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This paper aims to describe the metrical features of tumbuizo, Swahili poems which, allegedly due to their antiquity, present very different stylistic elements from later compositions based on regular metres inspired from Arabic poetry. The particularity of tumbuizo poems has often led scholars to label them as unmetrical; I will demonstrate here that instead they do present a metre, yet very different from the later, syllabic, ones, and I will expose its main features, with a particular emphasis on the role of stress in its structuring. A study of metre and prosody in Swahili literature has rarely explored those domains of poetry which are outside the sphere of classical metres, whose constraints are well known by both scholars and Swahili composers; it is my hope, therefore, that this paper will contribute to a new focus on this field of literary studies, often neglected.

In Maryse Condé’s satirical autobiography, What is Africa to Me?, she recollects and re-evaluates her decade-long stay in four West African countries. The book also affords readers the chance to follow her trajectory from a racially Othered adolescent female to an ardent follower of Negritude, especially Aimé Césaire’s brand, which she associates with her personal re-creation and the uplift of the whole of the Black race. Anchored in postcolonial and feminist perspectives on Othering, this paper examines the role that commodification, Negritude, and disillusionment play in the narrative. In this counter-discourse, pervasive Othering is perceptible in patriarchy, one-party governments, and the chasm between West Africans and diasporan Africans. It is argued that the writer’s ultimate disavowal of Africa is principally a function of her objectification by the post-independence elite. The paper concludes that, far from being blameless, Maryse Condé herself contributes to the Othering of her husband, Mamadou Condé, and of Africa.

Cinematically, Yoruba filmmakers represent different aspects of the Nigerian nation and various elements of traditional cultures, customs, and praxes. In particular, they pay close attention to the influences of supernatural powers and metaphysical agents in human times and affairs, and they represent them in elaborate visual narratives. Against this cinematic backdrop, this paper investigates the representations of àjẹ́, erroneously known as witchcraft, in Yoruba language films. The paper posits that contemporary Yoruba language filmmakers copy the cinematic models that the late Chief Hubert Ogunde and Alhaji Yekini Ajileye created to make movies about witches. By focusing on the representations of witchcraft in two purposefully selected films, Ìyá-Àjẹ́́ (2017) and Àgbà-Mẹ́ta (2016), this article argues that the binary model that Yoruba filmmakers adopt in their portrayal of witches is a tired formula. Instead, this study proposes àjẹ́ism as a theoretical model for studying the àṣẹ vital force that witches own, as well as the relevance of àṣẹ to women’s empowerment, civil protests, and space claiming. Thus, this essay proposes that we reimagine àjẹ́ as a cultural resistance tool that women can appropriate to fight injustices and oppressions.

This paper presents the noun class system of Bwala, a nearly undocumented and undescribed Bantu language of the Teke group spoken in the Kinshasa Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Genealogically speaking, Bwala belongs to the Kasai-Ngounie (Extended) subclade, one of the major monophyletic groups within West-Coastal Bantu. Bwala has seven singular classes (1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 14, 15) and five plural classes (2, 4, 6, 8, 10) which form nine singular/plural noun class pairings (1/2, 3/4, 5/6, 5/10, 5/4, 7/8, 7/6, 9/6, 14/6). The paper furthermore addresses the diachronic changes which the Bwala noun class system underwent with respect to Proto-Bantu (PB). We compare these to the changes identified by Hyman, Lionnet, and Ngolele (2019) for Teke-Ewo, a closely related variety, with the aim of identifying morphological innovations shared between varieties of the so-called Teke group (Bantu B70).

This paper examines Akan indigenous concepts for “stress”, “distress”, “sorrow”, and “depression” through the interaction between language, culture, mind and the body. It applies the theory of conceptual metaphors (Lakoff and Johnson 1980), with an emphasis on the theory of embodiment. The majority of Akan expressions and proverbs for “stress”, “distress”, “sorrow”, and “depression” are derived from body part terms via embodiment. The nature of the semantic patterns and how the Akans perceive these emotions from the core pillars of their language and culture are explored. In addition to examining the use of body part expressions, the paper further discusses the use of idioms and proverbs to comment on the emotions mentioned above.

This paper gives an account of sociolinguistic aspects of Chasu personal names and some ways in which they relate to the modes of address among the Vaasu people of Same District in the Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania. It reveals that Chasu personal names are both linguistic and socio-cultural phenomena and are formed by both lexical and affixation processes. From the linguistic point of view, Chasu names demonstrate meaningful morphological and derivational processes that are linked to gender marking and hierarchy of birth. From a socio-cultural perspective, personal names are linked with circumstances surrounding the birth, such as time and day of delivery, place of birth, and natural events. This study describes how personal names are chosen and bestowed upon children, and how beliefs, values, social practices and human experience are reflected in the naming practices. This paper further demonstrates that names are not only labels for individual or group identification but are also inseparable from the modes of address and manner of expression in the Chasu speech community.

This paper has one main goal: to provide a first description of the tense-aspect system of Mengaka. The paper indicates that Mengaka shows various tenses (past tenses, a present tense, a future tense) and aspects (perfective, habitual, progressive). Furthermore, the dividing lines between the degrees of past in Mengaka appear to be at least basically rigid. It is also argued in this paper that the tense-aspect system of Mengaka can be analysed as operating according to twelve tense-aspect categories. These categories may have one or more than one basic use. Also, they may be manifested by any of the following: the lack of a tense and an aspect marking, a tonal alternation, a free-standing marker or the use of a construction which may include tense and/or aspect markers and a nasal verb prefix.

