African Studies Program (AFSP)

This course is an introduction to the culture of the Swahili people of eastern Africa and their language, Kiswahili. We will focus on acquiring basic conversational Kiswahili through activities that enhance the four communicative skills (listening, speaking, reading, and writing). Through performance of cultural communicative activities and selected readings, students will gain an understanding of basic Kiswahili grammatical structures and cultural insights of the people of East Africa. They will also get an overview of the history of Kiswahili and its place in eastern Africa.

On completion of the course, students will be expected to demonstrate the ability to:

a)Use basic Kiswahili skills to successfully perform day-to-day interactions such as greetings, interpersonal conversations, and global comprehension

b)Communicate using a wide range of simple to fair Kiswahili grammatical constructions and draw upon a vocabulary of about 300 to 500 words.

c)Appreciate basic cultural practices of the Swahili speaking peoples and their

This course is designed to help learners of the oral, reading, listening, speaking and writing skills of Akan (Twi). Learners will be introduced to the vocabulary items and grammar of the language. The goal is to introduce learners to Akan language and culture. Learners will have the opportunity to participate in practical oral expression, description and interpersonal interactions. Beginners will also be able to recognise Akan words and use them in appropriate beginners conversations.

While this course starts with Olive Schreiner's astonishing C19 novel, The Story of an African Farm, and follow with Sol Plaatje's Mhudi and other C20 classics, the bulk of the time will be given over to reading and discussing the extraordinary explosion of post-aparthed literature in South Africa. Authors covered will included JM Coetzee, Athol Fugard, Masande Ntshanga, Es'kia Mphalele, Antjie Krog, Phaswane Mphe, Marlene van Niekerk, Zoe Wicomb, and others, and the course will trace literary interventions into the politics, ethics, and aesthetics (successful and failed) of building a new nation after the violence of apartheid Restrictions: While this course starts with Olive Schreiner's astonishing C19 novel, The Story of an African Farm, and follow with Sol Plaatje's Mhudi and other C20 classics, the bulk of the time will be given over to reading and discussing the extraordinary explosion of post-aparthed literature in South Africa. Authors covered will included JM Coetzee, Athol Fugard, Masande Ntshanga, Es'kia Mphalele, Antjie Krog, Phaswane Mphe, Marlene van Niekerk, Zoe Wicomb, and others, and the course will trace literary interventions into the politics, ethics, and aesthetics (successful and failed) of building a new nation after the violence of apartheid

This course will deal with the extension of grammatical concepts and structures and vocabulary expansion. In order to cover the language competency areas of speaking, listening, reading and writing, students will learn to initiate and sustain conversations, transcribe, translate and summarize news broadcasts, read excerpts from the book and newspaper articles, and give summaries, and write 3-4 page essays. This multifaceted approach will enable students to enhance their communication skills in Swahili, and handle a variety of topics that tremendously reflect the sociocultural environment and current events in East Africa.

This course will be a survey of cultural and contemporary issues in Kiswahili. A variety of issues and genres will be explored to give the student the opportunity to experience the richness, depth and versatility of Kiswahili. The topics that will be covered range from education to health, agriculture, politics, poetry, music and literature. The vast array of topics offered will provide the student the opportunity to get insights into the language, as well as a deeper understanding of the triumphs and tribulations of the people of East Africa and their quest to make sense of their world, both locally and internationally

What is Africa to you? How should Africa be written? How should Africa not be written? These fundamental questions are among other crucial questions informing the direction of this class, where the world’s second-largest continent, Africa—humankind’s cradle—will be at the center of our discussions. We will contend with the historical representations of Africa, its peoples, societies, and cultures, and what it means to imagine Africa in the contemporary moment. In doing so, we will not just leave at the representation of Africa as a geographic tragedy but as a complex space that has long teemed with a “human vibrancy” that enabled the peopling of the world.

From Burna Boy’s Afro-fusion music to the Dahomean female warriors in Woman King, and the youth-led 2020 protest against police brutality in Nigeria, West African people and cultures have remained central to popular imagination and political debates. This course invites students to explore the historical backdrop of the events, peoples, and ideas that have shaped West Africa’s evolution. It traverses the rise and fall of empires from the first millennium AD onwards, examines the emergence of European imperialism and anti-colonial resistance in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and concludes with the transformation in political and economic life from the 1960s to the present. The readings and discussions will emphasize the region’s contributions to global affairs and transnational movements’ influence on local developments. After taking this class, Students will understand how West Africans have adapted to changes and reflect on historical lessons that can shape the region’s future. Our study will include visits to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Registration in the class requires enrollment in AFSP 2205 Africa is People 3 credit course and instructor's approval. The course is part of SFS Global Experience Centennial Labs. To apply, please visit https://sfs.georgetown.edu/sfs-centennial-labs-c-labs-and-experiential-classes/

This course will analyze the formal and informal roles that women play in politics in sub-Saharan Africa. Women have always had a role in influencing political life and we will consider the historical context of African women’s political participation, activism and leadership. In the contemporary period, women in Africa are increasingly assuming formal political leadership as elected officials in national and local governments, as government ministers and political party leaders and as directors of civil society organizations, lobby groups and other politically-focused organizations and institutions. At the same time, women citizens in Africa face distinct political and social challenges. These include marriage, divorce and inheritance laws, land reform, as well as domestic and sexual violence, and access and opportunity in education and employment. Women and girls also face distinct threats in the context of war and conflict, including sexual violence and displacement. The course will consider specific political agendas of women, and the ways in which women and men mobilize to address these issues through both formal and informal political means. This is done through a focus on specific countries, including Kenya, South Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria and Somalia.

"Equality," is, in many ways, the cornerstone of modern conceptions of society, government, and global human rights. Since the Enlightenment, it has been the express concern of the "Western" world. But it is also, historically and culturally, controversial: What does "equality" mean? Or, as a famous law article on the topic asks, "Equality of what?" This course will trace the European and US philosophical traditions of equality alongside cross-cultural conceptions and critiques of the term, particularly those produced by African authors and artists. In doing so, it hopes to unsettle easy assumptions about the term's meaning, and to bridge American ideals of equality to a global understanding of the term. This interdisciplinary seminar, funded by an NEH Enduring Questions grant developed by English (Prof. Samantha Pinto) and African Studies/SFS (Professor Lahra Smith), will include a field trip to Thomas Jefferson’s estate, Monticello, as well as to other DC area cultural sites. Assignments will include group presentations, critical analysis papers, web postings, and research intensive, independent final projects; Authors will include Plato, Locke, Nkrumah, Coetzee, Achebe, and Ba, among others. Students from English, Government, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, Justice and Peace Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, African Studies, African American Studies, Culture and Politics, and all other disciplines are welcome.

