This article examines jila gadamojji, the final rite of passage, which recurs every eight years in the Boran gada generation-set system. Drawing on field and archival research, it situates jila gadamojji within changing social and political contexts in Kenya from c. 1930 to 2020. Despite predictions of its disappearance, jila gadamojji's persistence demonstrates its enduring importance in the Boran ritual landscape and experience of time and the state. In contemporary oral narratives, historical events are organised through gada cycles, with jila gadamojji forming a key temporal marker. Informants further incorporate political rituals and state timeframes, like elections and parliamentary terms respectively, into overlapping chronologies. These accounts draw on fragmented but interconnected forms of historical knowledge found in life-history interviews and group discussions. More recently, decentralisation in Kenya since 2013 and the designation of the ritual's site as a national monument in 2018 have further aligned these temporal frameworks across different scales. In this context, the paper reveals how diverse age- and time-reckoning systems, together with the recounting of shared events in oral history, construct time in ways that shape social identity and relations with state institutions and representatives.
The article presents an interim status of the results after two years of collaborative provenance research conducted by the Museen Stade (Germany) and the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR, Tanzania), focusing on the collection of the colonial botanist Karl Braun. Drawing on an exceptionally broad range of sources in German archives, the study reconstructs detailed object biographies and, for the first time, offers a comprehensive analysis of the colonial history of the Amani Institute. At the same time, the evaluation of Braun's estate is constrained by linguistic challenges and the one-sided perspective of colonial records. Complementary field research in Tanzania was therefore undertaken to broaden and critically reflect these perspectives. The article argues that the appropriation of cultural objects in colonial contexts cannot be understood in isolation but must be situated within the institutional, scientific, and political power structures of the Amani Institute. A purely museum-based provenance research approach thus proves insufficient. Instead, an interdisciplinary framework is required to adequately address the entanglement of knowledge production, military violence, and cultural appropriation. This applies not only to historical analysis but also to the development of contemporary decolonial research practices, which depend on international collaboration, multi-perspectival approaches, and the critical reflection of ethical and structural conditions.1
The destruction of two mosques and many businesses in Mota in December 2019 was met with widespread shock in Ethiopia, but came on the basis of a longer local build-up of tensions. Mota's small but economically visible Muslim minority had been accused of harbouring 'extremism' by inflammatory Christian preachers - in part fuelled by divisions within the Islamic community leveraging the same accusation against some of their own. Reported Muslim attacks on churches elsewhere in the country contributed to an already tense climate. When rumours attributed a quickly contained local church fire to Muslim arsonists, a mob arose attacking and burning mosques and (predominantly Muslim) businesses. As our research shows, rumour and mutual accusations of extremism continued to play a role in post-conflict assessments of the attack, together with complaints about the presumably complicit stance of local police forces. A climate of suspicion, fuelled by social media and conflict elsewhere in the country, was both the condition and the outcome of the conflict. Tracing out the history of these clashes and their aftermath, the article argues that the Mota conflict exemplifies how invoking the spectre of 'extremism' as the analytical lens too often conceals local intra-religious politics and communal grievances.
PM Abiy Ahmed's politics, his institutional reforms, as well as the civil war and ongoing insurgencies erupting during his tenure have placed significant strains on Ethiopia's religious communities, even as many initially welcomed his sermonising rhetoric. This article begins with a longer history of religion and politics in Ethiopia, in order to contextualise Abiy's rise to power and the role of religious rhetoric in his governing platform. It then proceeds to draw out the major developments and challenges encountered since 2018 by the country's major religious groups. Particular attention is paid to divisions within the Orthodox Church surrounding the Tigray War and the short-lived secession of Oromo bishops. On the Muslim side, the article details the tensions between various factions in the reconstituted Islamic Affairs Supreme Council. For Protestants, it shows why Abiy initially found much support despite a historic tendency of political withdrawal, particularly among his own Pentecostal constituency, and it traces how Abiy's tenure has furthered Protestant divisions. As such, the article sets out the national frame of religious politics, which is relevant for the urban conflicts studied in the remaining three articles of this special collection.
