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Recent years have seen African militaries attempt coups in virtually every geographic region, from Egypt to Lesotho and Guinea to Madagascar. They have targeted established democracies, infantile democratic experiments, increasingly authoritarian executives, power vacuums brought on by leader death, and-most recently in Burundi-leaders attempting to circumvent constitutional limitations on their tenure. These continuing acts perpetrated against regimes with such varied backdrops suggests that coups still afflict a wide range of states and remain a continuing threat to leader tenure. This is in contrast to the African Union's emphasis on curbing the practice. This paper explores the African Union's effectiveness to combat military coups, primarily focusing on the potential for sanctions to act as a deterrent to would-be coup plotters. The paper also considers potential limitations on the African Union's (AU's) ability to project power against certain states. Analyses for the years 1950-2014 indicate Africa has in fact witnessed a meaningful decline in coup activity, an impact even more pronounced than the end of the Cold War. Results also indicate that the AU's effectiveness in deterring coups is not constrained in cases where they are expected to lack leverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at a workshop entitled "Developing Africa: Development Discourse(s) in Late Colonialism," held at the University of Vienna in Vienna, Austria from January 13-15, 2011, is presented. Topics include women development experts, indigenous resistance to development in British East Africa, and the Mourides, Senegalese adherents of an Islamic Sufi order. Speakers included David Simon, Odile Goerg, and Robert Shenton.

This essay examines W.E.B. Du Bois' rearticulation during the 1940s of his long-standing idea that African liberation was a necessary step in the creation of a more democratic world. Du Bois' writing of Africa into world history, as both land of civilizational achievement and object of western terror, helped make the case for a global frame of economic justice and, concomitantly, an extension of human rights. He hoped as well to explore the possibilities of political organization and affective belonging that might draw Africans further within the global community. This essay concludes by considering how Du Bois' historiographical project provides a substantial challenge to the global racial order in our 'colonial present'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What was the indigénat? This article approaches this question via three arguments. First, a study of the indigénat (the regime of administrative sanctions applied to colonial subjects) challenges the idea that French West Africa formed part of an 'empire of law'. Second, a dynamic spectrum of political statuses developed around the indigénat until its abolition in 1946. This spectrum is no less significant than one of its poles alone, that of colonial citizens. Third, the indigénat, its narrative of reform, and its relationship to law, bureaucracy, and authority illuminate the tensions between imperial rhetoric and colonial governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the preservation of visuals created in Africa. The author explains that these are important sources for studying and understanding Africa. The author states that the definition of "African moving images" sometimes depends on the content and the political view on African history. The article details the history of film in Africa, beginning in the colonial period. The issue of freedom of speech and expression in Africa following independence are examined. The article also discusses institutions involved in saving African moving images in Africa.

Capital punishment in British colonial Africa was not just a method of crime control or individual punishment, but an integral aspect of colonial networks of power and violence. The treatment of condemned criminals and the rituals of execution which brc~ught their lives to an end illustrate the tensions within colonialism surrounding the relationship between these states and their subjects, and with their metropolitan overlords. The state may have had the legal right to kill its subjects, but this right and the manner in which it was enacted were contested. This article explores the interactions between various actors in this penal 'theatre of death', looking at the motivations behind changing uses of the death penalty, the treatment of the cofidemned convicts whilst they awaited death, and the performance of a hanging itself to show how British colonial governments in Africa attempted to create and manage the deaths of their condemned subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Archbishop of Canterbury from 1945 to 1961, Geoffrey Fisher devoted considerable time to colonial and imperial affairs, including in British Africa. This involvement took a variety of forms, but included overseeing the devolution of Church authority to local structures through the creation of new African provinces in what could be described as the Church's own 'decolonisation' project. At the same time, Fisher engaged closely with political issues in colonies including Kenya and Uganda, in ways that were naturally informed by the interests and priorities of Anglican missionary societies, but which also reflected the particular domestic constitutional position of the Anglican church. His actions also bore the mark of Fisher's own conception of state authority and preference for discretion: somewhat contradictory impulses that underlay the essentially ambiguous nature of Fisher's response to colonial questions. While personally inclined to trust the state to put its own affairs in order, Fisher's confidence in its capacity to police its own management of colonial policy had been eroded by the mid-1950s. As a result, Fisher found more of a voice as the 'nation's conscience'. By focusing on Fisher, this article seeks to bring into sharper focus the place of the church in Britain in debates around British decolonisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commission II of the World Missionary Conference held at Edinburgh in 1910 undertook a survey of the condition of the churches planted by western Protestant missions in Asia and Africa. The evidence submitted to the commission and the commission's report to the conference suggest that progress towards the Protestant ideal of a self-supporting, self-governing, self-extending indigenous church was extremely uneven: quite rapid in Korea, Japan and parts of China; decidedly patchy in Africa; and extremely slow in India. The commission explained these differences in part by appeal to 'racial characteristics', yet the report's use of the category of race was loose and ambiguous: the commission both deplored the failure of the indigenous churches to develop their own distinctive 'racial' character and blamed racial deficiencies for the failure of churches to advance more rapidly to autonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From 1884 to 1920 at the Karema Mission Station on Lake Tanganyika, African girls and women and missionary women created and embraced opportunities and experiences not available to their peers outside the mission. Some of these opportunities were linked to the challenges of founding a new mission in a preindustrial, agricultural society and mirrored those available to women in the early Church in Europe. While gendered norms were more fluid at the mission, racial hierarchies were maintained as Africans performed far more of the manual labor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author reflects on Africa's cultural and historical background specifically Ghana's 50th independence which coincides with the second issue of the International Journal of African Studies (IJAS). The author provides an overview of Ghana's political and historical developments together with Africa and United States of America's relations in history. The author stated that the IJAS is affiliated with Routledge Taylor & Francis for the second publication.

Examines the political aspects of air transport in British Africa during the period 1939-1946. Impact of World War II on British overseas air policy; History of air transportation in Great Britain; British aircraft problems along the West Africa-Cairo route during the war; Development of air transportation in East and Central Africa during the war.

The article reports on September 2013 conference on urban planning in Africa held at the University of Lisbon in Lisbon, Portugal. It discusses papers presented at the conference on topics including international networks involved in colonial urban planning, the impact of neoliberal economic policies on post-colonial urban planning, and urban planning in Lusophone African countries.