Publications

Cameroon is currently affected by a violent conflict between military forces of the Biya regime and armed separatist groups that seek political independence for the country’s Anglophone minority in the North West and South West regions. While several reports have highlighted the perspectives of Anglophone civilians, this article adds an additional perspective by exploring the so-far underrepresented voices of members of the Mbororo ethnic minority who, individually and collectively, have been targeted by extreme speech and acts of violence by the separatist forces.

Responding to a growing need to anchor analysis of the current violent crises in historical perspectives, the Arnold Bergstraesser Institute (Freiburg) organized a workshop on 16 and 17 June 2021 that had to be held as a webinar due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Eight papers were presented and discussed; offering food for thought to a broad audience of quite different disciplinary background – but this audience may be enlarged even further by this report. Studies on Cameroon slowly begin to expand.

During the past decades, Asian Studies scholars have made outstanding contributions on the topic of how political elites have promoted changes in clothing in their projects of modernising their citizens or creating new nationalist identities (such as by inventing national dress). But the visual power of the politics of appearances allows also marginal and oppressed groups to send powerful messages.

The growing influence of China appears to be both a contributing cause and partial effect of the perceived international vacuum of the multilateral action needed to prevent and respond to a serious moment of planetary crises. The burning question of the age arguably concerns how China will use, expand or lose its remarkable sources of economic, political and technological influence in this system crisis scenario while attempting to stabilise (or at least not upend) its own economic and socio-political conditions in the process.

This paper introduces the mini-series of ABI working papers addressing the Anglophone conflict in Cameroon (Adama 2022; Pelican et al. 2022; Willis et al. 2022).

The conflict erupted in late 2017 after one-year-long peaceful protests for the representation of the British colonial heritage in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions had been met with state violence. In the five years since, guerrilla warfare between Cameroonian state forces and Anglophone separatist groups has led to the death of over 6,000 persons and the displacement of an estimated 765,000 (ICG 2022).

Cameroon is currently affected by a violent conflict between military forces of the Biya regime and armed separatist groups that seek political independence for the country’s Anglophone minority in the North West and South West regions. While several reports have highlighted the perspectives of Anglophone civilians, this article adds an additional perspective by exploring the so-far underrepresented voices of members of the Mbororo ethnic minority who, individually and collectively, have been targeted by extreme speech and acts of violence by the separatist forces.

The growing influence of China appears to be both a contributing cause and partial effect of the perceived international vacuum of the multilateral action needed to prevent and respond to a serious moment of planetary crises. The burning question of the age arguably concerns how China will use, expand or lose its remarkable sources of economic, political and technological influence in this system crisis scenario while attempting to stabilise (or at least not upend) its own economic and socio-political conditions in the process.

Cameroon’s Anglophone regions have been in a state of violent unrest since October 2016. This began with lawyers and teachers protesting against the erosion of the special status for law and education in the Anglophone regions. Subsequently, the conflict turned violent, with military forces and rebel groups fighting in the hinterlands, displacing more than 765,000 civilians, who fled to the Francophone parts of the country or to neighbouring Nigeria.

Research ethics is integral to the entire process of knowledge production: from conceptualising and designing a research project and gathering, analysing and managing data, to writing and other forms of representation and engagement. Yet, there is often a lack of attention given to research ethics pedagogy and praxis in various academic institutions.

The Philippines has received continuous praise for its ‘highly developed’ migration policies and promotes those as the ‘gold standard’ for the deployment and protection of labour migrants. These policies are obviously not negotiated exclusively within the container of the nation state. In this article, I will therefore employ an analytical framework for the politics of migration policies that is multi-stakeholder and multi-level.

The global pandemic has resulted in ad hoc unilateral policies on migration, mobility and border management while at the same time emphasizing the need for global cooperation. For global governance in this field to be effective, it needs to include stakeholders beyond states and international institutions. The Global Compact for safe, orderly and regular Migration (GCM) highlights the role of those groups directly affected by global policies, i.e. migrants and their organisations.

Countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa are pursuing ambitious targets for a transition from fossil fuels to renewables. While this shift marks an important point of transition, the region’s political economy is still predominantly analysed through the prism of fossil fuels and state-centric approaches. Authoritarian power is widely understood as directly linked to the diffusion of oil revenues and the ways in which states use these to reinforce authoritarian rule.

Countries throughout the MENA are pursuing ambitious targets for a transition from fossil fuels to renewables. While the latter’s distributed nature offers a possibility for more democratic, inclusive and independent (energy) politics, transregionally connected authoritarian elites attempt to transform it into concentrated forms of political and economic power.

This webinar examines the recent interest in hydrogen energy among political and economic leaders in the oil and gas producing states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The region has seen many new “post-oil” energy investments over the past decade, but hydrogen energy has recently spiked in interest among Gulf oil and gas producers – especially among the state-owned hydrocarbon giants in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The event begins with a presentation from Prof.

How can triangular cooperation (TC) between the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and the European Union (EU) contribute to energy transitions and development in the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region? This report analyses the opportunities and risks of this cooperation constellation in several key sectors and countries.

The Africa Yearbook covers major domestic political developments, the forein poicy and socio-economic trends in sub-Sahara Africa - all related to developments in one calendar year.