Ethiopia's celebrated religious diversity is characterized by both instances of coexistence and conflict. In Gondar, a historically significant city in northern Ethiopia, inter-religious relations between Muslims and Orthodox Christians are shaped by visible identity markers, such as dietary restrictions and control over religious practices and spaces, and public narratives emphasizing peaceful coexistence. Peaceful co-existence narratives, however, often obscure underlying tensions that emerge through demographic shifts, competition for symbolic and physical spaces, and broader social and political changes. This paper examines the April 2022 conflict in Gondar as a lens to explore the dynamic interplay between narratives of coexistence and inter-religious tensions. Drawing on qualitative data from 28 in-depth interviews and field observations conducted in October 2022, the study highlights how religious competition and shifting demographic dynamics shape inter-communal relations. The findings show how public narratives of coexistence can help manage conflict while simultaneously masking fragile and contested realities. Situating the Gondar conflict within Ethiopia's broader historical and sociopolitical context, this paper argues that the coexistence-tension duality reflects not only historical grievances but also contemporary struggles over identity, power, and access to space, offering broader insights into the mechanisms that sustain or undermine inter-religious harmony in Ethiopia and similar settings.
The killing of the Oromo singer Hachalu Hundessa in 2020 sparked a wave of violence across the southern Rift Valley. Shashemene was particularly hit hard, leaving an unknown number of people killed, thousands temporarily displaced, and numerous private houses and businesses destroyed. Identity-based communal violence is hardly a new phenomenon in Ethiopia but there are, we believe, some emerging new dynamics that need to be analysed. This article argues that an entrenched primordialist discourse around ethnic identity, which has also served as the basis for Ethiopia's ethnic federalism, has produced specific spatial, nativist narratives, determining perceptions of inclusion and exclusion. We moreover argue that Abiy Ahmed's ambiguous rhetoric concerning the future of ethnic federalism and a perceived alliance with the Amhara created anxiety among the Oromo who feared that this would erode their control and ownership of the Oromia regional state. We believe that this perceived alliance affected the vertical antagonistic perceptions of the state and contributed to legitimizing horizontal inter-communal violence directed at civilians, seen as ushering in the policies levied against the Oromo. Lastly, we argue that religious differences, relevant for the southeastern parts of the country, exacerbated tensions and played an important, yet subtle role during the violence.
In Uganda, bibanda video halls have emerged as important vernacular spaces where foreign films that circulate globally are translated, interpreted, and reimagined for local audiences. This paper examines bibanda video halls as spaces highlighting cultural and performative dimensions of vernacular transcreation and cinematic reworlding in progress. Drawing on site visits and artistic visualisations, interviews with veejays (video jockeys), video hall operators and associates, and library research on representations of film translation in Uganda, we explore how residents mobilise narrative and aesthetic practices to reinterpret foreign films. We demonstrate how through localised practices, they invent and reinvent modes of operability that move beyond portrayals of deficiency, lack, and shortage in reference to urban life in informal contexts. The analysis focuses on localised dubbing in coded language and narratives that destabilise standard meanings and narratives. More broadly, the paper argues that these vernacular media spaces challenge Western perspectives on technology, highlighting the need to take seriously the ordinary, tangible, and intangible media infrastructures. It posits the importance of attending to local forms of meaning-making where residents in informal areas are proactive in constructing identity, vernacular meanings, and an ordinances.
This article explores how young queer and feminist activists in Kenya find motivation for sociopolitical changemaking and ascribe meaning to their online engagement amid feelings of disillusionment. Engaging with academic literature on queer and feminist counterpublics and scrutinising online interactions through the conceptual framework of utopia, this study investigates how different online tactics nurture hope and utopian imagination within these counterpublics even when anti-feminist and anti-queer backlash appears overwhelming. It illustrates how young activists sustain hope within their own digital filter bubbles, and how their algorithmically and actively curated personal publics enable utopian imaginaries of societal change as something that is already emergent. It discusses three forms of online engagement in which such utopian hope is nurtured: attempting to diversify public narratives through online campaigning for queer rights; demanding accountability through online call-outs; and actively filtering out hate in personal online publics. Based on qualitative research with young feminist and queer activists in Kenya, this article analyses how activists experience their online engagement in which queer feminist worlds feel simultaneously inaccessible and actualised. It suggests that in contexts of backlash, the digital separation and even polarisation of audiences may enable and safeguard queer and feminist political deliberation.
