Routledge African Studies an Interdisciplinary Sampler

R O U T L E D G E . T A Y L O R & F R A N C I S

Routledge African Studies An Interdisciplinary Sampler

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1. Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai's Writing From: Popular Culture in Africa, by Grace A. Musila, edited by Stephanie Newell and Onookome Okome 2. Digital citizenship in Africa's fractured social order From: Africa's Big Men, by Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna, edited by Kenneth Kalu, Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso and Toyin Falola 3. From Peaceful to non-peaceful protests: the trajectory of women's movements in the Niger Delta From: The Unfinished Revolution in Nigeria's Niger Delta, by Abosede Omowumi Babatunde, edited by Cyril Obi and Temitope B. Oriola 4. Africa's Re-Enchantment with Big Infrastructure: White Elephants Dancing in Virtuous Circles From: Extractive Industries and Changing State Dynamics in Africa, by Paul Nugent, edited by Jon Schubert, Ulf Engel and Elísio Macamo 5. How African Youth Control Their Identities Through Social Media From: African Youth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture, by Stephen Ekema-Agbaw and Vivian Yenika-Agbaw, edited by Vivian Yenika-Agbaw and Lindah Mhando

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12 Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 1 Grace A. Musila

Reminiscing about his friendship with Zimbabwean Dambudzo Marechera and South African John Matshikiza as young African writers in 1970s London, Nigerian author Ben Okri says:

There was a sense that we had to take on the Achebe, Soyinka and Ngugi generation; not in a bad way, not in the way of killing your fa- ther. We wanted to take the story and run away with it. And, ﬁ nding ourselves in London, we had to take on the challenge of Western literature. We had to write in full cognisance of everything that had been written. We couldn’t write as if [James] Joyce hadn’t written Finnegan’s Wake or [Fyodor] Dostoevsky hadn’t written Crime and Punishment . That was a steep challenge. There was, for us, a double challenge: the challenge of the older generation of African writers and the challenge of world literature. Maybe the toughest [of the two tasks] was the challenge of world literature at the point we found ourselves. We had to face the challenge and still be ourselves. (Zvomuya 2012, n.p.)

Opening a discussion on African popular fi ction with a nod to six stars in the fi rmament of the African canon may at fi rst glance seem strange. Yet, to my mind, Okri’s reminiscences poignantly mirror concerns that preoccupy a generation of young writers emerging in Kenya three decades later, in the early 2000s: a desire for novel ways of writing; a robust wrestle with the anxieties of cross-generational infl uence (to misquote Harold Bloom); a double-voiced location in the national and the transnational, the Pan- African and the Pan-global; and ultimately, a self-assigned mandate to push the limits of fi ction’s possibility. In fact, Okri’s reminiscences echo similar sentiments by one of the major voices in this emergent generation of Kenyan writers, Binyavanga Wainaina. As the founding editor of the East African literary journal Kwani?, Wainaina comments in the magazine’s inaugural editorial in 2003:

Lately I seem to meet all kinds of interesting people. Mostly young, self-motivated people, who have created a space for themselves in an

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Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 245 adverse economy by being innovative. [When] art as expression begins to appear without prompting, all over the suburbs and villages of this country, what we are saying is: we are conﬁ dent enough to create our own living, our own entertainment, our own aesthetic. Such an aesthetic will not be donated to us from the corridors of a university; or from the ministry of culture, or by The French Cultural Centre. . . . Breaking new ground always provokes ridicule. [In] the old Kenya, people with new ideas were ridiculed. They threatened the position of those who had stopped having new ideas. So I shall call this new generation the Redykulass Generation. This is the Kenya that Kwani? is about. We are a magazine of ideas. (Wainaina 2003a, n.p.)

Evident in Wainaina’s editorial is a celebration of youth, creativity, novelty, and transgression of artistic conventions prescribed by various cultural gatekeepers including academia, government, and the French Cultural Centre—an increasingly important stakeholder in the arts industry across Africa—along with related organizations such as the German-funded Goethe Institute and American-funded Ford Foundation. Important for our purposes though is the recurrent concern with novelty here, which echoes Karin Barber’s emphasis on popular arts’ ongoing concern with “experimentation in the quest for novelty” (Barber 1987, 15). As she reminds us, popular arts “are recognized by their ‘unoffi cial’ character and by their air of novelty. They are unoffi cial because they are free to operate between established cultural systems without conforming to their conventions, and they are novel because they combine elements from the traditional and the metropolitan cultures in unprecedented conjunctures, with the effect of radical departure from both” (Barber 1987, 13). That Barber’s observations are, to a certain extent, equally applicable to both Okri’s and Wainaina’s thoughts above is central to my discussion here, as I am interested in the increasing muddying of the waters that lie in the continuum between popular and canonical arts in recent years, thanks to popular artists’ adventurous exploration of the outer limits of novelty and their dynamic yet ambivalent relationship to their heritage of canonical writing and its concerns, as I illustrate below through a close reading of the writing of founding member of the Kwani? movement, Parselelo Kan- tai. Barber argues that the scholarly “tendency to defi ne popular art . . . in terms of absences and deviations from established categories [gives rise to] an intuitive feeling for the undefi ned, the fl uid, the changeable, and the endlessly evasive”; this, in turn, helps to generate a sense of the “ ‘unoffi - cial,’ sliding around between the two ‘offi cial’ sets of cultural canons and institutions” (Barber 1987, 11–12). Kantai’s writing embodies this fl irtation with the space, style, and institutions that lie along the elite/canonical— traditional arts continuum. In the same essay, Barber advises that “if we take [popular] art forms simply as social facts, and examine the network of relations through which they are produced and consumed, we may already

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246 Grace A. Musila be uncovering important but unnoticed aspects of the societies in which they fl ourish” (Barber 1987, 1). Taking Barber’s thoughts here as a point of departure, I see Parselelo Kantai’s writing as signaling particular nodes of spaces, institutions, and thought across the landscape of its concerns, circulation, and publics which offer important insights into both Kenyan social imaginaries and the ways in which the Kwani? generation of writers are pushing the outer edges of popular arts in interesting directions. Kantai is a founding member of the Nairobi-based Kwani Trust, publishers of the (print) literary journal Kwani?, which also enjoys a strong online presence. 2 Kwani? ’s very title—a Swahili word appropriated into Kenyan slang by the question mark, which makes it translate to “so?”—encodes an attitude of unfl inching defi ance implicit in the (unvoiced but present) “what” that completes the dare, “so what?” On its web page, Kwani? journal is described as “launching a renewed interest in the reading of local literary material by Kenyans and international readers, showcasing creative energies that seemed dormant in Kenya in the 1980s and 1990s, [and] hail- ing the emergence of a new post-independence generation.” 3 This description underscores what Tom Odhiambo (following Janet Wilson) describes as Kwani? ’s location in “the literary transnation” within a “global matrix of cultural transactions and network of transnational readers and contrib- utors” (Odhiambo 2012, 28, 35). To a large extent, Parselelo Kantai’s own biography and the circulation of his writing mirrors this local-transnational network of affi liations: a Nairobi-based investigative journalist and regional editor of France-based current affairs magazine Africa Report, Kantai’s fi c- tion has been variously published in Kenya by Kwani?, in the American literary Webzine St. Petersburg Review, in East African newspapers, and online. He is also a two-time nominee for the prestigious U.K.-based Caine Prize for African Writing, 4 and he has given public readings of his stories in Nairobi, London, and Paris, among other places. Kantai’s—and by extension, Kwani? magazine’s—location in Wilson’s literary transnationalism, his decidedly local and antiestablishment views, particularly regarding mainstream institutions’ assumptions about literary merit and state power, and his ongoing experimentation with form and content prompt a close refl ection on the emergent patterns of popular fi ction in East Africa. This chapter takes its cue from Barber’s injunction above, to trace the “networks of relations” that mediate the thoughts, production, and circulation of Parselelo Kantai’s writing, as an example of a Kwani ? generation author whose writing and sensibility straddles the popular-canon divide in suggestive ways. I am interested in the shapes Barber’s network of relations take in an increasingly globally connected Kenyan literary landscape and what these transnational nodes of connection mean for our understanding of contemporary Kenyan fi ction with roots in, or affi liated to, the Kwani? literary movement. The overarching frame of the Kwani? literary movement poses an additional set of questions owing to its interesting class and funding lines which weave across various vectors of the production,

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Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 247 consumption, and publics/audiences circuit. In a context where, as Odhi- ambo reminds us, “what was previously a well-defi ned terrain such as literature is no longer clearly knowable or navigable [as] scientifi c and technological innovations [stretch] the frames by which literature is produced and consumed” (Odhiambo 2012, 31–32), what discernible patterns emerge from Kantai’s fi ction and how do they function? How does a fi ction that seems to playfully scale the continuum between canonical registers and explicitly popular modes of address navigate its way around the minefi eld of intricate affi liations at the levels of authorship, publication, and circulation? What questions does this writing’s (and writer’s) complex genealogy invite towards understanding its commentary on manifestations of contemporary popular fi ction in Kenya? These are some of the issues I explore.

I ARCHIVES OF THE PRESENT

One of the driving forces in Kantai’s writing is an interest in the recovery of a collective Kenyan memory and the appeal of what he sees as fi ction’s permanence. As he notes, when he started writing, he was interested in “the recovery of a collective memory that seemed to have disappeared, or was not being discussed, after years of silence. These questions were only being addressed through the limited space of print and other media [which was] very transient [so], fi ction suggested some kind of permanence.” This emphasis on “permanence” signals Kantai’s vision of fi ction as a restorative archive-building platform. I read Kantai’s writing as participating in the creation of what can be termed “archives of the present,” in so far as it weaves together and validates fragments of Kenyan histories—most of which lie outside offi cial history or are altogether unacknowledged—while consistently signaling the living presence and implication of history in contemporary Kenyan life. Awake to the associations of the term “archives” with mainstream/institutionalized recordkeeping and a different sense of “permanence,” I use the phrase “archives of the present” here as a provisional term to describe Kantai’s use of fi ction as a site for the validation and recording of fragments of social histories, experiences, and spaces that often remain off the pages of “offi cial” archives because they are either too inconvenient or too “everyday” to warrant recording. Through an experimental interweav- ing of autobiography, social histories, and imagination, Kantai uses fi ction to restore fragments of national histories to public record and validate social histories of marginal fi gures and spaces, such as the sex workers on Nairobi’s Koinange “red-light” Street and illegal immigrants on the dilapidated alleys of the city’s Kirinyaga Road. In yoking the terms “archives” and “the present,” I aim to signal the ephemeral nature of both the “everyday” and the “popular,” which Kantai works with in his stories, while making a case for the work of his fi ction as a site of acknowledgement, recording, and contestation of these transient histories and public memories. By anchoring

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248 Grace A. Musila his stories on familiar spaces and current affairs in Kenyan public memory, Kantai’s writing indexes these moments, spaces, and happenings in a public record of the ever shifting present, as I illustrate below. In sum, I read Kantai’s work as articulating the slippages that mediate the boundaries between mainstream history and popular history in what I term Kenyan political imaginaries, following Bhekizizwe Peterson. Peterson uses the term in reference to “the intellectual and cultural horizons that shape our grasp of personal and social identities and histories” (Peterson 2002, 29). A casual glance at Kantai’s short stories bears witness to his stated mission of recovering and chronicling certain fragments of Kenyan history. In “The Cock Thief,” Kantai chronicles the last days of the Moi regime in Kenya, by imaginatively revisiting an incident in which the ruling party’s iconic fetish—a solid gold rooster—was allegedly stolen from State House, while “The Story of Comrade Lemma and the Jerusalem Boys’ Band” offers a fi c- tional reconstruction of what came to be known as the General Mathenge fi asco in 2003, when the newly elected National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) government invited an Ethiopian farmer on a much-publicized state visit, in the mistaken belief that he was the long lost Mau Mau nationalist struggle warrior, General Mathenge, who disappeared mysteriously in the 1950s. Kantai uses the General Mathenge fi asco to refl ect on the farcical degradation of inconvenient national histories by decades of collective amnesia. On its part, “The Redykyulass Generation” weaves together strands of the auto/biographical, the journalistic, and the fi ctional in a sobering commentary on the gap between hegemonic strands of Kenyan public life and the lived realities of ordinary citizens who, despite adhering to one of the prescribed creeds of the Kenyan nation project—education and hard work as the foundation for success—remain excluded from ethnicized patronage networks of access to opportunities. Lastly, “You Wreck Her” offers a powerful social history of Nairobi’s underbelly and its transactions with other world cities, by tracing the shifting fortunes of a Nairobi sex worker. The story traces Marabou’s meteoric rise from teenage sex worker on the notorious Koinange Street—Nairobi’s red-light district—to “discovery” by a Belgian model scout who whisks her off to the catwalks of Paris, London, Brussels, and Milan as a “Sudanese child-soldier-turned-model.” Marabou’s plunge from the dizzying heights of the international fashion scene back to the dilapidated alleys of downtown Nairobi is just as sudden. When Sudan stops being interesting to the fashion world, her ever resourceful Belgian agent “discovers” Angola as the new favorite African hotspot along with a new model to represent its wartime horrors, leaving Marabou penniless, still illiterate, and back on Koinange Street. In her introduction to Readings in African Popular Culture (1997), Karin Barber reminds us that “the assumption made by some enthusiasts of Afri- can ‘popular art’ that it is by defi nition naïve, cheerful and carefree has been replaced by the recognition that genres billed as entertainment usually talk about matters of deep interest and concern to the people who produce and

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Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 249 consume them” (2). Elsewhere, Simon Gikandi echoes this view: “[p]erhaps there is a case to be made for a new space of cultural production that is im- prisoned neither by the state nor by global capital but is, instead, connected more directly to cultural producers who are living and organic rather than mute consumers of global culture” (2006, 84). In a way, it is possible to read Kantai’s writing as one such phenomenon in its refl ection on Project Kenya. Indeed, if Ngugi wa Thiong’o remains the most infl uential canonical Kenyan writer to comment on the Kenyan nation project, then Kantai’s revisiting of Kenyan social and political histories in some ways addresses the inadvertent blind spots in Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s portrait of the Kenyan nation-state. At a time when nationalism has become a much-contested category in academia, Kantai’s writing captures an opposing reality on the ground: that the nation remains an important, albeit highly contested, identifi catory location for Africans. As Gikandi avers, despite perceptions of nationness “as the enemy of cosmopolitanism and perpetual peace; . . . postcolonial identities are embedded in the logic of national narratives, where the fortunes of subjects and agents are decided by the drama of nationalism, even in its disavowal” (Gikandi 2006, 69, 71). How does Kantai engage with the interface between the nation, the state, and writing? How does he use popular fi ction to inter- rogate key debates on Kenyan nationalism, at a time when Project Kenya is seriously contested, especially following the 2007 post-election violence? These are some of the questions this chapter grapples with. Commenting on three recent books by British and American historians on Kenyan colonial histories—David Anderson’s Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005), Caroline El- kins’s Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya (2005), and Lotte Hughes’s Moving the Maasai: A Colonial Misadventure (2006)—author Michela Wrong notes the irony that these attacks on British imperialism in colonial Kenya come from white Westerners. For her though:

We are white Westerners, which means that, however we may empa- thize, however vicariously angry we may grow as we pore over old documents, ours remains an essentially intellectual interest. It wasn’t our ancestors who found their paths barred by prejudice, their lives shaped by laws and taxes devised by Africa’s uninvited guests. (Wrong, qtd. in Kantai 2006)

While agreeing with Wrong, Kantai (2006) further complicates this view, arguing that “by occupying this intellectual territory, Western academics in African studies departments are also managing perceptions of what Africa is and how it can be engaged with” (n.p.). Kantai’s broader preoccupation here lies with Kenyans’ conﬂ icted relationship to their histories. As he reminds us:

People who import their histories are doomed by the failure of their own imaginations. Constantly acted upon, they will struggle with a lack

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250 Grace A. Musila of self-belief, and play out whatever roles are assigned to them without ever quite understanding their place in the world. This is the true meaning of “Third World,” VS Naipaul’s “half-made places” that have failed to imagine themselves into an existence beyond the assignations of their former conquerors. The repossession of this [intellectual] territory is the new frontier for the African intellectual. (Kantai 2006, n.p.)

I read Kantai’s engagement with Kenyan histories and the contradictions of Project Kenya as his contribution to this confrontation with troubled histories. As noted, Kantai is one of the founders of Kwani?, and some of his writing was fi rst published in Kwani? Therefore, any reading of his work and its contribution to the ongoing redefi nition of Kenyan popular literary practice must be framed within a broader acknowledgement of the Kwani? project, its aspirations, achievements, and contradictions. At its inception, founding editor Binyavanga Wainaina saw Kwani? as both a celebration and embodiment of an unprecedented burst of creativity among Kenyan youth after the politically repressive late 1980s and 1990s. Newly returned from a long stay in South Africa—and having just won the 2002 Caine Prize for African Writing for his short story “Discovering Home”—Wainaina was struck by this creative energy, which coincided with the National Rainbow Coalition’s (NARC) electoral victory, sweeping into power on a populist wave of euphoria after twenty-four years of Moi rule. Initially, Kwani? was faced with dismissive criticism from what Wainaina describes above as the “corridors of the university.” This dismissal had as much to do with hostility towards the journal’s transgressive description of the literary—what Odhiambo (2012, 31) terms challenging literary orthodoxy— as it did with conservative ideas of artistic merit upheld by sections of the Kenyan literary academy at the time. As Dina Ligaga notes, Kwani? sought to open up conventional understandings of the literary by presenting photo- essays, cartoons, anecdotes, and cyber texts side by side with short stories and poetry as literary forms (Ligaga 2005, 46). An example of this redefi ning of the literary through a fl uid interpenetration of genres, media, and exchanges between writers and their audiences is “The Vain Jango, ” an e-mail by an anonymous, stereotypically vain Luo 5 man that was fi rst circulated among Kenyans online, and subsequently reprinted in the fi rst issue of Kwani? In the e-mail, the anonymous Luo man describes an encounter with a beautiful young lady at an upmarket Nairobi bar, where he has gone to watch a live broadcast of an English Premier League game between Manchester United and Southampton. He tries to impress her by showing off his (fi ctitious) wealth and cultural savoir but makes a quick exit from the bar when she turns out to be “less cosmopolitan” than he had imagined her to be:

The other day I was chilling at Cactus . . . as I sipped my Tusker baridi as per kawa while I watched a premier league match between Man.

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Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 251 U and Southampton disinterestedly. I hate Man. U bro, I mean, why would those clowns want to win every damn English title? Anyway, back to my storo—my Tusker had started to ingia my system and my mind had embarked on those lager-induced intelligence ﬂ ashes. (Vain Jango [pseud.] 2003, 104)

Irritated by the anonymous man’s pretentious posing, Wainaina and fellow Kenyan author and publisher Muthoni Garland composed a biting reply, creating a background and thoughts for the unnamed woman in the story. Both the original e-mail and the two writers’ response are reproduced in e-mail format in the ﬁ rst issue of Kwani? “The Vain Jango” is also one of the sampled articles from this issue, online, but with an interesting twist: readers are additionally offered an audio dramatization of the e-mail and invited to offer their own responses to the e-mail, on Kwani? ’s web page. This exchange is a typical example of Kwani?’s innovative redeﬁ nition of the literary, not only in relation to genre and medium but also with regards to language, by publishing contributions in English, Swahili, sheng (Ken- yan slang), and Engsh (a mixture of these three languages), as illustrated here. Yet the absolute independence from both the academy and patron institutions suggested by Wainaina—in his claim of an aesthetic that “will not be donated from the corridors of a university, or by The French Cultural Centre” (2003a)—is debatable given that Kwani? lists Ford Foundation and Doen Foundation as its primary funding partners. The two foundations fund arts and culture across the continent and elsewhere, based on a particular understanding of the contribution of arts and culture to “development.” 6 The funding question brings with it another set of issues that further texture Barber’s (1987, 1) network of relations between production, content, publics, and consumption/audiences. Kantai’s lament in an interview about Western markets/readerships wanting “African truths and realities translated for them” 7 would seem to echo Barber’s commentary on the various lines of interaction between producers and consumers of popular arts (Barber 1987, 23–29), which I revisit shortly. Beyond this though, the issue of donor funding raises a new set of questions with regards to agenda setting, especially for an explicitly antiestablishment movement like Kwani. Odhiambo candidly captures this challenge:

The fact that Kwani Trust is a Ford Foundation Grantee implies the possibility of its creative writing and publishing projects being driven [by] particular ideological regimes. In other words, funds may be made available or withheld depending on particular donor funding priorities and demands. The obvious question that this donor-trustee relationship invites is: how independent or even creative, can one claim to be if the benefactor is always likely to be instrumental in inﬂ uencing the end products from the trustee? (Odhiambo 2012, 33)

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252 Grace A. Musila For Kantai, one glimmer of hope lies in the increasing development of local and diasporic markets and readerships for contemporary Kenyan writing, a readership signaled earlier in our discussion of Kwani? ’s—and Kantai’s— location in the literary transnationalism. Recalling Barber’s seminal thoughts on the complex self-location of creators and consumers of popular culture in Africa, an interesting dimension for us—which speaks to Parselelo Kan- tai’s work and thought—is Kwani? ’s class dynamics.

II WENYENCHI, WANANCHI, AND THE VEXED QUESTION OF THE AFRICAN MIDDLE CLASS

In her discussion, Barber cautions against homogenizing readings of African popular arts, their producers, and consumers by underscoring the textured nature of various arts’ popularity in itself, owing to their varied rootedness in “local systems of production and consumption” (Barber 1987, 24). On this basis, she distinguishes three kinds of relationships:

Some art is both produced and consumed by the people—produced, that is, by the people and for the people. Some is produced by the people but not consumed by them. . . . Some art on the other hand is consumed by the people but not produced by them. (ibid.)

With minor shifts, Barber’s typology here remains true of much of Kenyan popular arts over two decades later. One of these shifts lies in the blurring of the conceptual lines that defi ne the elite and the masses as class groups, particularly with the widening of what can be termed (with much caution) the African middle class, as a class that produces popular art addressed to popular publics of a middle-class persuasion, which nonetheless distinguishes itself from “elite” arts and its audiences, in the Kwani? case, an exclusionary cultural elite embodied by canonical writing and academia respectively. This is one of the blurred lines in the production-consumption-content triangle in both the Kwani? movement and Kantai’s writing. If, as Barber writes, popular artists “do not generally belong to the clearly visible institutional structures through which traditional and elite artists operate” (Barber 1987, 11), the advent of donor-funded literary platforms such as Kwani?—which locate themselves in opposition to the prescrip- tive gatekeeping strategies of the formal cultural and academic institutions, explicitly endorse transgressive writing forms and registers, and simultaneously retain a distinctly urban, largely middle-class following that is, in some ways, grappling with the entangled burdens of history that come with middle-class locations in Kenyan public life—further muddies the defi ni- tional boundaries of the term “popular.” Where on the traditional-elite continuum do we place this fi ction, with its connectedness to the word- scapes of London, Paris, New York, and Cape Town and its simultaneous

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Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 253 commitment to afﬁ rming popular tropes of “Kenyanness” as played out through everyday experiences of Nairobi’s streets, smoky bars, and notorious policemen? Its avid ear for the vivacious sounds of sheng and Engsh, constantly updated by ghetto-fabulous Kenyan youth, and its exchanges with similar literary movements such as Cape Town-based Chimurenga and Lagos-based Faraﬁ na? Consider this opening from Kantai’s story “You Wreck Her,” whose title is an inadvertent pun on the word “Eureka,” by the semiliterate addressee:

You do not know how far you have fallen down in this world until you see yourself crawling up a karao ’s face on a Friday night. You are slobbering and gagging over your short-time, ignoring the after-taste of condom coming into your nostrils from the back of your throat . . . you can feel he is getting close. . . . He ﬁ nds your breast. He is clutching you like a handbag thief on Moi Avenue. His thing grows larger in your mouth, then trembles and the thing in your mouth grows soft and your jaws are aching and there is a tap on the window. (Kantai 2010)

From the use of slang ( karao [policeman]; “short-time” sex clients) to ref- erents familiar to a Kenyan readership (the notorious handbag thieves on Nairobi’s Moi Avenue) to the narrator’s mode of address, whose intimate third-person present-tense address approximates an urban storytelling style of narration, similar to that of “The Vain Jango” above, Kantai’s story is fi rmly anchored in a familiar grid of popular storytelling in Kenya. Indeed, the very content of the story itself—experiences of a Nairobi sex worker—is familiar for local readerships. As he says, “Nairobi streets are full of these kinds of stories, these kinds of incidents. [As] a journalist, you end up pick- ing up these stories all the time.” 8 Perhaps the one challenge that has haunted Kwani? since its inception is the tension between its aspiration to embody an inclusive platform for local writing and voices—considered to be excluded by elitist publishers and academic institutions—and its own elitist identity as an ultimately middle-class Nairobian project. Ironically, like the 2002 NARC euphoria whose promises quickly fi zzled out—climaxing in the bloody 2007 post- election violence— Kwani? ’s promises of a literary revolution, suggested by Wainaina’s sentiments above, remained largely limited to Nairobi and the Kenyan diaspora. This class tension makes both Kwani? and Kantai’s writing a fascinating case study on new directions in African popular culture, in ways that on the one hand reiterate the challenges of literacy and purchasing power, which continue to limit access to largely middle-class readerships, and on the other, invite us to refl ect on African popular culture’s conscious self-insertion into a more global cultural canvas. As Odhiambo points out, the main challenge for Kwani? ’s pursuit of literary egalitarianism in Kenya lay in its confl icted claim to both a local identity and an aspirational “the literary transnation” (Odhiambo 2012, 35).

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254 Grace A. Musila But if the category “the people” is central to defi nitions of “the popular”— where “the people” refers to “unstable congeries of differently defi ned groups, linguistic, ethnic, occupational and religious, only thinkable as a category in that they are excluded from the privileges of the political, business and military elites” (Barber 1997, 4)—what do we make of Kwani? and by extension, Kantai’s case of writing predominantly by middle-class writers uneasily located in the complex dramas of national(ist) histories but simultaneously contesting the intellectual elitism of the academy and equally suffocating hegemonic political cultures? What do we make of such writing’s autobiographical refl ections which open up wider conversations about the hegemonic silences of nationalist histories? The Kwani? dilemma of an antiestablishment posture (insofar as it contests the conventional cultural gatekeepers) and its vanguard’s sticky relationships with Kenya’s troubled histories problematize our understandings of class dynamics of African popular arts. In thinking through these class contradictions—some of which are embodied by Kantai’s own location as a middle class Kenyan writer whose writing aligns itself with a more “pro-ordinary-people” critique of Project Kenya—I fi nd Barber’s defi nition of popular art “not in terms of its origins but in terms of the interests it serves” (Barber 1987, 7), particularly instructive. Although, as mentioned, Kantai celebrates the instrumentality of literature in building popular archives; he also registers concern about the proto- typical Kwani writer as in large part a generation whose attempts to break the silences of history are complicated by both their middle-class location and their indirect implication in uncomfortable moments in Kenyan history. As he sums it up in “The Reddykyulass Generation,” “Sons and daughters of the victors of anti-colonial struggle, the only reliable precedent for ongoing invention was the colonial elite our parents had replaced. And that was the problem: [we] had failed to produce new realities for ourselves” (Kantai 2007b). Kantai sees certain connections between the layered complicities of the Kenyan middle class and contemporary frustrations with the betrayals of Project Kenya. Adopting an (auto)biographical lens—by refl ecting on his generation’s lives—he sketches out the anxieties that haunted the postindependence Kenyan middle class:

Like Kenya’s other successful experiments of the time—tea and coffee as smallholder crops—we were rooted locally but designed for export. We, the sons and daughters of the nationalist elite, sat behind dark and heavy wooded desks wounded with the insignia of those other children— the white kids of colonial bureaucrats. We spoke only when spoken to and bowed and curtsied and pronounced [the word] “properly” by skipping over the superﬂ uous “er” or else got a rap on the knuckles. [The] prize at the end was the White Collar job; a job behind another desk, a car in the secured parking lot, 2.8 kids in a primary school much like the ones we were in. (Kantai 2007b, n.p.)

