Through Facebook and other social media, a growing number of well-educated women in Khartoum are marketing and selling typically female personal care and beauty items online. These ‘tajirat al-Facebook’ (or Facebook traders) are the new entrepreneurs of Sudan who work from home to run their businesses and widen their social circles. Relying on the urban infrastructure of mobile phones, delivery boys, digital connectivity and online platforms, they navigate public life from the intimate sphere of the home or harem to become successful businesswomen who continuously transcend conventional gender norms and classic divisions between public and private, online and offline, and work and family. By addressing the day-to-day socio-economic practices of these traders, this article casts innovative light upon the broader discussions surrounding the role of women in economic life in Africa. It is argued that the mobile phone, and the smartphone in particular, has opened up a range of opportunities for women to enhance their social and economic manoeuvring space and to negotiate power within, and beyond, the domestic realm. New communications technologies have paved the way for a new kind of entrepreneurship in which the commercial goals of profit making are intimately entwined with the broader practices of sociality and diversion from boredom.

African men, like men everywhere, have dominated the public sphere, holding the vast majority of official positions of power and authority. In pre-colonial African societies women were formally subordinate to male authority and male dominance was buttressed by an ideology of male superiority and a status system where women showed deference to men. But formal systems, ideologies and codes of etiquette are not realities. In some societies women wielded considerable influence and authority, so much in fact that these systems have been characterised as dual-sex political systems with each sex managing its own affairs (Okonjo, 1976). Women were not so much involved in hierarchical orders of relationships as in complementary, mutually dependent relationships.

In the one hundred and forty years that the Nuer have been known to small audiences outside the Sudan they have almost invariably been presented as truculent and aggressive warriors. They appeared in the nineteenth century exploration literature as archetypical ‘savages’: naked, stubborn and warlike men who were compared to monkeys, to the monkeys' advantage (Baker 1867:60). In the early twentieth century they were thought to be an intractable problem that impeded the peaceful establishment and efficient running of a new colonial administration. In Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard's monographs Nuer feuds and raiding are described as central to the structural relations between Nuer sections and between the Nuer and their neighbours.

N!ow is a belief concerning rain and cold which is held by the !Kung Bushmen in the region around Nyae Nyae in South West Africa.

About ten inches of rain falls in an average year in this part of the Kalahari Desert and sinks into the deep sands. There is no run-off in streams and there are few water holes. The rain is sufficient to support a covering vegetation of grass, shrubs, and scrubby trees. The vegetation includes numerous edible roots, tubers, leaves, fruits, and nuts, for which the Afrikaans language provides the convenient word veldkos.

In contemporary Ghana, adult children are considered responsible for the care of aged parents. Within this idealized framework, two aspects of eldercare are overlooked. Firstly, such a narrative obscures the role of non-kin and extended kin in providing eldercare in southern Ghana historically and in the present. Secondly, it hides the negotiations over obligations and commitments between those who manage eldercare and those who help with an ageing person's daily activities. It is in this latter role that non-kin and extended kin are significant in eldercare, while closer kin maintain their kin roles through the management, financial support and recruitment of others. This article examines recruitment to eldercare and the role of kin and non-kin in eldercare in three historical periods: the 1860s, the 1990s and the 2000s, centred on Akuapem, in southern Ghana. In particular, I show that helping an aged person relies on previous and expected entrustments, in which more vulnerable, dependent and indebted persons are most likely to be recruited to provide care.

Lorsque le Conseil Exécutif de l'Institut International Africain m'a fait l'honneur de me confier cette ‘Lugard Memorial Lecture’, le nom prestigieux de Lugard me frappa comme un éclair et chassa de mon imagination toute possibilité d'autre sujet. Je ne sais si notre Président, lorsqu'il prononça, en 1952, dans cette même ville, son remarquable discours à la mémoire du grand Lord, son prédécesseur, avait été victime d'une crise de possession aussi caractérisée. Quant à moi je découvris brusquement que j'avais depuis longtemps quelque chose à dire à Lord Lugard et que je n'aurais jamais de meilleure occasion. Souffrez done que je lui parle en votre présence.

Since 1982 the Mouvement des forces démocratique casamançais has been fighting for the independence of the Casamance region of Senegal. In 1989, when the Mouvement initiated a sustained military campaign, Senegal's official and independent press began to provide intensive coverage of its activities and objectives. This article documents the arguments for and against Casamançais independence as documented by Senegal's press in the year following the resurgence of this conflict. The Mouvement's leadership has consistently maintained that its efforts to win independence for the Casamance are legitimate because France created the Casamance. The French, it argues, never intended the Casamance to be administratively incorporated into Senegal. Conversely, those opposed to the Mouvement have attempted to delegitimise its activities by claiming that it represents the interests of the Jola, just one of the Casamance's many ethnic groups. It is argued that the Senegalese government and other opponents of the Mouvement have attempted to label the independence movement an ethnic movement because of a distinction in African political ideology between nationalism and ethnicity. According to this ideology, nationalism, and other legitimate forms of political mobilisation, should represent a plural constituency. Those that represent the narrow interests of a single ethnic group are not considered legitimate.

