An innovative examination of our understanding of political legitimacy in Mali, and its wider implications for democratization and political modernity in the Global South.

How do people survive and thrive in the uncertain and risk-prone Sahel? Land, Investment, and Migration seeks to answer this question through a long-term study of the people of Dlonguébougou in Central Mali. It uses a combination of infographics, satellite images, interviews, and survey data to present the strategies and fortunes of individuals and their families in this region over 35 years. In the early 1980s Camilla Toulmin spent two years in Dlonguébougou. She has since revisited to explore how climate change, population growth, new technologies, and land-grabs have been affecting the livelihoods and prospects of local people since. Land, Investment, and Migration: Thirty-five Years of Village Life in Mali brings together her findings. A trebling in population, unpredictable rainfall, and the arrival of Chinese investment have forced people into new ways of making ends meet and building up wealth - some doing much better than others. This book presents the search for new cash incomes, the shift of people from village to town, and the erosion of collective solidarity at household and village levels. Land, Investment, and Migration presents a mixed picture of a changing society. It shows the vibrancy of the village economy, rapid uptake of mobile phones and solar panels, and increased migration. It also shows the persistence of large family structures which offer some protection from the risks that many villagers face.

This book provides the historical and political context for the security interventions in Mali over the past three decades. The work contextualizes external military engagement (including that of the United States, France, the United Nations and G5 Sahel) within the broader framework of weak democratic consolidation, unmet development goals and increasing popular perceptions of widespread corruption in Mali. Over the past three decades, there have been four military coups in Mali: the military coup in 1991 launched the Third Republic; the 2012 coup toppled elected President Touré; the 2020 coup overthrew the elected President Keita; and the coup within a coup that ousted transitional President Bah. Given the political context, how do multiple international interventions relate to insecurity and instability in the country? Drawing on the author’s thirty years of research on Mali, this work examines the relationship between external intervention in the country, domestic actors, and decentralization policies. The book argues that external support has ignored the poor governance that is at the heart of the country’s crises. This book will be of much interest to students of intervention and statebuilding, African politics and International Relations in general.

Islamic Divorce in the 21st Century takes a close look at the ways that Muslims from West Africa to Southeast Asia engage with and navigate Islamic law and other relevant norms during times of marital breakdown in light of twenty-first century challenges and development.

This book explores the rise and impact of violent non-state actors in contemporary Africa and the implications for the sovereignty and security of African states. Each chapter tackles a unique angle on violent organizations on the continent with the view of highlighting the conditions that lead to the rise and radicalization of these groups. The chapters further examine the ways in which governments have responded to the challenge and the national, regional and international strategies that they have adopted as a result. Chapter contributors to this volume examine the emergence of Islamist terrorists in Nigeria, Mali and Libya; rebels in DR Congo, Central African Republic, Ethiopia and Rwanda; and warlords and pirates in Somalia, Uganda and Sierra Leone.

Examines Nigeria's challenges with consolidating democracy and the crisis of governance arising from structural errors of the state and the fundamental contradictions of the society in Nigeria's Fourth Republic reflect a wider crisis of democracy globally. 'Today we are taking a decisive step on the path of democracy, ' the newly sworn-in President Olusegun Obasanjo told Nigerians on 27 May 1999. 'We will leave no stone unturned to ensure sustenance of democracy, because it is good for us, it is good for Africa, and it is good for the world.' Nigeria's Fourth Republic has survived longer than any of the previous three Republics, the most durable Republic in Nigeria's more than six decades of independence. At the same time, however, the country has witnessed sustained periods of violence, including violent clashes over the imposition of Sharia'h laws, insurgency in the Niger Delta, inter-ethnic clashes, and the Boko Haram insurgency. Despite these tensions of, and anxieties about, democratic viability and stability in Nigeria, has democratic rule come to stay in Africa's most populous country? Are the overall conditions of Nigerian politics, economy and socio-cultural dynamics now permanently amenable to uninterrupted democratic rule? Have all the social forces which, in the past, pressed Nigeria towards military intervention and autocratic rule resolved themselves in favour of unbroken representative government? If so, what are the factors and forces that produced this compromise and how can Nigeria's shallow democracy be sustained, deepened and strengthened? This book attempts to address these questions by exploring the various dimensions of Nigeria's Fourth Republic in a bid to understand the tensions and stresses of democratic rule in a deeply divided major African state. The contributors engage in comparative analysis of the political, economic, social challenges that Nigeria has faced in the more than two decades of the Fourth Republic and the ways in which these were resolved - or left unresolved - in a bid to ensure the survival of democratic rule. This key book that examines both the quality of Nigeria's democratic state and its international relations, and issues such as human rights and the peace infrastructure, will be invaluable in increasing our understanding of contemporary democratic experiences in the neo-liberal era in Africa.

This volume examines religiosity on university campuses in Sub-Saharan Africa. Focusing on both individuals and organized groups, the contributions open a window onto how religion becomes a factor, affects social interactions, is experienced and mobilized by various actors. It brings together case studies from various disciplinary backgrounds (anthropology, sociology, history, religious studies, literature) and theoretical orientations to illustrate the significance of religiosity in recent developments on university campuses. It pays a particular attention to religion-informed activism and contributes a fresh analysis of processes that are shaping both the experience of being student and the university campus as a moral space. Last but not least, it sheds light onto the ways in which the campus becomes a site of a reformulation of both religiosity and sociality.