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The gendered value chain of matooke banana and its implications for tissue culture adoption in Uganda Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-08-08 Matthew A. Schnurr, Christopher D. Gore, Lincoln Addison, Sylvia Bawa, Alanna Taylor, Henry Nsereko, Sarah Mujabi-Mujuzi
Tissue culture banana is promoted as a form of micro-propagation that can aid farmers in managing pests and disease in Uganda, the country with the largest per capita consumption of banana in the w...
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Between two fires: Turkana chiefs in the colonial ‘contact zone’ Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-07-29 Mads Yding
Drawing on archival material, supplemented by oral history interviews done in Turkana in 2018 and oral history work by Lamphear from the mid-1970s, this article investigates the different dilemmas ...
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Political accountability and legislative behavior in Africa: evidence from the 2019 Kenyan Sugar Bill in the context of the political economy of sectoral policy Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-07-26 Eun Kyung Kim
Recent research on African legislatures, once considered rarely autonomous, has found that some broad-scale mass movements, including pro-poor campaigns, hold legislators accountable. This article ...
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Correction Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-07-26
Published in Journal of Eastern African Studies (Vol. 18, No. 3, 2024)
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Temporal frictions: competing futures of LNG in Tanzania Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-07-25 Aidan Barlow
This paper explores the temporalities behind resource nationalism and the liquefied natural gas project (LNG) in Tanzania. At a cost of $42 billion, the LNG project would be one of the most capital...
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Social media and politics as usual? Exploring the role of social media in the 2022 Kenyan presidential election Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-07-19 Eman Abboud, Fredrick Ajwang, Geoffrey Lugano
How is social media used in African elections and what is its impact? This article builds on existing research on the role of social media in African elections to argue that its impact is linked to...
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‘Constitutions without constitutionalism’ and judicial leadership in Kenya Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-07-14 Martha Gayoye
Judicial leadership and ‘constitutions without constitutionalism’ are two opposing but useful concepts to demonstrate the oppositional stance taken by a minority of judges in safeguarding the rule ...
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Protecting the win, and securing the base: Kenya’s 2022 presidential election dispute and outcome Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-07-09 Denis Galava, Karuti Kanyinga
In much of Africa, opposition presidential candidates face the benefits of incumbency and often accuse the government of rigging. But in Kenya’s 2022 presidential election, it was the government-fa...
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(Un)leashed potentials: an activist-centered perspective on the political mobilization of motorcycle taxi drivers in eastern DRC Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-07-08 Carsten Müller
The re-emergence of competitive elections in Africa has sparked new interest in political mobilization on the continent. Much of this literature focusses on political actors and the strategies they...
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The battle for Central: ethnicity, urbanization and citizenship in Kenya’s 2022 general elections Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-06-07 Nic Cheeseman, Mwongela Kamencu
In Kenya’s 2022 general elections, presidential candidate William Ruto did something unusual – he dominated the vote in the heartlands of one of his main political rivals, President Uhuru Kenyatta....
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Has Kenya democratized? Institutional strengthening and contingency in the 2022 general elections Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-06-07 Nic Cheeseman, Karuti Kanyinga, Gabrielle Lynch, Justin Willis
Kenya’s 2022 general elections saw – for only the second time in the country’s history – a transfer of power from a retiring president to a candidate that they had not backed. Moreover, despite acc...
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Debt, credit and obligation in Kenya’s 2022 elections Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-05-31 Ngala Chome, Justin Willis
Asked why they intended to vote for William Ruto in Kenya’s 2022 presidential election, many people in central Kenya had a simple answer: ‘we owe Ruto a debt’. This was not the only kind of debt, n...
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Religion, healthcare, and social media use in urban Tanzania: an ethnographic study of faith-based organizations Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-05-30 Mussa Said Muhoja
The relationship between religion and social media has been critically discussed on potential benefits and opportunities the work of faith-based organizations (FBOs) enjoys in relation to the growi...
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Electoral contestation, goods provision, and construction of devolved government in Northern Kenya Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-05-30 Karol Czuba
Upon election in 2013, the first governors of the 47 counties created by Kenya’s 2010 constitution assumed responsibility for the construction – in some cases, especially in the historically margin...