This article is about the unseen world of war—the unrecorded consequences for children of large-scale horror. There are two parts to it. The first is on the need for healing: it is an account of children's suffering during Zimbabwe's War of Liberation and their part in the fight for freedom. The second describes the means for healing: it examines how traditional healers (n'anga) provided opportunities through ritual for reconciliation and the soothing of individual trauma.

The Jola of Lower Casamance in southern Senegal are involved in ‘turnaround’ (or circular), rural to urban migration. Using data from three Jola communities located in different geographical and cultural sub-regions, this article compares the dynamics of migration among the villages and explores variations along gender and generational lines. Special emphasis is placed on the number of young unmarried girls and boys who return to the village during the rainy season to help their parents with agricultural work. It has been argued that the movement of people from the countryside to the city has had a negative effect on local food production. ‘Turnaround migration’ mitigates to some extent the impact of the rural exodus on rural communities. It has important implications of its own for the future of agriculture in the various Jola sub-regions.

Interest in African sacred kingship has for long been centred upon its ritual aspects; descriptions of highly colourful ceremonies have provided a convenient introduction to the study of a people's religious beliefs, yielding also examples of the ritual sanctions by which the ruler enforces obedience. As a result the constitutional aspects of kingship have been largely ignored.

Within the Nilo-Hamitic group of tribes in East Africa is a sub-group, the tribes of which speak closely related dialects. So close are these dialects that a native speaker of any one can understand a speaker of any other. In the normal intercourse between the peoples this does in fact happen constantly. Linguistically this group of dialects might be called the Teso Dialect Cluster, after the tribe of that name.

Migration patterns among the Fulani of Burkina Faso have changed over recent decades from predominant transhumance, involving whole families, to seasonal rural-to-urban labour migration of young men. This article uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative data to examine the relationships between the new forms of migration and domestic organization. Specifically, it asks the following questions: (1) How do households accommodate the temporary loss of productive members? (2) Does the out-migration lead to new forms of domestic organization, and to changing roles and power relations within sending households? Various forms of flexibility in domestic organization are identified, which serve to maintain viable economic units in the face of the temporary absence of substantial numbers of young men. These include: flexibility in the processes of household division; rapid, temporary restructuring of domestic units; and drawing on extra-household support networks. One consequence of this flexibility is that intra-household gender divisions of labour and power have remained largely unchanged in the face of seasonal labour migration. The extent to which this will remain the case if migration becomes more widespread is uncertain.

This article explores the politics of decentralization and state–peasant encounters in rural Oromiya, Ethiopia. Breaking with a centralized past, the incumbent government of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) committed itself to a decentralization policy in the early 1990s and has since then created a number of new sites for state–citizen interactions. In the context of electoral authoritarianism, however, decentralization has been interpreted as a means for the expansion of the party-state at the grass-roots level. Against this backdrop, this article attempts a more nuanced understanding of the complex entanglements between the closure of political space and faith in progress in local arenas. Hence, it follows sub-kebele institutions at the community level in a rural district and analyses their significance for state-led development and peasant mobilization between the 2005 and 2010 elections. Based on ethnographic field research, the empirical case presented discloses that decentralization and state-led development serve the expansion of state power into rural areas, but that state authority is simultaneously constituted and undermined in the course of this process. On that basis, this article aims to contribute to an inherently political understanding of decentralization, development and their entanglement in local and national politics in rural African societies.

Dans le royaume pré-colonial de Mamprusi les sorcières etaient, soit exécutées après le prononcement de la sentence à la cour du roi, ou bien isolées dans une section spéciale d'une grande ville marchande où elles recevaient des médicaments pour neutraliser leur sorcèllerie. Ce traitement des sorcieres est une manifestation du processus de centralisation à l'oeuvre dans le royaume, et exemplifie aussi la division du travail rituel qui est typique du système politique. Des changements récents dans la composition du village des sorcières qui ont été accompagnés par de nouvelles conceptions Mamprusi au sujet de la sorcellerie, tirant sur une croyance de longue date dans le pouvoir des femmes quant à subvertir l'ordre social. Des changements radicaux dans la politique nationale et les conditions économiques, ainsi que des changements au niveau local en ce qui concerne la division du travail menacent les normes idéalisées des relations de genre au Mamprusi. La chasse aux sorcières au Mamprusi émerge en tant que tentative pour controller les femmes, qui sont percues comme étant une des sources de ces désordres en général.

