This article examines discourses and cinematic representations of modernity in two documentary films by the Cameroonian director Jean-Marie Teno. In the first of these films, A Trip to the Country (2000), Teno investigates how ideals and aspirations of modernity as a state-sponsored project in Cameroon have their roots in the colonial period, and his film is characterized by a strong sense of anxiety linked to the turn of the millennium. In the second, Sacred Places (2009), modernity is given a different affective resonance and is linked to the pleasure of cinematic consumption in Ouagadougou as Teno situates African cinema in relation to its “brother,” the djembe drum. I argue here that a shift occurs between these two films and their affective engagements with modernity; this is a transition from a sense of millennial anxiety to a thematics of what I call “cinematic kinship.” I ultimately suggest that this shift allows Teno to outline new social roles for the African filmmaker as well as new relationships between African cinema and local publics.

Lagos is a recurrent theme in Nigerian music videos. Eromosele examines this phenomenon in relation to the objectives of the music video and the musician’s star image. Various studies involving emotion and forms of capital help to reveal how Lagos is appropriated into the iconography of music stars in ways that extend the city’s affective capital while serving the promotional aims of the music video. Capital is viewed chiefly as value accumulated through circulation and capable of being transubstantiated into different forms. The economic and political prominence of Lagos influences and is fed by the city’s affective power.

The concept of “scaling up” value chains dominates the African agricultural development literature. Scaling up commonly refers to three inter-related objectives: increasing agricultural production and quality, expanding farmer engagement with markets, and adding greater value to commodities that benefits all actors. Bassett, Koné, and Munro provide a critique of the assumption of linear and progressive development embedded in the scaling-up concept and offer an alternative relational network approach that highlights the contingent and relational dynamics of agricultural value chains. The research compares the selling patterns of cashew growers participating in OLAM’s Sustainable Cashew Growers Program in Côte d’Ivoire during 2018 and 2019.

The decade between 1963 and 1973 was heralded by some observers as liberal democracy’s darkest hour in many parts of the non-Western world. During this period seven Latin American democracies collapsed; one African country after the other rejected multi-party liberal democracy in favor of either single-party or military regimes; Soviet hegemony prevailed and seemed to be growing stronger in communist Eastern Europe and parts of the Third World; and pockets of authoritarianism could even be found in Southern Europe (e. g., Spain, Portugal, Greece). Such developments led scholars to concentrate their research efforts on trying to understand why democracy had failed to either take hold or to survive in those places where it had been successfully introduced.

The formal study of African languages in U.S. universities began with the passage of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) in 1958. Title VI of that act supported the establishment of “centers for the teaching of any modern foreign language [that is] needed by the federal government or by business, industry or education” and for which “adequate instruction is not readily available in the United States.” The act also authorized fellowships for those undergoing advanced training in these languages. Over the next two decades, a small number of universities successfully competed for the federal funding from NDEA and subsequent acts that established Foreign Language and Area Studies fellowships and later Title VI National Resource Centers (NRCs) for African studies.

“Academic freedom,” Ashby asserts, is “an internationally recognized and unambiguous privilege of university teachers.” Is this proposition confirmed by experience to date as regards the academic freedom of the foreign scholar in African universities? This is the central empirical question. Or is it merely a culture-bound affirmation of a normative ideal which it is hoped might be instituted as a universal right of university teachers, irrespective of citizenship status, tenure of appointments, and the political and university systems in which they serve? Indeed, is it an ideal which can be realized, however imperfectly, or in any event, ought to be categorically affirmed as a privilege of foreign scholars serving in universities anywhere? These are among the questions Ashby’s proposition provokes, and which require, at the outset, some disaggregation of the meanings and interpretations of such a highly normative and emotion-ridden concept, whose genesis and sustenance are undeniably sui generis to a particular cultural and historical experience.

The significance of the UN Decade for Women, in Africa as a whole and in Senegal in particular, must be assessed not only in terms of what was gained and what was not, but also in terms of where we started and the odds we were up against. For women in Africa, the decade meant the droit a la parole — the right to speak out, and the right be heard -- whether this right was won or granted, exercised spontaneously or in organized ways, and even if it was controlled or censored. Discourse by women on women was opened. Women seized the right to speak for themselves about themselves, sometimes freely, and sometimes cautiously within imposed limits.

On May 17, 1997, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of the Congo (AFDL), led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, took power in Kinshasa after a seven-month liberation war. According to the opinion of numerous observers, Kabila’s rebellion would be a saving act; it would distance the Congo from the specter of civil war toward which it was fatally headed. Ethnic opposition to the Mobutu regime was stirring. The rebellion would save the country from the claws of cynical politicians and from the political chasm they dug with the sovereign national conference, which created nonfunctional political institutions. Ten months after the new leaders were installed at Kinshasa, it is still too soon to evaluate their efforts to put the country back on its feet. But many praiseworthy initiatives, of which the Bulletin of the Congolese Press Agency daily informs us, touch all aspects of national life.

The term, “brain drain,” has been controversial ever since the Royal Society (1963) coined it to refer to the emigration of British scientists to the United States and Canada. The ensuing debate has produced two schools of thought. The nationalists, such as Patinkin (1968) who assume that the brain drain is dysfunctional to nation-states and who more or less view the talented individual as a property of a nation-state, have found sympathetic audiences in most of the developing countries and also among the altruistic moralists of the developed world. The moralists are concerned with the propriety and logic of the recipient countries accepting brains from the underdeveloped while at the same time granting them foreign aid. In response, the internationalists, such as Johnson (1968), who assume that the brain drain is functional to the pervasive trend towards closer integration of world economy and community and who more or less view the talented individual as a commodity in the international rather than the national market, have also found an equally sympathetic audience, especially among the drainees themselves. Being even more underdeveloped than the other developing areas, Africa is seen by the moralists as an ideal example of the follies of the brain drain.