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Editorial Announcement Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-05-24 Jason Mosley, Florence Brisset-Foucault, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Published in Journal of Eastern African Studies (Vol. 18, No. 1, 2024)
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Fragments of solidarity: the social worlds of African migrants moving northwards Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-05-24 Luca Ciabarri, Anja Simonsen
The article provides a framework through which to analyse the experiences and social trajectories of migration from East Africa to North Africa and Europe. On the one side, it explores the systemat...
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Amongst agaish: the criminalization of Eritrean migrants’ communities of care Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-05-14 Carla Hung
In the Processo Agaish trial, Italian prosecutors accused Eritrean refugees of human trafficking and exploiting their clients’ desires to move further North. Pointing out the mistranslation of the ...
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Social, cultural and political responses to Somaliland’s tahriib movement Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-05-07 Ja’afar Dirie
Irregular migration to Europe has surged over the past decade, including tahriib (irregular migration) from Somaliland, an internationally unrecognized nation-state in East Africa. As a unrecognize...
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Correction Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-16
Published in Journal of Eastern African Studies (Vol. 18, No. 1, 2024)
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Solidarities on the move between the Horn of Africa and Italy: Somali migrants’ disconnection and networking practices in the 2010s Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-16 Elia Vitturini
Through the reconstruction of the de-activations and re-activations of solidarity in different phases of migration trajectories, this article analyses transnational migration from the Somali territ...
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Assemblages of mobility and violence: the shifting social worlds of Somali youth migration and the meanings of tahriib, 2005–2020 Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-15 Luca Ciabarri
Drawing on two periods of fieldwork (2007–2008 and 2019–2020) conducted between Somaliland and Italy, this article traces, from a longitudinal perspective, the migratory journeys from Somalia to Li...
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Armed and disarmed in Eritrea: the regional dimension of DDR in post-2018 Ethiopia Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-04-05 Yalemget Abebe, Mercy Fekadu Mulugeta
In 2018, armed groups opposing the incumbent in Ethiopia, agreed to desert the violent means and participate in Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR). Like many DDR processes, it face...
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Inhabiting humanitarian borderscapes: claiming rights and organizing dissent in post-2011 southeastern Tunisia Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-29 Chiara Pagano
Since 2011, the evolving dynamics of the Libyan civil war combined with the EU’s efforts to delegate sea patrolling in the Central Mediterranean to Libyan entities, resulted in Tunisia witnessing a...
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The cycle of migrants’ containment between Libya and Africa: navigating their life among dreams, resilience, and defeats Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-27 Antonio M. Morone
During the last two decades, cooperation between Italy, the EU and Libya on migration management has been intended to establish a “cycle of containment” aimed at the externalisation and securitisat...
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Survivors-at-home and the right to know: solidarities in Eritrea in the aftermath of the Lampedusa tragedy Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-26 Valentina Fusari
This study delves into the transnational mobility of migrants from the Horn of Africa, exploring the limited situated ethnographies on survivors-at-home, a topic still underexplored. Focusing on th...
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Images of torture: ‘affective solidarity’ and the search for ransom in the global Somali community Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-25 Anja Simonsen, Mohamed S. Tarabi
Recent migration trends among the Somali youth and the rise of the migrant smuggling network, in Somali known as Magafe, have rendered traditional practices of solidarity ambiguous. Somali notions ...
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Marriage as a pathway for justice for the Gabooye of Somaliland Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-03-19 Amina-Bahja Ekman
While marriage is crucial in the preservation of clan alliances, as well as the reinforcing of the wider kinship structure in Somali society, there is very little research that critically engages w...
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Return migration, masculinities and the fallacy of reintegration: Ethiopian experiences Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-02-23 Adam Moe Fejerskov, Meron Zeleke
The multifaceted notion of ‘returning home,’ and not least the dualities between expectation, anticipation and the realities facing migrants upon their return, is a key component in understanding E...
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Social protection ‘from below’: micro traders and their collective associations in Tanzania Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-02-03 Lone Riisgaard
This article explores the social protection coverage, needs, and preferences of informal micro traders in Tanzania. In particular, it examines the social protection models implemented ‘from below’ ...
