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African Cinema and Human Rights (Studies In The Cinema Of The Black Diaspora Ser.)
by Edited by Mette Hjort and Eva JørholtEssays and case studies exploring how filmmaking can play a role in promoting social and economic justice. Bringing theory and practice together, African Cinema and Human Rights argues that moving images have a significant role to play in advancing the causes of justice and fairness. The contributors to this volume identify three key ways in which film can achieve these goals: Documenting human rights abuses and thereby supporting the claims of victims and goals of truth and reconciliation within larger communitiesLegitimating, and consequently solidifying, an expanded scope for human rightsPromoting the realization of social and economic right Including the voices of African scholars, scholar-filmmakers, African directors Jean-Marie Teno and Gaston Kaboré, and researchers whose work focuses on transnational cinema, this volume explores overall perspectives, and differences of perspective, pertaining to Africa, human rights, and human rights filmmaking alongside specific case studies of individual films and areas of human rights violations. With its interdisciplinary scope, attention to practitioners&’ self-understandings, broad perspectives, and particular case studies, African Cinema and Human Rights is a foundational text that offers questions, reflections, and evidence that help us to consider film&’s ideal role within the context of our ever-continuing struggle towards a more just global society.
African Cities In Crisis: Managing Rapid Urban Growth
by Rodney R. White Richard E. StrenThis book presents the results of the "African Urban Management" project designed to study comparatively governmental responses to the gap between the realities of official plans and perspectives and the mushrooming world of the urban poor in African cities.
African Cities Through Local Eyes: Experiments in Place-Based Planning and Design (The Urban Book Series)
by Giuseppe Faldi Axel Fisher Luisa MorettoThis book provides readers with a wide overview of place-based planning and design experiments addressing such powerful transformations in the African built environment. This continent is currently undergoing fast paced urban, institutional and environmental changes, which have stimulated an increasing interest for alternative architectural solutions, urban designs and comprehensive planning experiments. The international and balanced array of the collected contributions explore emerging research concepts for understanding urban and peri-urban processes in Africa, discuss bottom-up planning and design practices, and present inspirational and innovative co-design methods and participatory tools for steering such change through public spaces, sustainable services and infrastructures. The book is intended for students, researchers, decision-makers and practitioners engaged in planning and design for the built environment in Africa and the Global South at large.
African Citizenship Aspirations: As Time Goes By or How Far Till Banjul
by Catarina Antunes Gomes Cesaltina AbreuThis collective work aims to critically reflect upon contemporary citizenship aspirations and practices in sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on different realities, such as Angola, Mozambique and the Great Lakes region, it tries to unveil multiple historical commonalities, especially those arising from shared experiences of postcolonial violence and vulnerability. Thus, albeit the social realities under scrutiny cannot stand for the complexity of the Continent, the studies here gathered enlighten similar processes that can be identified in many other African contexts. That is certainly the case of the proliferation of religious manifestations and democratic demands that are currently being articulated in different countries such as Burundi, Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda and Nigeria.One such commonality can be referred to as a quest for being. Indeed, this quest for being has always underpinned African discourses and practices, either in postcolonial approaches, either in intellectual traditions, either in popular productions. These multiple practices reveal how, in certain circumstances, identity, as a product of historical wills of knowledge, power and truth, can be questioned as a site of possession and entrapment. How is one to be beyond colonial possession? Or beyond postcolonial authoritarian rule? Or beyond eurocentrism? African quests for being have always been quests for freedom. And they impose a debate on regimes of citizenship. Active citizenship is not merely a by-product of formal political systems; it is one that challenges them from the outside while actualizing the lessons of historical liberation struggles. As times goes by, the right to be still stands.The chapters of this book were originally published as a special issue in Citizenship Studies.
