People, Predicaments and Potentials in Africa
People, Predicaments and Potentials in Africa

Author: Takehiko Ochiai

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2021-01-18

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 9956551201

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The term 'African Potentials' refers to the knowledge, systems, practices, ideas and values created and implemented in African societies that are expected to contribute to overcoming various challenges and promoting people's wellbeing. This collection of articles, focused on African societies, is based on the idea that 'Africa is People'. In this book, African people are placed at the centre of the discussion. The book's contributors, all of whom believe in African people and their potentials, consider women, minors and young people, people with disabilities, entrepreneurs, herders, farmers, mine workers, refugees, migrants, traditional rulers, militiamen and members of the political elite, and examine their predicaments and potentials in detail. Africa is people, and African potentials can be found only in African people themselves.

African Potentials
African Potentials

Author: B Ohta

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2022-03-23

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 9956552542

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This book challenges colonial and age-old Western academic views that have dominated and marginalised African indigenous knowledge system. It spreads further the wings of knowledge and endeavour about an African way of thinking on conflict resolution and co-existence, and analytically connects this to the pursuit of Africa's sustainable development frameworks. Ohta, Nyamnjoh and Matsuda are teachers you always wished for but never had. Together, they have made this book a path-breaking one, and essential reading for a broad based understanding of the African mindset.

'African Potentials' for Wildlife Conservation and Natural Resource Management
'African Potentials' for Wildlife Conservation and Natural Resource Management

Author: Toshio Meguro

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2021-10-01

Total Pages: 374

ISBN-13: 9956552623

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This book focuses on two specific areas: wildlife conservation policies and projects, and the interaction between local societies and the surrounding environment in Africa. Against the internationally dominant approach that regards Africa as being a state of 'deficiency', this book demonstrates, based on fieldwork concerning various natural resources (e.g. wildlife, forests, fruit, fish and land) as well as many famous protected areas, that African people are collectively and actively trying to solve the environmental problems they are facing by strategically utilising both indigenous means and new extrinsic opportunities. Meanwhile, it also becomes clear that wildlife conservation still continues to cause local societies a multitude of problems, and the 'potentials' of local people and societies are existing but unnoticed and suppressed by powerful outsiders, and therefore, remaining informal and invisible.

African Politics of Survival Extraversion and Informality in the Contemporary World
African Politics of Survival Extraversion and Informality in the Contemporary World

Author: Mitsugi Endo

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2021-03-11

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9956551228

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This volume addresses two primary research concerns: first, considering extraversion (or extroversion) as a term for characterizing a region that is "mobilizing resources from their (possibly unequal) relationship with the external environment", a dynamic that constitutes a possible African potential; and, second, a survey of competing systems and strategies with a focus on relationships between formal and informal institutions in terms of their collaborations and conflicts. In addition, this volume contains three chapters examining very recent African responses to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic from a variety of perspectives. The final part of this volume contains an important contribution to the conceptualization of 'African Potentials'. This has proven to be a significant conceptual innovation, that allows intellectual access to alternative ways of thinking about latent ideas of universality.

Dynamism in African Languages and Literature
Dynamism in African Languages and Literature

Author: Keiko Takemura

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2021-03-13

Total Pages: 270

ISBN-13: 9956553514

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The book provides novel perspectives towards conceptualisation of African Potentials. It explores diverse and dynamic aspects of linguistic communications in Africa, ranging from convivial multilingual practices to literal and musical arts. The book reflects the diversity and ever-changing dynamism in the African sociolinguistic sphere, that is, metalinguistic discourse in East Africa, sociolinguistic dynamism in Angola, conflict reconciliation speech performed in Ethiopia, and syncretic urban linguistic code called Sheng in Kenya. The volume also explores multi-dimensional relationships between literary arts and the society by investigating such topics as traditional Swahili poetry, publication of children books in Benin, and transformation and reconstruction of Yoruba popular music. The book elucidates dynamic process of creation through mixing of traditional and foreign elements of culture.