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Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 255 Kantai’s portrait of the social engineering of the Kenyan middle class here foregrounds the idea of education as the route to success—with success being defi ned as a job, family, and a place in the ever fragile Kenyan middle class. Both in speeches by various fi gures of authority and in popular songs, the youth have historically been urged to work hard and embrace formal education, a message further popularized by a 1980s popular song: Someni vijana/Muongeze pia bidii/Mwisho wa kusoma/mtapata kazi nzuri sana (Youth, go to school/and work hard/at the end of your education/you will get good jobs). But there was little refl ection on the content of this education, which sought to produce articulate Afro-saxons whose parroting of unprocessed facts was better valued than their understanding of said facts:

We disdained Kiswahili and crammed facts about places we would never visit so that we could pass exams. [So], repeat: Wheat was grown in Regina, cattle ranched in the Pampas, the Bantu came from the Cam- eroon Forest. [This] was our heritage: ritualized incantation with no meaning save for the inner logic of developing collective obedience. We were signs that signiﬁ ed themselves, and we were rooted in contradic- tion. (Kantai 2007b, n.p.)

For Kantai, the problem with this rhetoric was the contradictions embedded in the promises of success as a reward for educational achievement and the reality of successive political regimes which presided over patronage networks marked by selective distribution of both “development” and the rewards of formal education. Kantai poignantly laments the tragic contradictions embedded in this creed of “Kenyanness” popularized among ordinary Kenyans and the cynicism with which the successive Kenyatta, Moi, and Kibaki regimes repeatedly undermined the creed of fair merit-based access to opportunities by reinscribing ethnic networks, even as they publicly denounced ethnicity as “the enemy of progress.”

Nationalism was meant to be a transformative project. Like the mis- sionary’s civilizing project before it, it would shake the tribe out of the nascent citizen, feed him on a diet of English and Kiswahili, wean him from poverty and disease. Successful, it would have been glorious vin- dication of the founding ethos—the national need for amnesia. (Kantai 2006, n.p.)

Yet, this detribalization agenda was not successful, because the same na- tionalists sabotaged their project by installing ethnic networks as channels for the distribution of public resources along lines of “sub-nationalist privi- lege” (Kantai 2006, n.p.). In “The Redykyulass Generation,” Kantai draws attention to the ways in which this betrayal of Project Kenya’s creed of hard work, education, and detribalization was a personal story, whose contradictions he saw variously unfolding in the lives of people of his generation,

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256 Grace A. Musila but most tragically, in the life of a good friend, businesswoman, and play- wright, Bee, who sank into depression and eventually ended her life in 2005, in frustration with a system that made it impossible to make a decent living without paying the price of various compromises set for people who fell outside the dominant patronage networks. In Bee’s personal torment, Kantai sees a tragedy which powerfully underscores the tragedy of Project Kenya’s betrayal. To him, Bee “embodied what we had been told about what it means to be Kenyan. And yet she found herself on the outside of things.” 9

Bee killed herself out of shame. The shame and confusion of misplaced belief. [She] had bought into the highest ideals of a sham project where public good was the code for private accumulation and the acquisition of papers [certiﬁ cates] could never protect you if you were from the wrong tribe. Bee, a Kenyan, had not been designed to speak in ethnic code, she had not been designed to “deal.” (Kantai 2007b, n.p.)

The question Kantai seems to ask us here is, what happens when a nation’s promises to its people turn out to be a lie? Predictably, the betrayals of Proj- ect Kenya mirror the betrayals of colonial modernity, where the privileges of modernity were promised and simultaneously denied to Africans on the basis of their blackness. 10 Attempting to understand the Kenyan manifestation of the now typical failures of the postindependence African elite, Kantai reﬂ ects:

Along the way, the new African elite, so young and transcendent when they came to power, were now older and fatter, and had lost their hun- ger. They were the fi rsts: the fi rst large cadre of Western-trained university graduates, which, in the heady days of independence, fi lled the gap left by the departing colonial administrative bureaucracy. [They] gave muscle to the rhetorical idea of Black Rule. [When] they stood up to speak at local gatherings, entire locations fell silent; people cocked their ears and stared at their bare feet and tried to decipher every nuance and cadence in the great man’s voice. The great men lived in Nairobi and did important things. They did not visit often. (Kantai 2007b, n.p.)

In this poignant portrait of what Fanon terms “the pitfalls of nationalism,” Kantai captures the Kenyan variant of these tendencies in the shape of the ubiquitous bwana mkubwas—the Big Men—in Kenyan everyday life and their spectacular self-inscription in local popular imaginaries. This relationship between the great “Firsts” and ordinary people would later crystallize into what came to be known in Kenyan parlance as the dichotomy between “Wenyenchi” (the owners of the country) and “Wananchi” (ordinary citizens), with the Swahili semantics of “wana” (children) signaling a certain infantilized powerlessness.

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Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 257 Though published in early 2007, “The Redykyulass Generation” in many ways anticipates the toxic atmosphere that was to explode after the December 2007 election in Kenya, thanks to a heady mixture of wananchi ’s pent-up frustrations, politically engineered ethnic tensions, and an arro- gant political elite— wenyenchi —convinced about its self-ordained right to power. Reading the story after the violence that rocked Kenya in 2008 and what has been lamented as the failure of intellectuals to imagine possibilities of healing the rifts that emerged across Kenyan society, 11 we begin to understand Kantai’s overarching argument that the postindependence nation was fragile, the product of a political elite and emergent middle class built on the quicksand of hollow aspirations. Awake to this hollowness, fi rst president Jomo Kenyatta recognized the power of forgetting as a strong adhesive for the rickety Project Kenya—fractured as much by its arbitrary colonial territorial boundaries which threw together diverse people as by equally deep ideo-political contradictions of the anticolonial struggle. In his fi rst Ken- yatta Day address on October 20, 1964, Kenyatta warned Kenyans, “Let this be the day on which all of us commit ourselves to erase from our minds all the hatreds and diffi culties of those years which now belong to history. Let us agree that we shall never refer to the past” (cited in Parsons 2007, 57–58). And thus a new creed of Kenyanness was inaugurated: collective amnesia. This creed made its way into everyday Kenyan parlance as “sahau yaliyopita tujenge taifa” (forget the past so we can build the nation).

III “SAHAU YALIYOPITA TUJENGE TAIFA”: PROJECT KENYA AND COLLECTIVE AMNESIA

The suspicion of memory as an enemy of progress in Project Kenya can be traced back to the Kenyatta regime which “create[d] national identities based on a selective recollection of the past [by] using national myths based on selective memory and amnesia to create an effective governing ideology” (Parsons 2007, 51–53). Reminiscing about his own childhood in postindependence Kenya, Simon Gikandi remembers being surrounded by “people who wanted the scars of the past . . . dressed up or camouﬂ aged in a narrative of an unbridled future. The ofﬁ cial slogan was forgive and forget. Mem- ory was the enemy of progress” (2012, 17). The notion of memory as the enemy of progress took root in Kenyan political imaginaries, informing the bedrock of Kenya’s troubled relationship with its history. As Kantai sums it up, “Kenya has always been a country with a national credo of ‘forward ever, backward never.’ There is major embarrassment and discomfort with the past for all kinds of reasons, but primarily for political reasons.” 12 In “The Redykyulass Generation,” Kantai traces the roots of this culture of amnesia—or what, in contemporary parlance, can be described as “pho- toshopping” of history—at the birth of Project Kenya, “Independent Kenya was founded on a pact of forgetting the past. To achieve this, histories—both

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258 Grace A. Musila collective and personal—had to be swept under the national carpet. Ques- tions about how notorious collaborators, torturers from the Emergency era had come to the centre of power were suppressed” (Kantai 2007b). One of the histories that was swept under the metaphoric national carpet was the complexity of the anticolonial struggle. As Evan Mwangi observes, following historian David Anderson, in postindependence Kenya, “Mau Mau is sanitised to shore up the legitimacy of the post-independence government whenever it fi nds itself in crisis” (Mwangi 2010, 94). “The Story of Comrade Lemma and the Jerusalem Boys’ Band” examines one such instance of sanitization. It tells of the fi ctional Sylvanus, a young man who forms a band during the state of emergency in Kenya. The band writes and performs “Joka” —a song which laments the tribulations of mi- grant laborers—to such acclaim that the young Sylvanus adopts the stage name “Comrade Lemma” (after a wanted struggle icon) to avoid detection by his mother. Decades later—in 2003—the now elderly Sylvanus fi nds himself propelled to the center of the nation’s fortieth anniversary celebration in the role of the real liberation struggle icon Comrade Lemma, complete with a new heroic life story. Kantai’s story—set in 2003, Kenya’s fortieth anniversary—critiques the opportunistic deployment of Mau Mau struggle rhetoric through an abridged archive, which selectively remembers and forgets its ambivalence towards the Mau Mau movement. The story closely mirrors the 2004 General Stanley Mathenge fi asco, as outlined above. 13 In the story, with independence, “Joka” is briefl y considered as a con- tender for the new national anthem, but it is banned “within the fi rst year of the new independent government’s life as it was said that the song’s dis- turbing lyrics had annoyed the new leader” (Kantai 2007b, 213). Allusively, this banning of the song recalls the banning of Mau Mau by the postindependence Kenyatta regime in Kenya. Indeed, the offi cial unbanning of the movement only came in 2003, forty years after independence. Through this web of allusions, Kantai confronts the culture of selective amnesia that has haunted Project Kenya since independence. At the fi ctional(ized) anniversary celebrations, a wealthy former secondhand clothes dealer called Marehemu George 14 embarks on a detailed rescripting of history, casting Comrade Lemma aka Sylvanus and the members of the Jerusalem Boys Band in a new, heroic frame, complete with fresh liberation struggle credentials:

Save for Comrade Lemma who survived death on numerous occasions, all the other members . . . died heroically in the service of the nation. [Comrade Lemma suffered] a long and traumatic experience in several detention camps, where quicksand torture was liberally applied; . . . Tairero Omondi died at the hands of thugs after a Comrade Lemma concert in the City Stadium; . . . Solomon Olimba died trying during a colonial police interrogation after his arrest for subversion; and Hum- phrey W. Gatonye, in a British Army bombing raid in the Aberdare

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Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 259 as Mau Mau soldiers wept with sheer joy at his vocal talents. (Kantai 2007b, n.p.)

This rescripting of the band—which had little interest in the liberation struggle politics—is reminiscent of the “discovery” of General Mathenge in Ethiopia. Kantai’s story satirizes the culture of hollow memorialization in postcolonial African states enacted through rituals of nationalist symbols, national holidays, anniversaries, monuments, and the symbolic naming of certain spaces; all of which often serve to project seamless nationalist narratives, beneath which the cracks and tensions remain shrouded in silence and feigned collective amnesia. It is this same culture of hollow memorialization that Kantai sketches out elsewhere, in “The Redykyulass Generation”:

On national holidays, we dutifully remembered the names of the national heroes: characters who had lived heroically and died tragically at some point in a misty past, we only knew them as blank spaces for the end of term exam: “Field Marshall Dedan Kimathi Waciuri was the————of Mau Mau.” “Mau Mau was the———of independence.” History was one of the subjects to be conquered over three days of examinations. It had nothing to do with present reality. Words substituted meaning, and the past with its betrayals and accommoda- tions remained in the shadows. (Kantai 2007b, n.p.)

This erosion of history to an anemic skeleton begs the question, to borrow from Langston Hughes’s “Dream Deferred,” what happens to a past clos- eted, a past kept too long under the national carpet of collective amnesia? Kantai offers two possibilities: “the past has lain under the carpet for so long; it seems to have rotten away and died” (Kantai 2006, n.p.). Yet, at the same time, for him, ﬁ ction provides the possibility of recovery of these erased memories and its uncomfortable truths.

IV INSCRIBING A POPULAR COUNTER-MEMORY

In the face of the state’s concerted effort to enforce collective amnesia of uncomfortable strands of history, Kantai’s writing offers interesting possibilities of archiving Kenyan popular memory. In his ﬁ ction, Kantai chronicles various strands of Kenyan social fabrics and the kinds of imaginaries and experiences that populate the canvas of contemporary Kenyan life. This can be read as consistent with his bigger project of archiving the “now” of Kenyan sociopolitical imaginaries. Like many postcolonial African states, postindependence Kenyan historiography has prominently tended to foreground what Jean-Francois Bayart (1993) terms the “Big men” of African politics and their preferred versions of history. In both “The Cock Thief” and “You Wreck Her,” Kantai

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260 Grace A. Musila counters this tendency by aligning his story with two fi gures who lie on the opposite end of the socioeconomic strata: a sex worker and the president’s driver. Through these two fi gures, Kantai aligns his readers with fi gures who occupy ironic positions in the sociopolitical landscape: as marginal fi gures, they possess little power in shaping decisions in their respective settings of the city and the presidency, yet their marginal positions at the same time allow them an intimate glimpse of the underbelly of the city and the top offi ce of state power, enabling them to offer us alternative historiographies of the urban and political landscapes respectively. In these stories, Kantai is not so much interested in moral dynamics as in the insights into the seam that forms at the intersection of “offi cial” stories and the less visible “unoffi cial” stories of the marginal fi gures of the city and state power. In “The Cock Thief,” Kantai excavates Kenyan popular memory to create an alternative rendition of the alleged theft of the gold rooster—the icon of the then ruling party, Kenya African National Union (KANU)—from President Moi’s offi cial residence during his last days in power. In his rendition, Kantai weaves around the theft a rich narrative which pits marginal fi gures who rarely have a say in hegemonic nationalist narratives—the pros- titute and the driver—against the ruling elite and offi cialdom, in this case represented by the ruling party and the president. Finally acknowledging the end of the president’s power after decades of unwavering loyalty, Naiguran—the president’s fi ctional driver—steals the iconic gold rooster from the president’s bedroom wall and boards a night bus to the border town of Busia, intending to cross into Uganda and sell the rooster to gold dealers in Kampala. En route there, a young sex worker boards the bus and sits next to him. Upon reaching Busia at dawn, Naiguran is shocked to fi nd that the sex worker seated next to him throughout the trip has turned into a man who closely resembles the president. Worse yet, the gold rooster in his closely guarded bag has morphed into a fl esh-and- blood rooster, which dutifully joins other roosters in crowing in the new day. Using this element of magical realism, Kantai offers a delicate portrait of power and its fi ctions. The story, Kantai says, was his way of thinking through the myths of power, “One of the main things I was trying to do was to show how things become devalued at the end. Some things are so central to the autocrat and his fi erceness and power; but once you step out of his shadow, they mean nothing.” 15 An important element of Kantai’s archiving work in his fi ction is his integration of fragments of popular memory into his work. For Kenyan readerships, a lot of these fragments, while hitherto familiar, had remained in the transient archives of the grapevine. If, as Luise White argues, hearsay and rumor “allow people to appropriate them and map out experience and negotiate realities” (White 2000, 39), then the rumors about the workings of the Moi regime are part of the way in which people were able to fi lter through the available information about the state’s actions and weave their own interpretations, which provided a forum to comment on the workings

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Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 261 of the Kenyan state. Ironically, rumor as a genre gains its legitimacy from precisely the suspect nature of offi cially produced truths. In our case, one can map out specifi c motifs in Kantai’s writing which archive fragments of popular memory and social truths in Kenyan historiography. These social truths, while offi cially unacknowledged—and therefore, by the state’s mo- nologic reasoning, nonexistent—are nonetheless rich repositories of popular memory as they index the state’s grammars of power. A number of examples emerge in “The Cock Thief,” narrated through fl ashbacks by the president’s driver, Naiguran. Naiguran’s position as the president’s driver allows intimate access to the presidency and the coterie of subordinate employees, who are a rich source of insights into the everyday workings of the presidency. Thinking back to his predecessor, Muli, Naiguran observes:

Muli the Mkamba driver [had] been with the Old Man since the dark days of Kikuyu humiliation, when on this very road, Ngoroko Ngamau, the king of the Rift Valley had intercepted the Old Man at a road block and, because Ngamau was short and had to compensate for this through a display of Big-Manness, or maybe simply because he could, he had slapped the Old Man. [The Old Man] had accepted the insult without comment. It was as if Ngoroko Ngamau was saying, “you are Kalenjin, you herd goats. I am Kikuyu, I run the country.” (Kantai 2010, n.p.)

Through Naiguran’s thoughts here, Kantai chronicles snippets of Kenyan popular memory, including the rumor that a top politician once slapped the then vice president, Moi, in full view of his driver. Similarly, Naiguran references one of the most toxic and hard-dying ethnic stereotypes in Kenyan popular memory, in the statement “You are Kalenjin, you herd goats. I am Kikuyu, I run the country.” This stereotype—a product of the nascent ethnic patronage networks that were sown in Kenya’s ﬁ rst republic under the Kenyatta regime—was later to be rehashed during the 2007 elections which took a particularly ethnic tinge that ultimately resulted in unprecedented bloodshed. Still on Muli, Naiguran describes his sacking by the president:

It was said that the Old Man wept as Muli left. And you had to wonder about those tears, however generous the Old Man was in arranging Muli’s retirement package. So Muli got his large piece of land some- where in Mwingi, and a loan to set up a citrus farm, his dream retirement project. He never made it to Mwingi. Tragic road accident. The usual fate of all the Old Man’s bosom buddies. (Kantai 2010, n.p.)

This extract references familiar tropes of state power in Kenyan popular memory, including the criminal state often ﬁ ngered in suspicious deaths. The tragic road accident and disappearances are recognizable templates, in what historians David Cohen and Atieno Odhiambo (2004, 3) have termed “the genealogy of assassinations” in Kenyan memory. In this memory,

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262 Grace A. Musila assassination and detention without trial are two core syllables of the same grammar of brutal state power, with Nyati House and the basement of the Nyayo House building featuring equally prominently. Thinking about the risk he has placed his life in, by stealing the gold rooster, Naiguran recog- nizes that if caught, he will be “broken and pulpy on the ﬂ oor at Nyati House, being ordered to confess” (Kantai 2010, n.p.). Curiously though, the once ultra loyal driver steals the rooster partly for its ﬁ nancial value but primarily out of disillusionment with the president’s lost power:

Between him and the Old Man, they still maintained the ﬁ ction of power. [But] it was not the Old Man’s rage that he feared, nor the prospect of a police cell and the gun-butts and kicks of his fellow corporals. He did not fear any of that. It was that the Old Man had faded. That was why he had left. There was nothing there anymore. (Kantai 2010, n.p.)

The gold rooster—“the most treasured symbol of those years of power” (Kantai 2010, n.p.)—was such a prominent icon throughout the decades of KANU rule from independence in 1963 to the ousting of the ruling party in 2002 that there were entire legends and myths woven around it. Kantai notes some of these myths in “The Cock Thief,” “Everybody had heard of the strange, hypnotic powers the cock possessed, how the Old Man’s angriest opponents, his most idealistic and intractable critics, would receive invitations to State House and accept them only at their own ideological peril” (Kantai 2010, n.p.). For a Kenyan readership, Kantai’s work is etched with a range of recognizable fragments of popular memory, which—despite ofﬁ cial attempts to invalidate them by sweeping them under the metaphoric national carpet—remain in circulation in Kenyan popular memory. In weav- ing these fragments into his story, Kantai records and validates familiar elements of Kenyan sociopolitical history which have been edited out of ofﬁ cial national histories. I read Kantai’s work as inaugurating a different interrogation of the silences of Kenyan histories, both through a critique of the successive regimes’ relationships to the grand narratives of Kenyan historiography and in his chronicling of fragments of Kenyan popular memory in an attempt to counter the culture of collective amnesia that forms the bedrock of project Kenya.

V CONCLUSION: ENGAGING THE POPULAR

In numerous ways, Kantai’s writing—straddling as it does the ever blurry borderlines between the popular and the canonical—invites us to inter- rogate the limits of dominant associations of the concept “popular” at a time when a complex combination of technological developments, shifts in class dynamics of both creators and consumers, and an even more complex

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Archives of the Present in Parselelo Kantai’s Writing 263 relationship with academia have inaugurated new patterns of popular literary practice. Indeed, the multimodal nature of Kantai’s writing is testimony to this. For instance, the song “Joka,” written and sung by the fi ctitious Comrade Lemma in “Comrade Lemma and the Jerusalem Boys’ Band,” was later arranged and recorded by renowned Kenyan musician Eric Wainaina. Wainaina drew the song straight from the short story—which in turn was fi rst published in Kwani? —and recorded it for his album Twende Twende. 16 The complex interface between fi ction, historical events, and autobiographical content in Kantai’s work enjoins us to heed Bhekizizwe Pe- terson’s reminder, in a different context, that “the challenge [for us] is to reconfi gure our grasp of the complex quilt work of personal and social instances that feed into the making and reception of popular culture” (Peter- son 2002, 203). At the same time, the complex location of Kantai’s writing, its readership, and the author himself embodies what Barber has described as “the legacy of diffi culties and ambiguities the word ‘popular’ brings with it” (Barber 1987, 6). It is in this way that I see Kantai’s use of fi ction to inter- rogate Project Kenya as widening the horizons of popular literary practice in Kenya.

NOTES

1. I am grateful to the African Humanities Programme and the National Re- search Foundation for fi nancial support towards this research. I am also grateful to Ambreena Manji and John Harrington for the opportunity to present and receive feedback on an earlier draft of this paper at the British Institute in Eastern Africa in Nairobi. The views expressed in the chapter are all mine and do not necessarily refl ect these organisations’ perspectives. 2. Available at http://www.kwani.org. 3. http://kwani.org/publication/kwani-journal/11/kwani_01.htm, accessed Sep- tember 20, 2012. 4. “The Story of Comrade Lemma and the Jerusalem Boys’ Band,” fi rst published in Kwani? vol. 2 (2004), was nominated for the 2004 Caine Prize, while “You Wreck Her,” fi rst published in the St. Petersburg Review vol. 2 (2009), was nominated in 2009. 5. One of the Kenyan ethnic communities often perceived to be ostentatious, and named ‘jang’o’ in Kenyan slang. 6. I use quotes here in acknowledgment of the multiple, and often contested, understandings of development/progress in African/Kenyan histories. 7. Interview with author, June 30, 2011. 8. Interview with Rosalia Gitau (2007). 9. Ibid.; interview with the author. 10.See, for instance, Fanon (1952), Gikandi (2002), and Macamo (2005) for detailed discussions on these paradoxes of colonial modernity. 11.See, for instance, Ojwang (2009). 12.Interview with the author, June 2011. 13.General Stanley Mathenge was a key fi gure in the Mau Mau Land and Free- dom Army in the 1950s whose fate remained unknown after the end of the Mau Mau’s struggle. He was believed to have escaped to neighboring Ethio- pia in the late 1950s. In 2003, the Kenyan press carried the news that he had

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264 Grace A. Musila been found living in a village in Ethiopia. Soon after, the state undertook to invite General Mathenge, who was given a hero’s welcome in Nairobi. This was to turn into an embarrassing situation when it emerged that the person taken to be the Mau Mau veteran was in fact an Ethiopian farmer, Lemma Ayanu, who had never been to Kenya. See Anderson (2005) for a detailed discussion of General Mathenge’s involvement in the Mau Mau Land and Freedom Army. 14.Marehemu George’s name itself—borrowed from Kenyan parlance of the 1970s, where secondhand clothes were nicknamed “Marehemu George” (the late George) due to popular perceptions that secondhand clothes were donations from dead Americans and Europeans—speaks to this culture of recycling nationalist mythology. 15.Interview with the author. 16.See Rosenberg (2012) for an excellent discussion of the interface between the ﬁ ctional Comrade Lemma’s [Kantai’s] song and musician Eric Wainaina’s musical interpretation and performance of the track.

