This short report discusses the resources to be found in the Railway Archive in Sekondi-Takoradi, Ghana. This report is also the result of various exploratory missions, as part of a cooperative effort between the Ghana Railway Company, the Institute of African Studies of the University of Ghana, and the International Institute of Social History, the Netherlands. The archive under consideration is classified as an institutional archive which provides unique insights into the social and labor history of Ghana– then Gold Coast– with some connections to West Africa and Great Britain. The archives provide additional material to the resources in the national archives in Ghana, best known as the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD).

On 19 August 2020, the Constitutional Court of Uganda handed down a landmark judgment on maternal health rights in Uganda. This judgment held that the State of Uganda was responsible for violating the right to health, non-discrimination, life and inhuman and degrading treatment of women under international law and Ugandan constitutional law for its failure by omission to provide basic emergency obstetric care in public facilities. This article examines the contribution of the Constitutional Petition No 16 judgment to the strengthening of women's reproductive health rights. By rejecting the “lack of resources” defence when complying with minimum core obligations under progressive realization in the provision of emergency obstetric services, the court makes an important contribution to the limited but growing body of jurisprudence holding governments accountable for a failure to ensure the protection of women's sexual and reproductive rights at both domestic and international levels.

In 1206 Chinggis Khan replaced the warring factions of Mongolia with a single polity, the Great Mongol Realm (Yeke Mongqol Ulus). The ulus was ruled by a khan, who allocated pastures, households and revenues to his relatives as shares (qubi). Chinggis granted the first allocation to his brothers and senior sons in 1207 but many more redistributions took place in the coming decades. Many of these appanages grew so large that their holders challenged the khan's dominance and even broke free of his control to form their own polities (uluses). This article will explore the fluidity of the Mongol appanage system by taking the qubi of Chinggis Khan's grandson Ariq Böke (d. 1266) as a case study. The Ariq Bökids established their own secondary ulus in Inner Asia, before fragmenting and lending their support to neighbouring khans in the fourteenth century.

One of the issues for determination in All Progressives Congress v Bashir Sheriff and Others was whether the first respondent won the primary election that was conducted according to the Electoral Act 2022. This issue, however, was not addressed because the Supreme Court set aside the suit because the first respondent failed to initiate it through the proper originating process. This decision contrasts with its previous judgment in Ekanem v The Registered Trustees of the Church of Christ the Good Shepherd, where it held that an inappropriate originating process does not undermine the competence of a suit. By departing from this previous decision, this note argues that there is a high possibility that the Supreme Court may have aided in the subversion of the Constitution. It recommends that the Electoral Act 2022 be amended to restrict the court's authority to dismiss election disputes if they were initiated through inappropriate originating processes.

The secessionist state of Biafra enacted a propaganda campaign that simultaneously built support for its war of independence (the Nigerian Civil War, 1967–1970) and fostered nationalism. Integral to this effort, although understudied, were the currency, stamps, posters, and cartoons artists produced while working for the government. Putting these materials in dialogue with print and radio propaganda, and the Ahiara Declaration (the culminating treatise of Biafran nationalism), this article demonstrates how visual propaganda actualized a nation, constructed national identity, positioned Biafra as a foil to an irredeemable Nigeria, and defined a citizenry. Through the materials they created, artists shaped Biafra’s national consciousness.

Most of the attention on Africa-China relations has centred on China's economic activities. What remains unclear is the role of partisanship in shaping public perceptions of China in African countries. Since the Chinese government builds a favourable relationship with an incumbent party, incumbent party supporters tend to have positive views towards China whereas opposition party supporters perceive China more critically. This study conducts multilevel mixed-effects regression analyses of public opinion across 33 African countries, and finds that opposition party supporters are indeed more critical of China. While opposition parties are motivated by their office-seeking interests, they also hold an incumbent party accountable. This study sheds light on the agency of political parties and their supporters in African countries and the mode (instead of volume) of China's bilateral engagement.

Understanding why citizens are willing to finance public goods is central to development and state capacity. Taxation can contribute to the common good, yet particularly in developing contexts, citizens may not benefit – or contribute – equally from such resources or across their lifetimes. How do taxpayers link solidarity to the practice of paying taxes? Taxation makes solidarity visible, but taxation practices also produce and shape solidarity. To enable further scrutiny of the perceived linkages between taxation, ideas around redistribution, and solidarity we develop a framework of imagined solidarity, which differentiates between affective and calculative solidarity on the one hand, and personal and generalised solidarity on the other hand. Using data from focus groups with formal sector workers in Namibia, we illustrate how taxpayers link solidarity to the practice of paying taxes along these dimensions; demonstrating the usefulness of this framework for the further study of fiscal interconnectedness, also beyond Namibia.