Politics in Africa: Violence and Patronage

Is it true that domination and politics in general work differently in Africa than in Europe or the US? Part one of a series on theory and the everyday life that appeared in the latest issue of Konkret magazine. Find it here as pdf (German). I introduce several concepts that are, in my opinion, useful to understand important developments in African countries, inter alia Bayart’s extraversion, Chabal/Daloz’s instrumentalisation of disorder and Mbembe’s private indirect government.

Africa as a Net Creditor

During my research for an article on the informal economy in Africa (due to be published in Konkret’s August edition) I came across an update of the calculations by James K. Boyce and Léonce Ndikumana with regards to capital flight from 33 sub-Saharan African countries, already published in October 2012. The authors found that the total stock of capital that is invested or spent in the global north (calculated with the modest short-term US Treasury Bill interest rate) between 1970 and 2010 amount to 1.06 trillion US-Dollar. “The stereotypical view that SSA is severly indebted and heavily aid-dependent”, they write, “is not fully consistent with the facts.”

Chimurenga, the Third Part

13 years after the onset of the second land reform in Zimbabwe, the effects of the redistributions are still highly contested. Read my review of a new book on the land question here. If you prefer German, you can choose the pdf of the original article as published by Konkret magazine.