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This book investigates the ways in which soft power is used by African countries to help drive global influence. Selecting four of the countries most associated with soft power across the continent, this book delves into the currencies of soft power across the region: from South Africa’s progressive constitution and expanding multinational corporations, to Nigeria’s Nollywood film industry and Technical Aid Corps (TAC) scheme, Kenya’s sport diplomacy, fashion and tourism industries, and finally Egypt’s Pan-Arabism and its reputation as the cradle of civilisation. The book asks how soft power is wielded by these countries and what constraints and contradictions they encounter. Underst...
This book investigates the ways in which soft power is used by African countries to help drive global influence. Selecting four of the countries most associated with soft power across the continent, this book delves into the currencies of soft power across the region: from South Africa’s progressive constitution and expanding multinational corporations, to Nigeria’s Nollywood film industry and Technical Aid Corps (TAC) scheme, Kenya’s sport diplomacy, fashion and tourism industries, and finally Egypt’s Pan-Arabism and its reputation as the cradle of civilisation. The book asks how soft power is wielded by these countries and what constraints and contradictions they encounter. Underst...
This edited volume explores Nigeria’s domestic and international politics and its implications for the country’s national development and international status. Coinciding with the twenty year anniversary of Nigeria’s return to democratic rule, this volume considers the state of democracy in Nigeria and examines its successes and challenges with a view towards offering possible solutions for the country’s future development. The first half of the volume addresses domestic politics, focusing on current issues such as the 2019 elections, Nigerian federalism, media, state-civil society relations, and Boko Haram terrorism. The second half looks at Nigeria’s relations with its African neighbors, discussing the relationships between Nigeria and South Africa, Egypt, Ghana, and Cameroon, among others. Engaging the full spectrum of the politics of a rising African power, this volume will be of interest to students and researchers of comparative politics, international relations, foreign policy, African studies, regional politics, peace, security, conflict, and development studies, as well as African policymakers.
This book considers the work of the preeminent scholar on decoloniality, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, as a means of examining the development of decoloniality discourse and considering the future direction of the African knowledge economy. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni has been instrumental in the construction of theories and ideas necessary for advancing a decolonial system of education and epistemology. This book considers how Professor Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s work has helped to shape our thinking both on Mugabe and the history of Zimbabwe, and beyond to the broader questions of race, liberation, higher education, and the future of decolonial studies. Renowned author Professor Toyin Falola then invites us to consider the dangers of continued repression of African epistemologies, and the enormous benefits of an alternative knowledge economy in which a diverse multiplicity of ideas drives our understanding of the world on to new heights. Unpacking the various conceptual leanings of decoloniality through the works of one of its leading lights, this book will be an essential read for researchers across the fields of African Studies, Race Studies, Philosophy, and Education.
The book is a response to the dominant discourse of South Africa as unwelcoming to African immigrants. Acknowledging the reality of xenophobia against African migrants in South Africa, it explores the positive spaces of interactions between South Africans and African migrants that do not necessarily result in tension. Hence, the book is about conviviality, cohabitation, interdependency and the production of a multicultural rainbow nation. South Africa, its constitution and representation as a multicultural society is the perfect context to experiment with the ideas in the book. Part of the objectives is therefore to demonstrate, as contained in the title, the ambivalence of this relationship which the popular discourse of xenophobia has silenced.
Although sociology is present as a discipline or as a social practice in most countries in the world, its future as a not-only Western social science has hardly been addressed before. In this book, a team of interdisciplinary scholars have been working together not so much to offer one single response to the question than to raise important issues at stake for the future of sociology. Is it universal? Can it be indigenous? How is it possible – and is it even desirable – to write its history differently so as to know better about its early world diffusion and gradual Westernization? Do we need to expand or change its canon? This collection brings together essays that are all engaged in in...
Interrogating Xenophobia and Nativism in Twenty-First-Century Africa interrogates xenophobia and nativism in Africa and how they hamper the realisation of Pan-Africanism. The contributors examine migration in Africa, immigration policies and politics, and the social impacts and history of xenophobia and nativism in African life and culture. Through their analyses, the contributors explore how xenophobia and nativism have impacted the Pan-Africanism movement. The book also offers suggestions for reducing xenophobia and nativism in Africa, including bettering immigration policies and creating socioeconomic structures that would enrich the public and help prevent the pervasive belief that immigrants usurp limited opportunities for the poor in the countries they immigrate to.
This book examines the detrimental impact of illicit financial flows on South Africa’s development, political economy, and transformation in the 21st century. Over the years, illicit financial flows have led to the systematic looting and channelling away of South African resources, yet they are rarely studied by researchers looking to explain the country’s underdevelopment and political economy. This book looks across sectors, showing that illicit financial flows cut across all the key pillars of development, frustrating the betterment of peoples’ lives in South Africa. Investigating the problem from a decolonial perspective, the book delves deep into the catastrophic impacts of illicit financial flows for people and the economy, discusses how the problem is being combatted, and ultimately suggests solutions for rebuilding social trust between people and the state. Making an important contribution to the decolonial debate, as well as to discussions of South Africa’s political economy, this book will be of interest to researchers across African studies, global development, political science, law and corruption studies.
Terrorism, Politics, and Human Rights Advocacy provides an insider-outsider analysis of the #BringBackOurGirls (#BBOG) movement. Formed through a coalition of elite women and middle-class allies to advocate for the rescue of over 200 high school girls from Chibok, Nigeria, who were kidnapped by Boko Haram in 2014, the movement is a global leader in the 'lives matter' advocacy and a new episode in African women-led rights movements. Based on data garnered from over 170 research participants, Oriola demonstrates how the #BBOG transformed the Chibok kidnapping into an international cause and a social problem in a sociological sense, inadvertently creating a social problem industry. The volume p...
This book critically engages with the concepts of small states and soft power and advances a new approach to defining small states, a new conceptualisation of soft power, and a method for empirically analysing the exercise of soft power. It revisits the concepts of small states and soft power with a focus on Bhutan and Qatar and their approach to exercise soft power to achieve their foreign policy goals. Building on two main perspectives to define small states – the objective approach and the subjective perspective – this book offers an intersubjective approach to define states as small. The intersubjective approach requires a shared understanding between states that a certain state is s...