This course builds on the material covered in Beginners and Intermediate Swahili. Advanced Swahili II will survey cultural and contemporary issues in Kiswahili. A variety of issues and genres will be explored to give the student the opportunity to experience the richness, depth, and versatility of Kiswahili. The topics that will be covered range from education to health, agriculture, politics, poetry, music and literature. The vast array of topics offered will provide the student the opportunity to get insights into the language, as well as a deeper understanding of the triumphs and tribulations of the people of East Africa and their quest to make sense of their world, both locally and internationally.

Poor resource management in many parts of Africa has resulted in serious social and environmental problems. This course will explore human and natural environmental interaction in Africa. An overview of Africa’s environmental history and its current situation will be discussed through a series of lectures, case studies, guest speakers, brainstorming sessions, and other hands-on activities. Specific focus for this course will be on natural resource extraction and consumption, deforestation, food security, smart agriculture technologies for climate change adaptation, and water crisis. Additionally, students will be introduced to Geographic Information Systems and application for environmental management.

Archives and Silences: Writing African History: Archival records, especially written documents are often assumed to be the authoritative sources for documenting historical events. Nevertheless, historians have questioned this assumption, shedding light on how archival records not only perpetuate omissions and inequalities but also advocate for using sources like oral traditions and rumors to reconstruct the past. With African history as its case study, this course invites students to explore the methodologies employed by historians in crafting narratives on topics such as gender, slavery, animal-human relations, and urbanization. Emphasizing diverse sources like songs, fiction, photography, the built environment, and surveys, students will discover how scholars amplify marginalized voices in historical narratives.

We will aim to tackle questions such as: How were archival records and institutions that preserve them created? How do historians navigate archival formation and silences in their research and writing? Which new innovative sources have historians incorporated beyond official records? What are the possibilities and limitations of their methodological approaches?

Course activities will include conducting oral interviews, critiquing museum exhibitions, and writing research papers that account for issues of power and inequality in archives and in the field of African history. After taking this course, students will be able to assess and apply historical methodology tools in their respective fields of study.

From Edward Blyden’s 1862 call for African-Americans to migrate back to Africa to the Ghanaian government’s celebration of 2019 as the “Year of Return” for Africans in the diaspora, people of African descent have debated and represented Africa as a site of belonging and resettlement. This course invites students to explore the history of black people’s (specifically African-Americans, West Indians, and West Africans who lived abroad) return to Africa from the eighteenth century to the present. We will examine how Africans engaged and reworked ideologies such as Pan-Africanism and Garveyism in their struggles against colonialism and postcolonial military rule. We will interrogate the following questions together: How and why did people of African descent pursue immigration to Africa? What were the limits of their political and cultural projects? How did they influence their host communities and vice-versa? To unpack these questions, we will situate the experiences of merchants, students, activists, formerly enslaved people, soldiers, and technocrats within the context of the Atlantic slave trade, colonialism, decolonization, and postindependence politics in Africa. Through lectures, discussions, and written assignments, you will gain a deeper understanding of the economic, political, and cultural relationships that people of African descent have forged across the Atlantic.

African Digital Geopolitics examines digital sovereignty initiatives in Kenya and across Africa—especially efforts to build startup ecosystems and strengthen technical education—as a way to understand how postcolonial African states negotiate sovereignty within a globally asymmetrical technological and economic order. By situating entrepreneurship and platform-building in broader political and historical contexts, the course asks how these initiatives function both as practical policy interventions aimed at technology-driven development and as figural and material performances of postcolonial state agency. Drawing on African case studies, foundational development texts, policy documents, and a week-long fieldwork component in Kenya's Silicon Savannah, students will explore the aims, challenges, opportunities, and paradoxes of digitally mediated development, as well as the contested terrain where innovation, governance, and global capital intersect.

Registration in the class requires enrollment in AFSP 3200, African Digital Geopolitics, the corresponding 3-credit course, and the instructor's approval. The course is part of SFS Global Experience Centennial Labs. To apply, please visit https://sfs.georgetown.edu/sfs-centennial-labs-c-labs-and-experiential-classes/

Full Course Title: The Making of A Region: Conflict and Nationalism in West Africa

In this course we will study the relationship between conflict and nationalism in West Africa by paying special attention to the historical, social, political, and economic factors that gave rise to both of these phenomenon. We will approach West Africa as an integrated region, with a shared history in order to more accurately compare and contrast how specific movements for national recognition were rooted in larger historical issues specific to West Africa’s strategically significant place in global affairs. We will pay attention to key nationalist movements and their leaders, as well as the ideological and economic forces—locally, regionally, and internationally—that they had to navigate in order to better understand how some of these movements led to conflict in the region while others did not. Lastly, we will discuss the dual legacies of conflict and nationalism in regards to contemporary issues in West Africa.

This course builds on the material covered in Beginners and Intermediate Swahili. Advanced Swahili I will survey cultural and contemporary issues in Kiswahili. A variety of issues and genres will be explored to give the student the opportunity to experience the richness, depth and versatility of Kiswahili. The topics that will be covered range from education to health, agriculture, politics, poetry, music and literature. The vast array of topics offered will provide the student the opportunity to get insights into the language, as well as a deeper understanding of the triumphs and tribulations of the people of East Africa and their quest to make sense of their world, both locally and internationally.

Civil Society & Democratization in Africa

What do student organizations, church groups, trade unions and private newspapers have in common? They are all examples of civil society and they have at times played a critical role in challenging repressive and authoritarian governments across sub-Saharan Africa. Yet in modern Africa critics also charge that civil society weakens the already fragile state, and is often undemocratic in its own internal and inter-organizational dynamics. In this course we will consider the intellectual roots of the idea of civil society, as well as assess what African experiences with civil society can teach us about the possibility of democracy to transform lives in other parts of the world. Through case studies of particular countries, including Ghana, South Africa, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Ethiopia, we will consider the specific instances of civil society involvement in the context of particular African countries. We will look at the way people use community associations and other networks to avoid involvement in politics, to resist interventions from the state (political, economic and social), and sometimes to directly confront politicians and political leadership. Finally, we will consider whether women, ethnic groups, religious associations or other categories of civil society are more or less likely to contribute to democracy in Africa. The lessons learned apply not only to Africa, but to other newly democratizing countries.

