In the contemporary global knowledge economy, the volume of scientific publications is a primary indicator of a nation’s intellectual vitality and developmental progress. Scientific publishing connects education, innovation, and civic engagement, serving as a pillar of inclusive growth. However, despite the essential role of Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) in understanding social trends and deepening the understanding of human behavior and culture, these disciplines remain marginalized within Morocco’s research priorities. This study examines the international visibility of Morocco’s HSS output through indexed publications. It considers institutional frameworks and identifies structural barriers to growth. By analyzing data from the Scopus database, the Moroccan Institute for Scientific Information (IMIST), and national funding programs, this paper argues that a strategic shift is required. It concludes with targeted policy recommendations for government agencies and university administrations to enhance the intellectual, social, and ethical impact of Moroccan HSS research.
River transport disasters are recurrent in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), yet they are often treated as isolated humanitarian events rather than symptoms of broader systemic vulnerabilities. Based on fieldwork conducted between 2023 and 2025 in Équateur province including 47 interviews, participant observation, and analysis of incident documentation; this study examines five major shipwrecks in 2025 that resulted in an estimated 734 deaths. Using a multidimensional vulnerability assessment framework, the article demonstrates how recurrent river disasters emerge from failures in governance capacity, infrastructure regulation, territorial oversight, and information integrity. The findings show that these events contribute to cumulative erosion of state legitimacy, socio-economic resilience, and territorial cohesion, while creating structural exposure that could be exploited by non-state actors. The article argues that river transport governance should be understood as a key vector of state fragility and a strategic priority for resilience-building in the DRC.
This article examines ambassadorial appointments in Nigeria as a historical lens through which to understand the relationship between patronage, elite circulation, and state legitimacy. Situating diplomatic postings within debates on neopatrimonialism, symbolic power, and the performative dimensions of the state, it argues that ambassadorships have long functioned not only as instruments of foreign policy but also as mechanisms for managing political loyalty and elite cohesion. Using the contentious November 2025 ambassadorial list as a historical entry point, the study traces the historical evolution of diplomatic appointments from the colonial period through the First Republic, military rule, and the Fourth Republic. It shows how public controversies surrounding figures such as Reno Omokri, Femi Fani-Kayode, and Mahmood Yakubu reflect deeper tensions over representation, neutrality, and trust in the context of contested elections and heightened public scrutiny. The article contributes to African state-formation scholarship by demonstrating how diplomacy in Nigeria operates as a ritualized political practice through which authority is negotiated, legitimacy performed, and power reproduced over time.
This article explores the national reception of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), comparing the cases of Egypt and Morocco. The aim is to find out whether the BRI promotes development in the target countries and, secondarily, whether it actually succeeds in enabling China to establish the BRI as a hegemonic standard in these countries by making them more dependent. To this end, we will explore in particular the impact of national institutional contexts in modulating its effects, and show two different trajectories. For example, Morocco, which has better institutional capacities, modulates the BRI to its advantage better than Egypt, which is on a trajectory of dependence.
This article argues that So Long a Letter (1979) constructs African female subjectivity as a dialogical self forged through the confessional epistle’s denouncement of colonial and patriarchal forces that have long sought to bend African women’s heads to external and internal orderings of their society. It contends that Bâ carves temporal and narrative spaces for African women by casting a subversive gaze on the interlocking systems of oppression that repress their sense of agency. Through the enabling potential of epistolary writing, the Senegalese writer fashions her heroine into a subjectivity that is neither given nor fixed, but constructed in the shifting positions of friend, wife, mother, widow, and at times Bâ’s own mouthpiece, and through a continuing dialogue with past memories, present dilemmas, and alternative temporalities beyond dominant chrononorms. Drawing on Bakhtinian dialogism, Anzaldúa’s mestiza consciousness, Freeman’s chrononormativity, and Barrett’s affective continuum, this analysis therefore seeks to offer a transdisciplinary investigation into the ways how the novel reimagines African female subjectivity as a dialogic process of becoming emanating from the interstices of epistolary voice, affective temporalities, and the repudiation of colonial and patriarchal chrononormative imperatives. Ultimately, the paper concludes that the novel becomes a canvas onto which Bâ inscribes alternative modes of self-articulation, collective agency, and female futurity for African women.
This article investigates the expressive strategies employed in the depiction and performance of sexual intimacy within African oral literature. Situating the study within the discipline of folklore and oral traditions, it explores how indigenous African communities have historically used oral forms, such as folktales, praise poetry, initiation chants, proverbs, wedding songs, and riddles, to encode, articulate, and ritualize sexual experience. These narratives and performances often utilize metaphor, euphemism, repetition, tonal play, and symbolic imagery to convey erotic themes in ways that are both culturally sanctioned and aesthetically rich. Rather than isolating sexuality as a taboo or marginal theme, the study argues that erotic language constitutes a vital strand in the tapestry of African orature, where it functions pedagogically, performatively, and symbolically. It transmits communal values regarding desire, courtship, fertility, gender roles, and the sanctity of union. Drawing on examples from various African cultures and grounded in folklore theory, ethnopoetics, and indigenous hermeneutics, this study positions sexual discourse as an integral mode of cultural storytelling. It further shows how oral traditions use pleasure as both a narrative technique and a folkloric device, imbuing the erotic with ritual meaning, moral weight, and communal legitimacy. Ultimately, the article affirms that African oral literature offers a sophisticated lexicon for the sensual, one that deepens our understanding of the human experience as told through the enduring voice of tradition.
