Society & Politics in Africa – serie

In recent years, information and communication technologies (ICTs) have been linked with socioeconomic development with the assumption that they can be harnessed for economic growth in developing countries and facilitate integration into the global information society. However, very few studies in the ICT-for-development field examine the direct connections between ICTs and socioeconomic growth. Information and Communication Technologies in Nigeria: Prospects and Challenges for Development is a compelling account of the development of ICTs in Nigeria. It examines the ICT policy framework and the societal context within which application of the technologies emerged and highlights the potentials of ICTs in socioeconomic development. However, this book also demonstrates, through interviews and case studies, that ICTs are not the panacea to underdevelopment; constraining factors in different countries can limit their capacity to succeed. The author employs a rare multidisciplinary approach that makes the book appealing and accessible to a diverse range of readership.

French Investment in Colonial Cameroon: The FIDES Era (1946-1957) analyzes French investments in Cameroon during the era of the program for the development of French colonies known as FIDES. It offers not only a description of the economic structures of colonial Cameroon, but also an analysis of French public and private investment in Cameroon, the Franco-Cameroonian economic and financial relationship, the contribution of Cameroon to the dynamics of French capitalism, and the role played by French capitalism in the economic development of Cameroon. It is particularly useful for its detailed financial evaluation and assessment of the various effects of FIDES investment in Cameroon and includes numerous tables and figures. French Investment in Colonial Cameroon: The FIDES Era (1946-1957) is based on a variety of sources collected in Cameroon, France, and the United States and will be useful for instructors teaching courses related to colonial, modern, or contemporary Africa, the economic history of Africa, and French colonial history, and to all interested in these subjects.

Focusing on yellow fever, cholera, and plague epidemics as well as on sanitation in the context of urban growth in Saint-Louis-du-Senegal between 1867 and 1920, this book explores how the French colonial and medical authorities responded to the emergence and re-emergence of deadly epidemic diseases and environmental contamination. Official reactions ranged from blaming the Africans and the tropical climate to the imposition of urban residential segregation and strictly enforced furloughs of civil servants and European troops. Drastic and disruptive sanitary measures led to a conflict between the interests of competing conceptions of public health and those of commerce, civil liberties, and popular culture. This book also examines the effort undertaken by the colonizer to make Senegal a healthy colony and Saint-Louis the healthiest port-city/capital through better hygiene, building codes, vector control, and the construction of waterworks and a sewerage system. The author offers insight into the urban processes and daily life in a colonial city during the formative years of the French empire in West Africa.

Sufi oral discourse in Senegal is overwhelmingly dominated by stories about past and current shaykhs. An important corpus of oral narratives about Sufi clerics is not only (re)told by Sufi speakers throughout Senegal but also in the Senegalese diasporas in the Americas, Asia, and Europe. These accounts are interwoven by multiple speakers among followers of Senegalese Sufi brotherhoods and passed down from generation to generation in Senegal and its diasporas. The weaving together and spreading of such texts themselves are part of the Sufi praxis. These oral texts, deeply rooted in their context of production, which dictates their form and functions, are still generally unknown to scholars of Islam in Senegal and West Africa. By filling this gap, this book contributes to the discourse of religions in general and Sufi Islam in particular.

Political History of Guinea since World War Two provides an in-depth study of the political evolution of Guinea from World War Two to the present. Based on primary-source information, it examines with rare depth and breadth the eventful history of this nation-state, whose trajectory has impacted in no small ways Francophone Africa and the rest of the continent. Interviews with some of the most knowledgeable and most credible actors and/or witnesses of Guinea’s political history and archival research, including the papers of key individuals never opened to the public before, constitute the foundation of this work. The author’s personal and professional experience further strengthens the work. As a native Guinean, a historian, and a journalist imbued with the political ideology of the PDG regime, the author was also a close and alert witness of the political transformation of this country. Hence, the book offers an incisive analysis of domestic politics and policy making under the five successive regimes that have governed Guinea since independence in 1958. It also offers an equally incisive analysis of the country’s foreign relations within international frameworks such as the Organization of African Unity, the United Nations, the Nonalignment Movement, the Economic Community of West African States, the Mano River Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and so on. This ground-breaking work is perfectly suited for courses in areas such as history, political science, African studies, decolonization studies, Third World studies, and nationalism studies.

Somali Oral Poetry and the Failed She-Camel Nation State: A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Deelley Poetry Debate (1979–1980) examines the most expressive medium in Somali culture and politics, that is, oral poetry, in its ideological and discursive dimension. Oral poetry has a formidable impact on Somali society and its internal dynamics. Somali Oral Poetry is the first critical discourse analysis of the connection between oral poetry and politics in Somalia. The book brings out contradictions and conflicts between the ways of thinking of a society structured in clans and a rightful claim for nationhood and the state of law. In addition, it highlights the difficulty the society finds in renouncing clan mentality that requires loyalty to the clan rather than to the State.The present volume illuminates, through the critical analysis of the Deelley poetry debate, the circumstances and issues that preceded the civil war in Somalia. Therefore, the book is of particular interest for its original explanation and understanding of the extraordinary subsequent failure of the State in Somalia.