This history of the African kingdom that included the famous trans-Saharan trading city of Kano is the third in the late M. G. Smiths series of histories of the Hausa-Fulani kingdoms in West Africa. Combining the approaches of social anthropology and history, Smith provides a fascinating account of this kingdoms complex political and administrative organization from medieval times to the threshold of Nigerian independence. The book relies on written sources in Arabic, Hausa, and English, but it is supplemented by in-depth interviews with Fulani rulers and councilors who were intimately familiar with the organization of the Muslim emirate of Kano before the British arrived in 1903. In the final chapter, Smith continues his analytical inquiry, begun in his earlier books, into the processes of change in political units.

In The Yearning for Relief Klaas van Walraven traces the history of the Sawaba movement in Niger and its rebellion against the French-protected regime during the 1960s. The book analyses its guerrilla campaign and failure, followed by the movement’s destruction.

Over the last decade West African villages, rural towns, and urban neighbourhoods have experienced changes resulting from democratisation and decentralisation processes. While much hope was invested in decentralisation policies in the 1990s, today there is a need to look at everyday decentralisation practices. In this volume, authors of different scholarly backgrounds focus on political, economic and cultural aspects of decentralisation. By exploring party politics, water provision, schooling, territorial division and cultural understanding the case-studies highlight core stakes and fundamental contradictions of present-day decentralisation in West Africa.