People, Predicaments and Potentials in Africa

Yaya Fonye Odette

Description

The term 'African Potentials' refers to the knowledge, systems, practices, ideas and values created and implemented in African societies that are expected to contribute to overcoming various challenges and promoting people's wellbeing. This collection of articles, focused on African societies, is based on the idea that 'Africa is People'. In this book, African people are placed at the centre of the discussion. The book's contributors, all of whom believe in African people and their potentials, consider women, minors and young people, people with disabilities, entrepreneurs, herders, farmers, mine workers, refugees, migrants, traditional rulers, militiamen and members of the political elite, and examine their predicaments and potentials in detail. Africa is people, and African potentials can be found only in African people themselves.

Informations

• Publié par: Langaa RPCIG
• Date de parution: 18 janvier 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789956551200
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

People, Predicaments and Potentials in Africa Edited by Takehiko Ochiai, Misa Hirano-Nomoto and Daniel E. Agbiboa

In collaboration

L a ng a a R P CIG M a nk on B a m end a

CAAS Kyoto U niversity

Publisher: LangaaRPCIG Langaa Research & Publishing Common Initiative Group P.O. Box 902 Mankon Bamenda North West Region Cameroon [e-mail] www.langaa-rpcig.net In Collaboration with The Center for African Area Studies, Kyoto University, Japan Distributed in and outside N. America by African Books Collective [e-mail] www.africanbookscollective.com

ISBN-10: 9956-551-67-8

ISBN-13: 978-9956-551-67-5 ©Takehiko Ochiai, Misa Hirano-Nomoto and Daniel E. Agbiboa 2021 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher

Notes on Contributors Daniel E. AGBIBOAis Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He earned a PhD in International Development from the University of Oxford. His research focuses on insurgent violence, non-state governance and the linkages between mobility, power and politics. His academic articles have appeared in leading journals, includingThe Journal of Modern African Studies, African Affairs, African Studies ReviewandCurrent History. Peter-Jazzy EZEHis Professor of Anthropology and Head of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is also Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI), President of the Ethnological and Anthropological Society of Nigeria (EASON) and Honorary Fellow of the Pan-African Circle of Artists (PACA). He studied the Orring of south-eastern Nigeria among whom he lived for his Master’s Degree and PhD fieldwork, and also conducted participant observation among African immigrants in Austria. He has published widely and has a passion for qualitative fieldwork to which he has brought important innovations. With Professor Pat Uche Okpoko, he has published the book,Methods in Qualitative Research (Nsukka: University of Nigeria Press, 2020), which is now in its third edition. He has taught the courses, Ethnic and Inter-Group Relations, and Race and Ethnic Relations at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels at two universities in Nigeria. Misa HIRANO-NOMOTOis Professor of the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies and Center for African Area Studies at Kyoto University, Japan. She has extensively researched urban communities in Cameroon and Okinawa, Japan. Her research topics are the urban informal economy, mutual assistance and rotating saving and credit associations. Her major works include ‘Urban voluntary associations as “African potentials”: The case of Yaoundé, Cameroon’ (African Studies Monographs Supplementary Issues, Vol. 50, 2014, pp. 123–136) andCultural Creativity for Conflict Resolution and Coexistence: African Potentials as Practice of Incompleteness and Bricolage

(co-edited with Motoji Matsuda, Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2016, in Japanese). Motoji MATSUDAProfessor of Sociology and Anthropology, is Kyoto University, Japan. His research fields are Nairobi and Western Kenya. His research topics are urbanisation, migration and conflict. His major works includeUrbanisation from Below (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 1998),The Manifesto of Anthropology of the Everyday Life World(Kyoto: Sekai Shisosha, 2008, in Japanese),African Virtues in the Pursuit of Conviviality: Exploring Local Solutions in Light of Global Prescriptions(co-edited with Itaru Ohta and Yntiso Gebre, Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2017), andThe Challenge of African Potentials: Conviviality, Informality and Futurity(co-edited with Yaw Ofosu-Kusi, Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2020). Hisashi MATSUMOTO is Professor at the Graduate School of Urban Innovation, Yokohama National University. His area of specialisation is cultural anthropology. His major research field is the resiliency of traditional rulers in contemporary Nigeria, especially among the Igbos. Currently he carries out fieldwork on the Nigerian diaspora in East Asia. His works includeThe Resilience of Chieftaincy in Postcolonial NigeriaAkashishoten, 2008, in Japanese) and (Tokyo: ‘African chiefs in the global era: Chieftaincy titles and Igbo migrants from Nigeria’ (in Y. Gebre, I. Ohta and M. Matsuda (eds)African Virtues in the Pursuit of Conviviality: Exploring Local Solutions in Light of Global Prescriptions,Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2017, pp. 229–247). Grasian MKONDZONGIUniversity of Edinburgh, (PhD, Scotland) is Executive Director at Tropical Africa-Land and Natural Resources Research Institute (Tropical Africa LNRRI) based in Harare, Zimbabwe. Until 2015, he was a Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Western Cape and A.C. Jordan Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Cape Town. His current research focuses on the interface of agrarian change, natural resource extraction and rural livelihoods in Zimbabwe and the southern African region. He has published extensively on issues of agrarian transformation, rural livelihoods, extractives and social transformation in Zimbabwe and southern Africa. His major works