Petina Gappah’s debut novel, The Book of Memory (2015), centres on the lives of two ‘white’ characters in post-independent Zimbabwe: Memory, the protagonist-narrator and a woman with albinism, and Lloyd, Memory’s adoptive father and a white, closeted gay man. Both characters are rendered to the margins of Zimbabwean society. This paper analyses how Memory and Lloyd are brought together by their respective forms of marginalisation. Memory is a person with albinism and her whiteness is perceived as dirty and a contagion. On the other hand, Lloyd is a white, closeted gay man in Mugabe’s homophobic Zimbabwe. Making use of Ann Cvetkovich’s reading of trauma and Robert McRuer’s concept of ‘compulsory able-bodiedness’, in this paper we argue that Gappah’s novel depicts a refiguring of the marginalised body as one capable of agency and existence in its own right. In the process, such refiguring destabilises race and sexuality as social constructs.

While Kenyan colonial subjects became citizens at independence, women were excluded from state resources, social services, and full political enfranchisement. This was neither the decolonizing future they had been promised nor the one they had envisioned; for Kenyan women, independence often held more symbolic than material meaning. Continued landlessness – which overlapped with perpetuated structural gendered inequalities and various forms of political exclusion – coloured the ways in which Kenyan women made sense of independence. Relying on archival and oral sources, this article explores how Kenyan women were prohibited from exercising the fullest rights offered and protected by the early postcolonial state. In examining the multilayered politics of women’s marginalization, this paper elucidates how these exclusions shaped political imaginations, and in particular, Kenyan women’s notion of temporality, often marked by a sense of stasis or being placed outside of time. “There Was No Change” thus not only sheds light on the broad question of how gender shapes temporal logics, but it also contributes to an emerging literature on gendered notions of time during political transition.

This paper discusses the phenomenon of underapplication of palatalization in a Pig Latin game in Akan, a Niger-Congo (Kwa) language. Akan Pig Latin (henceforth APL), which is popularly known in Akan as Megesege, is a language game played usually by Akan youth. The game is played by appending the velar consonant /ɡ/ to the right of every vowel in the input word or phrase and then copying the vowel of the base syllable to form a CV structure. Whenever the base syllable contains /i, ɪ, e/ or /ɛ/, the manipulation performed by the game creates a palatalizing environment, in which a velar segment is followed by a front vowel. In regular Akan phonology, such sequences tend to undergo the process of palatalization. This paper provides evidence to show that in the forms produced by APL, palatalization fails to apply in the expected contexts. The underapplication of palatalization is accounted for within the framework of Optimality Theory. It is argued that the process is blocked by a high-ranking OCP constraint that bans adjacent [Coronal] segments in neighboring syllables. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

International and regional public health policy have been promoting an integration and regulation of traditional medicine and their practitioners since the late 1970s with the aim to ensure the safety of the traditional healers’ patients and to improve healthcare services in rural areas by utilising traditional healers as auxiliary healthcare personnel. Contrary to many other African countries, such as South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe, Namibia has still not officially recognised traditional medicine and its practitioners as a complementary healthcare system. Nevertheless, traditional healers continue to provide their services to Namibians. This paper seeks to explore how the Namibian government, the public health system and individual traditional healers interact and collaborate in the absence of an official recognition of traditional medicine in Namibia. Data presented in this paper is based on an ethnographic exploration in Namibia from December 2011 until May 2012, including several in-depth-interviews with six traditional healers. This article is an abridged and updated version of the fifth chapter of Maylin Meincke's award-winning DSocSci thesis submitted to the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Helsinki (2016).

Marianne Thamm’s memoir Hitler, Verwoerd, Mandela and Me provides an interesting take on adoption: the adoption of an immigrant by a destination country and vice versa. This paper investigates Thamm’s navigation of the geographic, social, and linguistic spaces as an immigrant in Apartheid-era South Africa, and how it aids in creating her cognitive-affective map. To do so, the cognitive-affective map of adopting a new country, as well as of being adopted by a country, is applied twofold. Thamm meaningfully engages in two narrative strands (Singley, 2011) often found in adoption memoirs. These strands focus on the adoptee as being unadoptable, and as being part of a new beginnings narrative. Regarding the first strand, Thamm reflects on immigrants' 'unadoptability' in their new country, exposing normative prejudices, injustices, and ideologies in the process. Further, she uses her agency as a journalist in an effort to expose how this 'unadoptability' extends to the Black population in Apartheid South Africa. As for the second strand, her representation of herself, as the country's adoptee, enables her to take part in a new beginnings narrative, and to show how she takes agency and admits culpability in the need for this narrative to be created. In other words, Thamm admits that her passive resistance to the apartheid regime does not make her innocent to the injustices committed against the oppressed; as a white person, albeit a marginalized immigrant, she enjoys the privilege that accompanies her race during the regime. Finally, Thamm undertakes what can be classified as an adoption reunion journey to Europe, which further shapes her cognitive-affective maps and navigation of South African spaces as an immigrant. She reflects on how, after Apartheid, South Africa adopted back those it rejected under the regime.