This discussion-based seminar will introduce students to the diverse societies and contentious politics of West Africa. Focusing on the period since independence, the course will examine several case studies, including Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria. Students will read diverse primary and secondary sources, including memoirs by African leaders, accounts by anthropologists, and works by historians and political scientists. In addition to its emphasis on West Africa, the course will develop students' ability to analyze local, national, and regional politics.

The borders created by European colonialism have great significance to African states and politicians, but somewhat less meaning to citizens, who somewhat regularly cross them for both personal and business reasons. These same borders were drawn around diverse groups of people who do not necessarily feel an affinity to one another. Fifty years after independence, modern African states and their citizens struggle to balance nation-building challenges with democratization and economic development. In the context of tremendous ethnic, linguistic, racial and religious diversity, and faced with poverty and low levels of human capacity, the goals of equal and universal citizenship have rarely been met, though progress has been noted in some places. Recent political reforms such as elections and constitution-writing processes have become intertwined with questions of citizenship, ethnic and racial minorities, and language rights, to name just a few. In this course we will consider African nationalism in the context of broad theoretical understandings of the nation and the state. The course will address theories of nationalism and the specific experience of select countries, including Somalia, South Africa, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, and Senegal.

In this course we will explore the representations of Africa and African peoples from various perspectives, focusing primarily on literature and film. Academic scholarship in the natural and social sciences has some influence over how the continent and its inhabitants are viewed, including their histories, present conditions, and future possibilities. But perhaps even more influential in representing the challenges and hopes of the African continent is that which derives from literature and film. Increasingly, media and literature are being produced, marketed, and distributed across Africa, most notably from Nollywood, but other centers in Africa as well. Local, national, and international representations of Africa will be considered in some depth. The course is meant to help students integrate the study of Africa across their discipline/major, and foster a critical and reflective approach to the field of African Studies.

The African Studies Thesis allows students to investigate a topic of their choice in African Studies in depth. The spring colloquium offers you the opportunity to draw on various academic and other experiences in order to prepare a thesis on a specific topic in African studies. This colloquium will address the substantive phase of your thesis research. Students are expected to have defined and begun to refine the general topic of their thesis in the fall semester. In the spring semester, students work in the seminar and with their second readers/ advisors to complete the research, theory-building and writing phases of the thesis. Please contact African Studies for application.

This course seeks to broaden students’ understanding of the history, practices, and agenda of humanitarian organizations in Africa. We will critically analyze how humanitarian interventions have impacted the lives of Africans over the past two hundred years. Particular attention will be given to the ways in which Africans have actively shaped the outcomes of these interventions. Topic examined include anti-slavery movements, missionary Christianity, Muslim charity organizations, economic and military aids. Assigned texts include primary and secondary sources from a range of disciplinary perspectives.

Revolutionary Struggles in the African Atlantic The concepts of struggle and freedom, and their revolutionary promises will be critically discussed in this class. We will contend with how Africans' desire to wrestle themselves from the interlocking systems of colonialism, enslavement, apartheid, and racialized capitalism actively shaped the making of the modern world. The following question will drive class dialogues and debates. Have the struggles for freedom by Africans exposed the loopholes in the normative conceptions of freedom and democracy animating the Western political project? In deliberating on this vital question, we will employ the African Atlantic as a framework to diagram what freedom means for Africans on the continent and its myriad diasporas.

Most sub-Saharan African governments began independence as democracies. With few exceptions, they gave way to authoritarian rule and remained so for 25 years. At the beginning of the 1990s, a wave of political liberalization began to sweep across the region. This course will examine the nature of political institutions and political rule in sub-Saharan Africa since independence, including the factors leading to these political changes. Key topics will include the colonial political inheritance, ethnicity and social characteristics of African societies, the nature of and role of the military, political parties, legislatures, judiciaries, the media, interest groups, patronage networks, external powers, and the role of economic conditions (including structural adjustment programs) in influencing African politics. The course will conclude by asking whether the current trend toward democratization will endure.

In this interdisciplinary undergraduate seminar, we will discuss what it means to “queer” Africa and what it means to “africanize” Queerness. First, we will explore how “Africa” shapes queerness and consider how “Africa,” which is simultaneously a geographic location and an idea, is inherently queer. Second, we will illuminate how the African (Black)/Queer body provides a glimpse into those worlds currently rendered impossible by what the radical African feminist, Patricia McFadden, describes as the “neoliberal and neocolonial collusion.” What does it mean to be Black and African in a highly racialized world? And what work does “queering” Africa do to retain Blackness and its myriad vitalities? Similarly, we will deliberate on the work that “africanizing” Queer—which has always been attached to whiteness—does to recover the blackness inherent to queerness. In sum, we will contend with how queering Africa amplifies the complexities animating Africanness in the face of global white supremacist capitalist-heteropatriarchy and the assault and siege this regime unleashes on Afro/Black queer lives.

In a 2021 article, the Washington Post refers to African cities like Lagos and Khartoum as the “center of the world’s urban future.” Why and how are African cities central to discourses about futurity and urbanism? This course invites students to explore the evolution of cities on the continent of Africa and the innovative ways that its residents have developed to contend with everyday challenges. The first part of the course will focus on the rise and transformation of cities before and after the era of the slave trade, under colonial rule, and independent states. During this unit and the next one, we will address the following question: how have everyday people and policymakers adjusted to and shaped the cities’ shifting political and economic atmosphere? The second half will turn to how diverse actors such as architects, government officials, novelists, urban planners, young people, and garbage workers engaged with neoliberal policies and imagined new possibilities. We will consider themes such as governance, infrastructure, urban planning, and spatial practices. This course will enable students to think critically about the key themes and debates that have informed the field of African urbanism.

