Project MUSE®: Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute.daily12026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 76 (2006) through current issueLatest Articles: Africa: The Journal of the International African InstituteTWOProject MUSE®Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute1750-01840001-9720Latest articles in Africa: The Journal of the International African Institute. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Introduction: The social life of music files
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988209
<p></p>
Since the late 2000s, mobile phones have become an integral part of daily life in Africa, not just in cities but also in rural areas that often lack infrastructure such as all-weather roads or a connection to the electricity grid. As the most widespread digital tool and the main gateway to the internet, the mobile phone is now so embedded in the social life of the continent's populations that it has become a major topic in anthropology; de Bruijn and Nyamnjoh even suggest the emergence of a distinct 'African mobile phone culture' (2009: 13). Initially grounded in fieldwork conducted in Europe and Asia that examined the social transformations produced by specific technological shifts, scholarly discussions have
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallIntroduction: The social life of music files2026-04-17text/htmlen-USIntroduction: The social life of music files2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®894052026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17New currents, old boundaries: Exploring the relationship between streaming platforms and Afrikaans music
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988210
<p></p>
The relationship between music streaming platforms and music is neither linear nor unilateral. Streaming has not simply transformed how music circulates; it has also been reshaped by the creative practices, linguistic nuances and audience behaviours that define musical cultures. These transformations have raised many important questions. As a result, the existing literature is remarkably broad – ranging from highly technical analyses of platform algorithms (Bolin and Schwarz 2015; Roth et al. 2020), often referred to as the 'black box' (see Pasquale 2015), to more socially focused studies on how this technological wave is shaping people's lives (Beer 2017; Hesmondhalgh and Meier 2018; Jansson 2021), as well as
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallNew currents, old boundaries: Exploring the relationship between streaming platforms and Afrikaans music2026-04-17text/htmlen-USNew currents, old boundaries: Exploring the relationship between streaming platforms and Afrikaans music2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®1282092026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17Music circulation, war and the diaspora: A history of the travelling music studio during the Eritrean liberation struggle (1970s–1990s)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988211
<p></p>
As a child of Eritrean immigrants in the late 1990s and early 2000s, I vividly recall my parents' cassette and CD collections, often bought at festivals, as a way to stay connected to home – played during Sunday cleaning sessions or on road trips. Many cassettes they owned were produced initially in Eritrea during its thirty-year struggle for liberation from Ethiopian hegemony (1961–91). For members of the Eritrean diaspora like my family, music became a way for parents to expose their children to Eritrean culture. The global dispersion of Eritreans has created thriving communities where Eritrean music circulates and is consumed widely.Scholars of Africa have extensively researched music and national identity
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallMusic circulation, war and the diaspora: A history of the travelling music studio during the Eritrean liberation struggle (1970s–1990s)2026-04-17text/htmlen-USMusic circulation, war and the diaspora: A history of the travelling music studio during the Eritrean liberation struggle (1970s–1990s)2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®1161352026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17Song, Mobile Phones and the Echoes of War: Circulating Poems and Fashioning the Past in Amhara (Ethiopia)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988212
<p></p>
'Those who left for the front line? Well, there was Haile Gashaw, you know him well. Also, Kassahun Täshomä, from the other side of the hill, and Habtamu's two sons.' Alämitu slowly listed the names.1 On that day in May 2023, we were alone in her house, and for the first time since my return, she had agreed to talk about one of the war's most intense periods.In the autumn of 2021, nine young men from her small hamlet left for war. At that time, troops from Tigray, further north, had invaded the Amhara region, making their way towards the capital, Addis Ababa. Alämitu had heard how their advance left a trail of widespread destruction, and how the federal army was losing ground. At that point, many Amhara farmers
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallSong, Mobile Phones and the Echoes of War: Circulating Poems and Fashioning the Past in Amhara (Ethiopia)2026-04-17text/htmlen-USSong, Mobile Phones and the Echoes of War: Circulating Poems and Fashioning the Past in Amhara (Ethiopia)2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®1017082026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17Controlling the Narratives: Three Generations of Zarma Genealogists and Historian-Griots from Niger Confronting Recording and Digitization
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988213
<p></p>
