Publications

This article brings to fore long-standing intricacies and dilemmas in Brazilian and Chinese diplomatic and corporate narratives. It reveals the complex discursive repertoires shaping these countries’ sense of Self in the world, in the Global South, and, more particularly, in relation to Africa. It observes how constructing South–South relationships and invoking Southern identities have been ambiguous, indeterminate—thus liminal—endeavors in Brazil and China’s international positioning. The article also demonstrates, notwithstanding inherent tensions and contradictions, how Brazilian and Chinese actors have creatively acted upon this liminality to achieve foreign policy goals and frame economic projects in their African relations. The article engages the literature on Brazilian and Chinese relations with Africa, particularly in the post-2000s, to then introduce liminality as a concept to productively nuance and broaden available interpretations of their positioning vis-à-vis the Global South. This is followed by an analysis of how Brazil and China occupy ambiguous—and hence liminal—positions with(in) the “Global South”, based on dissecting Brazilian and Chinese diplomatic and corporate narratives towards Africa. We conclude by discussing the purchase of a liminality lens for understanding variegated positionalities in a changing international order and critically engaging them.

Climate change legal frameworks call upon countries to mitigate and adapt to the adverse effects of climate change. These frameworks have influenced the creation of policies and laws addressing climate change across the globe. Activists, individuals, and civil society organisations have utilised campaigns, demonstrations, and climate change litigation to compel countries to adhere to their climate change obligations provided in these frameworks. However, climate change litigation is still in its infancy and progressing slowly in African countries. Additionally, children’s involvement in such litigation is limited despite international and domestic legal frameworks permitting their participation. This article argues that children’s participation in climate change litigation in African countries is currently tokenistic and does not afford them meaningful involvement in the decision-making processes in climate change matters. Having presented the importance of child participation, it examines the opportunities and limitations of children’s participation in climate change litigation.

This article discusses the dynamic interplay between language contact, cultural exchange, and expressive forms of communication within the multicultural societies of Abasuba and Luo living in Kenya. From a socio-pragmatic perspective of signification of figures of speech in Olusuba traditional folksongs, we elaborate on a social context that manifests and inducts the socio-pragmatics of linguistic borrowing, particularly figures of speech (FOS), from Dholuo into Olusuba traditional folksongs. Unique to this study is that in the Olusuba speech communities, speakers are found to communicate non-literally to convey ideas and/or knowledge borrowed from the Luo community. The analysis was grounded in the Semiotic Theory (Barthes 1983) and constructed around de Saussure’s Theory of Meaning (1916) which proposes that language is a union of signs whose relation between their physical and symbolic distinction is arbitrary and thus attains its meaningfulness through the rules of convention. An ethnographic research design was adopted and a qualitative analysis of linguistic features and thematic content in Olusuba folksongs was employed to examine how borrowed FOS contribute to the expressive power and cultural significance of these songs, particularly in conveying themes related to nature and socio-economic activities shared by the Abasuba and Luo communities. Additionally, the study investigates the broader implications of integrating borrowed FOS into Olusuba folksongs on the preservation and evolution of cultural identity among the Abasuba people. In this endeavour, intact cultural groups of Abasuba people in natural settings were interviewed on Dholuo-oriented Olusuba folksongs alongside non-participatory observation during the performance of the folksongs. The results, for example, revealed the use of linguistic symbols whose semantics have been induced by Olusuba-Dholuo contact. This research sheds light on the intricate relationship between language contact, cultural exchange, and identity formation in multicultural societies, offering insights into the complexities of linguistic and cultural dynamics in diverse communities.