What causes insurgents to modify their rebel governance after they win? When the National Resistance Army/Movement defeated Uganda's army, it vowed its wartime promises and practices of good government, especially democracy and proper conduct by soldiers, would become the basis of its policies as the state's government. Certain wartime doctrines and practices were implemented at first, both to strengthen the new regime's legitimacy and its significant, if limited, popular support. But the NRM deviated from them soon after forming its government and later contradicted most of the rest. Several reasons explain why. Fighting a civil war implanted habits of military command that undercut later acceptance of democratic accountability. Its mixture of pragmatic and moral purposes in constructing its rebel governance, narrow provision of rebel services, and the brevity of the war reduced its postwar commitment. The NRM's efforts to protect its rule in response to significant military, political, and economic challenges after takeover likewise caused it to deviate from its rebel doctrines. It also reversed its commitment to institutional government and democracy because its leaders felt politically entitled, particularly President Museveni's insistence on personal rule.
Drought is a recurrent hazard in Lake Naivasha Catchment Area, Kenya, a centre for commercial irrigated agriculture and horticulture. Drought affects smallholder farmers, pastoralists and larger-scale agricultural enterprises differentially. We gathered qualitative data through semi-structured individual and group interviews with representatives of all Water Resource User Associations in the area, focussing on drought impacts on various actors, and the strategies they undertook to alleviate drought effects. We used an original framework combining insights from equitable resilience and environmental justice literatures to understand how absorptive, adaptive and transformative resilience capacities are distributed among different groups. Historical processes of land alienation and promotion of commercial farming have reduced pastoralists' and smallholders' access to land and financial, social and political capital, and their involvement in water governance processes, which are dominated by large-scale commercial flower farms. Thus, smallholders and pastoralists are more vulnerable to drought and less able to enact drought resilience strategies, such as establishing water storage infrastructure and fencing off water access points. The study confirms the importance of analysing how historical processes influence contemporary drought resilience capacities. This approach enhances resilience analyses in an era of climate change, with broad implications for livelihoods and business.
The localisation of colonial administration in multiethnic societies often generated significant social and political tensions. In many cases, colonial authorities favoured one group over others, deepening societal divisions and reinforcing imperial control. During Zanzibarisation, as this process of localisation was called in Zanzibar, British colonial authorities initially gave preferential treatment to Arabs, particularly Omani Arabs, who constituted the country's elite until 1964. While some modern-day scholars and members of other ethnic communities viewed Arabs as dominant within the ranks of the colonial administration, this article argues that their position was more complex and contested. The Arab elite sought greater representation in senior administrative roles, but colonial policies often hindered their ambitions. Drawing on archival sources and administrative records, this article examines Zanzibarisation after 1947 and highlights the persistent influence of British officials, the limited inclusion of African clerks, and the delayed restructuring of the civil service. It also explores the rivalry between African and Arab communities as both sought to improve their positions within the administration and the country. Ultimately, the article contends that Zanzibarisation exacerbated existing divisions and contributed to the 1964 collapse of the independent Sultanate of Zanzibar.
This article examines how categorical distinctions between refugees and migrants shift as displaced Burundians move across multiple contexts in Eastern and Southern Africa. While scholars have criticised rigid voluntary-forced dichotomies for failing to capture complex realities, few studies explore how these categories are experienced and navigated by displaced individuals themselves as their journeys progress. Drawing on interviews and migration trajectory histories with Burundians who moved towards South Africa, the empirical analysis shows that for displaced individuals, categorical ambiguity persists and intensifies through onward mobility. The findings identify three interconnected dimensions through which this ambiguity functions: analytical, administrative, and discursive. The article emphasises that states of liminality are extended in the lived realities of displaced individuals as their migration trajectories evolve in the region. It further argues that rethinking long-term mobility in forced/voluntary conceptualisations is essential for understanding the complexity of displacement trajectories where refugees 'become' migrants.
