JoAnn McGregor

Professor, Human geography

University of Sussex

+44 (0)1273 678753 Ext.8753

J.Mcgregor@sussex.ac.uk

profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p135339-joann-mcgregor

McGregor, JoAnn, Heather M. Akou, and Nicola Stylianou, eds. Creating African Fashion Histories. Politics, Museums, and Sartorial Practices. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2022.

Creating African Fashion Histories examines the stark disjuncture between African self-fashioning and museum practices. Conventionally, African clothing, textiles, and body adornments were classified by museums as examples of trade goods, art, and ethnographic materials — never as "fashion." Counterposing the dynamism of African fashion with museums’ historic holdings thus provides a unique way of confronting ways in which coloniality persists in knowledge and institutions today. This volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and curators to debate sources and approaches for constructing African fashion histories and to examine their potential for decolonizing museums, fashion studies, and global cultural history. The editors of this volume seek to answer questions such as: How can researchers use museum collections to reveal traces of past self-fashioning that are obscured by racialized forms of knowledge and institutional practice? How can archival, visual, oral, ethnographic, and online sources be deployed to capture the diversity of African sartorial pasts? How can scholars and curators decolonize the Eurocentric frames of thinking encapsulated in historic collections and current curricula? Can new collections of African fashion decolonize museum practice?

[Source: Indiana University Press]

Romuald Meango

Associate Professor of Economics. University of Oxford

Email: romuald.meango@economics.ox.ac.uk

Medeiros, Paulo de, and Livia Apa, eds. Contemporary Lusophone African Film: Transnational Communities and Alternative Modernities. Milton: Taylor and Francis, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429026836.

Offering a range of critical perspectives on a vibrant body of films, this collection of essays engages with questions specific to the various cinemas and films addressed while putting forward an argument for their inclusion in current debates on world cinema. Drawing on various theoretical perspectives, the volume strives to reverse the relative invisibility that has afflicted these cinemas, arguing that most, if not all, Lusophone films are transnational in all aspects of production, acting, and reception. The initial three chapters sketch broad, comparative overviews and suggest theoretical approaches, while the ensuing chapters focus on specific case studies and discuss a number of key issues such as the convergence of film with politics, the question of gender and violence, as well as the revisiting of the period immediately following independence. Attention is given to fiction, documentary films and recent, short, alternative video productions that are overlooked by more traditional channels. The book stresses the need to pay attention to the significance of African film, and Lusophone African film in particular, within the developing field of world cinema.

[Source: Routledge].

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)

Regional independent non-governmental organisation

Location: Accra, Ghana with partner organizations across West African countries

Contact: +233 302 555327 / +233 302 955213/ Email and website: info@mfwa.org/ Website: mfwa.org

Description

The MFWA is a regional independent non-governmental organisation with a network of national partner organisations in all 16 countries in West Africa. It is the biggest and most influential media development and freedom of expression organisation in the region with UN ECOSOC (Economic and Social Council) Consultative Status. The MFWA also has Equivalency Determination Certification with NGOSource that certifies the organisation as being the equivalent of a public charity in the United States. The MFWA is also the Secretariat of the continental Network of the most prominent Free Expression and Media Development Organisations in Africa, known as the Africa Freedom of Expression Exchange (AFEX).  It also works in partnership with other regional and international organisations through different networks such as IFEX, AFEX, the Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC) and the African Platform on Access to Information (APAI). The organisation also works closely with the regional inter-governmental body, ECOWAS. It also engages frequently with mechanisms of the African Union (AU) and the UN.

Mehta, Makrand. “Gujarati Business Communities in East African Diaspora: Major Historical Trends.” Economic and Political Weekly 36, no. 20 (2001): 1738–47.

Gujarati emigrants to East Africa were central to the economic development of that region both before and during European colonial rule. Not the undifferentiated mass of' Indians' or 'Asians' recorded by the colonial powers, the Gujaratis were both internally divided by caste, community, and religion, and bound together by common ties of language an orientation towards business. It was those ties, and the carefully maintained kinship and community networks, which the various communities utilised to build their economic fortunes in their new lands. Thus it is to those networks that attention must be turned to understand both the foundations of Gujarati success in East Africa as well as their continuing links back to Gujarat.

Source: Article's abstract

Melber, Henning. The Rise of Africa’s Middle Class: Myths, Realities and Critical Engagements. 1st ed. Vol. 10. Uppsala; London: Zed Books, 2016. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350251168.

Across Africa, a burgeoning middle class has become the poster child for the 'Africa rising' narrative. Ambitious, aspirational and increasingly affluent, this group is said to embody the values and hopes of the new Africa, with international bodies ranging from the United Nations Development Programme to the World Bank regarding them as important agents of both economic development and democratic change. This narrative, however, obscures the complex and often ambiguous role that this group actually plays in African societies. Bringing together economists, political scientists, anthropologists and development experts, and spanning a variety of case studies from across the continent, this collection provides a much-needed corrective to the received wisdom within development circles, and provides a fresh perspective on social transformations in contemporary Africa.

Source: Book description

Melchiorre, Luke. “Generational Populism and the Political Rise of Robert Kyagulanyi – Aka Bobi Wine – in Uganda.” Review of African Political Economy, August 22, 2023, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2023.2245729.

This article analyses the political rise of the Ugandan opposition leader, Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, arguing that he has a deployed a novel type of generational populism – a mobilising political discourse which frames the struggle between ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’ in generational terms, defining the former in relation to their status as youth, and in antagonistic opposition to an elite, which is depicted as defending a gerontocratic political order. At a theoretical level, the article broadens political science’s conception of populism, by introducing a new subtype of the political phenomenon which demonstrates the importance of intergenerational dynamics in the construction of the discursive categories of ‘the people’ and ‘the elite’. While it argues that Kyagulanyi’s success demonstrates the potential of populism in African countries to electorally challenge incumbent regimes, by helping to build political coalitions across ethno-regional lines, incorporating previously excluded social groups into the political process, it concludes by stressing that Kyagulanyi’s political project has failed to offer any real ideological alternative to the neoliberal orthodoxy that has characterised President Museveni’s Uganda over the last four decades.

Source: Article abstract (tandfonline.com)