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5 Digital citizenship in Africa’s fractured social order

Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna

Introduction To observers and key actors in social movements as well as civil society groups involved in mobilization for the reversal of authoritarian regimes, the “Arab Spring” was an eventful era. The overturning of hitherto deep-seated dictatorships and brutal despots in North Africa, followed by the installation of civil rule, to many was a landmark achievement borne by the infiltration of participatory opportunities in most African countries through internet provisions and social networking for political inclusion – all thanks to internet-based digital citizens who engage social media for mobilization.1 Digital citizenship has been made possible by the emergent and increasing use of virtual options for social networking. The most available digital option for citizens is social media, providing both the possibility for content sharing and interactive platforms through its feedback mechanism and agenda-setting capability. The emergence of social media has been celebrated as the most formidable and expansive platform of civic engagements,2 uprooting countries, especially of the Third World, from zones of ‘political-mass’ exclusion.3 Digitally active citizens found increasing relevance in using social media to permeate the African political terrain, making their voices heard even beyond their immediate border. Though in recent times, the ‘Arab- Spring’ became to be seen as the most remarkable instance of the significance of digital citizenship, the wave of digital citizenship has continued to spread, pervading the civic space of other countries like Nigeria – where social media has been in use in a lot of social protests, including the 2015 General Elections. There have also been recent surges of digital citizenship infiltration in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia. Within the Western clime and in the established democracies, the importance of digital citizenship has been visible in bringing to the public domain political excesses through whistle-blowing against ill-perceived acts by both government and political actors. On the front burner includes acting as a heavy counterweight to government through leaking its secrets as signified by Edward Snowden and Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks who “initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war”4; leaking classified information and bringing to the public domain many sordid acts of government. Digital citizens here are also engaged in both the use of social media for political campaign and for general politicking. However, though the gains of the newly inaugurated civil rule in Egypt were yet to be consolidated and an alternate system inaugurated in Libya, evidence suggesting the limit of digital citizens and use of social media in sustainable political mobilization is in full glare. It became obvious, that (1) the overarching historical conjectures inherent

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82 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna in a particular political system – which in Africa’s case is defined by turbulence and fractured social order – cannot be overlooked by more often than not an impulsive, emotional, irredentist cling to internet provisions; (2) arising therefrom, popular demand for change may merely result in a change to government and not a change to the policy process5; (3) prevalent social media availability and use may even relapse a democratising system to mob rule depending on the level of civic capacity of the citizenry; (4) digital citizenship may be infiltrated by an army of pro-government cyber warriors or find another use in the hands of money bag politicians. For sure, predatory African elites are not insulated from extending their manipulative tentacles to the digital platforms of civic engagement. Arising from the antithetical posture of the environmentalists about the contested consensus of the efficacy of digital activism in itself leading to political transformation above the limits permissible by the political environment, this chapter is preoccupied with the prognosis of the importance of Africa’s social order. It sees African states as easily yielding to inward antagonism as evident in such states as Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria and Nigeria where digital citizenship is trending, and has yet failed to operate above the borderlines of turbulence and other related challenges. Even the premature reversal of the uprising in Algeria cannot escape being viewed from the context of environmental factors. As such, social media remains a medium of social mobilization and is not in itself an instigator. Within the factors that instigate digital activism and contributing to popular uprising lie the explanations to its tide.6 Even as early as 1999 cyber-resistance has been coined to define a situation whereby the internet is used as a tool to circumvent popular and genuine demands by the citizenry. In fact, both government and opposition have been found to be in a new and perpetual contest for the soul of the virtual community.7 In as much as digital citizenship, through social media, provides a formidable tool in state-society relations, providing the most dynamic and active tool of political and social inclusion, there are varying limitations of the powers of social media in political mobilization. In fact, it has been argued that the assumption that social media, in and by themselves, will eventually push for political changes, introduce transformations to societies and liberate them from repressive regimes, should be repelled.8 Moreso, El-Nawawy and Khamis are of the opinion that “the optimism should be calculated rather than exaggerated, and there needs to be some caution in assessing the new technologies’ abilities to initiate political transformation”.9 No doubt, just like the belief in the capacity of social media in sustaining digital citizenship in political mobilization is on the rise, there is a corresponding and appropriate skepticism of possible cyber utopianism. Beyond antithesis to cyber utopianism, most African states fall within the categorization of badly divided societies.10 This is with regards to their sociological formations and make-up, defined by multiple ethnic groups, language blocs, clans, religious boundaries and other divisive tendencies. Furthermore, most African states, especially those that this work appraises, are also differentiated by economic factors manifested in uneven development with regards to urban-rural formations, as well as implications on teledensity that is the “lifewire” of digital citizenship. On those latent factors of economic and primordial spheres, the African elites have found such to be ancillary to their game of predating on the state, while in reality, residues of history and the import of class divisions also collide with digital citizenship. Invariably, although the catalytic role of social media in facilitating mass uprising involving local

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Digital citizenship in Africa 83 protestors, synchronizing social networks, integrating real-time footage for galvaniz- ing global public opinion and acting as a massive counterweight against regime excessisofessence11, the revolution that it facilitated was a product of accumulated socio-political cum historical reflections. As such, the political behaviour of digital citizens was not cyber-moulded, rather that socio-cultural realities were transitioned to the virtual world. Thence, digital citizenship in a fractured social order will not operate above the environmental realities precipitating such; rather it will reflect those fractures. This chapter draws on case studies from mainly five major African countries: Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria and Tunisia. It is divided into five parts. The first part explores the transition from citizenship to digital citizenship in state-society relations. The second part provides the analytical frame, focused on establishing the limits of digital citizenship, and relying on the critical theory of technology. The third part explores the anatomy of internet services provision as a fulcrum for digital citizenship in Africa; seeking to establish the relationship between the increasing availability of internet resources vis-à-vis pervasion of social media platforms on digital citizenship in Africa. The fourth part focuses on the evolving ecology of digital activism across Africa; exploring whether such activism is digitally sparked off and/or merely digitally transmitted. The last section of this chapter dwells on Africa’s fractured environment and digital citizenship, discussing such factors as historical conjectures, the nature of government and uncoordinated dilemmas, pretentious elites and ballot-box intended civil society/protest, literacy cum civic capacity and the digital divide as factors that condition digital citizenship.

The exploration of the transition from citizenship to digital citizenship At all ends of good governance is the rule of citizenship.12 A government, regime and/ or a political system is adjudged good when the citizens are both the drivers of political options and at the same time at the receiving end of political outcomes.13 The understanding here is that there is usually an active traffic of state-society relations in different forms in order to watch governance and probe for accountability and responsiveness to the needs of the masses. It is the understanding of the social capital of the citizens’ participatory potentials that justifies participation as a vital human right as well as a self-help option. At once, the citizens as observed by Ayoade, are “the compass of government which the state loses direction when it is abandoned by the citizens… . government is prone to crime and a government devoid of citizen control is a potential criminal at large”.14 For the purpose of analytical convenience, a citizen is a member of a political community who enjoys the rights and assumes the duties of membership.15 The overlapping concept of citizenship is composed of the synthesis of three main elements or dimen- sions16 that remain vital in democratising states – legal status, political agents and identity.17 The first is citizenship as legal status, defined by civil, political and social rights. Here, the citizen is the legal person free to act according to the law and having the right to claim the law’s protection. It need not mean that the citizen takes part in the law’s formulation, but remains involved through political proxy elected by them to represent their interest. The second considers citizens specifically as political agents, actively involved in governance through participation in a society’s political institutions – political party, elections, civil society and ad hoc protests against undesirable policy

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84 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna options. The third element refers to citizenship as membership in a political community that furnishes a distinct source of identity; that which informs a consensual, instinctual and/or concert response to issues. In the African clime, and in the era predating the explosion in mobile telephony and internet services, anti-regime postures were naturally advanced through popular strike actions, throwing up barricades and roadblocks – even with a camp fire – organising urban protests, mobilising workers, students, market women/traders, unemployed youth, rallies, boycotts, street protests, sit-at-home-strikes by public servants etc in a concert of civil disobedience.18 In the same vein, social networking was carried out through professional links, networks, clubs and cults, newspaper adverts, television and radio jingles, road trips, and word-to-word communication.19 However, the twenty- first-century transition to the digital age added dynamism to popular uprisings against undesirable governments, government policies and conveyance of civic stands by social movement groups. Significantly, social media as an outcome of innovations in internet resources added a vital option for convenient and speedy social networking with the additional importance of globalization of local actions. The relevant point about the crisscrossing role of critical citizens is that the digital (social) media provide an opportunity for political engagement.20 In the African scenario, citizens who were hitherto excluded from the political sphere have found a conduit for political participation made readily available by internet provisions. This virtual community has become an offshoot of a new community of cyber activists, leading to what has been dubbed “digital citizens”, and who use the virtual interface for critical engagement of the citizens in civic responsiveness. Those roles that citizens were hitherto barred from performing in their response to poor governance – popular participation, increases in grassroots mobilization, popular campaigns, political communication and networking, mass orientation, the inclusion of youth and women in politics, and so on – are rekindled and fired-up by social networking made possible by social media.21 Digital citizenship is hosted on the social networks provided by social media. As observed by Hofkirchner,22 social media platforms support sociality in three cognate ways: cognition as made possible by websites of newspapers; communication, which is usually through email platforms; and co-operation through community-building and collaborative platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. To this extent, digital citizenship, according to Mossberger et al., is the “ability to participate in society online from positive externalities to equality of opportunity”.23 The implicit analysis of the role of digital citizenship is its impact in the transformation of state-society relations. By extension, the old implicit sediments of the absolutist, authoritative and one-sided dominance concepts that continued their existence in the pseudo-democracies of especially African countries began to melt with the increasing ray of digital activism by the citizens. Through the concept of digital citizenship such tendencies as rulers not being accountable, the idea of ‘born to rule’, an inactive principle of transparency, tools of restricted freedom of speech and traditional media’s establishment of deep-rooted relationships with the centralized ruling government have evolved into a different solution and become overpowered and overcome through digital participation.24 Although digital citizenship has its peculiar challenges as will be discussed in subsequent sections, the traditional and absolutist resistance of challenge to the state machinery’s maximum rule is heavily bypassed by digital citizenship.

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Digital citizenship in Africa 85 Analytical frame on the limits of digital citizenship This work is pitched on the critical theory of technology as its analytical frame. This theory draws from the larger family of environmental theory. There is no doubt that digital media are aﬀecting political involvement among citizens.25 Whether as social media or otherwise, they provide exciting new possibilities for mobilization, organization and discussions made possible by the massive infrastructure for youth engagement and by lowering the threshold for direct confrontation.26 However, there are obvious limitations. Key in this aspect is the assumption that social media do not resonate an identity; that they operate within existing identities or even environmental fault lines. Against the backdrop of growing cyber utopianism27 and fatalistic resignation to technology, Hands28 calls for a critical theory of technology averse to technological determinism as a product of the following observations:

The internet is a product of human society and culture29 and, as such, virtual community does not exist in isolation but is an extension of the real community30 sustaining both the liabilities and social assets of the society hosting it. The use of social media itself – Facebook, Twitter, SMS, and so on – does not have any preordained outcome. Environmental factors play roles in determining outcomes.31 The potential of social media to initiate change is dependent upon the activists’ motivation to utilise the conditions in their society in a way that makes change viable.32 Radical shifts in value system can hardly happen under the pressure of social media alone.33 Governments’ role and capacity in censoring social media or even utilising them to serve their purposes34 are underestimated by social media enthusiasts. A government of a particular state may even hide under the pretence of regulation to wean the veracity of digital activism through social media censorship or outright blockade if possible. In many despotic states, “Governments create cyber-armies of hackers to discern possible enemies and send secret police to abduct these people during the night … . Though many believe their comments online are safe since they are anonymous, what they do not realize is that the government has many ways of ripping oﬀ the ‘protective’ mask of anonymity to reveal the speaker of any comment.”35

In essence, and in reaction to cyber utopianism, it is poignant to assert that many African states are imbued with certain qualities or even deficits that affect the dynamics of digital activism and also its end result. Figure 5.1 explains the environmental factors that condition and define both the course of digital citizenship and the outcome of digital activism. At the center of it all, there is an interrelation of the factors of nature of government, disposition of the political elite, historical conjectures, digital divide, literacy and civic capacity and socio-culture in determining the efficacy of digital/social media activism.

The anatomy of internet services provision as a fulcrum for digital citizenship in Africa With the liberalization of the telecommunication sector in most African countries, mobile telephony and internet services have found themselves in the hands of

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86 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna

Nature of Government

Disposition of Historical Political Elite Conjectures Digital/Social Media Activism

Digital divide Socio-Culture Literacy & Civic Capacity

Figure 5.1 Environmental factors of digital citizenship many.36 The competitive environment of the telecommunication sector has made it possible for Africans who were hitherto excluded from mainstream communication exchanges – that were until recently an exclusive reserve of the very few urban elite – to have a grasp of the world around them and beyond. By 2015, the top 10 internet countries in Africa (Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, Morocco, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Algeria and Tunisia) accounted for over 258 million users.37 See Figure 5.2. With the pervasiveness of internet resources, such factors as teledensity with regards to the ratio of mobile phone owners in a particular cluster as well as the advantage of

Africa Top 10 Internet Countries November 2015

Nigeria 92.7

Egypt 48.3

Kenya 31.9

South Africa 26.8

Morocco 20.2

Sudan 9.3

Uganda 8.5

Tanzania 7.6

Algeria 7.2

Tunisia 5.4

0510 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 Millions of Users

Figure 5.2 African top 10 internet countries, November 201538

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Digital citizenship in Africa 87 mobile telephones to traverse the hitherto areas of exclusion usually referred to as inauspicious zones, have created a unique impact on political citizenship. The increasing capital of social media has even impacted the orthodox media to find compact forms and social media pathways.39 The major fallout of the internet revolution is the upsurge in the use of social media for social networking. Social media have made it possible for a new form of group to emerge. This new group qualifies as a Social Movement Organization (SMO).40 SMOs may not all qualify as civil society groups; rather they are more dynamic, easier to convene, versatile and more representative of the different strata of the society, especially those hitherto excluded. The new SMOs have themselves come to have a more direct and fierce impact on the social environment. This is because of the dynamics of social networking; the speed and resourcefulness of social media in conquering the obstacles of orthodox means of mobilization. Among the many social media options made possible by the internet and increasingly in use in Africa is Facebook (see Table 5.1). Facebook, which is the most popular,

Table 5.1 2016 Africa top 10 Facebook subscribers41 Rank Country Population42 Number of subscribers 1 Egypt 84,705,681 27,000,000 2 Nigeria 183,523,42 16,000,000 3 Algeria 40,633,464 11,000,000 4 South Africa 53,491,333 13,000,000 5 Morocco 33,955,157 10,000,000 6 Kenya 46,748,617 5,000,000 7 Ethiopia 98,942,102 3,700,000 8 Angola 22,819,926 3,300,000 9 Ghana 26,984,328 2,900,000 10 Libya 6,317,080 2,400,000

Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites MILLION 0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400 1600 1800

Facebook YouTube Instagram Twitter Reddit Vine Ask.fm Tumblr Flickr Google+ Linkedin Pinterest VK Class Meetup Dreamgrow Mates

Figure 5.3 Top 15 most popular social networking sites (and 10 Apps!)43

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88 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna dynamic and common social networking service globally, was launched in 2004.44 Facebook had over 1.71 billion active users by the second quarter of 2016,45 making it the most widely subscribed social media platform.46 Facebook has made exchanges including transmissions of pictures and live videos possible across a wide array of people and territories. Twitter remains signiﬁcant as a critical and ﬂamboyant mediator of the occupy movements globally with its memorial hashtags. A synthesis of the varieties of options made possible by social media is aptly captured thus:

Tweeting on the 27th of January about the Egyptian revolution, American author Jared Cohen cited one Egyptian activist summing up activist media use as follows: ‘Facebook used to set the date, twitter used to share logistics, YouTube to show the world, all to connect people’.47

Other high ranking social networking tools in use for political mobilization include YouTube used for transmission of videos, and Instagram used for posting pictures. Others are captured in the table ranking the 15 most popular social networking sites used in Africa (see Figure 5.3).

The evolving ecology of activism across Africa: Digitally sparked off and/or transmitted? Digital activism in Africa stretches from the general public drive for transformation in the political landscape and popular demand for change of regime and/or government to more specific interest-driven SMO quests. The African continent, starting from North Africa as well as other African countries, has recorded a number of successful social media orchestrated revolutions; revolution as in the sense of the magnitude in upturning the status-quo as well as the mass collaboration pulled in this respect. The social media driven revolution was an extra-ordinary wave of mass protest and a radical antithesis to the long standing political culture of the Arab World, and totally reshaped the nature of politics in that region.48 Such a social media permeated upsurge, especially that in North Africa, is part of a general revolution against stay-put despotic regimes of the Arab World; a revolution popularly referred to as “the Arab Spring.” The North African revolution here represents a general uprising by citizens of some North African countries geared towards the upturning of dictatorial rule by fierce consensus of the mass of citizens of that region. This revolution started in December 2010 and traversed through the countries of Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and Libya in Africa, as well as a good number of other Arab countries. First among these was the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, while others include Egypt’s popular uprising, sometimes captured with the Twitter movement of #Occupy- TahrirSquare, as well as other associated occupy movements; Algeria’s and Libya’srevo- lutions, as well as the pockets of regime transformation and demand for political change in Nigeria under the following movements: #OccupyNigeria protest, #BringBackOurGirls and the “Change Campaign.” These are discussed under two themes below.

Regime change uprisings in North Africa The mass uprising that started in Tunisia on December 17, 2010 is popularly referred to as the Jasmine Revolution – a mobilization against corruption, poverty and political

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Digital citizenship in Africa 89 repression.49 The protest was the result of a chain reaction stemming from accumulated grievances against the Tunis government’s failure to provide for its citizens. The revolution set off a chain reaction leading to waves of uprising against deep-rooted despots across the region. The Jasmine Revolution began when Mohamed Bouazizi, an unemployed 26-year-old fruit seller, carried out a self-immolation (set himself ablaze) outside a municipal office in the town of Sidi Bouzid in central Tunisia on December 17 in protest of immediate police brutality in the midst of corruption and poverty. Bouazizi, who had been supporting his family by selling fruit from a cart, was enraged when local officials repeatedly demanded bribes and finally confiscated his merchandise. His plight, which came to symbolize the injustice and economic hardship afflicting many Tunisians under the Ben Ali regime, inspired street protests throughout the country against high unemployment, poverty and political repression. The revolution not only forced Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali to step down in January 2011, it spread to other African countries and the Middle East, giving birth to the Arab Spring. Successively and against the backdrop of dictatorship and teleguided media, Al Jazeera50 reported:

Cyberspace has become a crucial site of mobilisation and knowledge tools built by the simple efforts of individuals, bloggers and associations and is being used in order to communicate with the world and to keep up to date on what is happening in Tunisia, effectively eliminating the need for misleading official media.

In reality, while the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia involved internet services and mobile phones in mobilization of an already disgruntled audience, social media provided a mobilization opportunity for an already available audience, ready to upturn the presiding social order. The most critical aspect of the discourse of the Arab Spring is that social media readily provided an opportunity for internationalization of dictatorial cruelty in Tunisia as well as selling an agenda for revolt across the world, especially in Africa and the Arab world where tyranny was deep-seated. The Jasmine Revolution sparked oﬀ a chain reaction across the Arab World, North Africa and although less mentioned, it stretched to the entire African continent. “Inspired by the successful uprising in Tunisia, where demonstrators succeeded in bringing down the government,”51 protesters became upbeat of achieving the same feat in Egypt. The Egypt uprising began in January 2011.52 After 18 days of protest against poverty, unemployment, corruption and the autocratic governance of President Hosni Mubarak who had ruled the country for 30 years, Vice President Omar Suleiman announced on February 11 that Mubarak would resign as president, handing over power to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.53 The successful consolidation of people power (in Tunisia and Egypt) through the use of social media and transmission of situation reports across other climes of similar aspirations obviously announced the arrival of a terminus in dictatorial powers the world over. Egypt had millions of online protesters (home and abroad) who mobilized millions of others who engaged in physical protest converging in Cairo, Alexandria and other popular cities, with a cobweb of global sympathy, support and exchanges. A striking instance, and an unforgettable experience of the power of the internet in precipitating digital citizenship through the use of social media, was the action by Wael Ghonim. Ghonim was then a 29-year-old Google marketing executive, who while browsing the internet learned of Khaled Mohamed Saeed who was brutalized and beaten to death by the Egyptian Police. Ghonim, an Egyptian citizen living in Dubai,

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90 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna opened a Facebook page –“We Are All Khaled Said”–in sympathy and in lending voice against the oppression going on in Egypt. The Facebook page became a conduit for networking and mobilization. The page’s “followership” continued to grow in bounds and has remained a cornerstone in the discourse of the causative factors in the outbreak of the uprising in Egypt.54 The major social media tool in Egypt’s revolution was Facebook, whereas other media tools such as Twitter were in active use for internationalization, and mobile telephony and internet services provided the lifewire for anchoring the social media and social networks for protests by digital citizens. As a consequence of the successful onslaught against Hosni Mubarak’s regime in 2011, Muammar al-Qaddafi’s four-decade rule of Libya became heavily threatened amid a wave of popular protest in a dozen countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa (Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Omar and Kuwait),55 five of which were African countries. Largely less bloody, but fierce and masses-driven demonstrations against entrenched stay-put regimes brought quick transfers of power in Egypt and Tunisia. Libya’s case was, however, confrontational, with major bloodbaths that evolved into a civil war and international military engagement.56 The stand of the regime against this uprising made it to quickly worsen the already dented popularity of the regime. As violence escalated, and while pro-Qaddafi gunmen continued to engage in fierce confrontations on all fronts, the regime continued to suffer setbacks; from resignation of prominent cabinet members and support for the revolution to a regime of ongoing sanctions, travel bans, embargoes, asset freezing and the threat of international litigation by the United States, European Union, the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court.57 Qaddafi’s regime proceeded to lose its hold as there became a wide transmission of real time footage and massive informal reportage vis-à-vis global disapproval of his regime to the extent that, by March 20, a member of the inner circle of Qaddafi’s cabinet, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and head of Libyan Intelligence, Moussa Koussa, decamped and fled to the United Kingdom. It then became obvious that a regime whose disapproval had become acceptable by both local players and the international community could not continue to stand. By early March, 2011 in Benghazi, the local rebels consolidated their forces in a merger known as the Transitional National Council (TNC), which became the face of diplomatic engagement and internationalization for the rebel groups. France was the first country to officially accord the TNC recognition. The Libyan impasse continued to garner international attention. The Arab League, United Kingdom, European Union, African Union and the United Nations became unanimous on the unsustainability of the existing social order in Libya. The UN in its 6498th meeting on 17 of March, 2011, passed resolution 1973 (2011) authorizing the enforcement of a no fly zone in Libya.58 Following a UN Security Council Resolution of March 17, 2011 a coalition of military option by NATO was authorized.59 By March 19, a coalition of US and EU warplanes and cruise missiles swung into full force in efforts to dislodge Qaddafi’s air force and air defense system in a direct attempt to enforce a UN-authorized no flyzone. The exercises according to the spokesperson of the coalition successfully overwhelmed and dislodged the Libyan air defense by March 23. From August, the power pendulum began to swing in favor of rebel forces. A variety of international pressure, military actions and even ‘talks’ continued alongside skirmishes, leading to the overwhelming of pro-Qaddafi forces. By September, rebel forces had

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Digital citizenship in Africa 91 taken over Tripoli and began to extend their operations throughout the capital. This infiltration of the capital by rebel groups led to the deposition of Qaddafi, who was eventually killed in a hideout in his hometown on October 20. Significantly, the Libyan uprising was part and parcel of the agenda-setting struck and marketed by social media in a wave sweeping across the Arab World. The ragtag bands that spearheaded the revolution60 found digital and social media increasingly useful in transmitting their successes at different stages of the battle as well as in raising their morale in preparation for victory. A vital dimension of this uprising, just like others in the region, was international recruitment and sympathy as well as the reportage of the undesirable and internationally abhorrent behaviors of the pro-government forces. In all, the social media framed both consciousness and identity, uniting people for action against universal challenges.61 More so, the successes of mass action in Tunisia and Egypt and use of social media to mobilize and set agenda in this regard also played a heavy role in igniting the Libyan uprising.62 Just like what has become the end result of almost all of the new change widely traversed through social media and by digital citizens:63

Lack of political consensus among the various political actors, and their inability to resolve regional differences through peaceful national dialogue, resulted in two parallel civil wars raging in the east and west of Libya. The civil war has been fueled by detrimental foreign intervention, while the local actors have been justi- fying their conflicts under banners of fighting “terrorism” or standing up to “counterrevolutionary forces”.

The Algerian uprising has been dubbed, “The Revolution that never was.”64 The “Arab Spring” of 2011 stretching from North Africa through the Middle East succeeded in bringing down autocratic governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya – which are of concern here. But, the reverse was the case in Algeria. Despite widespread street protests that initially threatened to spark a Tunisian or Egyptian style revolt, the expected uprising in Algeria failed to materialize. President Abdelaziz Bouteﬂika’s regime – credited for being one of the most repressive in the region – successfully manipulated agitations, and repressed and reversed the uprising with a promise of modest political reform, thus managing to hold onto power.65 The reason for the reversal of Algeria’s uprising is still a subject of debate. Pro-regime analysts have pitched the reason for it at the domain of “progressive leadership” while a counter proposition from opponents and human rights activists claims that it may not be far-fetched from the environment of Algeria which was claimed to be made up of “a wary population traumatised by the country’s violent past and living in fear of its secret police?”66 There is evidence of media censorship as even Al Jazeera had been denied oﬃcial access in the country since 2004. More so, there is evidence of the omnipresence of the Algerian Department of Intelligence (DRS) and Security. Algeria operates a shadow state that does not brook criticism.67 Through a series of political reforms and concessions the Algerian revolution was averted. Though some observers argue that doomsday has only been postponed and that time will tell, what remains rife is that the dilemmas of history, the manipulative capacity of ruling elite, the civic capacity of the citizens and the breadth of government are all key in determining the scope of a social media driven revolution. Social media can certainly set an agenda, externalize local protests, garner an international soft spot or sympathy and achieve a

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92 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna regime change without establishing a consensual pathway for post-conflict management and/or sustenance of good governance. As is the case now, these uprisings that were so fierce and in quick succession have thrown up relevant debates about the efficacy of social media in expedient mobilization against perceived misgovernance. However, the reality of the conflicts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya is that all those other traditional boundaries dotting the landscape of Africa are not and cannot be ameliorated by only social media use for civic engagement. No doubt, digital republicanism has been birthed, but not operating above the environmental factors dotting its civic rudiments.