Contemporary Gender and Sexuality in Africa
Contemporary Gender and Sexuality in Africa

Author: Wakana Shiino

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2001-08-26

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9956552968

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Africa has fostered a rich culture of gender and sexuality from which non-African societies can learn. Most African traditional sexual customs differ greatly from Western colonial thought, which prioritises an individualism that respects the individual's free will and way of life. Regardless of the existence of various images of Africa, globalisation and conflict have made it inevitable that African people today must respond to sudden changes in the political environment and norms due to the influx of new thoughts and ideas. From colonial tensions to the consequences of globalisation, women easily have to sacrifice their sexualities. Also, the reader can observe that the Japanese/African ethnographic surveys in this book are influenced by the researchers' personal backgrounds, including their religion, social class, and sexual orientation.

Development and Subsistence in Globalising Africa
Development and Subsistence in Globalising Africa

Author: Motoki Takahashi

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2021-03-13

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 9956553395

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In Africa, people striving to live and survive under the complex relationship between development and subsistence have been directly or indirectly feeling influences of globalisation. As Africa's involvement in globalisation deepens, social phenomena are apparently synchronizing or becoming more similar to those in the rest of the world, but they are not homogenised with them, especially those of developed countries now or in the past. The dichotomic view distinguishing development and subsistence has already become outdated. Day after day, African people are trying to reconcile or bridge the two as capable actors. People in Africa, faced with challenges common throughout the world, live in their own ways. Africa can contribute to the world by sharing knowledge acquired through the struggles of development and subsistence, and by bridging the two.

Knowledge, Education and Social Structure in Africa
Knowledge, Education and Social Structure in Africa

Author: Shoko Yamada

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2021-03-14

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 9956553158

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In searching for the potential that lies in African societies, the chapters of this volume consider relationships between knowledge, education and social structure from multiple angles, from a macro-continental scale to national education systems, schools and local communities. The themes that cut across the chapters include education as a mode of transmitting values, the contrasting effects of school credentials and knowledge for use, politics and interactions among people surrounding a school and knowledge acquisition as a subjective process. The rich empirical analyses suggest that the subjective commitment of, and mutuality among, people will make the acquired knowledge a powerful 'tool for conviviality' to realize a stable life, even given the turmoil created by rapid institutional and environmental changes that confront African societies.

African Land Reform Under Economic Liberalisation
African Land Reform Under Economic Liberalisation

Author: Shinichi Takeuchi

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-10-10

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 9811647259

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This open access book offers unique in-depth, comprehensive, and comparative analyses of the motivations, context, and outcomes of recent land reforms in Africa. Whereas a considerable number of land reforms have been carried out by African governments since the 1990s, no systematic analysis on their meaning has so far been conducted. In the age of land reform, Africa has seen drastic rural changes. Analysing the relationship between those reforms and change, the chapters in this book reveal not only their socio-economic outcomes, such as accelerated marketisation of land, but also their political outcomes, which have often been contrasting. Countries such as Rwanda and Mozambique have utilised land reform to strengthen state control over land, but other countries, such as Ghana and Zambia, have seen the rise in power of traditional chiefs in managing the land. The comparative perspective of this book clarifies new features of African social changes, which are carefully investigated by area experts. Providing new perspectives on recent land reform, this book will have a considerable impact on scholars as well as policymakers.

Survival through Bildung
Survival through Bildung

Author: Helge Kminek

Publisher: Verlag Barbara Budrich

Published: 2024-04-29

Total Pages: 164

ISBN-13: 3847416243

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The central reference point of the volume is Heinz-Joachim Heydorn's essay "Survival Through Bildung - Outline of a prospect" (1974), which was translated into English and subsequently made available to a broad public for the first time. Despite the time gap of almost 50 years, Heydorn's text is fascinating, because the survival of humanity – at least a qualitatively substantial survival of humanity – seems extremely questionable today. Researchers with different theoretical perspectives question the text on its contemporary content and put their interpretations up for discussion.