Female migration over the decades has become a common feature in most regions. Many women face many challenges in their new environment in terms of assimilation and accommodation. This paper documents the narratives of immigrant women who have been victims of domestic violence and explores how immigration related factors such as xenophobia, language, unemployment and lack of familial support hinder their attempts to seek help thus making settlement and assimilation in the new environment particularly challenging. Many are imprisoned in marriages and relationships of domestic abuse. This paper locates the argument in the context of intersectionality, that race, class, ethnicity, religion and gender are important categories of analysis to understand the complexities women’s immigration challenges. Findings of this paper will contribute to new knowledge in the context of gender and migration amongst immigrant groups in South Africa.

This paper is founded on research that was conducted in July 2015 at a maximum-security correctional institution in Westville, Durban, South Africa. It focuses on the impact of incarceration of African (Black) migrants. The current outbreak of xenophobic violence, especially since 2008, supposedly committed by foreign nationals in South Africa, has prompted interest in the number of incarcerated migrants and migration overall. For purposes of this paper interviews were conducted randomly, using a systematic sampling technique with remand foreign nationals incarcerated at the Medium A, Durban Westville Correctional Centre. The experiences of foreign national detainees are recorded in order to augment their opinions to the discussions on crime, migration and xenophobia taking place at micro and macro levels in South Africa.

During the colonial and apartheid era, South Africa restricted the movement of Black people within the country through various legislations. Black people were allowed to reside in urban centres through a strict migratory policy only to the extent they could meet the economic needs of the white capitalist class. In the post-apartheid South Africa, the constitution of the country allows for the free movement and settlement of its citizen, which has led to rapid migration and urbanisation in the different provinces of the country. The current generation of the minority Indian community seized the opportunity to migrate across provinces in search of better economic opportunities and a better quality of life. This paper examines the movement and settlement of the current generation Indians from the Province of KwaZulu-Natal to Gauteng. The paper draws data from the study of twelve respondents who have migrated to the Gauteng province in the post-apartheid era.

Tiv associative constructions and prepositional phrases are characterized by what was originally a noun class agreement enclitic that has degenerated in some morphosyntactic contexts to a grammatical tone that remains invariant in noun class agreement. The enclitic interacts closely with an interesting property of Tiv relating to the contrast between the so-called A- vs. B-forms, in that the enclitic only manifests on B-forms. The paper also outlines a number of morphosyntactic functions of the enclitic, including marking the boundary of the tighter morphosyntactic unit or bracket that head nouns form with dependent elements such as another noun, as well as headship indexing. In certain cases the enclitic conflates the semantic functions of noun class agreement marking with the pragmatic value of topicalization. The enclitic started out in associative constructions as pragmatically motivated, but has gradually faded out in prepositional phrases originating from the associative constructions, with only syntactic conditions remaining. Despite its language-specific behaviour, the Tiv enclitic fits into the profile of the enclitics found in other Bantoid languages like Aghem (Hyman 2010, 1979), Isu (Kießling 2010), and Babanki (Akumbu and Kießling forthcoming), where the pragmatic values encoded by enclitics range between defocalization and focalization.

This paper discusses two consumption verbs in Akan (Niger-Congo, Kwa), dí ‘to eat’ and nóḿ ‘to drink’. The study argues that in addition to their basic meanings, the verbs serve as rich sources of metaphorical extensions. Starting from this premise, the paper provides evidence in the form of expressions wherein the consumption verbs are employed metaphorically for expressing everyday concepts and cognitive processes. First, it presents an analysis of the verbs by briefly discussing the components that comprise the central meanings of the verbs. Second, following Newman (2009), the verbs and their metaphorical extensions are discussed under two broad themes: Agent-Oriented Extensions and Patient- Oriented Extensions. Under Agent-Oriented Extensions, we discuss figurative usages that are based on the internalization of food and drinks as well as extensions based on the sensation of the agent undergoing the event. Extensions derived from the destruction of food during the process of consumption is discussed under the Patient-Oriented. We agree to a large extent with Newman and Aberra (2007:253–254) that not all the figurative usages of these verbs are ‘relatable to the literal sense’ of the EAT and DRINK verbs in Akan. For this reason we restrict our discussion to those extensions that are semantically related to the central meanings of these verbs.

This paper draws on theories of trauma as a basis for critical reflection on how songs among the Bulsa and Kasena of northern Ghana can enhance our collective understanding of the slave experience within Africa and specifically Ghana. Although literature on memories of slavery within the African collective imagination is rich and varied, these studies have often been silent on how those who lost kith and kin during slave raids within Africa, where the bulk of slaves were mostly captured, have often tried to cope, represent and reconstruct the memories of their traumatic past. Drawing on fieldwork through recording of traditional performances and songs from these cultural areas, the paper emphasises the significance of understanding the historical, cultural and literary contexts that continue to influence and shape the production and performance of these songs even in contemporary times. The paper has implications not only for those seeking an understanding of how slavery has shaped African societies but also how local communities continue to endure its legacies.

The paper examines whether or not English medium in Kenyan primary school education serves the intended instrumental and sentimental or symbolic functions. It is based on Standard Four (when English medium is introduced) Maths and Science classroom data in two schools from two regions of the country. The dominant home languages are Kiswahili in one region and DhoLuo in another. Premised on linguistic human rights and education as a basic human right, the data are analysed on four dimensions. These are: teacher talk-grammatical accuracy and appropriacy; types of questions; types of communication strategies and turn distribution. The paper concludes that teachers and learners are not ready to use English medium at Standard Four and the emphasis on the instrumental value of English is disastrous since very few Kenyans use English in their day-to-day interactions at work places. It recommends at least five years of Mother Tongue medium in primary school before the transition to the English medium.