Social movement organizations in Nigeria The flagship and most widespread digitally mediated uprising in Nigeria was the #OccupyNigeria protest convened against the removal of subsidy on Premium Motor Spirit (PMS). On January 1, 2012, the former President Goodluck Jonathan’sadminis- tration made a decision to remove the subsidy on PMS. The removal of subsidy on PMS was a rude shock to the Nigerian populace. The pump price of PMS rose from an initial N65 per liter to N141 per liter – the equivalent of 1 US dollar at that time had the removal of subsidy worked. Nigerians converged in a protest tagged the #Occupy- Nigeria Protest, launching a fierce, popular and massive protest involving religious leaders, members of the opposition political party, human rights activists, labour unions and celebrities. The Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress (TUC) with the coalition of numerous other civil society organizations announced the launch of the protest with a demand that government rescind its decision of removing the subsidy on PMS by January 2, 2012. However, Social Movement Organizations gave the protest a full-weight social network mediated movement under the hashtag #OccupyNigeria. There was the massive influx of youth movements and social networks hosted by social media like the “Enough is Enough” group led by Yemi Adamolekun, the Women Arise Initiative led by Mrs. Odumakin, the Save Nigeria Group led by Pastor Tunde Bakari and many other private and even individual initiatives including those by Nigerians abroad. The protest was widespread and one of the fiercest mass actions against the Federal government since the return to democratic rule in 1999. Though the protest enjoyed enormous Twitter fellowship, other social media options such as Facebook and SMS played significant roles.68 Unlike the usual civic protest convened by a coalition of Nigeria’s Labor Congress (NLC), Trade Union Congress and other groups, the #OccupyNigeria protest represented the general interest of Nigerians. It involved a mass action in the major cities of the Federation and the Federal Capital Territory. The protest first began in a few cities and later spread to all the major cities in Nigeria. The protest took the form of the Egyptian-style protests in cities such as Lagos, where protesters stayed put on major roads, mounting blockades, making campfires and ensuring that all major roads remained blocked throughout the period of the protest. In its real sense, the protest was more than just the usual occupy protests and involved chanting war songs along the roads, mass demonstrations and continued protest agreed to be halted only when the government would respond by reversing their earlier decision to remove subsidy on PMS.69 The protest lasted for two weeks. Government yielded to negotiation and conceded to a new retail price of PMS after recording a massive

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Digital citizenship in Africa 93 economic loss. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the protests cost an estimated average loss of N96.764 billion per day and a total of about N483.8 billion (over $2.9 billion) in each of the five working days of the protests,70 which spanned two weeks. Concerning the impact of social media in the #OccupyNigeria protest, the protest was a validation of Deluca et al.’s observation that social media create new contexts for activism that are not possible in traditional media because they (Twitter, Facebook and YouTube) “foster an ethic of individual and collective participation, thus creating a norm of perpetual participation and that norm creates new expectations of being in the world.”71 In reality, while the country was in protest mood given a growing discontent with the government of the period, such factors as “protest agenda” imported from the “Arab Spring” and facilitated by the availability and use of social media remain key. There was a convergence of traditional media and social media in bringing about dynamism to the protest. Even then, the nature of the protest was also peculiar as it accommodated all classes of the society. In an “occupy” style of “sit-in” protest, major participants stayed put on major cities and spots with musicians and other entertainers performing to the delight of protesters. There were also the intellectual class involving the like of Professor David Tam West, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Professor Pat Utomi, Barrister Femi Falana and so many others who sustained a counter thesis and debated the government’s claim. Their ideas became the intellectual cornerstone in orientation, recruitment and sustenance of the protest. Much more, social media played a formidable role in the transmission of both intellectual debates against subsidy removal as well as the reportage of successes of the protest. Another vital social movement (and still ongoing) that was widely transmitted and hosted on social media, especially Twitter and Facebook, and also followed through by orthodox media is the #BringBackOurGirls (BBOG) protest in Nigeria. The #Bring- BackOurGirls campaign no doubt is the most followed and transmitted specific-issue- based social media movement in the whole of Africa and with massive international followership and support. It is a social media campaign in response to the more than 200 kidnapped girls from Chibok in Borno, Nigeria by the Boko Haram sect. The Boko Haram terrorist group had on 14 April 2014 driven into a high school in Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria and kidnapped 276 girls, out of which 46 of the girls escaped.72 The kidnap of the Chibok schoolgirls was a demonstration of the agenda of the Boko Haram terrorist group that is averse to Western culture and influence, especially education for women and girls.73 Shortly after, Oby Ezekwesili led many other protesters to Abuja, the Nigerian Federal Capital Territory demanding that the Nigerian soldiers and government bring back our girls. The protest was followed by a supporting social media agitation, first hosted on Twitter with the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, which not only became a rallying point for networking in support of government action to initiate the release of the abducted girls74 but also became a node for globalization of the campaign. The #BringBackOurGirls campaign cut across the globe and caught the interest of all and sundry. In fact, the weight of the followership and interest in this campaign seemed to suggest that global public personalities as well as celebrities who were sympathetic to the cause would lose their social capital if they did not find time to associate with the campaign. While the campaign is mostly mounted on social media and also draws the attention of the traditional media in recording its protests, it most times takes the nature of an occupy movement, where conveners gather at a spot and even convene a media

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94 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna conference to mount pressure on government to do what was necessary. The major convener of the movement, Dr. Oby Ezekwesili, is a one-time former Minister who has served in different capacities. The group mobilizes for demonstrations and seeks to be heard. The protest has remained distinct as the group has continuously taken note (and on a daily basis) of how many days the abducted girls have remained in captivity. The protest of the BBOG campaigners is beginning to yield fruit as a number of the girls have been released through the government’seffort. The campaign has now increased its scope to include making sure that the released Chibok girls are rehabilitated and integrated back into society. While the veracity of the campaign is waning and declining in popularity, the message has however been transmitted and the active campaigners as well as the parents of the abducted girls have remained committed to it. The various social media movements in Nigeria, from the #OccupyNigeria protest, to the #BringBackOurGirls campaign, were a critical build-up to a larger participation in effecting change in the political status-quo against the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP), that had remained in power for 16 years since 1999. However, after a successful merger of different opposition parties, which included the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC), and All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP), to form the All Progressive Congress (APC) in 2013, the PDP was defeated in the 2015 General Elections to produce General Muhammadu Buhari (of the APC) as the President of Nigeria. Apart from the many other protests by Nigerians demonstrated in the different social media movements, the regime of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan was also charged with heavy corruption and underperformance on many scales. The newly formed APC capitalized on these deficits and launched a popular and well marketed demand for change. They swung into the social media trend with the slogan of “Change” as the rallying point. In a spectacular feat, the APC defeated the incumbent president in the 2015 General Elections as well as winning a majority of the seats in both the Senate and House of Representatives. They also won more gubernatorial seats than the then incumbent PDP. The defeat of an incumbent president in the 2015 general elections in Nigeria was a demonstration of both a viable expansion of the public space and the power of social media in political mobilization.75 The roles played by social media in the 2015 general election included as follows: mobilising groups of individuals in sensitization for civic actions to ensure free and fair elections, mobilization, which had started before the elections, to ensure that millions of registered voters got their voting cards; mobilizing for heavy turnout, orderly behavior and peaceful queues and conduct at polling units; sensitizing on the importance of waiting patiently to ensure that their votes were counted and correctly declared; and educating the electorate on reasons not to align themselves to distractions by hoodlums. It also involved political satire that has become part of politics and an instrument of perception formation. Apparently, from the results of the elections that brought General Muhammadu Buhari to power, the “Change” slogan, which was the hallmark of his All Progressive Congress (APC) campaign point and heavily transmitted through social media, obviously aided in moulding public perception that saw to the defeat of the then incumbent president, Goodluck Jonathan.76 In all, the protests held by digital citizens through social media in North Africa have their results being thwarted by the limit of these general citizens to forge a cohesive post-uprising leadership framework; the Nigerian protests against the major policy deficits of ex-President Goodluck Jonathan are yet to transition to an enduring civic capacity that holds government at all levels and different tiers accountable.

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Digital citizenship in Africa 95 Africa’s fractured environment and digital citizenship The state is the organic framework within which organised social order is mediated and sustained. It provides the socio-legal platform for the organization and ordering of the collectivity under its province of authority, the authoritative distribution of resources including high stakes of politics and political forms and unquestionably the assertion of sanctions. Digital citizenship through social media activism for civic engagement has not succeeded in obliterating the “high stakes” perennial challenges in Africa. In the Nigerian case, as symptomatic of the trend in the continent, major challenges fracturing the state’s social order include those related to revenue allocation; population census; legislative cum political representation; executive power-sharing; military recruitment; promotion and appointments; access to federal power and its control; ethnic and or regional balancing; hegemony versus marginalization combined with the minorities question; the North/South dichotomy; Christian/Muslim divide and even more.77 Without a doubt, African states are turbulent ones and their societies fractured. The fractured social order represents those turbulent elements consistently colliding with the legitimacy of most African states. There are the known challenges of conflictual plurality as well as of stability challenging advances. In discussing the challenge of plurality and its importance in social order in Africa, Bangura discusses the state in the context of a situation of structural pluralism, where African states are comprised of ordered and structurally unequal, exclusive corporate sections.78 This situation collides with the evolution of developmental states in Africa as cultural orientation in politics remains pro-clientelist, and defined by structural dependence of the economies on rent seeking.79 The situation is not favorable to the citizens but to the predatory political elite who continue to manipulate the state and plunder its fortunes in primitive accumulation of capital and personalization of power. A prognosis of the raison d’état of critical fractures in African states reveals that it is not the plural nature of African states on its own that brooks perpetual fracture, but the inability of most African states to evolve into a workable form. Rather the elites transform the situation in Africa into a tool for their selfish use. In the words of Elaigwu, “Ethnic consciousness transformed into a weapon of offence or defence in a competitive process in relation with other groups over desired scarce resources”80 remains chief among other fractures in Africa’s social order. Within this frame, and in agreement with environmental factors, the subsequent themes capture the limits of digital citizens in Africa’s fractured social order, which are also elements that traverse national cohesion and finds their way to interlock with popular demands for change.

Historical conjectures, nature of government and uncoordinated dilemmas Historical conjectures, nature of government and uncoordinated dilemmas are those conjoined elements that determine to a large extent the breadth of digital citizenship. For instance, an inroad as to why the Algerian revolution never materialized ﬁnds an answer in the country’s political culture developed after a history of a brutal reversal of an uprising in 1988. Ever since then, it became sunken in the citizens’ psyche about the scope of the state in foisting maximum control even by using secret police. Private gatherings are also monitored.81 Another critical challenge in most African states is the sustenance of coordination dilemmas. For if consensus about the political is not

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96 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna constructed, digital mobilization would remain activism in deformity. Coordination dilemmas are those lingering diﬀerentials that impede social cohesion, and as such obstruct the construction of a consensus about the limits of the state, agreement on elasticity of transgression by political actors and the nature and timing of mass reaction by the citizens.82 Coordination dilemmas also include those diﬀerences involving economic standards, which may render citizens less reasonably sophisticated as a veritable agency for democratization, and may include the disadvantages of poverty, ignorance and disease, with implications thus:

a measure of moral degradation, a dwarfed mental outlook and an inability to understand the full scope of individual rights and to muster resources to realize them, as well as a lack of preparedness for the complex question of generally monitoring activities of the state to ensure that it will keep within the boundaries delineated by society.83

More so, coordination dilemmas include the conflicting relationships as a result of ethnic diversity and distrust, unresolved questions of colonial manipulations and structural deficits, lingering residues of a civil war84 and so on. The unsettling nature of these uncoordinated dilemmas dissolves into a very dangerous political orientation and absolved as a culture of perpetual inward antagonism – a situation where every issue is appraised on the basis of the “we” against “them” perception. Arising therefrom, the lack of consensus on national issues among most African states is manifold. In the Nigerian case, attempts to read reactions and comments concerning major national headlines from social media and the online platforms of newspapers and TV channels reveal how easily issues are trivialized and addressed on primordial and divisive grounds. Such differences are cocooned in name calling, insults, abuse and destructive degeneration of logic. There is hardly anything that the majority of respondents would not subscribe to on divisive lines. Cyber wars are a sharp fallout of digital activism in a situation of uncoordinated dilemmas and contested legitimacy of the state. Another critical aspect of uncoordinated dilemmas is their impact on the consensual orientation about loyalty to the state. The fact is that African states, as aptly captured by Ayoade, are better categorized as “States without citizens”85 – a loaded reference to the emptiness of citizen status in Africa,86 where membership status has remained that of a constituent’s subject rather than a citizen, despite outgrowing colonialism. The challenge of contested rights of citizenship all over Africa has fertilized the delegiti- mizing gulf in most African states, where the loyalty to the state is highly contested. The rage at depleted citizenship has metamorphosed into a drive for major ethnic groups emerging as a hopeful replacement for better options for its own ethnona- tionals.87 The infestation of most African states with less instinctual citizens who have slippery borders of loyalty, and by extension staggering nationalism which depends on the proclivity of personal political participation as well as the level of personal political interest and ambition,88 has produced turbulence in national issue discourse.

Pretentious elites and the ballot-box-intended civil society/protest The African political elite are chameleon in nature; that is, their color changes with the power pendulum.89 In Egypt, Algeria and Nigeria, there is evidence of them cashing in on those divisive lines dotting the political scene. In Libya the same issue has made the

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Digital citizenship in Africa 97 post-civil war consolidation difficult. In Nigeria’s case, in an effort to counter the “Change” campaign, that saw the ousting of President Goodluck Jonathan, pro-regime supporters resort to exploiting those divisive lines dotting the political scene of the country to break the ranks of pro-regime change mobilizers. There are also allegations of massive recruitment of cyber warriors – which is a new form of bullish propaganda – by the All Progressive Congress (APC). Even the unfolding events in Nigeria provide an insight that such social media protests like the #OccupyNigeria protest of January, 2012 are also manifesting elements of elite manipulation. The issue is that pseudo-transformational leaders have been identified with African elites whose interest is personal rather than the collective interest of the citizens.90 Africa’s predatory elite most times wear an outward look of transformative and transcendence-ridden political actors but instead are self-consumed, exploitative, power-oriented and have warped moral values.91 These elites in their quest for perpetual determinants of who gets what, when, how and how much returns to them have turned to power-hungry politicians jumping on, and wielding control of any aspiration that has the control of state power as its terminus. These elites release their own legion of cyber warriors and make mass-participation in popular uprising a key indicator of successful politicking. Not far-fetched, crowds in political rallies in Africa are more often than not hired.

Literacy cum civic capacity and digital divides Literacy is vital in driving the understanding of the political. Dahl92 had raised the question of civic capacity with regards to the citizens’ engagement in contriving workable democracy. He had argued that for democracy to work, a certain level of political competence on the side of the citizens is required. Education is a vital social requirement that empowers and fuels civic capacity. Nothing has changed about the role of education since Lipset wrote his seminal paper in this regard. According to Lipset, education enables citizens to “understand the need for norms of tolerance, restrains them from adhering to extremist and monistic doctrines, and increases their capacity to make rational electoral choices.”93 One major perception is that more educated/literate citizens tend also to be more susceptible to democratic rule. By extension, digital citizenship will be more rational and less impulsive and less yielding to elite manipulation depending on the literacy level of the citizens. As observed by Ogbonna, “illiteracy not only provides an enablement for apathy, it could also furnish a ready audience with the capacity to pick up pedestrian and even extreme ideologies.”94 The citizens must understand the power of oneness of purpose and commitment to the democratic drive without the distractions of divisions. As proposed by Kupchan95 “democracies can be nimble and responsive when the electorates are content and enjoy a consensus born of rising expectations, but they are clumsy and sluggish when the citizens are downcast and divided.” Also, “ideas do not become powerful unless they speak to concerns of a large number of ordinary people.”96 The citizens must not only be at home with self-rule but available, capable and committed to it. In this ﬂank the renowned theory of elite circulation tends to favor an antithetical posture of stability drawing from elite pacts which social mobilization may only disturb in the temporary. Putnam advanced the assumption that political leadership stems from regenerative drives as new elite would always emerge who would command allegiance of the larger population, drawing support from even the deployment of coercive instruments.97

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98 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna In as much as social media have provided a critical alternative for the expansion of the political space, there are disparities in access to social media through the internet, often referred to as the digital divide, which also impede the efficacy of grassroots reach and mobilization through digitally permeated social media.98 The digital divide is “used to describe the pattern of unequal access to information technology based on income, race, ethnicity, gender, age and geography.”99 A broader view of the digital divide implies “the gap between individuals, households, businesses and geographic areas at different socio-economic levels with regard to both their opportunities to access information and communication technologies (ICTs) and to their use of the Internet for a wide variety of activities.”100 There is also the possibility of internet blockade as was done in Egypt for six days during the 2011 protest.101 The challenge of internet access in the rural areas of most African states is still ripe, while the problems of affordability and suitability to different lifestyles are germane.

Conclusion Digital citizenship has had a great impact on the political clime of Africa through social networking made possible by social media. Apart from expanding social participatory space to corners hitherto shielded and previously unconnected, digital platforms have been able to create both digital and global citizenship. As has been observed: “The internet is the single most attractive technological innovation to young men and women.”102 In this case people now find a cheaper alternative of self-expression and value sharing that has even a global reach, and is at the same time speedy and efficient. The uprisings that started in the last quarter of 2010 were peculiar in history. While they succeeded in announcing the arrival of a poignant tool in the expansion of public space as well as a window for the leakage of domestic excesses to the international community, it as well became the fastest media tool for agenda setting and facilitator of mass action against undesirable governance and governments globally. However, digital citizenship alone cannot in any way solve the problem of bringing about change in the political process. Though it could provide a platform for massive recruitment in the demand for change in Africa, its end result may however be com- pounded by environmental factors, especially when the operating milieu is contested. The efficacy of social media in agenda setting, mass mobilization and recruitment through systematic update of picture postings, video clips, dissemination of revolutionary ideas and philosophies is not in doubt. In essence, critical refueling of the protest drive by widespread transmission and development of hashtags in a whirlwind of various platforms for occupy movements, especially via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, is also a significant corollary of the provisions available for digital citizens. Be that as it may, African states are fractured with contested boundaries and deformed consensus in wielding an instinctual loyalty to the state as well as forging a common and rational front to post-uprising political engineering on one hand and, at, on the other, de-rooming the tendency of manipulative mobilization by political predators. Historically, most African states are fraught with uncoordinated dilemmas. The reconciliation of uncoordinated dilemmas cannot be achieved through citizens’ engagement through digital citizenship. In fact, the majority of social media activists may not even understand these challenges. Though popular demand for change of government in most African states may easily be internalized by the citizens who are armed with digital tools for political participation, the deeper challenge of structural

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Digital citizenship in Africa 99 deficit and contested constitutional frame, and the restructuring and evolution of power-sharing formulae targeted at ethnic balancing, etc are lofty ideals that would lead a coordinated country, but are what the citizens are least educated about. It is these greater goods that power-drunk elites have shielded the citizens from debating while continuing to plunder the fortunes of the state for private ends. The reality is that digital citizenship enthusiasts seem to overlook very many other challenges of democratization that cannot be handled by mere civic engagement through social media. In so far as most social mobilizations are targeted towards change on the short term rather than lasting construction of social cohesion (through political reform) on the platform of social justice, diversity becomes a burden that will weigh down the relevance of the institution of social networks as an instrument for coordinating the policing of the state by the citizens. Coordination dilemmas could be reconciled by reforms involving power-sharing. This is because democracy, if wholly accepted in a state without the distractions of divisions, critical citizens will easily converge for its sustenance. Recon- ciling these coordination dilemmas allows citizens a more enduring unity to police the state by reacting in concert to violations of fundamental limits by withdrawing their support from the sovereign.103 Once a workable institutional structure of power-sharing is established in Africa, other favorable conditions of democratization would be sustained while unfavorable conditions would gradually be shut out. In essence, a political equi- librium stemming from stability would be the extended achievement of a concrete system of power-sharing. Mobilization for both the reversal of authoritarian rule should be backed with a viable policy pact as an alternative to the existing order; whereas mobilization for political course and policy change should be unending and not terminated once a regime change has taken place. Beyond the short-term successes recorded in a variety of social media protests like the extremely turbulent and yet to stabilize situations in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and the seemingly result-oriented execution of the #OccupyNigeria protest and #BringBackOurGirls campaign in Nigeria, critical citizens should remain mindful that African politicians act within a class of political and historical misnomer – whether they identify with these protests or not. Such is reflected in the reality of the entire contests including those challenges alluded to with regards to uncoordinated dilemmas, and others with regards to attitude towards power. Drawing from the observation that popular civic engagements and mobilization through the social media by digital citizens have recorded successes in regime change, but the policy process front remains turbulent, it could then be averred that since social media cannot go it alone, other traditional elements of social mobilization are still increasingly significant in sustainable democratization beyond the short term. Another justification for the marriage of both tools of mobilization is the fact that more often than not the domestic realities of the environmental milieu of politics may be tinted with propaganda, sentiment, bias and other challenges affiliated to the nature of badly divided societies, making it possible for sponsored social media activism to go viral, advancing popularity that does not reflect the views of the masses. Therefore, while facilitating a movement as Social Movement Organizations and pro-change agents, good governance should remain their primary terminus. Critical citizens should be more deeply concerned with confronting the roots of Africa’ssocio- political problems, through proper diagnosis and renegotiating alternative and sustainable routes, rather than embarking on fierce reactions to mere symptoms of deep-seated problems.

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100 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna Notes 1 Melki Jad and Sarah Mallat, “Digital Activism: Efficacies and Burdens of Social Media for Civic Activism”, Arab Media and Society 19 (2014): 1. 2 RattoMattandMeganBoler,DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014), 12. 3 Ferguson James “Transnational Topographies of Power: Beyond ‘the State’ and ‘Civil Society’ in the Study of African Politics”, occasional paper 19 (2014): 45. 4 John Pilger, “Julian Assange: The Untold Story of An Epic Struggle for Justice”, https:// newmatilda.com/2015/07/31/julian-assange-untold-story-epic-struggle-justice/ 5 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna, “Social Mobilisation, Critical Citizenry and Democratisation in Nigeria,” PhD dissertation, Babcock University, Nigeria (2016). 6 Gadi Wolfsfeld, Elad Segev and Tamir Sheafer, “Social Media and the Arab Spring Politics Comes First,” The International Journal of Press/Politics 18, no.2 (2013): 115. 7 Kira Baiasu, “Social Media: A Force for Political Change in Egypt”, October 1, 2016, http:// new-middle-east.blogspot.com.ng/2011/04/social-media-force-for-political-change.html 8 Evgeny Morozov, The Dark Side of Internet Freedom: The Net Delusion (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2011). 9 M. El-Nawawy and S. Khamis, “Political Activism 2.0: Comparing the Role of Social Media in Egypt’s ‘Facebook Revolution’ and Iran’s ‘Twitter Uprising’,” CyberOrient 6, no. 2 (2012); http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=7439 10 Adrian Guelke, Politics in Deeply Divided Societies (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2012), 13. 11 Reda Benkirane, “The Alchemy of Revolution: The Role of Social Networks and New Media in the Arab Spring” GCSP Policy Paper, 7 (2012): 1. 12 Guillermo O’Donnell et al., Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclu- sions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013). 13 Merilee Grindle, “Good Governance: The Inflation of an Idea,” in Planning Ideas that Matter eds. Bishwapriya Sanyal, Lawrence J. Vale and Christina D. Rosan (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 259–282. 14 John Ayoade, “Nigeria: Positive Pessimism and Negative Optimism,” a Valedictory Lecture, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, September 17 (2010), 54. 15 Dominique Leydet, “Citizenship”,inThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2011 edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, 13 January (2012); http://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclop edia/archinfo.cgi?entry=citizenship 16 Will Kymlicka and Wayne Norman, Citizenship in Diverse Societies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 17 J. H. Carens, Culture, Citizenship, and Community. A Contextual Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 18 Bernard Ugochukwu Nwosu, “State, Civil Society and Political Change: The Dialectics of Democratisation in Nigeria,” PhD dissertation, University of Wakaito, New Zealand (2013), 207. 19 Joel Bayo Adekanye, “Reforming the Character of Civil-Military Relations for Democratic Governance in Nigeria after 1999,” a Keynote Address delivered at a 2-day workshop on Democracy and the Military in Nigeria, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lagos, Lagos, December 6–7 (2004), 2. 20 Yonghwan Kim and Hsuan-Ting Chen, “Social Media and Online Political Participation: The Mediating Role of Exposure to Cross-cutting and Like-minded Perspectives,” Tele- matics and Informatics 33, no. 2 (2016): 320. 21 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna, “Social Mobilisation, Critical Citizenry and Democratisation in Nigeria,” PhD Thesis, Babcock University, Nigeria (2016). 22 Wolfgang Hofkirchner, “Emergent Information: A Unified Theory of Information Frame- work,” World Scientific, no 3 (2013). 23 Karen Mossberger, Caroline Tolbert and Ramona McNeal, Digital Citizenship: The Internet, Society, and Participation (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 1. 24 S¸evki Is¸ikli, “Digital Citizenship: An Actual Contribution to Theory of Participatory Democracy,” AJIT-e 6, no. 18 (2015): 21.

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Digital citizenship in Africa 101 25 Eva Anduiza, Michael Jensen and Laia Jorba, Digital Media and Political Engage- ment Worldwide: A Comparative Study (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 6. 26 Maria Bakardjieva, Jakob Svensson and Marko Skoric, “Digital Citizenship and Activism: Questions of Power and Participation Online,” JeDEM – eJournal of eDemocracy and Open Government 4, no. 1 (2012). 27 Mohammed El-Nawawy and Khamis Sahar, “Political Activism 2.0: Comparing the Role of Social Media in Egypt’s ‘Facebook Revolution’ and Iran’s ‘Twitter Uprising’,” CyberOrient 6, no. 2 (2012); http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=7439 28 Joss Hands, @ is for Activism: Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture (London: Pluto Press, 2011), 38. 29 Joss Hands, @ is for Activism, 38. 30 Mohammed El-Nawawy and Khamis Sahar, Islam Dot Com: Contemporary Islamic Dis- courses in Cyberspace (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 55. 31 Clay Shirky, “The Political Power of Social Media: Technology, the Public Sphere, and Political Change,” Foreign Affairs, January/February, (2011); http://www.foreignaffairs. com/articles/67038/clay-shirky/the-political-power-of-social-media 32 Lance Bennett, “The Personalization of Politics: Political Identity, Social Media, and Changing Patterns of Participation,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 644, no.1 (2012): 20. 33 Evgeny Morozov, The Dark Side of Internet Freedom: The Net Delusion (New York, NY: Public Affairs, 2011), 319. 34 Morozov, The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, 319. 35 Eric Tung, “Social Networks: The Weapons of our Modern Era,” The Talon, February 28. 36 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna, “Social Mobilisation,” 51. 37 Internet World Stat, “Africa Top 10 Internet Countries,” last modified November 30, 2016, http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm 38 Internet World Stat, “Africa Top 10 Internet Countries.” 39 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna, “Social Mobilisation,” 51. 40 Jad Melki and Sarah Mallet, “Digital Activism: Efficacies and Burdens of Social Media for Civic Activism,” Arab Media and Society 19, Fall (2014): 1. 41 IT News Africa, “Top 10 African Countries with the most Facebook Users”; http://www. itnewsafrica.com/2016/09/top-10-african-countries-with-the-most-facebook-users/ 42 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, “List of African Countries by Population,” last modified March 2015; http://statisticstimes.com/population/african-coun tries-by-population.php 43 DreamGrow, “Top 15 Most Popular Social Networking Sites (and 10 Apps!)”; http://www. dreamgrow.com/top-15-most-popular-social-networking-sites/ 44 Narnia Bohler-Muller and Charl van der Merwe. “The Potential of Social Media to Influ- ence Socio-political Change on the African Continent,” Africa Institute of South Africa, Policy Brief 46 (2011), 2. 45 Statista: The Statistics Portal, “Number of Monthly Active Facebook Users Worldwide as of 2nd Quarter 2016 (in millions)”, last modified October 2, 2016; https://www.statista.com/ statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ 46 Maeve Duggan et al., “Social Media Update 2014,” Pew Research Center 9 (2015); http:// www.foothillspresbytery.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/175/2015/07/Social-Media-Site-Usage- 2014-_-Pew-Research-Centers-Internet-American-Life-Project.pdf 47 Paolo Gerbaudo, Tweets and the Streets: Social Media and Contemporary Activism (New York, NY: Pluto Press, 2012): 3. 48 Sean Aday et al., “New Media and Conflict after the Arab Spring” (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2012): 3. 49 Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Jasmine Revolution,” last modified May 30, 2016; https://www. britannica.com/event/Jasmine-Revolution 50 Al Jazeera, “Lessons of the Jasmine Revolution”; http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/ opinion/2011/01/201111985641326468.html 51 Al Jazeera, “Egypt Revolution: 18 days of People Power”; http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/ inpictures/2016/01/egypt-revolution-160124191716737.html

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102 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna 52 Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Egypt Uprising of 2011,” last modified May 30, 2016; https:// www.britannica.com/event/Egypt-Uprising-of-2011 53 Al Jazeera, “Egypt Revolution: 18 days of People Power.” 54 Jose Antonio Vargas, “How an Egyptian Revolution Began on Facebook,” Spring Awakening, February 17 (2012). 55 BBC World, 16 December, 2013, “Arab Uprising: Country by Country – Algeria”; http:// www.bbc.com/news/world-12482297 56 Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Libyan Revolt of 2011,” last modified May 30, 2016; https:// www.britannica.com/event/Libya-Revolt-of-2011 57 Carsten Stahn, “Libya, the International Criminal Court and Complementarity: A Test for ‘Shared Responsibility’,” Journal of International Criminal Justice 10, no. 2 (2012): 327. 58 United Nations Security Council, “Resolution 1973 (2011)”; http://www.nato.int/nato_sta tic/assets/pdf/pdf_2011_03/20110927_110311-UNSCR-1973.pdf 59 United Nations Press, http://www.un.org/press/en/2011/sc10200.doc.htm 60 Lisa Anderson, “Demystifying the Arab Spring: Parsing the Differences between Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya,” Foreign Affairs (2011), 4. 61 Cédric Dupont and Florence Passy, “The Arab Spring or How to Explain those Revolu- tionary Episodes?” Swiss Political Science Review 17, no. 4 (2011): 447. 62 Craig McGarty et al., “New Technologies, New Identities, and the Growth of Mass Opposition in the Arab Spring,” Political Psychology 35, no. 6 (2014): 725. 63 Al Jazeera, “Libya: The Story of the Conflict Explained,” last modified March 3, 2016; http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/04/libya-story-conflict-explained-160426105007488. html 64 Al Jazeera, “Algeria: The Revolution That Never Was,” last modified March 3, 2016; http:// www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2012/05/2012516145457232336.html 65 Al Jazeera, “Algeria: The Revolution That Never Was.” 66 Al Jazeera, “Algeria: The Revolution That Never Was.” 67 BBC News, “Arab Uprising: Country by Country – Algeria”; http://www.bbc.com/news/ world-12482297 68 Ibrahim Bisallah Hashim, “Nigerians Usage of Facebook during 2012 Occupy Nigeria Protests: Between Networked and Real Public Spheres,” Researcher 5, no. 7, (2013): 55. 69 Innocent Chiluwa, “‘Occupy Nigeria 2012’: A Critical Analysis of Facebook Posts in the Fuel Subsidy Removal Protests,” Revista Clina 1, (2015): 1. 70 Innocent Chiluwa, “‘Occupy Nigeria 2012’,” 1. 71 Kevin DeLuca, Sean Lawson and Ye Sun, “Occupy Wall Street on the Public Screen of Social Media: The Many Framings of the Birth of a Protest Movement,” Communication, Culture & Critique 5, (2012): 483. 72 Innocent Chiluwa and Presley Ifukor, “‘War Against our Children’: Stance and Evaluation in #BringBackOurGirls Campaign Discourse on Twitter and Facebook,” Discourse & Society 26. no. 3, (2015): 267. 73 Ibid. 74 Alyssa Litoff, “‘Bring Back Our Girls’ Becomes Rallying Cry for Kidnapped Nigerian Schoolgirls,” ABC News, May 6, 2014; http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/hillary-clinton-supp orters-place-signs-support-street-thanksgiving/story?id=43767793 75 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna, “Social Mobilisation, Critical Citizenry and Democratisation in Nigeria,” 96. 76 Japhet Omojuwa, “Social Media and 2015 Elections: Beyond APC vs PDP,” last modified February 3, 2016; https://www.naij.com/388515-social-media-2015-elections-omojuwa- for-naijcom.html 77 Joel Bayo Adekanye, “Reforming the Character of Civil-Military Relations for Democratic Governance in Nigeria after 1999,” a Keynote Address delivered at a 2-day workshop on Democracy and the Military in Nigeria, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lagos, Lagos, December 6–7 (2004), 2. 78 Abdul Karim Bangura, “The Democratic Project and the Human Condition Across the African Continent,” Distinguished Public Lecture, University of Lagos and the Centre for Black and African Arts and Civilization, Nigeria, June 20 (2013).

