Explores the dynamics of African masquerades and mask performances on the continent, linking performative expressions to societal characteristics.

Examines Nigeria's challenges with consolidating democracy and the crisis of governance arising from structural errors of the state and the fundamental contradictions of society in Nigeria's Fourth Republic.

An innovative examination of our understanding of political legitimacy in Mali, and its wider implications for democratization and political modernity in the Global South.

A comparative, whole-of-society approach to the Boko Haram insurgency that offers a more nuanced understanding of the risks, resilience and resolution of violent radicalization in Nigeria and beyond.

An innovative and valuable resource for understanding women's roles in changing societies, this book brings together the history of Africa, the Atlantic and gender before the 20th century. It explores trade, slavery and migration in the context of the Euro-African encounter.

High youth unemployment is seen as a major issue across Africa and globally, not solely as a source of concern for economic development, but as a threat to social stability and a challenge to fragile peace. In countries emerging from civil war in particular, it is identified as a key indicator for likelihood of relapse. But what do we really know about how lack of work shapes political identities and motivates youth violence? Drawing on rich empirical data about young people on the margins of the informal economy in Sierra Leone's capital, Freetown, in the wake of its civil war (1991–2002), this book moves beyond reductive portrayals of unemployed youth as "ticking bombs" to show how labour market experiences influence them towards political mobilisation. The author argues that violence is not inherent to unemployment, but that the impact of joblessness on political activism is mediated by social factors and the specific nature of the post-war political economy. For Freetown's youth, labour market exclusion is seen to have implications for social status, identities and social relations, ultimately keeping them in exploitative patterns of dependence. This in turn shapes their political subjectivities and claims on the state, and structures the opportunities and constraints to their collective action.Luisa Enria is a Lecturer in International Development at the University of Bath, where she also holds an ESRC Future Research Leaders Fellowship for the project "States of Emergency: Citizenship in Times of Crisis in Sierra Leone".

Analyses the complexities of Christian-Muslim conflict that threatens the fragile democracy of Nigeria, and the implications for global peace and security.

'Throws light on the role of several key agents in bringing to an end one of the darkest episodes in post-independence African history.' Ebenezer Obadare, University of KansasUntil the 1990s, conflict resolution and peacemaking fell to states, the UN and other intergovernmental organizations. In recent times it is non-armed, non-state actors who have had a pivotal role in seeking to resolve civil wars in Africa. This book examines, for the first time, through an examination of the Liberian Civil War in particular, how non-state actors have impacted upon peace processes. The Liberian Civil War was the first post-Cold War intra-state conflict in West Africa and exemplified the "new wars" breaking out on the continent. The peace process that followed showed how future peacemaking processes might evolve, being not only the first in which a regional economic grouping had a role - in this case ECOWAS - but also involving non-state religious and diaspora actors.Religious actors, initiators of the Liberian peace process, were mediators, dialogue facilitators, watchdogs and trustees of the entire peace process. Although their efforts were mainly influenced by the desire to fulfil the divine mandate to "tend to the flock", they were also able to regain some of the societal influence that organized religion, especially Christianity, enjoyed during the 158 years of minority Americo-Liberian rule. Diaspora actors' roles ranged from being founders and sponsors of warring factions to providing succour to Liberians back home through remittances and engaging in the peace process.Babatunde T. Afolabi is a Senior Programme Manager at the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD). He had previously worked at the ECOWAS Commission where he was involved in peace processes across West Africa.

From 1550 to colonial partition in the mid-1880s, trade was key to Afro-European relations on the western Slave Coast (the coastal areas of modern Togo and parts of what are now Ghana and Benin). This book looks at the commercial relations of two states which played a crucial role in the Atlantic slave trade as well as the trade in ivory and agricultural produce: Hula, known to European traders as Great or Grand Popo (now in Benin) and Ge, known as Little Popo (now in Togo). Situated between the Gold Coast to the west and the eastern Slave Coast to the east, this region was an important supplier of provisions for Europeans and the enslaved Africans they purchased. Also, due to its position in the lagoon system, it facilitated communication along the coast between the trading companies' headquarters on the western Gold Coast and their factories on the eastern Slave Coast, particularly at Ouidah, the Slave Coast's major slave port. In the 19th century, when the trade at more established ports was disrupted by the men-of-war of the British anti-slave trade squadron, the western Slave Coast became a hot-spot of illegal slave trading.Providing a detailed reconstruction of political and commercial developments in the western Slave coast, including the transition from the slave trade to legitimate commerce, this book also reveals the region's position in the wider trans-Atlantic trade network and how cross-cultural partnerships were negotiated; the trade's impact on African coastal 'middlemen' communities; and the relative importance of local and global factors for the history of a region or community. Silke Strickrodt is Research Fellow in Colonial History, German Historical Institute London. She is co-editor (with Robin Law and Suzanne Schwarz) of Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa (James Currey, 2013).

Analyses Muslim-Muslim divisions within northern Nigeria, which are as important for understanding the violence in the region as those between Muslim and Christian, with consequences for long-term peacemaking.

Through richly detailed anthropological case studies of the rural economics and administrative policies in Burkina Faso, and reassessment of current models of conflict, resource management and modern administration, this book explores the current political, economic and social transformation of Western Africa. Ethnic tensions, the case studies suggest, are a strategic part of social and economic local relations - a pattern that is repeated when ethnic stereotyping finds its way into the higher echelons of national administration and of international development cooperation. Conflicts are shown to be ethnicized by local and administrative elites, creating screens impenetrable to those involved in the states' formal administration, and behind which informal local economies thrive. In these 'concealed economies' individuals exploit the ethnic divide by hiding friendly and profitable inter-ethnic relations behind a rhetoric of ethnic tensions and staged conflict. Cultivating ties across ethnic divides is not limited, however, to rural relations but becomes common practice at almost all levels of national and civil administration. Andreas Dafinger is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the Central European University, Budapest. He has worked on Burkina Faso for almost twenty years.