This article discusses Africa’s deepening marginalization in the globalization of production, finance, and labor. It underscores critical development issues that result from, and are exacerbated by, globalization in the context of unequal global distribution of economic and political power: illicit financial flows and tax evasion, the brain drain, an increasing incidence of noncommunicable diseases, and the disproportionate burden of environmental degradation that is shouldered by the African continent. It also offers some policy suggestions to address these issues at national and regional levels.

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.

This article begins by tracking how the delineation of “New Cinema” in the recent work of Manthia Diawara differs significantly from the approaches that had been dominant when he published his initial study on African cinema in 1992. The changes lead us to position current filmmaking practices vis-à-vis Nollywood film, and to ask how the formation of the cinematic subject functions in contemporary “new waves” of cinema.

This article focuses on shifts, or “new waves,” within contemporary African film as sites of struggle and moments of exposure of the divergent forces at work in the struggle. From this perspective, attempts at initiating a new style in commercially oriented storytelling do not so much culminate in a break with previous styles of storytelling as they create a new space for tension over ideological claims and narrative coherence. As illustration, the article considers the competing logics at work in the strategies or rationalities associated with the branch of Nigerian filmmaking described as New Nollywood.

This article offers a historical perspective on the concept of voluntarism in modern Africa. It does so by exploring the ways in which postcolonial states grappled with the legacies of colonial-era concepts of voluntarism, using Tanzania as a case study. It argues that the postcolonial state sought to combine two strands of colonial thinking about voluntarism in a new conception of “virtuous citizenship.” But this was a fragile construction, and the language of voluntarism could bring to light divisions in society that many would have preferred to keep hidden.

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.

Recent experimentation by Nollywood producers has encouraged increasing differentiation of film practices as a strategy for contending with a demanding video market. “New Nollywood” refers to a select group of aesthetically sophisticated films intended for a new tiered distribution method, beginning with theatrical release and ending with DVD release. Nigeria’s upscale multiplex cinemas are therefore a starting point for examining what is new—and not so new—in Nollywood. This article argues that New Nollywood films and the cinemas in which they appear appeal directly to spectators’ senses by promising not only a movie and shopping, but also an affective experience closely bound up with global consumerism. The films exhibit a metropolitan vantage point that emphasizes subjects such as airline travel, trendy technology, consumer culture, global pop culture, lifestyle brands, high fashion, and luxury goods. These films advertise their “modernity,” which is not presented as a consolidated order of knowledge and values, but rather as an assemblage of signifiers of city life. Whereas mainstream Nollywood continues to produce strong narratives that resonate with its intended audience, New Nollywood—with its emphasis on images and style—is a direct expression of the cultural and economic forces shaping life in Lagos today.

This article explores the changing nature of the “volunteer” as an official role within health and development interventions in East Africa. Contemporary development interventions require the engagement of volunteers to act as links between project and community. This role is increasingly professionalized within development architectures with implications for the kinds of people who can engage in volunteering opportunities. Volunteers in development interventions are likely to be drawn from public sector staff and from educated youth seeking access to positions of paid employment. Volunteering as a formal status within the organization of development programs is recognized as a kind of professional work by those seeking to engage with development organizations. Volunteers perform important work in linking development programs with beneficiaries. At the same time, volunteering provides opportunities for personal transformation.

This article seeks to understand why Kenyans have responded so enthusiastically to the recent push, by the government and NGOs, for voluntary labor within health and development projects and interventions. It argues that voluntary labor gains meaning and value in relation to broader economies of work and unemployment, to anxieties about identity, recognition, and belonging, and to aspirations for personal as well as national development. In the context of precarious economies and the contraction of formal employment opportunities, voluntary labor constitutes valued, if unpaid, work; it offers opportunities for those excluded from formal employment to gain a valued identity and a sense of social worth; and it makes volunteers visible to powerful institutions (state and nonstate) that hold the keys to personal growth, social recognition, and developmental futures. Voluntary labor is a site of struggles about identity, social value, and recognition, which the decline of twentieth-century trajectories of progress has made acute.

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.

This article argues for a departure from theories of new cinema “waves” and proposes the notion of cinema “winds” as a more compelling conceptual framework for studies of African film movements. Building on the work of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Manthia Diawara, Ken Harrow, and Nwachukwu Frank Ukadike, in addition to commentaries by various African film directors, this article looks at various dimensions of global visibility and the elusive movements of African cinemas. It also explores how African directors challenge habits of seeing and interpreting world cinema.

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.