African Studies
Utafiti: Journal of African Perspectives
Call for Papers: Utafiti is inviting you to submit your manuscript – any topic in the humanities - for consideration in the next issues.
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This journal promotes critical and worldly debates with Africa at the centre.
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Published in association with the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), Africa Futures features cutting-edge research that critically reflects on some of the big questions relevant to imagining Africa’s future as a place.
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Robin Attfield talks about how Africa finds itself vulnerable to drought but also the flooding of its coastline, among other untoward environmental effects of climate change and civil war.
As the country geared up for nation-wide elections in October 2011, political wrangling dominated the scene, with President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf sacking her cabinet en masse by year’s end to tamp down widespread allegations of corruption against her government. Stunned by a by-election loss for her party in Montserado the previous year, Sirleaf merged her Unity Party (UP) with two other parties, the Liberian Unification Party (LUP) and the Liberian Action Party (LAP), thus significantly boosting her chances. Two other major parties joined Sirleaf’s party shortly after, giving her a seemingly unassailable lead. In response, her chief rival, George Weah, merged his Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) with the Liberty Party of Charles Walker Brumskine. Meanwhile, Sirleaf remained the darling of the international community. In September, she was enthusiastically received at the UN in New York and in June, she won debt relief amounting to $ 4.6 bn under the World Bank’s HIPC initiative. That same month, the Paris Club wrote off a further $ 1.2 bn in debt. However, little improvement was reported in economic performance and job creation, and unemployment remained at over 80%. By year’s end the crisis in Côte d’Ivoire was the key security concern, as hundreds of free-roaming former Liberian fighters were reported to have been recruited by the political factions in the neighbouring country, and thousands of Ivorian refugees poured into Liberia. The mandate of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) was renewed for another year in September. It still maintained 7,931 troops, 1,304 police, and a budget of $ 524 m, far more than that of the Liberian government. In December, the UN arms embargo on Liberia was also renewed for another year.