Freetown – tangible progress, by Mats Utas
Kushe-o (hello) – entering Eastern parts of Freetown in the late afternoon New roads and through fares, broadened streets, less traffic congestion, paved streets, a toll road making…
Tag: Urban issues
In between homes – the in-between existence of refugees in transit in Eastleigh, Nairobi, by Lena Johansson (master student at Uppsala University)
Eastleigh shop in 2009 soon after Obama became US president. Photo by Mats Utas Eastleigh, Nairobi is pictured as a good area for Somali refugees in media and…
Congosa politics: Rumours and elections in Sierra Leone, by Diana Szanto
The red party. APC political rally in Freetown Congosa in Krio means gossiping and spreading rumour, but its connotations are much darker than in English. It equals with name…
Urban kinship: the micro-politics of proximity and relatedness in African cities, by Jesper Bjarnesen and Mats Utas
It is our pleasure and privilege to introduce a special issue of Africa, exploring the micro-politics of proximity and relatedness in six African cities. To understand how social…
Fragile Security or Fatale Liaisons? Reflections on 2 March 2018 Attacks in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, by Sten Hagberg
On Friday 2 March 2018 around 10 o’clock, two coordinated of terrorist attacks took place in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. The first attack involved gunmen seeking…
The myth of the trickle-down effect: What Guinea’s recent upheavals intimate about the country, by Joschka Philipps
The dry season’s dust has again settled on Conakry’s streets, aside from a few marks of ashes and rubble on the sides of the main avenues, everything seems…
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…
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…
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…
“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,…