Throughout this book, we have set out to explore the potential for political work and political consequences that humour can have in various African contexts. The process of corralling our thoughts and ideas together has been a challenging but also entertaining one – made all the more enjoyable by having the licence to legitimately argue that reading jokes and memes on social media, watching stand-up comedy and comedy skits, and looking at cartoons has been for work purposes. (If anyone ever asks why we do research on humour, the answer – in all honesty – is that it is fun. There is also much humour that goes along with the research process itself, but that is indeed another book).

As we have demonstrated across the chapters, the landscape of and for humour – and specifically humour which does political work – is diverse, varied and continually being contested. The long history of visual and verbal humour in Africa is complex and multifaceted, and these histories entwine with the experiences of colonialism to inform the current backdrop to the freedoms and constraints facing different types of humourists in different national contexts. We are far from the first authors to make this argument – we stand on the shoulders of the many scholars who have provided detailed discussions of these histories and conditions. However, we have expanded and built upon these works with a comprehensive assortment of examples and discussion from across the continent and from vastly different political contexts.

Among these scholarly giants, the work of Achille Mbembe on cartoons in Cameroon and the politics of affect continues to frame much of the ensuing discussion on humour and politics in Africa (and beyond). At the heart of his reasoning is the claim that cartoons – and humour more generally – may seek to resist or disrupt dominant or hegemonic power but in so doing actually serves to reinforce the omnipotence of this power. Linked, in part, to Mbembe’s work and allied to a common tendency for scholars to seek examples of oppositional practices and instances where the underdog or subaltern is able to effectively speak truth to power and upend dominant power relations, it has become de rigour to link humour and resistance.