Open Books & Journals
The Rise of Africa's Middle Class by
Across Africa, a burgeoning middle class has become the poster child for the 'Africa rising' narrative. Ambitious, aspirational and increasingly affluent, this group is said to embody the values and hopes of the new Africa, with international bodies ranging from the United Nations Development Programme to the World Bank regarding them as important agents of both economic development and democratic change. This narrative, however, obscures the complex and often ambiguous role that this group actually plays in African societies. Bringing together economists, political scientists, anthropologists and development experts, and spanning a variety of case studies from across the continent, this collection provides a much-needed corrective to the received wisdom within development circles, and provides a fresh perspective on social transformations in contemporary Africa.
Location: Online Open AccessISBN: 9781783607136Publication Date: 2016-12-15
Britain, France and the decolonization of Africa : future imperfect? by
Looking at decolonization in the conditional tense, this volume teases out the complex and uncertain ends of British and French empire in Africa during the period of ‘late colonial shift’ after 1945. Rather than view decolonization as an inevitable process, the contributors together explore the crucial historical moments in which change was negotiated, compromises were made, and debates were staged....
Location: Online Open AccesssISBN: 9781911307730Publication Date: 2017
Warlord Democrats in Africa by
Post-war democratization has been identified as a crucial mechanism to build peace in war-ridden societies, supposedly allowing belligerents to compete through ballots rather than bullets. A byproduct of this process, however, is that military leaders often become an integral part of the new democratic system, using resources and networks generated from the previous war to dominate the emerging political landscape. The crucial and thus-far overlooked question to be addressed, therefore, is what effect the inclusion of ex-militaries into electoral politics has on post-war security. Can 'warlord democrats' make a positive contribution by shepherding their wartime constituencies to support the building of peace and democracy, or are they likely to use their electoral platforms to sponsor political violence and keep war-affected communities mobilized through aggressive discourses? This important volume, containing a wealth of fresh empirical detail and theoretical insight, and focussing on some of Africa's most high-profile political figures - from Paul Kagame to Riek Machar to Afonso Dhlakama - represents a crucial intervention in the literature of post-war democratization.
Location: Online - Open AccessISBN: 9781783602490Publication Date: 2017-04-15
Aid and Authoritarianism in Africa by
In 2013 almost half of Africa's top aid recipients were ruled by authoritarian regimes. While the West may claim to promote democracy and human rights, in practice major bilateral and international donors, such as USAID, DFID, the World Bank and the European Commission, have seen their aid policies become ever more entangled with the survival of their authoritarian protégés. Local citizens thus find themselves at the receiving end of a compromise between aid agencies and government elites, in which development policies are shaped in the interests of maintaining the status quo. Aid and Authoritarianism in Africa sheds light on the political intricacies and moral dilemmas raised by the relationship between foreign aid and autocratic rule in Africa. Through contributions by leading experts exploring the revival of authoritarian development politics in Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Cameroon, Mozambique and Angola, the book exposes shifting donor interests and rhetoric as well as the impact of foreign aid on military assistance, rural development, electoral processes and domestic politics. In the process, it raises an urgent and too often neglected question: to what extent are foreign aid programmes actually perpetuating authoritarian rule?
Location: Online - Open AccessISBN: 9781783606306Publication Date: 2016-03-15
African Conflicts and Informal Power by
In the aftermath of an armed conflict in Africa, the international community both produces and demands from local partners a variety of blueprints for reconstructing state and society. The aim is to re-formalize the state after what is viewed as a period of fragmentation. In reality, African economies and polities are very much informal in character, with informal actors, including so-called Big Men, often using their positions in the formal structure as a means to reach their own goals. Through a variety of in-depth case studies, including the DRC, Sierra Leone and Liberia, this comprehensive volume shows how important informal political and economic networks are in many of the continent's conflict areas. Moreover, it demonstrates that without a proper understanding of the impact of these networks, attempts to formalize African states, particularly those emerging from wars, will be in vain.
