This issue of CODESRIA Bulletin, the first for 2021, is released after a year that saw the global structures of knowledge production and dissemination disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Africa has so far defied the grim predictions that prophesied immense numbers of fatalities on the continent. The spectre of poor Africans dropping dead every- where has refused to materialise. However, the pandemic is not over yet, and we know that its adverse effects on socioeconomic and political life on the continent, as elsewhere, are already alarming and will be felt for some time to come. CODESRIA has not been spared the impact. The Council’s execution of its intellectual activities in 2020 was affected at the level of regular pro- gramming, especially given that higher education institutions, which are focal points for most of the Council’s activities, were shut across the continent and the cessation of travel allowed for little or no fieldwork for research. Read the Full Editorial

Published: April 3, 2021

This double issue focuses on the situation in Mali, a country that has faced decades of violence and instability since gaining independence from France in 1960. Since January 2020, Mali has witnessed a series of attacks by various “Jihadists” groups and internal political instability that finally led to a coup and the overthrow of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in August 2020. The decades of violence and instability in Mali have often drawn the intervention of external actors in ways that have raised the significant question of the nature of the state in Africa and its social contract with citizens. This is of concern not only to Mali. The articles in this Bulletin clearly illustrate that in a world that is increasingly interconnected, where an eruption in one corner easily becomes a reverberating disruption elsewhere, we cannot but see the recent coup in Mali as a national crisis with wider regional consequences. By far the most important dimension to this is that Mali has been a playground of numerous foreign interests that at times trump those of regional and local actors. The contentions between European powers on the one hand and ECOWAS and AU on the other hand is a case in point. Read the Full Editorial

Published: December 16, 2020

This issue of CODESRIA Bulletin is divided into two; the first, a completely thematic cluster two essays on inequality and inclusive development (Jimi Adesina) and the final article on “Mandela- wash” that discusses how the statue of South Africa’s first black president, Nelson Mandela, has been used to excuse, rationalise or simply clean up abhorrent acts of abuse, injustice and plunder associated with legacies of apartheid (Robin Cohen). The first cluster of essays is key to the Council’s research agenda. These articles pick up the discussion initiated in CODESRIA Bulletin No. 1, 2020 on Randomised Control Trials and Development Research in Africa. That issue of the Bulletin elicited enormous attention and triggered conversations on different platforms from the CODESRIA community and beyond and through private communication from partner institutions. The Council continues to receive correspondence from other organisations in the global South seeking to partner in conducting extended research on RCTs and the appropriateness and applicability of the methodology to development planning in the global South. We get the sense at CODESRIA that there is a desire from our community and partners engaged in development research in the global South to launch a research program on RCTs that constitutes a front for the liberation and/or protection of the social sciences in the global South from the ravages of unethical experimentation. One pathway to realising this is contained in the call for papers on pages 22 and 28 of this Bulletin. Read the Full Editorial

Published: October 8, 2020

Published: August 19, 2020

This issue of the Bulletin returns to ongoing work theorizing Africa’s economic development. It zeros in on the debate on Randomised Control Trials (RCTs) in the design of development interven- tions for and in Africa. A resurgent area of western in- tellectual curiosity and policy initiative, RCTs recently attracted renewed attention and unexpected validation with the award of the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics to Esther Duflo, Abijit Banerjee and Michael Kremer. This trio was awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for their work in adapting the experimental method of RCTs to the design of development interventions in Africa, and was lauded by the Nobel Committee for thus making a major contribution to poverty alleviation. This catalysed vibrant debates and rebuttal amongst academics, development practitioners and public policy experts that continues to date, including on social media platforms. The debates centred around the merits of applying RCTs to development thinking in the continent. Consistently, interlocuters have sought to contextualise the literature on RCTs within the historical sociology of knowledge production and dissemination, with an emphasis also being placed on the impact on development outcomes. Read the Full Editorial

Published: August 18, 2020

The year 2019 began with reflections on the 15th CODESRIA General Assembly held in Dakar in December 2018 and explored in Issues Nos 1&2, 2019 of the Bulletin. This double issue of the Bulletin picks up where those reflection in the latter issue ended. It follows up on some of the debates discussed at the plenary and parallel sessions of the Assembly, which explored the gains and losses, opportunities, and challenges of globalisation for the continent under the theme “Africa and the Crisis of Globalisation”. Read the Full Editorial

Published: July 16, 2020

In 2018, the Council set out to address three scientific and administrative operations after an challenges. This was on top of organising the 15th internal reform process spearheaded by the Executive General Assembly. The first was to consolidate Committee. The second was to complete a smooth leadership transition with the arrival of a new Executive Secretary in mid-2017. The third, and perhaps most pressing, was to reaffirm relations with partners and enter into new partnerships as a strategy of scaling up funding for our scientific programmes. These tasks were all achieved. Read the Full Executive Secretary's Note

Published: April 20, 2020

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) learned with immense shock and sadness of the passing on of Professor Samir Amin on Sunday, 12th August 2018. Subsequently, Prof. Samir Amin’s body was interned at Père Lachaise in Paris on 1st September 2018 at a site provided by the French Communist Party. The Council was represented at the burial by Prof. Fatow Sow and Dr. Cherif Sy; two members of the CODESRIA community who have worked with Samir Amin for a while. Read the Full Editorial

Published: January 15, 2019

Early this year, Africa was embroiled in a debate about the description of the continent as ‘shithole.’ Around the same period, thousands of African ‘dreamers’ faced deportation and criminalisation in Israel, following government’s decision to ask them to accept 3500USD and relocate to a third country, return to their home countries or face the threat of incarceration. This law was later suspended in April after protests, an international outcry and legal recourse in Israel. As this happened, in April, a scandal over the citizenship status of mainly Caribbean peoples broke in the UK that mimics similar developments in the US and Israel. This followed a change in immigration law in 2012 that framed the presence of the ‘windrush’ generation as illegal forcing them either to regularise their stay or be deported. Read the Full Editorial

Published: January 15, 2019

This edition of the Bulletin is published on the backdrop of celebrations marking the birth of the Council. This year, CODESRIA turned forty-five, a remarkable achievement for an organisation that started in the 1960s as the Council of Directors of Economic and Social Research Institutes in Africa. In 1973, it was formally established as an independent panAfrican research organisation with Samir Amin as first Executive Secretary. February has therefore become a special month for the Council. Read the Full Editorial 

Published: January 15, 2019