How are publics of protection and care defined in African cities today? The effects of globalization and neo-liberal policies on urban space are well documented. From London to São Paulo, denationalization, privatization, offshoring and cuts in state expenditure are creating enclaves and exclusions, resulting in fragmented, stratified social geographies (see Caldeira 2000; Ong 2006; Harvey 2006; Murray 2011). ‘Networked archipelagoes’, islands connected by transnational circulations of capital, displace other spatial relations and imaginaries. Spaces of encompassment, especially, such as ‘the nation’ or simply ‘society’ as defined by inclusion within a whole, lose practical value and intellectual purchase as referents of citizenship (Gupta and Ferguson 2002; Ferguson 2005). In African cities, where humanitarian, experimental or market logics dominate the distribution of sanitation and healthcare, this fragmentation is particularly stark (see, for example, Redfield 2006, 2012; Fassin 2007; Bredeloup et al. 2008; Nguyen 2012). Privilege and crisis interrupt older contiguities, delineating spaces and times of exception. The ‘public’ of health is defined by survival or consumption, obscuring the human as bearer of civic rights and responsibilities, as inhabitants of ‘objective’ material worlds ‘common to all of us’ (Arendt 1958: 52). Is it possible, under these conditions, to enact and imagine public health as a project of citizens, animated in civic space?

Film review of Da Kali: the pledge of the art of the griot (2013, 86 minutes) and Dò Farala A Kan: something has been added (2013, 69 minutes). French and Bamanankan, with English subtitles. Directed by Lucy Durán, edited by Michele Banal, and made with assistance from Lassana Diabaté.

Nine Ghanaian private banks collapsed during the country’s 2017–19 financial crisis. Apart from public audits that revealed liquidity problems and large portfolios of non-performing loans, the crisis generated vibrant debate on ‘indigenous banks’ as integral to national economic sovereignty. At the centre of these debates was a contested central bank-led project to inject equity in five struggling Ghanaian banks through a special purpose vehicle (SPV), Ghana Amalgamated Trust (GAT). Set against the historical dominance of foreign banks in West Africa and Ghana’s recent history of political fault lines, this article explores the moral discourses and popular discontents of harnessing an SPV – a device typically used to isolate financial risk – for a desire for African economic sovereignty. Drawing on banking archives, public debates and fieldwork in a private bank selected as a benefactor of the SPV, I focus on the contests of value that emerge when costly banking sector reforms meet a critical public that doubts the sincerity of politicians and bankers as economic ‘reformers’. Arguing that ‘indigenous banks’ became a moral category that embedded abstractions of finance in a nationalist discourse of affect and sentiment, this article illuminates the long history of centring domestic ownership of financial infrastructures in postcolonial African economic policymaking.

In 1932, as Nyasaland (present-day Malawi) was heading to indirect rule, a small vocal community in the north of the country resisted the colonial government’s attempts to assign them a Native Authority. Instead, they proposed their own form of government: a council of thirty-two mafumu (chiefs) who would make decisions on an egalitarian basis, the Atonga tribal council. The champion of this alternative form of governance was a Tonga intellectual named Filemon K. Chirwa. At the height of the political manoeuvring to institute the Atonga tribal council, Filemon wrote and published his only book: Nthanu za Chitonga (Folktales in Chitonga). This article argues that this book was – and still is – an important piece of political literature. Through an exploration of the context of the creation of the Atonga tribal council, it sets out the stakes that were at play in the construction of local traditions and customs, and then shows how the book was part of a project of producing an image of these. It then explores the ‘afterlife’ of the book, as it became a symbolic force in contemporary village communities, not only articulating the sense of political marginalization experienced, but also capturing a new form of political agency. The article concludes by suggesting that Filemon Chirwa’s collection of stories is an astounding example of the deeply political role that folktale literature can play within colonial and (post)colonial Africa.