How is technology impacting the conduct of politics in African states? Is technology strengthening or weakening democracy in Africa? Throughout the world, technological innovations have changed the way politicians engage voters, how voters receive and process information about campaigns and political events, the conduct of politicians while in office, and the manner in which elections are conducted. For example, WhatsApp, Facebook, and other social media sites have enabled politicians and their detractors to rapidly spread (mis)information, bypassing legacy media outlets. At the same time, several countries have adopted biometric and tabulation technologies to register and identify voters on election day, and to relay vote results. Overall, the deployment of technology in politics has created opportunities for democratic consolidation while also disrupting the normal conduct of politics.

This class will provide students with a broad understanding of politics in the digital era. While the material will focus on African states, throughout the semester we will make reference to examples from other parts of the world. At the end of the semester, students will have learned about: (i) how technology is reshaping the conduct of politics in Africa, (ii) the promise and peril of technological solutions to political problems, (iii) the nature of political participation among the youth in African states, and (iv) how analogue institutions may adapt to politics in the digital era.

This course will examine the nexus between the humanitarian crisis in Africa and the media through a case study format. It will explore the media-humanitarian relationship in four periods: the period immediately after independence in the 1960s, the Cold War, which lasted until the late 1980s, during the multiparty period, and the War on Terror, which started after September 11.

The course will also explore the changing humanitarian landscape from its early bootstrapped days in Biafra when it was purely driven by charitable instinct to its present professionalized project. Likewise, the media landscape has witnessed a radical shift; the newspaper was the primary media, especially photos, during the Biafra conflict. Ethiopia's 1984/5 famine was TV's moment, but in Ethiopia in 2020, social media was the principal site of engagement.

This course is taught by Mr. Abdullahi Boru Halakhe, senior advocate for East and Southern Africa at Refugees International

TBA

Afrofuturism has a decades-long history, but arguably did not enter the mainstream before 2018’s “Black Panther” popularized the genre. Long before the breakout film, however, Afrofuturist art forms, mainly speculative fiction and film, employed the lens of blackness to (re-)imagine the future, or futures, about black life and power, both worldly and otherworldly. Afrofuturism certainly has a foundation in African American culture. Yet what constitutes Afrofuturism continues to be defined, reinterpreted and debated, and many writers and scholars see Afrofuturism as rooted in African society, culture and the arts. Importantly, Afrofuturism is not merely the stuff of science fiction, mythology, or music, the formats in which it has seen its widest expression. In the real world, too, African governments have long engaged in futurist thinking, captured in technological blueprints and national development plans, “visioning” documents: Kenya’s Vision 2030, Rwanda’s Vision 2050, the African Union’s Agenda 2063, and myriad national and continental initiatives, are all efforts to guide transformation and to imagine alternate futures for the continent. Thus, Afrofuturism, broadly conceived, can allow us to imagine different trajectories for Africa and its Diaspora. What do the varied perspectives on Afrofuturism say about African culture, identity and agency? How might Afrofuturist lenses affect Africa’s national development narratives and international relations? Drawing on such diverse sources as literature, film, policy documents and social science texts, and engaging intersecting themes, including gender, technology, humanity, and power, this course will interrogate these and other questions. Evaluation will include both social science and creative writing assignments.

There has been a recent resurgence in inter-state cooperation in Africa on security and economic issues. These developments have brought a new focus to regional economic communities as well as continent-wide organizations like the African Union and the African Development Bank. This raises two important questions: (1) what explains the observed patterns of inter-state cooperation on security, trade, and investment in Africa? ; and (2) under what conditions has inter-state cooperation yielded results in the attempt to provide “African solutions to African problems?”

This class will examine how the need to cooperate on security and economic matters is driving inter-state cooperation in Africa. The goal of the class is to systematically interrogate the logic of inter-state cooperation in the region, and the workings of key sub-regional and continental organizations.

Terrorist organizations like al-Shabaab, AQIM, and Boko Haram, as well as ongoing civil conflict in a number of countries, present new challenges to African states, and have forced them to seek regional approaches to deal with the emerging security threats. Why do some African states seek international assistance in the face of security threats while others do not? And what is the impact of regional organizations on state development in Africa? At the same time, Africa has over a dozen regional economic communities, with each country being a member of at least two. Yet at 12%, intra-Africa trade is among the lowest of any region in the word. If Africa’s borders are artificial, why are they so impervious to trade? How has regional economic cooperation impacted intra-Africa trade and general mobility of goods, services, and people? The class will pay special attention to ongoing interstate infrastructure projects under the NEPAD initiative; as well as the main political and economic communities such as the African Union, ECOWAS, the EAC, SADC, and COMESA.

Poor resource management in many parts of Africa has resulted in serious social and environmental problems. This course will explore human and natural environmental interaction in Africa. An overview of Africa’s environmental history and current situation will be discussed through lectures, case studies, guest speakers, brainstorming sessions, and other hands-on activities. Specific focus for this course will be on natural resource extraction and consumption, deforestation, food security, smart agriculture technologies for climate change adaptation, and water crisis. Additionally, students will be introduced to Geographic Information Systems and applications for environmental management.

Jihadism and Security Challenges in Africa: The significant rise of jihadist networks has seriously upended the inchoate and precarious security architecture of Africa and turned it into a new global hotspot for jihadist activities. As a result, the continent has increasingly faced unprecedented human security challenges (violent extremism, terrorism, organized crime, rural exodus, IDPs, and migration).This course will offer an overview of the complex taxonomy of Jihadist movements, their origins and patterns, Salafi ideologies, and their socio-political impact on dramatically affected states in North Africa, the Sahel, and the Horn of Africa. Careful attention will be given to the structural drivers and factors fuelling violence, as well as the existing strategies for countering violent extremism (CVE) across Africa.

This course is concerned with the understanding and analysis of African Economies. We will explore many of the issues that African economies are grappling with today in their progress to eliminate poverty and improve the livelihoods of millions. Specifically, we will examine questions such as, what is the structure of African economies, what are the key sectors and what are the challenges and opportunities therein? What is Africa’s role in the global economy?

The course will be structured in three core parts: The first part is an overview to understand African economies, the second part covers, more in-depth, seven key topics that matter for the viability and the performance of African economies, and the third part of the course will take an international perspective to analyze the role of Africa in the world economy, discussing issues on trade and foreign aid.

