sub-Saharan African Societies Research Articles

Restitution of African Cultural Heritage: Revisiting Natural Law Concepts of Statehood and Property in the Context of Colonial Spoliation

Abstract In the late nineteenth century, Western Powers launched military campaigns in sub-Saharan Africa resulting in the colonization of vast territories and the spoliation of cultural property. To justify the conquest, they asserted the supremacy of Western culture and disregarded principles of international law in their dealings with African states, communities, and individuals. This article examines colonialist legal justifications such as the denial of statehood of pre-colonial sub-Saharan African societies, the notion that conquest and spoliation were justifiable, and the belief that African legal systems lacked concepts of property. The article details why these arguments contradict well-established nineteenth-century legal principles, particularly state sovereignty and private property, which together form the conceptual basis for the prohibition of spoliation. The universal nature of those principles allows for the nondiscriminatory application and interpretation of historical law and consequently the protection of African pre-colonial states and private as well as public cultural property.

Pastor Nevers Mumba’s Quest to Actualize the Declaration of Zambia as a Christian Nation through “Zambia Shall Be Saved” Campaign, 1993–2021

Abstract This article is grounded in the findings from qualitative and interpretivist research based on secondary and primary data. Two analytic frameworks have been used to make sense of the data. The first is Stephen Ellis and Gerrie ter Haar’s hypothesis that politics in sub-Saharan African societies cannot be fully understood without reference to religious ideas therein; and the second is the notion of African Political Theology which, according to Emmanuel Katongole, means going beyond addressing realities of violence, civil unrest, poverty, tribalism, and corruption, but deploying the story of salvation in Jesus as a concrete social, material, political, and economic reality in the African social imaginary for the construction of modern Africa. The article argues that through “Zambia Shall be Saved” orations from 1993 to date, Pastor Nevers Mumba has been calling for actualizing the declaration of Zambia as a Christian Nation (henceforth referred to as “Declaration”) made by President Frederick Chiluba in 1991. Katongole’s understanding of African Political Theology provides an invaluable lens for conceptualizing Mumba’s “Zambia Shall be Saved” discourse. The Declaration remains a topical issue among Zambian and international analysts and the significance of this particular article lies in the fact that it relates Mumba’s cry of “Zambia Shall be Saved” to the new conversation on “Actualizing the Declaration” coined by the government of the republic of Zambia in 2016. Overall, the article seeks to contribute to an ongoing discourse on Zambia’s Christian nationhood.

Coronavirus Disease Vaccination Among Persons With Disabilities: Understanding Vaccine Perceptions and Hesitancy in Ghana.

The effects of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been felt globally and in all spheres of life. Developing vaccines was an important milestone in ensuring the protection of lives, but there are concerns about vaccine availability in sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries. The living conditions of persons with disabilities, in particular, in SSA societies have been described as deplorable and unsustainable, and they are at risk of discrimination. Such persons appear to be already struggling to obtain other basic services, and the extent of vaccine accessibility to this population remains unknown. This study aimed to assess the perceptions of persons with disabilities in Ghana of COVID-19 vaccines. Between July 2021 and December 2021, 336 persons with disabilities (hearing, visual, and physical) were recruited from two regions in Ghana. The attitude toward the COVID-19 vaccination scale was adapted for this study. The results showed that persons with disabilities were ambivalent toward vaccination, and differences were observed between participant groups. The background variables found to influence attitude were age, place of residence, educational qualification, gender, and COVID-19 acquisition status. The study concludes with a clarion call to policymakers to expedite public education for persons with disabilities.

