The Intersections of Global AfricaThe 2024 Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association (ASA) in Chicago could not have come at a more pivotal time for education.Africanist scholars, practitioners, and government officials descended on the city to participate in more than 350 sessions, lectures, and special events several weeks after the reelection of Donald Trump.The Annual Meeting brought together members from more than fifty countries around the world.They braved the December cold to gather for critical conversations about higher education, immigrant communities, international collaboration, and the need to reject essentialist perspectives on Africa.With the largest attendance since the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chicago meeting enjoyed an exceptional number of intimate assemblies and special convenings.The community building and sororal care enacted throughout the week recalled the philosophy and activism of Audre Lorde and reminded members of their interconnectedness across institutional, disciplinary, and geographical distances.Most importantly, the Annual Meeting provided space and time to contemplate, negotiate, and embody the historical and political imperatives of the field in an otherwise uncertain institutional moment.The thematic essay for the ASA's 67th Annual Meeting, "Global Africa," positions Africa at the nexus of global relations, histories, and imaginaries.The piece asserts that "Africa is central to the understanding, analysis, and interpretation of the major global issues of today" and calls for "transdisciplinary, ontologically plural, and multimethod investigations" to identify and address these issues.This prescient exposition attracted many thoughtprovoking and innovative sessions surrounding Africa's diasporas, Global Blackness, the African immigrant experience in the United States, and identity construction in a global digital context, among many others.These sessions also built on previous meeting themes and discussions, and in the interim inspired the symposium African Studies and Black Studies: Intersections, Genealogies and New Directions hosted in early November at Duke University.The symposium convened scholars from North America and Africa for transdisciplinary conversations on the intersection of African studies and Black studies.Salient ASA member presentations included Jordanna Maton's work on masculinity and the volu, Walter C. Rucker's work on mnemonic praxis, and Natasha Shivji's

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the fissures within recent decolonial debates, arguing for the privileging of alternative narratives from formerly colonized groups and a shift away from centring colonialism. It calls for the recognition of decolonial struggles whose histories run deep and the need to link the struggles with indigeneity, its poetics of relations, and connectedness. Therefore, decoloniality requires thinking and doing and paying attention to social and economic well-being of hitherto marginalized indigenous communities, while giving due recognition to their poetics of relationality, reciprocity, and conviviality. Drawing on the example of #RhodesMust Fall movement in South Africa, it raises difficult questions around ownership, agency, while pointing to cracks that this contemporary movement surfaced, in spite of its claim to decoloniality.

Abstract Pentecostal charismatic churches that preach prosperity gospel in Zimbabwe have attracted a youthful membership. In the context of a deeply uncertain economic future, young Pentecostal Christians devise performativity strategies for optimizing their chances of converting prosperity gospel into material prosperity. These strategies include sartorial elegance in adorning counterfeit suits, the performance of obedience, and the use of social media technologies. The picture that emerges is a complex and at times contradictory one in which the potential realization of upward spiritual and social mobility rests, ultimately, on the transformative and volatile nature of value. Data for this project was collected in Harare through ethnographic research and interviews over a year-long period.

How societies are reestablished after conflict remains a key concern for citizens and policymakers, as unresolved issues in one conflict tend to become the seeds that grow into a subsequent one.Programs to transition combatants through disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration (DDR) processes are often a critical component to building an enduring peace after conflict.In Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration of Ex-Combatants in Africa, editor Ibrahim Bangura and his contributors weave together a rich perspective on the evolution and practices of DDR in Africa, adding to the existing literature.Throughout the book, the authors argue that if DDR programs are to succeed in their policy and practical objectives, then context matters in DDR program design and implementation.From this vantage, the book should be a welcome addition to the shelves of researchers, policymakers, and practitioners.The book opens with a survey of DDR's evolution and a focused analysis of key contextual themes that have been learned through decades of successful and unsuccessful DDR programs: transitional justice, children associated with armed groups, gender perspectives, and dealing with violent extremist groups.The remainder of the work contextualizes these themes through ten unique case studies contributed by a team of practitioners and researchers.The selection of case studies covers a mix of traditional and evolving practices of DDR in Africa, each highlighting an aspect of DDR in support of the editor's contextualization argument.Case studies on Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, and Sierra Leone examine the long-term effectiveness of DDR processes following negotiated ends to civil wars, while the cases of Zimbabwe and South Africa examine the efficacy of reintegration mechanisms in postliberation struggles.The innovative combination of DDR practices and community violence reduction in the Central African Republic points to new ideas on stabilizing conflict, while the appropriateness of DDR in addressing community militias is examined in the case of South Sudan.The evolution of DDR concepts during ongoing conflicts is highlighted in cases studies covering Nigeria's and Somalia's respective efforts to induce and handle defections from Islamist insurgencies.The book's strength lies in its comprehensive approach to the theory and practice of DDR in Africa.It adds to a body of knowledge on DDR-often

