Date: February 22, 2017
Venue: BIEA
Time: 6 pm
About
IFRA together with the British Institute in Eastern Africa invite you to the launch of a book, Lost Nationalism: Revolution, Memory and Anti-Colonial Resistance in Sudan by Elena Vezzadini. Elena is a scholar in history from the National Center of Scientific Research (CNRS) and affiliated to Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and the Institut des Mondes Africains.
Date: May 9, 2016
Venue: Rift Valley Institute Office, Seminar Room
Time: 2-4 pm
Entry: Prior registration
About
In 2013, almost half of Africa’s top aid recipients were ruled by authoritarian regimes. Many international donors such as USAID, DFID, the World Bank and the European Commission have had their policies entangled with the agendas of the ruling elites. Development policies are thus shaped with a view to maintain the status quo, compromising the rights and democracy of local citizens. This book raises the question: to what extent are foreign aid programmes actually perpetuating authoritarian rule?On 9 May 2016, the Rift Valley Forum will host the launch of Aid and Authoritarianism in Africa, edited by Tobias Hagmann and Filip Reyntjens.
The book highlights the political and moral complexities that emerge from the relationship between foreign aid and autocratic governments in Africa. It brings to light changing donor interests and rhetoric, as well as the impact of foreign aid on military assistance, rural development, electoral processes and domestic politics in Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, Cameroon, Mozambique and Angola.
Find more information about this event and registration details, here
with Cyrielle Maingraud-Martinaud & Murithi Mutiga
Date and Time: Tuesday November 3, 2015 at 4pm
Venue: IFRA
About
On 25 October, Tanzanian held its 5th general elections since the reintroduction of multipartism. If final results are not yet known at this time, it is clear that their outcome will be of tremendous importance for the future of the United Republic, which is considered to be one of the most stable countries of the region.Several factors have made these elections the most competitive since 1992: the alliance of main opposition parties under the banner of Ukawa, the defection of former Prime Minister Edward Lowassa, the divisions among the ruling party CCM and the habituation to democracy of Tanzanian citizens.The demand for change, especially from urban and young voters, has constituted a serious challenge to the ruling party and has already lead to the defeat of high profile CCM parliamentary candidates ; on the other side, CCM has been able, with the reputation of its candidate John Magufuli, to campaign on a strong anti-corruption agenda, undermining a traditional advantage for the opposition.
This seminar will investigate the implication of the proceeding of these elections on Tanzanian political dynamics as well as for East Africa.
Information on the poster.
Book Launch: Kenya’s Past as Prologue. Voters, Violence and the 2013 General Election,” edited by M-A. Fouéré, S. Mwangi, M. Ndeda & C. Thibon (2015)
Date: June 25, 2015
Venue: BIEA/IFRA
Time: 3 pm
“During the run-up to Kenya’s 2013 general elections, crucial political and civic questions were raised. Could past mistakes, especially political and ethnic-related violence be avoided this time round? Would the spectre of the 2007 post- electoral violence positively or negatively affect debates and voting? How would politicians, electoral bodies such as the IEBC, the Kenyan civil society and the international community weigh in on the elections?…The book’s centre stage tries to explore Kenya’s inescapable past and whether it would prepare the scene for a new political order.”
Published by Twaweza Communications
by Dr. Altaïr Després – Univerity Paris 1 Sorbonne
Date: June 16, 2015
Venue: IFRA
Time: 11 am
Entry: Prior RSVP – at: seminars@ifra-nairobi.net
Abstract
Focusing on the case of Western women travelling to Zanzibar, this paper seeks to explore how sexual intimacy with indigenous men can be a space for cultural transactions. While the economic issue is currently at the heart of the anthropological and sociological understanding of “transactional sex” or “sex-tourism” in Africa, little consideration is given to the role of symbolic and cultural resources in the economy of transnational sexuality and desire.
My hypothesis is that in a globalized sexual market not only do cultural stereotypes shape desire (intimate tourist encounters sometimes originate in racial stereotypes about the sexual performances of African men for example), but sexuality can also be a means to access cultural resources. By focusing on cultural transactions, the paper examines how, on the one hand, Western women engaged in intimate relations with African men discover local practices which are less accessible from ordinary tourist circuits, as their African boyfriends play the role of “cultural brokers” and teach them about local customs. On the other hand, this paper analyses to what extent, through intimacy, Western women also act as brokers, mobilizing their (cultural) skills for their partner by teaching him a foreign language or using their knowledge to formalize a business.
Date & Time: Friday, 30th May 2014, 6.00PM – 7.30PM
Venue: British Institute in Eastern Africa, Nairobi
Panel discussion and journal special issue launch.