Icono-diagnosis of therapeutic scarification in Sub-Saharan Africa

BackgroundBeyond the expression of thought and aesthetic considerations, works of art are proving to be real sources of information. Studied in several human sciences, they are also of interest in the medical field. Indeed, with human graphic representations, it is possible to establish a medical diagnosis thanks to an icono-diagnosis. This theme was discussed during a symposium at the quai Branly – Jacques Chirac museum and inspired this article. MethodologyBased on work dealing with different skin lesions and their circumstances of occurrence, this conceptual article deals with therapeutic scarification in sub-Saharan African cultures. DiscussionHaving existed in several cultures of the world, scarification has several meanings. Although they are tending to disappear, they are still present in many sub-Saharan African cultures. As a sociocultural marker, scarification also bears witness to a therapeutic tradition. Spiritual considerations as well as symbolic and graphic diversities within the different cultural groups lead to possible confusion. This raises the question of an effective icono-diagnosis and the keys necessary for a reliable diagnosis. PerspectivesIt is possible to establish an icono-diagnosis based on scarification in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the reliability of the diagnosis depends on a perfect knowledge of the cultures of origin studied. It is necessary to carry out a study of the cultural codes of the population studied prior to the diagnosis. Given the cultural and spiritual specificities of Sub-Saharan African societies, it seems interesting to us to open the fields of this research to human sciences whose implications seem obvious.

Effects of computed distances, and other determinant factors on place of child delivery in Magadi Ward, Kenya

The choice of place of delivery is still debatable in most sub-Saharan African societies’ especially pastoral communities. The decision on whether to deliver at a health facility or at home varies across households. This study sought to evaluate the effects of computed distance, demographic and socio-economic factors on the place of child delivery in rural Magadi, Kenya. The integration of both spatial and statistical techniques was adopted. Distances (straight-line distance, road network distance to the nearest health facility and primary facility) were computed using tools in the Network Analyst toolbox. Computed distances of 246 sampled households together with demographic and socioeconomic factors were further analysed using univariate and multivariate logistic regression. The findings showed that calculated road network distance to the primary facility was a determinant of access and use of place of delivery both for the adjusted and the unadjusted odds. Women aged 20 years or below, having more children, secondary education or above and those who are unmarried are more likely to deliver at health facility. Receiving 1 or 2 childbirth services from a health facility, being aware of a private actor who set up the health facility and involvement of the spouse in the decision-making of place of birth are also linked to the use of health facility for child delivery. Deliveries at home were related to family monthly income level, family occupation, opinion on health facility location and being aged between 21 – 30 years. It was found that though computed road distance to the primary facility was the dominant factor, other variables such as level of education, parity, awareness of local actors, other childbirth services received prior to child delivery and marital status determined whether a woman would access and use health facilities for child delivery.

Globalisation Paradoxes in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Social Reality in Eclipse

This paper challenges the dominant notion that globalisation has a neutral “win-win” outlook and the generalisation of “equal gains” and “equal pains” for all countries. The paper provides the dominant narrative on dimensions of globalisation but also dwells more on the global dichotomy approach in understanding this phenomenon. Drawing on analysis of secondary information, this paper examines the paradoxical problem of contested framing of the phenomenon and how it affects sub-Saharan African society. It distinguishes between the Western-oriented and sub-Saharan African perspectives in framing globalisation, which is a departure from the three other dominant narratives. Through a synthesis of available information and the author’s lived experience, this paper confirms that globalisation is not a neutral “win-win” phenomenon but a being that brings disproportionate gain and pain to the detriment of sub-Saharan Africa in numerous social spheres, as demonstrated in this paper. Based on the realities, mitigating approaches are proffered for African future development and social progress.

African and Not Religious: The State of Research on Sub-Saharan Religious Nones and New Scholarly Horizons

Sub-Saharan African societies are widely seen as highly religious. However, at least 30 million Sub-Saharan Africans identify themselves as “religious nones” and are supposedly not affiliated with any religious tradition. While research interest in religious nones has been growing in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, there is a dearth of literature on nones in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we offer an overview of this understudied subject and dwell on key challenges for studying African nones, including preconceived notions and structural oppositions. We further muse on the identity of African nones and consider differences from the characteristics established concerning Western nones. The article draws on quantitative data from across the region (primarily from Afrobarometer and Pew Research Center) and supplements them with interview data collected in Chad, Kenya, and South Africa.