This paper presents the results of a study carried out in Gumare and Etsha 6 villages of the Okavango Delta in Botswana. The study examined the relationship between development of tourism and production of traditional baskets in the area. Methods used for the study include a total of 100 household survey, questionnaires administered across the two study sites, two focus group discussions and key informant interviews. The findings indicate that different factors may have worked individually or in concert to necessitate a shift in focus for production of baskets from domestic to commercial wares. Importantly, the paper underlines the importance of tourism in availing a market for the baskets thus considerably influencing the nature of production and changes observed in the qualities of the baskets over time. The paper concludes that the observed changes are necessary if the basket production industry is to be sustained. Essentially, therefore, these changes may be conceived of as signs of evolution on the part of the craft and adaptation by producers.

This paper analyses the demonstratives of noun classes 16–18, the locative demonstratives, in Swahili. The main focus of the paper is the word order of these demonstratives in adnominal constructions. Corpus research presented in this study shows that the locative demonstratives precede the locative noun that they determine much more frequently than follow, contrary to what is claimed in the literature. In this paper I will demonstrate that the locative demonstrative following the locative noun is the marked word order and I hypothesize that this is the natural focus position of the locative demonstrative. The demonstrative is consequently defocused in the position preceding the noun. This defocus gives a reduction of the demonstrative function in favour of a more prepositional one. It is suggested that this is an on-going grammaticalization process. The article starts with an overview of the form, meaning, function and grammatical distribution of the locative demonstratives, as the information on these specific demonstratives is often sketchy in descriptions of Swahili.

In this paper we describe how the innovative technique of minimally invasive tissue sampling (MITS) and the researchers associated with it came to represent the fears, anger, and suspicions of a community in Eastern Ethiopia. MITS was developed to lessen the uncertainty over causes of death in low- and middle-income countries (Bassat et al. 2016). It is a medical procedure where a core biopsy instrument is used to extract numerous small tissue samples from a predefined set of organs (brain, lung, heart, liver, bone marrow) in deceased children under 5 and stillbirths. Additionally, MITS practitioners collect blood, urine, stool, and cerebral spinal fluid, take nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs, and include measurements and several pictures of the body to identify any abnormalities. In the study site, MITS has become more than just an act of extracting samples. Instead, it is a social process that begins when the research team learns about the death of a child and ends when the child is buried. Furthermore, the act of sample taking has come to represent the underlying fears, anger, and suspicions in the community about organ and blood theft, and those researchers associated with it – whether social scientists or histopathologists – have become the embodiment of an evil spirit called tuqatta, who survives on blood and organs, and conducts ritual sacrifice by offering the blood of its victims to spiritual ancestors. We suggest that the tuqatta embodies the strongly felt suspicion that the MITS intervention is not there for people’s benefit, but rather that it is taking something from them. The emergence of the tuqatta in the research site highlights the vulnerability that people feel in relation to this global health medical intervention. We conclude by arguing that local frames of understanding should not be dismissed as ‘rumours’ or simply as something to overcome in health research; rather, they require serious attention and indicate the need for open dialogue between researchers and the public.

Ideophones have been analysed in the linguistic literature as a class of words that depict sensory imagery; they are established in most natural languages, but particularly in African and Asian languages. They have gained popularity for their uniqueness in linguistic forms, including their peculiar phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic behaviour and rich sensory meanings. The question as to whether or not ideophones constitute a separate word class has attracted the attention of many researchers in recent years. This paper examines the linguistic characteristics of ideophones in Dagbani and Gurenԑ, two Mabia (Gur) Niger-Congo languages spoken in the Northern and Upper East Regions of Ghana, respectively. We demonstrate that ideophones in these languages exhibit peculiar phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic characteristics. Based on these peculiar characteristics, we assume that ideophones constitute a distinct word class in these languages. Ideophones in Dagbani and Gurenԑ have not received any systematic linguistic investigation. This study is therefore significant since it sheds new light on an area that has not received linguistic attention in the two languages under study.

This paper describes and analyzes the morphosyntactic manifestation of definite nominals in Argobba, a Semitic language spoken in Ethiopia, in HPSG framework. The objective of this study is, therefore, twofold: to describe the surface realization of definite nominals and put forward theoretical analysis of the categories in question. In Argobba, indefinite nominals (nouns, adjectives and numerals) are not morphologically marked. Definite nominals in contrast are morphologically marked. The Argobba definite article is a morphologically bound element with specification for gender. Plural nouns and adjectives are not morphologically marked for definiteness. There are different definite article suffixes for the category noun, adjective and numeral. Unlike in other sister languages in Ethio-Semitic subfamily, in Argobba, a singular noun qualified by a demonstrative, possessive pronoun and genitive NP obligatorily carries a definite article. In this paper, I argued that the article combines with nominals in the lexicon, not at the level of syntax. Accordingly, a DLR is posited to derive a definite nominal word.

This paper provides a linguistic analysis of English loanwords in Akan (Niger Congo, Kwa). Using data from the sporting, political and socio-economic domains, we consider phonological and morphological issues that pertain with English loanwords in Akan. Additionally, the paper investigates the specific semantic sub-domains of these words. Phonologically, we note that the loanwords comply with the vowel harmony rule in Akan. Also the English short neutral half-open vowel /ʌ/, the schwa vowel /ə/ and the back open rounded vowel /ɒ/ are replaced with more familiar Akan vowels. Furthermore, loanwords with consonant clusters are adjusted by either insertion or deletion. Morphologically, we observe that English stems are borrowed with various inflections from Akan. Semantically, we note that Akan has borrowed from the domains of security, soccer, health, governance, education and other specialized fields. Finally, we recognise that Akan speakers borrow to fill lexical and semantic gaps, for simplicity and for prestige.

