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.
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.
Ethiopia went through a highly eventful and difficult year, with multiple humanitarian challenges, violent incidents, and bizarre episodes of ‘ethnic’ politics, but also saw continued democratisation and legal reform efforts under the committed reformist prime minister Abiy Ahmed, who went ahead at full speed with the restructuring of governance, institutions, and laws and gave the country a new impetus and more status in Africa. He led the transformation of the former ruling-party coalition the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (eprdf) and renamed it the Ethiopian Prosperity Party (pp). He received international acclaim for his efforts, including the Nobel Peace Prize for his initiative to end the state of war with Eritrea and for domestic reform efforts. The economy, while growing, did not do spectacularly well, with lower export performance and a decline in (foreign) investments, partly due to security issues, a growing debt burden, and global volatility. Violent ‘ethnic’ clashes continued in various parts of the country. Large numbers of people still needed humanitarian assistance, because of uneven agrarian production, local droughts, malnutrition, and violence-induced displacements, although tens of thousands of people displaced in previous years returned to their places of origin. Tensions in and between Ethiopia’s regional states, vying for more autonomy, remained, and a new regional state (Sidama) emerged after a referendum on autonomy from Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples Region was held there in November.