- [Author: Dr Niels Boender (University of Edinburgh)]In early 1961, a controversy exploded between Julius Nyerere, the leader of African Nationalism in the British colonial Territory of Tanganyika, and the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions. The group had been backing Tanganyikan trade unionism with significant sums of money in the 1950s. In a set of correspondence, which we explore here, Nyerere set out an alternative vision of socio-economic development that he believed better suited African needs. His former supporters at the ICFTU disagreed with Nyere’s proposals. Through these debates, we can see not only how post-colonial leaders set out new […]
- Despite decades of scholarship and constant demands from Africans themselves, a tendency to view the continent as one political, economic, social, and cultural space persists. The history of ideas, operating on a broader conceptual level, does not escape this homogenising tendency. Ideas of the typical ‘African worker’ or ‘woman’ were colonially constructed and continue to affect the way governments, aid agencies, and individuals think about and interact with the continent. Showing the diversity of labour histories and intellectual histories of thinking about labour in Africa can show the importance of local initiative, vernacularisation of norms, and the de-centring of European […]
- After Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, Stephen Moore — one of Trump’s closest economic advisors — remarked that the United Kingdom faced a choice between embracing American ‘free enterprise’ or committing itself to a ‘European economic model of more socialism’.Moore is not the first to suggest that state intervention in economic affairs is typically European. While Moore characterised the ‘European model’ in negative terms, many left-of-centre commentators have lauded the continent’s supposed commitment to guaranteeing certain social rights, through strong welfare systems and laws which uphold decent working conditions.Yet the very notion that there is a distinct European model of social […]
