Debates on dedollarizing and internationalizing China’s currency, the renminbi (RMB), often focus on state-led initiatives such as bilateral currency swaps and Central Bank Digital Currencies while overlooking the role of entrepreneurs utilizing US dollar (USD) alternatives. Ethnographic fieldwork with Nigerian importers of Chinese goods reveals how parallel payment currencies and channels—informal naira-RMB transfers and illicit cryptocurrency transactions—are just as essential in the Global South to decenter US dominance: its currency, institutions, and authority. Analyzing formal monetary policies and local money practices, Liu shows how Nigerian importers cultivate multicurrency fluency, which is vital in an incipient era of political and economic multipolarity.

Through a personal mentoring relationship with Yacouba Sawadogo, the author analyzes his narrative, highlighting the roots of the climate crisis in the disconnection between humans and nature. The catastrophe epitomizes the visible manifestation of the invisible decay of “the interconnected relationships within creation (Zamane).” The author demonstrates how the Champion of the Earth advocates for a shift in mindset towards Mother Earth. Their qualitative inquiry includes interviews and narratives, examining Sawadogo’s Afrocentric ecological wisdom. In smelling his smell, the focus is on his resilience to provide a comprehension of individual ingenuity and community support, which are valuable for sustainable practices.

The extant literature on diamond industries in Africa has predominantly focused on men, with few attempts to examine the industry from a gendered lens. I trace women and highlight their gendered roles in the diamond-mining industry in colonial Ghana (Gold Coast). Relying on archival, oral, and visual sources, this article highlights women’s involvement in Ghana’s diamond industry in different capacities—as discoverers, washers, licensed prospectors, and dealers. Ultimately, I argue that the dominance men have enjoyed in studies about diamond mining in Ghana (and Africa generally) reproduces the colonial archive but can be overcome through creative and innovative research.

Muslims in the Central African Republic have experienced extreme violence for more than a decade. Through ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, this article shows how the foundations for contemporary violence were created through colonial and postcolonial state-making. The civilizing mission of republican colonialism set Muslims apart. Lifestyle and mobility were never fully colonized; escape depicted difference. Nationalist liberation mythologies render Muslim citizenship as foreign, precarious, and subject to ongoing contestation. Pentecostalism, a lateral liberation philosophy presented as patriotism, provides power to anti-Muslim discourse. Violence against Muslims is situated in an accumulated “pastness” of state-making and struggle in Central African historiography.

Slavery persisted in Morocco well into the twentieth century and throughout the French Protectorate (1912–56), long after it was abolished in other French-occupied territories (1848). While work by historians has illuminated a previously shadowy history of race and slavery in Morocco, less attention has been paid to the growing corpus of literary texts representing enslaved subjectivities under the Protectorate. Through their literary excavations of the slave past, such works retell the history of Moroccan slavery from the perspective of those most affected. This essay takes translator Nouzha Fassi Fihri’s Dada l’Yakout (2010) as a case in point. Although marketed as a novel, the text is also a dense oral history that channels the voice of an enslaved woman who really existed: Jmia, who was abducted as a child at the beginning of the twentieth century and died in 1975. Considered as “Moroccan other-archive” (El Guabli 2023) and imaginative archeology, literary works chart a way forward for reckoning with the enduring legacies of slavery and the slave trade in Morocco.

The paper critically revisits Chinweizu’s contributions to Pan-Africanism and African sovereignty, focusing on his analysis of Arab and Western imperialism, internal complicity, and the concept of “culturecide.” His call for a distinct Black African identity is explored as a foundation for reclaiming sovereignty, while also addressing critiques of nativism and essentialism. A nuanced approach to decolonization is proposed, emphasizing its relevance in today’s globalized world. Chinweizu’s ideas challenge a rethinking of the intersections between history, culture, and power in the ongoing quest for African autonomy.

In the development discourse, there has been a tendency to frame the Global South, especially Africa, as a perpetual recipient of ideas from the Global North. This has led to the implementing of “development” initiatives based on the unsuccessful modernization paradigm and the associated Washington Consensus. Despite the emergence of counter theories such as dependency and underdevelopment theories, they share similar assumptions with the modernization paradigm. These assumptions include the belief that historical change brings development or progress, the sidelining of noneconomic factors like ethnicity, race, and gender, and the sole emphasis on economic growth as a measure of development. Both models assume that the state should primarily drive advancement. To address the weaknesses of these development models, alternative perspectives such as women and development, women in development, and gender and development were introduced. However, these perspectives would be integrated into the mainstream development discourse, diluting their impact.

Knowledge of African history aptly suggests that the quest for political independence in the continent is generally driven by the idea that such independence leads to statehood. By statehood, here, I refer to the ability of a sovereign country to exercise effective control over its territory, govern its people, and engage in international relations. Yet, political independence in Africa seldom leads to statehood without the experience of internal conflicts such as coup d’état or civil war. The three reviewed books, The Politics of Fear in South Sudan: Generating Chaos, Creating Conflict by Daniel Akech Thiong, When Peace Kills Politics: International Intervention and Unending Wars in the Sudans by Sharath Srinivasan, and Leadership, Nation-Building and War in South Sudan: The Problems of Statehood and Collective Will by Sonja Theron, attempt to explain why the quest for statehood in Sudan and South Sudan is characterized by diverse forms of conflicts and how the seemingly unending conflicts could be resolved. While the primary focus of each of the books differ, their respective positions concerning the key factors and actors fueling and sustaining violent conflicts in both Sudan and South Sudan are complementary.