After war in northern Uganda, conflicts over land became pervasive. Families, clans and neighbours often relate through tensions and contradictions over customary land and how it is governed. This article discusses the changing gendered dynamics of the governance of customary land amidst land conflicts in a post-war society. Drawing on fourteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in Pader District in the Acholi sub-region, carried out between 2014 and 2016, the paper highlights strategies that different categories of women involved in land conflicts use, to perform, communicate and activate their belonging and attachment to land. Relating the notion of property to how women (re)-position themselves in land conflicts, and (re)-construct those positions and their identities on and through land, demonstrates how these conflicts in post-war northern Ugandan offers women a way of grounding themselves on customary land. The article, therefore, advances the notion of ‘intimate governance’ to understand in particular, women’s increasing role in land governance, suggesting that it is becoming (en-)gendered through land conflicts.

In this paper we show that certain consonants have the effect of depressing the tone on adjacent vowels in Malawian CiTonga, a Bantu language spoken mainly in Nkhata Bay. We argue that some of these effects are phonological, changing High vowels to Low. In other cases the effect is not categorical, but gradient, as certain consonants have a greater lowering effect than others on the tone of the adjacent vowel. For these cases we propose the effect is phonetic overall. Still, we demonstrate that in these latter cases where the lowering effect is most pronounced, there are near-neutralization effects, which in some cases can lead to neutralization and homophony in the judgment of native speakers. We make some general typological observations, comparing the set of depressor consonants in CiTonga to other Bantu languages.

This paper describes focus marking phenomenon in Leteh (Kwa: South Guan), and the formation of four focus constructions in the language. The study is informed by tenets of Basic Linguistic Theory (Dixon 1997; Dryer 2006). Non-subjects are obligatorily focus marked with a dedicated morpheme né, and a clause-final definiteness marker a, whereas subject focus marking is by a clause-final definiteness marker a only. Constituents that are focused represent the most salient information in the discourse. The occurrence of gaps is contingent on the lexical category of the focused constituent. Data are sourced from recorded Leteh folktales and constructed discourse. The paper adds new data on focus constructions in Kwa languages.

The promotion of multilingual education can be regarded as a force that is driving change in language teaching and learning. The existing literature refers to the positive impact of new discourses and interventions on non-English home-language speakers’ efforts to learn English successfully as a subject in school. However, the effectiveness of English 2nd Language (EL2) teaching interventions remains a bone of contention. In this paper, I shall therefore investigate whether or not issues of mother-tongue and multilingual education have been placed at the centre of educational reform. The paper is based on a situation analysis of multilingual language policies in 18 institutions of higher learning in South Africa. Unisa (a national and international university) is perceived as a major force in achieving this goal in South Africa was found that students’ perceptions of language matters are not reflected in Unisa’s language policy planning. Narratives and document analysis are used as a method to collect data.

South African schools continue to face challenges in implementing the official bilingual policy at the level of policy development, teacher training, materials development, language pedagogy and assessment. In general, there is a growing sense of policy failure and a resignation that English will inevitably maintain its hegemony over African languages. In this paper, the authors use data generated from a Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) research project, to document the implementation challenges schools face in enacting their language policies, highlighting how innovative schools sought to bring practice closer to policy. The paper presents a critical analysis of the work of three NGO-initiated projects that drove multilingual innovations in selected schools. These exemplary practices serve to reconceptualise the policy-practice nexus and offer an alternative to the prevailing policydriven and problem-identification research. At least one of the NGO interventions surveyed, the Home Language Project, may be considered a methodological breakthrough, with the potential to promote home languages in a low-cost, low-risk project.

This paper presents a systematic description of the 11 vowel phonemes (seven oral and four nasal vowels) of Siwu, the language of the people of Akpafu and Lolobi through a spectrographic analysis. The paper determines on scientific basis, the underlying acoustic parameters that characterize the vowel system of Siwu. The result of the study defines the acoustic vowel space of the language and shows that, the vowels are adequately dispersed within the vowel space as predicted by the maximal dispersion theory. The result further reveals that there are no significant dialectal differences between the two towns, (Akpafu and Lolobi) that constitute the Siwu language community – on the acoustic level.

Given that one of the Pan African Anthropology Association’s principle lines of research is the monitoring of ethnic conflicts in Africa, the contribution African intellectuals have made to the subject of cultural diversity management is a matter of great interest. The case study chosen for this paper is Equatorial Guinea, and the paper aims to provide an analysis of arguments that are raised in intellectual texts that deal with issues of identity and the country’s history. The paper will look at the legacy of colonialism in regards to the empowerment and discrimination of certain ethnic groups in relation to others, it will reflect on the construction of the post-colonial state and it will consider a reading of history that runs counter to the official one, that of the country being founded upon unity, by looking at examples of the ‘hijacking’ of the state and certain populations within a dictatorial context.