An essential feature of the oral history project is the comparability of material once it has been collected. It should be made clear that for comparative analysis it is not essential (although it makes the work easier, if this has already been standardized) for all categories of data collection to be standardized in all countries studied; it is essential only that a full picture of all significant aspects of each movement will be covered--a task, as Professor Blanksten suggests, made easier by some forethought as to which categories should be covered in the interview. We assume that the categories not covered but very important in one or two countries will be recorded there if the interviewers perform their roles adequately.

Certainly there are a number of extremely interesting problems that comparison would solve. What are the different speeds with which success or failure of these movements occurs? Why did some simply die out, others become dominant and successful, while still others become separatist tribal groups? If we use Professor Zolberg's categories plus others that turn up in the pilot study, and take account of Professor Cohen's strictures concerning quantification, then some answers may be forthcoming.

This article explores the influence of nationalism and modernity in contemporary Zimbabwe and on the musical lives of Zimbabweans through an examination of muchongoyo, the signature dance–drumming tradition of Zimbabwe’s Ndau communities. Invoking the concept of “Mugabeism,” it illustrates how Shona nationalism and expectations of modernity have partially reshaped muchongoyo in the turmoil of contemporary Zimbabwe. As indigenous practices serve political ends, their values shift. Consequently, there are now two muchongoyos : one rooted in the unique history and values of Zimbabwe’s Ndau community, the other emerging from decades of political employment of indigenous music for the sake of nationalist discourse.

Marrapodi Compound, a peri-urban settlement to the north of Zambia's capital, Lusaka, is a unique community containing several indigenous religious groups. These religious associations have enabled members of various ethnic backgrounds to create a form of social organization that provides a link between urban and village life. Through case studies of the community's major religions, it is possible to develop a composite picture of Marrapodi's social organization and to examine the importance of religion in each group's adjustment to an urban milieu. This discussion will begin by concentrating on detailed observations of two of the area's major religious groups, the Maranke and the Masowe Apostles.

It is my underlying assumption that the urban blight and social disorganization frequently attributed to shanty communities have been less important than the migrations and organizational efforts of the independent churches in creating the basic themes and direction of Marrapodi's growth over the past twenty years. This social and religious organization has been subtle, accretionary, and occasionally indirect. Exploring the impact of this tacit social organization on the changing shanty compounds and examining the ways in which religion is at the heart of Marrapodi's life will be my central concerns. A second, more external form of social organization, the planning of the local government, will also be examined from the perspective of both the urban planners and the community members interviewed in 1974. I shall concentrate on a description of the world of everyday events as seen from the perspectives of community members. Systematic observation of the social life, doctrine, and rituals of Marrapodi's major churches will be combined with broader historical and demographic information about the community's growth. These perspectives bridge the gap between the assumptions of outside urban planners and researchers and the uncorroborated personal reactions of individual residents. They make it possible to approach the crucial transitions now facing the community.

Addis Ababa, founded a century ago, has exerted influence over its periphery like no other Ethiopian town before it. From a straggling, disjunctive village in the 1880s, Addis Ababa (New Flower) developed into one of the largest urban centers in Africa. By the end of World War II, it was a city of over a half million people and home to the Organization of African Unity and several other international bodies. The growth of this metropolis was phenomenal, particularly since it emerged within an economy that was 90 percent agricultural and largely feudal.

After serving initially as Shewa's provincial center, Addis Ababa became the imperial capital in 1889 with Menilek's accession to the Ethiopian throne. Addis Ababa also became the geographic center of an Ethiopia that in the 1880s was in the process of constituting itself both physically and culturally. The twentieth century provided Addis Ababa and its imperial resident with the technological and economic means with which to dominate and defend a state that was larger than that of any previous Abyssinian ruler. Modern firearms permitted the conquest of areas never before subject to the Abyssinian monarch; improved communications in the form of roads, transport vehicles, telegraph, and telephone gave the center the means with which to supervise a distant periphery; new export crops and improved access to international markets insured the financing of these modern innovations. Addis Ababa was at the heart of these changes. Its own evolution and development reflected the efforts of both Menilek II (r. 1889-1913) and Haile Sillassie I (regent 1917-1930; emperor 1930-1974) to modernize and centralize the feudal state.

For the past three years or so, the world has been witnessing momentous changes. The world watched as the Berlin Wall came crashing to the ground; as the Solidarity Movement in Poland completed its methodical, relentless dismantlement of Polish Communism; and as the people of Czechoslovakia fashioned their velvet revolution. Even as this was happening, no one expected that it was just a matter of months before the entire Soviet Bloc would be in pieces. We were unprepared for such dramatic social changes. We had come to assume unquestioningly that the Cold War, East and West, Communism and Capitalism in ominous tension would always be with us. But, today we live in what is being called a unipolar world, as the United States and what is left of the former Soviet Bloc have decided to cooperate rather than compete on the world stage (Blight and Weiss 1992). President George Bush once dubbed this the “Era of the New World Order.”

One of the primary defining features of the “New World Order” is the resurgence of nationalism among large ethnic groups heretofore incorporated into multi-ethnic states. Moreover, the conflicts which grow from such developments have a high propensity to be internationalized. Take, for examples, the rebellion of the Baltic states against the former Soviet Union, or the breakup of Yugoslavia, and even the collapse of the Soviet Union itself. In Africa domestic conflicts in Sudan, Somalia and Mozambique, to name only a few places, have created refugee flows and the flow of armed rebels across national borders, thus internationalizing what were domestic conflicts (Weiner 1992).