Africa in Development – serie

It is established that the informal sector plays an important role in the creation of job opportunities for many rural and urban people. However, there is a scarcity of academic research on the relationship between gender, informality of employment and poverty reduction in Morocco with particular reference to the city of Fez. This book focuses on investigating the contribution of women’s self-employed work in the informal sector in reducing household poverty in the city of Fez. This is done through the medium of specific framework objectives. First, the book sets out the types of women engaged in informal sector activities in the city of Fez. Secondly, it makes a situational analysis of the contribution of women’s work in the informal sector to reduce poverty in their households in this region of Morocco. Thirdly, it identifies the linkages between working as self-employed persons and emancipation of women through their participation in political and social activism in Fez and lastly, it uncovers the main difficulties impeding the development of women in self-employed activities in the informal sector and identifies the various challenges for the development of their businesses in Fez.

The book is an intellectual and political response to Thomas Sankara’s challenge to the African people to dare to invent their own future, an echo of Patrice Lumumba’s call for them to write their own history. Exploring the history of Africa’s underdevelopment and the short-circuiting of the Pan-African movement, it argues for the revival of Pan-Africanism as a force for change and calls for a worthy successor to the Fifth Pan-African Congress.As a background to this argument and call, the book revisits Pan-Africanism’s history and founding ideals and conducts ruthless forensic examinations of the de facto Bantustanization of much of Africa and parts of the Caribbean, the ‘alternative development’ fiascos of the late twentieth century, the contemporary ‘globalization’ and ‘democratization’ of African projects by imperialist interests, the ‘Pan-Africanisms’ of imperialism’s active collaborators and other obstructions to the decolonization of Africa and African development.Finally, recognizing that the plights of many Afro-Latinos, Afro-Indians, Afro-Arabs and other ‘lost’ or neglected ‘tribes of Africa’ – as well as those of the victims of ‘black-empowered’ predators – call out for urgent Pan-Africanist responses, the book contains numerous start-up project ideas for action-oriented Pan-Africanists.

The Griqua people are commonly misunderstood. Today, they do not figure in the South African imagination as other peoples do, nor have they for over a century. This book argues that their comparative invisibility is a result of their place in the national narrative.In this revisionist analysis of South African historiography, the author analyses over a century’s worth of historical studies and identifies a number of narrative frameworks that have proven resilient to change over this time. The Griqua, in particular, have fared poorly compared to other peoples. They appear in, and disappear from, this body of work in a number of consistent ways, almost as though scholars have avoided re-imagining their history in ways relevant to the present. This book questions why that might be the case.

This book is about re-inventing Africa – it aims to induct a new cohort of dedicated professionals, guided not by material gains and power, but by personal commitment, in building a better society. It is about an education that develops responsible citizens inspired by the desire to serve their fellow men and women, people who can contribute their time and talents to make society a better place in which to live. Unless people are empowered by an education tailored to address their needs, they cannot be effective participants in bringing about constructive change. An education that prepares Africans to live confidently, as Africans, in today’s globalized world is a prerequisite for developing an active and responsible citizenry. The book also examines some of the key critical areas on which African countries need to focus their attention: poverty eradication; combating corruption; peace, security and development; democracy and constitutionalism; good governance; social justice; globalization and empowerment. It criticizes extremes, creates a healthy synthesis of African and Western thought about education – particularly education for citizenship and for social transformation – an education which concerns itself with human dignity, social equality and respect, rather than fear, for authority.

This study aims to understand how the nineteenth-century African agent of mission appropriated change without losing cultural integrity. Drawing essentially from the contexts that produced the man, from Sierra Leone to the Yoruba country, the study shows Samuel Johnson as embodying the opportunities and ambivalence that progressively accompanied Yoruba contact with Britain in the people’s war-weary century of change. Largely influenced by German missionaries in the British mission environment of Yorubaland, Johnson had confidence in the bright prospect the missionary message held for his people. This propelled him into a struggle to relieve the distressed country from its woes and to preserve the fading memory of its people. In an age of renewed cultural ferment called globalization, could Johnson offer a lesson in how to appropriate change? This is the concern of this volume.

It is no longer a matter of debate to state that the practice of ‘democracy’ in different African nations is almost always experienced through violence or something near to it. The principal question addressed by this work is, ‘Why are many African countries finding it difficult to practise democracy without «tears»?’ Though this unique work recognises a number of factors as contributing to the pitiable democratic experience of many African states, the liberal party model of democracy is identified as a major political obstacle which not only impedes democratisation, but also fails to address significant national questions in plural societies. Instead of acting as an attenuating force, the liberal party system tends to intensify the negative roles of other dependent socio-political variables in instituting and consolidating democracy in multi-ethnic societies. In light of this, this work recommends a cooperative, instead of a competitive method of government formation – a ‘Cooperative Collegial Democracy’ – for African societies and any multi-ethnic society. This is a party-less, peaceful and overtly fair political system which is imbued with the qualities needed to resolve national questions and which constrains the incompetent and corrupt from emerging as political leaders, thus ensuring competent leadership and establishing functional and non-destabilising democracies in African or other multi-ethnic states.

This study focuses on the experience in state-managed cooperation and integration between The Gambia and Senegal. Specifically, it examines the nexus between national politics in The Gambia and inter-state cooperation in Senegambia; that is, the impact and implications of politics in The Gambia on the process of cooperation with Senegal in functional areas.The Senegambia case is a microcosm of the African dilemma of reconciling the ideological imperative of African unity and regional integration, recently enshrined in the Constitutive Act of the African Union, and the primordial reality of protecting national statehood and particularistic interests. The experience is instructive in many ways. It is indicative of the problems that arise in any scheme to promote integration between countries with distinctly different colonial heritages. The Senegambia case demonstrates that integration is more problematic after statehood has been achieved, if only because the rewards of statehood are more immediate whereas those of integration and unity are more distant. Then also this case demonstrates that integration can be perceived as a threat to national sovereignty by one or both parties; in fact, sovereignty is often very fragile in these states and is jealously guarded. Finally, the experience reveals the complexities and intricacies of achieving union between African states and demonstrates the tension between constructing a national political state and responding to the demands of inter-national economic integration.

This book examines the triumphs and tribulations of the Zimbabwean national project, providing a radical and critical analysis of the fossilisation of Zimbabwean nationalism against the wider context of African nationalism in general. The book departs radically from the common ‘praise-texts’ in seriously engaging with the darker aspects of nationalism, including its failure to create the nation-as-people, and to install democracy and a culture of human rights. The author examines how the various people inhabiting the lands between the Limpopo and Zambezi Rivers entered history and how violence became a central aspect of the national project of organising Zimbabweans into a collectivity in pursuit of a political end.