At the turn of the 1960s, Léopold Sédar Senghor and John F. Kennedy vowed to radically transform African foreign policy. Through a close reading of a recently declassified correspondence and a historical analysis of two behind-the-scenes negotiations, Senghor’s first state visit to the U.S. and Kennedy’s support for the First World Festival of Negro Arts, Ripert examines the private and public concatenations that lead both statesmen to transform policymaking not by implementing new policies but by challenging inherited ideologies. Though their efforts did not always bring successful change in policymaking, the diplomatic correspondence between the two newly elected leaders reveals a more subtle and sustainable transformation: a decolonization of diplomacy.

Mozambique’s land law is notable for its intent to balance the recognition and protection of smallholder land use rights with attracting foreign and domestic investment to rural areas. However, the state’s legitimacy may be undermined through the process of recognition, as state actors and local elites circumvent the law for private gain. Walker focuses on two areas where the law has failed to protect smallholder rights: issues of women’s land rights, and the expansion of protected areas. These issues speak to the problem of recognition, revealing ways the state produces authority, but not necessarily legitimacy, in rural settings.

The negative environmental and social consequences of the major era of hydroelectric dam building in the 1950s and 60s generated social and political opposition to similar projects by the 1990s. In Ghana, hydroelectricity’s dependence on unpredictable rainfall also undermined the attractiveness of this source of electricity. The Bui Dam, Ghana’s third hydroelectric dam, faced considerable opposition until 2006, when the Chinese government loaned money for its construction. Gocking details how Chinese companies with similar funding, and constructing infrastructure projects in general in Africa, have contributed to a second era of major dam building in that continent, although there still remains considerable contestation.

Military mutinies are a serious threat to peace in Africa, as they may be a catalyst for large-scale civil violence. Unlike most studies that solely focus on the causes of military revolts, this article explores both cause and government response by examining a 1992 military sedition in Benin. Relying on interviews and government archives, Codjo uncovers the sources of the revolt and compares two consecutive administrations in their management of the crisis. The main takeaway is that presidential leadership style and antecedents of elite consensus on governance rules are sometimes critical in rallying support for a lasting solution to mutinies.

Post-war Sierra Leone has experienced a population explosion that has raised questions among rural farmers about the relationship between family size and poverty. Agricultural decline and the high cost of schooling are not prompting parents to articulate a desire for smaller families; rather, they highlight that the uncertainty around articulating the “right” number of children is unresolvable because the ability to send children to school is predicated on increasing agricultural outputs that decline precisely because population pressure has reduced soil fertility. Bolten and Marcantonio conclude that this renders family size the heart of a paradox, where there is no optimal number of children.

The relationship between urbanization and mining is a precarious one; the latter often expands at the expense of the former. The incautious urban planning of a mining city in southeastern DR Congo, however, has opened up opportunities for residents with artisanal mining skills. Since the city is constructed on top of mineral deposits, the residents are able to dig ore in their own backyards to draw their subsistence. Based upon archival and ethnographic research, Geenen argues that, by self-generating the livelihoods they expected their resource-rich soil to bring forth, these artisanal diggers take advantage of the urbanized mineral deposits and write their own narrative of capitalism.

In 2016, Rwanda began extracting methane gas from Lake Kivu, an innovative project designed to reduce the risk of a deadly spontaneous gas release while providing clean and renewable power to an energy-strapped region. Based on qualitative research in Rwanda from 2016 to 2019, Doughty, Uwizeye, and Uwimana use the Kivu methane extraction project to ask, How do we balance urgent electrification needs with responsible energy policies that respond to environmental risks, particularly in post-conflict contexts? Analyzing the Kivu methane projects as “green extractive humanitarianism” provides cautions within the promises of sustainability and “green capitalism.”

Oil is a metonym for terms in books and articles in diverse disciplines in African studies. Some portray oil as a causal agent that thrusts formerly low-income countries into the highly competitive neoliberal global economy. Others present it according to the oil curse/blessing binary. As a curse, petroleum causes dysfunctional and costly behavior. But increased revenues from oil just as certainly result in concrete improvements demonstrating a resource blessing. Heilbrunn uses case materials to explore environmental degradation, oil theft, community-company relations, post-conflict reconstruction, local content in contracts, and corruption. These key concepts form a basis for the keyword/concept essay on oil in Africa.