Publications

Seit 2013 versinkt die Zentralafrikanische Republik in Gewalt – mit dramatischen humanitären Folgen. Weder der Regierung unter Präsident Touadéra noch internationalen Vermittlungsbemühungen gelingt es, das Land zu stabilisieren. Mit Ausnahme der Hauptstadt wird das Land weitgehend von Rebellengruppen beherrscht.

Der Tschad ist ein hochkorruptes Land, in dem die Menschenrechte mit Füßen getreten werden. Wegen seiner Bedeutung im Kampf gegen islamistische Terroristen aber wird das Regime von Präsident Idriss Déby Itno durch direkte Hilfe Frankreichs und der EU gestützt. Ist Besserung in Sicht?

The recent upsurge of interest in restitution and repatriation debates by practitioners and scholars might offer appropriate chances for true interdisciplinary research. Not only should historical, anthropological and legal studies take part in such a conversation, but also, political science, archaeology and heritage studies. Resolutely and systematically giving voice to both African stakeholders and African researchers is an imperative.

With the exception of the tiny island republic of São Tomé and Príncipe, all other states did not have what could be called an ordinary year. The atmosphere of contin-ued crisis dragged on, with armed conflict and its repercussions impacting heavily on an ever-growing share of the population of the sub-region. After two particularly difficult years in terms of public finances, the region looked somewhat more stable financially, not least because reserves could be built up to face any future shocks. But fiscal consolidation translated into cuts in public investment.

The Africa Yearbook covers major domestic political developments, the foreign policy and socio-economic trends in sub-Sahara Africa – all related to developments in one calendar year. The Yearbook contains articles on all sub-Saharan states, each of the four sub-regions (West, Central, Eastern, Southern Africa) focusing on major cross-border developments and sub-regional organizations as well as one article on continental developments and one on African-European relations.

In Kolumbien gehört Gewalt schon lange zur staatlichen Strategie der Kontrolle. In der Pandemie verschärft sich die Lage – aber auch der Protest.

At first glance, Mariana Mora’s book may seem to be a conventional anthropological study of a highly popular movement: the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Southern Mexico. From 1994 onwards this movement, as an example of indigenous organising practices and their success in pressing for autonomy, has been the object of much anthropological enquiry. The Zapatista uprising occupied several towns in 1994 and later established autonomous municipalities with their own education and health services. Mora’s book differs from most, however, because of her decolonial and historicised approach.

This compilation of chapters of the Africa Yearbook (2009-2018) confirms that the people of Central African Republic experienced dramatic events over a period of ten years, not only from 2013 onwards when the Séléka rebels managed to take the capital Bangui. The scattered arenas of conflict demand a differentiated look at local dynamics and actor constellations.

Ein Jahrhundert nach dem Ende der deutschen Kolonialherrschaft rücken allmählich im öffentlichen Diskurs Aspekte eines deutsch-afrikanischen Verhältnisses in das Blickfeld, die sich mit den anhaltenden strukturellen und mentalen Folgen hier wie dort auseinandersetzen. Der Band präsentiert fast alle Aspekte des deutschen Verhältnisses zu Afrika. Die Autorinnen und Autoren aus Wissenschaft und Zivilgesellschaft offerieren Einblicke und Analysen, die auch die afrodeutschen Sichtweisen umfassen und die über das offizielle Terrain weit hinausgehen.

Mauretanien setzte im vergangenen Jahrzehnt im Kampf gegen religiösen Extremismus nicht allein auf Sicherheitskräfte, sondern auch auf Kooperation mit der Bevölkerung und religiösen Autoritäten. Kann sich das Land während seiner „G5 Sahel“-Präsidentschaft französischer Militärpräsenz und dem Vordringen jihadistischer Kräfte widersetzen?

Die COVID-19-Pandemie und die weitläufigen Konsequenzen des harten Lockdowns durch die südafrikanische Regierung haben verheerende Auswirkungen auf die Wirtschaft und die Lebensgrundlage vieler Menschen im Land. Geflüchtete und Asylsuchende sehen sich zudem nicht nur mit dem Verlust ihres Lebensunterhalts konfrontiert, sondern müssen in den letzten Jahren auch eine immer größer werdende bürokratische Hürde bewältigen. Die Reaktionen auf die Pandemie werden die Prekarität des ohnehin sehr schwierigen Asylprozesses nur verstärken.

Prior to the pandemic, what was the state of free movement in the ECOWAS region, and what needs to be considered in a post-coronavirus era? This policy brief takes stock of free movement, noting that European interests in migration governance in West Africa have increasingly been criticized as acting detrimentally on regional mobility. It also shows that the implementation of the ECOWAS free movement protocols was already being hindered by the divergent interests of member states, putting ECOWAS in a difficult position.

