Today's African political class is much more diverse in character and aspiration than the one that overcame colonial rule and inaugurated independent governments. Sons of early liberation leaders now jostle for power in a few countries (Chad, Kenya), descendants of successful autocrats perpetuate family rule in others (Gabon), several long-serving hegemons remain in control after decades in office (as in Cameroon, Djibouti, Rwanda and Uganda), a clutch of kleptocrats continue to defraud citizens (as in Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe), upstart soldiers oust elected placeholders (Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali), and here and there democratic stalwarts (Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Senegal, South Africa, Zambia) are delivering authentic, uplifting, leadership to their followers.

Since Kenya's independence in 1963, ethnicity has been an important factor in Kenyan politics and everyday life. While recent research has shown that ethnic favouritism impacted the allocation of educational resources in the past, so far, no systematic research has been conducted on how teachers exacerbate, mitigate or countervail the political culture of ethnicity and ethnic favouritism. As agents of socialisation, teachers’ attitudes and behaviour can, consciously or unconsciously, convey the message that ethnic favouritism is normal and socially acceptable, or conversely delegitimise such practices. Based on a list experiment among 894 secondary school teachers in the county of Nairobi, we find that at least 25% of teachers have already favoured coethnic pupils. Interviews indicate that such favours are seldom blatant in nature and mainly serve to show solidarity with one's kin. Still, even small – frequently well-intentioned – favours may damage inter-group attitudes, trust and relations, and may even contribute to the persistence of ethnic politics.

As infrastructure development has become a key ingredient in Africa–China relations, the role of African governments in co-determining the design, funding and governance of the continent's infrastructures has come under close scrutiny. This article sheds light on the rehabilitation of a symbol of Sino–African friendship: the Tanzania–Zambia Railway Authority (TAZARA). Employing Jessop's strategic-relational approach, it is shown that the strategies of the shareholding governments in the negotiations with a Chinese consortium were informed by strategic learning from previous railway privatisations, corresponding cost–benefit analyses and reflection about Chinese commercial interests. Zambia's indebtedness and Tanzania's autocratic developmental state under President Magufuli formed crucial elements of the structural context in which the fate of Africa's Freedom Railway was negotiated. The article transcends both crudely structuralist accounts of a supposedly all-powerful China and voluntarist conceptions of African agency that are void of structure. Assessing (African) agency requires analytical sensitivity towards the dialectical interaction between specific strategic capacities and strategically selective political–economic contexts.

For the first time in its history, Ghana held a referendum in 2018 to divide some of its regions to create new ones. Though the regions are purely administrative, the division faced resistance in some areas and not in others. This study combines qualitative comparative analysis with process tracing to show that the resistance occurred within regions with relatively high support for the opposition party, but only in the combined presence of (traditional) elites competing from either side of the region and controversies regarding claims to (traditional) political authority. Further, it finds a bottom-up mechanism of the resistance, evolving as the threatened interests of stakeholders grew from the community to the regional, national and diaspora levels. As in other African cases, this suggests that the sources of conflicts in Africa are not so much about ethnic differences but more about elites’ unequal access to political and economic resources.

The concept of ‘agency’ and its role in capturing the dynamics between Africa and external actors feature increasingly in the African IR scholarship. Over the past decade, Turkey has become an increasingly prominent actor in Africa, strengthening political, cultural and economic ties with African states and providing humanitarian aid and development assistance. In this paper, we examine Turkey's relationship with Africa from the point of view of African agency and ask ‘How much and what kind of agency can we identify by examining the way in which Turkey approaches African states?’ The conventional understanding of the concept of African agency defines it in materialist terms and emphasises its transactional nature; it does not adequately explain incidents of enhanced outcomes for Africans in their relationship with Turkey. We argue that an under-examined aspect and a vital source of African agency lies within the discourses of Turkish policy which provide an enabling source of policy space for negotiation for Africans. We demonstrate that the notion of Muslim kinship in Turkish discourses not only distinguishes Turkey from most of the other external powers engaging with the continent but also enables African interlocutors to negotiate enhanced outcomes.