Eagles in the Hut is an emotionally laden story of "incestuous rape" and girl-child abuse. Incestuous rape is unlawful intentional sexual intercourse with one's own blood relative without their legal or valid consent. The film is about a young teenage girl, Tariro, who suffers extensive sexual and physical abuse at the hands of her own biological father, James, and stepmother, Mai James. The director, Moses Matanda, unpacks a contemporary social challenge, known to Shona people as Makunakuna, a taboo and prevalent crime spreading like a cancer in Zimbabwean communities. The title "Eagles in the Hut" serves as a powerful metaphor encapsulating the central themes and motifs explored within the film's narrative. An eagle is a predatory bird of prey that soars high in the sky and survives on hunting for its food in the wild, while a hut typically represents a small humble dwelling, or a place of safety (a sanctuary) for humans. Thus, through its juxtaposition of eagles with the humble confined space of the hut, the title suggests a collision of opposing forces: the soaring untamed spirit of the eagle against the grounded, constricted reality of life within the hut. The film's setting in rural Zimbabwe enriches the narrative by embedding the story within a context that reveres traditional values and practices. However, these same values are scrutinized as potential enablers of incestuous abuse, reflecting on how cultural norms might contribute to such devastating behaviors. The director challenges the audience to rethink these norms, especially those related to patriarchy, which often dictate and diminish the role and autonomy of women within the society. Through the character of Mai James, the film unpacks the complexities of motherhood and the impact of its absence or distortion. Mai James is not merely a bystander but an active participant in the abuse, both physically and emotionally, highlighting how adherence to destructive cultural norms can perpetuate patriarchal dominance. While the director effectively portrays a stereotypically negative stepmother, this depiction unintentionally reinforces harmful gender stereotypes, suggesting that stepmothers are inherently vindictive. This portrayal serves to critique societal issues while also risking the entrenchment of damaging beliefs about women in these roles. The film powerfully depicts the lasting psychological impact of threats issued by sexual predators, as seen through James's control over Tariro. James intimidates Tariro by claiming to possess supernatural abilities that allows him to see and smell from afar, thus deterring Tariro from disclosing her ordeal.

Frank Gerits. The Ideological Scramble for Africa: How the Pursuit of Anticolonial Modernity Shaped a Postcolonial Order, 1945–1966. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2023. 318 pp. Illustrations. $67.95. Hardback. ISBN: 9781501767913. - Volume 67 Issue 4

Abderrahmane Sissako, dir. Black Tea. 2024. 110 minutes. Mandarin Chinese and French, with French subtitles. France, Mauritania, Luxembourg, Taiwan, and Ivory Coast. Gaumont. €19.99. - Volume 67 Issue 4

Claire L. Wendland. Partial Stories: Maternal Death from Six Angles. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022. 384 pp. Halftones. Tables. Notes. References. Index. $35.00. Paper. ISBN: 978-0226816883. - Volume 67 Issue 4

The native town is a hungry town, starved of bread, meat, shoes, coal, and light.The native town is a crouching village, a town on its knees, wallowing in the mire.Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth interrogated decolonized African states as representations of "racist logics of colonial planning shaped cities" (128).This description also illustrates the "extended time/space of infrastructure" needed to develop Africa for Western modernity.However, Jonathan Silver's The Infrastructural South challenges these stereotypes, revealing precolonial African cities, colonial-built legacies, modernity as a European concept, and the emerging urban wave of techno-environments shaping everyday life in Africa.Thinking about urbanization through infrastructures means understanding the creation and construction of a dynamic, "complex and interconnected entanglement facilitating the flows and circulations required for everyday social reproduction for households" (10).Engaging with technology in Uganda, Ghana, and South Africa, Silver captures how urban dwellers in "ordinary" or "secondary cities" struggle to "catch up" with digitized infrastructures found in large metropolitan regions.This gap prevents an understanding of the diversity of processes, trajectories, and futures in smaller urban centers (164).Silver's text employs ethnography, in-depth interviews, and personal encounters to present his findings on the innovations of the "networked city" in the Global South.He discusses how these innovations manifest in enclave imposition, corridor digital, and postcolonial metropole scenarios, which differ from what might be expected when applying the "abstracted universalized model of urban modernity from the West to urban Africa" (242).Frantz Fanon's perspective of underprivileged cities lacking essential resources has influenced the urbanization of African cities.The development of these cities now relies on "incremental techno-environments" to address challenges related to electricity, water, sanitation, and housing.For millions of people, living in the city means dealing with and adapting to the technologies required for social reproduction due to the absence of a fully functional networked system.Silver describes this urbanization from below as a process where residents, communities, and informal (and sometimes formal) service providers strive to manage and manipulate resource flows to sustain the urban experience despite its instability (85).