After taking this course, students are expected to have a good understanding of the current opportunities and challenges faced by African economies, to understand where Africa stands and how Africa contributes to the world economy, and to be able to have intelligent conversations on a wide range of socio-economic topics on the African continent.

We cover material ranging from qualitative case studies to theories of growth and trade and to statistical analyses. No prior exposure to any of these fields is required—the material is designed to be accessible to all, and technical material is presented in a relatively non­-technical fashion.

Wired Asymmetries explores the historical, diplomatic, and economic processes by which the meanings of technology have been constructed. Despite the common understanding of technology as a value-neutral instrument or a functional conduit that automates tasks, its Greek origin, teckhne, means art. Thus, contrary to this instrumental thinking, the course aims to discern the ethical and political meanings of technology. In order to examine the consequences of technology for societies and everyday people, the course addresses the historical context, socio-political environments, and notions of technological adoption in African countries. Accordingly, this course invites students to examine how different global players, corporate stakeholders, and communities—across gender, ethnicity, race, and class lines—have understood the political meaning and consequences of technological adoption.

This class is a graduate and undergraduate course that focuses on the endangerment and revitalization of African Languages. It explores the extent of language endangerment, the effects of loss of languages and the efforts that can be taken by individuals, speakers, policy makers and researchers to ameliorate the rate of language endangerment and loss in Africa. We will explore linguistic tools, methods and technology (including hands-on in-class data elicitation of an African language) that will help in the documentation and revitalization of languages and cultures in Africa.

This class examines some of the methodological and conceptual instruments that have shaped the understanding and history of technology in Africa. In doing so, it addresses the context, political commitments, and conceptual roots of technological adoption and investment in the afterlife of colonialism. This course seeks to address topics such as:technology's relations with the state, technology and development, technology and diplomacy, and the politics of techno-modernity. The examination of digital tools will include AI-powered facial recognition systems and data production and management, as well as associated understandings of modernity, development, rationality, and objectivity. We explore how African postcolonial states use technologies to try to engender futures beyond the asymmetries established by colonialism and its aftermath. We draw attention to China’s growing digital footprint in Africa as part of the rise of digital development on a global scale

This course will examine the nexus between the humanitarian crisis in Africa and the media through a case study format. It will explore the media-humanitarian relationship in four periods: the period immediately after independence in the 1960s, the Cold War, which lasted until the late 1980s, during the multiparty period, and the War on Terror, which started after September 11.

The course will also explore the changing humanitarian landscape from its early bootstrapped days in Biafra when it was purely driven by charitable instinct to its present professionalized project. Likewise, the media landscape has witnessed a radical shift; the newspaper was the primary media, especially photos, during the Biafra conflict. Ethiopia's 1984/5 famine was TV's moment, but in Ethiopia in 2020, social media was the principal site of engagement.

The independence of African countries from colonial rule remains one of the pivotal events in the making of the modern world. Before and after the imperial flags were lowered in countries such as Ghana and Tanzania, many people of African descent questioned the extent to which decolonization equated liberation. This course invites students to examine how different segments of African society across age, class, gender, and ethnic backgrounds struggled for economic, gendered, social, and political freedom from the Second World War until the present. How did these actors define, experience, and imagine decolonization? What impact did their ideas have on their societies and the African diaspora? How can we apply their theories and practices of decolonization? The answers to these questions and more will help to shape students’ understanding of this pivotal period in world history.

This course delves into the rich and diverse experiences of African and Afrodescendant communities in Paris, examining how films, music, and literary productions portray their lives, contributions, and struggles. By deconstructing stereotypes about Paris and highlighting the city as a vibrant hub for African and Afrodescendant intellectuals and artists, students will gain a nuanced understanding of the Black experience and the diaspora's cultural impact on the French capital. Key topics include postcolonial identity, race, gender, migration, resistance, and the role of Paris as a crucial site for African and Afrodescendant artistic and intellectual expression. Special emphasis will be placed on the contributions of Afrodescendant women intellectuals, thinkers, and artists, exploring their unique perspectives and roles in shaping the cultural and political landscape. Through critical analysis and discussions, students will engage with works by influential filmmakers, writers, and scholars to appreciate the dynamic interplay between African and Afrodescendant culture and the Parisian context.

Poor resource management in many parts of Africa has resulted in serious social and environmental problems. African environmental issues/problems are geographically variable and complex across the continent, and like in other continents, the issues are caused primarily by anthropogenic (human) activities induced internally and externally. The activities have resulted in several devastating environmental impacts including deforestation, soil erosion, desertification, loss of biological diversity, climate change, and contamination of air, land, and access to clean water. This course will explore human and natural environmental interaction in Africa. An overview of Africa’s environmental history and current situation will be discussed through lectures, case studies, guest speakers, brainstorming sessions, and other hands-on activities. The specific focus for this course will be on natural resource extraction and consumption, deforestation, food security, smart agriculture technologies for climate change adaptation, and water crisis. Additionally, students will be introduced to Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as an application for organizing and management of environmental programs.

The course seeks to introduce students to African cultural ideologies constructed by African scholars during the 20th century to address cultural dilemmas and related identity issues faced by African societies following the colonial encounter. It is a case study of local ideological responses to the cultural dilemmas generated by colonization as an experiment of forced acculturation. What do we mean by African culture today? Should we speak of African culture or African cultures? After revisiting these questions as a matter of introduction, the course dwells on the main cultural ideologies such as panafricanism, négritude, authenticity, afrocentrism, African renaissance and afropolitanism construed as collective identity and postcolonial discourses. We further explore the “cultural argument” in relation to politics and economic development in Africa. Is African culture an asset or an obstacle to the modernization of Africa?