Speakers
1. Jason Mosley (Research associate, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford, and managing editor, Journal of Eastern African Studies)
2. Phil Clark (Reader in comparative and international politics, SOAS, University of London)
3. Yolande Bouka (Researcher, Conflict Prevention and Risk Analysis Division, ISS Nairobi)
This panel discussion – which serves also as a launch of a special issue of the Journal of Eastern African Studies (JEAS) on the same topic – will debate the nature of Rwandan politics under the RPF and its impact on the post-genocide reconstruction process, regional relations and the well-being of everyday Rwandans.
For more information on the event, please click this link.
PS: Remember to RSVP by sending an email to seminars@biea.ac.uk
Rain, Power, Sovereignty and The Materiality Of Signs In Southern Zimbabwe
Date: Wednesday 16th April 2014
Venue: British Institute in Eastern Africa, Laikipia Road, Kileleshwa, Nairobi
Time: 11.00 am
Entry: Prior RSVP. For more information please contact seminars@biea.ac.uk or call +254 735 260 004
Seminar by: Joost Fontein, University of Edinburgh
Chair: Sinoxolo Neo Musangi, British Institute in Eastern Africa
Abstract
In 2010 a government meteorologist revealed that for much of the last decade, the Zimbabwean weather forecast had been censored on a daily basis by agents of the President’s Office. ‘This information’ he said ‘was seen as sensitive’. What this ‘sensitivity’ amounts to is the subject of this paper. It is hard to make sense of the government’s impulse to censor the weather forecast in the 2000s without reference to the localized re-configurations of authority over land and ‘re-making’ of the state that fast track land reform provoked. To the extent that fast track offered new opportunities for the realization of a diversity of localised aspirations and imagined futures that turned on access to land and fertile soils in divergent ways, the recurrent droughts and failing harvests of the early 2000s were politically significant because they called into question the legitimacy of land reform, and the broader ‘thirdchimurenga’ project constituted around it. But across Zimbabwe, and the region, rainfall and drought have long been measures of contested political legitimacy in more complex ways not limited to the politics of food, famine and agricultural production. In southern Zimbabwe, this is true not just for spirit mediums, chiefs and other ‘traditionalist’ authorities for whom rainmaking practices are well-established means of demonstrating ‘autochthony’, sovereignty and legitimacy, but also for war veterans, new farmers, government technocrats and others involved in land reform during the 2000s. This is what I examine here. Whilst I focus particularly on rainmaking practices, encounters with njuzu water spirits, and national biras that took place in the 2005-6 when research was carried out, the larger point I pursue is that water acts as an index of power – of the entangled but contested play of legitimacy and sovereignty – across many different registers of meaning and regimes of rule. In making this argument I engage with Keane (2003; 2005) and Engelke’s elaboration of Peirce’s theory of signs (1955), and build upon others (James 1972; Jedrej 1992) who have long argued that rainmaking ‘traditions’ across eastern, central and southern Africa are less a form of applied meteorology and more an idiom of politics and power, in order to argue that they are necessarily both at the same time.
Date: September 12, 2013
Venue: IFRA
Entry: Prior confirmation at seminars@ifra-nairobi.net
Presentation by Gerard Gerold and moderated by Thierry Vircoulon and Musembayi Katumanga
Maybe one day Nairobi will be laid out with tarred roads, with avenues of flowering trees, flanked by noble spaces and stately squares; a cathedral worthy of faith and country, museums and galleries of art, theatres and public offices. – Dutton Eric in Kenya Mountain, 1929
In Volume XI n° 3 – 2013 of Mambo! [IFRA Publication] Olivier Marcel takes a closer look at art venues in Nairobi from 1910 to present day. Then, he goes ahead to give a visual representation/mapping of art venues vis a viz key political events in Kenya and East Africa.
In his finding Oliver posits that most of the art venues and institutions in Nairobi lack institutional memory.
An astonishing example is the fifty year old Goethe-Institut, which has virtually nothing but testimonies to account for the activity that preceded the arrival of the current director in 2007. Additionally, when a venue shuts down, as did Wahome Mutahi’s popular Citrus Whispers Theatre in Ngara, its memory is only shared orally in small circles of theatre enthusiasts and progressively fades into oblivion.
Marcel also observes that there might be differences of intention between local organizers and their western counter parts. In his opinion western donors will usually partner with art organizers with the sole agenda of putting Nairobi on the Map!
This paper also points out how foreign donors came to settle in the art space. As is always the case foreign donors have an agenda they seek to push and art space in Kenya seems an obvious channel. Marcel makes this clear by pointing out how informal settlements have become attractive for art projects which are usually financed by foreign donors.
Download Mambo 2012 Marcel EN [pdf]
Olivier Marcel is a PhD student in geography who is currently completing his thesis titled “Tracing Art from Nairobi, Geography of Art Mobilities in an East African Metropolis” (Bordeaux 3 University – LAM, UMR 5115).
