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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New at Brill: Afrika Focus

This journal promotes critical and worldly debates with Africa at the centre. 

New Series: Africa Futures / Afrique Futurs

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.

Listen to our podcast on Africa and Climate Change

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.

Author:

The secondary effects of the contentious 2017 general election in Kenya spilled over into the next year as the opposition escalated confrontations with the government only to abruptly call for a ceasefire under the auspices of a handshake between the principals on both sides of the political divide. In the aftermath, the ‘Building Bridges’ initiative was launched as a peacemaking campaign that only served to heighten the entropy within the political system as deputies who had fought passionate rhetorical and physical battles during the election year suddenly had to make sense of the new political dispensation. These peacemaking efforts did little to address the economic uncertainty that followed both the election and the calamitous drought, as both taxes and consumer prices spiralled, and individual spending contracted. Public debt also ballooned as the unfeasibility of the recently commissioned single-gauge railway (sgr) connecting Nairobi to the coastal city of Mombasa finally became evident. At the same time, Kenya’s regional diplomatic efforts were tested through the unexpected political transition in Ethiopia and the continuing crisis in South Sudan.