The New Gambia, by Niklas Hultin
President Adama Barrow greeting the people. Photo by Katarina Höije It finally became clear on January 21, 2017, that Yahya Jammeh, the long-serving autocratic president of The Gambia…
Author: Mats Utas
Familiar with Graphic Anthropology? Didn’t think so… by David Johansson
During the second part of this spring sociologist Ugo Corte and I will teach a new master course in the Ethnography of the senses here at Uppsala University.…
Ebola: why has the previous existence of Ebola in the Mano river region not been discussed?
Empty Ebola Treatment Center at ELWA outside Monrovia. November 1, 2016 Passage from a medical journal from 1982: The results seem to indicate that at least Liberia…
Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic by Paul Richards. Book Review by Jamie Hitchen
Ebola: How a People’s Science Helped End an Epidemic is one of the first books to provide an in-depth analysis of the recent pandemic in West Africa, The…
How John Richardson Joined the NPFL: Charles Taylor’s Confidant Speaks on Liberian Politics and American Warmongering, by Brooks Marmon
One of Charles Taylor’s best known and most eloquent defenders is John T. Richardson, a Liberian architect, who continues to speak with the former Liberian President two to…
Flavour was not supposed to die…, by Andrew Jefferson
It’s raining in Freetown and the traffic is, as usual, slow on the road through Congo Town towards Kroo Town Road. The radio announcer is going through the…
The protest march in Guinea and the tragedy of the stray bullet, by Joschka Philipps (Conakry, August 18, 2016)
Thierno Hamidou Diallo, may he rest in peace, was fatally shot on August 16th, 2016. He is the tragic victim of the anti-government demonstration in the Guinean capital…
Governing the world ‘as if’ it counts, by Morten Jerven
The most challenging notion to take on board in the governance of today’s world is that not all that counts can be counted. We increasingly rely on numbers…
Prevention and militarization in Africa’s security governance by Linnéa Gelot
The 27th African Union Summit, underway in Kigali, Rwanda, is widely expected to adopt one of Dr Donald Kaberuka’s recommendations on how to increase member state contributions…
One year after the elections: a deceptive calm in Burundi? by Mimmi Söderberg Kovacs
Burundian soldiers patrolling the streets of Bujumbura. Photo by the author The car stops and the driver turns off the ignition and leans back in the seat. Before…
The Inner Beast released after Ugandan Elections 2016, Marianne Bach Mosebo
The Ugandan Presidential Election in 2016 left many Ugandans frustrated and angry at the election process and the announcement of the incumbent, President Yoweri Museveni, as the winner…
Elections in Uganda 2016: Rumours and the Terror of the Unknown, by Henni Alava and Cecilie Lanken Verma
Two parallel realities appear to exist in pre-election Uganda, especially when seen from the northern region of Acholiland ten years after it was declared ‘post-conflict’. In one, everything…
The power of language: discourses and efficacious fussiness in the Ugandan elections, by Anna Baral
On February 15, 2016, three days before Ugandan general elections, the four-times presidential candidate (and never a winner) Kizza Besigye was stopped by anti-riot and military police with…
New Developments in Drone Proliferation: How Africa was Deployed to Rescue Drones, by Kristin Bergtora Sandvik
Debates on global drone proliferation tend to assume that adoption and adaptation of drones follow a universal logic and that the drone industry is a singular thing, geographically…
Burundi, I, and the year of 2015, by Gudrun Sif Fridriksdottir
“I miss dancing” a friend of mine says sometime in late June. “What?” I reply, thinking I must have misheard him. “I miss dancing”, he hesitates a bit…
The Ties that Bind: Ex-Military Command Structures as a Foundation for Peace or Source for Insecurity? by Anders Themnér
The presence of large groups of ex-combatants is often seen as a major challenge to post-civil war stability. Experiences of ex-fighters engaging in different forms of violence have…
Closed fists of Ebola, by Diana Szántó
The arrival is always a shock. When the door of the aeroplane opens, there is a sudden rush of heat, of odours and colours. It does not take…
A Burkina Faso where “nothing should be as before”: presidential and legislative elections in perspective By Sten Hagberg
On Sunday 29 November, Burkina Faso organized successful presidential and legislative elections. They marked the end of a one-year-political transition and a step in consolidating the country’s democr…
Bujumbura Burning, Part II: Misrepresentations of the Burundian Crisis and their Consequences, by Jesper Bjarnesen
Since April, Burundi’s capital of Bujumbura has been the scene of violent confrontations between security forces and civilian protesters who deplore president Pierre Nkurunziza’s candidacy in July‘s p…
“We Are With You” – Musicians and the 2016 general elections in Uganda, by Nanna Schneidermann
In Uganda, the campaigns for the 2016 elections are on. On the 16th of October president Yoweri K. Museveni was the guest of honor at a dinner party…
“Rogue, Rogue, Rogue…” – Marketscapes, Criminality and Society in Liberia’s Postwar Borderlands, by Richard Akum
“Rogue, rogue, rogue!!” In many communities in Liberia where the state faces security service provision challenges, this chorus whips up the pent-up wrath of violent mobs. The “rogue,…
Zanzibar in trouble?
I took the family for a holiday on the paradise island Zanzibar. White sand, turquoise water and colorful marine life. Easy living. The last two days we left…
“You think this is an Ebola Office?” Rebuilding trust in the aftermath of Sierra Leone’s outbreak, by Luisa Enria
We are sitting amongst the rubble of an unfinished building, a group of young men have stopped their construction work for a moment to take respite from the…
Popular resistance stopped the coup, by Sten Hagberg
Last week, Burkina Faso was breaking international news. In the midst of a government meeting, soldiers of the president’s security forces – the notorious Régiment de Sécurité Présidentielle…