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Digital citizenship in Africa 103 79 Thandika Mkandawire, “Thinking about Developmental States in Africa,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 25, no.3 (2001): 289–313. 80 Jonah Elaigwu, Federalism and Nation-building in Nigeria (Abuja: NCIR, 1994). 81 Al Jazeera, “Algeria: The Revolution That Never Was.” 82 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna, “Social Mobilisation, Critical Citizenry and Democratisa- tion in Nigeria,” 54. 83 Erne Awa, “Democracy in Nigeria: A Political Scientist’sView,” in Governance and Devel- opment in Nigeria: Essays in Honour of Professor Billy J. Dudley, ed. Oyediran Oyeleye (Ibadan: Oyediran Consult International, 1996), 1–21. 84 Donald Horowitz, “Ethnic Power Sharing: Three Big Problems,” Journal of Democracy 25, no. 2 (2014): 9. 85 John Ayoade, “States Without Citizens: An Emerging African Phenomenon,” in The Pre- carious Balance: State and Society in Africa, eds. Donald Rothchild and N. Chazan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988), 100–118. 86 Victor Adefemi Isumonah, “Universalism and Political Mobilisation,” Inaugural Lector, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, April 14 (2016). 87 Eghosa Osaghae, State of Our Own: Second Independence, Federalism and the Decoloniza- tion of the State in Africa (Ibadan: Book Craft, 2015), 1. 88 Victor Adefemi Isumonah, “The Ethnic Language of Rights and the Nigerian Political Community,”,inCitizenship, Belonging, and Political Community in Africa: Dialogues Between Past and Present, ed. Emma Hunter (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press), 97. 89 Daniel Aina Ayandiji, “Factionalism, Rampaging Economic Vampires, and the Fragile State,” Inaugural Lecture, Babcock University, Nigeria, March 9 (2016), 6. 90 Robert Dibie, Public Administration, Analysis, Theory and Application (Nigeria, Babcock University Press: 2014), 12. 91 Ayandiji, “Factionalism, Rampaging Economic Vampires, and the Fragile State.” 92 Robert Dahl, “The Problem of Civic Competence,” Journal of Democracy 3, no. 4 (1992): 47. 93 Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53, (1959): 79. 94 Emmanuel Chijioke Ogbonna, “Social Mobilisation, Critical Citizenry and Democratisation in Nigeria’s Democratisation,” 56. 95 C. A. Kupchan, “The Democratic Malaise: Globalization and the Threat to the West,” Foreign Affairs 91, no. 1 (2012): 64. 96 Francis Fukuyama, “The Future of History: Can Liberal Democracy Survive the Decline of the Middle Class?” Foreign Affairs 91, no. 1 (2012): 53. 97 Robert Putnam, The Comparative Study of Political Elites (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice- Hall Inc., 1976). 98 Katharine Brodock, “Economic and Social Factors: The Digital (Activism) Divide,” in Decoded: The Mechanism of Change, ed. Mary Joyce (New York, NY: IDEBATE Press, 2010), 71–84. 99 Karen Mossberger, Caroline Tolbert and Mary Stansbury, Virtual Inequality: Beyond the Digital Divide (Georgetown, Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003), 1. 100 The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Understanding the Digital Divide,” October 17, 2016; http://www.oecd.org/sti/1888451.pdf 101 Kira Baiasu, “Social Media: A Force for Political Change in Egypt. The New Middle East,” The Middle East, April 13, 2016; http://new-middle-east.blogspot.com/2011/04/socia l-media-force-for-political-change.htm 102 A. M. Chidi and Ihediwa Nkemjika Chimee, “Social Media and Political Change in the 21st Century: The African Experience,” Glocalism: Journal of Culture, Politics and Innovation 1, no. 5, (2016): 12. 103 Barry Weingast, “The Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law,” American Review of Political Science 91, no. 2, (1997): 250.

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7 From peaceful to non-peaceful protests The trajectories of women’s movements in the Niger Delta

Abosede Omowumi Babatunde

Introduction This chapter interrogates the trajectories of women’s movements in the context of resource control struggles in the oil-producing Niger Delta region. It contex- tualises this with regard to the changing identity of Ogoni movements by focus- ing on women in the region. It also examines the various dimensions of the women’s protests, including the factors that empower or undermine the success of the women’s struggles in the Niger Delta. The analysis of Niger Delta women’s struggles for resource control shows how their agitation has transformed their identity, with some of them becoming active actors in communal conflict, and who must be reckoned with in any effort to find lasting peace to the crisis in the region. The concluding section analyses the various trajectories of their struggles and the prospects for the future. Since the late 1990s, almost all the nine states that constituted the Niger Delta have been engulfed in violent conflicts (Human Rights Watch, 1999, 2002, 2005; Imobighe, 2004). Earlier on in the decade, the initial non-violent agitation in the region was championed by the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). The non-violent campaign for ownership and control of Niger Delta oil resources by MOSOP was met by state repression culminating in the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni activists in 1995, even though the oil multinational, Shell, was forced to stop operations in the community. Following the execution and the repression of the Ogoni, which drove MOSOP underground and contributed to the exiling of thousands of Ogoni people, agitation by other Niger Delta ethnic minorities turned violent by the late 1990s. Examples of groups that turned to violent protests include the Federated Niger Delta Ijaw Congress, the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF ) and the Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV) among others. With the transition, the legitimate protests of the youth against oil companies, who they blamed for oil pollution, wanton exploitation of their oil resources and poverty, also assumed criminal dimensions. Illegal oil bunkering, occupation of oil installations by protesters, kidnap- ping of oil workers and hostage-taking for ransom, which were tactics initially used for expressing grievances against oil companies and the government, gradually became avenues for obtaining money. Community vigilantes and armed

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104 Abosede Omowumi Babatunde youth groups emerged to cash in on the tense atmosphere created by decades of anger and frustration and provided fertile grounds that blurred the boundary between protest and criminality in the region. Local women are among the emerging actors in the struggle for the control of oil, or for an equitable share of the oil wealth produced from the waters and lands of the Niger Delta for the benefit of its people or what is referred to in the region as the struggle for “resource control”. The notion that women are victims of the oil-induced violent conflict is changing as there is increasing evidence that they have continued to play prominent roles in various social movements that were formed to protest against the depredations of the oil industry, and demand for fairer benefits from oil wealth. Until very recently, most studies on the agitation in the Niger Delta have adopted a male-centric perspective to the struggle for resource control. The role of women is either ignored, underplayed, or they are presented as victims and men as perpetrators of violence. However, this approach is not only flawed, but has led to the continued domination of notions of hegemonic masculinity and the ultimate designation of who can or cannot be named a perpetrator or victim (Lahai, 2010). Connell and Messerschmidt (2005) explain that the patriarchal structures prominent in Africa which allow men’s dominance over women through culture and institutions, account for the denial of women an agency devoid of victimhood in the discourse of violent gender relations. In the Niger Delta context, the feminist essentialist notion of women as naturally peaceful has been largely invalidated by the growing evidence of women’s restiveness and involvement in increasing agitations against perceived injustices. The growing evidence of the significant roles played by the Niger Delta women in resource control struggles, validates Lahai’s (2010) position that women are not always bearers of certain essential qualities of kindness and compassion, especially when seen from the perspective that they sometimes may be complicit in the oppression of other women.

Women in the Niger Delta: between victimhood and agency? The involvement of the Niger Delta women in the resource control struggles did not emerge in a vacuum. Studies have acknowledged the significant roles played by the women in the local economy in the Niger Delta. Niger Delta women play a significant role in the agricultural labour force and represent a vital resource in fishing, trading and food crop production in the region. The major food crops cultivated by women include yam, cocoa, cocoyam, maize, melon, groundnuts, potato, plantain, banana and pepper (Omeire et al., 2014). Many of the women are peasants and housewives, and they are the principal care givers to the children and the aged. They are responsible for providing other necessities for the survival needs of their communities (Okon, 2002; Kanu, 2012). The nature and dynamics of oil exploitation in the Niger Delta have largely shaped the experience of women such that it seems to vacillate between victimhood and agency. The pervasive feeling of powerlessness arising from the

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Women’s movements in the Niger Delta 105 ineffective measures devised by the oil companies to ameliorate the devastating impact of oil operations, and the state and federal governments to tackle the plight of the people, is ostensibly the driving force behind the involvement of the Niger Delta youth and women in the oil-induced crisis (Ikelegbe, 2005; UNDP, 2006). Ikelegbe (2005) contends that women’s engagement in the current struggle has been partly prompted by the failure of the community leadership structure and the elites to attract appropriate benefits, and the appropriation of the limited benefits to the detriment of women. Therefore, women’s collective social power has been deployed not only against the oil multinationals, but also against the excesses of traditional authority structures as well as youth violence and militancy in the Niger Delta. This situation led to the changing identity of women from being mere victims of oppression to agentic actors in their struggles for justice. Women arguably bear the brunt of the environmental challenges in the Niger Delta region, and they are the most vulnerable victims of the armed conflict in the region. They are subjected to all kinds of violence including sexual violence such as rape, physical violence such as beatings, murder and destruction of prop- erties (Azubuike, 2008; Odoemene, 2012; Nwankwo, 2015). Members of the Nigerian security forces, in particular, have been accused of brutal repression of women protesters. Among the victims of the invading forces in the Niger Delta are women of the oil-bearing communities of Iko, 1987; Umuechem, 1990; Ogoni, Itere, Ekeremor-Zion, Ugbo Ilaje and Ogba, 1993–1998 and Odi, 1999. The predicament of the Niger Delta women validates Cockburn’s (2013) conten- tion that women’s everyday life is a gendered battlefield. Niger Delta women’s access to economic opportunities has been constrained by cultural and socio-economic factors that necessitate coping and survival strategies geared towards a change in their oppressive statuesque. In the case of the Ogoni women, Ibeanu (2001) notes that prior to the Ogoni struggles, women’s socio-economic and political rights were curtailed. The Ogoni agitation spearheaded by Ken Saro-Wiwa eventually led to the active role played by the Ogoni women in the resource control struggles. Within MOSOP, the Ogoni women have voting rights and were considered as one of the important actors in the resource control struggles. The significant role accorded women within MOSOP seem to challenge the lopsidedness in the traditional and modern economic and political structures that was disadvantageous to the women in the region. Traditionally, women’s access to productive resources, especially farmland and capital, is dependent on their husbands or male relatives and they are subordinate in decision-making, even on issues that directly affect them. Several norms, cultural practices and belief systems regarding gender roles, constrained women from effectively responding to environmental changes. Cultural practices such as mode of inheritance, land tenure system, fishing rights among others have been used to keep women at a disadvantage in relation to the traditional economy (Omeire et al., 2014). Notwithstanding the prominent role of women in the traditional economy in the Niger Delta, access to communal facilities in the rural communities is relatively skewed toward men. This is because the

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106 Abosede Omowumi Babatunde informal regulatory mechanisms used in determining the use of the communal facilities are harsh to women (Ukeje, 2004). In spite of the disproportionate negative impact of oil on the local women, they have been largely excluded from the token compensation for pollution and devastation of their farmlands and fishing waters. Compensation claims are made by traditional rulers and local elites, and women are least recognised as owners of land and water resources (Pegg and Zabbey, 2013). This position of subordi- nation, lack of viable opportunities as well as exclusion from decision-making, make the women more vulnerable to poverty. One of the consequences is that the destruction of women’s economic livelihood has made many grassroots women become unemployed, confined to domestic servitude, forced into prostitution, for example. This perhaps explains Omorodion’s (2004) assertion that women’s sexuality is exploited and forms the basis of female economic power in the region. This situation encourages the commodification of women as they are seen more in terms of their sexuality. This situation has created a large commercial sex market in the region with all the associated social and health problems (Ingwe et al., 2012). It is, therefore, not surprising that the UNDP (2006) report noted that the region has the highest rate of HIV/AIDS prevalence in Nigeria. Another challenge that the women were confronting has to do with the fact that women are disproportionately affected in terms of oil-induced health problems. The health hazards from toxic waste and the pollution of drinking water are borne mostly by women and their children. Omeire et al. (2014) explained that the disproportionate adverse impact of gas glaring on women’s health in the Niger delta region is due to the significant roles women play in agriculture and household survival which brings them in direct contact with pollutants. It is perhaps inevitable that women would not just be passive victims of oppression, rather they inadvertently become entangled in the struggles as important actors worthy of according recognition in the Niger Delta narratives. It is significant that local women are alleged to be also involved in the oil theft (illegal bunkering) activities which have continued unabated, resulting in the loss of billions of naira daily, and around $6 billion each year, to the Nigerian treasury (Omeje, 2006; Vidal, 2011; Ingwe, 2015; Akpan, 2016). It is arguable that the militants could not have successfully carried out oil bunkering undetec- ted by the security agencies without the support and connivance of community members including women. This assertion is in agreement with Ikelegbe’s (2001) view that some of the sabotage was carried out by local youth (with the connivance of women) who damage pipes while trying to steal oil, and refine it for sale at the black, or local, markets. Women also participate in community protests organised by youth either to demand for compensation payments, or to get clean-up contracts from oil companies. It has been alleged that the women played a major role in the insurgency in the Niger Delta ranging from their engaging in largely peaceful protestations which at the extreme cases may involve the use of the culturally potent curse of “post-menopausal nakedness” to active involvement in the violent conflict and

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Women’s movements in the Niger Delta 107 insurgency (Ekine, 2008). Oriola (2012, 2016) elucidates the significant role that Niger Delta women played as peace activists, emissaries and go-betweens during negotiations designed to secure the release of kidnapped oil workers. Also important is that the women participated in active combat in the insurgency, engaging in gun duels with security agencies (Oriola, 2012: 546). In addition, women serve as informants who insurgents in the creeks deploy to strategic locations such as oil infrastructure and security forces stations as spies. Some women also constitute a formidable force who provide spiritual fortification for the men in the creeks (Oriola, 2012). Grassroots women in many oil communities have taken recourse to demonstrations to express their grievances against the government and oil multinationals. This is attested to by the massive protests by women from several communities in the Niger Delta states, particularly in Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers since the 1984 Ogharefe Women Protest against the Pan Ocean company (Turner and Brownhill, 2004; Ikelegbe, 2005). In their tenacity for fairer benefits, the women are gradually becoming more restive and rebellious. In each of the protests, the women’s major grievance centres on demand for improvement in the economic, environmental and social conditions of the oil-bearing communities. However, the nature, methods, dimension and dynamics of women’s engagements in the struggle have often been largely downplayed or overlooked though their efforts have achieved some remarkable success.

Theoretical framework This chapter is situated within a radical feminist theory which focuses on position of women in the economic system, and links the exploitation of women to material production (Engels, 1884). Marxist feminists argue that women are oppressed through systems of capitalism in which much of women’s labour is uncompensated and that women’s liberation can only be achieved through a radical restructuring of the current capitalist economy. The oppression experienced by the Niger Delta women in a patriarchal society is aggravated by the economic, cultural and traditional roles and mores. As such, they sometimes engage in acts of resistance to challenge the oppressive situation that they find themselves in (Ekine, 2008). In their quest for survival, the seemingly vulnerable women became actively involved in the struggles in the Niger Delta. The acts of resistance by the Niger Delta women range from peaceful protests, including the deployment of the culturally potent curse of “post-menopausal nakedness” as a form of protest, to active involvement in the violent conflict and insurgency (Ekine, 2008; Oriola, 2012, 2016). Women’s capacity for violent actions transcends gendered traditional boundaries, and it could be seen as archetypal men’s actions which are at variance with the peaceful nature of real women (Oriola, 2016). Nevertheless, such actions when viewed from the prism of marginalisation and deprivation that the women have been subjected to, are not to be unanticipated. Given the situation they are confronted with, Oriola (2016) contended that insurgent women embrace

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108 Abosede Omowumi Babatunde “masculine values” and question the usefulness of “feminine values” in the situations they found themselves in. Most of the literature on gender and armed conflict tends to position women and men at opposite ends of a moral continuum (Coulter, 2008). The gendered assumptions that men make war, women make peace that is prevalent in the literature on conflict, have been negated by growing evidence of women’s engagement in armed conflict (Coulter 2008; Fuest, 2008; MacKenzie 2009; Oriola, 2012, 2016). In the case of the Niger Delta, the grassroots women who have been the most directly affected by the oil pollution, are the most active groupings that have undertaken the largest consistent protests, production disruptions and facility occupations (Ikelegbe, 2005). Other grassroots women’s groups that also played significant roles in the agitations include the Itsekiri, Ijaw, Urbobo groups in Delta state, Ilaje in Ondo state and the Ikwere ethnic group in Rivers state. Feminist scholars are increasingly challenging the notion of universal victimhood of women in armed conflict which tends to infantilise and deny women their agency. As Coulter (2008) contends, women have shown themselves to be as capable as men in performing violent acts, as exemplified in the case of the genocide in Rwanda and the wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia (Coulter, 2008). Nevertheless, women’s ability to demonstrate violent aggressive behaviour seems to fuel the perception that female fighters have to “become like men”, by assuming male roles and behaviour, and also outdo men, in order to fit our notion of how real combatants should be (Coulter, 2008). In the case of the Niger Delta, women have continued to engage in their daily activities to eke out a living, in spite of the volatile situation in the region (Ekine, 2008). Rather than resign themselves to the oppressive situation, the women have courageously devised some coping and survival strategies. They have also become actively engaged in the struggles, showing resistance to oppression with tenacity that is worthy of commendation. For instance, during the 1990s, the female wing of MOSOP, the Federation of Ogoni Women Association (FOWA), acted as the vanguard of women-led resistance in the Ogoni struggle. Other socio-politically inclined groups that were later formed by the Niger Delta women include the Isoko Women Forum, Ndokwa Women in Politics, Urhobo Women Association, Itsekiri Women Association, Izon Ladies Association and the Egi Women Movement. While the involvement of the women in the insurrection challenges the patriarchal ideology of society, Oriola (2012) suggests that the women’s struggle oscillates between victimhood and agency. This he attributes to the fact that although the female insurgents perform influential roles that society accords them, the participation of women in violent acts has given rise to the labelling of such women as wayward and unsuitable as wives and mothers. As such, the recognition of women’s agency in armed conflict seems to challenge patriarchy, without leading to any significant changes in the patriarchal social order. One important implication of this is the tendency to perceive women’s engagement in armed struggles as insignificant. Yet, Oriola (2016) contended that it tends to

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Women’s movements in the Niger Delta 109 depict a trajectory in feminist scholarship in the sense that those women who are engaged in state armies and insurgent collectivities as agents are regarded as those who have transcended the strictures of patriarchy by transgressing the boundaries of femininity.

Women’s engagement in the resource control struggle in the Niger Delta The earliest ethnic minority struggle for environmental justice, resource control, political participation and autonomy in the post-Nigerian civil war Niger Delta was championed by the Ogoni in the early 1990s (Osaghae et al., 2011). A significant manifestation at this period was the emergence of the women’s wing of the resistance groups. FOWA was the first women’s group to emerge, and played a key role in organising massive protest in Ogoniland. FOWA was among the eight other units that was set up within MOSOP in 1993 (Ekine, 2010). Within MOSOP, FOWA specifically represents the voice of the Ogoni women alongside the other units such as the National Youth Council of the Ogoni People (NYCOP); Council of Ogoni Churches (COC); Council of Ogoni Professionals (COP); Council of Ogoni Traditional Rulers (COTRA); National Union of Ogoni Students (NUOS); Ogoni Students Union (OSU); Ogoni Teachers Union (OTU); and Ogoni Central Union (OCU). FOWA, like the other units within MOSOP, though independent, tolls the line of MOSOP policies. Barikor-Wiwa (1997) contends that FOWA has grown to become the strongest component of the nine existing units of MOSOP. In addition, it has been credited to be one of the most effective grassroots women’s movements in Africa. While FOWA played a significant role in the various protests for resource control and environmental justice in Ogoniland, the group activities expanded to include empowerment, cultural revival and other socio-economic programmes for female emancipation. During the wave of military attacks on Ogoniland in the early 1990s FOWA diverted the money raised for women’s development programmes for procuring food and medicine for the Ogoni people, and also mobilised the Ogoni women to donate towards the resettlement and rehabilita- tion of the displaced Ogoni people (Barikor-Wiwa, 1997). The Ogoni women, under the umbrella FOWA, have been credited as the champion of the women’s resistance which gained momentum in the early 1990s. Indeed, FOWA became the voice of the Ogoni women, with 126 branches in all Ogoni villages. In the efforts to raise international awareness of the environmental injustice in Ogoniland, especially the challenges facing the women, in January 1997 an international FOWA office was set up in Toronto, Canada, and other branches in St Louis, Missouri and Ohio, in the United States. The repressive reaction of the military rulers to the genuine agitations of the Ogoni is largely responsible for the prevailing youth restiveness and militancy in the region. By the mid-1990s, there emerged various ethnic minority movements among the Ijaws, Itsekiris, Ilajes, Ikweres, Isokos, Ogbas and others who engaged the state and oil companies in violent protests. The more militant

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110 Abosede Omowumi Babatunde elements within MOSOP that emerged were NYCOP and FOWA. Although these young and more militant elements were opposed by the conservatives within MOSOP, they mobilised under the leadership of Ken Saro-Wiwa to take on Shell (Obi, 1997: 145). They played a significant role in forcing Shell to close oil production in Ogoniland entirely in the mid-1990s, after the extra-judicial murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the Ogoni eight by the Nigerian military junta (Par, 2012). In this regard, FOWA made a pronouncement, alongside five other resolutions, to demand the withdrawal of Shell from Ogoniland. Over 300 Ogoni women leaders representing FOWA’s 57,000 registered members signed or thumb-printed the resolution (Barikor-Wiwa, 1997). Thereafter, various ethnic militias have emerged in the Niger Delta to challenge the activities of the oil companies. These militias, taking a cue from MOSOP, started to draw up various charters and bill of rights demanding resource control (Obi, 1997). The space for protest and resistance was taken up by other ethnic minority groups in the Niger Delta, especially among the Ijaw (Obi, 2007). This, thus, marked a phase in the interesting interface of oil politics between the Nigerian government, multinational oil companies and the peoples of the Niger Delta. The Ogoni women were not only very visible in the resource control struggles; Ekine (2010) argues that resistance was incorporated into every part of their daily life. In spite of the harassment they faced in the course of carrying out their daily activities, they insisted on being visible and active in the struggles. It was inevitable that they would become more politicised, engaging with elders and youths in the struggle. Through FOWA, the Ogoni women worked together with NYCOP, using a strategy of collective action as an act of resistance in their struggle. They used their status as mothers to work with and coordinate their activities with men, particularly the youth who they regarded as their sons in the community. In opposition to some local politically motivated traditional leaders, FOWA actively advocated the boycott of the 1993 presidential elections (Ekine, 2008). The resistance and daring of the Ogoni women serves as a stimulus for other women in the Niger Delta to become visible and active in the resource control struggles in their communities. The repressive reactions of the oil multinationals and governments to the agitations of the women were not a deterrence but rather made them more daring and resolute in their struggles. During the high-handed military operations in Ogoniland, many of the Ogoni women accused the security forces of perpetrating acts of sexual violence in the form of systematic rape, forced prostitution, sexual slavery, sex-related threats, sexual killings, beatings, destruction of property, and so on (Odoemene, 2012). Since the 1990s, there have been several documented instances of violation of women by the Nigerian Army in its offensive in the oil communities of Umuechem, Ogoni, Kaiama, Odi, Choba and the Ijaw in Warri region among others (Human Rights Watch, 2005). The gendered nature of the violence against the women reinforces the position of feminisation of violence in the Niger Delta narratives. This act of violation of women, Lahai (2010) argued, constitutes a gender- specific tactic to effectively contain and stifle radical female agency at its early

