Though children's labor has been critical to African economies historically, Africanist scholars tend to treat child and adolescent workers as invisible. In this essay, the reasons for this neglect are explored, as are the consequences of such neglect for theory and empirical research. Suggestions are made for pursuing research on child and adolescent labor that places young workers within the broader context of economic, social, and political relationships and processes. The essay critically reviews the extant scholarly literature on children and work in the pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial periods and concludes that child labor is either underresearched or undertheorized to the detriment of our understanding of gender, patriarchy, agency, the formation of worker and political consciousness, capital accumulation, and the state. The essay argues that children have shaped and continue to shape history in Africa and that childhood is a terrain of struggle in which numerous social and political forces (including children, patriarchy, capital, and the state) seek constructions that suit their particular (and changing) interests. The essay makes a plea to Africanist scholars to take children more seriously in their research.

This essay examines the cultural symbolism underpinning “Takembeng,” a contemporary, rural-based social movement of female farmers in the Northwest Province of Cameroon. It argues that the power and success of women's activism, in the context of national opposition party politics and the “new struggles” for democracy, are embedded in an institutional history and culturally legitimate etiquette of moral censure. It also suggests that the highly disruptive but mystically charged nature of these mobilizations makes them effective because they open spaces for popular dissent on the national stage. Understanding the “civility” associated with the apparent incivility of activists is indispensable to understanding the dynamism of grassroots political activism.

The idea to convene a special forum on “Islamism in West Africa” occurred to me while attending an African Studies Association Roundtable at our meeting in Washington, D.C., in 2002. A full year had elapsed since September 11, 2001, and the onset of the U.S.-led campaign to rout the Taliban from Afghanistan. Personal post-9/11 experience in Africa, as well as the writings and communications of other colleagues, had convinced me that in certain circles throughout the continent bin Laden had unexpectedly emerged as a kind of folk hero. Just how widely the Osama rage had taken hold—whether it was a fleeting Afro-pop phenomenon or a serious political challenge—began to loom as a pressing affaire d'état. Suddenly, black Africa was being reexamined by U.S. intelligence and media alike through the prism of potential apologists for “Islamic terrorism,” or worse. What, I wondered, would the African Muslim landscape look like by the time the African Studies Association was to reconvene in 2003? More important, what was the true state of Islamism in sub-Saharan Africa?

Within Muslim Africa, Senegal has long been characterized by the striking dominance of Sufi forms of Islamic practice and social organization, with important consequences for Senegalese politics and society. While the Sufi model remains centrally important, it has been increasingly rivaled since the 1980s by reformist, or “Islamist,” groups and ideologies. In the wake of the historic Senegalese democratic alternation in power in 2000, and in an international context of apparent conflict between the West and the Muslim world, the growing public discourse about religion in Senegal is resulting in reinterpretations and dynamic transformations that have further blurred the boundaries between Sufism and Islamism.

Over the past fifteen years, the practice of Islam in the Gambia has undergone a perceptible change, from a tolerant and accommodating type of Qaddriyya-inspired Islam to a more radical form. This transformation has coincided with the rulership of President Yahya Jammeh, a master of manipulation of Islamic symbols. Breaking with his predecessor Sir Dawda Jawara, Jammeh has frequently blurred the line between mosque and state to reinforce his political advantage. Examples include building a mosque on state grounds and cultivating particular imams. At the same time, Jammeh has not hesitated to break with his local Wahhabi allies when he has judged it expedient to do so. Thus, in the wake of severe economic deterioration and a resulting rapprochement with the United States, the Jammeh regime has challenged the nation's prime Wahhabi leader over girls' wearing of headscarves to school. Gambia's recent experience illustrates the reciprocal relationship between religion and politics, and politicians' use of Islam for personal gain.

The recent (2000) reenactment of the Shari'a legal code in twelve states of Northern Nigeria and the other expressions of Islam in public affairs in the region have been preceded by a long history that should also be understood as determined by the social and political conditions of specific stages in the evolution of the Nigerian social formation. This article attempts to explain Islamism in the region through such factors as Islamic identity for many Muslims, the competition over interpretation and representation of Islam, the nature of the Nigerian state and society, Muslim organizations and leadership, as well as the activities of other religious organizations (especially Christian evangelicals). In this regard, Islamism is driven essentially by internal (Nigerian) forces, even though external forces may have had an effect. The article argues that while Islamism poses major challenges to the Nigerian state and society, it has also exposed itself to challenges from both Muslims and Nigerian society as a whole.

This article posits that a new and important transformation is occurring in Sahelian society. Westerners have tended to see the rise of “Islamism” as just another rejection of globalization and modernization. This article argues that another interpretation is possible, one that looks at the rise of movements like Izala as an attempt of embryonic Hausa capitalists to become part of globalization by substituting a much more individualized set of beliefs and behaviors for the older social and normative constructs of “traditional” Hausa society that obliged them to limit their accumulation of capital.

West African Islam is evolving politically and fast: This much these four rich case studies on Niger, Gambia, Nigeria, and Senegal assure us. How quaint now seems the early postcolonial notion that meaningful separation of mosque and state would remain a bedrock of the independent nation-state in a region of Africa marked by such a strong Muslim presence. Significant inroads into the superimposed European ideal of governance through secular institutions alone had already been made before the events of 9/11 recalibrated our focus on Islam in West Africa. As Mahmud and Villalón show us, partisan democratizing pressures in Nigeria and Senegal had put Shari'a and anti-Mouride Reformism on the the political table well before Osmana bin Laden became a household name. Similarly, the emergence of civil society associations in Niger and Wahhabi proselytizing in Gambia, according to Charlick and Darboe, elevated Islamist movements there prior to the attacks on the Twin Towers and Pentagon. After 9/11, the significance of Islamism in West Africa is of course inescapable: Mahmud's mere reference to a “Nigerian Taliban” inevitably whets curiosity. This response, however, is disproportionate to the group's real impact. It is crucial, in other words, that scholars of West African Islam not fall into the reductio ad al-Qaedum trap of neophyte Africanist students and intelligence analysts.