Fiction as prosthesis: Reading the contemporary African queer short story

In this article, I read contemporary African queer fiction as a tool employed by writers to represent and rehumanise queer identities in Sub-Saharan African societies. In these societies, heteropatriarchal authorities strive to disable queer agency by dehumanising queer subjects. I argue that African queer identities, desires, and experiences are controlled and restricted under the heterosexual gaze, which strives to ensure that human sexuality benefits patriarchy, promoting heterosexual desire as ‘natural’ and authentically African and pathologising homosexuality. African writers then employ fiction as a means of rehumanising queer subjects in these disabling heteronormative societies to grant voice and agency to identities that have been multifariously subjugated and/or deliberately erased, and fiction acts as a type of prosthesis, a term I borrow from disability studies. Rewriting such lives in fiction does not only afford discursive spaces to queer identities, but also reconstructs the queer person as a human subject worth the dignity that they are often denied. In the article, I analyse a selection of six short stories from the collections Queer Africa 2: New Stories and Fairytales for Lost Children to demonstrate how these stories function as prosthesis for queer people in disabling societies.

A Re-Examination of Measures for Typifying Political Parties’ Philosophies, Policies and Democracy in Free Societies and Lessons for sub-Saharan Africa’s Emerging Societies

This article re-examines measures on how plentiful political parties’ philosophies and policies implant democracy in free societies, to adduce lessons for political parties in sub-Saharan Africa’s emerging societies. From Bawn et al.’s (2012) charaterising framework on political parties’ in free societies, I expand their theory of political parties by affirming that, interest groups, activists and lay voters, rather than leaders of political parties must be the key actors in policy-making and democratisation; as groups’ alliances develop collective plans and screen contestants for party nominations based on loyalties to parties’ agendas. This premise contrasts with those theories, which believe that, parties are tools for self-seeking leaders. The variance edifies, because parties dominated by interest groups, activists and voters, rather than leaders, are more responsive to voters’ preferences. Thus, I debunk the prevailing practices of political parties’ philosophies and policies in sub-Saharan African societies, wherein elective offices aspirants rebuff popularising in solving social problems, but scheme on narrow self-seeking predatory ambitions at the electorates’ chagrin.

Leveraging Women’s Leadership Talent to Promote a Social Justice Agenda in Ethiopian Schools

Background: Research that identifies and celebrates the positive attributes of women educational leaders advancing a social justice agenda in traditionally male-dominated, Sub-Saharan African (SSA) societies is sparse. Studying female educational leadership in SSA conceptually brings to the fore issues associated with the intersectionality of gender, leadership, pervasive abject poverty, and cultural mores from a critical theory lens that runs counter to the White, western, male conceptions of leadership underlying much of the existing literature in the field. Purpose: With a focus on Ethiopia, we sought to understand the way in which women educational leaders, as traditionally oppressed groups in a patriarchal society, utilize their past marginalization as they advance a social justice agenda to promote educational opportunities for traditionally underserved students, particularly females. Research Design: Using transformative leadership as our theoretical lens and semi-structured interviews as our methodology, we conducted a grounded phenomenological study of eight Ethiopian women who were in educational leadership positions ranging from assistant principal to regional supervisors. We recruited the women leaders through direct contact, reputational nomination, and leadership positions they held. Findings/Results: Our findings paint a portrait of these female leaders as tenacious and determined, with a strong sense of self-agency and moral courage, whose identities are born out of their humble beginning and multi-focal understanding of issues from being female, from poor communities, submersed in male-dominated culture. These identities drove the participants to work towards emancipatory policies to acknowledge and intervene in “power differences” that directly influence school performance for girls and women in Ethiopia. Conclusions/Recommendations: Increasing workforce diversity with respect to gender, recasting leadership preparation programs as equity-oriented institutions, and addressing key public policies to support women in leadership positions are foundational recommendations that can lead to gender equity in education in Ethiopia.

