Global Africa is a striking, original volume that disrupts the dominant narratives that continue to frame our discussion of Africa, complicating conventional views of the region as a place of violence, despair, and victimhood. The volume documents the significant global connections, circulations, and contributions that African people, ideas, and goods have made throughout the world—from the United States and South Asia to Latin America, Europe, and elsewhere. Through succinct and engaging pieces by scholars, policy makers, activists, and journalists, the volume provides a wholly original view of a continent at the center of global historical processes rather than on the periphery. Global Africa offers fresh, complex, and insightful visions of a continent in flux.

About the Author

Dorothy L. Hodgson is Professor of Anthropology and Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Graduate School - New Brunswick at Rutgers University. Judith A. Byfield is Associate Professor of History and Director of Undergraduate Studies at Cornell University.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

0.1 • Why Global Africa?
Dorothy L. Hodgson and Judith A. Byfield

PART I.
ENTANGLED HISTORIES

1.1 • PROFILE: Ibn Khaldun: The Father of the Social Sciences
Oludamini Ogunnaike

1.2 • Trade and Travel in Africa’s Global Golden Age (AD 700–1500)
François-Xavier Fauvelle

1.3 • Three Women of the Sahara: Fatma, Odette, and Sophie
E. Ann McDougall

1.4 • Afro-Iberians in the Early Spanish Empire, ca. 1550–1600
Leo J. Garofalo

1.5 • “From the Land of Angola”: Slavery, Marriage, and African Diasporic Identities in Mexico City before 1650
Frank Trey Proctor III

1.6 • “Ethiopia Shall Stretch” from America to Africa: The Pan-African Crusade of Charles Morris
Benedict Carton and Robert Trent Vinson

1.7 • Africans in India, Past and Present
Renu Modi

PART II.
POWER AND ITS CHALLENGES

2.1 • PROFILE: Leymah Gbowee: Speaking Truth to Power
Pamela Scully

2.2 • Pan-Africanism: An Ideology and a Movement
Hakim Adi

2.3 • Mwalimu Nyerere as Global Conscience
Chambi Chachage

2.4 • Power, Conflict, and Justice in Africa: An Uncertain March
Stephen Mogaka and Stephen Ndegwa

2.5 • Where Truth, Lies, and Privilege Meet Poverty . . . What Is Hope? Reflecting on the Gains and Pains of South Africa’s TRC
Sarah Malotane Henkeman and Undine Whande

2.6 • Commerce, Crime, and Corruption: Illicit Financial Flows from Africa
Masimba Tafirenyika

2.7 • Working History: China, Africa, and Globalization
Jamie Monson, Tang Xiaoyang, and Liu Shaonan

2.8 • The Radicalization of Environmental Justice in South Africa
Jacklyn Cock

PART III.
CIRCULATIONS OF COMMUNITIES AND CULTURES

3.1 • PROFILE: A Taste of Africa in Harlem: Red Rooster
Judith A. Byfield

3.2 • Networks of Threads: Africa, Textiles, and Routes of Exchange
Victoria Rovine

3.3 • Sending Forth the Best: African Missions in China
Heidi Østbø Haugen

3.4 • PHOTO ESSAY: Baohan Street: An African Community in Guangzhou, China
Michaela Pelican and Li Dong

3.5 • The African Literary Tradition: Interview with Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Mukoma Wa Ngugi

3.6 • African Soccer’s Global Story
Peter Alegi

3.7 • Art, Identity, and Autobiography: Senzeni Marasela and Lalla Essaydi
Christa Clarke

3.8 • Raï and Rap: Globalization and the Soundtrack of Youth Resistance in Northern Africa
Zakia Salime

PART IV.
SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND HEALTH

4.1 • PROFILE: A Conversation with Microbiologist Dr. Sara Eyangoh
Tamara Giles-Vernick

4.2 • The Politics, Perils, and Possibilities of Epidemics in Africa
Douglas Webb

4.3 • Generative Technologies from Africa
Ron Eglash

4.4 • “Money in Your Hand”: M-PESA and Mobile Money in Kenya
Dillon Mahoney

4.5 • What’s in Your Cell Phone?
James H. Smith

4.6 • Bioprospecting: Moving beyond Benefit Sharing
Rachel Wynberg

4.7 • Of Waste and Revolutions: Environmental Legacies of Authoritarianism in Tunisia
Siad Darwish

PART V.
AFRICA IN THE WORLD TODAY

5.1 • PROFILE: Africa Calling: A Conversation with Mo Ibrahim
Stuart Reid

5.2 • From Lesotho to the United Nations: The Journey of a Gender Justice Advocate
Keiso Matashane-Marite

5.3 • Meschac Gaba: Museum of Contemporary African Art
Kerryn Greenberg

5.4 • Africa in Nollywood, Nollywood in Africa
Onookome Okome

5.5 • Globalizing African Islam from Below: West African Sufi Masters in the United States
Cheikh Anta Babou

5.6 • Afropolitanism and Its Discontents
Obadias Ndaba

5.7 • PHOTO ESSAY: Awra Amba: A Model “Utopian” Community in Ethiopia
Salem Mekuria

About the Editors
Index

Reviews

“This book serves as an invaluable resource for geographers, historians, and all social scientists, as well as any members of the public interested in learning more about this complicated and fascinating continent.”
— Polymath

"Challenging popular perceptions of Africa as a place of despair and violence, this volume describes the contributions that African people, ideas and goods have made throughout the world – contributions which, according to the editors, demonstrate that Africa occupies a central position in global historical processes."
— Survival: Global Politics and Strategy

"A refreshingly edited collection that offers a number of unusual views on Africa’s global connectedness and entanglements."
— New Global Studies

"In much writing about Africa, the continent is portrayed either as a self-contained space or as a region whose fate has been determined from outside—by enslavement, colonization, and, indeed, 'globalization.' The rich variety of contributions to Global Africa point to more diverse and complex ways of thinking about the importance and limitations of Africa's connections to the rest of the world."—Frederick Cooper, author of Africa in the World: Capitalism, Empire, Nation-State

"In their wonderful Global Africa, Dorothy Hodgson and Judi Byfield have provided the public with a badly needed and smartly executed intellectual survey of important themes in African Studies and a vital and accessible guide to the topic."—Howard W. French, Associate Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, author of A Continent for the Taking: the Tragedy and Hope of Africa; China's Second Continent: How a Million Migrants are Building a New Empire in Africa; and Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power.

"There are few volumes that have taken the 'global' and 'Africa' as comprehensively in its main dimensions as this one. From the conceptual to the literally material to the sacred juridical, the authors explore and expose profound entanglements which are as resonant today as they have ever been. To be able to have in one volume a set of essays that takes us all over continental Africa and an Africa that resonates as richly in China and India as in Spain, through the eyes of politicians as through soccer players, . . . is treasure indeed."—Abena P. A. Busia, Chair, Department of Women's and Gender Studies, Rutgers University

About the Book

About the Author

Table of Contents

Reviews