Migrants from Senegal constitute a small minority in Norway, which complicates their possibilities of carrying out certain linguistic and cultural practices face-to-face. However, with increased access to digital means, socio-cultural practices, including multilingual discourse, may be participated in transnationally. In this paper, we analyse two stretches of multimodal conversation between a Senegalese living in Norway and two interlocutors in Senegal, more specifically one WhatsApp conversation with a nephew, and one Messenger interaction with a close friend. Based on interview and interactional data, we investigate how they use their various communicative resources to negotiate transnational relationships, and to seek emotional, spiritual, and practical support. The analysis shows how language choice is used to create virtual togetherness (Baldassar 2008; Nedelcu and Wyss 2016) in different ways. The interlocutors engage in practices ranging from phatic communication, banter and gifting, to help with practical issues and doing business as they manage different mobile chronotopes (Lyons and Tagg 2019). Our research extends the use of the mobile chronotope to include voice messages and considers more intimate relationships. It shines light on the immense resourcefulness of highly multilingual individuals in achieving their communicative aims and points this out as a fruitful area for future investigation.

The study of African youth languages (AYLs) has seen a few conceptual shifts and portrayals, reflecting their dynamicity, diversity, and fluidities. In these contexts, AYLs have been described as constituted by codeswitching/mixing, and as restrictive practices with links to ingroup or marginalized identities. This paper is oriented towards an emic view of AYLs, of what the speakers perceive themselves as doing, particularly in ecologies where codeswitching remains the dominant norm. I draw on naturalistic samples of Nigerian youth languages to illustrate the nature of codeswitching/mixing, linguistic innovation, and ethno-lingual practices within the frames of polylanguaging and metrolingualism. A metrolingual view of youth languages points to their fluidity and everydayness, rather than treating them as exotic phenomena of ingroupness or adversarial goals, while polylanguaging represents a shift from the sense of language mixing to the complex fashion in which speakers make use of diverse repertoires for communicative intents. I argue that both notions broadly explain the sociolinguistic typicalities of AYL practices – and that they subsume seemingly disparate concepts in youth language theorizing.

This paper examines the role of the mass media in the struggle for civil democratic rule in Africa with a special focus on Nigeria from 1993 to 1999. The paper argues that Nigeria for the most part of her post-independence existence had been under military rule. But 1993– 1999 was marked by an unprecedented military dictatorship leading to the suppression and muscling down of democratic forces and the eventual annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential elections presumably won by Chief M.K.O. Abiola, which was generally believed to be free and fair. The mass media having fought for the nation’s independence stood diametrically opposed to continued military rule and insisted on the country’s return to civil democratic rule. To achieve this, the mass media extensively and effectively employed antimilitary publications and reportage mostly at the risk of losing their lives to expose the evil and misrule of military rule in order to mobilize the civil societies against the military juntas. This resulted in series of episodes of mass protest, industrial strife, and civil disturbance across Nigeria by various civil society groups and labour unions. In spite of the hostile environment created by the military such as arbitrary arrest and detention of journalists, political assassination, extra-judicial killings, abuse of human rights, closure of media houses, seizure of publications among others, the Nigerian media kept its resilience in the anti-military struggle. This paper concludes that the struggle by the mass media against the military regime between 1993 and 1999 extensively tarnished the image of the Nigeria military junta and resulted in both international and domestic pressures that eventually forced the military to cede power to a democratically elected government in 1999.

This paper aims at developing a better understanding of local social, cultural and ecological geographies of water and sanitation in Nigeria’s coastal settlements. In-depth interviews, field observations and secondary sources of data were used to capture local complexities associated with these issues in Ibeno-a coastal settlement in Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria. Findings showed that the daily water and sanitation practices of the people depend, to a large extent, on the nature of the locational/physical environment as well as the wider social and cultural circumstances of the people (located in beliefs, spiritualities and socio-economic status). As behavioural responses, a number of coping resources and methods were observed to be central to meeting the daily challenges of water and sanitation in the area. In conclusion, the paper argues that theories working on behavioural changes and human cognition alone are not sufficient in deepening understanding of the complexities surrounding water and sanitation issues in developing countries. The wider social and environmental contexts are important variables for considerations.

In this article we investigate various focus constructions in Ewe. The contribution of this paper is two-fold: First, it presents new evidence that focus fronting in Ewe is simply movement to a focus phrase in left periphery of the clause, and, secondly, it presents an analysis of the focus ɖè construction in which little previous work has been conducted. In the first part of the paper we investigate the pragmatic uses of the particle yé, which we analyse as the head of a focus projection that does not encode a specific kind of focus, but can host elements expressing a range of focal interpretations. In the second part of the paper we argue that the ɖè construction used in one form of predicate focus is not a focus particle of the same class as yé, but rather an overt focus operator located in the C domain.

Over the last twenty years, a number of anthropologists have questioned the discipline’s “epistemology of intimacy” to show that in some parts of the world, Otherness plays an integral role in the construction of social unity. While Otherness has been rehabilitated as a productive, even unifying, relationship in certain contexts, it remains an insecure premise through which to relate in parts of the world where people idealize pure mutual identification and believe in the reality of witchcraft. In such places, Otherness is always implicated as a dangerous potential in even the most intimate relationships. South African churches have long resisted this potential in the ways that they relate to fellow Christians in church and to the social world beyond it. In contrast to their “hermeneutics of faith”, I pay specific attention in this paper to a church in South Africa whose religious ethic centred on a radical “hermeneutics of suspicion” that led believers to relate to their own bodies, fellow churchgoers, and a wider social world in terms of socially threatening Otherness. I argue that members of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, where this ethic was elaborated, found in radical Otherness the possibility of an ontologically singular position from which they could attempt to remake social worlds that would be immune from witchcraft – without exposing themselves to the dangers of new social relations.

