African Studies
About African Studies
Ohio University Press’s African Studies publishing program includes regional surveys, works of distinguished scholarship that contribute to academic debates, and multiauthor collections on key topics. Groundbreaking series such as Eastern African Studies, Western African Studies, Research in International Studies (RIS) Africa, RIS Global and Comparative Studies, and the Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History have redefined the study of Africa. The New African Histories series promotes continued research on the lived experience of Africans while pushing the boundaries of social history in exciting new directions. A forthcoming series, Africa in World History, will produce accessibly written books by African specialists who speak to current images of Africa in the popular culture, drawing attention to the parallels in human experience in Africa and other parts of the world.
Multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary, our list promotes the work of both first-time authors and established scholars. Topics include the nature of the colonial state, social history and social life, religion and politics, conflict and reconstruction, environmental history, poverty, public health, and development.
Many books on our African Studies list are available in paperback editions.
Featured Title(s)
The African AIDS Epidemic
A History
By John Iliffe
This history of the African AIDS epidemic is a much-needed, accessibly written historical account of the most serious epidemiological catastrophe of modern times. The African AIDS Epidemic: A History answers President Thabo Mbeki’s provocative question as to why Africa has suffered this terrible epidemic.…
Butterflies & Barbarians
Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa
Swiss missionaries played a primary and little-known role in explaining Africa to the literate world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This book emphasizes how these European intellectuals, brought to the deep rural areas of southern Africa by their vocation, formulated and ordered knowledge about the continent.…
Fighting the Greater Jihad
Amadu Bamba and the Founding of the Muridiyya of Senegal, 1853–1913
In Senegal, the Muridiyya, a large Islamic Sufi order, is the single most influential religious organization, including among its numbers the nation’s president. Yet little is known of this sect in the West.…
A History of Modern Ethiopia, 1855–1991
Second Edition
By Bahru Zewde
Bounded by Sudan to the west and north, Kenya to the south, Somalia to the southeast, and Eritrea and Djibouti to the northeast, Ethiopia is a pivotal country in the geopolitics of the region. Yet it is important to understand this ancient and often splintered country in its own right.…
A History of the Excluded
Making Family a Refuge from State in Twentieth-Century Tanzania
The twentieth-century history of Njombe, the Southern Highlands district of Tanzania, can aptly be summed up as exclusion within incorporation. Njombe was marginalized even as it was incorporated into the colonial economy.…
Hostels, Sexuality, and the Apartheid Legacy – On Sale
Malevolent Geographies
In the last decade, the South African state has been transformed dramatically, but the stubborn, menacing geography of apartheid still stands in the way of that country's visions of change. Environmentally degraded old homelands still scar the rural geography of South Africa.…
In Search of a Nation
Histories of Authority & Dissidence in Tanzania
Edited by James L. Giblin and Gregory H. Maddox
The double-sided nature of African nationalism—its capacity to inspire expressions of unity, and its tendency to narrow political debate—are explored by sixteen historians, focusing on the experience of Tanzania.…
In the Company of Diamonds
De Beers, Kleinzee, and the Control of a Town
After the 1925 discovery of diamonds in the semi-desert of the northwest coast of South Africa, De Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd. virtually proclaimed its dominion over the whole region. In the town of Kleinzee, the company owns all the real estate and infrastructure, and controls and administers both the town and the industry.…
In the Heart of the Hausa States – On Sale
By Paul Staudinger
Edited by Johanna E. Moody
Consequent upon the Berlin West Africa Conference (1884-1885), the Africanische Gesellschaft in Deutschland launched the Niger-Benue expedition to investigate possible riverine communications throughout the Niger-Benue river system.…
Individual Freedoms and State Security – On Sale
In The African Context
In 1980 the ZANU/PF government of Robert Mugabe came to power after an extended war of liberation. They inherited a cluster of emergency laws similar to those available to the authorities in South Africa.…
Islands of Intensive Agriculture in Eastern Africa – On Sale
Edited by Mats Widgren and John E.G. Sutton
