15 research outputs found
Women and Peace Talks in Africa
This paper interrogates the role of women in peace talks in Africa. It addresses the exclusion of women and their peculiar interests from deliberations aimed at constructing a post conflict state framework that resolves the contradictions that incite violent conflict and provides safeguards against recurrence. The paper argues that the failure of peace talks to deliberately incorporate women interests detracts from their potential to effectively confront the questions of post conflict rebuilding. It notes the increasing inclusion of women but argues that this does not amount to gender representation. This is because at the heart of the inclusion is the requirement of female participants to represent non-gendered interests of class, ethnicity, religion as the case may be. In the light of this, it is contended that to the extent that their claim to power derives from their social navigation of the structures of power through relationships with men, their representation can only reinforce the very basis of womenâs subordinate status. Going further, the paper challenges the argument for feminizing peace talks in Africa. It considers this as reverse chauvinism and calls instead for incorporation. In concluding, it is contended that peace talks need to be democratized and female representation placed within the broader context of social challenges. This approach will prevent the undue reification of gender - read women - interests with the consequence of heightening the âsex warsâ in ways that does not add value to democratic incorporation
Manufacturing consent in Africa? Multinationals, NGOs and the (re)invention of resistance in the Niger Deltaâs oilscapes
Everyday agency and centred marginality:Being âyouthâ in the oil-rich Niger Delta of Nigeria
The co-constitution of city-time, materials and youth life in urban Lagos
This article uses the co-constitutive intersections of time, youth and materials to explain change in postcolonial city life. The focus here is not so much on how each of the concepts individually makes postcolonial cityness, but on how the relationships that are built between and among them translate into the dynamism that we see in postcolonial cities. Focussing on a site on the edge of a thriving city, in this case Ibeju Lekki in Lagos, Nigeria, the article shows the subtle but consequential ways in which major infrastructural investments like the multibillion-dollar Dangote Refinery can affect social life. It also shows how the framing of actors, such as youth, shapes the way infrastructural projects are themselves emplaced within cities. It draws on ethnographic and documentary material from fieldwork between 2020 and 2023 and a collection of Lekki real estate marketing posters to make its point
A farewell to innocence? African youth and violence in the twenty-first century
This is a broad examination of the issue of youth violence in twenty-first-century Africa, looking at the context within which a youth culture of violence has evolved and attempting to understand the underlining discourses of hegemony and power that drive it. The article focuses specifically on youth violence as a political response to the dynamics of (dis)empowerment, exclusion, and economic crisis and uses (post)conflict states like Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria to explain not just the overall challenge of youth violence but also the nature of responses that it has elicited from established structures of authority. Youth violence is in many ways an expression of youth agency in the context of a social and economic system that provides little opportunity
Youth networks and violence in the Niger delta
This study provides an alternative explanation for the nature of politics in the Niger Delta by focussing on the forms and contents of relationships within youth networks. While not repudiating previous narratives around historical and contemporary grievances, the study argues that a lot can be learnt from interrogating how social codes like respectability and self organizational tactics like provisionality, shape, not just the nature of youth politics, but also the ways in which youth imagine themselves and their place in fluid and extractive contexts like the Niger Delta. The implication of focussing on issues such as these, the study argues, is that it becomes possible to tease out the critical, yet often ignored, micro-politics of social categories which ultimately frame the way actors articulate their macro level grievances and aspirations. This study is driven by three main research questions. First, what pathways facilitate youth engagement with politics in the Niger Delta? Second, how do Niger Delta youth imagine and organize themselves as actors navigating its dynamic oil political economy? And finally, how has the Amnesty which was declared in 2009 for youth insurgents changed the nature of relationships within youth networks and how has it impacted on their roles as actors in the Niger Delta? As a way of engaging with these questions, the study used the 2009 Amnesty as a historical marker to periodize state interventions in the region and also to illustrate the impact and limits that formal interventions have when seeking to shape the politics of social shifters like youth.