This paper challenges the commonplace characterisation of Ethiopia as a developmental state, by stressing that the Ethiopian model, which heavily relies on political control of the rent process at the expense of the bureaucratic knowledge/expertise, is not conducive for industrial policy implementation. We show that this approach worked fine at early stages of growth, however with the increasing complexity, knowledge- and capital-intensive nature of industrial policy-making and implementation, the crucial role to be played by a capable bureaucracy becomes more evident.

The South African response in dealing with the Corona pandemic needs to speak to the realities of all people living in the country, including migrant and refugee communities. Reflecting on this in light of ongoing research on the political stakes of migration governance, we find that the virus response shows little change in the government agenda when it comes to dealing with refugees and other migrants. Veritably, we see that the pandemic may even be an excuse for pushing through already-aspired to policies.

Despite the increasing attention on West Afri-
can countries as a major region of origin for
refugees and other migrants coming to Eu-
rope, there is little research that specifically considers
the position, stakes, or interests of West African states.
However, in order to understand the stakes of migra-
tion cooperation, the EU and its member states need
to better understand how and in what ways African
governments prioritize migration. This means con-
sidering migration policy interests in a more holistic

Präsidentschaftswahl in Afghanistan

Foto: Alexey Lebedev/stock.adobe.com

Desde su nacimiento a finales del siglo XIX, la principal seña de identidad del terrorismo moderno ha sido su dimensión internacional. Aparte de las relaciones transnacionales de las distintas organizaciones violentas no estatales, la historiografía ha destacado la importancia del papel desempeñado por otros actores internacionales, especialmente las diásporas, los estados y las opiniones públicas extranjeras, y las organizaciones internacionales.

In spite of high capital expenditures, the development of state-owned sugarcane estates in Ethiopia’s southwestern lowlands did not bring the desired success in terms of sugar revenues, employment creation, or the socio-economic development of the local agro-pastoralist population. Yet, the radical and capital-intensive transformation of the Omo River basin was by no means without impact. This paper shows that the Kuraz Sugar Development Project (KSDP) entails ‘side effects’ which manifest themselves in different spatial–temporal dimensions.

Der Untergang des Abendlandes schien nah: Als vor knapp einem Jahr der Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) - hierzulande verkürzt „Migrationspakt“ genannt - verabschiedet wurde, markierte dies den Höhepunkt einer hitzig geführten Debatte. Nachdem die Verhandlungen für das umfangreiche Rahmenwerk lange Zeit bei Medien und breiterer Öffentlichkeit auf wenig Aufmerksamkeit gestoßen waren, wurden die Regierungen unvermittelt von einem „heißen Herbst“ überrumpelt.

In den Jahren 2017 und 2018 übernahm Deutschland gemeinsam mit Marokko den Vorsitz beim Globalen Forum für Migration und Entwicklung (GFMD) und gab Impulse in Bereichen wie Arbeitsmigration und Rückkehr. Auf die Debatte zum Migrationspakt war man dagegen nicht vorbereitet.

Chapters in this volume have followed different fora and deliberations on the global governance of migration initiated by the UN High Level Dialogue on Migration and Development (UNHLD) in 2006 up till and including the summit of the Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) in Berlin 2017. The focus of the book is on the impact of civil society groups and organizations on these processes concerned with the formulation of an overall normative framework for the govern- ance of migration.

Labour migration has become one of the defining features of Southeast Asia. However, the governance response has so far been markedly uneven. First, with regard to the ‘objects’ of governance: the scope of governance is very different when it comes to so-called high-skilled labour and low-skilled labour). Second, uneven resources and bargaining power of countries of origin and destination in the region lead to equally uneven governance measures Third, the progress and depth of governance contributions is very uneven between responses from the top-down and the bottom-up.

This chapter discusses the ideas, strategies and political practices of migrant communities and conceptualises them as political – and potentially democratic – remittances. The term ‘political remittances’ encompasses migrants’ political attitudes, political activism abroad as well as engagement after return to the countries of origin and, more largely, diasporic circulation of material and immaterial goods with a distinctive political dimension caused by migration.

This paper aims to address a rarely researched dimension of political remittances by moving from the (trans)national to the regional level, and from the individual to the institutional level of collective action. We base our analyses of the regional and institutional aspects on the case of the Migrant Forum in Asia (MFA), a regional network comprising migrants’ rights organisations that span across Asia (from West to East).