Modern anthropological research has shown that at every level of civilization there exists a moral code which is expressed in the ideal behaviour of individuals in the community, that is a behaviour which is ‘correct’ according to the people's ideas and praised by them in speech and story. Part of this moral code consists of regulations determining the mutual behaviour of the sexes, that is, of rules attempting to direct and control the physiological and emotional sexual impulses in individuals in the interest of the social well-being of the community or state. These physiological and emotional forces of sex are part of the biological equipment of human beings and hence common to all peoples. The anthropologist among so-called primitive people can approach the study of the moral code and its application from two angles: that of the individual, and that of the community. In all forms of society there is a supposition that individuals find control in sexual matters irksome, and only submit to restraint as a result of effective training allied to effective external pressure. A further universal supposition is that the community finds it necessary to demand a certain type of behaviour from individuals for the sake of its cohesion and stability. Both these suppositions are borne out by anthropological studies in primitive sociology. As soon, however, as we descend from general principles to a particular tribe, we begin to ask whether there is any connexion between the nature of the community and its demands on individuals as represented by the moral code and especially by the sexual regulations. Is there, for example, less need for stringent sexual regulations in a small isolated community than in a warlike tribe dependent for its existence on the strength of its arms? And if there is any such connexion what are the reasons for it?

Cet article examine la logique économique du marché national des boissons et sa place dans les stratégies de subsistance des hommes et des femmes du district rural d'Ulanga, dans le sud de la Tanzanie, où les activités brassicoles des femmes coexistent avec la monopolisation du marché des alcools de sue par les hommes. La disponibilité saisonnière des alcools de sue, combinée avec l'intégration du district dans les marchés céréaliers nationaux, crée une brève opportunité pour certaines femmes d'augmenter les revenus qu'elles tirent de la production et de la vente de bière de maïs, une opportunité rendue possible par l'interdépendance économique inégale des hommes et des femmes ainsi que de différentes régions de la Tanzanie. L'essor saisonnier du marché de la bière de maïs survient lorsque le prix du maïs est élevé et les stocks de céréales domestiques sont faibles. Les brasseurs doivent faire un choix entre satisfaire leurs besoins de consommation immédiats et investir leurs modestes réserves de capitaux ou de céréales dans la production de biére dans l'espoir de générer des profits à plus long terme. Comme dans d'autres régions de la Tanzanie, ce choix s'exprime de façon idiomatique à travers le contraste entre “manger” (kulia) et “générer” (zalisha) à travers lequel les céréales, et l'argent auquel elles sont explicitement comparées, peuvent être amenées à se reproduire grâce à un investissement prudent.

Cet article explore les dynamiques en transition dans l'éducation des enfants à Asante (au Ghana) à travers le concept problématique de ntamoba. Dans les records historiques et dans la mémoire populaire, ntamoba a survécu sous un certain nombre de formes—en tant que paiement de mariage, en tant que rite lié à la naissance et à l'appellation de l'enfant et en tant qu'indemnité payée au père par la lignée maternelle afin de signifier la termination des droits qu'a le père sur cet enfant. Cet article cherche à dormer une perspective historique et à expliquer la manière dont les droits du père de se servir de ses enfants avait été transformé en des droits de propriété. Cet article met au premier plan le temps et la place sociale/le statut en tant que des variables clés dans cette enquête, démontrant comment la disparition de ntamoba était liée à la résurgence des catégories sociales subalternes en Asante au vingtième siècle.

Plusieurs auteurs ont signalé l'existence d'une curieuse forme d'alliance, chez les Manding ainsi que chez d'autres peuples du Soudan français. Cette alliance joue entre représentants de groupes déterminés — familles, villages, régions, peuples — porteurs de noms différents. Elle donne lieu à diverses manifestations, dont certaines fort étranges.

Cet article explore à la fois le sens du “odwira”, le rituel royal qui purifie annuellement la communauté de sa pollution, et la manière par laquelle le rite est utilisé pour négocier les configurations changeantes du pouvoir à Akuropon et dans le royaume d'Akuapem. Dans une petite société où les consensus sont requis en public et les conflits sont régiès en prive, où les rois avaient jadis le pouvoir de faire de leurs adversaires des esclaves et encore aujourd'hui peuvent leur dénier emploi et maison, l'opposition doit être discrète. Les rituels et les symboles sont bons pour faire une déclaration politique car une ambiguité ancrée leur permet d'être un terrain sûr pour une agression politique. Pour cette raison, bien que le rituel de purification du “odwira” soit considéré comme inaltérable dans sa représentation et sa structure symbolique, en pratique la politique explosive de la communauté est aussi reflétée dans les modifications occasionnelles qui sont faites au long precédéxs cérémonial chaque année.