Africa will constitute the backdrop for discussing the markings and un-markings of waste and its disproportionate effects on Africans and African-descended peoples in The Racial Life of Waste. In particular, we will focus on how the racialization of the African body at the “inauguration of modernity” drew both on metaphorical and literal readings of waste. For instance, notions like pungence, impurity, darkness, dirt, emptiness, etc., commonly associated with the African body, situated the African outside the parameters of the “Human” (Wynter 2003). Descriptions of Africa as “the dark continent” (Stanley 1878), “the heart of darkness” (Conrad, 1899), “a place without history” (Trevor-Roper 1963), “the Whiteman’s grave” (Curtin 1963), to name a few negations (Achebe 1977), created the conditions that racialized the African qua Black body as waste. In the contemporary moment, these negations, which also imagined Africa as an empty continent, a “terra nullius” or “terra incognita” (Mudimbe 1987) have spilled over into the recent interplanetary obsession among billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, etc., to discharge “waste” into space because space is empty. If the African experiment is the foundation on which these extra-terrestrial projects on waste deposition are envisioned, we will discuss how the appearance of the “modern human” in the western imaginary coincided with the construct of “waste.” In the era of the European encounter, the incorporation of both the African human and the African continent into Western definitions of the human resulted in their equation or reduction to Waste. Hence, we will distinguish between “waste produced by humans” and “humans produced as waste,” a distinction that will show us that human-produced waste, otherwise known as “anthropogenic waste,” is not produced equally around the globe. For example, between 2000 to 2020, Africa, compared to the rest of the world, contributed only 3.9 percent of carbon emissions (Kamer 2022), making it the least polluting continent yet the most vulnerable paradoxically. These are the key questions we will consider: What intersections between race, class, gender, and history are at play in the production of waste? How does Africa, in general, and the African body in particular, embody the paradox of extraction and deposition? In a world where Africa is figured as a geographical “shithole,” how significant are these considerations in the pursuit of radical global environmental justice?

Thousands of people in the Sahara-Sahel region have freely opted to migrate or/and have been forced into migration due to many factors including socio-economic deprivation, wars and conflicts, militarization and empire, environmental factors, among many others. This course seeks to provide an introduction to the transnational migration in what has been coined as “Europe’s Frontier Zone” or “Europe African borders” by highlighting the drivers behind people’s decisions to move from one place to another. Needless to say, human mobility has become one of the most politicized issues of our time as the tension between mobility and containment is a central feature both globally and across the Sahara-Sahel region. The latter has become a key area of externalization and securitization of the European Union’s border control mechanisms. In this regard, the course surveys some of the challenges and opportunities associated with human mobility across regional borders, including but not limited to the role played by individual-level factors, networks, ethnicity, race, gender, class, states in influencing the migration processes and managing immigration through politics of border control (e.g., detention, deportation policy, border surveillance and policing, documentation, production of “illegality” and irregularization), asylum-seekers and refugees, role of racial, religious and linguistic diversity generated by migratory flows and their implications for people’s behavior toward migrants in transit and destination countries. The course also critically discusses and assesses the role and responsibility of international institutions such as the UNHCR, IOM, and other NGOs/organizations in dealing with migrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers. The core texts/literature for the course are selected from critical migration scholarship across different disciplines and sites of knowledge production. The goal of this curriculum is to provide an interdisciplinary framework for teaching and learning.

The role of women in African politics has undergone a dramatic transformation over the past few decades. Whereas it was virtually unheard of for a woman to run for political office as recently as the 1980s, women have now held the presidency in several African countries including Liberia, Malawi, and Central African Republic. Women comprise a majority of parliamentarians in Rwanda and hold nearly 40 percent of seats in the Mozambican and South African legislatures. Women have also played very visible roles in peace processes in countries such as Liberia and Uganda. What accounts for the changing role of women in Africa? Are these changes meaningful? What are the implications of such changes for issues regarding development and democracy? This course will focus on both the formal and informal roles that women play in politics in sub-Saharan Africa to answer these questions.

The words “terrorism” and “insurgency” have long dominated the headlines about Africa. Too often, “Africa” is ascribed by the media and popular culture as being a violent continent where conflict is an inevitable outcome of primordial and ancient hatreds. But how much do we really know about political violence in Africa? We will interrogate this question by probing: Who defines “terrorism” and “insurgency” in Africa? Why do armed groups form and what drives individuals to join them? Why does political violence manifest in different ways? Are terrorism and insurgency effective political tactics? Are current forms of political violence inventions from the modern era, or do they have deeper historical roots? This course will address these and other questions, while introducing students to relevant analytical frameworks, theories, and cases concerning terrorism, insurgency, and related forms of political violence in Africa. The first part of the course will examine the broad historical trends, as well as theoretical, conceptual, and empirical literature surrounding terrorism and insurgency as political violence in Africa. We will use the tools and knowledge gained in the first part of the course to situate and interrogate case studies in the second part of the course.

This course examines the development of forms of slavery in world history. Understandings of slavery have, with relatively few exceptions, focused on the history of Atlantic slave world and as a result have been dominated by the plantation complex model of slavery. Besides examining in detail the development of plantation slavery in the Atlantic world, this course will explore various forms and systems of slavery that existed in social, cultural, political and economic systems in Europe, Africa, Arabia, and the Indian Ocean. Using a comparative approach, this course will problematize and challenge the view of slavery as constituted exclusively by the dichotomous categories of chattel/free. Our examination of these themes will revolve around a series of thematic questions, which will consider while exploring the materials and rhetorical history of slavery. - What is slavery? How is it defined in different contexts? - Given the diversity and variability of human bondage over time, can we come up with a definition that encompasses all of those experiences? If not, why not? If so, what's the value of a universal definition? - What is the difference between slaveholding societies and societies with slaves? - How does one become a slave? Did slaves exercise agency? If so, under what circumstances? - What role did gender play in the experience of slavery? - What is the role of race, religion, and culture in the justification of slavery by slave owning societies? Was race a factor in South Asian, Arabian, and African slaveries?

Although Islam has been well established in Africa for many centuries, many simplistically associate “orthodox” Islam with the Middle East. Indeed, sub-Saharan Africa was in the picture from the early days of Islam. In 617 CE, only six years after the birth of Islam, eighty-three Muslim men and women migrated from the city of Mecca to Abyssinia (now modern day northern Ethiopia) to seek social justice and religious freedom. This course traces the spread of Islam to Africa from the seventh century C.E. to the present, while paying particular attention to continuing points of contact and exchange between Muslims in Africa across the Sahara as well as the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. Through the study of secondary sources, in-class reading and discussions of primary sources, as well as documentaries, this course will provide students with the knowledge and skills they need to understand the diversity of Islamic practices on the African continent.

This discussion-based course examines Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and the continent's largest economy. The course focuses on: (1) political history, (2) corruption, (3) religion and conflict, (4) film and culture, and (5) challenges. Readings include academic literature on Nigeria as well as primary sources produced by Nigerians. Written assignments ask students to master core historical knowledge about Nigeria, reflect on readings, and produce a research paper.

