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Ufahamu : A Journal of African Studies
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This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 0041-5715 - ISSN (Online) 2150-5802
Published by eScholarship

[73 journals]

Transnational Migration, Identity, and the African Literary Experience
- Authors: Ahmed; Kabir
  Abstract: This essay seeks to examine transnational migration by looking primarily at 20 th- century writers historicizing the concept of the ‘post-colonial’ and pointing to its development as captured in their writing. In the paper, transnational migration is viewed as the movement of persons across national boundaries where the migrants live their lives across borders, participating simultaneously in social relations that embed them in more than one nation-state, and in which there is a process by which such immigrants forge and sustain multi-stranded social relations that link together their societies of origin and settlement. Going by this definition, all major African writers (such as Ayi Kwei Armah, Chinua Achebe, Ben Okri, and the like), with the possible exception of Ayi Kwei Armah, are transmigrants. This is because their migration took place—is taking place—within fluid social spaces and identity-forming contexts, which are constantly reworked through...
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
A King or A Priest in the City of 201 Gods: Interrogating the Place of the
Oòni in the Religious system of Ilé-Ifè in Southwest Nigeria
- Authors: Elugbaju; Ayowole S.
  Abstract: The tradition of the origin of the Yorùbá people of Western Nigeria, Republic of Benin, Togo, and the Diaspora indicate one source, Ilé-Ifè, where the varieties of their indigenous political system originated. However, since the colonial period, a debate remains about the place of the Oòni, the King of Ilé-Ifè, in the political and religious systems of the Yorùbá nation, which has led to a perennial discourse across Yorùbáland. Using literature, primary sources such as oral interviews, and participant observations of rituals and festivals spanning several years, this study critically analyses the position of the Oòni in the religious system of Ilé-Ifè. The findings of this study reveal that the festivals in Ilé-Ifè are within the purview of certain family compounds headed by the Ìsòrò (king-priests). It also discovered that the mandatory performance of the Oòni in Ifè festivals is limited the Ìdìó, Olójó, Edì, Ìtàpá, Pokùlere and Ifá festivals only. The participatory...
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
For an Anti-Colonial Reading of the Racist Polemic on Miss France
- Authors: Gabriel; Joao
  Abstract:
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
“ONWARD AND INWARD”
- Authors: Lieber; Talia , Wolff, Rebecca
  Abstract:
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
Editorial
- Authors: Lamontagne; Samuel
  Abstract:
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
“From Historical Facts to Poetic Truths”: The Nigerian Civil War and
Other Subjects: An Exploration of Texts and Images in Painting
- Authors: Okwuosa; Tobenna
  Abstract:
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
Msia Kibona Clark, Hip-Hop in Africa: Prophets of the City and Dustyfoot
Philosophers (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2018). pp. 312.
- Authors: Chukwudike Okpalaeke; Patrick
  Abstract:
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
Part I—Dedication to Professor Allen F. Roberts
- Authors: Brown; Degenhart , Milbourne, Karen E. , Gagliardi, Susan Elizabeth , Albrezzi, Francesca , Jeychandran, Neelima , Kirk, Johanna , Anderson, Samuel Mark , Edmondson, Scott M. , Sullivan, Elaine Ericksen , Hassnaoui, Amira , Peretz, Jeremy Jacob
  Abstract:
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
The Predator in Love
- Authors: Marboeuf; Olivier
  Abstract:
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
Keeping Safe From COVID-19
- Authors: Nabulime; Lilian M.
  Abstract:
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
Asking Different Questions: Case Studies in Collaborative Research from
the Fowler Museum at UCLA
- Authors: Jones; Erica P. , Forbes, Carlee S.
  Abstract:
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
The Resistance Movement of the Mareko People against the Fascist
Aggression and Occupation in South-central Ethiopia
- Authors: Tesfaye Getachew; Yohannes , Wolde-Michael Jima, Buruk
  Abstract: The primary objective of the present paper is to explore the patriotic resistance movement of the Mareko people of south-central Ethiopia against Italy’s colonialist aggression and five-year occupation between 1935 and 1941. The paper also uncovers the role played by the Mareko people and other ethno-linguistic individual freedom fighters who opposed the Fascist administration within the Mareko woreda (district). Though the then governor of the Dobena sub-district and his officers became the leading collaborators (banda) with the Fascist administrators, the majority of the Mareko people strongly resisted these detractors. Like other nations, nationalities and peoples of Ethiopia, the estimated 110 Mareko marched against the invaders at the battle of Maychew in 1936 despite enduring major casualties. Acknowledging the local spiritual leadership of Wärѐqѐ Märeyamѐ and Qegnazmach Tuji Anjilo, this paper celebrates the local Mareko defiance in staving off the encroaching...
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
Césars, Creation, Independence, and Radicality
- Authors: Gay; Amandine
  Abstract:
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
Reflections on a Common Purpose in Expanding the Frontiers of Global
African Scholarship
- Authors: Fagunwa; Temitope
  Abstract: The enormous contributions of global African scholars to the academic fields of arts, social sciences, and humanities cannot be understated. This accomplishment has not received adequate recognition in a world dominated by Western scholarship. This domination is not unexpected because the production, distribution, and consumption of knowledge are historically charged, both politically and economically. It is not accidental that the domineering “international” publishers and journals in the global academy are based in the West. Knowledge production in the field of African studies has been affected by this reality. Hence, there is an urgent need to transcend current methodological and pedagogical approaches. Because knowledge is the bulwark of the survival of any group of people, global African scholars in the field of African studies have the mandate of heeding the warnings of the Senegalese historian Cheikh Anta Diop. Diop has argued that for African scholarship to attain...
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
Energy Trajectories and Solar Energy Imaginaries of the Maasai
- Authors: Adornetto; Turner
  Abstract: Solar energy development in Tanzania is steeped in discourses of Western technological transfer whereby the devices themselves are lauded as central innovating agents—the “doers”—that are solutions to local poverty. The trend intensifies in Maasai spaces, where a long history of marginalization in development projects has shaped the narratives of energy change around the practices and perspectives of pastoralists. In this paper, drawing from ethnographic work on Tanzania’s solar energy landscape, including 50 unstructured interviews with Maasai herders, city-dwellers of Arusha, Tanzania, and representatives from foreign solar energy firms, I show how the Maasai reconfigure incoming solar energy devices through locally generated knowledges, philosophies, and technologies in calculated efforts to chart their own futures. Using a sociotechnical imaginaries approach, I analyze interviews, historical literature and other relevant documents to underscore how Maasai pastoralists...
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000
Retelling the Mau Mau Past from the Mbeere Perspective
- Authors: Kanyingi; Benson , Mwaruvie, John , Otieno Osamba, Joshia
  Abstract: This article analyzes the contested historical narrative behind the Mbeere’s role in the Mau Mau movement. Specifically, it explores the role of memorialization and marginalization in reconfiguring this past. With respect to the latter, the Mbeere were ostracized from the Mau Mau movement after the Kenyan Parliament, headed by Dedan Kimathi, sought to consolidate support by encouraging local officials to lobby bordering ethnic groups. As a result, the Mbeere, who were suspected to be pro-government and anti-Mau Mau, faced brutal reprisals from the Kikuyu and the Embu, key players in the movement. Although the physical violence may have ended, the symbolic violence of denial and ostracism persists as the Mau Mau movement’s memory is popularized and commodified through the British government’s acknowledgement of their abuse against Kenyans in the Mau Mau struggle. The dominant history of the Mau Mau rebellion is harrowing for the Mbeere Mau Mau veterans, who in fact existed...
  PubDate: Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +000