ABSTRACT The article narrates how civil servants in South Sudan experienced the recent civil war, the subsequent economic crisis and related state bankruptcy. Despite the complete depreciation of civil servants’ salary and the absence of their payment for several months in a row, the situation did not result in a mass exodus from the civil service or the administration’s collapse. Indeed, the majority of state bureaucrats chose to remain and worked to maintain their position within the administration, which they tried to keep as neutral as possible. This article explores the various reasons and logics that make them remain part of this demonetised state. While exploring ordinary middle-ranking civil servants’ practices, beliefs and long-term projects during wartime, this article not only highlights often unaccounted civil servants’ perceptions and imaginations of the state, but it also demonstrates their role in holding up the state, especially in times of crisis, and their contribution to state-making processes more generally.

ABSTRAIT À partir de l’exemple kikuyu et en nous inspirant des cas de l’Afrique de l’Est, voire australe, nous présentons un regard synthétique sur le mariage femme-femme, ainsi que sur son expression actuelle au Kenya central, où il se pratique toujours, bien que de façon restreinte aujourd’hui. Nous proposons une perspective d’anthropologie historique en présentant les transformations qu’a subi ce type d’union, avant d’analyser les données issues d’entretiens que nous avons conduits entre 2019 et 2023 dans les environs de Nairobi et en Province Centrale (Nyeri et Murang’a). Nous nous fondons sur les quelques recherches conduites sur cette pratique en Afrique de l’Est où l’accomplissement personnel passe toujours par le mariage et la procréation – si possible de garçons. Paradoxalement, le mariage femme-femme renforce une représentation patrimoniale et inégalitaire des relations homme-femme. Cette union souligne la fragilité de la position des veuves ou des femmes sans enfants au sein du lignage de leur époux, puisqu’elle leur garantit une certaine stabilité dès la naissance d’un garçon. En outre, les femmes qui y recourent adhèrent à l’idéologie kikuyu qui accorde au stock de noms du lignage et à leur reproduction, ainsi qu’à la transmission de la terre du lignage une importance symbolique capitale.

ABSTRACT Women’s labour migration from Uganda to the Middle East has surged in recent decades, becoming a subject of concern and intense debate within Uganda. Women who have worked in the Middle East tell of slavery, humiliation and confinement – and they tell of relations forged in the Arab families they work for and about becoming somebody, in the eyes of people back home. They tell of cruel bosses – together with whom they work on creating ‘happiness’ on social media. They tell of happiness as sites of ambivalence and confusion, of heroic escapes – and desperate attempts to get back to the Middle East to try one’s luck once more. We cannot reduce their experience to binaries of constraint vs. agency; necessity vs. choice; slavery vs. freedom. We suggest exploring their contradictory and ambivalent stories by focusing on motivations, desires, and goals that defy simplistic categories of subordination and resistance.

ABSTRACT The last decade of colonial rule in Kenya witnessed a widespread debate about social security for African workers. The government sought to create a stable, permanent workforce, while workers wanted secure and improved conditions. Old-age security was central to these discussions, deemed necessary for the transition from the traditional security of rural land-owning to a ‘detribalised’ existence. This paper revisits the largely forgotten 1954–5 Social Security Committee, a key moment in the history of social welfare in East Africa. Formed at the intersection of colonial labour policy, humanitarian impulses, and African trade union activism, the Committee represented a rare instance of African participation in colonial social policymaking. Its deliberations on different models of social security – pensions versus provident funds, contributory versus non-contributory models, and inclusion of women, domestic workers, and peasants – exposed competing visions of race, labour, and welfare. The Committee’s recommendation for a comprehensive pension scheme echoed principles of universal social rights and risk pooling associated with the British postwar welfare state. Fiscal caution and intra-official tensions ensured it was not implemented. Kenya was left with a limited, contributory scheme that continues to frustrate many. This lost model illuminates both the ambitions and constraints shaping postcolonial welfare trajectories.

ABSTRACT This article explores the ways in which ZANU and ZAPU presented their political ideologies in the public sphere during the Rhodesian UDI crisis (1965–1980). It argues that both groups understood the need to have a developed and adaptive set of political principles in order to navigate the complexities of politics both in Rhodesia and the wider Cold War. In particular, this often meant walking the line between the communist and capitalist blocs, which they did in broadly similar ways. From a core set of principles, they built a resilient and reactive public ideology which allowed them to gain the upper hand in the propaganda war for Rhodesia.

