African Journals Initiative, Tanzania and Open Access
We start with a short piece from Dr Jama Musse Jama, Editor of Dhaxalreeb at the Somaliland Centre for African Studies, exploring this year’s International Open Access Week theme, “Who owns our knowledge?”, and considers “Why (Diamond) Open Access in the Global South?”
The latest issue of Zamani: A Journal of African Historical Studies, based in Tanzania, was published in October. The journal promotes African perspectives on African history in both writing and research. It has an international editorial board and welcomes cutting-edge and high-quality research on Africa’s rich and diverse pasts.
Volume 2, Issue 1 begins with Mbozi Santebe’s article, “Combatting Road Accidents and Fatalities: The Colonial State, Voluntary Organisations, and Road Safety in Northern Rhodesia, 1940s-1964”. It examines institutional responses to the continued increase in road accidents linked to the rise in use of motor vehicles that have overwhelmed the poorly resourced road safety bodies.
Emanuel Lukio Mchome explores “Engineering Inefficiencies and Technical Dependency: A Vital Lens in Understanding Power Outages in Postcolonial Tanzania, 1960s-1990s”.
Andrew S Kasambala and Oswald J Masebo’s article “Dynamics of Infanticides among the Ngoni of Tanzania, 1850s-1916”, provides a deeper understanding of the manner and extent to which the changing socio-economic and political forces influenced the persistence of cultural practices among the Ngoni People. In “Beyond Christianity: German Missionaries’ Heritage in Colonial Mbeya, Tanzania, 1880s-1918”, Ashura Jackson Ngoya and Edward Simon Mgaya investigate the secular roles of missionaries and consider their efforts in education, health, agriculture, trade, and tax collection, which sometimes led to them working as colonial intermediaries in certain areas of Mbeya.
Through a historical analysis of key thinkers from Tempels and Hountondji, to Wiredu and Oye wu mí, Eric Clement Mgalula’s article “Criteria for Rejecting Ideas in African Philosophy: A Historical and Epistemological Analysis”, historicises the evolution of evaluative criteria in African philosophy, challenging colonial legacies and romanticised traditionalism.
Finally, Rasul Ahmed Minja explores “Mediation Partiality and the East African Community’s ‘Quiet Diplomacy’ in the Kenyan Post-Election Crisis of 2007/2008” and concludes that the post-election crisis of Kenya serves as a case study of demonstrating both the limitations and potential of regional organisations in conflict resolution.
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