After independence from Britain in the early 1960s, Tanzania and Zambia simultaneously embarked on a purportedly non-aligned, moderately socialist, and import-substitution-led path to modernization. Given the economic ideas prevalent amongst modernist leaders of the time, the state-led creation of basic infrastructure was considered particularly crucial in the endeavor. This was the context to the attempts of Julius…
Another version of this article was published in the Tribune. After two decades of stagnation, Africa is widely believed to have turned the corner in the new millennium. Countries across the continent are witnessing significantly increased foreign investment, trade, and feverish economic activity. More than half the countries in Africa recorded GDP growth of over…
It is an ongoing project of mine at AUD–and hopefully, of others elsewhere in India–to help augment/create capacities for learning/research on Africa. To this end, I’ve come up with a course (below) that gives an introduction to geography-history-political economy of the Sub-Saharan part of the continent, but of course, reflects my own interests too. I…
Published in Himal Southasian, July 2011 Following Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s recent visit to Africa and the accompanying India-Africa Summit in Addis Ababa, this relationship across the Indian Ocean has come firmly into the spotlight. Like previous iterations, however, this time observers in India have analysed the situation through a lens that has been simultaneously…
First published online here. Is history a product of human thoughts, plans, and actions alone? Or are non-humans also partners in the manner societies are organized and changed? If we were to accept the conventional view of history, the answer to the first question would invariably be in the affirmative. Historians of a past era—some even…
Watching the Kony 2012 video I was reminded of an evening in mid-2006, when a fellow graduate student asked me to join her at the screening of a new documentary that was making waves across the US. I was known in my department as an activist type and was working on Africa, which is why I believe…
25 Februrary, 2012. It was the rainy season, which, in Central Africa means buckets of downpour almost every day, interspersed with spells of sapping heat. But no one in the town of Solwezi in Northwestern Zambia cared about the weather during those five days in January 2008, when their country played at football’s African Cup…
Rikshaa Republic 