Scholar-activists, by virtue of their critical engagement in the central issues of the day and their role in the production and dissemination of knowledge, have a unique opportunity to challenge the inherited orthodoxies in the academy and in the larger world in which we live. Within the field of African studies they have served as powerful critics and have broken new substantive, conceptual, methodological, and epistemological ground. To sustain this thesis, this essay explores three interrelated issues. First, it critically assesses the concept of value-free research—a notion which is commonly used to dismiss engaged scholarship as inherently flawed. Second, it documents how a number of African American scholars, passionately committed to social justice and to an end to racial oppression, produced pioneering work on Africa well before the field of African studies gained academic legitimacy in the post–World War II era. Finally, it highlights some of the critically important contributions that activist scholars have made to the study of Africa. The intellectual biographies of six prominent Africanists—Claude Aké, Basil Davidson, Francis Deng, Susan Geiger, Joseph Harris, and Walter Rodney—illuminate how political commitment can fuel theoretical and methodological innovation.

In 1932 the governor of French Togoland announced an increase in taxes on Lomé market women because of the economic downturn caused by the Depression. Both the indigenous city council and a clandestine resistance movement opposed this fiscal plan, warning of social unrest. The strain triggered a protest by market women that spread beyond the colonial capital. This article offers a new explanation of the explosive tension by arguing that an organized male political campaign conjoined with a socioeconomic protest led by market women. It explores women's resistance as a performance of vodou ritual as a vehicle of shame and protest. Ultimately the violent, culturally marked protests marked the gendered perimeters of political authority for both Ewe women and men and further defined Ewe market women's conception of an Ewe self and the emergence of conflicting and contested notions of “Eweness” as a prelude to the independence struggle.

African states have become increasingly unable to provide adequate health care to their citizens due to debt, structural adjustment, poverty, and mismanagement. The health crisis is worsening in many areas and driving up mortality rates after decades of decline. This article investigates how African communities and their citizens respond in light of state inability to deliver health-related services. Drawing on a survey of more than five hundred rural Kenyans, our analysis shows that people are dissatisfied with government facilities and are turning to mission clinics and hospitals as well as to private clinics. A number of factors determine choice of health-care facility, including cost, level of education, socioeconomic background, the time taken to reach a facility, the type of disease requiring treatment, and agro-ecological zones. These findings have profound theoretical implications for health and development models, which normally are biased in favor of developed Western countries.

Nigerian parents and teachers were interviewed with the purpose of understanding how ordinary citizens view the unequal participation in education in Nigeria. Several areas of concern were identified in relation to participation in schooling such as its financial cost to families, the perceived limited value of education in adulthood, and the low quality of instruction. The interviewees acknowledged the continuing unequal participation of some groups and gave some reasons for their exclusion, though they did not seek to justify it. Specific policy suggestions are made for increasing participation in schooling by all children and for improving the quality of schooling.

After an Eritrea nationalist movement gained Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia in 1991, the newly formed government introduced a national educational policy based on the use of mother languages as the medium of instruction in all public schools. The stated purpose of the policy was to foster national unity, identity, and development while respecting cultural diversity. Nine different languages are spoken in Eritrea, among a population that consists equally of Christians and Muslims. The government has shown considerable flexibility in applying its language policy, particularly in its response to resistance from some predominantly Muslim segments of the population. Yet the implementation of the educational policy shows that three languages—English, Arabic, and Tigrinya—have come to dominate the majority of schools in Eritrea. This article examines how the state carried out its language policy from 1991 to 1997 and explores the problems it confronted in implementing the policy.

This study of contemporary Hausa literature analyzes a northern Nigerian body of popular fiction currently referred to as Kano market literature and known to Hausa speakers as Littattafan Soyayya (books of love). The popularity of this genre of romance rests firmly upon its subject matter, one that has proven controversial within the conservative Muslim environment of Hausa society. On the surface, the novels are preoccupied with love and marital relationships, depicting the ordeals faced by courting lovers or married couples. However, on a deeper level, the novels have become an explorative territory for the socially, culturally, and religiously loaded issues of polygamy, marriages of coercion, purdah, and the accessibility of female education. In effect, Kano market literature reflects the rapid social change confronting Hausa society and positions itself as a voice offering a new perspective on gender relations. This article examines closely the works of arguably the most celebrated woman writer, Bilkisu Ahmed Funtuwa. Acutely aware of her rigid social and religious milieu, Funtuwa offers suggestions to young women who desire a greater level of control over their familial relationships and educational direction.

The “special relationship” between Israel and Ghana that began with the latter's attainment of independence in March 1957 endured only three years. At the January 1961 Casablanca Conference, Ghana joined in a sharp condemnation of Israel, marking the end of Israel's brief but extraordinary influence in Accra. Despite this downturn, Israel continued to fund aid and assistance projects in Ghana and to conduct civilian training programs. This article reviews the policy origins of Israel's entry into Ghana, demonstrates how both countries exploited a brief “honeymoon period,” analyzes their diverging paths, and explains why Israel did not use the fall of Nkrumah in 1966 as an opportunity to reestablish the special relationship.