Research Guides: Politics of Africa: Weekly Topics

Complimentary Resources (Media) to Course Weekly Themes

Below are some recommended materials that you should explore to deepen your knowledge on the politics of Africa. Feel free to explore the topic even further by searching the library catalog and also check these guides. In addition, explore the Audiovisual collection that includes recordings with African intellectuals and leaders (requires login with netid and password).

The Politics of Africa: Africa’s pre-colonial and colonial inheritance

Colonialism: A case Study of Namibia. 1975. This 21 mins long DVD traces the history of Namibia also known as South-west Africa. To watch, login with your netID.

Conference on Africa's Freedom Fighters, Accra 1962 : speech. Sound recording. 40 mins. Speech made by Kwame Nkrumah at the closing ceremony for the Freedom Fighters Conference held May-June 1962, at the Kwame Nkrumah Institute of Economic Science, commonly known as the Winneba Ideological Institute, near Accra.

The Angolan Liberation Movement. Sound recording. 1970. A talk given by Jose Condesse, whose guerilla name is Y. Toka and who is Commander of the Third Region (Eastern Angola). He describes the struggles of his people in their fight for independence from Portugal.

The Post-colony

Nationalism and Patriotism. In Ethnic identity, regional conflict, and peacekeeping initiatives. A documentary examining efforts to promote and safeguard peace in the 20th century, a century defined by its wars.

Kwame Nkrumah Talks to his People. Sound recording in two parts. 1961. He talks about his country's goals, aspirations and his critics. Log in with NU netID and password required.

Tanganyika Declares Independence ca. 1961. Under British control since 1919, Tanganyika (the mainland part of modern Tanzania) became a United Nations (UN) Trust Territory following World War II. As an agent of the Tanganyikan African National Union (TANU), Julius Nyerere engineered Tanganyika's independence, which was declared in 1961. He then became the country's first president.

"Unification of African Law" is discussed by N. RUbin (chair), Asante, Sebingwamo, and Enozie. Sound recording. 1963. 28 mins.

Power Politics

Ethnic Politics and State Power in Africa by Philip Roessler
ISBN: 9781107176072
Publication Date: 2016-12-15
Why are some African countries trapped in vicious cycles of ethnic exclusion and civil war, while others experience relative peace? Roessler models Africa's weak, ethnically-divided states as confronting rulers with a coup-civil war trap - sharing power with ethnic rivals is necessary to underwrite societal peace and prevent civil war, but increases rivals' capabilities to seize sovereign power in a coup d'état. How rulers respond to this strategic trade-off is shown to be a function of their country's ethnic geography and the distribution of threat capabilities it produces. Moving between in-depth case studies of Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo based on years of field work and statistical analyses of powersharing, coups and civil war across sub-Saharan Africa, the book serves as an exemplar of the benefits of mixed methods research for theory-building and testing in comparative politics.

Political Regimes

Democracy and Authoritarianism

"Africa and Democracy" is discussed by N. Gellner (chair), R. Hinden, C. van Dyck, C. Veliz, and A. Mazrui. 1963. Sound recording. 29 mins long. To listen/play the audio recording, login with your netID and password.

Chef! = Chief ; La tête dans les nuages = Head in the clouds. Documentary film on political corruption and authoritarianism in Cameroon. 1999. 1 videocassette (61, 35 min.) : sound, color ; 1/2 in.