Collaborative work between anthropology and psychology on literacy and particularly on illiteracy helps to rethink general disciplinary backgrounds, concepts, and complex empirical phenomena in the field of (il)literacy. Since the formational period of the social sciences, the concept of literacy has been key to the self-understandings of anthropology and psychology. However, it was long neglected in empirical research. Nonetheless, implicit and explicit assumptions about the role, history, and distinctiveness of writing systems and their presence or absence in various societies were central to disciplinary understandings of societies, individuals, and humanity. To this day, literacy and especially its relational other—illiteracy—have not received the attention they deserve from either empirical or conceptual research. This article begins with their histories in anthropology and psychology and argues that illiteracy, in particular, has been neglected in their debates. It then offers a framework for literacizing and illiteracizing, conceptualizes both illiteracy and literacy as multiple and relational phenomena, and discusses methodologies and preliminary results from our collaborative research project on processes of literacizing and illiteracizing in urban literate environments in Benin and Bolivia. It concludes with a discussion of the potential of research on literacy and illiteracy as a model for transdisciplinary work, especially a more intensive collaboration between our disciplines.

"We must accept to live as African – that is the only way to live free and dignified", said the late Thomas Sankara in his famous 1987 speech at the Organization of African Unity. "Live as African", beyond summarizing Sankara's political and ethical vision, draws an agenda for economic liberation articulated around the ideal of self-sufficiency understood both as freedom from external domination and as capacity to self-determination through reliance first and foremost on one’s own resources. In this article, I argue that this agenda is the only one sustainable both for African peoples and for the Planet once it is realized that peoples from the periphery as a whole will never be able to achieve the same consumption/waste levels as peoples in the center, as global South thinkers Celso Furtado and Samir Amin demonstrated some decades ago. Since then, a growing literature has shown why the Western development “model”, due to its ecological exceptionalism, is simply not reproducible elsewhere and why the promise of economic catch-up is illusory. Building on these findings and on the importance and implications of monetary sovereignty, I will elaborate on the principles of a Sankara-inspired economic model that could deliver a free and dignified life to all.

Rural South Africa is undergoing significant livelihood transformations, especially in areas vulnerable to socio-economic and environmental change. Using a longitudinal household panel dataset from Bushbuckridge, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa (2010–2021), this study examines livelihood dynamics, transitions, and their determinants through Hierarchical Cluster Analysis and multinomial logit regression. Three livelihood strategies were identified: (1) agrarian- local employment mix, (2) social grant-based, and (3) migrant employment-based. By 2021, around 50% of households had shifted strategies, mostly from agrarian-based to either social grant or migrant employment strategies. Reliance on social grants was higher among larger households and those with more elderly members, while households with more working-age adults favored migrant employment. These patterns reflect a decline in land-based livelihoods and a growing dependence on external income sources, reshaping rurality. The study highlights the need for place-based policies that promote local employment opportunities, support rural populations, and integrate social protection into rural development.

This volume explores the central role of African languages in shaping inclusive and sustainable futures across the continent. While Africa has long been viewed primarily as a source of extractable resources, its future strength lies in its people. With higher education access below 10% in Sub-Saharan Africa—compared to nearly 80% in the Global North—there is both an urgent need and a major opportunity to expand learning. Such expansion will only succeed if students can study in languages they know; using African languages as mediums of instruction is essential to unlocking the continent’s human potential. Drawing on perspectives from education, technology, public communication, and indigenous knowledge, the contributions show how local languages function as cultural anchors and as drivers of learning, innovation, and social transformation. They address issues such as scientific communication in African languages, terminology development, multilingual education policies, digitization and digital divides, language visibility in public life, education for hunter-gatherer communities, and media and the arts, illustrated through cases from across the continent. A concluding theoretical chapter examines broader challenges and opportunities for multilingual education in Africa. Together, the chapters demonstrate that strengthening African linguistic resources is vital for decolonizing knowledge production, empowering communities, and reimagining education systems that reflect Africa’s diverse realities and aspirations. With contributions from Doris Löhr, Comfort Beyang Oben Ojongnkpot, Taiwo Oloruntoba-Oju, Bert van Pinxteren, Ayodele Yusuff, Feyi Ademola-Adeoye, Adédoyinsolá Omowùnmí Eleshin, Emilisco Jones Enoachuo, Sarita Monjane Henriksen, Tomoe Noguchi, Omusula W. Omuholo

