18 Ergebnisse.

This collection of articles cuts across the Eastern African region, with authors interrogating varying themes in different historical periods that speak not only to the practice of music and dance but also to the performances that characterize these practices. The book dedicates itself to research in music and dance, while engaging with colonial and contemporary political and historical realities within the Eastern African region. Inevitably, ...

When voters enthusiastically turn up to cast their vote during general elections, they expect that their action would meaningfully change their lives. But in most of Africa, even when elections are held on a regular basis, voters are quite often disappointed by the performance of their leaders who use the new positions as an opportunity to loot public resources and consolidate power. It is almost as if elections are of minimal value to the pop...

In 1996 President Nelson Mandela described Professor Ali A. Mazrui (1933-2014) as "an outstanding educationist and freedom fighter." In 2002 the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan referred to Professor Mazrui as "Africa's gift to the world." Author of more than 35 books and hundreds of articles, Professor Mazrui was an African scholar who treated with uncommon flair a wide-range of themes that included globalization, the triple heritage, p...

Deprived of being heard, people still have a voice. They make it heard in ways that disturb the status quo. This book is an engagement with such voices. Can Deni, Wairi, Yaadi, matatu people, militia people and taxi drivers in Kenya also ask "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?" as Nelson Mandela did. Why do two men wearing bling bling turn into two snakes dancing in Rika's imagination? The web of corruption is intricate. N...

This book is a result of public dialogue forums in pursuit of accountable and transparent governance in Kenya organized by Twaweza Communications with the support of Ford Foundation. From the convenings it was evident that the stability of Kenya will be driven by the extent to which citizens feel fully included in the development agenda. Quite often, political leaders view the role of citizens in governance as restricted primarily to their par...

Out of the first series of public lectures titled (Re)membering Kenya organised by the Volume editors together with Twaweza Communications and supported by the Goethe Institut Kenya, The Ford Foundation and the Institute for International Education, and whose key outcome was the publication of Remembering Kenya Vol.1 (2010) grew a second round of lecture series. The second series took cognisance of the fact that the problems that bedevil Kenya...

While probing the politics of everyday in Gikuyu popular music, the main thrust of this book is to unpack the representation of daily struggles through music. Depending mainly on the lyrics of the songs, the study also combines both the textual and the contextual analysis of the music. Music here is studied both as a text, and as an aspect of popular culture. The decade 1990-2000 in Kenya provides two contrasting political developments, which ...

Laura Fair is Professor of History at Michigan State University in the U.S.A. She lived in Zanzibar for many years doing research for her first book: Pastimes and Politics: Culture, Community and Identity in Post-abolition Urban Zanzibar, 1890-1945. In this book she illustrates how former slaves used the social and cultural tools at their command to demonstrate their freedom from slavery and articulate alternative visions of justice under colo...

Elections provide a tremendous opportunity for national transformation and the pursuit of democratic practice. They can be a moment of national renewal. However, in most of Africa elections are often characterized by violent conflict as politicians seek to capture or maintain power through ethnic mobilization, propaganda and misrepresentation. Considering opportunities offered by information technology especially mobile phones and the discover...

Fifty Years of Kiswahili in Kenya is a collection of articles that were presented at an international Kiswahili conference organized by the National Kiswahili Association (CHAKITA) Kenya in 2013, which was held at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa (CUEA). A few articles are however from a similar conference held in 2012 at Kenyatta University. The book exemplifies the importance of the Kiswahili language in various sectors of society. ...

In most of Africa, there is evidence of politicised inter-ethnic rivalry and ethnic mobilisation to acquire, maintain or monopolise power as competition for resources intensify. This volume demonstrates how ethnic diversity can be managed at a number of levels in order to improve the lives of citizens. As the contributors show, ethnicity as an identity is fluid and malleable. It can be deconstructed in order to reduce its saliency. Evidently, ...

One of the critical questions that Kenyans have continuously asked is what went wrong in January and February 2008 with the "peace" they had hitherto enjoyed. There have not been readily available answers to this fundamental question. The collection of papers presented in this book attempt to provide, as a starting point, possible explanations for the events of early 2008 including key background issues in Kenyan history since pre-independence...

The narratives collected by Twaweza Communications in this volume tell yet another side of the story about the violence that engulfed Kenya towards the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008. The narratives are part of a Daraja Initiative involving media monitoring, reflections and documentation of the traumatic post-election violence period often associated with the contested presidential results of 2007. The goal of the project is to contribu...

During the run-up to Kenya's 2013 general elections, crucial political and civic questions were raised. Could past mistakes, especially political and ethnic-related violence, be avoided this time round? Would the spectre of the 2007 post-electoral violence positively or negatively affect debates and voting? How would politicians, electoral bodies such as the IEBC, the Kenyan civil society, and the international community weigh in on the electi...

Our lives, which are mainly structured according to repeated and socially sanctioned modes of behaviour suggest that human activity is a performance, it is an activity undertaken with a consciousness of itself. We are always aware that someone who has certain expectations about us is watching. In order to satisfy the expectation we behave accordingly. Quite often we are conscious of projecting identity - in politics, in our homes, places of wo...

This book brings together multiple voices and positions from Africa. These voices, assembled during a 2003 Soap Summit held in Nairobi, are powerful and varied and suggest ways in which issues of health could be tackled in an entertaining manner. The summit organised by Population Communications International - Africa. highlighted the critical role that the arts can play in ensuring better health, especially among the youth. It resulted from t...

There is no doubt that the topic of leadership has become of critical importance in the world. On the global front terrorism, war in the Middle East, HIV/AIDS, environmental disasters resulting from global warming, glaring inequalities between rich and poor nations, religious fundamentalism, trafficking of drugs and so on have made it imperative that a global leadership committed to dialogue across cultures and nations be given a space to arti...

Art, Culture and Society Vol 1 is the first in a series of books to be published by Twaweza Communications on the relationship between art and society, with special reference to Kenya. It is part of a cultural leadership initiative being undertaken by the organization through a reexamination of the arts as they are produced and studied. This volume brings together important reflections on the arts and is a major step in encouraging dialogue on...