While neoliberals typically view civil society organizations as vital channels for the implementation of economic and political reforms, they are also inclined to blame the politics of belonging for the poor record of these reforms. Piet Konings rejects such notions and argues that the relationship between civil society and the politics of belonging is more complex in Africa than Western donors and scholars are inclined to admit. He argues that ethno-regional associations and movements are more significant constituents of civil society in Africa than the conventional organizations that are often uncritically imposed or endorsed. He shows how the politics of belonging, so pervasive in Cameroon, and indeed much of Africa, during the current neoliberal economic and political reforms, has tended to penetrate the entire range of associational life, and he calls for a critical re-appraisal of prevalent notions and assumptions about civil society in the interest of African reality.

Neoliberalism has become the dominant development agenda in Africa. Faced with a deep economic and political crisis, African governments have been compelled by powerful external agencies, in particular the Bretton Woods institutions and western states, to pursue this agenda as a necessary precondition for the receipt of development aid. What is particularly striking in Africa, however, is that neoliberal experiments there have displayed such remarkable diversity. This may be due not only to substantial differences in historical, economic and political trajectories on the African continent but also, and maybe more importantly, in the degree of resistance internal actors have demonstrated to the neoliberal reforms imposed on them. This book focuses on Cameroon which has had a complex economic and political history and is currently witnessing resistance to the neoliberal experiment by the authoritarian and neopatrimonial state elite and various civil-society groups. It is the culmination of over twenty years of fine and refined research by one of the leading scholars of Cameroon today.

This book discusses the social and political consequences of the economic and financial crisis that befell African economies since the 1980s, using as case study the plantation economy of the Anglophone region of Cameroon. The focus is thus on recent efforts to liberalize and privatize an agro-industrial enterprise where overseas capital and its domestic partners have converged, the consequent modes of production and labour, and the alternatives proposed and resistance generated. The study details how the unprecedented crisis caused great commotion in the region, and presented a serious challenge to existing theories on plantation production and capital accumulation. The crisis resulted in the introduction of a number of neoliberal economic reforms, including the withdrawal of state intervention and the restructuring, liquidation and privatisation of the major agro-industrial enterprises. These reforms in turn had severe consequences for several civil-society groups and their organisations that had a direct stake in the regional plantation economy, notably the regional elite, chiefs, plantation workers and contract farmers. On the basis of extensive research in the Anglophone Cameroon region, Konings shows that these civil-society groups have never resigned themselves to their fate but have been actively involved in a variety of formal and informal modes of resistance.

This book explores the relationship between plantation labour and gender in Africa, particularly Cameroon. It demonstrates that the introduction of plantation labour during colonial rule has had significant consequences for gender roles and relations within and beyond the capitalist labour process. These effects have been quite ambivalent, being marked by both profound changes and remarkable continuities. The book focuses on two tea estates established in anglophone Cameroon in the 1950s, the Tole Estate and the Ndu Estate, the first employing mainly female pluckers, the second mainly male pluckers. This allows for an examination of the variations in male and female workers' modes of resistance to the control and exploitation they meet in the labour process. [ASC Leiden abstract]

Cameroon is a land of much promise, but a land of unfulfilled promises. It has the potential to be an economically developed and democratic society but the struggle to live up to its potential has not gone well. Since independence there have been only two presidents of Cameroon; the current one has been in office since 1982. Endowed with a variety of climates and agricultural environments, numerous minerals and substantial forests, and a dynamic population, this is a country that should be a leader of Africa. Instead, we find a country almost paralyzed by corruption and poor management, a country with a low life expectancy and serious health problems, and a country from which the most talented and highly educated members of the population are emigrating in large numbers. To all of this is recently added a serious terrorism problem, Boko Haram, in the north, a separatist movement in the Anglophone west, refugee influxes in the north and east, and bandits from the Central African Republic attacking eastern villages. This fifth edition of Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Cameroon contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, politics, economy, foreign relations, religion, and culture. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Republic of Cameroon.