African Coalitions and Global Economic Governance
by Nelson Michael ByronThe proliferation of international institutions with overlapping scope and authority over issue areas creates strategic dilemmas for all states. While African states are often considered marginalised in world politics and global markets, Michael Byron Nelson shows how coalitions can form a crucial part of African strategies to influence international institutions and achieve results. Building a bottom-up analysis of global governance, through legal analysis, content analysis, and in-depth interviews, Nelson illuminates institutional and coalition dynamics through case studies of three key areas - food safety, intellectual property, and agricultural trade. He highlights the difficulties encountered by coalitions attempting to navigate institutional systems, emerging from institutional thickness (increasing the number of institutions involved) and integration (increasing the formal linkages between those institutions). Finally, Nelson shows how increasing the hierarchy of an institutional system, by creating a focal point on a single institution, can make coordination easier for coalitions.
The African Colonial State In Comparative Perspective
by Crawford YoungIn this comprehensive and original study, a distinguished scholar of African affairs argues that the crisis in African development can be traced directly to European colonial rule, which left the continent with a "singularly difficult legacy." Crawford Young proposes a new conception of the state, weighing the characteristics of European empires of the past (including those of Holland, Portugal, England, and Venice) and distilling their common qualities. He then presents a concise and wide-ranging history of colonization in Africa, from construction through consolidation and decolonization. Young argues that several qualities combined to make the European colonial experience in Africa distinctive. The high number of nations competing for power on the continent and the necessity to achieve effective occupation swiftly yet make the colonies self-financing drove colonial powers toward policies of "ruthless extractive action." The persistent, virulent racism that distanced rulers from subjects was especially central to African colonial history.
African Constitutionalism and the Role of Islam
by Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'imConstitutionalism is steadily becoming the prevalent form of governance in Africa. But how does constitutionalism deal with the lingering effects of colonialism? And how does constitutional law deal with Islamic principles in the region? African Constitutionalism and the Role of Islam seeks to answer these questions. Constitutional governance has not been, nor will be, easily achieved, Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im argues. But setbacks and difficulties are to be expected in the process of adaptation and indigenization of an essentially alien concept--that of of nation-state--and its role in large-scale political and social organization.An-Na'im discusses the problems of implementing constitutionalized forms of government specific to Africa, from definitional to conceptual and practical issues. The role of Islam in these endeavors is open to challenge and reformulation, and should not be taken for granted or assumed to be necessarily negative or positive, An-Na'im asserts, and he emphasizes the role of the agency of Muslims in the process of adapting constitutionalism to the values and practices of their own societies. By examining the incremental successes that some African nations have already achieved and An-Na'im reveals the contingent role that Islam has to play in this process. Ultimately, these issues will determine the long-term sustainability of constitutionalism in Africa.
African Constructions of China: Insights from Ghana and Kenya (Routledge Contemporary Africa)
by Kwaku Opoku DankwahMarking a constructivist turn in Africa-China scholarship, this book explores African constructions of China. Using Ghana and Kenya as case studies, the book outlines the role of diverse state and non-state actors in defining what China represents to the region, and how it compares to Western powers. Resisting Sino- and state-centric analysis of China-Africa relations, this book emphasises the importance of African agency in shaping the discourse. The book demonstrates that the identity construction of a foreign state such as China takes place both at the international level, and at a domestic, intrastate level. Domestic constructions of China in Ghana and Kenya reflect internal tensions about future directions for African political and socio-economic development, and these constructions in turn help to justify government policies towards China. The book concludes by questioning the idea of a straightforward win-win relationship, and suggests that exploitative, hierarchical relations conventionally associated with North-South interactions may continue in South-South relations. This book’s important analysis of the role of domestic non-state actors in shaping African policymaking extends much needed nuance to a sometimes polarised debate. It will be of interest to researchers across the fields of politics, international relations, global development, and African and Chinese Studies.
