The Elite Africa Project is a global network of scholars working to shift how Africa and its elites are understood.

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The Elite Africa Project

is a Canadian-based global network of scholars working to challenge predominant understandings of Africa and its elites.

Both in academia and in wider public discourse, African elites have either been ignored or depicted as grasping and self-interested. This framing perpetuates negative depictions of the continent and its peoples and draws on a simplistic understanding of what power is and how it is wielded. Our work aims to counter these perceptions by initiating global conversations about “who leads” in Africa and how they do so.

We seek to disrupt and renew both academic and public discussions of African leadership, refocusing attention on a wider, qualitatively different set of elites from those that have predominated in the past (such as the parasitic “Big Men” of neo-patrimonial politics).

Burna Boy, Nigerian musician, rapper and songwriter; in 2021, his album Twice as Tall won the Best World Music Album at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards, and he enjoyed back to back Grammy award nominations in 2019 and 2020.

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigerian economist, fair trade leader, environmental sustainability advocate, human welfare champion, sustainable finance maven and global development expert. Since March 2021, Okonjo-Iweala has been serving as Director-General of the World Trade Organization.

This project focuses on Africa’s elites, defined as those who operate at the highest level across a range of domains, wield significant power, and possess expert knowledge, skills, and personal strengths that are deployed in strategic, creative, and generative ways. While elites are those who possess the most consequential and powerful agenda-setting and decision-making capacity, Africa’s elites have either been sidelined in many of our analyses or rendered monotonal. When we switch frames to consider the continent as embodying and projecting new, generative forms of power, it changes our view of Africa. It may also change how we understand power itself.

We look at six domains of elite power, from the political to the aesthetic, and ask how we might shift how we think about and study Africa, and how this shift would impact our conceptualization of power and its exercise. Our goal is to contribute to popular conversations about Africa and to highlight the achievements of the astonishing new generation of leaders for a broader public audience.

This website will serve as a hub for collaborative activity by scholars, activists, and practitioners working on Elite Africa and house a searchable database of primary and secondary materials on African elites.

Kofi Annan (1938-2018), Ghanaian-born diplomat, trained in economics, international relations and management; was the first UNSG to be elected from within the ranks of the UN staff itself and served in various key roles before becoming Secretary General.

Namwali Serpell, Zambia award-winning novelist and writer; Recognised early on with the Caine prize, her numerous subsequent awards include the Windham–Campbell Literature Prize, one of the world’s richest literary prizes.

Mohammed "Mo" Ibrahim, Sudanese billionaire businessman. He worked for several telecommunications companies, before founding Celtel, which when sold had over 24 million mobile phone subscribers in 14 African countries.

The Elite Africa Project

is a Canadian-based global network of scholars working to challenge predominant understandings of Africa and its elites.

Both in academia and in wider public discourse, African elites have either been ignored or depicted as grasping and self-interested. This framing perpetuates negative depictions of the continent and its peoples and draws on a simplistic understanding of what power is and how it is wielded. Our work aims to counter these perceptions by initiating global conversations about “who leads” in Africa and how they do so.

We seek to disrupt and renew both academic and public discussions of African leadership, refocusing attention on a wider, qualitatively different set of elites from those that have predominated in the past (such as the parasitic “Big Men” of neo-patrimonial politics).

This project focuses on Africa’s elites — those who operate at the highest level across a range of domains, wield significant power, and possess expert knowledge, skills, and personal strengths that are deployed in strategic, creative, and generative ways. When we switch frames to consider the continent as embodying and projecting new, generative forms of power, it changes our view of Africa. It may also change how we understand power itself.

This website is the hub for collaborative activity by scholars, activists, and practitioners working on Elite Africa and will house a searchable database of primary and secondary materials on African elites.

ELITE AFRICA PROJECT DATABASE

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Bisschoff, Lizelle. “From Nollywood to New Nollywood: The Story of Nigeria’s Runaway Success.” The Conversation, September 28,

2015. https://theconversation.com/from-nollywood-to-new-nollywood-the-story-of-nigerias-runaway-success-47959

“The video-film industry of Nigeria has been described as one of the greatest explosions of popular culture that Africa has ever seen. It is the first economically self-sustainable film industry in Africa. Initially through the use of video technology, and now affordable digital technology, Nigeria produces more than 2000 films per year. The industry, popularly called Nollywood, is currently ranked as the second largest in the world in terms of output after India’s Bollywood. Nollywood’s popularity has spread across the African continent, to the African diaspora in Europe, North America and Australia. It has even gone as far as the Caribbean and Pacific Islands.”

[Source: Excerpt from the article].

Bisschoff, Lizelle. From Nollywood to New Nollywood

Bisschoff, Lizelle
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“The video-film industry of Nigeria has been described as one of the greatest explosions of popular culture that Africa has ever seen. It is the first economically self-sustainable film industry in Africa. Initially through the use of video technology, and now affordable digital technology, Nigeria produces more than 2000 films per year.

