In this paper, I consider the concept of 'human minimum' as Henry Odera Oruka proposed to obligate responsibility as an approach to eliminating extreme poverty in Africa and beyond. I aim to establish why it is morally problematic and economically counterproductive to demand equal moral responsibility from all moral agents, irrespective of their economic differences, in the fight against extreme poverty. To achieve the latter, I attempt to answer two significant questions: What are some of the moral implications of ensuring that a society attains the human minimum as an approach to eliminating extreme poverty? Who has a greater moral responsibility for ensuring the attainment of the human minimum between the government, non-governmental/non-profit organisations and individual members of society? In Oruka's philosophy, enforcement of a global human minimum is the equal moral obligation of all moral agents - defined as those situated above the poverty line. I will demonstrate why ignoring the economic differences - and inequalities - of those who qualify as moral agents in Oruka's conceptualisation of extreme poverty, particularly in continental Africa, risks plunging more of those who live slightly above the human minimum threshold into extreme poverty.
This paper examines the approaches the United States of America uses to promote democracy in Nigeria within the larger political history of relations between the two countries and the theoretical underpinnings of the democratic peace hypothesis as a purpose- driven justification for democracy promotion. Through qualitative exploratory research, the article reveals that the United States' strategies for promoting democracy in Nigeria are based on a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches, such as foreign policy, support to civil society organisations, workshops, diplomatic visits and bilateral forums between public officials from both countries. Although these initiatives have fostered institutional support, civic engagement and governance reforms, they continue to face obstacles due to manipulations from politicians and the weak participatory culture of Nigerians in their affairs. To promote grassroots involvement and resistance to political manipulation, this paper introduces a complementary strategy of aligning extant strategies with political education to cultivate an inclusive and democratic society in Nigeria. With an added value of contributing to the literature on democracy promotion in Africa, this approach, in tandem with Nigeria's sociopolitical context, has the potential to strengthen the sustainability and legitimacy of foreign efforts aimed at promoting democracy in a more practical manner.
The paper assessed the work of private formal actors in waste management and whether their service meets the objective of equitable spatial distribution to the communities they serve. We conducted interviews with public metropolitan actors, private waste management companies and their beneficiaries (household heads). Through interacting with the beneficiaries, we measured how effectively the private formal actors meet the equity objective in managing solid waste, an impure public good because some households are excluded from its benefit through fees or charges. However, because of the negative externality associated with waste, its management or collection is always expected to benefit all equally. The assessment revealed that private waste management (collection) was unequal across the selected communities. This has led to low-quality waste collection services in some areas, undermining residents' rights to a quality environment and reinforcing injustice. The study revealed financial, regulatory and infrastructural reasons contribute to such unequal management. Our paper contributes to existing analytical studies measuring the effectiveness of public-private partnerships in the management of solid waste by specifically looking at the equity dimension of formal private collection.
Literature identifies increasing hybrid political regimes in the post-Cold War era, such as electoral authoritarianism, illiberal democracy and competitive authoritarianism. These regimes hide their non-democratic activities behind democratic practices like elections, which are generally short of being free and fair. This article argues that there has been a political transition to competitive authoritarian regimes in Nigeria since the inception of Buhari under the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015. The literature on competitive authoritarianism discusses various mechanisms these regimes use to remain in power, including suppressing the media, censoring social media and dominating the legislative arm of government, with some discussing government influence on the judiciary. By examining the 2019 and 2023 elections, this article argues that EV is a critical tool in Nigeria's competitive authoritarian system. There are several traditional methods of manipulating the electoral process - such as controlling the media, influencing the judiciary, or leveraging state resources to sway voters - but if they prove to be insufficient, the incumbent deploys violence to tilt the electoral playing field in its favour. This violence, often involving the use of security forces and political thugs, serves as both a deterrent to opposition supporters and a direct means of influencing election results.
Corruption that endures across regimes and scales overshadows South Africa's democratic gains, rendering post-apartheid anti-corruption reforms insufficient against deeply institutionalised practices. This study evaluates the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures by drawing on insights from law enforcement, policymakers and civil society. It explores the factors that contribute to the limited success of existing strategies, with particular emphasis on implementation gaps, institutional autonomy and policy coherence, comprising multiple theories at multiple levels of analysis, and guides the analysis employed. Utilising a qualitative research design, the study triangulated data from semi-structured interviews and a narrative literature review, analysed through thematic analysis. The findings indicate that a lack of coherence reduces the effectiveness of policies across the system. Policy gaps and inconsistencies highlight systemic issues where political and bureaucratic self-interest undermine national-level anti-corruption objectives. Organisational structures, capacity and incentives significantly influence the effectiveness of anti-corruption measures. The presence of enforcement weaknesses, fragmented institutional practices, and insufficient stakeholder coordination hinder progress. The research highlights the critical need for integrated governance approaches, stakeholder-inclusive mechanisms, and risk-based interventions. Recommendations include enhancing institutional capacity, revising legal frameworks, and strengthening peer-review mechanisms and anti-corruption forums to improve policy outcomes and resilience in the public sector.
