Africa is known for its rich and diverse literary tradition, with English being a prominent language in many African countries. The study of African anglophone literature in China has gained momentum in recent years, as scholars and readers increasingly recognize its importance and value. This article aims to provide an overview of translation and research on African anglophone literature in China. It discusses the works of representative writers such as Damon Galgut, Chinua Achebe, and Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, examining the reception and influence of their works in China, exploring how Chinese publishers and scholars have engaged with this literature, and highlighting the translation of African anglophone literary works in China, as well as the academic research and criticism surrounding these works.

This article offers the first gendered history of African radio audiences. It uses a comparative approach to demonstrate that colonial development projects in Ghana and Zambia successfully created mass African audiences for radio between the 1930s and 1950s, at a time when most radio sets on the continent were owned by white settlers. However the gendered impact of the projects was uneven. In Zambia the promotion of battery-operated wirelesses inadvertently created a male-dominated audience, while the construction of a wired rediffusion system in Ghana attracted equal numbers of male and female listeners. Ghana’s radio project offers new perspectives on the history of colonial development as a very rare example of a scheme that benefitted women as much as men. Differences in the voice of Ghanaian and Zambian radio also reveal that these early radio schemes had a lasting influence on broadcast content and listening culture in both countries beyond the 1950s.

This article examines the central role of West Central Africa in the development of a global capitalist economy during the eighteenth century. Using a rich and overlooked set of records in English, Portuguese, and French, the article explains that rulers and brokers on the Loango coast championed ideas and practices of free trade and free markets from the rise of the Atlantic slave trade through at least until the end of the eighteenth century. The article shows that European slave traders opposed a free market by fiercely competing to obtain full control of the trade in African captives along the Atlantic Africa. In contrast, the West Central African states of Ngoyo, Kakongo, and Loango, located north of the Congo River, fully embraced free trade and free markets during the era of the Atlantic slave trade.

This piece explores the parallel development of two fisheries management regimes in mid-twentieth-century Lake Malawi: one imposed by the British colonial government over the lake and the other by Senior Chief Makanjira focused on Mbenji Island. The parallel development of these regimes provides opportunity for close analysis of how fisheries management centred on different knowledge and practices led to distinctive legacies of governance legitimacy and efficacy. Given the increasing recognition that Indigenous knowledge is crucial to the future sustainability of fisheries globally, we contend that it is imperative to recognise the ways in which colonial pasts have embedded knowledge hierarchies and exclusionary decision-making processes within national fisheries governance regimes that continue to obstruct capacities to bring different knowledges, practices, and management approaches together effectively and appropriately.

This article traces the history of the repression of palm wine and alcohol (sodabi) in Dahomey, now Benin, with varying degrees of intensity, from the nineteenth-century kingdom of Abomey to postcolonial Dahomey. In parallel with the repression, this article also looks at the history of palm alcohol production. Dahomeans learned to distil wine from French peasants during the First World War, and were driven into sodabi production by French economic policies during the Great Depression. Using court sources, this article describes the social organisation, gender division, and economic rationale of sodabi production, as well as the occasions on which it was drunk. Ultimately, it argues that the repression of sodabi made it more difficult for peasants to improve their living conditions.

The South African case, Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution and Others v Ingonyama Trust and Others (CASAC) concerned a dispute between customary law communities and the Ingonyama Trust (the Trust). The Trust, which holds the land for the benefit and welfare of its communities sought to unilaterally convert customary land tenure to common law leaseholds. The communities successfully challenged this decision before the Kwazulu-Natal High Court and, in this case note, I appraise the court’s reasoning. Although the order was progressive, there remained space within its reasoning to affirm customary law tenure on its own accord. Instead, the CASAC court restrained the development of customary law by employing other sources of South African law – including statutory law, the common law and the Constitution – to explain and give meaning to customary law land rights. Courts must exercise caution in engaging the plurality of land tenure in post-colonial contexts: although well-intentioned, the judicial reasoning in CASAC marginalized the application and development of customary land law.

Nigeria’s legal system is pluralistic with the common law, Islamic law and customary law as the main legal traditions. These legal traditions have their courts within a unified judiciary. Disputes relating to the appointment of imams often end in the English-style courts rather than Islamic courts. This paper examines the controversies regarding which courts within the Nigerian plural courts system have or should have the original and appellate jurisdiction in such disputes. The paper argues that mosques are waqf properties and thus should come within the ambit of Islamic personal law as defined by the Constitution. The paper concludes, inter alia, that in all instances, the courts vested with jurisdiction to hear disputes relating to the appointment of imams should be operated by judges who are learned in Islamic law and where this is not possible, the courts should use assessors who are experts in Islamic law to assist the judges.

This paper discusses the need for public policy limitation on two issues that the Nigerian Same-Sex Marriage (Prohibition) Act (SSMPA) regulates. First, the paper argues that the blanket non-recognition of the benefit(s) of same-sex marriage may breach Nigeria’s conflict of laws norms in certain transnational contexts. Second, it finds the prohibition of registration of gay clubs and organizations under the SSMPA a violation of the right to freedom of expression and association which both the Nigerian Constitution and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights guarantee. The paper therefore recommends an approach that Nigerian courts might adopt in determining whether the conferral of a specific benefit of same-sex marriage conflicts with Nigerian public policy in light of recent jurisprudence.