The African Continental Free Trade Area: Economic and Distributional Effects
by World BankThe African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) agreement will create the largest free trade area in the world, measured by the number of countries participating. The pact will connect 1.3 billion people across 55 countries with a combined GDP valued at $3.4 trillion. It has the potential to lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty by 2035. But achieving its full potential will depend on putting in place significant policy reforms and trade facilitation measures. The scope of the agreement is considerable. It will reduce tariffs among member countries and cover policy areas, such as trade facilitation and services, as well as regulatory measures, such as sanitary standards and technical barriers to trade. It will complement existing subregional economic communities and trade agreements by offering a continent-wide regulatory framework and by regulating policy areas—such as investment and intellectual property rights protection—that have not been covered in most subregional agreements. The African Continental Free Trade Area: Economic and Distributional Effects quantifies the long-term implications of the agreement for growth, trade, poverty reduction, and employment. Its analysis goes beyond that in previous studies that have largely focused on tariff and nontariff barriers in goods—by including the effects of services and trade facilitation measures, as well as the distributional impacts on poverty, employment, and wages of female and male workers. It is designed to guide policy makers as they develop and implement the extensive range of reforms needed to realize the substantial rewards that the agreement offers. The analysis shows that full implementation of AfCFTA could boost income by 7 percent, or nearly $450 billion, in 2014 prices and market exchange rates. The agreement would also significantly expand African trade—particularly intraregional trade in manufacturing. In addition, it would increase employment opportunities and wages for unskilled workers and help close the wage gap between men and women.
The African Continental Free Trade Area: Prospects, Problems and Challenges
by Benjamin Ofori-AmoahIn March of 2018, 44 African countries signed the African Continental Free Trade Area agreement (AfCFTA) to launch what is considered as the largest free trade area in the world. The signing of the agreement has been hailed as a major breakthrough for African development by African countries and organizations as well as external observers of African affairs. This is not the first time African countries have proposed a new organizational and institutional structure for development. African countries have signed at least 13 regional trade agreements (RTAs) for intraregional trade since 1959. However, the track record of these groups has been relatively mediocre compared to RTAs elsewhere. Thus, Africa has the lowest percentage of intracontinental trade in the world. This volume evaluates the prospects and challenges for the AfCFTA through a deep-dive assessment of previous trade blocs on the African continent and of regional free trade areas in other parts of the world. The central question of the book is this: If pre-AfCFTA trade blocs in Africa did not encourage more intracontinental trade, what guarantees that the AfCTA will? The formation of the AfCFTA will definitely remove overlapping membership that existed with previous trading blocs on the continent, but what is different about the AfCFTA that will get rid of cumbersome regulation, boost manufacturing, and create jobs? This book argues that the dreams of AfCFTA will not be realized unless African countries make efforts to address the industry mix of their economies and to enforce the rules and regulations they set down on paper.
The African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples' Rights in Context: Development and Challenges
by Charles C. Jalloh Kamari M. Clarke Vincent O. NmehielleThe treaty creating the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples' Rights, if and when it comes into force, contains innovative elements that have potentially significant implications for current substantive and procedural approaches to regional and international dispute settlements. Bringing together leading authorities in international criminal law, human rights and transitional justice, this volume provides the first comprehensive analysis of the 'Malabo Protocol' while situating it within the wider fields of international law and international relations. The book, edited by Professors Jalloh, Clarke and Nmehielle, offers scholarly, empirical, critically engaged and practical analyses of some of its most challenging provisions. Breaking new ground on the African Court, but also treating old concepts in a novel and relevant way, The African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples' Rights in Context is for anyone interested in international law, including international criminal law and international human rights law. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
The African Criminal Court
by Gerhard Werle Moritz VormbaumThis book examines the mutual recognition of judicial decisions in European criminal law as a cornerstone of judicial co-operation in criminal matters in the European Union. Providing comprehensive content and combining theoretical and practical aspects, it covers all of the major issues surrounding mutual recognition. The book analyses its definition, genesis, principles, case law, implementation and evaluation. Special attention is given to mutual recognition measures, namely European arrest warrant (i. e. surrender procedure), mutual recognition of custodial sentences, and measures involving deprivation of liberty, mutual recognition of probation measures and alternative sanctions, mutual recognition of financial penalties, mutual recognition of confiscation orders, the European supervision order in pre-trial procedures (i. e. mutual recognition of supervision measures as an alternative to provisional detention), the European investigation order (i. e. free movement of evidence), and the European protection order (i. e. mutual recognition of protection orders). Instead of focusing solely on a criminal law approach, the book also considers the subject from the perspectives of European Union law and International criminal law.