ABSTRACT The camel plays a strategic role in reconfiguring livelihoods in northern Kenya drylands. The rapid evolution of camel milk marketing (CMM) hinges on growing urban demand, physical infrastructure development and local pastoralists’ need to diversify their economies. CMM is made possible by growingly complex networks, relationships and contracts being weaved locally. Women cooperatives are at the centre of intricate relationships, socially regulated arrangements and technical practices that enable the daily flow of fresh raw camel milk from the northern Kenya drylands to busy terminal markets in Nairobi. After analysing the growing relevance of the camel economy in the region, we explore the evolutions of camel milk production and marketing in the Isiolo-centred channels. The moral economy informs our perspective and draws from other perspectives addressing dryland societies’ social and cultural transformations. We used mixed methods, integrating datasets of existing CMM enterprises with qualitative data collected during fieldwork. By examining how CMM networks are cast within the local social, cultural and political setting, we show how diverse networks strengthen rural-urban connections and support the livelihoods of marginal groups.

ABSTRACT Infrastructure-led development is driving geopolitical agendas in the Global South, and Djibouti is a case in point. Strategically situated in the Horn of Africa, Djibouti’s seaports and related infrastructure have been modernised through foreign investments to serve international trade and growing African hinterlands. Scholarship often posits foreign logistics investors as hegemons driven by geopolitical interests, and host states as passive recipients. This paper questions such claims. It examines the relationship between “hegemon” and “host state” from the perspective of the latter, in this case the Djibouti government’s interactions with Emirati and Chinese infrastructure companies. Methodologically, the analysis is based on interviews, secondary data and document analysis. It applies a conflict-sensitive controversies approach from critical logistics studies to trace contestation over authority in Djibouti’s logistics sector. It shows how Djibouti’s government applies various strategies (discursive, legal and political) to exercise agency in its logistics sector. The paper concludes that the geopolitics of infrastructure-led development is a reciprocal effort that goes beyond conventional logics of hegemons imposing on host states.

ABSTRACT The re-emergence of competitive elections in Africa has sparked new interest in political mobilization on the continent. Much of this literature focusses on political actors and the strategies they use to mobilize. If the campaign activists are reviewed at all, they are often categorized by their ethnic or religious affiliation. Thereby, abilities and potentials for political participation, which are important within conceptual literature on political mobilization, are side-lined. This article uses an activist-centered perspective to review the political mobilization of motorcycle taxi drivers, eastern Congo. Based on empirical research in 2020 and 2021, it evaluates the mobilization potentials of the so-called motards and their deployment during political action. The article finds that motards possess unique potentials for participating in political campaigns due to their mobility and large social networks but only partially deploy them. While their mobility potential is widely utilized, the mobilization of their social networks is hampered by a lack of allegiances and infrequent contacts with politicians. Based on the research findings, the article advocates expanding the perception of political mobilization in Africa by reflecting on the preconditions of mobilizability such as enabling potentials, interactions with activists and aligned political strategies.

ABSTRACT Drawing on two periods of fieldwork (2007–2008 and 2019–2020) conducted between Somaliland and Italy, this article traces, from a longitudinal perspective, the migratory journeys from Somalia to Libya and Europe of a new generation of young asylum-seekers. The underlying thread linking the two temporal frames is the transformations of the word tahriib. Travelling between Libya and Somalia, the word takes on new meanings: while in the emerging institutional language on migration, the word referred to growing dimensions of control and containment of mobility (in Arabic it refers to human smuggling), for the new generation of young Somali asylum-seekers it alluded initially to a dimension of danger, adventure, and generational rupture, and then became increasingly associated with violence and disruption. These transformations, I argue, reveal the shifting social worlds of Somali youth migration, where protracted crises in the country of origin and struggles for social inclusion in the new transnational Somali society had to adjust to increasingly restrictive forms of regulation of international migration. As the destructive transformations of tahriib unfold, their effects pervade not only the areas of origin and transit but also affect the attempts at integration in European countries, showing the deceitful and uncertain nature of diaspora.

ABSTRACT During the last two decades, cooperation between Italy, the EU and Libya on migration management has been intended to establish a “cycle of containment” aimed at the externalisation and securitisation of the southern European border on Libyan soil. The escalation of the civil war in Libya since 2014 was one of the main reasons for the European attempt to replicate the international policies of containment southwards in Africa and to address them towards countries that were reputed as major producers of migrants, as in the case of the Horn of Africa. By comparing and discussing migrants’ life-stories collected in Tripolitania and Southern Tunisia, this study deconstructs some recurrent representations of migratory dynamics that are usually taken for granted in order to legitimate international policies of containment, and reveals the not-pre-made character of migrants’ journeys, their solidarity strategies, and the networks of (im)mobility mobilised to deal with the traps of containment. The international policies of containment and human mobility are two sides of the same reality that must be (re)connected to the wider regional or country context where this nexus is taking shape. This represents an analytical imperative and a methodological intersection between migration studies and African studies.