Location: Open AccessISBN: 9781848138827Publication Date: 2012-03-08
Collections Online: Africa
- Africa Online Digital Library (Michigan State Univ.) The African Online Digital Library (AODL) is a portal to multimedia collections about Africa. MATRIX, working in cooperation with the African Studies Center at Michigan State University, is partnering with universities and cultural heritage organizations in Africa to build this resource.
- African Democracy Encyclopaedia Project (EISA) Components include: Country Profiles, Election Calendars, Election Archives, Gender Issues, and a Links Directory to additional online sources.
- Africana Digitization Project (Univ. of Wisconsin) 8 titles. A small digital collection of "materials that were published in limited, sometimes very limited, quantities, but which have produced a demand beyond the capacity of their initial print run to satisfy." Digitization was undertaken to ensure accessibility, particularly for researchers in Africa.
- AfroBarometer "Afrobarometer is a pan-African, non-partisan research network that conducts public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, economic conditions, and related issues in more than 35 countries in Africa."
- Archive of Languages and Oral Resources of Africa ALORA is a project which falls within the missions assigned to CERDOTOLA by the Member States CERDOTOLA is committed to document and safeguard aspects of Africa's languages and cultural heritage. This has been traditionally achieved through production of written texts, and casually through audio recording on tapes as provided by the state of the art technology. The bulk of textual, graphical and audio resources documented as far back as the 70s and early 80s has not been subject to far reaching dissemination. Other cultural and scientific objects such as field notes, tapes, manuscripts, wordlists, questionnaires, photos and various archival documents are usually left to perish in library shelves or in the hands of researchers and individuals. The main goal of the ALORA Project is to safeguard these treasuries from irredeemable loss, and to to disseminate them via the world wide web. In addition, ALORA is a virtual infrastructure for hosting versatile digital resources stemming from documentation of African languages and cultural heritage. Inasmuch as African languages are facing the threat of death in a more or less near future, keeping leaving records of their daily usage is a recipe for ensuring their future revival.
- The Harold E. Scheub Collection; South African Voices (Univ. of Wisconsin) "Harold Scheub...specializes in African oral traditions and written literatures. South African Voices is a three-volume work that includes: A Long Time Passed, Created in Olden Times, and The Way We Travelled: Oral History and Poetry..."
- Horn of Africa Crisis (Wilson Center Digital Archive) From the site: "This is a collection of primary source documents related to the conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia in the late 1970s (also known as the 1977-1978 Ogaden War or the Ethiopian-Somali Conflict). Somalia invaded Ethiopia in 1977 in an effort to capture the disputed Ogden region. The resulting crisis is discussed in this collection, as well as the later Eritrean Liberation Movement. Later documents cover Soviet policy toward the region, Ethiopian relations with the Eritreans, the role of the US in Africa, and US Operation Torch."
- Peace Corps Digital Library Currently not functional
- Repositório Cientfico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal --RCAAP RCAAP portal aims to collect, aggregate and index Open Access scientific contents from Portuguese institutional repositories. From the site: "RCAAP constitutes a single entry point for searching, discovery and recall of thousands of scientific and scholarly publications, namely journal articles, conference papers, thesis and dissertations, distributed by several Portuguese repositories."
- World Digital Library Includes: almost 300 items on Africa; 1,329 items on the Middle East and North Africa
Repositories of Primary Source materials
- National History Center - Decolonization resources collection - AfricaThe Center is pleased to announce the official launch of our Teaching Decolonization Resource Collection. This digital collection provides instructors...
Librarian
Rachel Dwyer
she/ her
Contact:
African Studies Library
6th floor,
Mugar Memorial Library
Mon-Fri 9am - 5 pm
rdwyer@bu.edu
6th floor,
Mugar Memorial Library
Mon-Fri 9am - 5 pm
rdwyer@bu.edu
617-353-3726
Subjects: African Studies