In the wake of the tragic massacre of university students in Garissa by members of al-Shabaab, the Kenyan government has vowed to step up security and retaliate. However, scholars and activists from both within and outside of Kenya are challenging the logic of securitization and militarization and proposing alternative solutions. Continue reading
Category Archives: Horn of Africa
A Collective Response to Dr. Markus Hoehne and the Somaliland Journal of African Studies
Safia Aidid has given us permission to repost this open letter from Somali intellectuals, academics and activists. The Africa Collective feels that it is important to continue this conversation about making African Studies a more inclusive space, particularly for African scholars.
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GMOs in Africa: Capturing frontier markets in the name of food security
Arts and Culture / Contested History and Memory / Ethnicity / Horn of Africa / Music and Pop Culture / Nationalism
Teddy Afro’s “Tikur Sew” – Ethnic Politics and Historical Narrative
Ethiopian popular singer Teddy Afro released his fourth and most recent studio album Tikur Sew (Black Man) in 2012. The title track was a tribute to the late nineteenth-century Emperor Menilik II and the victory of a united Ethiopian front against an aggressive Italian invasion at the world-famous Battle of Adwa in 1896. This was an event of global historical significance, which continues to feature prominently in the historical memory of many Ethiopians and Africans throughout the world. However, my sanguine interpretation of the song as an effort to remind Ethiopia of the importance of unity was not how it was received in Ethiopia. In many ways, the controversy over Tikur Sew has more to do with contemporary ethnic politics—and the role that ethnicity plays in present-day Ethiopian society—than it does with the actual content of Teddy Afro’s song or the historical event it commemorates. Continue reading
Women’s Economic Empowerment and Reproductive Freedom in Africa
Many international women’s organizations continue to pour an enormous amount of energy and resources into defending abortion rights and promoting contraception. Unfortunately, many forge alliances with population control advocates who prioritize limiting births over women’s general health, while callously dismissing resistance to “family planning” as evidence of Africa’s cultural backwardness. However, the problem of unsafe abortions can only be adequately addressed by a holistic approach to sexual and reproductive health that goes beyond discretely addressing women’s rights to a safe abortion and contraception to include women’s rights to economic resources. Continue reading
Latent Recognition: African Refugees in Israel
In Israel, particularly acute demographic pressures have been compounded by economic anxieties and unspoken and overt forms of racism to create an especially intractable situation for African refugees and asylum seekers. And the construction of a detention center in the Negev weighs heavily in a country that was born out of the failures of other nations to provide asylum during World War II. But do the contradictions of Israeli nationalism simply refract a more pervasive problem: that asylum may be impossible for more than a small minority in any system of nation-states? Continue reading
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