Democratization in Mali

Democratization in Mali
Author: Robert Pringle
Publisher: United States Institute of Peace Press
Total Pages: 84
Release: 2006
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Our Continent, Our Future

Our Continent, Our Future
Author: P. Thandika Mkandawire
Publisher: IDRC
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2014-05-14
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 155250204X

Our Continent, Our Future presents the emerging African perspective on this complex issue. The authors use as background their own extensive experience and a collection of 30 individual studies, 25 of which were from African economists, to summarize this African perspective and articulate a path for the future. They underscore the need to be sensitive to each country's unique history and current condition. They argue for a broader policy agenda and for a much more active role for the state within what is largely a market economy. Finally, they stress that Africa must, and can, compete in an increasingly globalized world and, perhaps most importantly, that Africans must assume the leading role in defining the continent's development agenda.

Land, Investment, and Migration

Land, Investment, and Migration
Author: Camilla Toulmin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2020-01-09
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0192594303

How do people survive and thrive in the uncertain and risk-prone Sahel? Land, Investment, and Migration seeks to answer this question through a long-term study of the people of Dlonguébougou in Central Mali. It uses a combination of infographics, satellite images, interviews, and survey data to present the strategies and fortunes of individuals and their families in this region over 35 years. In the early 1980s Camilla Toulmin spent two years in Dlonguébougou. She has since revisited to explore how climate change, population growth, new technologies, and land-grabs have been affecting the livelihoods and prospects of local people since. Land, Investment, and Migration: Thirty-five Years of Village Life in Mali brings together her findings. A trebling in population, unpredictable rainfall, and the arrival of Chinese investment have forced people into new ways of making ends meet and building up wealth - some doing much better than others. This book presents the search for new cash incomes, the shift of people from village to town, and the erosion of collective solidarity at household and village levels. Land, Investment, and Migration presents a mixed picture of a changing society. It shows the vibrancy of the village economy, rapid uptake of mobile phones and solar panels, and increased migration. It also shows the persistence of large family structures which offer some protection from the risks that many villagers face.

Bamako Sounds

Bamako Sounds
Author: Ryan Thomas Skinner
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
Total Pages: 215
Release: 2015-06-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1452944415

Bamako Sounds tells the story of an African city, its people, their values, and their music. Centered on the music and musicians of Bamako, Mali’s booming capital city, this book reveals a community of artists whose lives and works evince a complex world shaped by urban culture, postcolonialism, musical expression, religious identity, and intellectual property. Drawing on years of ethnographic research with classically trained players of the kora (a twenty-one-string West African harp) as well as more contemporary, hip-hop influenced musicians and producers, Ryan Thomas Skinner analyzes how Bamako artists balance social imperatives with personal interests and global imaginations. Whether performed live on stage, broadcast on the radio, or shared over the Internet, music is a privileged mode of expression that suffuses Bamako’s urban soundscape. It animates professional projects, communicates cultural values, pronounces public piety, resounds in the marketplace, and quite literally performs the nation. Music, the artists who make it, and the audiences who interpret it thus represent a crucial means of articulating and disseminating the ethics and aesthetics of a varied and vital Afropolitanism, in Bamako and beyond.

African Conflicts and Informal Power

African Conflicts and Informal Power
Author: Mats Utas
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2012-09-13
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1848138857

In the aftermath of an armed conflict in Africa, the international community both produces and demands from local partners a variety of blueprints for reconstructing state and society. The aim is to re-formalize the state after what is viewed as a period of fragmentation. In reality, African economies and polities are very much informal in character, with informal actors, including so-called Big Men, often using their positions in the formal structure as a means to reach their own goals. Through a variety of in-depth case studies, including the DRC, Sierra Leone and Liberia, this comprehensive volume shows how important informal political and economic networks are in many of the continent’s conflict areas. Moreover, it demonstrates that without a proper understanding of the impact of these networks, attempts to formalize African states, particularly those emerging from wars, will be in vain.

From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel

From Empires to NGOs in the West African Sahel
Author: Gregory Mann
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2015
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1107016541

This book explains the shift from the government of empires to that of NGOs in the region just south of the Sahara. It describes the ambitions of newly independent African states, their political experiments, and the challenges they faced. No other book places black American activism, Amnesty International, and CARE together in the history of African politics.

African History: A Very Short Introduction

African History: A Very Short Introduction
Author: John Parker
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2007-03-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192802488

Intended for those interested in the African continent and the diversity of human history, this work looks at Africa's past and reflects on the changing ways it has been imagined and represented. It illustrates key themes in modern thinking about Africa's history with a range of historical examples.

The Causes of Instability in Nigeria and Implications for the United States

The Causes of Instability in Nigeria and Implications for the United States
Author: Clarence J. Bouchat
Publisher: Army War College Press
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2013
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

The political economy problems of Nigeria, the root cause for ethnic, religious, political and economic strife, can be in part addressed indirectly through focused contributions by the U.S. military, especially if regionally aligned units are more thoroughly employed.

African Migrations

African Migrations
Author: Abdoulaye Kane
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2013
Genre: History
ISBN: 0253003083

Spurred by major changes in the world economy and in local ecology, the contemporary migration of Africans, both within the continent and to various destinations in Europe and North America, has seriously affected thousands of lives and livelihoods. The contributors to this volume, reflecting a variety of disciplinary perspectives, examine the causes and consequences of this new migration. The essays cover topics such as rural-urban migration into African cities, transnational migration, and the experience of immigrants abroad, as well as the issues surrounding migrant identity and how Africans re-create community and strive to maintain ethnic, gender, national, and religious ties to their former homes.