areLand Reform Revisited: Democracy, State Making and Agrarian Transformation in Post-Apartheid South Africa (co-edited with Femke Brandt, Leiden: Brill, 2018) andAfrica History and Culture(co-edited with Mariama Khan, Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt, 2020). He has also published articles in peer-reviewed journals including an award- winning article ‘“I am a paramount chief, this land belongs to my ancestors”: The reconfiguration of rural authority after Zimbabwe’s land reforms’ (Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 43, Sup. 1, 2016, pp. 99–114). Kyoko NAKAMURA is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Global and Regional Studies, Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan. She has been conducting research among pastoral communities in Kenya. Her research interests are age system and life course changes, tourism and culture, and body adornments and beads. Her major works include ‘Life story as a tourism commodity among the Kenyan “Maasai”’ (Global-E, Vol. 12, Issue 12, 2019) andAdornments of the Samburu in Northern Kenya: A Comprehensive List (Kyoto: Center for African Area Studies, Kyoto University, 2005). Takehiko OCHIAIProfessor of African Studies and is International Relations at Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan. His research interests include politics and religion in Nigeria, civil wars and post-conflict peacebuilding in Liberia and Sierra Leone, regional security and integration in West Africa and Japan’s Africa policy. His major works include ‘Beyond TICAD diplomacy: Japan’s African policy and African initiatives in conflict response’ (African Study Monographs, Vol. 22, No. 1, 2001, pp. 37–52) and ‘Customary land tenure, large-scale land acquisitions and land reform in Sierra Leone’ (Asian Journal of African Studies, Vol. 42, 2017, pp. 139–169). He recently edited a book,An Introduction to African Security(Kyoto: Koyo Shobo, 2019, in Japanese). Takuto SAKAMOTOAssociate Professor at the Graduate is Program on Human Security, the University of Tokyo, Japan. His research interests include human security, global governance, state and conflict, and dryland pastoralism, all with a particular focus on Africa. He also has extensive methodological interests in data analysis

and simulation. His major works includeIntegration and Disintegration of Territorial Rule: Multi-Agent Simulation Analysis of the States in Northeast AfricaShoseki-kobo Hayama, 2011, in Japanese) and (Tokyo: ‘Computational research on mobile pastoralism using agent-based modeling and satellite imagery’ (PLOS ONE, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2016). Chizuko SATO is Senior Research Fellow at the Area Studies Centre, Institute of Developing Economies (IDE-JETRO), Chiba, Japan. She researches a wide-range of topics related to South African politics and society including land reform, labour movements and identity politics. Her current research focuses on the history and dynamics of international migration within southern Africa. Her major works are included in F. Brandt and G. Mkodzongi (eds)Land Reform Revisited: Democracy, State Making and Agrarian Transformation in Post-Apartheid South Africa(Leiden: Brill, 2018), in H. Chitonge and Y. Mine (eds)Land, the State and the Unfinished Decolonization Project in Africa: Essays in Honour of Professor Sam Moyo (Bamenda: Langaa RPCIG, 2019) and in Y. Kodama (ed.)International Migration of African Women(Chiba: IDE-JETRO, 2020, in Japanese). Mikako TODAAssistant Professor at the Faculty of Global is Studies, Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan. Her research focuses on disability and area studies in Central Africa and resource use in tropical Africa. Her major works include ‘Handicap et charité chez les chasseurs-cueilleurs et agriculteurs au Cameroun’ (in F. Reichhart, A. C. Lomo Myazhiom, Z. Rachedi and M. Mercier (eds)Au carrefour de l’altérité: Pratiques et représentations du handicap dans l’espace francophone, Namur: Presses universitaires de Namur, 2020, pp. 83–98) and ‘Unreflective promotion of the non-timber forest product trade undermines the quality of life of the Baka: Implications of the Irvingia gabonensis kernel trade in Southeast Cameroon’ (African Study Monographs Supplementary Issue, Vol. 60, 2020, pp. 85–98).

Table of Contents Series Preface: African Potentials for Convivial World-Making ................................................ xi Motoji Matsuda Introduction: Africa is People ........................................ 1 Takehiko Ochiai, Misa Hirano-Nomoto and Daniel E. Agbiboa PART I. POTENTIALS IN THE EVERYDAY 1. Local Recognition is Alienated from Global Discourse: Changes in Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) in a Kenyan Pastoral Community............. 15 Kyoko Nakamura 2. No Longer Oppose or Coexist: Forty Years of Trans-Border Business and the State in the Republic of the Congo .............. 35 Mikako Toda 3. Crossing the Border between Informal and Formal Sectors: Twenty Years in the Life of an Entrepreneur in Yaoundé, Cameroon ....................... 55 Misa Hirano-Nomoto

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4. Human Ecological Foundations of Farmer–Herder Conflict in the Sahel: Combining Field Observation, Remote Sensing and Computational Modelling ....... 73 Takuto Sakamoto PART II. POTENTIALS FOR SURVIVAL 5. Subsistence Living Within the Market Economy: African Potentials for Survival in a Western Kenyan Mountain Village ....................................................... 95 Motoji Matsuda 6. A Faustian Bargain? The Puzzle of Community-Based Armed Groups in Africa ............. 125 Daniel E. Agbiboa 7. Conflict and Collaboration in Zimbabwe’s Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining Sector ......... 149 Grasian Mkondzongi 8. ‘One Day, We Gonna Talk about It like a Story’: Hardships and Resilience of Migrant Women in South Africa from the Great Lakes Region ........... 169 Chizuko Sato

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PART III. POLITICS AND POTENTIALS IN NIGERIA 9. African ‘Kings’ and Globalisation: Chieftaincy and Transnational Mobility among Igbo Migrants in Japan ................................. 191 Hisashi Matsumoto 10. The 200-Year War: Anthropological Dimensions of Nigeria’s Pastoralist–Horticulturalist Politics .......... 209 Peter-Jazzy Ezeh 11. Reforming Federalism: Military Rule, Institutional Engineering and the National Question in Nigeria ...................... 233 Takehiko Ochiai Index ............................................................................... 263

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