African Cultural Heritage Conservation and Management: Theory and Practice from Southern Africa
by Susan Osireditse KeitumetseFor a long time, resource conservationists have viewed environmental conservation as synonymous with wilderness and wildlife resources only, oblivious to the contributions made by cultural and heritage resources. However, cultural heritage resources in many parts of the developing world are gradually becoming key in social (e. g. communities' identities and museums), economic (heritage tourism and eco-tourism), educational (curriculum development), civic (intergenerational awareness), and international resources management (e. g. UNESCO). In universities, African cultural heritage resources are facing a challenge of being brought into various academic discourses and syllabi in a rather reactive and/or haphazard approach, resulting in failure to fully address and research these resources' conservation needs to ensure that their use in multiple platforms and by various stakeholders is sustainable. This book seeks to place African cultural heritage studies and conservation practices within an international and modern world discourse of conservation by presenting its varied themes and topics that are important for the development of the wider field of cultural heritage studies and management.
African Democratic Citizenship Education Revisited (Palgrave Studies in Global Citizenship Education and Democracy)
by Nuraan Davids Yusef WaghidThis edited collection explores how democratic citizenship education manifests across the African continent. A recognition of rights and responsibilities coupled with an emphasis on deliberative engagement among citizens, while not uniquely African, provides ample evidence that the concept can most appropriately be realised in relation to its connectedness with experiences of people living on the continent. Focussing on a diverse collection of voices, the editors and authors examine countries that have an overwhelming allegiance to democratic citizenship education. In doing so, they acknowledge that this concept, enveloped by a certain Africanness, has the potential to manifest in practices across the African continent. By highlighting the success of democratic citizenship education, the diverse and varied contributions from across this vast continent address the malaise in its implementation in countries where autocratic rule prevails. This pioneering volume will be an invaluable resource for researchers and students working in the fields of education and sociology, particularly those with an interest in education policy, philosophy of education and global citizenship initiatives.
African Development: Making Sense Of The Issues And Actors
by Todd J. Moss Danielle ResnickBoth authoritative and accessible, African Development introduces the issues, actors, and institutions at play in development trajectories across sub-Saharan Africa. This new edition, thoroughly updated, includes an entirely new chapter devoted to key demographic trends in the region, especially rapid urbanization and the distinct “youth bulge.” There is also a review of major democratic gains and disappointments since 2011; analysis of renewed internal armed conflicts; and attention to the contemporary sovereign debt crisis relative to the structural adjustment debt of earlier decades. The book uniquely brings to life the collective impact of history, economics, and politics on development in the region.
African Development, African Transformation: How Institutions Shape Development Strategy
by Landry SignéAfrica is home to many of the world's fastest-growing economies. This powerful book traces new continental institutions for development and their capacity to affect economic growth, regional integration, and international cooperation in Africa. It also assesses Africa's ability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union's Agenda 2063. As the continent's most ambitious development initiative since independence, the African Union Development Agency (or AUDA, previously known as the New Partnership for Africa's Development or NEPAD) provides an excellent case study for examining how an African-based, continent-wide development institution emerged. Inspired by the ideas of Pan-Africanism and the African Renaissance, NEPAD was created to bring Africa into the globalizing world, to close the gap between developing and developed countries, to enhance economic growth, and to eradicate poverty. Almost two decades after NEPAD's creation and it was given its transformation into AUDA, this brilliant book examines its role in achieving these goals.
