This article uses the Kenya Office in Cairo (KOC) to explore the intersections and tensions between territorial nationalism and supranational networks of anticolonial patronage during a brief window in the broader era of decolonization. It argues that the principal staffers of the KOC were in many ways marginal figures in Kenyan nationalist politics, but were able to build a degree of political capital and stature due to their proximity to external patrons in a period when more established nationalist figures were restricted to the physical space of colonial Kenya. The article then analyzes a factional schism within the KOC to highlight how nationalist outposts and exilic activists became imbricated in competition between political rivals and visions operating at multiple geographic and ideological scales. That the figures involved in the KOC and its post-schism rival would be sidelined by the official infrastructures of Kenyan nationalism and anticolonial internationalism and the “Big Men” who came to control them shows, first, that mobility is not always the most productive framework for apprehending these histories and, second, that proximity to internal and external patrons and the clout that accompanies this proximity were contingent and could both make and break political capital.

Since independence, the University of Khartoum and later, higher education as a whole, was a site of political struggle in Sudan. Critical to this was the issue of “university independence,” a value widely held by Sudanese elites, which successive regimes attempted to restrict. Relying on Sudanese national security reports, oral histories of student activism, and British diplomatic reporting, the paper charts the struggle over university associative life in Sudan from independence through to the ouster of President Ja’afar Al Nimeiri. It argues that the May Regime used restrictions on university life as a means of hampering political activity, yet faced serious pushback from students, faculty, and administrators who shared values of university independence. It was only when threats to the state’s security and legitimacy outside the university gates took place that the regime was able to successfully restrict university associative life. These efforts set the stage for further repression under the Ingaz regime (1989–2019).

This paper analyzes the use of rubu unpaid “traditional” labor in Toro District in western Uganda during the colonial period. It explores how the “traditional” roots of the unpaid labor system were negotiated and reinterpreted by African elites through their attempts to gain more control over the labor through wrangling over exemptions and commutations for the work which, then, shaped British responses to the forced labor regime. Chiefs managed rubu labor on the ground and wielded a lot of exploitative power. However, the British administration used intermediaries, luwalo inspectors, to monitor rubu labor and delimit the power of chiefs. This paper also investigates the growth of commutations from so-called traditional labor as a colonial revenue generator.

In Burundi, weekly services are the primary point of contact between churches and their followers, with most of the population attending. These gatherings provide churches with a strategic platform to attract and retain members. Over six months, we collected data from five churches in the rural town of Muramvya—Catholic, Anglican, Pentecostal, FECABU (Evangelical), and Adventist—analyzing 125 transcripts for structure, themes, scope, tone, and key words. We find that emerging denominations—Pentecostal, FECABU, and Adventist—pursue different strategies than traditional ones. Pentecostal and FECABU churches place greater emphasis on rituals than on scripture readings, adopt a more positive tone, and focus on the immediate concerns of their congregants rather than abstract topics. The Adventist Church, while also emphasizing rituals and using a positive tone, distinguishes itself with a stronger commitment to scripture. The Pentecostal church uniquely combines a focus on morality with references to supernatural punishment. We argue that this blend of approaches among emerging denominations strengthens group cohesion and enriches individual faith experiences, helping them attract followers. Our findings shed light on the growth of these denominations in Burundi and may help explain broader religious trends across Sub-Saharan Africa.

This article reconsiders the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) “Media Trial” that followed in the wake of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. While both the original trial (2000–03) and its appeal (2007) have been widely analyzed, most observers have approached it as a case against three media bosses. This article suggests that the Media Trial was not only invested in the line between press freedom and criminal hate speech and, in relation to Ferdinand Nahimana, not solely concerned with his role at “hate radio” station Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM). Drawing on trial transcripts, other court records, and press coverage of the trial, I show how the tribunal actively interrogated Nahimana’s status as a historian and his research and scholarship as part of its judicial process. As such, I argue that the Media Trial helped codify the notion that Rwandan history had become “deadly” before the genocide and that the Rwandan historical field would need to be fundamentally transformed.

In the years following independence, history-writing increasingly became a strategic instrument of nation-building and a means of constructing a “usable past.” Using the South African writer Bloke Modisane’s research on the Maji Maji War in Tanzania as its point of departure, this article examines how newly independent African states navigated the politics of historical production in the early postindependence period. Although deeply invested in African history, Modisane was not a formally trained historian and remained on the margins of the emerging Dar es Salaam School of History. His uneasy reception in Tanzania not only underscores the tension between Pan-African ideals and national imperatives, but the challenges faced by intellectuals working outside official or institutional structures. While he never completed his research to the point of publication, revisiting his experience reminds us that the history of African history was also shaped by incomplete, interrupted, and forgotten efforts to write the past.

This work explores the travels of Ugandan Enoch Olinga, as an example of a person who enjoyed connections with global minorities across national boundaries and as a unique lens into the Black international experience in the mid-twentieth century. I examine his internationalist experiences through the lens of emotions to emphasize different dynamics of global racial identities and transnational diasporic connections during the 1950s–1970s, an era of decolonization and civil rights movements. I argue that Olinga, a prominent Baha’i who traveled worldwide during this era, advocated for unification among global minorities by emphasizing common racial and cultural heritages and expansive concepts of a politicized kinship. Through the Baha’i Cause, he articulated his own ideas about striving for global harmony and racial unity, with a connection to Africa serving as the linchpin. Emotional analysis provides insights into how Olinga invoked diverse notions of family and kin to arouse particular emotions amongst people of color both within and beyond the unity offered by the Baha’i Faith.

How should we understand 1970s Kenya, with its combination of inequality and relative political stability? This article offers a new perspective on that by following the early history of the Harambee Co-operative Savings and Credit Society—the most prominent of many such societies that grew in those years. The rise and crisis of this co-operative provides evidence of mismanagement and the pursuit of personal advantage—but also suggests that civil servants saw the importance of enabling wider accumulation. As a result, the lowest-paid employees of government could see through Harambee—and other co-operatives—a possible, if precarious, route to a future as property-owners. That possibility helps explain both the institutional strength of Kenya’s provincial administration (whose employees were the members of Harambee Co-operative) and how a substantial number of Kenyans could develop a sense of themselves as citizens with a stake in the political system.