How should we understand 1970s Kenya, with its combination of inequality and relative political stability? This article offers a new perspective on that by following the early history of the Harambee Co-operative Savings and Credit Society—the most prominent of many such societies that grew in those years. The rise and crisis of this co-operative provides evidence of mismanagement and the pursuit of personal advantage—but also suggests that civil servants saw the importance of enabling wider accumulation. As a result, the lowest-paid employees of government could see through Harambee—and other co-operatives—a possible, if precarious, route to a future as property-owners. That possibility helps explain both the institutional strength of Kenya’s provincial administration (whose employees were the members of Harambee Co-operative) and how a substantial number of Kenyans could develop a sense of themselves as citizens with a stake in the political system.

This article explores the impact of mobile phones on entertainment practices and electoral communication among pastoral communities following constitutional reform in Kenya in 2010. It examines the digital dissemination of music files among Samburu mobile herders, emphasizing the role of communication technology in shaping political identities and ideologies. Specifically, this analysis considers how the two main contenders for the governorship of Samburu County in the 2022 elections engaged with the content-exchange networks generated by the digital circulation of raid songs among pastoralists. The recording and dissemination of these repertoires via mobile phones fostered new patterns of interaction and entertainment, which in turn provided channels through which election songs could circulate in rural areas. By mobilizing these songs, candidates sought to project a more authentically pastoral identity, thereby appealing to rural voters. The analysis presented here unveils a consolidating form of rural populism grounded in pastoral political categories, institutional decentralization and the use of digital technologies. It situates mobile herding societies within larger global trends of digitally mediated politics and new forms of consensus building, shedding light on the changing foundations of Kenyan democracy.

This article examines how three generations of jasare – Zarma genealogists and historian griots from Niger – have responded to the challenges of recording and digitizing their performances, from analogue archives to social media platforms. It explores the tensions between performance and fixation, the transformation and circulation of narratives, and the question of ownership in the context of mediated orality. The first generation resisted state-led archival initiatives in the 1960s. The second adapted their discourse to radio audiences, navigating censorship and self-regulation. Since the death of Jeliba Baaje in 2018, the third generation – no longer active performers – has grappled with the ethical and symbolic stakes of managing digital archives, especially as renewed interest in jasare narratives emerges on platforms such as YouTube and WhatsApp. Drawing on long-term ethnographic collaboration, the article analyses the aesthetic and political strategies employed to preserve control over sensitive narratives in contexts where audience composition is diffuse or unknown. These strategies are situated within broader transformations of patronage systems, memory politics and digital circulation. Ultimately, the article reflects on how oral knowledge systems engage with global regimes of authorship, highlighting the dynamic interplay between tradition, performance ethics and the logics of new media.

This article explores the impact of music streaming platforms on popular Afrikaans music. It sets recent technological developments in digital music distribution against the complex historical backdrop of the Afrikaans language and the histories of social marginalization affecting large parts of its linguistic communities. These patterns have shaped Afrikaans music production, consumption and gatekeeping since the first recorded Afrikaans music in the early twentieth century. A key question arises: how has the fundamental shift in the music economy ushered in by streaming platforms enabled previously marginalized Afrikaans artists – particularly from the Coloured community and speakers of vernacular forms such as Kaaps – to reach wider audiences, thereby breaking with historical patterns? This article draws on interviews with music artists, scholars, producers, mixing engineers, platform founders and executives, as well as analyses of publicly available data from platforms such as Spotify, YouTube and TikTok. The evidence suggests continuity at the centre: white Afrikaans pop still dominates discovery playlists and editorial spaces – whether curated by human editors, algorithms, or both. Yet the peripheries are stirring. The rise of Afrikaans gqom on the Cape Flats and the growing visibility of Koortjies within Coloured Pentecostal circuits show how streaming can surface alternative publics, vernacular aesthetics and new circuits of value.

This article explores the connection between musico-poetic circulation and the ways in which conflicts are recounted and collectively given meaning in Ethiopia’s Amhara region. It highlights the key role mobile phones have come to play in social life. It contributes to current debates on how new information and communication technologies affect social relations, open up new communicative spaces or build on pre-existing modes of exchange. I focus on the possibilities that phones offer for producing, playing, exchanging and storing audio and video recordings of sung poetry. By revisiting the concept of ‘mediatized orality’, I analyse the relationships formed with and around these files, and trace their trajectories in two directions: spatially, connecting local affairs to national issues; and temporally, bridging past and present. I argue that this ‘regime of circulation’, which weaves the many voices of remembering into poetic circulation, is a practice of representing conflicts and fashioning the past – one that predates the arrival of new technologies, as evidenced by the Ethiopian historiographical tradition. What people do with phones and the files they carry draws on this tradition. It also transforms it, opening up ways of appropriating issues surrounding ethnicity, nation and history.

Despite two hundred years of interethnic coupling and domestic migration into the Betsiboka valley in north-western Madagascar, Sakalava are still considered the autochthonous ‘masters of the land’ (tompontany). Some migrant families whose ancestors from the central highlands settled in the valley broke custom by burying kin in new tombs near their residence rather than returning them to ancestral tombs upcountry, in their purported place of origin. In so doing, these settlers disembedded themselves from the social and financial expectations of distant kin in the highlands. While new tombs reinforced their claims of belonging in the valley, neighbours understood these families’ actions as paradoxically signifying lowly social status and possibly enslaved origins. These migrants doubled down on their outsider ethnic identity rather than attempting to incorporate themselves into host communities. Ritual and kinship techniques such as new tomb construction and heterosexual marital alliances with Sakalava women allowed this allochthonous community to master the land and the cash crops that it produced. These migrant families reversed the well-established model of ‘autochthonization through incorporation’ commonly described in scholarship on African agrarian societies by refusing to become absorbed into the first-comer Sakalava communities. In gaining symbolic and political ascendancy over the Sakalava, these migrants achieved allochthonous dominance and challenged prevailing assumptions about the directionality of assimilation and belonging.

This article examines the circulation, recording, preservation and archiving of music during the Eritrean liberation struggle from the 1970s to the 1990s, with a focus on the role of diaspora community support. It argues that the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) strategically leveraged music to foster a sense of national identity and unity, recognizing its powerful role in mobilizing support and galvanizing the Eritrean populace. Despite the challenges posed by war, the EPLF made significant efforts to record and archive music, understanding its importance for cultural preservation and morale. Post-independence, these efforts were continued through a digitization project, ensuring that the themes of national unity cultivated during the struggle persisted into the contemporary era. This article highlights the innovative strategies employed by the EPLF to utilize music as a tool for political and social cohesion, and the enduring impact of these efforts on Eritrean national identity. The preservation and digitization of liberation-era music not only safeguard a crucial aspect of Eritrea’s cultural history but also underscore the vital role of music in the broader narrative of the nation’s fight for independence and its ongoing journey towards unity and self-determination.