The education of young people in Africa has been receiving increasing political attention due to expanded schooling and, as a result, an expanding number of unemployed educated youths who challenge governments. While many studies have described young people in Africa as being in a stage of ‘waithood’, this special issue looks at decision-making processes in youths’ education. The articles, which are mainly based on anthropological fieldwork, show how fears of ‘losing’ the future and ideas of ‘securing’ it guide decisions about young people’s education. Economic, political, moral, gendered, and religious factors are decisive in educational decision-making processes. Moreover, the status and prestige attributed to various forms of education impact those decisions. By looking beyond ideas of ‘proper’ education, which often reduce it to public schooling, this issue gives insight into the educational landscape in Africa and its connections to those of other continents that shapes young people’s lives and futures.

Face à un monde plus multipolaire, les spécialistes de l’économie politique internationale affûtent leurs outils pour expliquer la longue durée des institutions postcoloniales, la subordination financière internationale et la quête d’autodétermination. Dans le cadre de ces débats, cet article développe le concept de « luttes honnêtes » au sein de l’histoire postcoloniale du Sénégal et se concentre sur trois d’entre elles. En premier lieu, les tentatives de faire évoluer l’économie sénégalaise en abandonnant les cultures de rente coloniales et l’influence française, de 1960 à 1980 ; ensuite, les efforts pour faire face à la crise de la dette des pays du Sud et à la dévaluation du franc CFA de 50 %, entre 1980 et 2004 ; enfin, la lutte visant à développer l’économie sénégalaise au sein d’un tout nouvel espace fiscal et de nouvelles formes de dette externe depuis le début de l’allégement international de la dette, de 2004 jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Je m’appuie sur des données financières, ainsi que sur des interviews réalisées à Dakar et à Paris, pour affirmer que ces luttes ont débouché sur une certaine transformation structurelle. Cependant, le danger de la crise de la dette n’a pas disparu et l’autodétermination économique demeure précaire. La dépendance continue aux capitaux étrangers a atteint des niveaux records ces dernières années. La subordination financière internationale est une condition structurelle de l’action gouvernementale des pays du Sud, qui ne cesse de menacer les progrès durement gagnés en matière d’autodétermination.

Theatre, music, dance and poetry performances provide means and methods to co-create knowledges in a way that brings emotional and bodily experiences into dialogue with academic reflections. Working through the trauma of enslavement, colonisation and their aftermath requires such highly sensitive methodologies to avoid further objectification and alienation of the people involved. In this colloquium, we launch a 45-min live recording of the dance theatre “Mafone – Oríkì da viagem” (“Mafone – Oríkì of the voyage”) directed by Brazilian transdisciplinary artist Diego Araúja, Colombian choreographer Jaime Gómez and Mozambican musician Matchume Zango. It is a major outcome of our approach to Orlando Fals Borda’s Participatory Action Research, which inspired us to organise an exchange programme between Afro-descendant artists and community actors from Salvador da Bahia (Brazil) and Cartagena de Indias (Colombia). We take this public video screening as an opportunity to reflect on our shifting roles as researchers, mediators and mentors of this process throughout the past three years, and open up a discussion on the potentials and limitations of combining arts and research. In particular, we consider the opacity through which both trauma and dreams can be reinvented in a non-harmful, but polysemantic way. Hence, we will take the public on a creative journey of transdisciplinary experimentation and collective healing, striving to provoke thoughts and discussions on alternative ways of doing research in and with Latin America.

Between 2015 and 2022, venture capital (VC) investments in Africa have increased significantly. However, a closer look reveals that these investments have been dis- tributed unevenly in socio-spatial terms. In this article, we seek to demonstrate that the existing literature on the VC-inequality nexus in North America can help make sense of the interrelationship between VC allocation decision-making and socially differentiated access to VC in Africa. By summarizing existing findings on the VC allocation-inequality nexus and combining insights from different disciplines, we provide conceptual clarity through a systematic inventory of the existing literature. Secondly, by developing a view from Africa, we show how an engagement with VC from ‘the margins’ complicates existing narratives on investee discrimination mainly generated in a North American context. Finally, we filter our findings through VC experiences of Asian economies, where VC funding has often evaded the classic ‘race’ problem due to its domestic nature, even though these experien- ces are far from equal affairs.