African Development and Global Engagements: Policy, Climate Change, and COVID-19
by Adebusuyi Isaac AdeniranThe book takes a cursory look at the drivers and the directions of Africa’s developmental drive as a largely developing continent within the frameworks of the ever-dynamic global space, putting into perspective inherent challenges and opportunities of the 21st Century, and thereafter. Being the continent with most youthful population, Africa appears to still lack in requisite innovative interventions to transmute such demographic dividend into economic opportunities for the benefits of the larger population. Instead, there has been increasing trend in South-North migrations among both skilled and unskilled Africans across all age groups. Besides, impacts of climate change on the continent have also implied unstructured migratory trend within and beyond the bounds of the continent. Africa has continued to play a feeble role in various United Nations (UN)-enabled ‘Conference of Parties’ (COP) negotiations, such as the COP-26 in Glasgow, Scotland (2021). The management of recent Covid-19 epidemic across the world has presented a clear pointer to Africa that except development is internally-driven, no one is ready to exogenously drive sustainable good life for others. Ostensible ‘vaccine nationalism’ that has dotted the production and availability of various Covid-19 vaccine brands, which has ultimately left Africa as the ‘begging continent’ one more time calls for in-depth interrogation in contextualizing what the place of Africa has been, is and to be within the global interactive mode.
African Development Prospects: A Policy Modelling Approach
by United Nations StaffFirst published in 1989. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
African Ecology and Human Evolution
by F. Clark Howell Francois BourliereThe record of man's early evolution, though still fragmentary, is more complete on the African continent than anywhere else in the world. The ecological context of this evolution, however, has been studied intensively only in recent years. This pioneering volume draws together eminent specialists from many fields--physical anthropologists, zoologists, geologists, paleontologists, and prehistorians--who summarize here the results of their diverse research on Pleistocene environments and the cultural and biological evolution of man in Africa.This volume was sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Inc., which met at Burg Wartenstein, Austria. The editors have field experience in Africa, especially eastern and equatorial Africa. This experience is coupled with their awareness of the need to integrate results of numerous field studies bearing on the biological-behavioral evolution of higher primates with other field studies on the paleoecology and the mammalian ecology of sub-Saharan Africa.The book includes contributions on Pleistocene stratigraphy and climatic changes throughout the African continent; on the origin and evolution of the earliest man-like creatures in Africa; on the dating, distribution, and adaptation of Pleistocene hunter-gatherer peoples; and on the ecology, biology, and social behavior of African primate and human populations. The chapters reflect vividly the state of current knowledge at the time and indicate paths for future research. Over 100 maps and figures, detailed bibliographies, and a comprehensive index contribute to the importance of the volume for basic reference use.
African Economic Institutions (Global Institutions)
by Kwame AkonorThis book analyzes how, and under what conditions, African International Economic Organizations (IEO) have evolved, and what individual and collective contributions, if any, these African IEOs have had on Africa’s socio-economic development. Providing a comprehensive and accessible overview, the book covers the continent’s main IEOs, The United Nations Economic Commission on Africa, The African Development Bank; and The New Partnership for Africa’s Development as well as the five major Regional Economic Communities, including Economic Community of West African States, and Southern African Development Community. Assessing the degree to which African IEO’s have been able to chart their own course in coming up with their development agendas and priorities rather than following the lead of Global Institutions, this book: Provides a descriptive and analytical overview of the historical and contemporary development blueprints produced for Africa Clearly examines the contribution made by African economic institutions towards development Considers whether African economic institutions are building blocks or stumbling blocks in Africa’s development Offers a detailed evaluation and critique of African IEOs Enabling the reader to reach a deeper understanding of the challenges and potentials of development on the African continent, African Economic Institutions will be of interest to all students and scholars of African politics and development studies.
African Economies and the Politics of Permanent Crisis, 1979-1999
by Nicolas Van De WalleThis 2001 book explains why African countries have remained mired in a disastrous economic crisis since the late 1970s. It shows that dynamics internal to African state structures largely explain this failure to overcome economic difficulties rather than external pressures on these same structures as is often argued. Far from being prevented from undertaking reforms by societal interest and pressure groups, clientelism within the state elite, ideological factors and low state capacity have resulted in some limited reform, but much prevarication and manipulation of the reform process, by governments which do not really believe that reform will be effective, which often oppose reforms because they would undercut the patronage and rent-seeking practices which undergird political authority, and which lack the administrative and technical capacity to implement much reform. Over time, state decay has increased.