Towards Subjectivity

This article examines the ambiguity facing contemporary sub-Saharan African society. It explores the traditional Africa community, which had values embedded but that are now disintegrating. Communities have turned into primarily one symbols of identification and refuge without adding many values and meaning. Some individuals (as I sight from a context I understand—Kenya) have held their communities for their own personal and selfish gains, mostly for politics and when accused of corruption. On political, social, religious, and ecological matters, and in terms of a societal way forward, this article explores individuality within the community.

Matri-archive: A New Portal to Knowledge Production in African Studies

Abstract In An Intimate Rebuke, Laura Grillo uncovers for Western audiences what is taken for granted in numerous sub-Saharan African societies: the ontological status and cosmic authority postmenopausal Mothers have to disrupt injustice and restore stability during periods of social violence. Through her ethnographic research, she contributes new insights to the conversation on matriarchy, matricentricity (Amadiume), and mothernity (Oyěwùmí) in Africa.

Corruption in Sub-Saharan Africa - An Impediment to Economic Growth

Sub-Saharan Africa is faced with many challenges. It is a region bulging with resources but cursed with incredible political and economic greed. With a vast ethnic diversity and an often misconstrued cultural lifestyle, which puts the region on the marginalization line. From a historical context, the impact of colonialism has haplessly set the environment for low leadership standards. The background setting for Sub-Saharan Africa’s economic underdevelopment is uninhibited corruption that exists within Sub-Saharan African societies. This institutional corruption takes a triangular cause - cultural, economic and political; each, together with so many other factors threaten Sub-Saharan Africa’s socio-economic development.

Survivalism, collectivism and proud heritage: A study of informal arts and crafts entrepreneurship in rural Zimbabwe

Background: Entrepreneurship has most often been studied in the context of developed economies and results extrapolated to apply universally. This tells us little about entrepreneurship in other contexts, including in developing economy situations. In the developing world, entrepreneurship has been explored as a means of reducing poverty, but there has been little inspection of it from other perspectives. Aim: This article explores the motives and experiences of arts and crafts traders in rural Zimbabwe and provides information about the purposes of the business for financial and social life from the perspectives of our research participants. Method: The study used a qualitative methodology, conducting interviews with 12 rural arts and crafts traders. Results: The research identifies drivers, experiences and outcomes of entrepreneurship that are explained by the unique structural and sociocultural context, and the value ascribed to business refers both to financial income and the dissemination of culture and heritage. Evidence of specific sub-Saharan modes of conducting business, reflecting the collectivity, reciprocity and strong ethnic identity characteristics of sub-Saharan African societies also emerges. Conclusion: The article illustrates that western models of business and entrepreneurship may be limited in terms of informing us about the experiences in other contexts. We argue that research on entrepreneurship, and any policy on it in sub-Saharan Africa, takes cognisance of the non-western context and the potential for unique contextual business orientation and outcomes.

La France contemporaine face au défi de la créolisation

Inspired by Jane Gordon's book, Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon, this article examines the paradoxes of Creolization within the French context. How do post-colonial French identities of Maghrebi, Sub-Saharan African or Caribbean descent Creolize French society? Instead of being an opportunity that must be seized by the Nation, why is creolization perceived as an imminent threat to the Republic? How can one think of Creolizing politics in the former colonial power? How does Creolization compel us to rethink how we live together? And how does it require us to rethink freedom and equality for all? These are the questions at the heart of this article.

Prospects for Fertility Decline in Africa

Prospects for Fertility Decline in Africa

American plants in Sub-Saharan Africa: a review of the archaeological evidence

ABSTRACTAmerican plants play significant roles in Sub-Saharan African societies as foods, raw materials, medicines and ornamentals. Adopted over the past 500 years in the context of the Atlantic slave trade and European colonisation, the pathways by which these plants were culturally integrated are poorly understood. This paper reviews the current archaeological evidence for American plants in Sub-Saharan Africa and draws on botanical, material culture, spatial, historical and linguistic data to explore the social processes associated with the adoption of these new resources.

