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

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome to The Elite Africa Project

Watch a video introduction to the project and database.

Featured Posts

Introducing: The Elite Africa Project Database

Learn more about the Elite Africa Project and our Online Database!

Dafe Oputu

Scholar Spotlight: Jeanne-Marie Jackson - Part 2

Part 2 of our interview with Professor of English Jeanne-Marie Jackson

Elite Africa Roundup - 20 August 2025

Funeral stalemate in Zambia, Jude Dibia on queerness in African lit

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Elite Africa Roundup - 2 August 2025

WAFCON 24, Cairo event honours displaced Sudanese entrepreneurs

Domains of Elite Power

The mechanics of how power—the essential condition of elite status—is meaningfully generated and exercised

Economic

Economic and business elites

Coercive

Military elites and those in security agencies

Ritual

Royalty, nobles, “traditional” rulers

Aesthetic

Art, literature, music- and media-based elites including new online influencers, clothing designers, architects, etc.

Religious

Religious and spiritual leaders, and intellectual/academic elites

Political

State-based or state-focused elites including international techno/bureaucrats

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.

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ELITE AFRICA PROJECT DATABASE

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Moolla, F. Fiona. Reading Nuruddin Farah: The Individual, the Novel & the Idea of Home. Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2014.

Moolla examines his writing within the framework of Somali society and culture, Islamic traditions and political contexts, all of which are central themes in his work. She also addresses Farah's engagement with women's lives - his female characters and identities being at the heart of, rather than peripheral, to his stories - something that has distinguished him from many other male African writers. The book finally suggests that through his literary negotiation of the central contradiction of modern identity, Farah comes close to constituting a subject who no longer is transcendentally 'homeless' but finds a home 'everywhere' - a fitting project for a writer who has been in exile for the greater part of his life.

[Source:https://boydellandbrewer.com].

Moolla, F. Fiona. Reading Nuruddin Farah

Moolla, F. Fiona
This is some text inside of a div block.

Moolla examines his writing within the framework of Somali society and culture, Islamic traditions and political contexts, all of which are central themes in his work.

Aesthetic

Mortimer, Mildred. Journeys Through the African Novel. Heineman, UK, 1990.

Mildred Mortimer questions the preeminence of outer and inner voyages in the francophone African novel. Rooted in both African oral tradition and the European novel, the journey motif not only reflects cultural blending but also African experiences of migration, exploration, and conquest. The author focuses on the importance of orature to African writing, links between Maghrebian and sub-Saharan African fiction, and the distinction between men's and women's journeys.

[Source: Amazon.com].

Mortimer, Mildred. Journeys Through the African Novel

Mortimer, Mildred
This is some text inside of a div block.

Mildred Mortimer questions the preeminence of outer and inner voyages in the francophone African novel.

Aesthetic

Limb, Peter and Jean-Marie Volet. Bibliography of African Literature. Scarecrow Press, USA, 1996.

The Bibliography of African Literature provides extensive coverage of the writings of both established and promising new authors in all continental African countries and Madagascar. The bibliography is arranged primarily by language, with emphasis on literatures in English and French. Some works in Portuguese, Arabic, and various major African languages are also included. Works are divided by region and country. A general overview lists bibliographies, anthologies, and critical works about African literature. With author, gender, and country indexes.

[Source: Culled from Amazon.com].

Limb, Peter and Jean-Marie Volet. Bibliography of African Literature

Limb, Peter and Jean-Marie Volet
This is some text inside of a div block.

The Bibliography of African Literature provides extensive coverage of the writings of both established and promising new authors in all continental African countries and Madagascar.

Aesthetic

Kigandi, Simon, ed. Encyclopedia of African Literature. Routledge; 2002.

The most comprehensive reference work on African literature to date, this book covers all the key historical and cultural issues in the field. The Encyclopedia contains over 600 entries covering criticism and theory, African literature's development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers and their texts. While the greatest proportion of literary work in Africa has been a product of the twentieth century, the Encyclopedia also covers the literature back to the earliest eras of story-telling and oral transmission, making this a unique and valuable resource for those studying social sciences as well as humanities. This work includes cross-references, suggestions for further reading, and a comprehensive index.

[Source: Book description culled from by Routledge.com].

Kigandi, Simon, ed. Encyclopedia of African Literature

Kigandi, Simon
This is some text inside of a div block.

The most comprehensive reference work on African literature to date, this book covers all the key historical and cultural issues in the field. The Encyclopedia contains over 600 entries covering criticism and theory, African literature's development as a field of scholarship, and studies of established and lesser-known writers and their texts.

Aesthetic

Irele, F. Abiola. The African Imagination: Literature in Africa & the Black Diaspora. Oxford University Press, USA, 2001.

This collection of essays from eminent scholar F. Abiola Irele provides a comprehensive formulation of what he calls an "African imagination" manifested in the oral traditions and modern literature of Africa and the Black Diaspora. The African Imagination includes Irele's probing critical readings of the works of Chinua Achebe, Edward Kamau Brathwaite, Amadou Hampaté Bâ, and Ahmadou Kourouma, among others, as well as examinations of the growing presence of African writing in the global literary marketplace and the relationship between African intellectuals and the West. Taken as a whole, this volume makes a superb introduction to African literature and to the work of one of its leading interpreters.

[Source: Amazon.com].

Irele, F. Abiola. The African Imagination

Irele, F. Abiola
This is some text inside of a div block.

This collection of essays from eminent scholar F. Abiola Irele provides a comprehensive formulation of what he calls an "African imagination" manifested in the oral traditions and modern literature of Africa and the Black Diaspora.

Aesthetic

Irele, F. Abiola and Gikandi Simon, eds. The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

This history offers new perspectives on African and Caribbean literature. Chapters address the literature itself, in a variety of languages, regions and genres, the practices and conditions of its composition, and its complex relationship with African social and geopolitical history. The book provides an account of the entire body of productions that can be considered to comprise the field of African literature, defined both by imaginative expression in African itself and the black diaspora. This magisterial history of African literature is an essential resource for specialists and students.

[Cambridge University Press].

Irele, F. Abiola and Gikandi Simon, eds. The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature

Irele, F. Abiola and Gikandi Simon
This is some text inside of a div block.

he book provides an account of the entire body of productions that can be considered to comprise the field of African literature, defined both by imaginative expression in African itself and the black diaspora.

Aesthetic
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