This paper examines the chieftaincy succession conflict in Dagbon, Northern Ghana. It traces the history of the struggle for the kingship title between the two feuding clans, the Abudu and the Andani clans, and analyzes in detail the clashes of March 2002 which resulted in the death of the incumbent king of Dagbon and several of his supporters. Using data and information gathered from key informant interviews and an analysis of newspaper and internet sources, the paper concludes that the conflict has been highly politicised because chiefs, royals and the educated elite in Dagbon have a tradition of being involved in national politics and have often used their influence in government to attain high traditional office. Furthermore, the desire of Ghana’s two main political parties for electoral votes in the keenly contested elections has contributed to the politicisation of the Dagbon conflict since the return to civilian rule in 1992.

This paper seeks to describe some linguistic features of six dialects of the so-called Meru group. All the six are found on a geographical continuum and they are mutually intelligible. The argument in this paper is that the linguistic features, e.g. phonological, morphological and lexical systems of dialects, are largely responsible for reduced degrees of intelligibility. Dialect clusters within a given geographical area exhibit common phonological characteristics for that particular cluster. Besides this sharing of phonological characteristics, there exist features that are peculiar to individual dialects. That is, there are idiosyncratic features inherent in a given dialect that set it off from the other dialects in the same cluster. The existences of these peculiar features, therefore, enable us to draw dialect boundaries from a phonological point of view. Morphological features as well as lexical differences that are unique to one dialect also provide a firm basis for drawing linguistic boundaries. The total of these diversities in unity constitute a language continuum. The dialects maintain individual characteristics, though some may seem simple, to set them off from one another.

This paper examines The High Tone Syllable (HTS) in Arigidi. The HTS, an element which occurs between the subject NP and the VP in declarative sentences has only been found in Yorùbá and some of its dialects. In Arigidi, the HTS usually occurs between the subject and the verb phrase in declarative sentences too. This paper revealed that the HTS in Arigidi regularly replaces the last syllable of the preceding NP whenever the NP shows up in that position. This paper also affirms that the HTS is a tense and aspectual marker which indicates past/present and completed actions in Arigidi.

This paper addresses contemporary proclamations of Zuluness among a sub-group of gay Zulu men in South Africa through an inter-disciplinary methodological approach. Against the socio-historical manifestations of the myth of homosexuality as un-African, this paper addresses the reconciliation of Zuluness and Gayness among members of a particular gay Zulu sub-culture. The re-interpretation of traditional Zulu ethnicity and African/Zulu culture among gay Zulu men in contemporary KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) offers new insights into the fluid and flexible constructions of contemporary African ethnicities and suggests that Zulu essentialism is being challenged. I argue that there are three main pillars upon which Zulu gay men in the KZN region primarily build their Zulu ethnic consciousness: firstly, the linguistic variety of isiNgqumo which derives its lexicon from an ancient isiZulu, secondly, the belief in the power of the amadlozi [ancestors] and lastly, the adherence to the traditional custom of ukuhlonipha [to show respect].

The period that runs from 1964 to 1980 was special to Malawi for mainly three reasons: (1) the apparent unique approach to development as compared to other African countries; (2) its unprecedented economic growth; (3) arguably the only period whereby Dr Banda, Malawi’s first president, had almost total control of the country’s economic and development policies. Through a comparative literature review of economic history sources, the paper points out that these conditions create a plausible reason for a deeper critical analysis of the economic and development policies that were being pursued. Although it can be concluded that economic growth and development is a product of mainly external socio-economic/political factors, the paper argues that Dr Banda’s pragmatic policy choices and determination played a critical role to the recorded progress in the said period. These policy choices may distinctively be referred to as ‘Pragmatic Unilateral Capitalism’.

Violence, insecurity, and severe hunger resulting from the civil war caused hundreds of thousands of Somalis to flee from the country. Now a large number of Somalis, over one million, live in the diaspora. These diaspora communities retain close ties with the homeland and engage in a wide variety of transnational activities. Some of them prefer to return to Somalia. With regard to Somali politics, there are three main areas that diaspora returnees are involved in. Some invest in the private and social sector; others engage in the civil services; while yet others directly compete for higher political positions. This paper will focus on the participation of returned professional politicians in post-war political leadership in the Somali Republic. This research intends to fill the knowledge gap on the political role of the Somali diaspora and, therefore, to contribute to the ongoing wider debate on diaspora and their impact on their homelands. Based on the assumption that Somali diaspora is increasingly dominating the political leadership of the homeland, this paper intends to answer two questions. Firstly, what is the role of the diaspora relative to their local counterparts in the field of political leadership? Secondly, given the leadership skills and experiences accumulated while abroad, particularly in the West, what diaspora political leadership is able to contribute towards peace and a state-building project in post-war Somalia? Raising this second question, my intention –in addition to illustrating the role of political leadership – is also to moderately respond to a perceived weakness in the literature on the diaspora engagement.

Tanzania is a multilingual country with 150 ethnic languages spoken within its boundaries. However, Kiswahili is the language most frequently used in government offices, as well as in everyday activities countrywide. Despite the adoption of one of Africa’s largest languages as an official language, the government has constantly insisted that English should remain the only medium of instruction at post-primary level, because of its tremendous power and prestige in the global market. The government’s stance reveals a limited understanding of what a system of promoting bilingualism and bi-literacy in education should involve. This paper presents the findings on a study conducted in primary and secondary schools in Tanzania with regard to language-in-education policy implementation. Therefore, the practice in schools is that monolingual education dominates and the idea of bilingual education appears far-fetched to practioners in the education sector. This paper proposes the 50–50 Model as a way forward for implementing strong bilingual education in Tanzania.