On 13 August 2022, a Nigerien artist living in France forwarded me a short video montage via WhatsApp that had been shared in a group by members of his home canton. The montage featured two photographs and a soundtrack. Despite the spedup audio, I immediately recognized the Epic of Isa Korombe, narrated by Jibo Baaje, also known as Jeliba Baaje (Figure 1).1 Jeliba was a renowned genealogist and historiangriot (jasare2) from the Zarma area, with whom I collaborated from 1995 until his death in 2018. The discovery of this epic on social media was unexpected, as I was unaware of any recordings of this specific epic by Jeliba besides those I had made myself. Even more striking was the visual backdrop, which included
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallControlling the Narratives: Three Generations of Zarma Genealogists and Historian-Griots from Niger Confronting Recording and Digitization2026-04-17text/htmlen-USControlling the Narratives: Three Generations of Zarma Genealogists and Historian-Griots from Niger Confronting Recording and Digitization2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®1116152026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17Mobile phones, electoral songs and pastoral populism in northern Kenya: Towards a political anthropology of file sharing
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988214
<p></p>
Over the past two decades, Kenya has emerged as one of the leading countries in sub-Saharan Africa in terms of the diffusion of mobile phones, with adoption levels reaching 139.7 per cent of the population in 2024–25 (Communications Authority of Kenya 2025). This trend is largely the result of a series of regulatory reforms and the introduction of a highly successful mobile payment system, which, towards the end of the 2000s, began to transform the country's communications landscape (Nyabola 2018). The 2007 launch of M-Pesa – a mobile-based money transfer service introduced by Safaricom, Kenya's main telecom provider – significantly accelerated the rollout of telephone networks and infrastructure, even in the
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallMobile phones, electoral songs and pastoral populism in northern Kenya: Towards a political anthropology of file sharing2026-04-17text/htmlen-USMobile phones, electoral songs and pastoral populism in northern Kenya: Towards a political anthropology of file sharing2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®1138182026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17Mastering the fertile Betsiboka valley: Ritual techniques of allochthonous dominance among a re-anchored 'lost people' in Madagascar
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988215
<p></p>
Over the past several decades, scholars of African studies have produced numerous case studies detailing how domestic migrants, across a range of time periods, have become assimilated into host communities (Boni 2006; Chauveau 2006; Kopytoff 1987; Kuba 2003; Lentz 2006a; 2006b; 2013). This literature, in conversation with critical scholarship on the constructed nature of ethnic categories and, to a lesser extent, the legacy of slavery and servitude, has revealed how, in agricultural societies, the strategy of 'autochthonization through incorporation' allowed migrants to gain access to the land (Lentz 2006b: 37; cf. Kuba and Lentz 2002; cf. Isumonah 2003: 4–5). As anthropologist Carola Lentz (2006a: 2) has
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallMastering the fertile Betsiboka valley: Ritual techniques of allochthonous dominance among a re-anchored 'lost people' in Madagascar2026-04-17text/htmlen-USMastering the fertile Betsiboka valley: Ritual techniques of allochthonous dominance among a re-anchored 'lost people' in Madagascar2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®1199742026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17Money, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa by Kevin P. Donovan (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988216
<p></p>
Money, Value, and the State is an ambitious and deeply researched historical ethnography of money as a political order drawing on archival and ethnographic material across postcolonial Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Kevin Donovan's central claim is that decolonization was not only a political opening but an attempt to build a government of value: a project through which states sought to monopolize valuation to secure economic self-determination. He names this formation the 'money-changing state', or a fiscal model that monopolizes national currencies and the terms of exchange, especially the conversion of domestic currency into foreign exchange, to both hoard reserves and govern access to value (pp. 1–5). In this
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallMoney, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa by Kevin P. Donovan (review)2026-04-17text/htmlen-USMoney, Value, and the State: Sovereignty and Citizenship in East Africa by Kevin P. Donovan (review)2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®83832026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17Africonomics: A History of Western Ignorance by Bronwen Everill (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988217
<p></p>
After Africa's political decolonization era in the late 1950s and 1960s, African scholars began challenging Western portrayals and colonial narratives of and about Africa, marking the emergence of African History as a distinct discipline. This scholarship demonstrated the vibrancy of indigenous institutions, local economies and African agency. Within this historiography, economic history gained prominence through scholars such as Walter Rodney, whose seminal book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa critiqued colonial exploitation, and Samir Amin, who examined the impact of global capitalism on Africa. Claude Ake advocated for knowledge rooted in African realities, while A. G. Hopkins' An Economic History of West