China and Africa’s economic and diplomatic relations have developed rapidly in the last twenty years. Media stories depict China’s engagement as a new “scramble for Africa” reminiscent of the West’s colonial engagement with Africa in 20th century. What is the real story? What is China getting from its engagement with Africa? Even more important, what are the Africans getting from the relationship? Will it be transformative or a repeat of the Western colonial extractive experience? This course will provide students with a balanced and nuanced understanding of the China-in-Africa story.

Reimagining African technology markets. Course Description: Technology plays an increasingly important role in Africa’s development and social and economic progress. Africa’s digital revolution can be attributed to demand from a youthful population, increased digitization and digital transformation and increased investment in innovative products. That said, there are pervasive challenges such as poor critical infrastructure, a wide digital divide and skills gaps. While the tech sector has positioned itself to help solve Africa’s challenges, there is inconclusive evidence on the sustainability of such corporate social impact and the sector’s role in solving systemic challenges. As such, the class will examine the market systems approach to development and how to leverage the corporate sector for good. Africa’s fast adoption of technology for development provides a shift from typical “brick and motor” business models that focused on the construction of dated infrastructure and the distribution of goods, to one that leapfrogs and focuses on leaning in to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a rising gig economy, increasing local manufacturing thus providing Africans with additional agency to craft their own progress. This course will introduce broad topics related to Africa’s development at the intersection of business, development and technology. Students will study factors relevant to the tech sector’s success such as geopolitical influences such as China’s digital belt road, cyber and information technology security, ethical considerations in product development and evolving legal frameworks. We will discuss the role of the private sector as a vehicle for change with a particular emphasis on how technological innovation is affecting the lives and livelihoods of Africans and African markets. The course will involve deep engagement with classmates, guest speakers, and readings and real-life focused assignments that allow students challenge, design and reimagine tech in Africa.

Title: Startup States: Sovereignty, Technology, and Development in Africa

Startup States examines digital sovereignty initiatives in Africa—particularly efforts to cultivate startup ecosystems and technical education—as a critical lens for understanding how postcolonial African states negotiate sovereignty in a globally asymmetrical technological and economic order. By situating entrepreneurship and platform-building within broader political and historical contexts, the course interrogates how such initiatives function both as practical policy interventions aimed at technologically powered development and as (figural and material) performances of postcolonial state agency. Through African case studies, foundational development texts, policy documents, students will explore the aims and paradoxes of digitally-mediated development and the contested terrain where innovation, governance, and global capital intersect.

Registration in the class requires acceptance to the Kenya Alternative Spring Break Program and Departmental Approval. Students will explore Kenyan development broadly construed, with a particular focus on private sector growth, public health, and education—and the interconnections between these areas. In addition to readings, students will spend an intensive week in Kenya with African Studies Program faculty members, learning directly from high-level leaders and practitioners.

Registration in the class requires an application and Instructor Approval. This directed study is an optional adjuvant to the African Studies Program’s study abroad experience in Kenya. Students will explore Kenyan development broadly construed, with a particular focus on private sector growth, public health, and education—and the interconnections between these areas. In addition to readings, students will spend an intensive week in Kenya with African Studies Program faculty members, learning directly from high-level leaders and practitioners. Upon returning from Kenya, students will complete a paper.

This interactive course examines the impacts of environmental crime, such as illegal logging and wildlife trafficking, in Africa and the public and private sector response to quell this dangerous trend. Recognized as one of the most lucrative forms of transnational criminal activity, environmental crime in Africa is worth tens of billions dollars annually and comparable to drug and human trafficking in terms of profitability. This illicit trade not only causes severe environmental degradation, but it adversely impacts national security and governance throughout the continent. This course analyzes current bilateral and multilateral policy prescriptions to address environmental crime and examines private sectors solutions currently in place to counter illegal fishing, illegal logging, and illicit wildlife trafficking. A portion of the course will be dedicated to case studies of specific African source countries and their relationship with demand countries in Asia. Senior-level policy makers, field based conservationists, and private sector leaders, will join certain classes to explain how they view this issue set and how these principles are practically applied.

Violent Conflict Finance in sub-Saharan Africa : In this class, students will be exposed to historical and current cases of violent conflict in sub-Saharan Africa, with a focus on how violent crime is financed: through corruption, crime, and illicit trafficking of drugs, weapons, wildlife, and people. In the first part of class, students will: develop an applied understanding of the key concepts and causes of violent conflict; develop an understanding of debates surrounding the nexus between crime, corruption, and illicit trafficking; and explore applied threat finance practices and techniques in conflict analysis. In the second part of class, students will examine 4 case studies to explore the concepts from part I in more detail. We will examine the civil wars in the Mano River region; the Great Lakes wars; the ongoing conflict/trafficking nexus in the Liptako-Gourma Region; and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta in Nigeria.

There is a growing restlessness in Africa not seen since the collapse of colonialism. Jihad militancy is a part of this. This militancy and its impact on the continent and global peace is underestimated by the West, not least because of its preoccupation with Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. This course gives attention to the identity of al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb, Boko Haram in North-eastern Nigeria, al-Shabaab in Somalia, the Mulathameen Brigade (the “Masked Ones”) in Algeria, Ansar al-Dine in Mali, Séléka in the Central African Republic and Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia. These are groups that have emerged from a long history of the ‘Africanization of Islam and the Islamization of Africa’. Their defining characteristics are typified in a devotion to fundamentalist, apocalyptic religious belief, and a commitment to armed struggle. Considered against the background of the Africa Renaissance, revitalized by the birth of democracy in South Africa, and the Afro-Arab Spring epitomized in the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, attention is given in the course to the particularities of the groups under review. The impact of the West on African states, including its support for some oppressive regimes against which rebel groups are fighting, is considered. Attention is also given to the influence of western-based Christian fundamentalist groups operative in some African countries, which need to be understood against a strident Arab perspective on the Christian crusades. Having endured for 200 years, some see the crusades as continuing in mutated form. A pause of 800 years is more than a distant memory, if the fight is for the purity of an Islamic world order, within which defeat is not an option. This partly explains what the West interprets as the medievalism of the Islamic State. These and other reasons for the support of rebel groups in the Islamic world and different parts of Africa are investigated and -- viewed from a conflict resolution perspective – questions are asked concerning realistic options (military, political, socio-economic, cultural-religious, and theological) for countering the violence and organized terror of extremism in Africa?

