SDG 9: Innovation, infrastructure and sustainable development Africa’s lack of infrastructure is becoming particularly noticeable in an era of technological innovation By Yunus Momoniat Even in 1972, when the term “sustainable development” was first used, there was an inkling that industrialisation – which is the only means of supplying the necessities of life to large populations – was a deeply destructive process. The word “pollution” was just beginning to enter our lexicon. In 1987, with the publication of a UN report, Our Common Future, the United Nations defined sustainable development as “development that meets the needs of the present without…
Yunus Momoniat
Book review By Yunus Momoniat Mahmood Mamdani’s seminal book, published in 1996, represented an important turning point in African Studies. In it, he challenged many beliefs long-held by Africanist scholars and made bold proposals that at the time cast a new light on the nature of colonialism and its effects on, and consequences for, Africa. The Ugandan scholar has now published a 2018 edition with a new preface that answers some criticisms of the earlier edition, and also considers the state of the continent two decades after his initial analysis. The product of extensive engagement with the field of African…
Book review Taking African Cartoons Seriously: Politics, Satire, and Culture Edited by Peter Limb and Tejumola Olaniyan, Michigan State University Press | East Lansing; 2018 Aristotle noted that man was a social animal, but also that we are the only species that laughs. What we laugh at remains something of a mystery. We humans also practise professions that make of laughter a source of livelihood: court jesters have been around since the time of the pharaohs, but now we also have professional comedians and cartoonists – as well as those unwitting comedians, politicians. Cartoons, which often ridicule this latter species,…
