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Africa Today, 355 N Jordan Ave; SGIS GA3081, Bloomington, IN (2026)

01/23/2026

📣 New Issue Out Now: Africa Today, Vol. 72 No. 2 (Winter 2025)
We’re excited to share the latest issue of Africa Today, now available in print and on Project MUSE!

This issue features a rich set of research articles examining African political crises, colonial legacies, modernity, agency, cross-border governance, activism, literature, and digital politics. Contributors engage urgent debates shaping Africa today — from Francophone West Africa and Nigeria’s border policies to transnational LGBTIQ+ advocacy and poetic critiques of corruption.

🔍 In this issue:
• Rethinking decoloniality, modernity, and African agency
• New analyses of political crises in Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, and Niger
• Insights into judicial corruption, activism, and border politics
• Reviews on digital disinformation and infrastructure in Africa

📖 Read the full issue on Project MUSE:
https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/56202

10/17/2025

📣 New Special Issue: Africa Today, Vol. 72 No. 1 (Fall 2025)

We’re proud to announce Africa Today’s latest special issue, “Belonging and Returning to the African Community: Critical Perspectives,” guest-edited by Jonathan O. Chimakonam.

This issue brings together five research articles that explore what it means to belong and return to the African community, not just as a place, but as a metaphysical, ethical, and cultural journey. Contributors examine African philosophy, decoloniality, interculturality, migration, ubuntu, and the return of African artifacts, offering new frameworks for understanding identity, solidarity, and community in contemporary Africa.

🔍 Highlights include:

Philosophical reflections on the authentic African community

Analyses of colonial disruption, Afrophobia, and migration ethics

A debate on the restitution of African arts and artifacts

The issue also includes two book reviews.

📖 Read the full issue on Project MUSE: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/55708

07/22/2025

📣 New Double Issue Alert!
Africa Today 71.3–4 (Spring/Summer 2025) is now out in print and on Project MUSE!

🎯 Special Focus: Rethinking Women’s Political Power in West Africa
📚 Featuring articles on women ministers, entrepreneurs, clergywives, and more, plus timely pieces on youth migration in The Gambia, African logic, and recent book reviews.

🔗 Read it here: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/55236

12/02/2024

Happy December, everyone!
We are delighted to announce that our winter issue (71:2) is now out!
It includes four research articles, one In The Now essay, one book review, and an In Memoriam in honor of Andreas Esheté.
Check it out here: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/53781

10/08/2024

We are happy to introduce a new feature in Africa Today: Research Notes!

The first essay under this banner, "Widening the Archival Sliver: Availing and Available Archival Materials Tied to Apartheid-Era African-Staffed Military Forces," by Dr. Richard Levi Raber, was published in our recent Fall issue (71.1).

Richard Raber is a historian of war and society in southern Africa with a focus on Angola, Namibia, and South Africa. He holds a PhD in African History from Indiana University. He is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Exeter where he leads the Angolan and southern African case study of “Children of War: Evolving Local and Global Understandings of Child Soldiering in Africa, c. 1940-2000”, a continent-wide project examining child soldiers and the militarization of youth. He can be found on Twitter .

We invite scholars to follow in Richard's footsteps and contribute to Africa Today through Research Notes!

Here are some guidelines for this new feature:

A Research Note addresses an important methodological or ethical issue or set of problems that scholars face when conducting research in African studies. Research notes may focus on novel primary sources, evidence or datasets, archival research, fieldwork practices, or ethical dilemmas that would be of broad interest to researchers in African studies. The author should provide some context in terms of what has been done previously in the field in addition to presenting their own personal approach or experiences. The research note should include a critical reflection on the advantages and/or disadvantages of the approach being presented. The piece may be focused on a particular issue or set of problems that is more common in a specific discipline but should be written in language that is accessible and engaging to Africanist scholars from other disciplines.

See more here: https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/aft/research-notes

09/17/2024

Our Fall issue is now out!
It includes four research articles; one research note (a new genre!); and two book reviews.
Check it out on Project Muse (free access is available from several African countries):
https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/53168

07/11/2024

Excited to announce that our summer issue is out! It includes some insightful contributions: three research articles, two timely In The Now essays, a discussion forum about art history, and four book reviews!
Check it out on Project Muse (free access is available from several African countries):
https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/52763

05/02/2024

This month our Author Spotlight features Dr. Valerio Colosio!