Islands of intensive agriculture are areas of local cultivation surrounded by low-density livestock herders or extensive cultivators. Along the line of the East Africa Rift Valley, and in the highlands on either side, communities of considerable historical depth have developed highly specialized agricultural regimes, employing such labor-intensive devices as furrow irrigation, hillside terracing, and stall-feeding of cattle.…
Jua Kali Kenya – On Sale
Change and Development in an Informal Economy, 1970–1995
By Kenneth King
Kenya was where the term “informal sector” was first used in 1971. During the 1980s the term “jua kali"--in Swahili “hot sun"--came to be used of the informal sector artisans, such as carworkers and metalworkers, who were working under the hot sun because of a lack of premises.…
Kakungulu & the Creation of Uganda: 1868–1928
This is a history of the early days of Uganda. The account has an African focus because it shows the British takeover through the experiences of an extraordinary leader.“At this spot in the year 1901 the British flag was first hoisted by Semei Kakanguru, emissary and loyal servant of His Majesty the King.…
Kampala Women Getting By – On Sale
Wellbeing in the Time of AIDS
What do ordinary women in an African city do in the face of “serious enough” infections in themselves and signs of acute illness in their young children? How do they manage? What does it take to get by? How do they maintain the wellbeing of the household in a setting without what would be considered as basic health provision in an American or European city?Professor Wallman focuses on women in a densely-populated part of Kampala called Kamwokya.…
Katutura: A Place Where We Stay – On Sale
Life in a Post-Apartheid Township in Namibia
Katutura, located in Namibia’s major urban center and capital, Windhoek, was a township created by apartheid, and administered in the past by the most rigid machinery of the apartheid era. Namibia became a sovereign state in 1990, and Katutura reflects many of the changes that have taken place.…
Kola is God’s Gift – On Sale
Agricultural Production, Export Initiatives, and the Kola Industry in Asante and the Gold Coast, c. 1920–1950
By Edmund Abaka
Kola is a "food-drug"—like coffee, tea, coca, and tobacco—a substance considered neither food nor medicine, but used to induce "flights of fancy." It is incorporated into rites of passage and ceremonies to cement treaties and contracts; its medicinal properties were first recognized outside Africa in the twelfth century; and it is a legal and popular stimulant among West African Muslims.…
The Krobo People of Ghana to 1892 – On Sale
A Political and Social History
This book presents a broad analytical framework for the history of southeastern Ghana within the context of a representative study of one of the country’s most important political and economic forces.…
Kwame Nkrumah
The Father of African Nationalism
The first African statesman to achieve world recognition was Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), who became president of the new Republic of Ghana in 1960. He campaigned ceaselessly for African solidarity and for the liberation of southern Africa from white settler rule.…
Labor and Democracy in Namibia, 1971-1996 – On Sale
In this compelling study of labor and nationalism during and after Namibia's struggle for liberation, Gretchen Bauer addresses the very difficult task of consolidating democracy in an independent Namibia.…
Leaf of Allah
Khat & Agricultural Transformation in Harerge, Ethiopia, 1875–1991
Khat is a quasi-legal psychoactive shrub, produced and marketed in the province of Harerge, Ethiopia, and widely consumed throughout Northeast Africa. In the late nineteenth century the main cash crop of Harerge was coffee.…
Learning from Robben Island
Govan Mbeki's Prison Writings
By Govan Mbeki
“South Africa has jailed so many gifted men and women that there already exists a sizeable body of prison writing…The essays by Govan Mbeki which comprise this book add to this distinguished list. Yet they differ in important respects from all others: they were written, circulated and preserved in prison.…
Limits to Liberation After Apartheid
Citizenship, Governance, & Culture
Edited by Steven L. Robins
Postapartheid South Africa struggles with race tensions, social inequalities, and unemployment that are contributing to widespread crises. In addressing the transition to democracy, Limits to Liberation After Apartheid examines issues of culture and identity, drawing attention to the creative agency of citizens of the "new" South Africa.…
Lineages of State Fragility – On Sale
Rural Civil Society in Guinea-Bissau
In Guinea-Bissau, as elsewhere in Africa, there is a disjuncture between the central state and rural civil society. It is this significant and overlooked aspect of Guinea-Bissau's political evolution—the continuing ability of civil society to evade and thwart state power—that is at the heart of Joshua B.…
