By Ulf Engel. Contemporary conflicts in Ethiopia are overshadowed by the ongoing war between the government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on the one hand and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front on the other. Between 1991 and 2018 both parties were partners in a Tigray dominated coalition front which finally failed to impose its hegemonic nation-building project on the multi-ethnic country.
By Immanuel R. Harisch. The perception of the socialist camp as inward-looking, isolated, and cut off from global trends until the transition to capitalism is still widespread; at the same time, Africa, as a marginalized world region, is similarly not included in prevailing imaginations of transregional connectedness.
By George Njung. Africans’ lack of knowledge about our own shared refugee experiences continues to fuel hate and discrimination on the continent. For far too long, the global refugee situation has been misconstrued as static, with certain parts of the globe generating disproportionate numbers of refugees and others perpetually faced with the burden of hosting displaced peoples.
By Rose Jaji. African “refugeeness” in the media, policy, and academia is an essentialist physical image conflating material deprivation and multiple victimhoods. Historically, African refugees were capable of political participation even to the point of building vibrant states in the new lands they fled to in precolonial Africa.
By Adérito Júlio Machava. During the period prior to the setting up of the Portuguese colonial administration in southeast Africa, there were important waves of forced migrations caused by, firstly, the Mfecane, and secondly the defeat of King Ngungunhane in 1895, and the subsequent overthrow of the Gaza Empire.
By Lazlo Passemiers. Not all people seeking refuge in Africa have been black. One group of white refuge-seekers in Africa consisted of whites who fled from their African countries of residence after the fall of colonial and white minority rule.
By Madina Thiam. On February 17, 1907, a brief note went out of the Dakar office of the Governor-General of French West Africa, addressed to subordinates. The governor had learned through French newspapers that: “According to a report on Northern Nigeria … thousands of Fulanis from the Middle Niger might be migrating from the French territory and heading towards the Nile valley.”
By Marcia C. Schenck. Are you interested in the history of refuge seeking in Africa? Please check out the recent blog series on Histories of Refuge. This series looks at how people have migrated, sought refuge, and settled, in and out of Africa. It also examines issues such as who gets to be called a refugee, and why?
By Ulf Engel The new special issue “Africa’s Transregional Conflicts” of the journal Comparativ. Zeitschrift für Globalgeschichte und vergleichende Gesellschaftsforschung (Journal for Global History and Comparative Research on Societies) addresses...
Birgit Meyer and Annalisa Butticci (both University of Utrecht) discuss the idea of heritage in a larger context of identity formation. Giving examples of their fieldwork Butticci and Meyer show...
TRAFO – Blog for Transregional Research is a platform for scholars in the humanities and social sciences who are interested in transregional exchange and research on current issues. TRAFO is the blog of the Forum Transregionale Studien (Berlin) and the Max Weber Stiftung – Deutsche Geisteswissenschaftliche Institute im Ausland (Bonn).
ISSN: 2199-2134
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