On April 2, 2021, the Social Science Research Council’s (SSRC) African Peacebuilding Network (APN) held the virtual launch of the book, Researching Peacebuilding in Africa: Reflections on Fieldwork, Theory and Context, edited by Ismail Rashid and Amy Niang. Following the successful book launch, Natalie Bernstien, APN’s program assistant, interviewed both editors, posing questions about the […]
The cognitive empire is underpinned by gladiatory scholarship. The cognitive empire invades the mental universe of its targets. Ngugi wa Thiong’o in his book, Decolonizing the Mind: the Politics of Language in African Literature, depicted the cognitive empire as that “metaphysical” formation which operates through the detonation of cultural bombs at the center of a people’s universe and through the removal of hard disks of previous knowledge and memory so as to download into their minds the software of another knowledge and another memory.
In the early hours of November 4, 2020, the armed wing of the former ruling party of Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), attacked several federal military bases across Tigray including the military’s Northern Command headquarters in the capital Mekelle and killed or captured and detained soldiers and raided several armories. […]
This article reflects on Dagaaba men’s constructions of masculinity and the implications of such perspectives for everyday peacebuilding amid the Covid-19 pandemic in Africa. The essay is motivated by the observation that, despite the debilitating ramifications of Covid-19, the pandemic may offer men the opportunity to embrace and practice alternative notions of masculinity in their […]
Boko Haram’s 2014 kidnapping of 276 female students from Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, marked an important transition in the Nigerian and global fight against violent extremism, and offers a useful lens into the vagaries of Trump’s policies on women, peace and security in Africa. His administration provided support to Nigeria’s armed […]
Yet, in moving forward, we must look back to past mistakes, learn lessons, and prevent future shortcomings, particularly in relation to the peacebuilding dimensions of Africa-US relations.