This course examines U.S. foreign policy towards Africa through a multi-sector historical lens. The primary aims are to deepen students' understanding of U.S. policy priorities on the continent; examine the tension between U.S. interests and values in its engagement with Africa; and explore the African contexts into which U.S. policy is employed. The course begins by identifying current and historical U.S. interests in Africa and will also highlight the agency, interests and strategies of African nations in their engagement with the United States.

Many scholars and practitioners in the developing world once held that the private sector was peripheral, if not antithetical, to development goals, preferring instead statist or nationalist approaches. Today, a more nuanced approach to development accounts for the states need to rely on resources and information provided by a viable private sector in order to formulate and implement effective economic policies. While hardly a paragon of “mature capitalism,” the increased relevance of African private sectors – spurred in part by marked changes in democratic and economic institutions beginning in the 1990s – is today undeniable. We can now at least begin to talk about African private sectors on their own merits, rather than in terms of their parasitism vis-à-vis the public sector. Private sector activity in Africa is also deeply influenced by external actors and the culture of business is both more diverse and dynamic than appreciated. How have business politics and the politics of business changed in the last two decades? This course aims to address these essential questions by investigating how business in Africa has been historically misconstrued, as well as through examination of business prospects. This course will examine the changing role and perception of the private sector in African development, and the interactions of businesspeople and business organizations with the African state. Certainly, the private sector role in Africa has been both positive and negative. We will explore the various tradeoffs and the implications for development and democracy, drawing on numerous country and firm cases from around the continent.

Title: Peace Economies & Resilience in Africa

This course explores how scholars can reframe how we study conflict and development in Africa. Specifically, we will move beyond traditional approaches of conflict analysis and mitigation to focus on the design of economies that actively incentivize peace. Students will explore how governments, civil society, and the private sector can align economic incentives that encourage peace and stability. Drawing on emerging research from the World Bank, IMF, Institute for Economics & Peace, and African-led innovations, the course examines models of stability-driven economic growth, peace finance, and impact investing.

Through case studies and practitioner engagement, students will analyze how local and regional actors are reshaping markets to reduce fragility, strengthen resilience, and expand prosperity. Guest speakers from the fields of peace finance, business for peace, and impact investment will share insights into how investors evaluate and fund peace-driven initiatives.

This course explores: (1) The Correlation Between FDI and Economic Growth (2) How to Attract FDI, the Necessary Public Policy Landscape (3) USG Policies that Promote U.S. - Africa Trade and Investment.

Title: Africa-China Digital Entanglements: Development, Geopolitics, and Techno-Power Africa-China’s Digital Entanglements examines some of the methodological and conceptual instruments that have shaped the understanding and history of technology in Africa. In doing so, it addresses the context, political commitments, and conceptual roots of technological adoption and investment in the afterlife of colonialism. Reading, analyzing, and critically interrogating works by scholars in African-China studies, science, technology and society, international relations, and related fields is the focus of this graduate course. This course seeks to address topics such as technology's relations with the state, technology and development, technology and diplomacy, and the politics of techno-modernity. Principally, we explore how African postcolonial states use technologies to try to engender futures beyond the asymmetries established by colonialism and its aftermath. To this end, we draw attention to China’s growing digital footprint in Africa as part of the rise of digital development on a global scale. The course integrates theoretical work and empirical cases, both historical and contemporary, to critically examine the political and cultural construction of technologies and their potential transformative powers. The examination of digital tools will include AI-powered facial recognition systems and data production and management, as well as associated understandings of modernity, development, rationality, and objectivity. In doing so, we will delve into the historical foundations, political visions, and conceptual roots of technological advancements in Africa, which have emerged as instruments of governance, means of development, and objects to be resisted.

This course serves as the gateway requirement for students pursuing the Graduate Certificate in African Studies. The focus is on Africa in the World, using various lenses of theory, policy and the disciplines, exposing students to core arguments in the literature. The course will establish a foundation in the key theoretical, historical and policy issues that pertain to Africa. The course will build upon traditional disciplinary offerings but go beyond them to explore and integrate with professional and practitioner- oriented studies. Assignments and assessments will focus on a range of practical and research-based skills such as analysis of primary sources, preparing policy papers, editorials and opinion pieces, and possibly other online or “public writing.” Students will utilize creative and rigorous writing and presentation tools, such as electronic portfolios as a tool to prepare, present and share a range of writing projects. Students are expected to utilize these assignments to reflect on diverse and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of Africa. At the end of the semester students will emerge with a set of writing projects that could advance their intellectual and professional goals.

This course provides an overview of major principles, theories, operational concerns, and public policy issues related to complex humanitarian emergencies. The course highlights selected contemporary crises, examining causes and consequences of these emergencies. Examples include Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Chechnya, Indonesia, Haiti and Colombia. A particular focus is the role of humanitarian issues in foreign policy and international relations.

Title: Democrats, Dictators, and Development in Africa This course dives into the ongoing tug-of-war between autocrats in Africa and the activists, opposition leaders, foreign actors, and institutional checks and balances that seek to constrain or displace them. Drawing on a mix of theory and cases, we will explore how democracy in Africa has evolved since the independence period, how autocrats are adapting new tools and technologies to survive in power, and how these trends are shaping—and are shaped by—conflict, development, and geopolitical competition. Students will immerse themselves in a country case of their choice to complement the key concepts and insights they learn for making sense of the evolving governance landscape on the continent.

Investing on the Frontier: Module on Private Capital Flows into African Markets

A graduate-level practitioner-led module on capital flows into African markets and investing in opportunities on the continent. Africa business expert Aubrey Hruby will teach the course integrating guest practitioners and working with advisor Jake Bright.

The module will cover 1) the core principles of African business, economic, financial, and technology developments of the last 5-10 years, with a special focus on the 5 largest markets; 2) FDI; 3) Public and private equity; 4) Venture capital; and 5) Local resource mobilization.
Requirements: a basic understanding of the political and economic history of pre and post-independence Africa and a focus on modern African markets.