The human rights approach to witchcraft accusations denies their validity and forecloses the possibility of a trial, fair or otherwise. While there is much to be said for a bracing rationalism in all aspects of life, evidence from Africa over the past couple of centuries shows no sign that witchcraft narratives lose their plausibility as a result of people being told that witches do not exist.

This article examines discourses and cinematic representations of modernity in two documentary films by the Cameroonian director Jean-Marie Teno. In the first of these films, A Trip to the Country (2000), Teno investigates how ideals and aspirations of modernity as a state-sponsored project in Cameroon have their roots in the colonial period, and his film is characterized by a strong sense of anxiety linked to the turn of the millennium. In the second, Sacred Places (2009), modernity is given a different affective resonance and is linked to the pleasure of cinematic consumption in Ouagadougou as Teno situates African cinema in relation to its “brother,” the djembe drum. I argue here that a shift occurs between these two films and their affective engagements with modernity; this is a transition from a sense of millennial anxiety to a thematics of what I call “cinematic kinship.” I ultimately suggest that this shift allows Teno to outline new social roles for the African filmmaker as well as new relationships between African cinema and local publics.

In his November 2011 solo art exhibition, Fashion Victims, held in Niamey, Niger, the Cameroonian artist Alioum Moussa launched a critique of global participation in the industrial fashion system by employing secondhand garments as his primary medium. The show had special resonance in a city attempting to cultivate both industrial and artisanal production of dress and fashion for global markets. Moussa demanded that viewers reckon with their own consumerist dress practices and potential fashion victimization in what he described as “global games of seduction,” and he offered tributes to the different “fashion victims” by inviting others to play in shared games of history.

African beer markets are increasingly being commercialized. Select brewers are going to extraordinary lengths to attract new customers on the continent. Economic and business “life cycle” models usually indicate that this can only go on for a finite period, that industries, companies, and products, just like organisms, must move through stages of emergence and maturity to inevitable decline. Such expectations may be too rigid in the African context. Such are the continent’s dynamic economic and social realities that commercial brewers, and especially a handful of multinational corporations, look capable of staving off decline—an intoxicating prospect for them indeed.

Many scholars have concluded, perhaps prematurely, that information and communication technologies (ICTs) are inherently empowering for Africans. In order to look more closely at the impact of ICTs on relationships and society, this article focuses on everyday life. Specifically, it uses ethnographic methods and the theory of “affordances” to illuminate the use of cell phones among Bulsa of Ghana’s Upper East Region. While cell phones help users connect with distant loved ones, they also plant seeds of alienation between users and those who remain physically present. These changes are evident in new body habits and in social behaviors that would be culturally unacceptable in face-to-face interactions but are largely excused in the interventions of the virtual world.

In May 2013 the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) announced that construction of the world’s largest hydroelectric project will begin in October 2015. Upon completion, according to the DRC, the project will bring electricity to half the African continent. With funding from South Africa, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and others, the U.S.$80 billion Grand Inga Hydroelectric project will construct a 44,000 megawatt (MW) dam anchored to a new transmission network able to distribute electricity to all four of sub-Saharan Africa’s regional electricity power pools. While the dam promises to bring electricity to many millions of Africans who currently lack access, the project also poses risks to the citizens and environment of the DRC. To assess the complex tradeoffs, this article evaluates four dimensions that are part of an energy security framework: availability, affordability, efficiency, and stewardship. In doing so, it explores some of the governance challenges that arise in managing such a “mega-project.” The analysis also reveals tensions between national and regional energy security. It presents evidence that, under certain assumptions, the pursuit of enhanced security at the regional level may result in a net security loss for the DRC. Finally, the article provides suggestions for enhancing the decision-making process of those designing related national and regional energy strategies.

Angola is a large country with a relatively small population and abundant natural resources, including oil reserves. The high price fetched by oil, the mainstay of the Angolan economy, on international markets has helped this leading producer attain growth rates that are among the highest in the world. However, Angola is also noted for its unequal distribution of wealth and notorious political corruption. This article seeks to explore this paradox within the framework of the so-called resource curse theory and analyze the role played by the oil industry in the process.

This article examines debates about how to manage elephants in Kenya’s Tsavo National Park as a jumping off point for exploring the relationships among the local, national, and global constituencies that converged in the formulation of wildlife policy in Kenya during the 1950s and 1960s. Bridging the colonial and postcolonial years, the so-called Elephant Problem in Tsavo, while leveraging different international constituencies, pitted different administrative philosophies against one another and drew out different understandings of the application of ecological sciences in national parks. The result was a paralysis of policymaking which sparked an overhaul of the wildlife departments in the 1970s.

In rural Kenya, the main visible security force is the Kenya Police Reserve, an unpaid force guarding localities and armed by the state. Turkana County faces challenges of low state penetration, small arms flows, and armed intercommunal conflict. The state has a weak hold on Kenya Police Reservists (KPRs) and their arms, and this situation is weakening further as many move into paid private security roles, including guarding oil exploration and drilling sites. Security is critical in view of the recent oil discovery and ensuing land disputes which could trigger widespread conflict, and the recent devolution of development and administrative functions to counties in Kenya.