Ufahamu Africa

In this week’s episode with Judd Devermont, we talked about his recent publication in African Affairs, “The US intelligence community’s biases during the Nigerian civil war.” He made two book recommendations: Milan Vaishnav’s When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics and Ricardo Soares de Oliveira’s Magnificent and Beggar Land: Angola Since the Civil War.

Here are a few other things mentioned in this week’s episode, with some bonus links as well:

Read Monica Mark’s (@nickswicks) piece in Buzzfeed, titled, “Meet the Badass Women Wrestlers of Senegal.” Mark reports from a cluster of five villages in southern Senegal, the place from which all women wrestlers on Senegal’s national team hail. One of my favorite quotes from the piece comes from a 67-year-old great grandmother who said, “Wrestling is how we prove our womanhood.”

If you liked that, you might also like this 2013 BBC news report from the Casamance region of Senegal where Mark was reporting from:

The East African published a moving story last month of a woman who was taken as a toddler from Rwanda to Italy during the 1994 genocide and later adopted by an Italian family. The woman, Jeanette Chiappello, now in her twenties, recently returned for the first time to her birthplace and reunited with her 70-year-old father and others in her family. The story is a cautionary tale about international adoption, especially during a crisis. Here at Ufahamu Africa, we’d like to do a longer segment on international adoption, so if listeners or readers have any book or interview recommendations, please comment below or send us an email.

It looks like the presidential runoff election in Liberia will be postponed. The runoff election between retired footballer George Weah and current Vice President Joseph Boakai was supposed to be held on Tuesday, November 7. The supreme court ordered a stay so that it can hear the complaint of third-place finisher and lawyer Charles Brumskine, who alleges the first-round Oct. 10^th election was marred with polling station irregularities and violations of electoral law and fraud. The court is set to rule Monday on whether it will delay the runoff election. For some background here are a few pre-election reports:

• Liberia’s election as a true test of democracy by Robtel Neejai Palley
• Africa Research Institute pre-election expert briefing by Ibrahim Al-bakri Nyei
• What Afrobarometer survey data tell us about the election by Kim Yi Dionne

If you haven’t already, listen to the latest episode of Africa Past and Present. Host Dr. Peter Alegi (@futbolprof) and guest host Dr. Candice Keller interview Youssouf Sakaly and Malick Sitou about the digital Archive of Malian Photography, a collaborative project that aims to preserve and digitize collections of five important Malian photographers. The episode raises important questions about ownership and ethics and conservation. You should also check out the archive, where low-resolution scans are shared through a creative commons license (like the image here) and high-resolution scans can be accessed through collection custodians.

Here are a few things we didn’t have a chance to share in this week’s episode:

• Watch the launch of Landry Signé’s book, Innovating Development Strategies in Africa: The Role of International, Regional and National Actors, at the Brookings Institution. We talked with Landry about his book in Episode 29.
• Zimbabwe police charge a U.S. citizen with plotting against the government.
• Fascinating reporting on how aquaculture threatens native fish species of Africa, with immediate concerns for ecotourism destinations like Lake Malawi and the Okavango Delta.
• There were reports of gunfire and protests in Eritrea’s capital.
• Meb Keflezighi ran his last competitive marathon on Sunday. Did you know one of his rituals before a marathon is eating his mother’s himbasha, a fluffy baked bread.