Africa Insight

Stepping on Toes My Odyssey at the Nigerian Ports Authority

2024-07-10T05:38:58+00:00

No abstract

Land entitlement and the right to development in Lesotho

2024-07-09T10:54:04+00:00

This article explores the question of land entitlement inbLesotho in relation to thebright to development enshrined in the African Charter. The Charter guarantees that the right to development is to be achieved with due regard to ‘the equal enjoyment of the common heritage’. The article argues that land is a common heritage, which ought to be utilised in a manner that meets a people’s collective aspirations for socioeconomic and cultural development. The article enquires how and to what extent the statutory and customary law regimes in Lesotho guarantee entitlement to the land as a common heritage, from the standpoint of law.

Harnessing Ghana’s soft power for global influence

2024-07-09T11:03:36+00:00

This paper aims to add to the field of foreign policy in general and, specifically, make an insightful contribution to Ghana’s use of soft power in projecting her image internationally. The research involved largely secondary data sources and a few primary pieces of information that is experts’ opinions. Foreign policy formulation and implementation by states is underpinned by exerting both hard and soft power in the international system. Ghana was the first country in Sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence from colonial rule as far back as 1957 and has made a tremendous contribution to achieving Pan-Africanism. It enjoys an enviable position as a bastion of peace in Africa. In contemporary times, states are investing in soft power strategies, policies, and programmes to grow their influence globally. Soft power is the ability to persuade state and non-state actors to attain goals through attraction rather than force. A state’s soft power emanates from its political values, its culture, and its foreign policies. Ghana's political values (example, a haven of democracy), rich cultural heritage, economic diplomacy and good neighbourliness foreign policy has positioned the country as a soft power state. The country’s involvement in peacekeeping missions globally has engendered admiration in the international system. This paper emanates from the examination of the strategies, policies, and programmes that Ghana is using to cement its soft power position internationally. Three major themes emerged from the data that were gathered and analysed, namely: soft power, foreign policy, and gastro diplomacy.

AU’s Agenda 2063 and the quest to silence the guns

2024-07-09T11:11:49+00:00

The recent spree of coups (failed and successful) in West Africa between 2020 to 2023 is a serious cause for concern in terms of the democratic trajectory of the continent. This, coupled with the incessant political instability across Africa (in countries like Mozambique, the DRC, the Tigray region civil war in Ethiopia, Islamic terrorism in many parts of the Sahel, and the Libyan crisis) that has continued unabated since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi, suggests nothing close to the aim of ‘silencing of the guns’ in Africa. If anything, the insecurity situation in Africa seems to be worsening. Following the official launch of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) in January 2021, what do these untenable political, and peace and security issues mean for the implementation and domestication of AfCFTA in the midst of the wars raging in Africa? This paper attempts to assess and critique the first ten-year plan of the AU’s Agenda 2063, specifically in terms of the aim of ensuring peace and security (silencing the guns), and then determining whether this ideal has created a conducive environment for successful implementation of the AfCFTA, or will do so in future. Some of the key drivers behind the recent spate of coups in Africa (mostly in West Africa) and the general political instability across the continent are explored and unravelled in this paper using Sankarist tools of analysis, and the Sankarist theory and praxis.

China-Africa digital cooperation

2024-07-10T05:15:37+00:00

Among the many areas of Sino-African cooperation, digital technology is fast gaining prominence. This is because of advancements in digital technology in computing, internet expansion, big data analytics, and automation that are driving wholesale socio-economic transformation on a global scale. The incorporation of new digital technologies is driving economic growth, introducing new security dynamics, and transforming global trade. This paper takes stock of digital cooperation between China and Africa in the last two decades. It zooms in on specific areas of cooperation, such as digital infrastructure, digital content, and digital skills development, which have had a significant impact on the continent’s digital economy. However, Africa needs to be more proactive and tread with caution in its digital cooperation with China to avoid digital colonialism. Digital technology is not value-neutral. African countries must ensure that the technology they import from China aligns with African values and interests.

Rethinking culture through the multimedia ethnography of the Tiv people of Nigeria

2024-07-10T05:22:58+00:00

Folklorists are increasingly becoming interested to the intersection between oral artistic products and multimedia technology. The production and performance of cultural products in a re-presented multimedia format call for an investigation of the functions and theoretical frame of digital media in its parody, collage, transposition, pastiche, and refocusing of cultural products, especially as some are on the verge of dying out, as they are no longer performed due to the theme of modernity. The revival of some cultural products through multimedia may serve to rejuvenate them, and indeed the society that creates and uses them, but the originality variations in the production and performance pattern engender the need to rethink culture to offer frames of theoretical and thematic referents arising from the changes thereto. Since digitalisation of the cultural products enables the collection, preservation, and collage of texts, objects, audio, and visual performances, there is the need to rethink culture to map up and identify the oral products in their virtual historicity – an exercise not fully explored with the Tiv kwagh-Hir. This research used Russell Kaschula and Andre Mostert’s paradigm of technauriture to cross-examine the Tiv kwagh-Hir used in multimedia technologies, as a measure of rethinking the production, style, format, and uses of contemporary cultural productions. The findings show that the emergence of multimedia technology has created, in its wake, versions, styles, new characters, and a vision for society that probes for fresh analytical dimensions, thematic preoccupations, and theoretical conceptions.

Livelihoods and coping strategies adopted by rural households in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in Ogun State, Nigeria

2024-07-10T05:30:41+00:00

The Covid-19 pandemic, which was initially considered a public health crisis, has caused a lot of distress and discomfort globally. This is because much of the impact of the pandemic has been felt on the global economy and this may be felt for a long time to come, both in rural and urban areas. This work was conducted to ascertain the effects of the pandemic on farming families in Ogun State, and to identify the methods employed to adapt to the scourge of Covid-19. Three hundred copies of a questionnaire were administered to respondents in the study area. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics such as the Paired Samples T-test and Poisson Regression Model (PRM) were used to analyse the data collected. The study showed that about 67 per cent of the respondents were younger than 50, and 56 per cent were male. It was also observed that the majority (56.67 per cent) of the households in the study area had five or less members in the household, which is an indication that most households in the study area had a small family size. Farming was the main occupation, as 63.67 per cent of respondents were farmers. The result of the paired-sample analysis showed that the pandemic had affected the income of the respondents and their households negatively, as the respondents were better off before the outbreak of Covid-19. The results of the PRM analysis revealed that age, education, household size, access to financial or other assistance, and monthly income before the outbreak of the pandemic were among the factors that significantly influenced the number of coping strategies adopted by respondents to combat the pandemic. The implication is that older people are more likely to be vulnerable and less likely to have sustainable coping strategies during a pandemic. It is, therefore, recommended that more assistance should be directed at older people during a disease outbreak, to alleviate their suffering.