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallAfriconomics: A History of Western Ignorance by Bronwen Everill (review)2026-04-17text/htmlen-USAfriconomics: A History of Western Ignorance by Bronwen Everill (review)2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®77222026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17Elusive Histories: Mozambican Migrant Laborers in Rhodesia, ca. 1900–1980 by Allen F. Isaacman, Joy M. Chadya and Barbara S. Isaacman (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988218
<p></p>
Elusive Histories diversifies a historiography in which South Africa's role as a destination for migrant labour dominates the subregion. This work and other recent scholarship remind us of a more expansive economic position. Alongside rural farms and mines, Southern Rhodesia's two main cities, Bulawayo and Salisbury, were significant urban centres that drew migrants from across the region. Zoe Groves' Tracing Machona (2020) explored this theme in the context of Malawi. Here, the Isaacmans and Chadya extend this consideration to Mozambicans who were drawn to Rhodesia's comparative economic prosperity.By early 1959, more than 200,000 individuals from Mozambique were legally resident in Rhodesia (p. 71). While their
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallElusive Histories: Mozambican Migrant Laborers in Rhodesia, ca. 1900–1980 by Allen F. Isaacman, Joy M. Chadya and Barbara S. Isaacman (review)2026-04-17text/htmlen-USElusive Histories: Mozambican Migrant Laborers in Rhodesia, ca. 1900–1980 by Allen F. Isaacman, Joy M. Chadya and Barbara S. Isaacman (review)2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®73392026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17Gold, Finance and Imperialism in South Africa, 1887–1902: A View from the Stock Exchange by Mariusz Lukasiewicz (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988219
<p></p>
The book Gold, Finance and Imperialism in South Africa, 1887–1902: a view from the stock exchange provides a detailed history of the development of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Lukasiewicz shows that the JSE was not merely a byproduct of South Africa's gold-mining boom but an important institution of the economic expansion that embedded local mining capital within global financial systems. The author argues that the book is not a corporate narrative, but a deconstruction of the JSE's organizational structure (pp. 204–5). The book integrates political, imperial and financial histories by showing how speculative capital, which was largely channelled
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallGold, Finance and Imperialism in South Africa, 1887–1902: A View from the Stock Exchange by Mariusz Lukasiewicz (review)2026-04-17text/htmlen-USGold, Finance and Imperialism in South Africa, 1887–1902: A View from the Stock Exchange by Mariusz Lukasiewicz (review)2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®100472026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17Malaria on the Move: Rural Communities and Public Health in Zimbabwe, 1890–2015 by Kundai Manamere (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988220
<p></p>
Kundai Manamere's Malaria on the Move offers a fascinating and richly contextualized study of malaria in Zimbabwe's south-eastern lowveld, skilfully weaving historical epidemiology with some anthropological insights. She critiques biomedical triumphalism by emphasizing the importance of local socio-economic factors in disease control, which are often overlooked in most malaria intervention strategies. By integrating epidemiological data, policy shifts and the socio-political dynamics of migration in a historical context, Manamere gives a richly detailed account of Zimbabwe's malaria control efforts. She argues that mobility, such as circular labour migration, colonial displacements and rural livelihoods, was
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallMalaria on the Move: Rural Communities and Public Health in Zimbabwe, 1890–2015 by Kundai Manamere (review)2026-04-17text/htmlen-USMalaria on the Move: Rural Communities and Public Health in Zimbabwe, 1890–2015 by Kundai Manamere (review)2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®85852026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17An Ethos of Transdisciplinarity: Conversations with Toyin Falola by Sanya Osha (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221
<p></p>
It seems almost inevitable that one intrepid scholar would dare to engage with Toyin Falola and his extensive scholarship, which includes nearly 200 books and essays. It is most commendable that this unenviable task of writing about Falola's contributions to African Studies would be taken up by Sanya Osha, whose own scholarship crosses the boundaries of African Studies at the intersection of African philosophy, African feminism, cultural studies and African politics. It is a real service to the global academic world for him to take on such a responsibility of evaluating someone who has become an intellectual phenomenon on the continent.Sanya Osha sets for himself the tough methodological task of weaving the many
... <a href="https://muse.jhu.edu/article/988221">Read More</a>
Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-14T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/310/image/coversmallAn Ethos of Transdisciplinarity: Conversations with Toyin Falola by Sanya Osha (review)2026-04-17text/htmlen-USAn Ethos of Transdisciplinarity: Conversations with Toyin Falola by Sanya Osha (review)2026-04-172026TWOProject MUSE®72532026-05-14T00:00:00-05:002026-04-17