Dr. Colosio published an article on micro-level power in Chad in Africa Today in our Spring 2022 issue. Around that time, he also published two other articles on similar topics in the Canadian Journal of African Studies and Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology.

Shortly after the publication of his article, Dr. Colosio decided to continue his work as a researcher through a collaboration with an International Non-Governmental Organisation (INGO). Since then, as a research manager for the INGO Fondazione ACRA, he has carried out research and development activities in several Sahel countries, in partnership with local academics, civil society, and municipal officials.

He has also maintained an interest in pure academic research: He and his wife conduct research on social solidarity networks of food cooperatives in the city where they live, Ankara (Turkey). The work he has been doing in Africa on the role of grassroots associations and bottom-up governance puts his new project in a different and interesting context. Their research will be published in June. He also continues to work as a research manager, focusing mainly on the role of grassroots associations in areas such as urban food policy and social cohesion.

His 2022 article in Africa Today can be read on Project Muse (muse.jhu.edu/article/849102). This is a reminder that Africa Today is now available for free to readers from several African countries (as well as Yemen).

If this article captures your interest and you want to be part of a conversation about it, we encourage you to submit a piece for “In Dialogue”—our new way to facilitate scholarly discussions on our publications. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjou.../index.php/aft/inthenow

If you are our past author and are interested in being featured in our author spotlight, please write to: [email protected].

04/09/2024

We are happy to announce our Spring 2024 issue!
It includes the following articles and a book review:

“Doing Being a Father”: Ethnographic Perspectives on Intimate Fathering as Identity Work in Côte d’Ivoire (Konstanze N’Guessan)

Consider the Base for Representation at the Top: Political Parties and Women’s Parliamentary Representation in Ghana’s Fourth Republic (Michael Amoako Addae, Rosina Foli)

Disobeying Monoversal Literary Canonism: Africanizing Global Literature and Globalizing African Literature (Hassan Mbiydzenyuy Yosimbom)

Students’ and Governments’ Entanglements in Ghana’s Political Transition: How (Not) to Understand Students’ Relations with Civilian and Military Regimes, 1960–92 (Eugenia A. B. Anderson, George M. Bob-Milliar, Samuel Adu-Gyamfi, Sebastian A. Paalo)

Students of the World: Global 1968 and Decolonization in the Congo by Pedro Monaville (review), Emily Hardick

You can access it here: https://about.muse.jhu.edu/preview/issue/52254

Enjoy!

02/01/2024

Author Spotlight is back! And this month, we are highlighting Dr. Tracy Kuperus.

Dr. Kuperus (Calvin University) published her article “Democratization, Religious Actors, and Political Influence: A Comparison of Christian Councils in Ghana and South Africa,” back in our Spring 2018 issue.

We were excited to learn that her new co-authored book, Africa's Urban Youth: Challenging Marginalization, Claiming Citizenship, was published recently by Cambridge University Press. The book was co-authored with Amy S. Patterson and Megan Hershey.

She describes the book: “Drawing from extensive fieldwork in three countries, this book explores how African urban youth navigate citizenship through daily experiences, relationships, and political engagement. Privileging the voice and agency of Africa’s young people, it shows how identity is negotiated across religious, gender, economic, and regional distinctions.” Sounds fascinating!

Here is a link to purchase:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/africas-urban-youth/AF346925355D17EC139889FCC2EB6C85

Her 2018 article in Africa Today can be read on Project Muse (muse.jhu.edu/article/699781). This is a reminder that Africa Today is now available for free to readers from several African countries (as well as Yemen).

If this article captures your interest and you want to be part of a conversation about it, we encourage you to submit a piece for “In Dialogue”—our new way to facilitate scholarly discussions on our publications. https://scholarworks.iu.edu/iupjournals/index.php/aft/inthenow

If you are our past author and are interested in being featured in our monthly spotlight, please write to: [email protected].

01/09/2024

Happy New Year, everybody!
New year, new issue from Africa Today. We are excited to share that our Winter issue is now available through Project Muse. It includes five fascinating research articles and four reviews.
Check it out:
https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/51556

09/19/2023

We are excited to share that our September issue is now out!
It is a special issue entitled "Rifle, Pen, and Prayer Beads: Constructing Political Legitimacy in Mali."
It includes five research articles and three book reviews.
Check it out:
https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/51143

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