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Women’s movements in the Niger Delta 111 stages of political mobilisation. This is particularly true for the case of the Ogoni women and other grassroots women in the Niger Delta who were able to rise against their social, economic and political exclusion to become active actors in the conflict and in deciding its outcome. The strong-arm tactics of the security forces did not deter those women who were determined to forge ahead in their protest against injustice (Ekine, 2005). This is in consonance with Ibeanu’s (2001) assertion that prior to the Ogoni conflict, women did not enjoy the same socio-economic and political rights as men. This lopsidedness, he further stated, permeated both traditional and modern economic and political structures in the region (Ibeanu, 2001). However, he noted that the Ogoni conflict eventually raised the profile of the Ogoni women. Since the Ogoni women’s protests, other Niger Delta women have not only been active in the struggle, they have recently begun to assert their role, in peaceful mass actions against the oil companies in the region (Ikelegbe, 2005). In their efforts to call attention to their persistent marginalisation, Olakunle (2010), revealed that about 58 remarkable protests have been organised by the women in the region including the Ogharefe Women Protest in 1984, Ekpan’s Women’s Uprising in 1986, the Okutukutu and Etegwe Women Protest in 1991, the Obunagha community protest in 1992 and the Escravos Episode 2002, among others. The spontaneous identity mobilisation (Ikelegbe, 2005) by the Niger Delta women can best be understood in the context of a prolonged disillusionment with the dominant male identity that had become inefficient, defective, compromised and unreliable in drawing attention to and seeking a reversal to the misfortunes of oil communities. The grassroots women, rather than resigning themselves to their fate, opted to courageously take up the challenges as exemplified by the resistance of the Ogoni women and other Niger Delta women groups among the Ijaw, Itsekiri, Urhobos, Ikwerre, Ilaje and so on. It is important to note that women’s role in the insurgency is not a supportive one, but an essential part of the armed struggle in the Niger Delta (Oriola, 2012). Grassroots, ethnic and regional women such as FOWA, Warri Women Con- sultative Assembly, Niger Delta Women for Justice (NDWJ), among others, are not only an active part of the civil challenge and popular struggles, but have begun to appropriate traditional forms of resistance (Ikelegbe, 2005). The women’s groupings, though mostly informal, small and autonomous, constitute the platforms through which the local women mobilise collective efforts, in their socio-political agitations for justice, accommodation and fair access to benefits from oil. Apart from their engagement in the struggles, Ikelegbe (2005) notes that the women also have another segment comprising local groups of traditional organisations and the local socio-economic, thrift, welfare and support groups. Also, through the women’s professional organisations, scholarship and grants and vocational training have been provided for the women (Olakunle, 2010). The traditional women groups, being the most directly affected by the oil pollutions, are the most active groupings that have undertaken the largest consistent protests, production disruptions and facility occupations (Ikelegbe, 2005). The grassroots women groups are the ethnic

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112 Abosede Omowumi Babatunde groups such as the Ogoni and Ikwere ethnic groups in Rivers state and Itsekiri, Ijaw, Urbobo groups in Delta state. The cultural and socio-politically inclined communal, clan and ethnic groups are involved at the level of articulation of female grievances and in the support of communal women groups. Like their male counterparts, the female wings of socio-politically inclined groups include FOWA, Isoko Women Forum, Ndokwa Women in Politics, Urhobo Women Association, Itsekiri Women Association, Izon Ladies Association, Egi Women Movement, among others. These women are better informed, enlightened, confident and empow- ered, and they are the vanguard that facilitate the mobilisation and enlighten- ment of the grassroots women groups (Ikelegbe, 2005). According to Ikelegbe (2005), the socio-political women groupings usually organise community sensitisation, lobbying and in some instances they have taken their protestation from the communities to the seat of power where they demonstrated in the National Assembly to press home their demand for better development in the Niger Delta. Through non-governmental organisations (NGOs) working on women issues in the region, their struggles have been brought to the attention of international organisations. One of the exceptional tactics of the aggrieved women is their readiness to deploy the curse of nakedness which is the ultimate weapon of African women’s traditional social collective power, situated in their being symbols of dignity, virtue and motherhood (Ukeje, 2004; Ikelegbe, 2005; Ekine, 2008). In 2002, elderly Ijaw women used nudity to protest against Chevron Oil Company at its Warri south oil flow station. The naked women occupied the flow station for a period of ten days, to press home their grievances which include the unemployment of their children and husbands, and poor physical infrastructural and neglect of their region (Folami, 2016). This remarkable female protest attracted international media attention and was regarded as one of the most well-organised protests by women in the region (Ihayere et al., 2014). The willingness of the women to employ the most extreme form of direct actions in the form of partial or complete nudity signifies a complete exaspera- tion at the failure of their initial peaceful protests to yield a positive outcome. In Africa, “nudity” is an extremely traditional and ritual way of protesting. Women are traditionally regarded as as an embodiment of sanctity, dignity, morality and purity; the readiness of women to expose nudity typifies shame as well as a curse to society (Ikelegbe, 2005). Ukeje (2004) documented the most remarkable among the wave of protests by the Niger Delta women from different ethnic groups in July and August 2002 in Warri, Delta state. The protest started on 8 July 2002 when 200 grassroots women from the Itsekiri of Ugborodo oil communities peacefully occupied the Escravos Tank Farm operated by Chevron-Texaco, for about two weeks (Olakunle, 2010). It initially started peacefully when the women gathered at the entrance to the Shell office complex, and prevented personnel and vehicular movements in and out. However, it later degenerated into violence when regular policemen and their notorious anti-riot wing, popularly called “kill-and-go”,

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Women’s movements in the Niger Delta 113 were asked to disperse the women using teargas and batons, leaving several injured and hospitalised (Olakunle, 2010). In 2009, women in Gbamaratu organised a protest against oil companies operating in their community, including Shell and Chevron-Texaco, demanding that they stop oil exploration activities that have destroyed their environment without any adequate compensation (Folami, 2016). The rising wave of resistance by the Niger Delta women against environmental dislocation and human rights violations has escalated beyond the shores of Nigeria such that international protests by women were at times simultaneously held in the Niger Delta, United States of America and the United Kingdom (Emeseh, 2011). In one remarkable case in 1999, women all over the Niger Delta region adopted similar methods of protest against multinational oil companies by staging simultaneous protests in Nigeria and London against the flaring of natural gas by the oil companies (Folami, 2016). Another remarkable protest occurred at the Escravos facility in 2007 when Itsekiri women in Warri South-West took over the gas pipeline in frustration over the continued lack of development and the erosion of lands in their community (Ekine, 2010). A major female-led protest, that took place in September 2011, occurred when hundreds of aggrieved women from Gbaramatu communities laid siege at the Chevron facility in Chanomi Creek over the failure of the oil company and the Nigerian government to provide basic facilities in their communities, particularly water and electricity. The women prevented Chevron from laying pipelines for a liquefied natural gas project (Par, 2012). In spite of the repressive reaction of the Nigerian government to the peaceful agitation of the aggrieved women, they were undaunted in their quest for environmental security and social and economic justice. Knowing the repressive reaction of the Nigerian government, in which many men have been brutally killed, women have also taken up the challenge of taking the protests forward. The participation of women in the struggles should not only be perceived as a form of solidarity to the men, but it also demonstrates the capacity of women to defend their rights against oppression. One of the legacies of MOSOP, under Ken Saro-Wiwa, was the voice given to the hitherto powerless women through FOWA to be visible in the struggles for social justice in the deeply deprived Niger Delta region.

The implications of women engagements in resource control struggles for peacebuilding in the region Women movements such as FOWA have not only changed the tempo and direction of the Niger Delta struggle, they have heightened the level of mobilisation and participation, and in so doing, transformed the scale and volatility of the resource control struggle into a melting pot of protests and mass actions (Ikelegbe, 2005). As a result of the youth problematic and the growing recognition of women’s activities, the Niger Delta Development Commission has established a Women and Youth Directorate. The oil multinationals, particularly the

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114 Abosede Omowumi Babatunde major ones like Shell, have also initiated capacity-building programmes for women (SPDC, 2002 cited in Ikelegbe, 2005). Also, the state governments in the Niger Delta region have designed programmes to promote the welfare of women in the oil-bearing communities and their socio-economic empowerment through skill acquisition programmes, micro enterprises, credit facilities, educational support and so on. The efforts of the oil companies and the government could at best be described as token because they have largely not addressed women’s emancipation and gender justice. These programmes/initiatives, most of which are either poorly implemented or never take off, fall short of transforming the condition of women across the region. As Okorie and Williams (2009) have opined, the prevailing patriarchal system of production and ownership constitutes a major impediment to inclusive government interventionists’ action. Although women are prime movers of development in the region, their plight has not received adequate attention. The development agencies and Ministry of the Niger Delta set up to address the developmental needs of the region largely serve the interests of the traditional rulers, male political elites and top militants. Evidently, the significant role that women played in the struggles have not given them a place at the table of key stakeholders that should also be consulted by the government agencies, and participate in decisions affecting the region. In 2009, the government of late President Yar’Adua granted amnesty to the youth militants. About 30,000 ex-militias were disarmed and demobilised, and some were sent overseas for training in various capacities as part of the ongoing reintegration process of the amnesty programme. Ogege (2011) identified the shortcomings of the post-amnesty peacebuilding programme (PAP) to include the inadequate funding to implement it and the lack of transparency and accountability in its implementation. Aside these challenges, the exclusion of some ex-militias, mostly women, was a major gap in the implementation of the PAP. It is also noteworthy that only a relatively few number of women were included in the last phase of the reintegration process of the amnesty (Folami, 2016). This oversight can be best understood in the context of the unwillingness of the government to come to terms with the role of women in the militant struggle for resource control in the Niger Delta. The exclusion of women from the PAP has not deterred women’s resistance, although it is not clear that Ogoni women are in the forefront of this struggle. President Buhari, who assumed leadership after Jonathan, has been making some efforts to address the challenges in the region. The Buhari government recently authorised the clean-up of Ogoniland through the implementation of the 2011 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report on Ogoniland. Regardless of the recent efforts of the government, there have been reoccurring incidences of oil theft and pipelines vernalisation leading to huge loss in oil revenue. The involvement of women in oil theft is indicative of the trajectory of women’s identity as agentic actors rather than mere victims in the Niger Delta struggle (Ingwe, 2015; Akpan, 2016).

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Women’s movements in the Niger Delta 115 The renewed attacks on oil facilities led to the temporary closure of two of Nigeria’s refineries and it has also forced Shell to declare force majeure on Bonny Light crude, while the company had to evacuate its workers from its offshore Bonga oil field. The government has responded with a massive deployment of troops that forced more than 10,000 people to flee the fallout (Faul, 2016). A new group, the Niger Delta Avengers (NDA), claimed responsibility for the recent attacks while demanding the renewal of the contract that paid militants to guard the installations they once attacked. However, some analysts opined that the renewed attack on oil facilities is being fuelled by some politicians in the Niger Delta that are opposed to President Buhari, a northern Muslim. Indeed, Faul (2016) argued that the sophistication of the attacks points to the complicity of political elites in the recent attacks and that the NDA poses a greater threat than its small numbers and scant grassroots support would indicate. Also, personnel of oil companies, government officials and security agencies have been fingered as culpable in the oil theft business (see Chapter 6 in this volume). With the increasing evidence of women’s involvement in militancy, they would have provided support to, and be part of, the recent activities of the NDA. The complicity of women in oil theft, pipelines vandalism and the renewed militancy in the Niger Delta points to the changing role that some women have assumed in the dynamic of the resource control struggles in the region. Indeed, the once powerless and voiceless group (women) are becoming a force to be reckoned with in the Niger Delta’s struggle, as exemplified by the activism and struggles of Ogoni women, as well as other women from Ijaw. Itsekiri, Urhobo and so on. The Ogoni women, through FOWA, have continued to initiate various programmes for the empowerment of the women, and for the emancipation of the Niger Delta people. These activities have garnered momentum with the numerous branches set up across the Niger Delta and globally. Also, they organised peaceful demonstrations commensurate with the anniversary of the death of the leader of MOSOP, Ken Saro-Wiwa on 10 November 1995. In spite of the agency and activism of the Niger Delta women, successive Nigerian governments have overlooked the formidable roles that women can play in the peace processes in the region. Although they are important stakeholders, they have largely been overlooked and hardly included in the peace forum and initiatives set up by the government and oil multinationals to brain- storm on the daunting challenges confronting the region. It is not surprising that the Niger Delta women leaders were not included in the recent Pan Delta consultative forum set up by President Buhari. The only women in the committee were part of the political elites, rather than representative of the Niger Delta grassroots women’s movement. The Niger Delta women should be seen as a vital force in local governance, development and peace in the region. Peace is an essential prerequisite for sustainable development. It is indisputable that no meaningful peace can be achieved in an environment dom- inated by insecurity. The failure to factor in the critical roles of women in the Niger Delta struggles has serious implications for the search for durable peace and development in the oil-rich region.

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116 Abosede Omowumi Babatunde Conclusion The narratives of the role of the grassroots women in the resource control struggles in the Niger Delta highlight the important role of women not as merely victims, but as important actors who should not be ignored in the peace process in the region. The Niger Delta women have been involved in peaceful demonstrations for resource control and environmental security which, over time, transformed to violent militancy as a result of the failure of the government to address the grievances of the Niger Delta people. During the initial non-violent agitation championed by MOSOP, the women were actively involved in the peaceful agitation, supporting their men and also engaging in collective actions to press home their demands. The female-led agitations were initiated by the Ogoni women, through FOWA, the women’s wing of MOSOP. FOWA became the vanguard, pacesetter and catalyst for the grassroots women’s movements that proliferated across the Niger Delta. The commendable activities of FOWA were so remarkable that it was regarded as one of the most effective female-led movements in Africa. With the transition of the youth agitations to violent militancy, the women have continued to demonstrate their agentic capacity and resilience by acting as emissaries, spies, envoys, fighters, spiritualists and peacemakers in the insurgency. The Niger Delta women have the potential to become very formidable intermediaries in the peacebuilding initiatives in the region given the significant roles they have continued to play in the resource control struggle. Yet, they have not been considered important stakeholders who can play critical roles in the peacebuilding processes in the region. The exclusion or limited involvement of women in the peace consultative forum and other peace initiatives set up by the Nigerian government and oil multinationals is indicative of the low recognition of women’s agentic capacity and the important role they can play as peace intermediaries. Regardless of the challenges of limited empowerment, lack of adequate capacity for mobilisation and resources that undermine the impact of women’s struggle, the significant achievement made by the women points to the important role that women can play in the peace process in the region. The need to capture the otherwise hidden contributions and agency of women’s movements in the Niger Delta cannot be overemphasised. Indeed, positive peace may remain elusive unless the gender dimensions of the dynamics of resource control struggles are effectively addressed and factored into the peacebuilding processes using much more innovative strategies than is presently the case.

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118 Abosede Omowumi Babatunde Ingwe, R., Mboto, W.A. and Ude Ugwu, U. (2012). Transnational Crime, Human Rights Violation and Human Trafficking in Nigeria’s Oil-Rich Niger Delta. Romanian Journal of Society and Politics. No. 3: 65–93. Kanu, W.N. (2012). Gender Disparity in Agriculture Production: Implication for Sustain- able Food Security in Imo State. PhD Thesis. Department of Sociology. Imo State University, Owerri. Lahai, J.I. (2010). Gendered Battlefields: A Contextual and Comparative Analysis of Women’s Participation in Armed Conflicts in Africa. Peace and Conflict Review. Vol. 4, No. 2: 1–15. MacKenzie, M. (2009). Securitization and Desecuritization: Female Soldiers and the Reconstruction of Women in Post-conflict Sierra Leone. Security Studies. Vol. 18, No. 2: 241–261. Nwankwo, B.O. (2015). The Politics of Conflict Over Oil in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria: A Review of the Corporate Social Responsibility Strategies of the Oil Com- panies. American Journal of Educational Research. Vol. 3, No. 4: 383–392. Obi, C. (1997). Globalisation and Local Resistance: The Case of the Ogoni versus Shell. New Political Economy. Vol. 2, No. 1: 137–148. Obi, C. (2007). Resource Control in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. Global Knowledge. No. 2. Odoemene, A. (2012). The Nigerian Armed Forces and Sexual Violence in Ogoniland of the Niger Delta, Nigeria, 1990–1999. Armed Forces and Society. Vol. 38, No. 2: 225–251. Ogege, S.O. (2011). Amnesty Initiative and the Dilemma of Sustainable Development in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. Journal of Sustainable Development. Vol. 4, No. 4: 249–258. Okon, E.J. (2002). Women and the Niger Delta Struggle. In R. Aduche Wokocha (ed.). Development Right Issues in the Niger Delta. Schaleworths Centre for Democracy and Development, 66–73. Okorie, V.O. and Williams, S.B. (2009). Rural Women’s Livelihood Strategies: A Case Study of Fishery Communities in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Gender, Technology and Development. Vol. 13, No. 2: 225–243. Olakunle, M.F. (2010). Women’s Response to the Question of Development in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. Journal of Comparative Research in Anthropology and Sociology. Vol. 1, No. 1: 133–149. Omeire, E.U., Aveuya, A.A, Muoneme-Obi, C.T, Adolphus, G., Ufomba, A. and Omeire, C.A. (2014). Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Niger Delta Women and the Burden of Gas Flaring. European Scientific Journal. Vol. 10, No. 26. Omeje, K. (2006). High Stakes and Stakeholders: Oil Conflict and Security in Nigeria. Aldershot: Ashgate. Omorodion, F.I. (2004). The Impact of Petroleum Refinery on the Economic Livelihoods of Women in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. Journal of Culture and African Women Studies. Issue 6. Oriola, T. (2012). The Delta Creeks, Women’s Engagement, and Nigeria’s Oil Insur- gency. British Journal of Criminology. Vol. 52, No. 3: 534–555. Oriola, T. (2016). “I Acted Like a Man”: Exploring Female Ex-Insurgents’ Narratives about Nigeria’s Oil Insurgency. Review of African Political Economy. Vol. 43: No. 149: 1–19. Osaghae, E.E., Ikelegbe, A., Olarinmoye, O.O. and Okhomina, S.I. (2011). Youth Mili- tias, Self Determination and Resource Control Struggles in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. Dakar, Senegal: Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa.

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Women’s movements in the Niger Delta 119 Par, G. (2012). Indigenous Niger Delta Woman: A Microcosm of Denied Rights and Dignity. World Pulse in partnership with the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). Pegg, S. and Zabbey, N. (2013). Oil and Water: The Bodo Spills and the Destruction of Traditional Livelihood Structures in the Niger Delta. Oxford University Press and Community Development Journal. Vol. 48, No. 3: 391–405. Turner, T.E. and Brownhill, L.S. (2004). Why Women are at War with Chevron: Nigerian Subsistence Struggles Against the International Oil Industry. Journal of Asian and African Studies. Vol. 39, Nos. 1–2: 63–93. Ukeje, C. (2004). From Aba to Ugborodo: Gender Identity and Alternative Discourse of Social Protest Among Women in the Oil Delta of Nigeria. Oxford Development Studies. Vol. 32, No. 4: 605–617. UNDP (2006). Niger Delta Human Development Report. Abuja: UN House. Vidal, J. (2011). Shell Oil Spills in the Niger Delta: Nowhere and No One Has Escaped. Guardian, 3 August.

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1 Africa’s re-enchantment with big infrastructure White elephants dancing in virtuous circles?

Paul Nugent1

When it comes to Africa, the capacity of international organizations to champion that which they previously disavowed is nothing less than remarkable. At the present time, all the principal actors – African governments, corporate investors and the international agencies themselves – are fixated upon the transformative potentialities of infrastructure, by which they mostly mean ‘big infrastructure’. This is intriguing, given that Africa has been through previous iterations of much the same thing. During the late 1940s and 1950s, when the modern idea of development was born, overwhelming emphasis was placed upon the catalytic effects of infrastructure, and to that end unprecedented levels of investment were chan- nelled into the construction of ports, roads and railways (Hoyle and Hilling 1970). When the results proved disappointing, enthusiasm waned; and when the money dried up in the late 1970s, a steady process of attrition ensued. The decline of Africa’s railway systems is merely the most striking example of a technology that had come to be regarded as too expensive and unsuited to African requirements. A residual scepticism about big infrastructure remained firmly entrenched during the heights of structural adjustment. Hence, the Berg Report, for example, devoted an entire chapter to agriculture, but a modest ten pages to transport and communications, which were sub- sumed within a chapter entitled ‘Other Productive Sectors’ that bundled together industry, mining and energy. It specifically advised caution with respect to ‘large-scale capital-intensive projects’ and proposed that the accent should be placed on the maintenance and renewal of existing roads (World Bank 1981, 106). World Bank documents today devote most of their attention to championing substantial new investments in transport and energy, which are regarded as the drivers of economic change. Clearly, there has been nothing less than a paradigm shift and this is reflected in the places where international agencies place their money.2 If economic development has become a kind of modern religion, infrastructural investment is once again its most potent fetish. In this chapter, I set out to do two things. First, I address the question of how far these investments are driven by the requirements of the extractive industries. This has a bearing on the likely consequences of lower commodity

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Africa’s re-enchantment with big infrastructure 23 prices for the more ambitious plans to ‘respace’ the African continent in the future (Engel and Nugent 2010). In the second section, I consider some implications for the institutional capacity of African states and raise the question of whether the current patterns are sustainable.

The big fix: regional variations in infrastructural expenditure patterns The re-enchantment with infrastructure arises out of a conjuncture of a number of elements that came into play around the start of the millennium. The first is the rediscovery of regional integration as a platform on which to build complementarities between African economies (Bach 2016). Whereas economic policies after independence tended to mirror each other, and to be competitive in their effects, regional integration today aims to create a common market for goods produced locally as well as more advantageous conditions for Africa’s integration into the global marketplace. This is clearly an imperative for the countries with large mining sectors as well as for landlocked states – and all the more so for those that fall into both categories, such as Zambia and Niger. But the expectation is that regional integration will also grow the market for countries with substantial manufacturing sectors (like Nigeria) or with potential for exporting their agricultural surpluses (like Uganda). Within this schema, transport corridors are conceived of as the veins and arteries that circulate goods between coastal ports, urban markets and mining hubs. The second factor is a decade of sustained economic growth underpinned by high primary commodity prices. This led to renewed interest in Africa on the part of global corporations, and embol- dened African leaders to anticipate a qualitative transformation on the back of targeted investments. It is no exaggeration to say that the notion of a ‘big push’ (Killick 1978), which was current in development thinking in the early 1960s, is back in vogue, if not in name. The third element is the rapid ela- boration of new information technologies that create the ‘smart’ systems that potentially enable big infrastructure, for example at seaports, to be deployed in much more efficient ways. Finally, there is a shift in the consensus towards what is sometimes called ‘neoliberal governance’, in which the boundary between the public and private domains has become blurred (Ferguson 2006; Chalfin 2010). To some extent, this represents a hangover from the era of structural adjustment, but it also reflects a curious convergence of governance trends in Europe and the mixture of public and private interests in China. Given that the European (EU) and China are amongst the most important players in the infrastructural game, this context clearly matters. All of this has enabled some of the grander visions to seem credible in areas where state-led development fell short in the past. These four trends reinforce each other in multiple ways to the point that they can often seem like a single package. However, each of these elements embodies its own internal tensions, and to that extent the relationships between them are also inherently unstable.

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24 Paul Nugent It is a recurring theme in policy documents, most notably those produced by the World Bank and the African Development Bank (AfDB), that what is holding Africa back is its severe infrastructural deficit. A particular emphasis is placed on seaports, which are characterized as chronically congested and lacking overall capacity. The problem is attributed to a combination of geo- graphical circumstances, especially the scarcity of natural deep-water harbours, and historical legacies arising from decades of economic failure. However, it is also attributed to the more heartening reality that in the first decade of the new millennium the volume of trade passing through Africa’s ports tripled (African Development Bank 2010, 32). The existing seaports were only constructed to handle general cargo and were unable to accom- modate the latest generation of container ships, the so-called ‘Panamax’ and ‘Post-Panamax’ vessels. Port investments across Africa are largely about bridging the gap with other parts of the maritime world. The cost of transporting goods is commonly said to be the most serious constraint upon Africa’s trade with the rest of the globe. The greatest single factor is the amount of time that it takes for ships to be turned around. A report from 2005 estimated that the time spent on average in East Asian ports amounted to 20 per cent of the total transport time, whereas in Africa this rose to as much as 80 per cent (African Development Bank 2010, 48). The ‘dwell time’ in African ports ranged from 4 days in Durban and 5 days in Mombasa to 25 days in Tema and 28 days in Port Sudan. The costs also varied wildly with Luanda recording an average handling cost of $320 per TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) by comparison with an average of $90 in Mombasa and $121 in Durban (African Development Bank 2010, 47). In addition, the neglect of the continent’s rail network has meant that it has not always been possible to follow the shortest route to the coast. Because more traffic is forced onto the roads as a consequence, this contributes to the wider problems of congestion and delay. The fact that most Zambian copper can no longer be dispatched along the Tanzania–Zambia railway (instead, it is transported by truck to Durban and Dar es Salaam) is considered symptomatic of the wider problem (Raballand and Whitworth 2014, 4). In colonial East Africa, an earlier version of the regional integration agenda placed overwhelming emphasis on the railway from the port of Mombasa to the Uganda border. Today, the Rift Valley Railway carries only 5 per cent of the freight from Mombasa’s port, although it is currently in the process of being upgraded (World Bank 2014, 82). Finally, one should mention the parlous state of some of Africa’s main roads, which represent continental ‘highways’ in name only. Along the Abidjan–Lagos Corridor (ALCO), for example, only 51 per cent of the roads were classed as ‘good’ in 2010, with 28 per cent categorized as ‘fair’ and 21 per cent as ‘poor’. Meanwhile, along the Cotonou– Niamey Corridor, as many as 42 per cent of the roads were classed as ‘poor’ (Deen-Swarray et al. 2014, 45). The shifting configuration of financing is based on the premise that the infrastructural deficit is beyond the financial capacities of African governments,

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Africa’s re-enchantment with big infrastructure 25 even when they pool their resources. The AfDB has, for example, taken the lead in financing the Trans-African Highway Project, which is a priority of the African Union. The World Bank has greatly increased its own commitments to transport infrastructure, abandoning the scepticism of the relatively recent past. This in part reflects a retreat from the narrowly economistic prescriptions of the structural adjustment era, which produced disappointing results across much of Africa. In addition, development banks, bilateral donors and the private sector all play important roles. Along any given transport corridor, there is typically a multiplicity of projects that bring together different combinations of actors, while the usual corporate suspects, such as Bolloré, turn up in several locations at once. There is a certain structural logic that favours big infrastructure, for the reason that it is often easier for African governments to access external funds to cover large investments than to find money for more modest projects. For politicians whose reputations rest on their ability to point towards ‘development’, there is an additional incentive to favour big infrastructure because it tends to be highly visible. The electoral cycle plays its own part as incumbent politicians feel the need to be seen commissioning or championing new projects in advance of going to the polls. Regimes may also seek to secure political support by devolving some of the work to local contractors. Let us now consider the patterns of infrastructural expenditure in more detail before assessing the relative importance of the various actors. The Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA), which brings together the G8 countries, the World Bank, the EU, the AfDB and some others, publishes an annual report on infrastructural financing. It distinguishes between investments in transport, energy, water and information and communications technologies (ICT). In 2013, the report revealed that ICA members invested considerably more in energy than transport infrastructure, whereas other external investors leaned the other way (Infrastructure Consortium for Africa 2014). In 2015, energy and transport accounted for 43.5 per cent and 34.1 per cent of ICA financing, respectively (Infrastructure Consortium for Africa 2016, 24). However, if the investments in energy in South Africa and North Africa are removed from the equation, transport comes out ahead across the other regions of Africa. It will come as little surprise to learn that China was by the far the largest bilateral investor, accounting for 25 per cent of all infrastructural financing in 2015, or that it has specifically targeted transport infrastructure. But the data also highlights two other patterns that are worthy of note. First, private investment in infrastructure has been unevenly distributed, with a strong bias towards energy in South Africa, but it has contributed far less than the ICA and other public investors – in fact, a mere 8.9 per cent of the total in 2015 (Infrastructure Consortium for Africa 2016, 15). Second, African governments finance slightly more than half of the expenditure commitments, typically placing their own money into transport rather than energy. In addition, African governments incur the obligations that come with external lending. In 2015, as much as 72.9 per

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26 Paul Nugent cent, or $14.25 billion, of ICA funding commitments were in the form of loans, whereas grants accounted for only $2.35 billion and ‘blended’ funding a mere $1.10 billion (Infrastructure Consortium for Africa 2016, 26). This suggests that African states are far more engaged with the infrastructural ‘big push’ than is commonly assumed. A separate report by Deloitte (2015), which deals with recent trends in large construction projects valued at over $50 million, tells a broadly similar story. However, it uses a different breakdown of expenditure and only deals with newly activated projects. It reveals that transport gained ground relative to energy between 2013 and 2015 in terms of the number of projects, and accounted for substantially more in terms of the total value of expenditure. Whereas mining investment fell back, the oil and gas sector underwent significant growth. The report is also of interest for what it reveals about public–private partnerships (PPPs), which the World Bank has been especially keen to promote (World Bank 2014). It revealed that between 2013 and 2015, public investment projects increased from 181 to 205, private projects fell from 127 to 57, and PPPs increased from 14 to 39. The uptake of PPPs seems, therefore, to have come at the expense of private projects rather than public financing. Somewhat surprisingly, PPPs have had the greatest purchase in West Africa, followed by Southern Africa (Deloitte 2015, 5–6). This data therefore indicates that the progress in implementing PPPs has been incremental as well as uneven. This brings us to the question of how far resource extraction is shaping the pattern of infrastructural investment. Some of the extractive industries clearly make their own investments, but they also depend on connective infrastructure such as ports, roads and railways. Diamonds are mostly flown out, but mining equipment has to be brought in the hard way (African Development Bank 2010, 10). In the case of oil that is produced away from

Table 1.1 Infrastructure commitments by sector and source, 2015 ($ million) Source Transport Water Energy ICT Multi- Other Total sector ICA 6,770.9 3,184.3 8,635.0 626.0 634.4 – 19,840.7 ACG 2,071.7 377.8 1,554.9 16.5 391.5 – 4,412.4 RDBs 173.7 47.6 95.0 76.4 25.5 – 418.2 China & others 9,932.2 268.4 10,747.5 1,032.1 –– 21,980.1 Non-ICA Europe 345.5 – 458.2 72.5 –– 876.2 African 15,278.3 4,124.8 5,692.0 705.2 1,164.7 1,1167.3 28,402.3 governments Private 113.5 114.0 7,214.8 ––– 7,442.3 Total 34,658.8 8,116.8 34,667.5 2,518.8 2,216.1 1,167.3 83,372.3

Source: Infrastructure Consortium for Africa 2016, 89 Notes: These ﬁgures refer to commitments rather than disbursements. ACG = Arab Coordina- tion Group, RDB = regional development banks.