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Muslim political dissent in coastal East Africa: complexities, ambiguities, entanglements Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-01-16 Benjamin Kirby, Erik Meinema, Hans Olsson
This article stages a comparative analysis of Muslim politics in coastal Kenya and Tanzania between 2010 and 2023. We explore parallels, discontinuities, and entanglements between different express...
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Colonialism, heritage and conservation: Zanzibari perceptions of the collapse of the House of Wonders Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2024-01-11 Sarah Longair, Fatma Said, Stephanie Wynne-Jones
The House of Wonders (or Beit al-Ajaib), one of the iconic buildings of Zanzibar’s waterfront, partially collapsed on 25th December 2020. This catastrophic incident, which included the famous clock...
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Making the Maasai: revisiting the history of Rift Valley Maa-speakers c.1800–c.1930 Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Richard Waller
This article offers a re-assessment of Maasai history from 1800 to 1930, taking a critical look at both the existing historiography and the sources on which it is based. It examines how Maasai inst...
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“Little Dubai” in the crossfire: trade corridor dynamics and ethno-territorial conflict in the Kenyan–Ethiopian border town Moyale Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-09 Katrin Sowa
Against the promise that new trade corridors in Africa lead to political stability and state control, this article presents a contradictory case. In the context of the implementation of the LAPSSET...
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Western Sudanese marginalization, coups in Khartoum and the structural legacies of colonial military divide and rule, 1924-present Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-13 Willow Berridge
This paper discusses the long-term history underpinning the tension between the “national” army and provincial “militias” that led to the outbreak of conflict in Sudan in April 2023. Sudan’s Britis...
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Wealth and poverty in mining Africa: migration, settlement and occupational change in Tanzania during the global mineral boom, 2002–2012 Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-09 Deborah Fahy Bryceson, Jesper Bosse Jønsson, Michael Clarke Shand
This article interrogates place, process and people’s quest for enhanced welfare during the 2002–2012 global mineral price boom in northwest Tanzania. Mass in-migration of miners, traders and servi...
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Environmental risk management from below: living with landslides in Bududa, eastern Uganda Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-09 Pamela Khanakwa
This article explores how the people of Bududa used culturally and spiritually embedded knowledge to tame extreme weather and ably live with the spectre and reality of landslides since the turn of ...
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Ascendant recentralisation: the politics of urban governance and institutional configurations in Nairobi Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-09 Smith Ouma
This paper draws from two experiences with decentralisation in Kenya to illustrate the different ways through which the central government has sought to bolster its power at the expense of the loca...
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A non-event: ratifying the African Women’s Rights framework in Ethiopia Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-09 Karmen Tornius
Ethiopia, the host of the African Union, did not ratify the African Women’s Rights framework (the Maputo Protocol) for fifteen years. While realist, liberal and constructivist scholars have theoris...
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Mother Earth is for us all: the discontent of Oromo pottery-making women at land dispossession in Southwest Oromia, Ethiopia Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-11-09 Bula Wayessa
This paper examines the effects of changes in land tenure on female potters in the southern highlands of Ethiopia. Communal land has historically played an important role in the livelihoods of pott...
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Military decolonisation and Africanisation: the first African officers in the Kenyan army, 1957–1964 Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-09-16 Poppy Cullen
On 15 July 1961, the first eight African officers were commissioned into the King’s African Rifles in Kenya. This was very late to begin Africanising the colonial military force. The colonial army,...
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The politics of being Murle in South Sudan: state violence, displacement and the narrativisation of identity Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-09-16 Diana Felix da Costa
The article offers a nuanced account of how identities are negotiated and contested in South Sudan, by focusing on how Murle and ŋalam identities were deployed in different ways in different places...