Research on the significance of the mobile phone and internet in transnational family relationships shows that these media provide direct platforms for negotiating remittances. My interest in this article is not so much in how they are used to coordinate and channel money home as in their appropriation to meet expectations of reciprocity. The article draws from field narratives collected among Cameroonians in Germany and in Cameroon to reveal contestations over what can be described as legitimate consumption within the Cameroonian transnational social sphere. Underlying the arguments in this article is my observation that direct communication within the Cameroonian transnational sphere is beset by so much mistrust, discontent and uncertainty that remitters must specify what they are remitting money for. Healthcare in Cameroon is considered an expenditure that is worthy of migrants' financial support.

This article introduces a personalized account of the early years of radio in Ghana based on an unpublished manuscript by one of its pioneering broadcasters – Bernard Senedzi (B. S.) Gadzekpo. An accomplished writer who produced manuscripts in both English and the Eʋe language, Gadzekpo's radio memoir is written from the vantage point of someone who worked in both the colonial and postcolonial broadcast service for nearly thirty years. It foregrounds African broadcasters in the history of radio and offers insights into the complex realities of Africa's mutable encounter with radio and the strategic role played by local intellectuals in fulfilling its modernization mission during and after the colonial period.

The Muslim Students’ Society of Nigeria (MSSN) is a movement that promotes the Islamic identity of Muslims in Nigeria’s educational institutions. Despite promoting the same objectives around the country, a comparison of the MSSN’s activities between the northern and southern regions of Nigeria suggests that the success of the movement varies in many aspects. This is because there are two main types of regional variation relating to the MSSN: the success of Christian opposition to the MSSN’s objectives; and the attitude of many Muslims and the government to those objectives. For example, in the Muslim-dominated northern states, the call by the MSSN to let Muslim girls wear the hijab in schools and the MSSN’s support for the reintroduction of sharia were welcomed by the state governors. However, in the south-west region, where the populations of Muslims and Christians are roughly equal, the MSSN struggled to get the state governors to accept the hijab and the call for sharia was rejected. This article thus argues that, despite envisioning the same notion of Islam for all Muslim students in Nigeria, the MSSN’s activities do not produce a monolithic Islam, and that this reflects differences in the practice of the religion across the country.

Can the African novel work as interlocutor for anthropologists studying Africa’s postcolonial politics today? Conversely, is there a role for the African literary imagination in our renewed efforts to decolonize anthropology? This article draws on Chinua Achebe’s fictional representations of the postcolony in two novels, No Longer at Ease and A Man of the People, to discuss the value of the African literary archive for an anthropological interest in elites, corruption and postcolonial decadence in the early postcolony. This African literary archive has contributed enormously to Achille Mbembe’s critique of power in the postcolony. Here, I argue that, in contrast to anthropologists of the late colonial and early postcolonial moment, African writers such as Achebe mobilized fiction as a powerful form of critique to address early signs of postcolonial despair and disillusionment in Africa.

This article analyses how the circulation of ideas and hybrid rituals between Shia Muslims and Christians reveals a much more intentional political process whereby minority religious groups consciously create shared experiences and a sense of commonality in the face of political marginalization in northern Nigeria. One example is the Shia invention of Jesus’s Mawlid (Jesus’s birthday), which they perform in a different way from the conventional Christmas but that is attended by some Christians. Also, some Christians participate in the annual celebration of Mawlid al-Nabiy (the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday), organized by Shias. Despite the adherents of the two religions participating in mixed religious practices, they continue to see themselves separately as Muslims and Christians. Reactions to these hybrid rituals impact relationships among the mainline Sunni groups. Sufis (Tijanis and Qadiris), who were previously united in the face of the anti-Sufi reform movement (Izala), now diverge over how to respond to Shia Islam. While they disagree with Shias intellectually, not everyone supports the attacks against Shias by Salafi activists. These dynamics add to the understanding that the concept of ‘tolerance’ is not sophisticated enough to capture all forms of religious coexistence in Nigeria.

Arowosegbe's article is a welcome invitation to reconsider African studies by reflecting on the dubious ambiguities of their ownership. While he dismisses Western hegemony, he also demands acknowledgement of the relevance of Western thought to the discipline. The latent tension and challenge to reconcile these demands are underlined by his parallel references to knowledge production in as well as on Africa without a further clarifying distinction.