Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. In Search of African Diasporas : Testimonies and Encounters. Durham, N.C. :Carolina Academic Press, 2012.

This is an ambitious and brilliant book by one of Africa's leading diaspora intellectuals. A combination of a researcher's field notes, a travelogue and personal memoir, it is unusual in African writing. It is the first book by an African scholar to take us on such an amazing analytical and narrative journey in search of African diasporas around the world from Latin America to the Caribbean, Europe and Asia. It is filled with analytical insights, captivating stories, and intriguing observations on the complex histories and experiences of African diasporas, their triumphs and tragedies, perils and possibilities, and their enduring struggles for belonging, for their humanity. Its inimitable passions are leavened by engaging humor, its scholarly analyses by a novelist's eye for local context and color.

The author seeks to address the perplexing question of what it means to be a person of African descent living outside of the African continent. He offers the reader fascinating and richly textured portraits and surveys of the diversity of diasporic lives as well as the abiding connections of the diaspora condition. What makes this book particularly gripping are the multilayered narratives, the braided stories and explorations of African diasporic lives across many contexts and places as well as the author's own life during the period of his travels from 2006 to 2009. Also skillfully interwoven are the author's daily encounters and observations, information and reflections from interviewees from all walks of life, and the larger structural contexts of diaspora struggles for enfranchisement and empowerment.

Source: Excerpt from book description culled from Amazon.com

Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. “Obama’s Africa Policy: The Limits of Symbolic Power.” African Studies Review 56, no. 2 (2013): 165–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43904934.

The election of Barack Obama as the first African-descended president of the United States in 2008 was greeted with euphoria in the U.S. and around the world, including Africa. Little, however, changed in the substance of U.S.–Africa relations. This underscores the limits of the symbolic politics of race and presidential personalities in the face of the structural imperatives of U.S. power and foreign policy in which African interests remain marginal and subordinate to U.S. interests. The article explores the structural contexts of foreign policymaking in the United States and what might be expected from the second Obama administration.

Source: Article's abstract

Zeleza, Paul Tiyambe. “Africa’s Struggles for Decolonization: From Achebe to Mandela.” Research in African Literatures 45, no. 4 (2014): 121–39. https://doi.org/10.2979/reseafrilite.45.4.121.

This essay commemorates the large historical lives of Chinua Achebe and Nelson Mandela, both of whom died in 2013. It is noted that the nature of African and world reactions to the deaths of the two men undoubtedly reflected their different biographies, the relative valuations of the political and the artistic in the popular imagination, the oscillation of ideas and action in the praxis and political economy of social struggle, and the assorted demands and terms of literary and political combat. It is argued that underlying the different remembrances were the thick braids of the twists and turns of modern African history, of the continent’s struggles for the triple dreams of African nationalism—decolonization, democracy, and development—that intersected the lives of the two men. Achebe’s and Mandela’s significance arises out of the manner in which their stories embodied and bore witness to Africa’s protracted drama for historical and humanistic agency, for the reclamation, reconstitution, reaffirmation, and self representation of Africa and its peoples from the existential, economic, and epistemic violence of Europe that began with the depravities of the Atlantic slave trade and intensified with the depredations of colonialism. Also, their lifetimes reflected the profound complexities, contradictions, and changes of colonial and postcolonial Africa, the development of African worlds—its cultures, arts, polities, economies, societies, and ecologies—out of the interconnections, intersectionalities, and intertextualities of Africa and Europe, as well as Africa and the world mediated by the diaspora and globalization. The essay explores the historical journeys and meanings of Achebe’s and Mandela’s lives placed in the expansive context of African nationalism. In this intriguing story, their two countries bookend each other.

Source: Article's abstract

Zell, Hans M., and Helene Silver, and Barbara Abrash. A Reader's Guide to African Literature. New York, Africana Publishing Corporation, 1971

An annotated listing of outstanding works of African literature as well as anthologies, bibliographies, and critical works by English and French-speaking writers.

[Source: Books.google.ca].

Zizwe Poe, Daryl. Kwame Nkrumah’s Contribution to Pan-African Agency : An Afrocentric Analysis. London: Routledge, 2003.

The book analyses the contributions made by Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) to the development of the Pan-African agency from the 1945 Pan-African Congress in Manchester to the military coup d'etat of Nkrumah's government in February 1966.

Source: Book description by publisher

Zocchi, Dauro M., and Michele F. Fontefrancesco. “Traditional Products and New Developments in the Restaurant Sector in East Africa. The Case Study of Nakuru County, Kenya.” Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2020. https://doi.org/10.3389/fsufs.2020.599138.

Over the last 20 years, we have witnessed worldwide a renewed interest in local food products and traditional cuisine. Addressing this demand, the catering industry has played a pivotal role in reviving local food heritage and traditions. While several studies have explored the evolution of this trend in Europe, little attention has been given to this phenomenon in contemporary Africa. To partially fill this gap in the literature, the authors conducted an ethnographic study to investigate the role of the catering sector in recovering and promoting food and gastronomic heritage in Nakuru County, an emerging Kenyan agricultural and tourist hub. They sought to understand the main drivers behind the offering and demand for traditional ingredients and recipes. Some differences in the role of Kenyan cuisine emerged, with the differentiation mostly linked to the customer profiles. In particular, attention toward traditional foods was more accentuated in restaurants aimed at middle- and high-income Kenyan customers and for specific products namely African leafy vegetables and indigenous chicken, locally known as kuku kienyeji. They also discovered that the inclusion of these products on the restaurant menus implied an incipient localization of the food supply chains based on self-production or direct commercial relationships with small-scale producers. The research highlights how the relaunch of traditional food and cuisine develops from a demand for healthy and natural products rather than a search for cultural authenticity. Based on the specificities of the local market, this fosters the creation of alternative supply strategies to cope with the poor quality of ingredients, price fluctuations, and discontinuity of the supply. In this sense, the research suggests also considering tangible factors linked to the technological and logistical conditions of the trade and safety of food to understand the drivers behind the rediscovery of local and traditional foods.

Source: Article's abstract

Zoma Contemporary Art Center

Museum

Addis Ababa and Harla, Ethiopia

www.zomamuseum.org

Description:

Zoma Contemporary Art Center (ZCAC) is an environmentally conscious  artist in residency project. The museum acts as a bridge between artists and  architects from around the world to create cutting-edge ecological art and  architecture.

Mukomawa Ngūgī

Academic/Writer, Associate Professor in English at Cornell University

‍