The study's main contributions include a rethinking of the notion of youth which asks for a conscious analytical disaggregation of politically active youth from the general pool of the young. This implies that the idea of youth is dependent on acts of doing rather than of being. The study also challenged the idea that youth is marginal and argues that even the fact of marginality can be a useful resource for navigating uncertain social contexts like the Niger Delta. Through its engagement with the changing notion of respectability as well as the innovative deployment of provisionality as an organizing strategy by youth, the study provides new ways of analyzing the Niger Delta that can move it away from a fixation on rational choice narratives of scarcity, greed or grievance. Finally, the study provides the first comprehensive mapping of youth networks in the Niger Delta and does so across three pathways, showing how these complex relationships shape and are also shaped by the broader political economy of oil. The study concludes by arguing for new questions to be asked about how the shifting forms and geographies of the Niger DeltaĂąs youth networks flow out to other areas of national and transnational life in ways that recognize the regions fluidity, uncertainty and permanence.</p
âGreenâ or âRedâ? Reframing the Environmental Discourse in Nigeria âGrĂŒnâ oder âRotâ? Zur Themenverschiebung im nigerianischen umweltpolitischen Diskurs
This paper investigates the role of environmental social movements and NGOs in the struggle for democracy in Nigeria. In particular, it examines how environmental issues, specifically in the oil-rich Niger Delta, have come to symbolise the Niger Delta communitiesâ craving for greater inclusion in the political process. The paper argues that because of linkages to the nature of economic production, environmental crises have been particularly useful in driving the democracy discourse in Nigeria. By linking environmental crisis to democratisation and the interactions of power within the Nigerian federation, NGOs and social movements have been able to gain support for environmental causes. This may, however, have dire implications for the environmental movement in Nigeria. Because ownership, not necessarily sustainability, is the central theme of such discourse on resource extraction, social movements may not be framing the environmental discourse in a way that highlights its unique relevance. The paper concludes by making a case for alternative methods of framing the environmental discourse in a developing-world context like that of Nigeria.Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Bedeutung umweltpolitischer Bewegungen und Nichtregierungsorganisationen (NRO) fĂŒr den Kampf um Demokratie in Nigeria. Insbesondere widmet er sich der Frage, inwiefern Umweltthemen, speziell im ölreichen Nigerdelta, inzwischen das groĂe BedĂŒrfnis der Bevölkerung reflektieren, stĂ€rker in den politischen Prozess einbezogen zu werden. Umweltkrisen haben den demokratischen Diskurs in Nigeria ganz besonders vorangebracht, weil sie zu den Grundlagen der ökonomischen Produktion in Beziehung stehen. Indem soziale Bewegungen und NRO die Umweltkrisen mit dem Demokratiedefizit und den Machtstrukturen innerhalb Nigerias in Beziehung setzten, fanden sie auch UnterstĂŒtzung in Umweltfragen. Dies könnte allerdings negative Folgen fĂŒr die nigerianische Umweltbewegung haben. Denn das zentrale Thema eines sozialen Diskurses zum Abbau von Ressourcen ist die Eigentumsfrage und nicht notwendigerweise die Nachhaltigkeit; wird der Diskurs von sozialen Bewegungen bestimmt, wird die einzigartige umweltpolitische Relevanz möglicherweise nicht ausreichend herausgestellt. Der Autor plĂ€diert fĂŒr eine alternative Themensetzung im umweltpolitischen Diskurs in EntwicklungslĂ€ndern wie Nigeria
âGrĂŒnâ oder âRotâ? Zur Themenverschiebung im nigerianischen umweltpolitischen Diskurs
This paper investigates the role of environmental social movements and NGOs in the struggle for democracy in Nigeria. In particular, it examines how environmental issues, specifically in the oil-rich Niger Delta, have come to symbolise the Niger Delta communitiesâ craving for greater inclusion in the political process. The paper argues that because of linkages to the nature of economic production, environmental crises have been particularly useful in driving the democracy discourse in Nigeria. By linking environmental crisis to democratisation and the interactions of power within the Nigerian federation, NGOs and social movements have been able to gain support for environmental causes. This may, however, have dire implications for the environmental movement in Nigeria. Because ownership, not necessarily sustainability, is the central theme of such discourse on resource extraction, social movements may not be framing the environmental discourse in a way that highlights its unique relevance. The paper concludes by making a case for alternative methods of framing the environmental discourse in a developing-world context like that of Nigeria.Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Bedeutung umweltpolitischer Bewegungen und Nichtregierungsorganisationen (NRO) fĂŒr den Kampf um Demokratie in Nigeria. Insbesondere widmet er sich der Frage, inwiefern Umweltthemen, speziell im ölreichen Nigerdelta, inzwischen das groĂe BedĂŒrfnis der Bevölkerung reflektieren, stĂ€rker in den politischen Prozess einbezogen zu werden. Umweltkrisen haben den demokratischen Diskurs in Nigeria ganz besonders vorangebracht, weil sie zu den Grundlagen der ökonomischen Produktion in Beziehung stehen. Indem soziale Bewegungen und NRO die Umweltkrisen mit dem Demokratiedefizit und den Machtstrukturen innerhalb Nigerias in Beziehung setzten, fanden sie auch UnterstĂŒtzung in Umweltfragen. Dies könnte allerdings negative Folgen fĂŒr die nigerianische Umweltbewegung haben. Denn das zentrale Thema eines sozialen Diskurses zum Abbau von Ressourcen ist die Eigentumsfrage und nicht notwendigerweise die Nachhaltigkeit; wird der Diskurs von sozialen Bewegungen bestimmt, wird die einzigartige umweltpolitische Relevanz möglicherweise nicht ausreichend herausgestellt. Der Autor plĂ€diert fĂŒr eine alternative Themensetzung im umweltpolitischen Diskurs in EntwicklungslĂ€ndern wie Nigeria
Networks of violence and becoming: youth and the politics of patronage in Nigeria's oil-rich Delta
This article argues that access to clientelistic networks is central to the ability of youth to engage in violent activities in Nigeriaâs oil-rich Delta. Even though the literature has demonstrated that the contradictions of oil wealth and economic neglect provide the backdrop for conflict in the region, the actual channels through which it becomes possible to activate incentives for violence have not been properly addressed. It also points out that a fixation on the narrative of resistance has undermined our ability to engage with other critical variables such as social codes of masculinity, survival and âbecomingâ which play very central roles in animating violent networks in the region. Drawing evidence from interview data, the article uses the lived experiences of âex-militantsâ to highlight these points as well as to raise questions about the applications of neopatrimonial theory to governance projects in African states
Jeunes en question(s)
Comment penser les jeunes et la jeunesse en Afrique ? Comment ne pas rĂ©duire Ă la condition tragique faite Ă certains la grande diversitĂ© des existences que connaissent les autres ? Quels moyens se donner pour un essor durable des connaissances, au delĂ des conventions intellectuelles et des clichĂ©s sensationnalistes ? Que faire dâune catĂ©gorie fondĂ©e sur l'Ăąge, ce critĂšre improbable qui Ă la fois procĂšde du devenir biologique des humains, sert d'unitĂ© de mesure des individus dans les recensements de population, est mobilisĂ© Ă des fins fort diverses par les politiques et les publicistes, et dont les acteurs eux-mĂȘmes se jouent dans leurs interactions ? Au travers dâĂ©tudes de cas, Ă©crites bien souvent par des auteur(e)s qui sont eux-mĂȘmes des jeunes, cette livraison propose une nouvelle anthropologie comparative des jeunes et de la jeunesse. Elle dĂ©construit lâhistoricitĂ© de la catĂ©gorie jeune et son arrivĂ©e tardive dans le champ des Ă©tudes africaines, rappelle que des modalitĂ©s coutumiĂšres imprĂšgnent encore les devenirs. Des jalons sont repĂ©rĂ©s dans le foisonnement des travaux, et des questionnements formulĂ©s pour de nouvelles enquĂȘtes. Ainsi sont posĂ©s, entre le local et le global, les cadres dâune comparaison avec dâautres jeunesses de par le monde, et le moyen dâenrichir des analyses trop marquĂ©es du seul sceau de la mondialisation. How should young people and youth in Africa be conceived of? How can one avoid reducing the great diversity of existences among the majority to the tragic condition experienced by a minority? What are the best means of durably increasing knowledge, beyond conventional wisdow and sensationalist clichĂ©s? What can be done with a category based on age, that improbable criterion which originates in the biological evolution of human beings, and serves as a demographic instrument to measure individuals in population censuses, and is used for a wide variety of purposes by politicians and journalists, and is thwarted by the actors themselves in their interactions? Through case studies, many of which were written by authors who are themselves young people, this issue offers a new comparative anthropology of youth. It deconstructs the historicity of the âyouthâ category and its late arrival in the field of African studies, and reminds us that customs can still have a bearing on young people's development. Reference points are highlighted in the profusion of works, and questions are formulated for new studies. Between the local and global, it presents a framework for comparison with other types of youth throughout the world, as well as the means for supplementing analyses that are overly marked by the single stamp of globalisation