Aesthetic
Economic

Bakare, Lanre. “Out of Africa: How Netflix’s Ambitions Could Change the Continent’s Cinema.” The Guardian, March 12, 2021.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/mar/12/out-of-africa-how-netflixs-ambitions-could-change-the-continents-cinema

“Last year, Africa produced its first animated feature, made in Nigeria and self-funded. Micro-budget projects have taken off in South Africa, as traditional funding routes become blocked off because of the pandemic. The kind of improvisation and innovation seen on Mosese’s set is a constant on a continent that is – in many regions and areas of cinema – still developing. A new scramble for Africa’s cinema has only just begun.”

[Source: Excerpt from the article].

Bakare, Lanre. “Out of Africa"

Bakare, Lanre
This is some text inside of a div block.

“Last year, Africa produced its first animated feature, made in Nigeria and self-funded. Micro-budget projects have taken off in South Africa, as traditional funding routes become blocked off because of the pandemic. The kind of improvisation and innovation seen on Mosese’s set is a constant on a continent that is – in many regions and areas of cinema – still developing. A new scramble for Africa’s cinema has only just begun.”

Aesthetic

Overbergh, Ann. “Kenya’s Riverwood: Market Structure, Power Relations, and Future Outlooks”. JOURNAL OF AFRICAN CINEMAS 7, no 2 (2015): 97‑115. https://doi.org/10.1386/jac.7.2.97_1.

This article analyses the economic structure, market dynamics and power relations in Kenya’s Riverwood movie circuit. Similarities and differences with better-known African popular cinema industries are highlighted and tentatively explained. The article pays attention to historical background, context factors, individual agency and questions of justice and fairness in the circuit. Riverwood may at first glance appear to be just another example of the African popular cinema genre, but on closer inspection shows as many dissimilarities as similarities with, for instance, Nollywood and Bongowood.

Overbergh, Ann. “Kenya’s Riverwood"

Overbergh, Ann
This is some text inside of a div block.

This article analyses the economic structure, market dynamics and power relations in Kenya’s Riverwood movie circuit.

Aesthetic

Niang, Sada. “The FEPACI and Its Artistic Legacies”. Black Camera: The Newsletter of the Black Film Center/Archives 12, no 2 (2021): 176‑202. https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.12.2.11.

‘‘In Africa, the creation of the FEPACI (Federation of African Filmmakers) at the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage in 1969 was the first step towards such a consolidation. At first, the newly minted FEPACI only “made a commitment to use films for the liberation of colonized countries as a step towards African unity under the sign of Pan-Africanism.”

[Source: Excerpt from the article abstract].

Niang, Sada. “The FEPACI and Its Artistic Legacies”.

Niang, Sada. “The FEPACI and Its Artistic Legacies”.
This is some text inside of a div block.

‘‘In Africa, the creation of the FEPACI (Federation of African Filmmakers) at the Journées Cinématographiques de Carthage in 1969 was the first step towards such a consolidation. At first, the newly minted FEPACI only “made a commitment to use films for the liberation of colonized countries as a step towards African unity under the sign of Pan-Africanism.”

Aesthetic

Manthia Diawara. “On Tracking World Cinema: African Cinema at Film Festivals”. Black Camera: The Newsletter of the Black Film Center/Archives 12, no 1 (2020):48‑58.

“African cinema exists in exile. Gaston Kabore, the General Secretary of FEPACI, was criticized for traveling too often to Europe and America on behalf of African cinema and doing little networking in Africa. More African films are seen in Europe and America than in Africa. In fact, an African filmmaker told me that the recent African Film Festival organized in New York was more important to him than FESPACO, because African films have a better market in America than Africa.”

[Source: Excerpt from the article, p. 47].

Manthia Diawara. “On Tracking World Cinema

Manthia Diawara
This is some text inside of a div block.

“African cinema exists in exile. Gaston Kabore, the General Secretary of FEPACI, was criticized for traveling too often to Europe and America on behalf of African cinema and doing little networking in Africa. More African films are seen in Europe and America than in Africa. In fact, an African filmmaker told me that the recent African Film Festival organized in New York was more important to him than FESPACO, because African films have a better market in America than Africa.”

Aesthetic

Larkin, Brian. “The Grounds of Circulation: Rethinking African Film andMedia”. Politique Africaine (Paris, France: 1981) 153, no 1 (2019): 105‑26. https://doi.org/10.3917/polaf.153.0105.

“In both film production and the scholarly analyses of African screen media, there has been a recognition that something has fundamentally changed. The mode of productive forces has shifted, the aesthetic forms they produce are different, and the technical, financial and institutional infrastructures that organize film production are not reproducing themselves but are in the midst of a deep transformation. The task for scholars has been how to think this change and the split between these new forces and older forms of African popular cinema.”

[Source: Excerpt from the article].

Larkin, Brian. “The Grounds of Circulation

Larkin, Brian
This is some text inside of a div block.

“In both film production and the scholarly analyses of African screen media, there has been a recognition that something has fundamentally changed. The mode of productive forces has shifted, the aesthetic forms they produce are different, and the technical, financial and institutional infrastructures that organize film production are not reproducing themselves but are in the midst of a deep transformation. The task for scholars has been how to think this change and the split between these new forces and older forms of African popular cinema.”

Aesthetic
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