate, but die fighting. As a site of creative resilience, chimurenga is the ultimate site of creative labor and a vast laboratory, not simply a destination for incoming technologies, or a 'user' space but generative of its own insurgent and counter-insurgent innovations. Focusing on the communal war effort involving guerrillas and ordinary Africans in the rear bases of Mozambique and Zambia and on the front inside Zimbabwe, the paper makes its argument through a focus on healthcare innovation.

More Than Just von Lettow-Vorbeck

This article assesses the impact and significance of the First World War in sub-Saharan Africa. Colonial territories were drawn into the war effort in a variety of ways because they were ruled by European powers at war with one another, and because the continent was of strategic significance.While men and material resources were extracted from Africa and while parts of it were devastated by hostilities, at the same time large areas experienced little disturbance. The study explores the wide range of responses to the war displayed by ordinary Africans and considers its larger political legacy for subjects of the colonial order

The Big Question: Upwardly Mobile: What role should technology play in Africa’s development?

The Big Question: Upwardly Mobile: What role should technology play in Africa’s development?

A German-Christian Network of Letters in Colonial Africa as a Repository for ‘Ordinary’ Biographies of Women, 1931–1967

This study explores the possibilities of extracting biographies of ‘ordinary Africans’, especially women, from the epistolary networks of a transcontinental Lutheran community of readers. Due to the enthusiastic efforts of a number of German deaconesses, women from British colonial Africa whose narrations might otherwise not have been recorded, participated in conversations with women in Nazi, and thereafter West as well as East Germany. Mission evidence supports the argument that in colonial Africa religion opened up one of the few spaces for African and European women to collaborate in an otherwise segregated society. While the network was initiated in the name of their common faith and sustained with German church funding (and British colonial infrastructure), the content of the letters was far from restricted to religious matters. The article contends that these epistles reflected an awareness amongst rural female African participants of their position in a much larger geopolitical space – and even a world church. Thus the label ‘ordinary’ refers to the status of the African women writers in their local communities and church congregations rather than their horizons of expectation. Their fragmentary biographies or life-histories, from both colonial Tanganyika and the Transvaal, need to be viewed within the context of their interaction with their German facilitators and the members of the female Christian reading community in Europe – who were the intended audience envisaged by the African women narrators.