Great African Reads discussion

Hello,

Has anyone come across good books in English or French about the recent events and changes in the Sahel (past 10 years or so)? I'm looking for things about Mali post-2013 and the rise of new insurgencies, and especially anything detailed on the Burkina revolution and Le Balai Citoyen (Wim, looking to you)? Would love a novel!

A few that I enjoyed:
- Migrant, Refugee, Smuggler, Saviour, on migration, with a lot of time spent in Niger
- Africa's New Oil: Power, Pipelines and Future Fortunes, has chapters on Chad and Niger-- maybe the best book I've read explaining Deby's grip on power
- For a movie, I like (a href=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbukt...-- I actually screened it back home in the US for friends as a jumping off point to explain when I came home from a year in the region
- For Boko Haram, start with Born on a Tuesday and perhaps add "Eat the Heart of the Infidel": The Harrowing of Nigeria and the Rise of Boko Haram

A book about migration is the one I am working on for the moment. The Black Candy story will be launched in November 2019. It talk about the feeling of a “stranger in your home country”. Enjoy your day.

Tinea wrote: "Hello,

Has anyone come across good books in English or French about the recent events and changes in the Sahel ..."

Thanks for your post Tinea! I am also very interested in this kind of books, but they seem to be so hard to find... even here in the Sahel :(

I will consult colleagues and friends working on Mali and search a bit more for Burkina Faso. Most interesting books published on Burkina Faso the past years still concern the Sankarist revolution in the 1980s...

Thanks as well for your reading list! I will definitely try to get a hold on the first one. On Boko Haram, I also enjoyed The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria by Helon Habila.

This reminds me of our suggestion to have a non-fiction group read. Shall we start with a first read on the Sahel region?

Hi Tinea,

It is not a book, but a report just came out today from Sahel expert Alex Thurston on 'Escalating Conflicts in Burkina Faso': http://rosalux.sn/en/escalating-confl... .

On the youth movements like Le Balai Cityen en Y'en a marre, GRIP published a book in 2017: 'Une Jeunesse africaine en quete de changement' (sorry, couldn't add a link as the book is not on goodreads)

On Boko Haram I can really recommend Hilary Matfess's book Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses

Thanks for these suggestions Valerie!
Here is the goodreads link to the 2017 book on African youth: Une jeunesse africaine en quête de changement. I will definitely look out for it.

Thanks for these ideas! Valerie, very much appreciated the link. Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses is on my shelf-- hope to get to it soon. I met the author in Nigeria and she had such interesting insights into conflict drivers!

Has anyone come across these? I saw them while browsing Zed Books and African Arguments' web pages-- they tend to publish about contemporary African events.
- Burkina Faso: A History of Power, Protest and Revolution
- The Trial of Hissène Habré: How the People of Chad Brought a Tyrant to Justice
- Living by the Gun in Chad: Combatants, Impunity and State Formation

Wim wrote: "This reminds me of our suggestion to have a non-fiction group read. Shall we start with a first read on the Sahel region?"

Yes, that would be fun! Do you know when in the calendar we would start this? Would it be a 2020 gig? I'm happy to support on it.

Tinea wrote: "Thanks for these ideas! Valerie, very much appreciated the link. Women and the War on Boko Haram: Wives, Weapons, Witnesses is on my shelf-- hope to get to it soon. I met the author..."

I read the The Trial of Hissène Habré: How the People of Chad Brought a Tyrant to Justice, and found it interesting and well written. Marielle Debos is probably the most knowledgeable person about security dynamics in Chad, so I think Living by the Gun in Chad: Combatants, Impunity and State Formation is certainly worth reading (though it will be a more academic style of writing than Celeste Hicks). I have Burkina Faso: A History of Power, Protest and Revolution on my shelves but I haven't read it yet. In general, I would say that Africa-related books published by Zed Books are trustworthy; they are written by experts but usually in a not overly academic style which makes them perfect read-out-of-work-hours books.

Wim wrote: "Thanks for these suggestions Valerie!
Here is the goodreads link to the 2017 book on African youth: Une jeunesse africaine en quête de changement. I will definitely look out for it."

Thanks Wim for adding the link. As to your suggestion for a non-fiction group read, I would certainly be interested in that.

Thanks for the question and all the recommendations!

I'm afraid I don't have anything to add on Mali or Burkina Faso as my readings have been mostly about further north. Smugglers and Saints of the Sahara: Regional Connectivity in the Twentieth Century by Judith Scheele is older but looks at life around the Mali-Algeria border from an ethnographic perspective.

Not on GR as far as I can see but Boulay & Freire's Culture et Politique dans l'Ouest Saharien is an excellent edited collection touching upon issues relating to music, language, relations to external actors and political activism in Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco and Algeria. On Boko Haram I'd recommend Sects & Social Disorder: Muslim Identities & Conflict in Northern Nigeria by Abdul Raufu Mustapha, and The Boko Haram Reader: From Nigerian Preachers to the Islamic State edited by Abdulbasit Kassim and Michael Nwankpa.

Tinea wrote: "Wim wrote: "This reminds me of our suggestion to have a non-fiction group read. Shall we start with a first read on the Sahel region?"

Yes, that would be fun! Do you know when in the calendar we w..."

We can already start now, pick one book for the remaining months of 2019, if there is enough interest?

Wim wrote: "Tinea wrote: "Wim wrote: "This reminds me of our suggestion to have a non-fiction group read. Shall we start with a first read on the Sahel region?"

Yes, that would be fun! Do you know when in the..."

Can we get a roll call of who would participate?

I'd suggest we toss all the books above into a poll, excepting the ones on Boko Haram because that could be it's own subject. If we start this month, it'd be great to read a nonfiction book ever 3 months, giving us some more time than we take for the fiction reads-- this would certainly help me!

Ok, done and done!

Check out the new Quarterly Nonfiction project and vote for a book to read this quarter about the Contemporary Sahel.

Thanks Tinea for setting up the thread!