Africa Update Vol. 17
Welcome to the latest edition of Africa Update! We've got Nigeria's undercover atheists, the electricity pirates of the DRC, Kenya's top Somali restaurants, the best Rwandan hairstyles, and more.
The wheels on the trotro go round and round... (via Africa Visual Data)
West Africa: In Benin, the government has just raised the fee required to register as a presidential candidate from US $26,000 to US$450,000. A new wave of travel start-ups is encouraging Nigerians to explore their own country rather than traveling abroad. Nigeria's undercover atheists are ostracized for their lack of faith. Read this special issue of Kujenga Amani about peacebuilding in the Niger Delta. Ghanaian market vendors fought back after they were targeted for eviction, and ended up getting a new market building so they could keep selling. Sierra Leone recently implemented a popular new policy of free primary education, but they're falling short of school seats and teachers. This is a remarkable thread about how the BBC identified soldiers responsible for killing civilians in a video from Cameroon. D’Ebola à Zika, un labo tout-terrain en Afrique de l’Ouest.
As Charles Onyango-Obbo notes about Accra, "All African capitals, and its independence & post-independence leaders who were minimally anti-imperialist have streets named in their honour. They’ve probably done so in Accra alone more than all the rest of Africa combined!"
Central Africa: Russia has begun supplying arms to and signing opaque cooperation agreements with the Central African Republic. IPIS has released a new interactive map of armed groups in the CAR. In the DRC, fees of US$500 for power meters and yearslong waits to have them installed have led many people to pirate electricity from their neighbors. Burundi has begun suspending NGOs for failing to comply with opaque legal regulations. La Belgique va rendre au Rwanda les archives de la période coloniale. Uganda's former police chief was recently arrested, and there are rumors it was because he might have been fomenting a Rwandan-backed uprising against Museveni.
Some fantastic Rwandan hairstyles from the early 20th century, via James Hall
East Africa: This article on Kenya's Somali cuisine made me hungry! I'll have to add those restaurants to my list for my next staycation in Nairobi. Read this piece on the history of Islam on the Kenyan coast. Kenya may reconsider its criminalization of homosexuality in light of India's recent decriminalization of the same. The IGC has a new report contrasting patterns of statebuilding in Somalia and Somaliland. This was an insightful description of how Tanzania's Magufuli consolidated power within the CCM. Magufuli has also called for a ban on contraception, saying that Tanzania's population is too small. A new report estimates that more than 380,000 people have died in South Sudan's civil war.
Southern Africa: Members of the ANC in South Africa are brutally assassinating each other in an intra-party struggle for control. South Africa recently legalized personal use of marijuana, but more needs to be done to ensure that the poor rural farmers who grow it also benefit. The new On Africa podcast is kicking off with an analysis of Zimbabwe's recent election. Meet the woman challenging sexist laws about the inheritance of chieftaincy in Lesotho.
Here's where every hospital in Africa is located, via Makhtar Diop
Health: Congratulations to Dr Denis Mukwege, who has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work providing healthcare to women affected by sexual violence in eastern DRC. The Ugandan government has banned all ministers from seeking healthcare abroad. In Kenya, an estimated seven women die each day from unsafe abortions. This was a heartbreaking portrait of South Sudan's best maternity hospital. Harsh laws against adultery prevent many women in Mauritania from reporting sexual assault.
Chart of the day via Justin Sandefur
Academia: Scholars based in Africa are encouraged to submit their papers to the Working Group on African Political Economy by October 21, and to this conference on Gendered Institutions and Women's Political Participation in Africa by October 15. Join this free online discussion of state-building in Tanzania with the African Politics Conference Group on October 15. Don't miss this essential reading list on African feminism or this new edition of Ufahamu Journal on the African university. Let's hold more conferences on Africa in Africa, so that African researchers don't run into visa problems.
Additional chart of the day, showing that concerns about Chinese debt in Africa are rather overblown, via Quartz
Fellowships: The Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research at Syracuse has five fully-funded scholarships for African scholars to attend. The Iso Lomso Fellowship for Early Career African Scholars is open until October 20. Several scholarships are available for African PhD students and researchers through the Next Generation Social Science Fellowship.
Cheers,
Rachel