The more the merrier? Fertility and food insecurity among older Senegalese women

ABSTRACTThe number of children women have is a critical determinant of their future wellbeing. Often, adult children confer some protection against adverse conditions in their older ages. In many sub-Saharan African societies, it is expected that older women who typically have had many children, will benefit from their investment in children. Yet it is unclear if this is really the case. Using data from the 10 per cent micro-sample of the 2002 Senegalese Population and Housing Census, this study investigates the effect of the childbearing histories of older women (aged 60–85) on the likelihood that their households experienced food insecurity in the past year. Women who had had no children and those who had ever had two or more, were not significantly different from those who had had five or more – only those who had had one child were adversely affected. Based on principles of intergenerational altruism and moral obligation, I expected that food insecurity would decrease with increases in the number of surviving children. This pattern was generally found. However, among women in the bottom 40 per cent of the wealth distribution, the relationship was, at best, weak with respect to all of the fertility variables (children ever had, living, co-resident). The benefits of high fertility seem to accrue to relatively richer women – those in the top 60 per cent of the wealth distribution. Yet among these richer women, having fewer than three children and co-resident adult children were significant risk factors of food insecurity.

Closing the health gap in a generation: exploring the association between household characteristics and schooling status among orphans and vulnerable children in Swaziland

Swaziland has one of the highest HIV/AIDS prevalences in the world, which has contributed to many Swazi children being left as “orphans and vulnerable children” (OVC). In 2010, there were 78,000 AIDS orphans in the country and the number is expected to increase given the current HIV prevalence. The WHO aims to close the gap in a generation and eliminate health inequality; as a result the Swazi Government began in 2005 to provide financial support to the education of OVC. Prior research has indicated that household characteristics are some of the major determinants with respect to schooling status among children. We have examined the association between household characteristics and schooling status of OVC. Schooling status may vary by gender and by age, as well as by other sociodemographic factors, in sub-Saharan African societies, and therefore we have also included a comprehensive set of appropriate variables in all of our multivariate analyses. Using existing data from the Swaziland Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 2010, a total of 5890 children aged 7–18 years old were analyzed. The results from the multivariate logistic regressions showed that non-OVC were more likely than OVC to be in school (OR = 2.18, p < 0.001), even after taking other variables into considerations. The OVC in socioeconomically disadvantaged households, such as those with lower levels of household wealt, and those who resided in an urban area, were less likely to be in school. These findings suggest that education programs for OVC need to be household-appropriate.

Rethinking the Dualism of Regionalism vs. Universalism in the Light of the Sub-Saharan Experience with the Regulation of Foreign Investment

In Sub-Saharan African countries, inequalities and unbalanced distribution of land and natural resources are deeply rooted in the historical land conflicts and dispossessions in the region that have drastically altered the political and economic positions of major segments of Sub-Saharan African societies. This article attempts an answer to the question of whether a sub-regional investment agreement could help in addressing the problem of land-grabbing in Sub-Saharan Africa. The affirmative answer to this question is based on a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the three major approaches to the legal regulation of foreign direct investments (FDI) that have been utilized to date in Sub-Saharan Africa. The article provides a succinct historical survey that sheds light on the fact that both domestic regulations of foreign investments and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) have almost exclusively dealt with the question of the promotion of FDI, and that a number of BITs in Sub-Saharan Africa tend to overemphasize the protection of foreign investors while doing very little to protect common concerns, i.e. values that do not coincide, or do not necessarily coincide, with the interests of the investor. The article then discusses the approach to the legal regulation of FDI through BITs as exemplified in the BITs concluded by the US with six sub-Saharan African partners, underscoring the unsuitability of such treaties to lay the foundations of an international investment regime more favourable to Sub-Saharan countries. Finally, the paper attempts to formulate a few recommendations to address the problem, suggesting a sub-regional investment agreement for Sub-Saharan Africa.