African Epistemology: Essays on Being and Knowledge (Routledge Studies in African Philosophy)
by Peter Aloysius Ikhane Isaac E. UkpokoloThis book investigates how knowledge is conceived and explored within the African context. Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, has historically been dominated by the Western approach to the discourse of knowledge. This book however shines a much-needed spotlight on knowledge systems originating within the African continent. Bringing together key voices from across the field of African philosophy, this book explores the nature of knowledge across the continent and how they are rooted in Africans’ ontological sense of being and self. At a time when moves to decolonize curricula are gaining momentum, this book shows how understanding the specific ways of knowing that form part of the every day life of the African, will play an important part in rebalancing studies of philosophy globally. Employing critical, conceptual and rigorous analyses of the nature and essence of knowledge as understood by indigenous African societies, the book ultimately asks what could pass as an African theory of knowledge. This important guide to the connections between knowledge and being, in African philosophical thought, will be an important resource for researchers and students of philosophy and African studies.
The African Exception (Contemporary Perspectives On Developing Societies Ser.)
by Ulf EngelGovernance has become an important concept in the politics of African development. It is therefore a crucial concept for social science analyses focusing on Africa. In public discourse Africa's future is being shaped by a combination of external interventions backed by African elites who cooperate with the donors, whose understanding of the importance of 'good governance' they share. This groundbreaking book disentangles the analytical aspects of governance from its political and normative connotations. The 'African exception' - the difference in 'development' between Africa and other regions of the South - can be understood by analysis focusing upon the specific forms of governance played out in politics and economics. The perspective of neo-patrimonialism is crucial but not sufficient here. The first section of the book explores African governance in two functional spheres: the political realm and the economic. Section two looks at new areas of governance in Africa: violent social spaces, HIV/AIDS and entrepreneurial urban governance.
The African Experience
by Vincent KhapoyaUpdated in its 4th edition, The African Experience is the only interdisciplinary survey to examine this region of the world from geographic, linguistic, social, historical, and political perspectives. Drawing on research from all of the social sciences, this text captures Africa in its complex totality. The African Experience helps readers develop a comprehensive and critical understanding of Africa, one that allows them to grasp the regions internal dynamics and its evolving place in the world.
The African Experience: From Olduvai Gorge To The 21st Century (History Of Civilization Ser.)
by Roland OliverThis masterpiece of scholarship and compression, the second edition of The African Experience, covers the entire span of human history across the African continent, from the earliest emergence of hominids in eastern and southern Africa up to the present day. Drawing on more than forty years of teaching and research, Professor Oliver arranges the book thematically, beginning with the human colonization of the different regions of Africa, the origins of food production, and the formation of African languages.The achievements of Ancient Egypt are placed in context with the developments in the rest of the continent, and the spread of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - "peoples of the book." The tradition of urban settlement is traced, especially in western Africa, as well as the emergence of large and complex societies formed by the interaction of pastoralists and cultivators in eastern and southern Africa.The extent and nature of slavery in Africa is fully discussed, together with the external slave trade and the caravan trade in precolonial times. This leads to an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of African political systems and why, from the early nineteenth century onwards, these systems were unable to withstand political pressure from abroad and the ensuing colonization. The colonial partition of Africa saw the rapid amalgamation of small units, through which considerable modernization was achieved at the expense of the indigenous structures and through the exploitation of the African peoples. Later chapters describe the birth of modern African nation-states, at a time of widespread belief in state planning - now being questioned as the political elites of black Africa begin to review their single-party systems. This new edition sees a number of revisions, including a new chapter on the 1990s, when the end of the Cold War left Africa free at last to try to solve its own problems.