Nollywood is a rich cultural zone, especially with the rise of epic blockbusters in the 2020s. Some of these include King of Thieves: Ogundabede (2022), An & iacute;k & uacute;l & aacute;p & oacute; (2022), Elesin Oba: The King's Horseman (2022), Mami Wata (2023), Jagun Jagun: The Warrior (2023), Orisa (2023), Ageshinkol & eacute; (2022), House of Ga'a (2024) and L & iacute;s & agrave;b & iacute;: The Uprising (2024). Using African feminisms as a conceptual lens, I interrogate how female characters are portrayed and note that Nollywood, although maturing and creating more nuanced female characters, is still tethered to patriarchal stereotypes of power distribution privileging men above women. I further argue that, although powerful women assert powerful personalities to a certain extent, thus demonstrating agency, their power is curtailed in the socio-cultural, domestic and political arenas, which ultimately creeps into the production culture of epic films, thus complicating women's truest emancipation.
While browsing for Algerian literature, I unexpectedly came across a list of so-called Algerian writers: Albert Camus (born in Attaref), Bernard-Henri L & eacute;vy (Beni Saf), Robert Merle (Tebessa) and H & eacute;l & egrave;ne Cixous (Oran). These names befuddled me; it seems, if you are a French intellectual, being born in Algeria is enough to claim the 'Algerianity' of your work. This article attempts to answer the question, 'What is Algerian literature?' One could argue it is writing in Arabic produced by an Algerian national. But this is not all. We cannot ignore Algerian literature's links to French, which unleashes a debate on identity, language and culture. I cite selected Arabic-writing Algerian authors from the colonial and post-independence periods to demonstrate how this literary tradition persisted and evolved through colonial rule and beyond. Further, this article will seek to explore Algerian literature in French specifically by considering Kateb Yacine and Malek Haddad, prolific figures of Algerian combat literature. The research findings indicate that Algerian authors writing in Arabic and French defend their identity through counter-hegemonic narratives. With a strong sense of national consciousness, they were committed to uncompromising literature that sought to demythologise the archetypical propaganda of 'l'Alg & eacute;rie, c'est la France'.
The enslaved Black female body was a significant site of sexual exploitation during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and fated to a long passage of sexual assault. Slavery was rife with various sexual aggressions like rape on the enslaved Black woman by both Black and white heterosexual men. In addition, to facilitate their sexual perversions, the white slave masters 'whiten' the Black identities of the female slaves by revoking the slaves' African names and imposing on them white Euro-American names. This 'whitened' identity becomes a fetish for the slave masters as they fixate on the misrepresented Black female bodies to satisfy their sexual fantasies. Though scholarship has grappled with the issue of sexual violation in the slavery arena, (Foster 2019; Jennings 1990, Oduwobi 2017), the subject has not received the fullest attention. For instance, there exist significant gaps on the question of the psychosexual motivations which drive the white slave masters to 'whiten' and fixate on their Black female slaves. Situating the present paper in the period of proto-colonialism, the long period of European and African commercial interrelations when slavery thrived, this study adopts Frantz Fanon's psychoanalytical framework on colonial sexuality as well as Freudian libido theory to discuss the interplay of sexuality and identity between the Black slave raider and the slave master with the enslaved Black woman, as well as the relationship between the white slave master and the Black enslaved woman. The study focuses on two Ghanaian neo-slave narratives: Joseph Baiden's Seeds of Slavery (2018) and Manu Herbstein's Ama (2002) and concludes amongst others that the quest to 'whiten' the enslaved Black woman is borne out of the slave master's irrepressible obsession with the Black female body.
Resilience-thinking has become a dominant adaptation vision in the Anthropocene. The concept has spread through policy governance, spurred by the need to utilise existing systems to understand and develop critical approaches to adapt and 'bounce back' in the face of climate crises. We analyse how African indigenous peoples are recognised as the epitome of resilience, yet such claims characterise the re-colonisation of indigeneity and do not address the long histories of colonial violence nor the asymmetrical power relations in resilience policy. Framed as the 'Age of Man', the Anthropocene obfuscates the roles of race, colonialism, capitalism and patriarchal oppression, erasing racialised histories of extractive imperialism. Drawing from decolonial theory, we argue that through 'Africanising indigeneity', indigenous African ontologies can legitimise decolonial struggles in the Anthropocene. In essence, by re-imagining decolonial struggles as emancipation, de-Westernisation and recognition of African indigenous knowledge systems, we contend that it becomes possible to (re)conceptualise and decolonise the Anthropocene. We conclude that for indigeneity to become more valuable in resilience governance and knowledge production, it needs to be better approached and reconceptualised within a critical and pluriversalistic/pluralistic frame, stressing its strengths for a decolonisation project - as a set of contemporaneous struggles and a source of alternative futures.