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Africa’s re-enchantment with big infrastructure 27 Table 1.2 Construction projects in 2015 valued at above $50 million Type of project Value of projects Number Percentage of all ($ million) projects (%) Education 131 2 0.66 Energy and power 95,555 85 28.24 Healthcare 561 4 1.33 Manufacturing 2,000 1 0.33 Mining 39,776 22 7.31 Oil and gas 81,558 18 5.98 Real estate 12,522 18 5.98 Shipping and ports 1,035 1 0.33 Social development 3,305 12 3.99 Telecommunications 567 2 0.66 Transport* 131,664 111 36.88 Water 6,736 25 8.31 Total 375,410 301 100

Source: Adapted from Deloitte 2015, 5 Note: * A considerable amount of port development is included within the ‘Transport’ category rather than under ‘Shipping and ports’. the coastline, there is a preference these days for underground pipelines that are linked to dedicated oil terminals at the coast. To that extent, oil does not merely create an enclave effect where it is drilled, but also in the locations from where it is shipped. The same applies perforce to natural gas. By contrast, other mining operations tend to rely on infrastructure that is shared with other users. Historically, one form of subsidy to the mining industry resided in the construction of railways followed by the creation of monopolies that forced all transporters onto the tracks. By spreading the cost among multiple users, the freight charges to the mining sector were reduced. These days, such monopolies are frowned upon, which means that the railways have to attract willing customers by offering faster and more reliable services. One argument in favour of railways is that they reduce wear and tear on the roads, which ought to benefit those engaged in the haulage of other commodities. Whether this is optimal for the mining industry depends on the nature of what is being transported and other associated costs. In many parts of the world, copper is transported by rail, and it is likely that, all else being equal, this would be the preferred mode among mining companies in Central Africa. But because the real cost of road maintenance is not borne by those who transport copper, and because the labour of truck-drivers is so cheap,3 there is presently little incentive to alter existing practices. Aside from railways, ease of shipment through the seaports is of fundamental importance to the mining industry, especially in this era of containerization. This brings us back to the cost and speed of handling through the various ports.

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28 Paul Nugent In practice, the extractive industries carry very different weight in the various regions. This is reflected in the design of the transport corridors that the regional economic communities (RECs) have been promoting for some years now (Söderbaum and Taylor 2008). In the case of East Africa, the discovery of oil and gas deposits has brought an appreciation of the need for new pipeline projects, but as of 2015 most of the work was no more than incipient. The main focus of the East African Community (EAC) has been on removing trade barriers within the designated Single Customs Territory (SCT) and attempting to facilitate regional access to global markets. For landlocked countries such as Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda, the ports of Mombasa and Dar es Salaam are the entry points for petroleum imports (all of which are currently transported by road) and manufactured goods (which come largely from Asia). The current focus is on making substantial improvements to existing ports as well as constructing some entirely new ones; upgrading rail links; and improving the roads along the corridors. Given that the EAC has few minerals outside of Tanzania, it cannot be said that either the Northern Corridor from Mombasa or the Central Corridor through Dar es Salaam is driven by an extractive logic. It is revealing that the most expensive construction projects in 2015, in order of importance, were the East African Railway, the new port development at Bagamoyo, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, the Djibouti–Ethiopia Railway and the Mombasa– Malaba Railway. The only straightforwardly extractive investment was a railway to transport potash in northern Ethiopia. In West Africa, the picture is more mixed. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has indicated that its priority is to promote ALCO, with a view to exploiting the possible agglomeration effects of Afri- ca’s most densely populated zone in a belt that stretches along the coastline from Lagos to Accra (World Bank 2009; OECD/SWAC 2017, 134–136). There are limited mineral resources along the coastal corridor, and the expectation is that most of the traffic will involve goods produced within the region, including manufactures and agricultural produce. At present, the most visible item of trade is Nigerian cement, which has found a ready market in Ghana. The expansion of the ports that are dotted along the coastline, notably at Abidjan, Tema, Lomé and Cotonou, is intended to facilitate access to the global market for the Sahelian countries. Burkina Faso depends on the road corridors through Ghana and Togo for many of its manufactured imports, whereas the mining industry makes use of the Abidjan– Ouagadougou railway. In 2014, when the existing management contract expired, the major stake in the operation of the railway was taken on by Pan- African Minerals, which announced plans to extend the line to its manganese mine in north-eastern Burkina Faso.4 In West Africa, some of the largest infrastructural investments involved extractive industries. Oil and gas projects, such as the Nigeria–Algeria pipeline project, accounted for five of the ten most expensive projects in the region in 2015. However, the Simandou iron-ore project in Guinea topped the list, while a bauxite/alumina project was

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Africa’s re-enchantment with big infrastructure 29 ranked fifth. The construction of a partially new rail link between Niamey (Niger) and Cotonou (Benin), which was assigned to Bolloré, is another example of the linkage between mining (in this case uranium) and railway investments in the Sahel, although work ground to a halt following a legal challenge in Benin in 2015. In West–Central Africa, the picture is different again. Here, the overall level of infrastructural investment has been considerably smaller, but it has certainly been pursued with a view to facilitating mineral exports. The Kribi– Edea railway, which is geared to the development of iron-ore and bauxite exports from Cameroon, was the largest project in the region in 2015. There has also been major investment in seaports, especially at Kribi. However, the many delays to the expansion of the port have meant that the transport corridor to neighbouring countries is poorly developed.5 In Southern Africa, which was the largest recipient of new investment by some margin, there has been a much greater focus on power generation, some of which serves the mining industry but is clearly also driven by rising consumer demand. By far the largest construction project in Southern Africa in 2015, at a cost of $22.5 billion, was the redevelopment of the port of Durban. Already the continent’s second-busiest port, Durban hopes to quadruple its capacity in the coming years. Part of the rationale is that the copper industries of Zambia and the DRC will continue to patronize the port, but it is also intended to cater to South Africa’s own requirements. Finally, there is much less evidence of an extractive logic at work in North Africa, which accounted for only around 10 per cent of all new investments. In 2015, the largest project was the Tangier–Casablanca high-speed rail project in Morocco, which is oriented towards passenger traffic. The other major investments were concerned with power generation of various kinds, including the development of the Nador West Port in Morocco, which is connected to plans for a thermal energy project. The other rationale behind this port development is that it will enable Morocco to bid for cargo traffic in the western Mediterranean.6 In general, therefore, we may conclude that infrastructural investments are only partially justified with reference to the requirements of the mining industry, whereas the more specific needs of the oil and gas sectors are often prioritized. In East Africa, the main transport corridors are intended to facilitate the flow of Asian manufactures and petroleum imports, and to increase regional trade. In West Africa, the case for ALCO has been advanced on the basis of developing the internal market, whereas the corridors that run from the ports to the Sahelian countries are intended to facilitate both the import of consumer goods and the export of minerals. In West–Central Africa and Southern Africa, mining logics play a more significant role. In North Africa, however, the extractive industries are confined to a handful of oil and gas projects. Given this highly variegated picture, it is clearly very difficult to generalize for the continent as a whole, but the overall picture is that ‘internal’ needs – for cheap electricity, faster travel and

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30 Paul Nugent cheaper consumer goods – are at least as important as ‘external’ drivers. In the context of less favourable international prices for minerals, one would expect the relative balance of investments to shift – as indeed it has in recent years –albeit without significant effect on the overall momentum behind infrastructural investments. China’s interests are not confined to the extractive industries, and one would expect its broader interest in infrastructure to continue for as long as it is able to sustain its own growth trajectory. As for the development banks, they exhibit an undiminished enthusiasm for investments in big infrastructure and this is unlikely to change any time soon. A retreat from big infrastructure would require a paradigm shift, and this is not currently on the horizon.

Infrastructure and state capacities When we consider the impact of all this investment upon state capacities, a fundamental distinction needs to be drawn between the ability of African governments to shape the developmental agenda and their capacity to complete administrative functions with a modicum of efficiency. A moment’s reflection would indicate that these are not necessarily congruent, because the assertion of (multi-)state ownership over the project for respacing Africa might well be associated with greater bureaucratic confusion. As far as the first criterion is concerned, it sometimes seems as if the agenda is being driven by external actors and that African governments simply tag along. But much as statist versions of development in the 1960s and 1970s were hegemonic, so current versions of development through ‘infrastructuring’ are based on a consensus that is shared by all the principal actors – ranging from the World Bank, to Bolloré, to African governments themselves. I have already indicated that the latter have manifested a high level of commitment by financing much of the infrastructure, but it is also noteworthy that these states have retained a considerable measure of control over the way in which infrastructure is rolled out and operationalized. An obvious place to start is with corridor management, which is a complex field because it necessarily involves government agencies across multiple countries as well as non-state agencies operating at the regional and national levels. The task of coordinating all of this complexity should not be underestimated. The corridors themselves are constituted in very different ways. The Walvis Bay Corridor Group, which is responsible for four transport corridors, has made a formal attempt to be inclusive. Its members include four Namibian ministries, the Road Authority, the Namibian Ports Authority (NAMPORT), the Walvis Bay municipality and six business, logistics and transport associations. Non-Namibian companies are permitted an associated status, which is indicative of the measure of control that the Namibian state prefers to retain.7 By contrast, ALCO was established by the five states along the corridor with the support of the World Bank and UNAIDS, and

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Africa’s re-enchantment with big infrastructure 31 with additional input from ECOWAS, UEMOA, USAID, the Global Fund and other international organizations.8 Unusually, AIDS and malaria pre- vention has shared the limelight with trade facilitation, which reflects some donor preferences. Importantly, ALCO remains an intergovernmental initiative, with no direct input from the private sector.9 It has, however, engaged with the West Africa Trade Hub, which was established as an initiative of USAID. Over several years, the Hub generated valuable field data on checkpoints and bribes demanded per kilometre along the corridors. Although USAID funding for this work has now ceased, the Borderless Alliance continues to provide a forum through which state agencies and private businesses can work together to minimize transport delays. In East Africa, the pattern is somewhat similar. The Northern Corridor Transit and Transport Coordination Authority (NCTTA) is operated by the Ministries of Transport in the member countries. The input of the private sector is confined to a Stakeholders Forum that convenes from time to time.10 However, TradeMark East Africa (TMEA), a non-profit organization, has served as the conduit for much of the donor funding that has gone into the construction of roads and one-stop border posts (OSBPs). TMEA has been closely involved in upgrading computer systems for Customs and promoting trade facilitation. It also acts as something of a lobbyist for the private sector, promoting the interests of corporate actors and small-scale traders alike.11 The overall pattern, therefore, is one in which state agencies have remained in control, but have looked for common ground with non-state actors that have stakes in trade and transport. International corporations are playing a critical role in the construction of port facilities, but African governments have resisted any move towards wholesale privatization. At Walvis Bay, a decision was taken to upgrade the existing port with a large tranche of funding from the AfDB, but without any private sector involvement. The solid governance record of the Namibian state, and the relative efficiency of the port, made the AfDB more than usually accommodating (African Development Bank 2013). In this way, the Walvis Bay port was retained firmly within the public domain, although the actual construction was put out to tender. In most cases, governments have established port authorities (PAs) that are granted a high degree of autonomy and maintain overall regulatory oversight. It is customary to dis- tinguish between three models of port management: namely, landlord ports, in which the infrastructure (berths, docks and roads) is owned and operated by the PA, while the superstructure (cranes, sheds and so on) is owned by private operators; tool ports, in which private companies manage the infrastructure and superstructure on behalf of the PA; and service ports, in which the PAs remain fully in control of operations (Trujillo and Nombela 1999, 11–12). In a survey of trends up to 2010, the AfDB indicated that the landlord model found little favour, and was confined to Ghana and Nigeria. Versions of the service port were very common across Africa, but with concessions often granted to private companies to manage part of the operations (African

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32 Paul Nugent Development Bank 2010, 82–85). In that way, the PAs managed to retain ownership of the hard infrastructure. In recent years, new container terminals have been leased as concessions to corporate giants such as Dubai Port World (DPW) and Bolloré.12 However, governments have also driven hard bargains. A case in point is the port of Djibouti, which granted the concession for a new container terminal to DPW before revoking it in 2014.13 In Tema, a hybrid configuration is unfolding. The current expansion project entails the investment of $1.5 billion to construct a port that will be equipped to handle container ships that are three times the size of those currently using the facilities.14 The container port is operated by Meridian Port Services (MPS), a joint venture between the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) and Meridian Port Holdings, in which APM Terminals (part of the Maersk group) and Bolloré are the main shareholders. Therefore, the GPHA has not relinquished control; rather, it has sought to remain fully embedded in port management. The AfDB attributes governments’ reluctance fully to privatize port operations to their desire to use the income from the ports to cross-subsidize other sectors (African Development Bank 2010, 84). But there is another consideration: namely, in the context of regional integration, Customs revenues are attributed to the country of final destination for imports. This comes at the expense of the countries that own the ports. In Ghana, a representative of a major international organization confided that while the incoming Kufuor government loudly trumpeted its plans to improve operations at Tema, the assumption is that the port’s principal purpose is to generate revenue. In his view, Tema is, to all intents and purposes, a tool port, subordinating operational efficiency to the revenue imperative.15 In many countries, ownership is a politically charged issue that ties the hands of government. In Kenya, rumours that the authorities planned to privatize the port of Mombasa caused an uproar that led to a hasty retreat in 2012. The government subsequently announced that a newly built second container terminal would be operated by a private company after a competitive tendering process. In 2016, the tendering was itself suspended following legal challenges and claims of questionable dealing, as a result of which the Kenya Ports Authority assumed direct control of the terminal.16 In contrast with the ports, governments exhibit less sensitivity about railways, many of which are being constructed and upgraded with external financing and operated by private companies. Governments seem to view more efficient railways as crucial elements in improving trade flows rather than milch-cows in their own right. Roads are different again in that there is an increasing tendency for construction and maintenance to be contracted out to private companies that assume responsibility for particular sections. Although there is a proliferation of tollbooths along the transport corridors, such as ALCO, these do not, in themselves, generate any financial rewards for the state, which can therefore afford to be more sanguine about hiving off de facto control.

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Africa’s re-enchantment with big infrastructure 33 Finally, although Customs ostensibly has little to do with big infrastructure, physical enlargement of the seaports and the construction of OSBPs are closely associated with upgrades to information systems and the respacing of Customs work with donor support. Customs reforms are part of a global trend, and reflect the fact that almost all African countries are members of the World Customs Organization (WCO) and have either already joined, or are in the process of entering, the World Trade Organi- zation (WTO). This, in itself, presupposes compliance with international norms and procedures. Whereas most countries have historically been characterized by rather limited integration between government agencies, the shift towards variants of single window means that it is possible for various agencies within a single country to access the same computer records. This is being strongly driven by an integrated border management (IBM) agenda (Siva 2011), but it has implications for other branches of the bureaucracy (Nugent 2016). At the same time, IBM is supposed to facilitate the sharing of data across borders, which is a challenge because of language differences and entrenched institutional cultures. As many countries have migrated to versions of the ASYCUDA (Automated System for Customs Data) Customs system, which is championed by UNCTAD, revenue authorities are increasingly able to access one another’s entries (Cantens et al. 2010). For imports transiting through Mombasa, a single Customs entry is made in the country of final destination, which may be Rwanda or Uganda. Along with the rolling out of an electronic cargo tracking system (ECTS) in 2017, this circumvents the need for physical inspection of transit goods and thereby contributes to an overall reduction in delays. This is also a domain in which states are actively seeking to reclaim the agenda. In a number of countries, aspects of Customs work – most notably valuation and inspection – were initially subcontracted to international companies in the name of greater efficiency (Chalfin 2010, 107–108, 171– 184). At the same time, Customs departments in many countries were restructured and folded into semi-autonomous revenue authorities (RAs). There were fourteen of these RAs in 2009, mostly of them in Anglophone countries, with more expected to follow (Fjeldstadt and Moore 2009, 2). A recent trend has been for RAs to claw back control of valuation from private companies and to centralize their activities in the capital city. This restructuring was implemented in both Uganda and Ghana in 2017.17 The centralization of Customs operations conforms to a larger pattern in which states seek to remain in the driving seat. Given that RAs furnish the revenues that enable the rest of the state to function, this has the potential to give them a much greater voice within the state bureaucracy. This, in turn, has implications for the extractive industries, given a context in which there is much debate about whether mining companies are paying their way. This brings us to the second question of whether the infrastructural big push is helping to enhance the administrative performance of African states.

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34 Paul Nugent One critique of ‘neoliberal governance’ reforms is that they risk creating islands of effectiveness amidst large swathes of institutional incoherence. Here I will confine myself to a consideration of performance along the transport corridors and the implications for the extractive industries. The re- enchantment with railways is relatively recent, and as yet there is insufficient evidence to judge whether there has been a significant improvement – although, given the decrepit state of the existing networks, one would expect fresh investments to bring rapid returns. I will therefore focus on long-dis- tance trucking routes and seaports. In each case, a great deal of donor effort has gone into calibrating the effects of infrastructural improvements on transit times – and hence on transport costs. The data that is freely available presents a mixed picture. The condition of the roads along any corridor clearly affects journey times, but one of the greatest impediments has been the quality of the border crossings, where literally creaking infrastructure (degraded roads and bridges) and duplicated border formalities have led to lengthy delays along the main trucking routes. A case in point is the section of corridor between the Congolese/Zambian Copperbelt and the port of Durban. The crossing from the DRC to Zambia at Kasumbalesa is notoriously slow, and it has been repeatedly blockaded by drivers protesting against chronic insecurity. There have also been acute delays at Chirundu on the Zambia/Zimbabwe border and at the Beit Bridge crossing between Zimbabwe and South Africa. According to one estimate, a third of the total transport time along the corridor was spent waiting at the border crossings (Curtis 2009, xv). In an effort to address this serious problem, the governments of Zimbabwe and Zambia decided to construct an OSBP at Chirundu, an initiative that was subsequently adopted by COMESA. The OSBP, which was the first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa, became partly operational in 2007 and was formally opened in 2009. At that point, it took a vehicle thirty-nine hours to transit northbound and fourteen hours to move southbound through Chirundu (Curtis 2009, 20). At Beit Bridge, the equivalent delays were thirty-four and eleven hours, respectively. Assessments indicated that some of the most stubborn challenges related to coordinating the activities of around twenty government agencies on the two sides of the border, sharing Customs information and persuading officials that greater efficiency was in their best interests (OECD/WTO 2011, 7–8). After several years, the flow of traffic through Chirundu improved, with copper accounting for most of the southbound traffic. However, in 2017, there were reports of vehicles stran- ded at Chirundu for days amidst allegations of corruption and bureaucratic obstacles. In West Africa, a series of OSBPs has been constructed along ALCO, but they are standing empty because officials on either side have not been able to agree on the modalities for opening them. There have been some improvements to crossing times since 2014, but from a very low base: for example, the average time for a truck crossing from Kraké in Benin to Seme in Nigeria fell from sixty-three to twenty-seven hours between 2014

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Africa’s re-enchantment with big infrastructure 35 and 2016 (ALCO 2016). As in Chirundu, border officials who have not bought into the official rhetoric on the advantages of the frictionless border have found ways to slow down the system. The greatest successes have been chalked up in East Africa, along the Northern and Central Corridors, which, as I have indicated, are of marginal significance to the extractive industries. The lessons here are that the involvement of external actors in the design of OSBPs may facilitate coordination between state agencies. TMEA has been involved in the construction of thirteen OSBPs, ten of which are now complete. The landlocked states of Rwanda and Uganda have displayed particular interest in creating purpose- built facilities and rendering clearance procedures as smooth as possible, whereas in Kenya there has been much greater institutional competition and bureaucratic inertia. Along the Northern Corridor, the Malaba and Busia OSBPs are operational on a twenty-four-hour basis, but the inherited infrastructure and institutional communications on the Kenyan side are notice- ably less conducive to making rapid strides. Where the OSBPs have become fully operational, the results have been significant. At Busia, the long queues of trucks that were apparent in 2014 had largely disappeared by 2017. In 2011, the average crossing time at Busia was 14.3 hours, but this had been reduced to just 3.6 hours by 2017 (Soi and Nugent 2017, 546–547). An even more dramatic improvement was recorded at the Mutukula OSBP on the Uganda/Tanzania border, which was formally opened by the two countries’ presidents in November 2017. At the ports, the picture is somewhat similar. Many of the PAs have been accused of chronic inefficiency and everyday corruption, and they have come under government pressure to boost their performance. These days, most PAs post online statistics on volumes of cargo handled and waiting times, so progress may be monitored and port trajectories compared. A number of ports have produced evidence to back up their claims of improved performance. The website of the port of Djibouti, for example, claims an increase in container traffic from 424.9 thousand TEUs in 2010 to 910.2 thousand TEUs in 2015. Over the same period, it reported that non- containerized traffic almost doubled.18 The port of Mombasa similarly claims a substantial increase in container traffic – from 770.8 thousand TEUs in 2011 to 1.1 million TEUs in 2015.19 While the advocates of state withdrawal from port management maintain that the current arrangements remain sub-optimal, the evidence of incremental improvement means it is easier to make the case for continued public control. Clearly, though, qualitative shifts in the performance of seaports and OSBPs alike will depend on transforming institutional cultures – and this still has some way to go. While the RAs have seen some significant changes in the way staff relate to their work in a country like Uganda or Ghana, it is the most laggardly agency that typically dictates the pace at the ports and the OSBPs. Moreover, the experience of many of the OSBPs is that better flows at the border crossings are often accompanied by a proliferation of informal checkpoints – erected

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36 Paul Nugent by the police and a range of other state agents – along other sections of the corridors. This has the effect of simply transplanting the transport delays to different locations. Finally, it should be mentioned that there is a risk of African countries overreaching themselves at a time when the global economic environment is no longer particularly favourable. Although regional integration initiatives are proceeding apace, it is difficult to point to a coordinated regional strategy when it comes to big infrastructure. On a more modest scale than in South- East Asia, but following a similar zero-sum logic, governments seek to entice trade to their ports to the detriment of their neighbours (Fau 2014, 58–63). Some irony resides in the fact that, while the coastal states are making the greatest investments, the landlocked countries are incurring fewer risks and reaping more of the benefits as a consequence. On the one hand, as part of the creation of free-trade zones and the imposition of a Common External Tariff (CET), the poorer landlocked countries receive manufactured goods at lower costs as well as Customs revenue on imported goods. On the other hand, the competitive investment in ports and railways enables them to shop around for the best deals, potentially leaving the littoral states high and dry. As I have indicated, most of the copper from Zambia and southern DRC travels to the seaports by road. The expansion of the port of Durban is intended to consolidate the niche that it has carved for itself. However, at the same time, the bridging of the Zambezi River and the promotion of the Walvis Bay–Ndola–Lubumbashi Development Corridor, as it is now called, is intended to provide an alternative outlet to the sea. The governments of Zambia, the DRC and Namibia have formally committed themselves to promoting this corridor as a conduit for materials used in mining and for the export of copper.20 Yet, the Congolese authorities have also been recep- tive to plans to develop the Angolan port of Lobito as an alternative outlet for their exports. Therefore, three expensive port developments are pinning their hopes on assumptions about the direction that copper exports will take in the future. Similarly, the ports of Abidjan, Tema, Lomé and Cotonou are formally partners in ALCO, but they stand in a competitive relationship with respect to the transit trade with the landlocked countries of the Sahel. Another striking example is LAPSSET (the Lamu Port–South Sudan– Ethiopia Transport Corridor), which Kenya has been aggressively promoting. It is supposed to cater to the landlocked countries of Uganda, South Sudan and Ethiopia and to promote development in the poorest parts of northern Kenya by means of rail, road, air and fibre-optic-cable links. The centrepiece is a new port at Lamu that a Chinese company is constructing. However, Ethiopia has already chosen to prioritize a new rail link to the port of Djibouti, possibly because it is less susceptible to terrorist attacks by al- Shabaab. To compound matters, the projected oil pipeline from northern Uganda to Lamu has been abandoned in favour of a route to the port of Tanga in Tanzania. With the latter country also planning to open a new port at Bagamoyo, Kenya’s heavy investment in seaports suddenly seems to

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Africa’s re-enchantment with big infrastructure 37 be a dangerous gamble. The downstream consequences of overreach are apparent when one recalls that African governments channel many of their scarce resources into infrastructural development. Indeed, one recent study suggests that African governments fund as much as 65 per cent of infrastructural expenditure from the general budget (Guttman et al.2015, 3). This inevitably means that resources are diverted away from competing priorities, such as urban water supply and power generation, which may be more pressing needs. Kribi has often looked like turning into a white ele- phant, although it will probably come to fruition – albeit at great expense and long behind schedule – because of its strategic importance to neighbouring countries. However, the portofLamuseemsunlikelyevertopay its way, and many other infrastructural investments may go the same way in the future.

