Africa Today articles from December 2007

Africa Today archives from December 2007

Spatial stories: (1) photographic practices and urban belonging.(Essay)
December 22, 2007... Photographs can reflect the excitement, calm, vitality, decay, alienation, and intimacy of urban environments, yet they not only record the city, they create it. To demonstrate this point, I analyze photographs by Alioune Ba, a Malian, and...

Nollywood in Lagos, Lagos in Nollywood Films.(Essay)
December 22, 2007... Nollywood--the Lagos-based Nigerian film industry--has become the third-largest film industry in the world, and it is by far the most powerful purveyor of an image of Nigeria to domestic and foreign populations. It consists of many small...

Falola, Toyin, and Ann Genova, eds. 2006. The Yoruba in Transition: History, Values, and Modernity.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Falola, Toyin, and Ann Genova, eds. 2006. THE YORUBA IN TRANSITION: HISTORY, VALUES, AND MODERNITY. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press. 536 pp. $55.00 (cloth). This book has its origin in papers presented at the "Perspectives on Yoruba...

Gberie, Lansana. 2005. A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the Destruction of Sierra Leone.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Gberie, Lansana. 2005. A DIRTY WAR IN WEST AFRICA: THE RUF AND THE DESTRUCTION OF SIERRA LEONE. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 224pp. $24.95. Lansana Gberie's A Dirty War in West Africa is a welcome contribution to...

Penn, Nigel. 2005. The Forgotten Frontier: Colonist and Khoisan on the Cape's Northern Frontier in the 18th Century.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Penn, Nigel. 2005. THE FORGOTTEN FRONTIER: COLONIST AND KHOISAN ON THE CAPE'S NORTHERN FRONTIER IN THE 18TH CENTURY. Athens: Ohio University Press, and Cape Town: Double Storey Press. 388 pp. $24.95 (paper). Some writers believe that...

Perbi, Akosua Adoma. 2004. A History of Indigenous Slavery in Ghana: From the 15th to the 19th Century.(Book review)
December 22, 2007... Perbi, Akosua Adoma. 2004. A HISTORY OF INDIGENOUS SLAVERY IN GHANA: FROM THE 15TH TO THE 19TH CENTURY. Accra: Sub-Saharan Publishers. 231 pp. $25.95. This monograph provides an accessible overview of slavery's importance for Ghana's...

Bamako, Mali: monuments and modernity in the urban imagination.(Report)
December 22, 2007... Between 1995 and 2002 more than forty commemorative monuments were built in Bamako, the capital city of Mali. Their number, scale, presence, and placement make them striking additions to the city's built environment. The monument project is...

Postapartheid publics and the politics of ornament: nationalism, identity, and the rhetoric of community in the decorative program of the new constitutional court, Johannesburg.(Report)
December 22, 2007... Focusing on the new Constitutional Court in Johannesburg, South Africa, this article considers the role that the architecture of public buildings, and more particularly the decorative programs in these public buildings, are playing in...

Mystical graffiti and the refabulation of Dakar.(Report)
December 22, 2007... Since late 2003 or early 2004, Pape Diop has been adorning the walls of inner-city Dakar with graffiti depicting Cheikh Amadou Bamba (1853-1927), the Senegalese holy man whose writings and life lessons are central to the Sufi movement known as...

"Onetouch" quality and "Marriage Silver Cup": performative display, cosmopolitanism, and marital poatwa in Kumasi Funerals.(Report)
December 22, 2007... This study focuses on display and performance at one of the most widely attended, high-visibility events throughout urban Kumasi, the customary funeral rites held on public grounds and side streets each weekend. In particular, it examines the...

Introduction to special issue: visual experience in Urban Africa.(Editorial)
December 22, 2007... Cities in Africa, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, are intensely visual environments. For visitors and residents alike, it is seemingly impossible to amble through certain city neighborhoods without visual traffic pulling the eye...