Francis Nyamnjoh

The State of the Media in Southern Africa 2000: Botswana

By Francis Nyamnjoh

Introduction
The main development in Botswana in 2000 was in the area of broadcasting. The press, of course, continued to play an active role in the promotion of civil society and democracy. MISA Botswana monitored and reported accordingly on media related issues, and in November there was a sub-regional workshop on Cartoon Journalism and Democratisation in Southern Africa, at the University of Botswana. As the report shows, government-media relations are not, comparatively speaking, characterised by hostility. But there is no room for complacency.

A Relevant Education for African Development—Some Epistemological Considerations

By Francis. B. Nyamnjoh

This paper argues that education in Africa is victim of a Western epistemological export that takes the form of science as ideology and hegemony. Under the Western epistemological export, education in Africa and/or for Africans has been like a pilgrimage to the Kilimanjaro of Western intellectual ideals and also the tortuous route to Calvary for alternative ways of life.

Chieftaincy and Democracy in Contemporary Africa

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Theorizing democracy and accountability in Africa ought to emphasise networking and creative domestication of encounters with others.

Bakweri Chiefs in Cameroon (© Makuna Tande)

This focus should check the application of misleading labels, and draw attention to the various pressures exerted on the state and private corporate entities by various groups in various ways for various reasons of empowerment. As people increasingly distrust states, markets and NGOs to accommodate their needs, they will continue to explore other avenues of fulfilling their expectations.

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Interrogating Barbie Democracy

By Francis B. Nyamnjoh

The world is currently hostage to a very uncreative idea of democracy informed by a very narrow idea of what it is to be beautiful, healthy, successful and free. Nowhere is this narrowness better exemplified than in the colossal investment that consumer capitalism has made in slimness, the greatest icon of which is Barbie.

The Africa of 2015 will be more assertive and critical of certain orthodoxies as Africans seek to harness their distinctive creativity, adaptiveness, sociality and conviviality in relationships and encounters. This essay focuses on democracy, a domain in which, paradoxical as it may seem, Africa would have much to teach the rest of the world by 2015.