This collective volume pays tribute to the work of Africanist Piet Konings and his 30-year career (1978-2008) at the African Studies Centre Leiden. It focuses on key themes addressed in Konings' work such as labour relations, African development, social and political history, ethno-regionalism, and civil society and civic movements. Contributions: Introduction: Piet Konings' contributions to African Studies (J. Abbink); The political economy of authochthony: labour migration and citizenship in Southwest Cameroon (Peter Geschiere); 'Ganyu' in Malawi: transformation of local labour relations under famine and HIV/AIDS duress (Deborah Fahy Bryceson); Labour migration from the Gold Coast to the Dutch East Indies: recruting African troops for the Dutch colonial army in the age of indentured labour (Ineke van Kessel); Economic crisis and imaginative response: the upsurge in traditional medical practices among youths in Cameroon (Robert Mbe Akoko); Taking Africaness and African law seriously in South African law schools: some conceptual challenges (Francis B. Nyamnjoh); Football in Cameroon: its origins, politics and sorcery (Paul Nchoji Nkwi); 'Sagacity spirit' and 'ghetto ethic': 'feymania' and new African entrepreneurship (Basile Ndjio); Examining the architecture of electoral authoritarianism in Cameroon (Nantang Jua); Multipartyism and 'big man' democracy in Cameroon, 1990-2011 (Ibrahim Mouiche). [ASC Leiden abstract]

Gender, Separatist Politics, and Embodied Nationalism in Cameroon illuminates how issues of ideal womanhood shaped the Anglophone Cameroonian nationalist movement in the first decade of independence in Cameroon, a west-central African country. Drawing upon history, political science, gender studies, and feminist epistemologies, the book examines how formally educated women sought to protect the cultural values and the self-determination of the Anglophone Cameroonian state as Francophone Cameroon prepared to dismantle the federal republic. The book defines and uses the concept of embodied nationalism to illustrate the political importance of women’s everyday behavior—the clothes they wore, the foods they cooked, whether they gossiped, and their deference to their husbands. The result, in this fascinating approach, reveals that West Cameroon, which included English-speaking areas, was a progressive and autonomous nation. The author’s sources include oral interviews and archival records such as women’s newspaper advice columns, Cameroon’s first cooking book, and the first novel published by an Anglophone Cameroonian woman.

In this enlightening book, John Mukum Mbaku analyses the main challenges of constitutional design and the construction of governance institutions in Africa today. He argues that the central issues are: providing each country with a constitutional order that is capable of successfully managing sectarian conflict and enhancing peaceful coexistence; protecting the rights of citizens ? including those of minorities; minimizing the monopolization of political space by the majority (to the detriment of minorities); and, effectively preventing government impunity. Mbaku offers a comprehensive analysis of various approaches to the management of diversity, and shows how these approaches can inform Africa?s struggle to promote peace and good governance. He explores in depth the existence of dysfunctional and anachronistic laws and institutions inherited from the colonial state, and the process through which laws and institutions are formulated or constructed, adopted, and amended. A close look at the constitutional experiences of the American Republic provides important lessons for constitutional design and constitutionalism in Africa. Additionally, comparative politics and comparative constitutional law also provide important lessons for the management of diversity in African countries. Mbaku recommends state reconstruction through constitutional design as a way for each African country to provide itself with laws and institutions that reflect the realities of each country, including the necessary mechanisms and tools for the protection of the rights of minorities. From students and scholars to NGOs, lawyers and policymakers, this unique and judicious book is an essential tool for all those seeking to understand and improve governance and development in Africa.

Complex Adaptive Systems, Resilience and Security in Cameroon comprehensively maps and analyses Cameroon’s security architecture to determine its resilience. The author examines the key actors involved in Cameroon’s security and evaluates the organisational structures, before analysing the different security systems that arise from the interplay between the two. He also shows how these security networks can be better conceived as complex adaptive systems, interdependent on other environmental, economic and societal systems. In this regard, security actors become security agents. Finally, arguing that security should be pursed from a resilience perspective, this book seeks to comment on the contemporary situation in Cameroon and its possible trajectory for the future. Providing a timely assessment of security in Cameroon, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of African politics and Security Studies.

The second volume of the African Higher Education Dynamics Series brings together the research of an international network of higher education scholars with interest in higher education and student politics in Africa. Most authors are early career academics who teach and conduct research in universities across the continent, and who came together for a research project and related workshops and a symposium on student representation in African higher education governance. The book includes theoretical chapters on student organising, student activism and representation; chapters on historical and current developments in student politics in Anglophone and Francophone Africa; and in-depth case studies on student representation and activism in a cross-section of universities and countries. The book provides a unique resource for academics, university leaders and student affairs professionals as well as student leaders and policy-makers in Africa and elsewhere.