In the early twentieth century, scholars studied the Nuer social organisation and described it as a system of interconnected patrilineal lineages, clans, tribal segments, and tribes. They viewed the Nuer society as lacking centralised political institutions and complex social structures. However, this observation was based on the Nuer of the nineteenth century, who had weak ties to their common origin and history, allowing for intermixing with neighbouring peoples, mainly Dinka and Anuak. Over the twentieth century, factors such as globalisation, colonialism, and civil wars caused the Nuer society to undergo significant changes. They transitioned from a genealogically segmented pastoralist society to an ethnic group. However, this ethnic identity is currently facing challenges and fragmentation due to displacement and increased mobility. This paper examines how the Nuer have defined boundaries between themselves and others throughout history, depending on the cultural and structural contexts that shape their identity, through an in-depth analysis of literature, oral history, historical research, and interviews.
In 2007, the Constitutional Court ordered that the South African government must enforce the principle of sustainable development in awarding environmental authorisation for developmental projects. This legal mandate, rooted in the Constitution, has been a powerful tool for environmentalists in their fight for sustainable development. Armed with appropriate legal apparatus, environmentalists continue to lodge protests against development initiatives. This article examines how environmentalists have shaped the discourse around the meanings of consultation and development since then. With more control and ligating leverage, they vehemently oppose undertakings that have potentially adverse impacts on the environment, the people and their heritage. Environmentalists have successfully persuaded courts to value the importance of sustainable development, climate crisis, customary rights and intangible cultural heritage, as well as consultation and public participation, making it difficult for the state and industry to implement any projects. While environmentalists have complicated state implementation of development projects, they have entrenched the protection of land rights and participatory democracy. The findings help us imagine the proper implementation of future development projects. The article underscores the importance of South Africa's Constitution in ensuring the functioning of democracy, particularly in how it empowers communities to protect their land.
The article explores the challenges of protected area co-management within the context of land restitution. Co-management has been used to resolve land claims in protected areas, as well as to reconcile conservation objectives and land rights. It also focuses on the re-emergence of traditional authorities, engaging with debates around the role of chiefs in a democratic South Africa. Some scholars argued that chiefs are still relevant and can play a role in a democratic dispensation. Others challenged the relevance of chiefs in a democratic era given their hereditary nature. Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve serves as case study. Chiefs were denied any special designation beyond being citizens in a protected area management arrangement, where newly elected institutions were set up to collaborate with the state. They regained authority and relevance around such management within a decade of the 2001 restitution agreement. The study uses qualitative data collection and ethnography. It contends that co-management failures resulted in increased poverty and community unrest, culminating in the reassertion of chiefs' authority, followed by the re-alignment of state conservation with traditional leadership. It shows that chiefs, despite not democratically elected, may still represent the interests of their subjects, advocate for local rights, and stand against marginalisation of local voices. It concludes by highlighting the nuanced and evolving role of chiefs in balancing community interests with conservation imperatives on ancestral land.
The article attempts a philosophical exposition of the Oromo's indigenous notion of Namummaa for the sake of conflict resolution/peacebuilding and common good in Ethiopia. As a relational philosophy, Namummaa explains the ontological conception of peace the Oromo people hold; it is embedded in their religious and communal sense of relationality and belonging. The study emphasizes whether this ontological ideal promotes nonviolence, renunciation of self-aggrandizement at the expense of the cosmos, community, or others, and bolsters mutual coexistence-all of which are essential for building peace and resolution of conflicts in contemporary Ethiopia. Thus, apart from the normative-philosophical theorisation of Namummaa, the article attempts to present a balanced and critical assessment of Oromo indigenous concepts and practices of human relation by making a qualitative reflection on their possible application as a conflict resolution and peacebuilding mechanism not only for the intra-Oromo but also for the inter-cultural relationships in Ethiopia today. After a thorough and systematic reading of available written and oral sources garnered from primary and secondary data, the study concludes that Namummaa, according to the Oromo perspective, is complex, connected to the strong quality of human beings and meaningful in terms of building intercultural dialogue for peacebuilding in Ethiopia.
