Once seen only as a continent of poverty, violence and corruption, the Africa of today is a vibrant place where social forces demand representative governance, in the process generating fresh forms of complexities in the political, social and economic life of ordinary Africans. Whether what we are witnessing is a third liberation of the continent: the first from colonialism, the second from autocratic indigenous rule and now something far more different, is a work in progress.
This series seeks original approaches to furthering our understanding of the ensuing changes on the continent. The series includes work that progresses comparative analysis of African politics. It looks at the full range and variety of African politics in the twenty-first century covering the changing nature of African society, gender issues, economic prosperity and poverty to the development of relations between African states, external organisations and between leaders and the people they would govern. The series aims to publish work by senior scholars as well as the best new researchers and features original research monographs, thematically strong edited collections and specialised texts.
To submit a proposal for Contempoary African Politics please contact African Studies editor Helena Hurd, [email protected]
By Nana K. Poku
February 15, 2023
Ignored by theoreticians and discredited by militant attackers of imperialism whose dialectical reasoning proved Africa’s impotence in global politics, the continent now often appears to exist only as a reminder of the failures of indigenous rule. Until the end of the Cold War the post-colonial ...
By Jeffrey Haynes
December 30, 2022
This book analyses Flight-Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings’ plans for radical democratisation in Ghana, involving ordinary people directly in the country’s political and economic decision-making processes. Rawlings came to power in Ghana in late 1981 determined to restructure the characteristics of ...
By Rok Ajulu
July 29, 2021
This engaging reassessment of postcolonial Kenya argues that the country’s political turmoil over the last fifteen years is a continuation of repeating patterns of political contestation and conflict across Kenya’s history. When Kibaki stole the 2007 presidential election, leading to a spiral of ...
Edited
By Said Adejumobi
September 01, 2020
Africa has made notable progress in its nascent democracy but with uneven performance across countries. However, across the board, challenges abound. Central to Africa’s checkered democratic narrative is the weakness of its democratic institutions, participatory mechanisms and accountability ...
By Jonathan R. Beloff
July 30, 2020
This book examines how Rwandan elites within the government, private sector and civil society perceive the nation’s political and economic relationship with the international community. Using testimonies and interviews of Rwandan political, military and economic leaders, and bureaucrats, this book ...
By Jasper Abembia Ayelazuno
August 20, 2018
As bearers of their own emancipation, the political agency of the subaltern classes is a vexed question, a time-honoured one at that. Why do the subalterns endure injustices without revolting most of the time, but revolt sometimes against some injustices? The euphoria of ’globalisation-from-below’,...
By Sandrine Gukelberger
June 11, 2018
Urban Politics After Apartheid presents an understanding of gendered urban politics in South Africa as an interactive process. Based on long-term fieldwork in the former townships 20 years after the end of apartheid, it provides an in-depth analysis of how activists and local politicians engage ...
By Charles O. Oyaya, Nana Poku
May 10, 2018
Kenya, like the rest of Africa, has gone through three sets of constitutional crises. The first related to the trauma of colonialism and struggle for independence. The second a period of constitutional dictatorship and the clamor for reform. The third, most recent crisis, being one of identity, ...
Edited
By Nana Poku, Jim Whitman
October 10, 2017
The period since the 1980s has seen sustained pressure on Africa’s political elite to anchor the continent’s development strategies in neoliberalism in exchange for vitally needed development assistance. Rafts of policies and programmes have come to underpin the relationship between continental ...
By Samantha Balaton-Chrimes
July 13, 2017
As an ethnic minority the Nubians of Kenya are struggling for equal citizenship by asserting themselves as indigenous and autochthonous to Kibera, one of Nairobi’s most notorious slums. Having settled there after being brought by the British colonial authorities from Sudan as soldiers, this appears...
By Arrigo Pallotti, Corrado Tornimbeni
May 25, 2017
Each country in southern Africa has a unique history but in all of them socio-economic inequalities and high poverty levels weaken the governments’ legitimacy and represent a challenge to models of economic development. One key issue appears to be the solution of the land question. This vital ...
By Paul Ugor, Lord Mawuko-Yevugah
May 16, 2017
All over the world, there is growing concern about the ramifications of globalization, late-modernity and general global social and economic restructuring on the lives and futures of young people. Bringing together a wide body of research to reflect on youth responses to social change in Africa, ...
