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 - 7 May 2025

DRC-Rwanda peace deal, remembering Congolese prof. Mudimbe, and more

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Elite Africa Roundup - 21 April 2025

Tracking a wave of political repression, Ethiopia wins Paris marathon

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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Prabhu, Anjali. “Négritude: A Passion in Abiola Irele’s Work.” Journal of the African Literature Association 14, no. 1 (2020): 126–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/21674736.2019.1681770.

This essay focuses on Abiola Irele's passionate and life-long engagement with négritude and the centrality of his thinking and writing about négritude to his œuvre. Using one of Irele's final lectures, if not the last public lecture he gave, the author, who witnessed the lecture, takes up several moments of that presentation and links them to Irele's landmark work on négritude, his contributions to scholarship in African literary studies, and his footprint in the field through his publications, editorial leadership, and mentoring.

Source: Essay's abstract

Prabhu, Anjali. Négritude

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This essay focuses on Abiola Irele's passionate and life-long engagement with négritude and the centrality of his thinking and writing about négritude to his œuvre.

Aesthetic

Jack, Andrew and Adam Green. "African Business Leaders Find New Ways to Give Back." FT.Com (Nov 15, 2017).

This article highlights the philanthropic works of some of Africa's business leaders in diverse areas of life including education, technology, nutrition, health and disaster response. Business leaders whose charitable works are highlighted in the article include Jim Ovia and Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, Strive and Tsitsi Masiyiwa of Zimbabwe, Patrice and Precious Motsepe, and Mark Shuttleworth of South Africa and Dikembe Mutombo of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Source: proquest.com

Jack, Andrew and Adam Green. African Business Leaders Find New Ways to Give Back

This is some text inside of a div block.

This article highlights the philanthropic works of some of Africa's business leaders in diverse areas of life including education, technology, nutrition, health and disaster response.

Economic

Skinner, David E. 2009. "The Incorporation of Muslim Elites into the Colonial Administrative Systems of Sierra Leone, The Gambia and the Gold Coast", Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 29:1, 91-108, DOI: 10.1080/13602000902726814

This article focuses on relations between British colonial administrations in three West Africa territories during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Sierra Leone, the Gambia and the Gold Coast were centers of trade organized by Muslim merchants and places of Muslim settlement before the British arrived and the subsequent administrations developed policies and programs which incorporated Muslim communities into the colonial system. The British adapted the existing economic, political and religious institutions to the policy of indirect rule, financially supported these institutions and successfully made alliances with Muslim elites. Colonial policies and programs contributed to the strengthening of Islamic communities throughout the colonial era.

Source: Artile's abstract

Skinner, David E. 2009. The Incorporation of Muslim Elites into the Colonial Administrative Systems of Sierra Leone, The Gambia and the Gold Coast

This is some text inside of a div block.

This article focuses on relations between British colonial administrations in three West Africa territories during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Economic
Political

Ammassari, Savina. “From Nation-Building to Entrepreneurship: The Impact of Élite Return Migrants in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.” Population Space and Place 10, no. 2 (2004): 133–54. https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.319.

The issue of whether or not return migration produces any development impacts on the migrants’ country of origin continues to raise the interest of policy-makers. Most empirical studies focus on the macro-level economic impacts of return. However, it has increasingly become apparent that socio-cultural and political impacts are important as well. Using both quantitative and qualitative data concerning highly-skilled élite migrants who have returned to Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and stressing instead the meso-level of analysis, this paper demonstrates that return migration has, on balance, fostered positive development effects in both the public and private sector. The effects do vary, mostly across generations of migrants and in relation to historical periods. Whereas earlier migrants’ contributions tended to concern the realm of nation-building, more recent contributions are to be found in a more explicit economic context in the form of entrepreneurship. In particular, the paper illustrates the changes that return migrants have operated in the work place and dwells upon some significant, concrete examples of innovative practice and productive investment. The policy implications of the main findings are discussed, and some recommendations for future research are formulated.

Source: Article's abstract

Ammassari, Savina. From Nation-Building to Entrepreneurship

This is some text inside of a div block.

This paper demonstrates that return migration has, on balance, fostered positive development effects in both the public and private sector. The effects do vary, mostly across generations of migrants and in relation to historical periods. Whereas earlier migrants’ contributions tended to concern the realm of nation-building, more recent contributions are to be found in a more explicit economic context in the form of entrepreneurship.

Economic

Osei, Anja. Elites and democracy in Ghana: A social network approach, African Affairs, Volume 114, Issue 457, October 2015, Pages 529–554, https://doi.org/10.1093/afraf/adv036

This article presents new theoretical and empirical insights into democratization in Africa, using the typology developed by John Higley and Michael Burton to understand elite interaction in Ghana. Social network analysis (SNA) is used to test the main proposition of the Higley/Burton theory, namely that a ‘liberal democracy is impossible without a consensually united elite’. Empirical evidence is provided from a unique data set that maps the interaction patterns between Members of Parliament elected to the Ghanaian legislature in 2012. The article shows that MPs in Ghana form a dense and strongly interconnected network bridging ethnic and party cleavages, and that MPs from different parties have developed a measure of trust in one another. These findings not only support Higley and Burton's claim that elite integration is conducive to stable democracy, but also point to new directions in African Studies by demonstrating the capacity of actor-centric approaches to explain processes of democratization in countries that lack the classic structural preconditions for consolidation.

Source: Article's abstract

Osei, Anja. Elites and democracy in Ghana

This is some text inside of a div block.

he article shows that MPs in Ghana form a dense and strongly interconnected network bridging ethnic and party cleavages, and that MPs from different parties have developed a measure of trust in one another.

Political

Onomake, Umoloyouvwe Ejiroghene Ovbije. “Elite Exchanges : The Cultural Politics of Chinese Business in Nigeria.” University of Sussex, 2017.

Since the late 20th century there has been increasing interest in China's role in Africa, both in academia and popular media. This interest reflects the general curiosity and concerns related to China's political and business interests. Research into African-Chinese relations is usually on the macro level and rarely provides insight into the lived realities of the people at the heart of these interactions, particularly Africans. As such, this thesis examines Nigerian-Chinese elite exchanges by interrogating the stock/conventional narratives constructed in political discourse and popular media (and to a large extent by academic research), in which China appears either as benevolent investor or neo-imperialist; and Africa appears as a passive recipient without agency at the mercy of greedy politicians and elite-pacting. Nigeria is one of China's most important trade partners in Africa. In response to this relationship, the Nigerian government has constructed a complex public relations campaign that taps into the aspirations and dreams of Nigerians and links them with Nigerian-Chinese relations. The campaign is centred on three key areas: big business, entrepreneurship and education. The author explores the experiences of aspirational and elite Nigerian actors who attempt to take on the promise of Nigerian-Chinese relations through these three key areas and argues that although the grand narrative is sold as accessible to all, it is mostly those who have access to capital, both financial and social, that are able to transform the promise of Nigerian-Chinese relations into a reality.

Source: Thesis/University of Sussex

Onomake, Umoloyouvwe Ejiroghene Ovbije. Elite Exchanges

This is some text inside of a div block.

The author explores the experiences of aspirational and elite Nigerian actors who attempt to take on the promise of Nigerian-Chinese relations through these three key areas and argues that although the grand narrative is sold as accessible to all, it is mostly those who have access to capital, both financial and social, that are able to transform the promise of Nigerian-Chinese relations into a reality.

Economic
Political
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