Bajorek. Jennifer. Unfixed: Photography and Decolonial Imagination in West Africa. Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 2020.

In Unfixed, Jennifer Bajorek traces the relationship between photography and decolonial political imagination in Francophone west Africa in the years immediately leading up to and following independence from French colonial rule in 1960. Focusing on images created by photographers based in Senegal and Benin, Bajorek draws on formal analyses of images and ethnographic fieldwork with photographers to show how photography not only reflected but also actively contributed to social and political change. The proliferation of photographic imagery — through studio portraiture, bureaucratic ID cards, political reportage and photojournalism, magazines, and more — provided the means for west Africans to express their experiences, shape public and political discourse, and reimagine their world. In delineating how West Africans’ embrace of photography was associated with and helped spur the democratization of political participation and the development of labor and liberation movements, Bajorek tells a new history of photography in west Africa— one that theorizes photography’s capacity for doing decolonial work.

[Source: Duke University Press].

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].

Bakari, Ishaq Imruh and Mbye B. Cham. African Experiences of Cinema. London: BFI Publishing, 1996.

African Experiences of Cinema brings together important historical documents, contemporary testimonies and critical essays. Film makers, scholars and critics detail their responses to, and experiences of, the challenges of cinema across the African continent.

[Source: Google Books].

Aïsha Baker

Fashion Influencer

South Africa

Level of Influence: International

instagram.com/bakedonline/?hl=en

Bakrania, Shivit. “Libya: Border Security and Regional Cooperation.” Applied Knowledge Services. GSDRC, August 3, 2015. https://gsdrc.org/publications/libya-border-security-andregional-cooperation/.

This literature review examines security-related developments that determine Libya's relationship with its neighbors—Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Niger, Sudan, and Tunisia. The report looks at the incentives of the neighboring countries' relationships with Libya and the main challenges in implementing or maintaining these regional relationships or cross-border mechanisms with Libya and the main challenges in implementing them. Finally, an overview is provided of international agency contributions to border management and security in the Sahel and Maghreb.

Source: culled from article overview from gsdrc.org

Balán, Pablo, Augustin Bergeron, Gabriel Tourek, and Jonathan L. Weigel. "Local Elites as State Capacity: How City Chiefs Use Local Information to Increase Tax Compliance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo." American Economic Review 112, no. 3 (2022): 762-97.

The authors question whether local and traditional elites are an impediment or an asset to development of a state, and whether local elites can collaborate with the state to improve on governance and public service delivery especially in fragile states. The paper investigates the relationship between local elites and the state as it seeks to raise revenue through taxation.

Baldwin, Kate, and Pia Raffler. "Traditional Leaders, Service Delivery, And Electoral Accountability." Decentralized Governance and Accountability(2019):61-90

The article examines the effect of traditional leadership on the provision of goods and services for the local populace, in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors note that traditional leadership is relatively powerful in countries like Ghana and Botswana whilst they have little or no power in countries such as Madagascar and Tanzania. Most recently, they have become informal administrators and intermediaries between their communities and larger state institutions. Using Ghana as an example, the authors argue that new forms of chieftaincies keep emerging as chiefs are not only confined to rural spaces but are also involved in modern governance and as local elites as governments work with chiefs to administer services as dispute resolution. The authors further argue that the two reasons why traditional leadership keeps resurging are first, socio-cultural and political significance of chiefs as representatives of their ethnic communities and second, their intermediary position as power brokers. In Ghana the state has mingled chieftaincy with the larger political system which makes the state a propounder of the chieftaincy system. Thus, the process of state formation involves changes in the roles of elite’s and changes in sources of power, leading to a situation where the basis of power of local elites becomes intertwined with or depends on the state. In communities where the chiefs are deemed stronger or influential or connected to public or elected officials, they are likely to receive more public goods. Sometimes the status of the traditional leaders depends on the state. Other times, chiefs can be so powerful in their local communities that they can leverage that power to determine political votes and in turn negotiate for improved service delivery for their communities.

‍

Bamako encounters/Rencontres de Bamako

Cultural event

Bamako, Mali

https://biennialfoundation.org/biennials/bamako-encounters/

Description:

International in scope, this cultural event focusing on issues in contemporary photography and video features exhibits, professional  encounters, workshops, public projections and catalogue, which serve as a  catalyst for the Continent’s artists, image professionals and the public at  large. The Bamako Encounters is aimed at promoting the various trends in contemporary photography and video in Africa by creating international exchange among artists, the public, curators, commissioners, the media and collectors.