Contemporary Journal of African Studies (CJAS)

From the Editorial Team

Akosua Adomako Ampofo — 2024-11-30

Resolving Chieftaincy Conflicts through Intercultural Dialogue: The Case of Bawku Interethnic Peace Committee in Northern Ghana

Joshua Gariba — 2024-11-30

Farmer-Herder Conflicts as a Clash of Ontologies in North-Central Nigeria

Philip Idachaba — 2024-11-30

The paper understands the farmer-herder clashes in the North-Central Nigeria as a type of ethno-religious conflict. Given the role of the cattle and the farmland to the material survival of the herder and the farmer, discourses on these clashes have been dominated by the perception that they are struggles for material survival couched in religious garb. That is, these clashes have been interpreted, largely, as a struggle for survival. However, the distinct point this essay highlights is that, the clashes are not just motivated by the inevitability of material survival. Rather, the conflicts are fundamentally a clash of ontologies (worldviews). To properly establish this point, the essay will show that: (i) the ontology of the Muslim Fulani Herder is fundamentally different from that of the rural farmers in North-Central Nigeria (ii) a major area where this clash of ontology operates is in the centrality of land among the communities of North-Central Nigeria; (iii) and the clash is further exacerbated by the fact that both ontologies are seemingly incommensurable. The paper adopts hermeneutics and phenomenology as methods. That is, the essay interprets cultural practices and oral lore in other to describe the essence of both groups.

On Language attitudes and Language endangerment: The Dompo Language of Ghana in perspective

Esther Manu-Barfo — 2024-11-30

There are talks of a few thousands and even a few hundreds of speakers left of a language. In some instances, languages with these numbers of speakers are classified as being endangered. A language with native speakers as few as below ten will be categorized as highly endangered and on the verge of extinction. The Dompo language, spoken in the North-Western part of the Bono Region of Ghana is one such language. The language has a remaining aged fluent speaker base of about three people, and a few other natives who have some basic knowledge of its vocabulary. Dompo has lost its vibrancy to the Nafaanra language, whose speakers are believed to have migrated from the neighbouring country of Ivory Coast. Nafaanra is currently not only the language of everyday usage in the Dompo community but is also the first language of most of the native Dompo people. This paper discusses the results of a survey of 100 local respondents in the Dompo community about their attitudes towards Dompo and their views on the causes of the degeneration of the language. 66 respondents identified as native Dompos while 34 stated that they were Nafaanras. All the native Dompos recounted that while they have a positive attitude towards their language despite its current state, they bemoan its non-transmittance to them by their older kinsmen. Intermarriages between Dompos and Nafaanras, which further led to the subjugation of the language, emigration of fluent speakers to other communities, lack of interest on the part of the younger generation to learn Dompo, the language being used as a secret language to tattle about others are among some of the reasons given for the decline of the language.

On the Coloniality of News Mobilities and How the World Knows About What Happens in Francophone Africa

Lyn Kouadio — 2024-11-30

On the Coloniality of News Mobilities and How the World Knows About What Happens in Francophone Africa

Abstract

The coloniality of the global news industry and its centrality in knowledge production about the Global South remains under-examined. This is especially true of Black Francophone Africa (by which I refer to countries formerly colonised by France), which continues to receive limited attention in the academic study of Politics in Africa. By posing the question, ‘How do we know about what happens in Francophone Africa?’ this paper sheds light on the coloniality of production and circulation of news deemed credible about Francophone Africa. It interrogates the implications for knowledge production about this space in African Studies and International Politics.

Résumé

La colonialité de l'industrie mondiale de l'information et son rôle central dans la production des svaoirs sur les pays du Sud restent sous-examinés. Ce constat est particulièrement vrai pour l'Afrique Noire francophone (c'est-à-dire les pays anciennement colonisés par la France), qui demeure l'objet d'une attention limitée dans les études politiques sur l'Afrique. En posant la question "Comment sait-on ce qui se passe en Afrique francophone ?", cet article met en lumière la colonialité de la production et de la circulation d'informations jugées crédibles sur l'Afrique francophone. Il s'interroge sur les implications de la production de connaissances sur cet espace dans les études africaines et la politique internationale.

Dealing with learning uncertainties during COVID19 pandemic. Reflections of alone and unaccompanied refugee children in Uganda

David Okimait — 2024-11-30

This paper explores how alone and unaccompanied refugee children in a Ugandan refugee settlement reflected and dealt with their learning uncertainties that emerged during the coronavirus pandemic in Uganda. Their earlier experiences of living as refugee children in Ugandan refugee settlements fueled additional uncertainties that were evoked by memories of lost and abandoned childhoods in South Sudan that provided a better life and a promising future to some. Having experienced over five years of their childhoods as refugees in Ugandan settlements, children demonstrated their resilience mechanisms. Notable among these was the ability to be absorbed into foster family systems, the manufacture of new relations and reconnection with learning through the Ugandan education system. With such levels of childhood resilience, refugee children revealed that once again they were able to build dreams of a greater life ahead of them, which they believed stretched beyond their refugee status. In the period right from the emergence of COVID19, refugee children found themselves yet again in the midst of uncertainties. Whilst children argued that learning through school gave them a sense of direction for their future, they found themselves out of school for almost two years. This positioned children in situations where they had to once again negotiate past these uncertainties they were faced with. To these alone and unaccompanied refugee children, it was crucial to them to get past their learning uncertainties if they were to achieve their lives’ ambitions which from their reflections in this paper are mainly founded in schooling. From their experiences, children revealed different ways they negotiated their learning uncertainties including adapting to self-learning mechanisms, others anticipated that schools would reopen soon. And yet others believed that skipping a class or two was a way of recovering the lost school time due to lockdown measures.

Who Owns Africa? Neocolonialism, Investment, and the New Scramble

Ebenezer Kwesi Bosomprah — 2024-11-30