No Condition Is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract This chapter draws on qualitative research into youth livelihoods in four sub-Saharan African countries that has addressed the local social dynamics of work and education from the perspectives of young people themselves. Firstly, it illuminates the extent to which the youth in the four different national contexts value education. It then turns to young people's lived experiences of juggling both schooling and work from an early age, highlighting the wide disparity between idealized notions of 'transition' and the complexities of youth livelihoods. Finally, it explores the gendered dimensions of this social landscape, and how these produce different pressures that force young women in particular out of education. The chapter concludes with implications for young people's current and future engagement with the rural economy, and for education policy.

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Slaves and society in Western Africa, c. 1445—c. 1700

The Journal of African History ◽

10.1017/s0021853700018314 ◽

1980 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

pp. 289-310 ◽

Cited By ~ 16

Author(s):

J. D. Fage

Keyword(s):

Social Mobility ◽

Social Groups ◽

Early Years ◽

Sub Saharan Africa ◽

Western Africa ◽

The Social ◽

African Slaves ◽

Limited Supply ◽

Sub Saharan

Published European first-hand accounts of the coastlands from Senegal to Angola for the period c. 1445-c. 1700 are examined to see what light they throw on the extent to which institutions of servitude in pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa were autonomous developments or a response to external demands for African slaves. It seems clear that when, in the early years of this period, European traders first approached societies along the western African coasts, they were commonly offered what they called ‘slaves’ in exchange for the goods they had brought. But it would be wrong to conclude from this that a slave class was necessarily a feature of western African coastal societies when these were first contacted by Europeans. It is clear, for instance, that the Europeans preferred to deal with societies which had developed monarchical governments, whose leaders had control of sufficient surpluses to make trade worthwhile. The evidence suggests that in these societies most individuals were dependants of a ruling and entrepreneurial elite, but that there was also social mobility. A category of dependants that particularly attracted the notice of the European observers was women, whom men of power and wealth tended to accumulate as wives (and hence as the potential mothers of still more dependants). The necessarily limited supply of women may have been a factor encouraging such men to seek to increase their followings, and thus their status, power and wealth, by recruiting other dependants by forcible, judicial and economic means. While many such dependants, or their offspring, would be assimilated into the social groups commanded by their masters, the latter were certainly willing to contemplate using recently acquired or refractory recruits in other ways, such as exchanging them for alternative forms of wealth.

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Transcontinental Modernism. M&G as an Unité d’habitation and a factory complex in Mozambique

10.52200/43.a.2bif8auu ◽

2010 ◽

pp. 70-73

Author(s):

Ana Tostões ◽

Maria Manuel Oliveira

Keyword(s):

Social Program ◽

Sub Saharan Africa ◽

Industrial Complex ◽

Architectural Heritage ◽

Technological Approach ◽

The Social ◽

Sub Saharan ◽

Overseas Territories ◽

Architectural Modernism

With the aim of contributing to the documentation and conservation of the modern architectural heritage, this paper presents Monteiro & Giro Complex (M&G), built during the 50’s in Quelimane, Mozambique, with the goal of stressing the modernity of the social program and the technological approach. If one wants to gain a better understanding of the worldwide Diaspora of architectural modernism, it is essential to document and analyse the important heritage of sub–Saharan Africa. Modern architectural debates have been reproduced, transformed, contested and sometimes even improved in distant lands and overseas territories. These contradictory aspects of Modernist practice are revealed in the programmatic, technological and structural M&G industrial Complex.

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