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From ruins and rubble: promised and suspended futures in Kenya (and beyond) Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Uroš Kovač, Anna Lisa Ramella
ABSTRACT In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, much future-making in Kenya is taking place in ruins of unfinished promising projects, failed capitalist enterprises, and decades of colonial and postcolonial exclusion and marginalization. When discussing future-making in Kenya specifically and Africa more generally, especially in the context of vision-driven developmentalist narratives that
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Transition, transformation, and the politics of the future in Uganda Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-09-05 Sam Wilkins, Richard Vokes
ABSTRACT While the framing of the past remains a critical terrain of political discourse in Uganda, competing political visions oriented towards the future have emerged as equally salient as the country undergoes significant social and economic changes. Against the image of gridlock that characterises Ugandan politics after President Yoweri Museveni’s latest controversial re-election in 2021, the aim
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‘I have opened the land for you’: pastoralist politics and election-related violence in Kenya’s arid north Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-19 Flora McCrone
ABSTRACT The shadow of election violence has hung over Kenyan politics since 2008, when post-election violence erupted across the country. These events paved the way for major national reforms, including the devolution of central government, designed to counteract tendencies of ethnic patronage and violence. Kenya’s subsequent election cycles have not seen the same explosion of nationwide violence
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Uganda’s ruling coalition and the 2021 elections: change, continuity and contestation Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-10 Moses Khisa
ABSTRACT Since coming to power, President Museveni has consistently stitched together disparate actors and representatives of divergent constituencies in his ruling coalition. This became especially necessary as his rule grew less popular and more precarious. This article argues that the nature of the ruling coalition reflects the structure of politics and menu of priorities for the incumbent. The
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Authoritarian micro-politics: village chairpersons in NRM Uganda and the lessons of their 2018 re-election Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-08-04 Sam Wilkins
ABSTRACT In July 2018, the office of village chairperson (Local Council 1/LC1) was contested throughout Uganda in open elections for the first time in almost two decades. These offices, central to the National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) famed decentralisation project in its early years in power, continue to have immense significance in the daily lives of most Ugandans. While their long-awaited re-election
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A comparison of the role of domestic and international election observers in Zambia’s 2016 and 2021 general elections Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-31 O’Brien Kaaba, Marja Hinfelaar, Koffi Sawyer
ABSTRACT In this paper, we focus on the role of the institution of external and domestic observers in electoral turnovers. Observers have come under scrutiny in recent years, particularly following their assessments of the Kenya and Malawi elections, for which they raised no serious concerns, but the polls were subsequently annulled by courts on the basis of serious irregularities. By comparing and
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Autocratisation, electoral politics and the limits of incumbency in African democracies Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Nicole Beardsworth, Hangala Siachiwena, Sishuwa Sishuwa
ABSTRACT The world is experiencing a new wave of autocratisation, characterised by a global democratic reversal. From 2010 to 2020, the share of the world population living in autocracies increased from 48 to 68%. Electoral autocracies are now the world's most common regime type, and along with closed autocracies they number 87 of the world's 195 states. Even during the height of the third wave of
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Overcoming incumbency advantage: the importance of social media on- and offline in Zambia’s 2021 elections Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Gabrielle Lynch, Elena Gadjanovaa
ABSTRACT President Edgar Lungu and the Patriotic Front used a range of incumbency advantages to tilt the playing field in their favour in the run-up to Zambia’s 2021 elections and, as a result, were more visible offline than the opposition United Party for National Development (UPND) and its flagbearer, Hakainde Hichilema. In this paper, we draw on an original survey of party officials and activists
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Incumbent disadvantage in a swing province: Eastern Province in Zambia’s 2021 general election Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Jeremy Seekings
ABSTRACT Might incumbency entail disadvantages as well as advantages? This article examines the performance of incumbent president Edgar Lungu and the Patriotic Front (PF) in Zambia's Eastern Province in the 2021 election. Eastern Province was a ‘swing’ region in that neither of the two major national political parties had deep-rooted support, despite Lungu's and the PF's strong performance in 2015-16
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The urban vote in Zambia’s 2021 elections: popular attitudes towards the economy in Copperbelt and Lusaka Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Hangala Siachiwena