Conclusions In this chapter, I have addressed two fundamental issues concerning infrastructural investment in Africa. First, I have mapped the changing patterns as well as the principal actors, with a view to assessing how far the needs of the extractive industries are driving and shaping investment flows. It is striking that investments in big infrastructure – especially in seaports and railways – are back in vogue amongst donors, investors and African governments alike. One significant finding is that African governments finance much of the infrastructure both directly and through loans. Another is that, whereas the oil and gas sector has tended to benefit from investments in pipelines across the regions, the ability of mining to shape infrastructural provision has varied considerably. Some transport corridors, most notably in East Africa and coastal West Africa, are geared towards facilitating the flow of imported and domestically produced commodities rather than easing the export of minerals. It is really only in Southern Africa and parts of West Africa that infrastructural investments are driven by mining logic. Second, I have weighed up the implications of the infrastructural ‘big push’ for the ability of African governments to shape the agenda and for the capacity of bureaucracies to undertake their (partially reconfigured) functions. African governments have retained a surprising degree of control over the process, as is reflected in the stubborn persistence of PAs and public management of the transport corridors. Through a closer examination of OSBPs and seaports, I have concluded that the record of bureaucratic implementation remains patchy. Although performance indicators mostly point to demonstrable improvements, the patterns are highly uneven, especially with respect to OSBPs. The results have been encouraging where there has been significant harmonization of information systems and procedures, and where a range of state agencies has displayed commitment to the process of reform. East Africa is forging ahead by comparison with the other regions. However, across much of the continent, the big infrastructure is still

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38 Paul Nugent waiting for the rest of the institutional bandwagon to catch up. Be that as it may, I have found little evidence to support the claim that ‘infrastructuring’ has contributed to greater institutional coherence, even though a bewildering array of actors is now involved. Finally, I have concluded this chapter on a cautionary note. Precisely because infrastructural investments are not driven by a purely extractive logic, they are more likely to proceed apace irrespective of lower commodity prices. But herein lies a danger that African countries will overreach themselves and be saddled with a series of white elephants that will be held under state ownership. It would be profoundly ironic if history endeduprepeatingitself.

Notes 1 The research for this chapter was facilitated by a European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant for the project entitled ‘African Governance and Space: Transport Corridors, Border Towns and Port Cities in Transition’ (AFRIGOS; ADG-2014–670851), of which I am the principal investigator. I would like to thank Isabella Soi and the editors for their comments on the draft and Hugh Lamarque, Jose-Maria Muñoz, Sidy Cissokho and Wolfgang Zeller for their insights on specific points. I am very grateful to Michael Ojatum of Trade- Mark East Africa for granting me access to performance data on one-stop border posts. 2 For a graph that plots the shift in World Bank investments in transport infrastructure, see http://projects.worldbank.org/search?lang=en&searchTerm=infrastructure, accessed 28 December 2017. 3 This is an aspect that Wolfgang Zeller has been considering as part of the AFRIGOS project. 4 See www.reuters.com/article/ivorycoast-burkina-railway/burkina-ivory-coast- hand-control-of-railway-to-mining-firm-pm-idUSL5N0L70J720140204, accessed 28 December 2017. 5 I am grateful to Jose-Maria Muñoz for his insights into the reasons why progress at Kribi has been so slow. 6 See www.afdb.org/fileadmin/uploads/afdb/Documents/Environmental-and-Socia l-Assessments/Maroc_-_Projet_de_construction_du_complexe_portuaire_Nador_ West_Med_%E2%80%93_PCR_-_OITC_%E2%80%93_03_2015.pdf, accessed 28 December 2017. 7 See www.wbcg.com.na/members/our-members.html, accessed 28 December 2017. 8 See www.corridor-sida.org/?Institutional-arrangement, accessed 28 December 2017. 9 Interview with Edy K. Anthony, Abidjan–Lagos Corridor Group, Cotonou, 21 August 2017. 10 See www.ttcanc.org/page.php?id=16, accessed 28 December 2017. 11 See www.trademarkea.com/who-we-are/our-organisation/, accessed 28 December 2017. 12 DPW, based in the Emirates but a truly global operator, took over a concession for the existing container terminal in Dakar in 2007. It also held the concession at Djibouti port between 2000 and 2011, when the arrangement was terminated, as well as concessions in Algiers and Maputo. Bolloré holds a concession at Douala and leads a consortium for a terminal at Kribi, which is not yet operational. Other significant players are AP Møller (for Walvis Bay, Luanda, Lagos and

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Africa’s re-enchantment with big infrastructure 39 Tema) and Hutchison (for Dar es Salaam). Bolloré is involved at some level in the management of all the major port developments in West Africa. 13 DPW claims to operate more than sixty terminals on six continents. It has taken the Djibouti government to court over this issue. 14 See www.maersk.com/en/the-maersk-group/about-us/publications/group-annual- magazine/2015/west-africas-next-generation-ports, accessed 28 December 2017. 15 Interview with a representative of international organization (name withheld), Accra, 28 August 2017. 16 I am grateful to Hugh Lamarque for pointing me towards press coverage of this aﬀair. 17 These observations are based on ﬁeldwork in Ghana in August 2017 and Uganda (with Isabella Soi) in October 2017. 18 See www.portdedjibouti.com/statistics/, accessed 28 December 2017. 19 See www.kpa.co.ke/InforCenter/Performance%20Reports/KPA%20Annual% 20Report%202015%20(without%20photos).pdf, accessed 28 December 2017. 20 See www.wbcg.com.na/news-info/news/detail//developing-the-walvis-bay-ndola- lubumbashi-development-corridor/home-page.html, accessed 28 December 2017.

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40 Paul Nugent Hoyle, B.S. and D. Hilling, eds. 1970. Seaports and Development in Tropical Africa. London: Macmillan. Infrastructure Consortium for Africa. 2014. Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – 2013. Tunis: ICA. Infrastructure Consortium for Africa. 2016. Infrastructure Financing Trends in Africa – 2015. Tunis: ICA. Killick, T. 1978. Development Economics in Action: A Study of Economic Policies in Ghana. London: Heinemann. Nugent, P. 2016. ‘The Future of States in Africa: Prospects for the Ordering of Space and the Remaking of Bureaucracies’, Comparativ 26(2), 75–91. OECD/SWAC. 2017. Cross-border Co-operation and Policy Networks in West Africa. Paris: OECD. OECD/WTO. 2011. Aid for Trade Case Story on Chirundu One-stop Border Post. Paris: OECD/WTO. Raballand, G. and A. Whitworth. 2014. Transport Policy. In C. Adam, P. Collier and M. Gondwe, eds, Zambia: Building Prosperity from Resource Wealth. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Siva, R. 2011. Developing a National Single Window: Implementation Issues and Considerations. In G. McLinen, E. Fanta, D. Widdowson and T. Doyle, eds, Border Management Modernization. Washington, DC: World Bank. Söderbaum, F. and I. Taylor, eds. 2008. Afro-regions: The Dynamics of Cross-border Micro-regionalism in Africa. Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Soi, I. and P. Nugent. 2017. ‘Peripheral Urbanism in Africa: Border Towns and Twin Towns in Africa’, Journal of Borderlands Studies 32(4), 535–556. Trujillo, L. and G. Nombela. 1999. Privatization and Regulation of the Seaport Industry. Policy Research Working Paper No. 2181. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank. 1981. Accelerated Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Agenda for Action [Berg Report]. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank. 2009. World Development Report 2009: Reshaping Economic Geography. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank. 2014. Building Integrated Markets within the East African Community: EAC Opportunities in Private–Public Partnership Approaches to the Region’s Infrastructure Needs.Washington,DC:WorldBank.

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12 How African Youth Control Their Identities Through Social Media Stephen Ekema-Agbaw and Vivian Yenika-Agbaw

INTRODUCTION

Since the inception of Facebook in 2004, social media has revolutionized the way people communicate and interact with each other worldwide. Other social media sites, such as Twitter and Tumblr, have added to and furthered the social media revolution, the results of which aff ect almost every aspect of our social lives. As of October 2012, Facebook had approximately one billion active users. Twitter too boasts ﬁ ve hundred million active users and continues to grow. There is hardly a business, university, club, political group or any other organization with even a hint of Internet presence that does not have an employee or department designated to handle its social media eff orts. Social media has become a global enterprise, and, as a result, it aff ords its users a host of new opportunities. One such opportunity is the ability to communicate with millions of people with the simple click of a mouse or tap of a smart phone. However, beyond just what people say, social media allows people to communicate who they are and what they like; it allows people to control what the world sees of them. This new freedom of communication is most liberating in the continent of Africa. Most of the Western world (the United States and western Europe) knows little about the people of Africa, and the little that it does know is limited to stereotypes and exaggerations. Africans have never had an opportunity to tell their story to the world, and instead have always had it told for them. However, with the advent of social media, a change is already taking place, and young Africa is at the forefront. African youth, through the power of social media, are beginning to take control of their global identity. The ability of users to control their brand or identity is not the primary aim of social media; rather, it is one of its many logical outpour- ings. Instead, social media has become a reﬂ ection of the dominant culture, to which African youth bring a unique reality. Moreover, whereas social media is a critical platform for African youth to dispel the negative stereotypes attached to them, their participation in it still belies a Western

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How African Youth Control Their Identities Through Social Media 185 infl uence, undercutting the true level of control African youth might claim to have over their identities. Ultimately, regardless of who is in control and how much control that person has, social media allows African youth to show the world that they are no diff erent from other youth worldwide. In addition, social media enable African youth to tell their own stories in their own unique voices. Through these stories, viewers/readers get a peek at their world that is often layered and/or enmeshed with complex ideas of “Africanness” and globalization that are laced with their multiple ethnic, colonial, postcolonial, social-class, gender, sexual and global cultural identities. We posit further that these identities manifest the confl icted nature of their cultural histories, whereby on the one hand, they seem to be in control of the images of themselves and their people they construct, but on the other hand, they do seem to perpetuate popular stereotypes about Africa and blacks, stereotypical images that seem pervasive in movies and other media. Our analysis is based on more than fi fty public Facebook and Twitter profi les researched between May and November 2012. No data were used from sites of subjects with whom we are friends or acquaintances. We begin our discussion with a basic overview of narrative theory, situating social media as a form of narrative that warrants a study.

NARRATIVE THEORY

Contrary to popular belief, narratives are no longer limited just to print and/or fi ction. They can also be nonfi ction texts that appear in various forms and through diff erent genres. To David Herman (2009), “Stories are accounts of what happened to particular people—and of what it was like for them to experience what happened—in particular circumstances and with specifi c consequences. Narrative, in other words, is a basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process, and change” (2). These stories are circulated through diff erent forms of media, depending on the author’s purpose, the audience and the kind of story being told. In this digital age, oftentimes they are constructed using multiple sign systems and through multiple modes. This way, anyone can become an author, weav- ing versions of his or her autobiographical narratives for private and/or public consumption. In so doing, they participate in constructing their own identities—who they believe they are at that point in time and given what they may be experiencing. Within the social media realm, one would then expect that these youth in a sense have a subculture as Africans who happen to have access to mobile phones, the Internet and other digital modes through with they can tell their own stories. “Subculture today,” Patrick Williams (2011) notes, “are more often characterized by either perpetuating non-normativity or by temporari- ness and liminality by perpetuated marginalization” (5). In this chapter, we

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186 Stephen Ekema-Agbaw and Vivian Yenika-Agbaw are not looking at subculture as a deviancy; rather we see it as agency that allows African youth to make deliberate choices regarding narratives—images and/or texts to construct their identities through social media. Furthermore, as Williams (2011) professes, “How we dress and talk, the kind of lifestyle we have, where we come from, and where we are going . . . these things are tied up in the notion of identity, which itself is part of one’s self-conception” (26). Because we did not interview any of the subjects under this study (because we are dealing with random sampling), our analysis of their constructions of “self,” “Africanness” and “blackness” is focused more on what they post/ write on their Facebook pages or tweet about themselves.

SOCIAL MEDIA AS A REFLECTION OF MAINSTREAM CULTURE

Understanding the culture of social media is necessary to understand how African youth control their identities through this medium. The best way to understand social media is as a refl ection of the dominant culture. Social media is replete with its own form of communication and patterns of behavior, which all derive from the dominant culture. Analyzing social media provides us with a representative sample of how society generally communicates. Communication on social media is infl uenced by how language is used in the “real world” as well as the constraints of the social media platform. Twitter is a prime example of this. Twitter is a social media platform that only allows its users to post tweets (online text messages) of 140 characters or less. Tweets may be directed to another Twitter user but are usually just random thoughts or musings of the tweeter at that time. Given the 140-character restriction, tweeters are forced to come up with creative ways to convey complex thoughts that would otherwise exceed the word limit. As a result, tweeters often use some form of broken or abbreviated English (or other language, depending on the native tongue of the tweeter) to convey longer thoughts. Here, although the broken English is the result of complex thoughts being funneled through a word- restricted medium, it is still a refl ection of communication that exists in the real world, most notably slang. Aside from the 140-character constraint, one of the more unique communicative features on twitter is the hash tag. Twitter created the hash tag as a way to group tweets with a common topic. For example, if a number of tweeters wanted to comment on the Super Bowl, they would write their tweets and then end them with #Super- Bowl2012 or #SuperBowl, “#” being the so-called hash tag on Twitter. By doing this, tweeters can stay abreast of the conversation on the Super Bowl or any other topic as well add to the conversation. The hash tag is Twit- ter’s way of facilitating group discussion. Twitter conversations using the hash tag refl ect the millions of smaller conversations that people have in their real lives. By using the hash tag, Twitter may gather information on

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How African Youth Control Their Identities Through Social Media 187 everything its users are talking about and create a list of trending topics for all of Twitter to see. Although this use of the hash tag started on Twitter, it has since transcended the platform and now pervades all of social media. Furthermore, the hash tag has also evolved in how it is used. Now, instead of just linking conversational threads, it is also used to add emphasis or to make the point that the post it follows failed to make. For example, a post on Facebook may say something like, “just got a free coke from the vending machine #winning.” The hash tag in this message is not meant to link to other conversations about winning; instead, it is simply intended to show that the user is having a good day or is pleased with her good fortune. This is the communicative value of the hash tag, and the fact that it can be added to any word or phrase is what makes it so powerful. Beyond just communication, however, social media also refl ects the dominant culture through its users’ online behavior. Online behavior assesses such factors as what users are talking about, what things they like, what music they are listening to and so on. Moreover, like the use of language on social media, how people behave online is infl uenced by what they are experiencing and how they behave in the “real world.” Prior to the boom of social media, when a newsworthy event took place, most people heard about it via television, radio or newspaper. Now events go public much faster through social media outlets. This is because people talk about what they are doing, online. From the mundane to the amazing, social media refl ects the behavior of its users, because its users reveal their behavior through words, pictures or other media formats. An undecided voter using Facebook to comment on a political debate between candidates or a sports fan tweeting a picture of herself and her friends at a UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) event are examples of events that users experienced outside social media but shared with the world through social media. Social media refl ects mainstream culture. When this act of sharing is multiplied by its millions of users, Twitter can catalog its worldwide or region-specifi c trending topics and Facebook can place targeted ads on its users’ pages. Social media is no longer a new concept; it is, instead, now an evolving one, with seemingly unlimited potential. Regardless of what other innovations stem from social media and what else it is able to become, social media is at its core a tool for connecting people. For African youth, most of whom have limited access to the world beyond their individual countries, social media is critical for self-expression and telling their story to the world.

AFRICAN YOUTH BRING A UNIQUE REALITY TO SOCIAL MEDIA

When we discuss African youth, we are talking about the young adult demographic of Africa—speciﬁ cally, young men and women ages eighteen to twenty-nine. As a group, African youth bring a reality to social media

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188 Stephen Ekema-Agbaw and Vivian Yenika-Agbaw that is hardly seen by the rest of the world. This reality is shaped by their everyday experiences. During May–July 2012, Stephen had the opportunity to do research in Cameroon on women’s rights. However, outside his research, he also had an opportunity to integrate himself in the youth culture to see what life was like for them day-to-day. Much of his understanding of the lives of African youth has come from the experiences we had in Cameroon, which have allowed him to more accurately assess the reality that they bring to social media. The everyday reality of African youth is something he terms a “hustler’s culture.” This “hustler’s culture” arises from a dilemma facing African youth. On the one hand, African youth are at a stage in their lives where they greatly need their independence; they are young adults who are ready to leave or are just leaving home for the fi rst time. On the other hand, Afri- can youth have incredibly limited resources aff orded to them—specifi cally, money. These youth are forced to get by day-to-day on remarkably limited budgets. Moreover, because of the struggling economies of most African countries, job prospects are poor for most youth, and they are unable to turn to their parents for help, because they too are struggling under the diffi cult economic circumstances. This is the primary dilemma facing African youth culture, and, as a result, money quite literally permeates every decision throughout their day. The result of this dilemma is the rise of a “hustler’s mentality” among African youth. In any action or exchange in which money is involved, there is always a barter that takes place and a bargain to be had. African youth are remarkably savvy in how they are able to stretch their money as well as make money. This concept of a “hustler’s culture” is not meant to assign a solely nefari- ous quality to African youth; instead, it is meant to refl ect how important money is to them. In addition to their ideas of making fast money and looking for ways to avoid paying bills, school is another big part of the reality of African youth because of how important school is for future job prospects. The real goal for African youth coming out of school is to obtain employment with the government. The vast majority of African youth are well aware of just how corrupt their governments are, and they feel powerless to stop the system. Yet they see the money that government offi cials have and want that for themselves. The desire for money motivates them to seek government employment, which is impossible without an education, and the pursuit of government employment is what makes school important. Beyond their poor economic reality and struggle for independence, Afri- can youth have a nascent relationship with the Internet and social media. Their reality with this medium is based on the diffi culty of getting access to the Internet and the poor quality of the connection. In Africa, Internet access is slow and limited. Very few private residences have Internet access in Africa, and, even for those that do, Internet use is generally infrequent

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How African Youth Control Their Identities Through Social Media 189 at best. The Internet is simply not a big part of the lives of African youth because of how diffi cult it still is to access. Nevertheless, millions of Afri- can youth share their reality on social media regularly. African youth bring a unique reality to social media. Through their online profi les and behavior, they show the same “hustler’s mentality” that is present in their lives offl ine by hiding their economic conditions while exaggerating their independence. Based on their profi les, African youth convey a sense of freedom that is antithetical to their reality offl ine. More- over, even more amazing is that these youth have an understanding of the “good life” or the “nicer things in life,” as their profi les tend to show off their most glamorous activities and their most in-style items. What is most unique about the reality that African youth bring to social media is that they exhibit fi rst-world materialism while stuck in a third-world reality.

SOCIAL MEDIA ALLOWS AFRICAN YOUTH TO COUNTER THE NEGATIVE NARRATIVES ATTACHED TO THEM

The reality that African youth bring to social media fl ies in the face of the prevailing narrative and stereotypes about African youth that are held by many in the Western world. The average American sees Africans as poor, uncivilized, dumb and perpetually destitute. Furthermore, Western media likes to portray Africans as backward people who walk around naked and are constantly in need of aid and assistance. Whereas some of these traits are true for some Africans, they do not tell the full story. Many Africans live in luxury within their home countries, and many have known nothing but wealth and opulence their entire lives. This reality does not fi t the West- ern world’s narrative when it comes to Africa, so it is often left out. Social media, however, changes all this, because it allows the individual to control his or her own identity. Prior to social media, the news media was the only outlet for information concerning Africans, and it largely told the same stereotyped story about them. Now, pictures on Facebook and tweets on Twitter are slowly poking holes in the news media’s narrative. This is not necessarily a conscious undertaking by African youth; instead, it is one of the many hidden benefi ts of the social media platform. Because African youth can so easily show the world what is actually occurring in their lives, outside observers are now able to compare what they see through social media versus what they see through news media. The ability to compare social media’s narrative to that of the news media itself cuts down the perpetuated stereotypes of African youth. This is because, even if what people see of African youth on Facebook or Twitter is consistent with the stereotypes, there is a cognitive dissonance in trying to comprehend how poor African youth have access to a form of technology like Facebook. This cognitive dissonance makes it very diffi cult for

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190 Stephen Ekema-Agbaw and Vivian Yenika-Agbaw observers to be completely swayed by the stereotype-laden narrative used to describe African youth. This problem is exacerbated when the social media entries by African youth run completely counter to the perpetuated stereotypes. Moreover, because entries on social media come directly from the source, they can be observed free of any negative spin. This allows observers to make up their own minds about African youth rather than having a narrative forced upon them. African youth take part in undercutting these stereotypes by simply showing the world who they really are. Moreover, despite being aware that the rest of the world looks down on them, there is no concerted eff ort by African youth as a whole to combat the stereotypes against them. Instead, individual African youth take to social media to defi ne their identities for themselves. This collection of African youth taking to social media to defi ne their identities creates the narrative that counters the stereotypes against African youth. Despite this narrative, African youth are not a monolithic group with uniform thoughts and feelings; they are a diverse group, as diverse as any other group of youth in the world. Some African youth look to take part in the pop/mainstream culture of their countries and regions. They show this by displaying pictures of their favorite celebrities and playing music of their favorite artists on their Facebook pages. Therefore they are very capable of exhibiting materialism and celebrity worship similar to that of youth in the Western world. Other African youth choose to show their more religious sides by tweeting Bible verses or other pieces of holy scripture. I observed a multitude of social media profi les of African youth, and key in all of them was how the youth shape their identities in a way that is divorced from their economic conditions. More importantly, however, is the fact that their profi les do not look any diff erent from the profi les of my friends on Facebook and Twitter. This is a clear example of how social media allows African youth to counter the negative stereotypes against them. Even as African youth use social media to control their identities and combat the stereotypes levied against them, there is an underlying question of who is really controlling whom, as use of social media belies an inherent Western infl uence. An analysis of the images, tweets, music and so forth that African youth post on social media makes clear that they are very much infl uenced by American and European pop culture. So, even as African youth proclaim their independence and importance to the world, the same culture that puts forth the negative stereotypes about them still exercises some level of control over how African youth are portrayed to the rest of the world. Western culture infl uences African youth through its celebrities and pop culture. Looking through Facebook profi les of various African youth, it is quite common to see several famous American movie stars and musicians among their “liked” fan pages. Beyond just celebrities, however, African youth like to portray themselves wearing popular American fashion trends.

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How African Youth Control Their Identities Through Social Media 191 Such clothing items as skinny jeans and high stiletto heels can be seen in the proﬁ le pictures of many young African women who are trying to embody Western ideals of beauty. Ultimately, African youth are simply trying to exemplify the celebrities they see on TV and are unaware of how the images they see of Western culture inﬂ uence and control their thinking. So it is true that African youth express their individuality on social media through the clothes they wear and the music they like, but it is also true that some level of this individuality has been manufactured in the Western world.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND AFRICAN YOUTH: IDENTITIES CONSTRUCTED/RECONSTRUCTED?

“The events represented in narrative are such that they introduce some sort of disruption or disequilibrium into a storyworld involving human or human- like agents whether that world is presented as actual or factual, realistic or fantastic, remembered or dreamed, etc.” (Herman 105). This is what we have also noticed in the data. African youth construct their identities in the social media of interest in ways that defy simple categorization. On the one hand, their constructions mimic colonial and/or Western concepts of who Africans should be or how they should act, given their exposure to Western education and more. For example, in some Facebook pages and albums, we notice images of youth posing as savages and the prehistoric Africans they have been stereotyped as. Subsequent images reveal other images that immediately contradict these, indicating that they are also active members of a modern society. Constructions keep shifting even within one day, for in the morning the youth may be a savage, in the afternoon a hip hop star, and in the evening an activist (political, social, environmental, etc.). These constructions reveal that they are affi liated with multiple communities and, depending on what may be going on at a particular time, perhaps this is what they would like to project about themselves. The concept of multiple identities resonates with Philip Howard’s (2011) views of “cosmopolitan citizen[ship]” (82) and “the space of fl ow that allows” people from diff erent parts of the globe to be cognizant of cultural novelty elsewhere and to want to identify with this rather than stick only with what is limited in their region. So as environmental activists, they align with other environmentalists across the globe to fi ght for a safe Earth! However, as Africans, they may then fi nd themselves affi liated with people who understand the needs of their continent or countries of origin more so than with others etc. How- ard (2011) notes further that

[t]he process by which we build a cultural identity in the network society is complex. In some ways we exercise more agency than in the mass media era, because we can actively use digital media to source information from around the global network. We can build transnational identities when

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192 Stephen Ekema-Agbaw and Vivian Yenika-Agbaw we ﬁ nd common cause with social motifs around the world, or develop interesting culinary, musical, or literary tastes. (85–86)

Is this what African youth are now doing? We ponder this question throughout the chapter. Howard (2011) adds:

What Castell teaches us is that the digital media enhance our ability to manage our own identity, but as a consequence we do so within the context of our social network. . . . Many of the technologies we use and digital artifacts we create are purpose-built for our networks of friends, family, and work colleagues. (67)

We argue that for these youth, it is also for the public, because most of them leave their proﬁ les public. Howard also talks about “consumption identities” (70) and “roles in co-production: contributing reviews, promoting merchandize to friends and family and submitting ideas to improve the product or advance the storyline” (70). These youth are involved in all these processes in some way.

CONCLUSION

In the end, social media’s greatest gift is showing us that we are more alike than not. As social media refl ects the dominant culture, it also creates a hybrid global culture that is a combination of the cultures that exist in various countries and continents. Although African youth have a reality that is in many ways foreign to Western youth, their struggles for money and independence are something that all youth can relate to at some level. Moreover, this relat- edness and sense of being similar at some level are the most important factors in combating the stereotypes against African youth. Finally, regardless of the extent to which Western infl uence undermines African youth identity, this same infl uence aff ects youth across the world, particularly American youth; thus this reality calls into question how much ownership American youth have over their identities as well. The advent of social media has been a boon to African youth, and, as more and more continue to get connected, the benefi ts to them and the continent will become more apparent. However, they also have to be mindful of the pitfalls of social media.

WORKS CITED

Bruner, Jerome. The Culture of Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996. Ferguson, James. Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order. Duke University Press: Durham, NC, 2006.

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How African Youth Control Their Identities Through Social Media 193

Herman, David. Basic Elements of Narrative. Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley- Blackwell, 2009. Howard, Philip. Castells and the Media. Cambridge, MA: Polity, 2011. Keim, Curt. Mistaking Africa: Curiosities and Inventions of the African Mind. Westview Press, 1999. Williams, Patrick. Subcultural Theory: Tradition and Concepts. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press, 2011.