Researchers from the Global North and South have collaborated for decades to conduct cutting-edge interdisciplinary research. The tools they used to manage their research projects remained virtually unchanged until the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak early in 2020. Since then, a lot has changed, including the nature and dynamics of research collaboration. How are researchers and project managers adapting to this change? Survey data, semi-structured interviews, and personal accounts from 102 respondents from 33 countries are used in this empirical study to investigate the impact of the pandemic on research collaboration projects. An independent non-parametric t-test revealed a significant difference in the research collaboration infrastructure and home environment between Global North and global South collaborators. The findings have practical implications for people involved in collaborative research projects, funding agencies, project management professionals, and universities interested in pursuing or sustaining North-South research collaboration during the pandemic.

As corruption threatens state sovereignty and undermines the achievement of gender parity in politics, media have been pivotal in feminising corruption among female political office holders. By feminised corruption, I refer to recent trends of typifying women as corrupt and making more women visible among the corrupt across political spaces. While scholars have engaged with feminised poverty, focus on feminised corruption in transnational context is limited. Consequently, that media transnationalism essentialises women as higher moral agents is comprehensible; what is worrisome is how media transnationalism turns back to weaponise corruption against women in public office. Could an avowal that women are the world’s proletariat be connected with feminised corruption? If transnationalism resembles the "trans" in transvestism as Judith Butler suggests, how does media feminise corruption in transnational contexts? By focusing on feminised corruption among female political office holders, this study deploys Nigeria’s Diezani Allison Madueke’s corruption saga (1) to spotlight new, comparative insight that media transnationalism shed on feminised corruption (2) to understand how moral conduct of female political office holders affect women’s political participation, and; (3) to seek feminist moral approach that could address the challenges of feminised corruption. While this study is in no way justifying corruption or seeking to exonerate anyone, it calls attention to misogynistic use of media to deprive women and discourage new entrants from venturing politics. It emphasises moral tools necessary for any meaningful involvement of women in political activities and suggests how women may use these tools to survive and thrive within political spaces across states.

Examining a variety of novels that offer insightful representations of violence in their respective historical settings, the author argues that similar historical experiences between Latin America and Africa engender ethical/aesthetic responses and enhance trans-continental critical dialogues in comparative literary studies. In the same way that the drama of the Congo has become the symbolic open wound of (post)colonial dispensation in Africa, Spanish conquest in Latin America also produced spaces where the legacy of colonialism is strongly visible and memorable, providing fertile ground for the reproduction of violence. This book explores the concept and reality of violence beyond its most obvious manifestations, demonstrating how in the colonial contexts of Peru and the Congo, violence was a function of (post)colonial power dynamics and deeply engrained socio-political, economic and cultural ordering and othering. From this perspective, the work considers and re-examines theoretical contributions from authors such as John Galtung, Michel Foucault, Immanuel Wallerstein, Anibal Quijano, Frantz Fanon, Achille Mbembe, Eboussi Boulaga, Pierre Nora, Susan Sontag, Stevan Weine, Cathy Caruth and Nelson Maldonado-Torres.

For more than a decade scholars mostly from economy and development studies have described the rise of a newly emerging ‘middle class’ in the Global South in- cluding Africa. This has led to a ‘middle class narrative’ with the ‘middle class’ as the backbone of economic and democratic development. Especially with regard to the stability of the position of the people in the ‘middle’, empirical social science studies challenge the ‘middle class narrative’ and at their uncertainty and insecurity. This tension between upward mobility at the one hand uncertainty and instability at the other hand (the vulnerability-security nexus) and the options to cope with this challenge under the condition of limited provision of formal social security is the focus of this case study on Kenya. Instead of an analysis of inequality based on income, it is more helpful to start from the welfare mix and the role of social net- works as main elements of provision of social security. Against this background, we identify different strategies of coping that go together with different sets of values and lifestyles, conceptualised as milieus, that are not determined by the socio- economic situation