ABSTRACT This article analyses Afrobarometer survey data to understand popular attitudes toward the economy of Zambia amongst residents in the ruling party strongholds. The Patriotic Front (PF) won the most votes in urban provinces from 2006 to 2016 but crucially lost to the opposition in 2021 while retaining majorities in its rural base. Historically, opposition parties have won the most votes in
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‘Tribal balancing’: exclusionary elite coalitions and Zambia’s 2021 elections Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Nicole Beardsworth, Samuel Kalonde Mutuna
ABSTRACT Presidents have access to a range of resources unavailable to challengers, and often the most important are derived from control of the state. This allows incumbents to build more inclusive elite coalitions, distribute clientelist resources to their political base and co-opt opposition politicians. Cabinet and government appointments are some of the most visible, direct and identifiable indications
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‘The outcome of a historical process set in motion in 1991’: explaining the failure of incumbency advantage in Zambia’s 2021 election Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Sishuwa Sishuwa
ABSTRACT This article uses a longitudinal comparative perspective to analyse Zambia's 2021 transfer of power. The article takes the previous elections since the transition to multi-party democracy in 1991 as a body in which patterns of incumbency failure can be seen. It identifies five pervasive patterns that seem present in all polls that have resulted in leadership change or turnovers: a struggling
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Citizenship moods in the late Museveni era: a cartoon-powered analysis Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-28 Jimmy Spire Ssentongo, Henni Alava
ABSTRACT This article develops the concept of citizenship moods to analyse citizens’ emotional (dis)engagements with the state in Uganda. Through a reflexive analysis of ethnographic and media material from 2019–2021, we claim that around the time of the 2021 elections, after 35 years of rule by Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement, the most prevalent moods among Ugandans were fear, contentment
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Explaining youth political mobilization and its absence: the case of Bobi Wine and Uganda’s 2021 election Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-26 Anna Macdonald, Arthur Owor, Rebecca Tapscott
ABSTRACT What explains youth political mobilization in Uganda – or lack thereof? This article challenges the simple dichotomy of youth as either a dangerous or disengaged political constituency. Instead, we analyze the conditions that determine whether youth can coalesce as a politically salient category. For many, the outcome of the 2021 Ugandan elections defied expectations. A large and underemployed
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Perceptions of COVID-19 in faith communities in DR Congo Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-21 Emma Wild-Wood, Yossa Way, Amuda Baba, Sadiki Kangamina, Jean-Benoit Falisse, Liz Grant, Nigel Pearson
ABSTRACT This article explores the perceptions of COVID-19 among faith communities in north-eastern DR Congo and their intersection with public health responses to disease outbreaks. In a situation of a political and economic insecurity and significant unaddressed health needs, faith communities have a strong trusted public presence and offer resilience in the face of political insecurity, limited
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Role of history in shaping perceptions of climate change in the alpine areas of Kenya Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-20 Timothy Downing, Daniel Olago, Tobias Nyumba
ABSTRACT Climate change will have differential effects on communities around the world due to different vulnerabilities. Two climate-vulnerable areas in Kenya – Mount Elgon and Mount Kenya – were compared in this study to see how their differing histories may have impacted their inherent adaptive capacities. A literature review was used to outline the differences in the history of the two areas, and
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Integrationism vs. rejectionism: revisiting the history of Islamist activism in coastal Kenya Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-19 Jannis Saalfeld, Hassan A. Mwakimako
ABSTRACT In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kenya’s coastal region saw the rise of Islamist activism(s). Revisiting this rise, this article traces the history of two contrasting politico-religious groups seeking to address the historical marginalisation of Kenyan Muslim communities: the Mombasa-based Islamic Party of Kenya (IPK) and the southern coastal Ansar Sunnah movement. While the IPK accepted
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Bursting pipes and broken dreams: on ruination and reappropriation of large-scale water infrastructure in Baringo County, Kenya Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-16 David Greven
ABSTRACT In the course of Kenya’s Vision 2030 development plan, the Kenyan Northern Rift Valley recently became the playground for new stakeholders, interests and speculations. Large-scale development projects, such as the geothermal exploration in Tiaty East sub-county, is one of them and is described as game-changer in a formerly marginalized area. This article explores the case of Mt. Paka, a dormant
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Legal autocratisation ahead of the 2021 Zambian elections Journal of Eastern African Studies (IF 0.9) Pub Date : 2023-07-14 Marja Hinfelaar, Lise Rakner, Sishuwa Sishuwa, Nicolas van de Walle
ABSTRACT Zambia experienced an episode of distinct democratic backsliding between 2011 and 2021. Autocratisation resulted from the deliberate use of legal mechanisms to enhance executive power. Tracing key legal changes through legal documents, press reports and informant interviews, the article examines this recent episode of autocratisation as a consequence of a poorly institutionalised party system