Even though Ethiopia is one of the world's least connected countries, social media played a critical factor in the Oromo Protests (2015-2020). Understanding this contradiction requires a look beyond the offline protest actors on the ground and street rallies and investigating non-territorial online actors participating in social media mobilisation. These interactions highlight developments in communication technologies and the flow of information from the high to low technologically dense spaces - reflecting trends of digital inequalities. In the Oromo Protests, unequal access to social media and internet created hierarchical relations and divisions of labour among the offline and online political actors. This paper argues that differentiated functions by protest actors are not solely based on individuals' choices; they are (re)produced by socio-economic status and digital inequalities. The finding suggests that these factors are instrumental in role specialisations and defining hierarchical relationships among actors supposedly working together within one protest community.
This paper examines Southern Rhodesia's 1902-1913 rabies outbreaks using primary sources which were generated by Native Commissioners, the Veterinary Department and other government departments. It uses a rural case study to contribute to the global dog historiography and the global rabies historiography which both ventilate the views of Western (urban) ruling classes and their middle-class collaborators in issues regarding dog-owning, rabies outbreaks and rabies eradication methods. The perspectives of peasants and rural institutions are absent in these historiographies. This creates the view that elitist perspectives about rabies and purebred dogs are the only credible animal histories of rabies in the world. The article concludes by highlighting African cultural views about dogs that eventually influenced some colonial authorities to accept the use of some traditional rabies eradication methods.
This article examines Sheger City within Ethiopia's contested nation-building trajectory, arguing that capital-adjacent urban restructuring has become a strategic arena for negotiating competing national projects. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork including ethnographic observations, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, and analysis of policy documents and political discourse, the article shows how the state deploys spatial reconfiguration to navigate, mediate and reproduce longstanding ideological tensions. While scholarship has privileged capital cities as primary sites of nation-building, this focus obscures political dynamics unfolding in urban formations that encase the capital. Sheger, a doughnut-shaped city surrounding Addis Ababa, demonstrates how non-capital urban projects recalibrate territorial authority, symbolic meaning and demographic politics of contested capitals. The article introduces pericapital urbanism to conceptualise this spatial politics, in which power is asserted not by transforming the capital but by reworking its margins through administrative consolidation, spatial reclassification and symbolic restructuring. While the ruling party frames Sheger City as a pragmatic compromise between Oromo self-determination and Ethiopian nation-building, Oromo nationalists view it as repackaged dispossession and domination, and Amhara nationalists interpret it as a project of demographic and territorial reengineering. This underscores the need to theorise capital peripheries as consequential sites in multinational states' spatial strategies of nation-building.
Although the Italo-Ethiopian War of 1935-1941 has received some attention in Ethiopian academic historiography, the existing studies exhibit several limitations. These include issues related to limited spatial coverage, focus on a limited range of issues and the deployment of the problematic 'collaborator-resistor' framework in examining people's varied responses to Italian rule. This article seeks to redress some of these shortcomings by focusing on developments in Ethiopia's southern province of Borana. In particular, the article examines how Borana's predominantly pastoralist population was impacted by Italian colonial rule and how pastoralists used the resources available to them in advancing personal, family and group interests. I argue that rather than being mere pawns of the colonial state and its representatives, Borana's pastoralists were active agents who sought to advance their interests within the limits of colonial rule. The article is based on oral interviews in Borana and archival materials drawn from the British Foreign Office and the Kenyan National Archives.
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.
Policymakers and international donors promote climate-smart solutions in agrarian modernisation, yet the term remains ambiguous in the literature. In Rwanda, new climate-smart policies appear distinct from past Green Revolution models but risk repackaging the same top-down approaches. Standardised, technology-driven solutions may again marginalise rural communities' knowledge and lived experiences. This paper argues for a historically grounded, inclusive approach that views farmers as active participants rather than passive recipients. Moving beyond the modernity-versus-tradition binary, agrarian transformation must prioritise adaptability, participation, and the recognition of agriculture as both a cultural and political practice.
