This Week in Africa
Discover more from This Week in Africa
Check out what we’ve done this month at GLD. Here is the week in Africa:
Ethiopia’s civil war
Ethiopian violence has splintered relations between Amhara and Tigray. An Ethiopian airstrike hit a school filled with displaced persons in January, killing at least 57 civilians. Women are paying the price for the brutal war. There are many groups facing abuses across the country.
Ethiopia declared a truce, but troops are seen moving closer to Tigray. Is there a new front? Does the recent truce make peace more likely, or is it another empty promise? Can it end the war? Is Abiy’s National Dialogue dead on arrival? Stay tuned.
Governing Zambia
What is the relationship between democracy and justice in Zambia? Sishuwa Sishuwa explains how Hichilema is undermining democracy.
Struggle for rights and freedom
This is a cool visualization of African borderlands. Africans living in Ukraine explain their relationship to the country. Kenya’s Supreme Court rejected the president’s attempt to amend the constitution. Check out this map of intra-African migration. There is new violence in eastern DRC, displacing thousands of people. Bandits bomb the Abuja-Kaduna train. Weapons losses are fueling Africa’s militant groups. The death toll from a recent bombing that killed Somali lawmaker continues to rise. What is next in Central African Republic? Nii Kotei Nikoi asks: How should we struggle?
Challenges of democratization
CDD-Ghana partners with SIDA to promote democracy in West Africa. Angola’s regime is scared. Tunisia’s crisis escalates as the president dissolves Parliament. Bruce Whitehouse discusses the mirage of Malian democracy. What’s happening in Ghana’s democracy?
Africa’s rapid urbanization
All aboard a Mombasa metro! Meet Uganda’s boda boda driver breaking taboos. Nairobi is displacing the poor to make way for more expressways. Learn more about boda bodas in Tanzania. Freetown-Zurich partnership to modernize Freetown’s central business district. This report provides a template for the just city in Kenya. Rebuilding Mogadishu.
Stephen Marr and Patience Mususa curate this great special issue on the politics of climate action in Africa’s cities. This article examines sustainable waste management in Uganda. Make sure to read Lewis Abedi Asante’s “The politics of market redevelopment in African cities: Insight from two market projects in Ghana.” This paper provides a machine learning approach to better understanding urban employment across the world.
This is very cool: The Urban Research Incubator, comparing Bogota to Cape Town.
Research corner
Thalia Gerzso and Nicolas van de Walle examine the politics of legislative expansion in Africa. This article examines power sharing in Burundi. This piece examines borderland dynamics between South Sudan and Uganda. Daniel Agbiboa’s essay “The Checkpoint State: Extortion, Discontents, and the Pursuit of Survival” is out. This is a helpful piece on external validity and meta-analysis. Abena Dove Osseo-Asare’s “Making masks: The women behind Ghana's nose covering mandate during the COVID-19 outbreak” is great. Check this out: “Disrupted dreams of development: neoliberal efficiency and crisis in Angola.” This article examines political representation and violence targeting women in Kenya.
Check out Samson Kaunga Ndanyi’s Instructional Cinema and African Audiences in Colonial Kenya, 1926-1963. Mohamed Sesay’s Domination through Law: The Internationalization of Legal Norms in Postcolonial Africa is the Winner of the 2021 Lee Ann Fujii Book Award. Get your copy of the open source Natural Resource–Based Development in Africa: Panacea or Pandora’s Box? Text as Data provides a new framework for machine learning in the social sciences. Listen to the new Quality of Government podcast!
The week in development
Check out the recent issue of Africa Development on “Digital Technologies and Election Management in Africa's Democratisation Process.” This is why it costs so much to move goods around Africa. Here is a beginner’s guide to petroleum pricing in Ghana. Africa needs to focus on better delivery of COVID vaccines. Guinea reaches deal with miners to continue Simandou iron ore development. Learn more about the rise and fall of West Africa’s palm oil empire. These are some agribusiness investment opportunities in the Sahel. Ghana has eased its COVID restrictions. Algeria starts a national unemployment program. DR Congo joins East Africa’s trade bloc. Ghanaians are skeptical of the country’s e-tax. It is a good idea, but needs to be designed well. Nanjala Nyabola discusses how borders matter, even in cyberspace.
Can Namibia avoid the resource curse? What explains price hikes in Kenya? Did Facebook break Kenyan law? Why do domestic banks keep collapsing in Ghana? Why does the US knowingly slow down food aid distribution?
Africa and the environment
Fires are important to South Africa’s ecology. Rising sea levels threaten Africa’s heritage sites. South Sudan is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Madagascans stave off encroaching dunes with plants. Learn more about the Chinese trawlers depleting fishery stocks in West Africa. There is an extreme weather warning for all in the next five years. Water protests erupt in Limpopo Town. Putin’s isolation from Europe could usher in natural gas opportunities for Africa.
APCG Online Colloquium
Join us on April 13 (9-10 am EDT) for the APCG Online Colloquium featuring Salma Emmanuel's paper, “The Effect of Court Rulings on Social Attitudes and Norms: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Tanzania.” Sign up here.
Daily life
Take me to Marero Beach. Karen Attiah takes down William and Kate’s cringeworthy Caribbean tour. Oh man: an ethnography for fad diets. Ok, 2022 will be a little better with Ghana, Senegal, and the US in the World Cup. The jollof derby!
And meet the editor who moves theory into the mainstream.
All the best,
Jeff and Phil