The Akan cherish people who are grateful. The paper addresses the language of thanking in Akan under expressive speech acts and linguistic routines. The paper gives ethnographic situations and communicative events for thanking including, (1) thanking after child birth; (2) thanking in joyful occasions: marriage and wedding; survival from accidents, achievements, promotions, bequeathing of properties, (3) funeral activities, (4) thanking after arbitration, (5) ironical thanking (indirect thanking), and (6) thanking at the shrine. We will consider socio-cultural functions and the current state of thanking in Akan society.

Objectives for this paper were to: study farmer beliefs and perceptions on local pig farming practices; and to explore opportunities for improved located production in selected villages of Western Kenya. The paper seeks to understand why the local pig breed still remains the predominant breed in these areas despite numerous calls to introduce better exotic breeds. Most pigs in Kenya are of exotic breeds, intensively managed on commercial farms. Focus group discussions were used to gather data. Discussions were taped, transcribed and translated from Swahili to English. Farmers use pigs to guard homes at night, pigs also act as a charm to protect families against evil spirits. Women farmers manage the family pigs, men sell the pigs. Farmers identified feeding, marketing, and breeding as the main challenges affecting the sector. The discussions identified a number of opportunities for improved production, and likely strengthened the bond between the farmers, researchers and staff. This created an outlook that can now be used in further public engagement as ongoing research studies on appropriate feed, health and improvement of market access are being analysed.

This paper discusses the syntactic distributions of aspect in the grammar of Yorùbá Àkókó. It considers the various Yorùbá Àkókó aspectual contrasts relative to the inception, duration or completion of an event. This is called Aspectual Structure. The paper describes the Yorùbá Àkókó aspectual structure in terms of Gazdar et al’s (1985) framework which is called the Generalised Phrase Structure Grammar (GPSG). The Yorùbá Àkókó aspectual structure distinguishes between the perfective and the imperfective; the imperfective is further subdivided. All the verbal elements and the occurrences of auxiliary which mark the perfective, imperfective (habitual, progressive) as well as the tonal alternations that occur in some elements in Yorùbá Àkókó, are completely different from that of the Standard Yorùbá. This paper does not regard the perfective as an “unmarked category” of the aspectual subcategories. This is so because in Yorùbá Àkókó the perfective does not become neutralized whenever it occurs with other aspect categories. Using the GPSG framework, the paper also accounts for some co-occurrence restrictions and the right orders of aspectual auxiliary verbs in Yorùbá Àkókó. The paper, in addition, describes the Yorùbá Àkókó negative markers and asserts that they are sometimes tied with aspect markings. This paper conclusively draws attention to issues on Yorùbá dialectology which would need further research.

This paper presents a comparison between the passive and the stative derivations. The stative derivation, which is variously referred to in the literature as the neuter, neuter-passive, quasi-passive, neuter-stative, metastatic-potential, descriptive passive (Satyo 1985), is described by Doke (1947) as closely similar to the passive derivation. Doke (1947) refers to what we will call the stative derivation here as the ‘Middle or Quasi-passive’. This closeness has motivated detailed comparisons of the two derivational forms. While there is no uniformity in the literature as to what the stative derivation is, our choice of the label ‘stative’ is well motivated. As stated in Mchombo (2004: 95), ‘stative’ is based on the observation that the verb denotes the result state of the base verb. It is also a label that is widely used. Mchombo (1993, 2004) looks at the passive and the stative constructions, as two distinct types of verbal extensions, working within the lexicalist theory of syntax, the Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) theoretical framework. He proposes that the passive morpheme suppresses the agent of the transitive predicate, while the stative morpheme deletes it. Dubinsky and Simango (1996) go further arguing that the passive alters mapping from arguments to grammatical functions, as currently assumed in the Lexical Mapping Theory (henceforth LMT), and the stative performs a perfectly analogous operation on the Lexical Conceptual Structure (LCS), that is argument structure, itself. They present several differences between the two derivations beyond those originally proposed by Mchombo (1993) but are later noted in Mchombo (2004). We use the LMT to analyse the passive and stative derivation in Ndebele. The paper demonstrates that Ndebele deviates from the assumptions arrived at by both Dubinsky and Simango (1996) and Mchombo (1993 & 2004). This paper also demonstrates that the stative derivation is more restricted in Chichewa than is the case in Ndebele.

Compartmentalizing time in order to engage with specific historical epochs and how they shaped African urban development, this paper turns to Tanure Ojaide’s, When It no Longer Matters Where You Live (1998), in order to explore the ripple effects and exilic implications of state neglect of postcolonial urbanscapes in the Niger Delta. More specifically, the paper engages with the author’s concern for the proverbial paradox of neglect of the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria by successive governments. Beyond the fact that the situation serves as a vector for the increasing consciousness of subnationalism in the region, the paper is concerned with the dynamics and the processes of migration that the situation produces either as overt transnational exile, or covert but thoroughly flawed postcolonial neologism of cosmopolitanism. I argue that the onus falls on the government to make conditions of urbanscapes in the homeland attractive and worth living for the retrieval of its human resources from the vortex of dispersal that has been exacerbated by globalization.