Person: Akyeampong, Emmanuel
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Akyeampong
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Emmanuel
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Akyeampong, Emmanuel
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Publication Race, Identity and Citizenship in Black Africa: The Case of the Lebanese in Ghana(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2006-08) Akyeampong, EmmanuelAs we approach the post-colonial half century, transnationalism has become a major reality in Africa and the wider world with the proliferation of immigrants, refugees and displaced persons. But transnationalism is not a new development, and diaspora and globalization - both historical processes - have long served as contexts for the remaking of identity, citizenship and polity. Today, concepts such as 'cosmopolitanism' and 'flexible citizenship' are in vogue in a globalized world, as transnationalism challenges statist concepts of political citizenship. In this article, using the case of Ghana, I revisit the historic presence of a Lebanese diaspora in west Africa from the 1860s, and the intellectual and political obstacles that have worked against their full incorporation as active political citizens. I seek to understand why the prospect of non-black citizenship was considered problematic in black Africa during the era of decolonization, interrogating the institutional legacies of colonial rule and pan-Africanist thought. The intellectual rigidity of pan-Africanism on race is contrasted with current notions of the constructedness of identity. I probe the ways in which the Lebanese in Ghana constructed their identities, and how these facilitated or obstructed assimilation. As African governments seek to tap into the resources of the new African communities in Europe and North America, the article suggests the timeliness of exploring alternative criteria to indigeneity when defining citizenship in black Africa.Publication China in West Africa’s regional development and security plans(Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, 2015) Akyeampong, EmmanuelThis article argues that we are presently in another global economic transition. The old centres of growth have witnessed serious economic reverses with several countries going into ‘receivership’ in the West – Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Northern Ireland, and possibly Spain and Italy. The fastest growing economies in the world are no longer in the West but in developing regions such as Africa and Asia. China has emerged overnight as the second largest economy with predictions that it would overtake the United States within the next generation. China’s economy has gone from one of export-driven growth to the prospect of continued growth based on internal demand, driven by one of the fastest and largest growing middle classes in history. South–South trade also holds great promise as one of the engines of continued growth for China. China’s recent rise began with its designation as the world’s ‘factory’ by Western multinational companies in the 1980s, seeking to increase their profit margins by outsourcing production to areas with cheap but disciplined labour. As China moves beyond the initial phase of labour-intensive industries to more technologically advanced industries, it has turned to developing countries in continents such as Africa for raw materials, investment and business opportunities in areas such as the construction of infrastructure (roads, railways, hydroelectric dams and so on).Publication Threats to Empire: Illicit Distillation, Venereal Diseases and Colonial Disorder inBritish West Africa, 1930-1948.(Cambridge University Press) Akyeampong, EmmanuelBetween 1930 and 1948 colonial governments in British West Africa found themselves fighting an unusual battle against ordinary Africans on two fronts: illicit distillation from 1930, which undermined colonial revenue, assailed colonial hegemony in the flagrant disrespect for law, and compromised British subscription to international conventions that forbade liquor distillation in the African colonies; and prostitution, particularly during World War II, when venereal diseases emerged as a real threat to military preparedness among British military forces. Though I have written on liquor traffic, illicit distillation, and prostitution in colonial West Africa, I underestimated the American influence on the international context that framed these issues between the 1880s and the 1920s and the energy of American moral reform organizations that drove temperance and the social purity movement. The American factor enters African historiography from decolonization, and America and the former Soviet Union typically are presented as anti-colonial forces. Elided within this historiographical tradition are America's imperial history and the formative influence of American moral reformers in shaping the very nature of colonial rule in the British Empire. The internationalized struggle against vice in the British Empire lent a depth to colonial responses and a sharpness to the colonial crackdown on illicit distillers and prostitutes in West Africa in the 1930s and 1940s that radicalized ordinary men and women and unveiled their potential for nationalism and mass politics. In the Gold Coast, for example, these ordinary men and women would be heavily represented in Kwame Nkrumah's Convention People's Party (CPP). The collapse of prohibition in America in 1933 in the face of widespread criminality and corruption took the wind out of the sails of the international moral reform movement and helped undermine the discourse of the “civilizing mission” and the “white man's burden” as rationales for colonialism. In the aftermath of economic depression in the 1930s and World War II, colonial emphasis shifted to development in partnership with African nationalists. Nkrumah in the early years of Ghana's independence commented on how the mosquito was an unsung hero, for its presence in West Africa limited white settlement and removed a bottleneck from the process of decolonization in West Africa.Publication Ties that Bound: Slave Concubines/Wives and the End of Slavery in the Gold Coast, c.1874-1900(2012) Akyeampong, EmmanuelPublication For Prayer and Profit: West Africa's Religious and Economic Ties to the Gulf 1960s to the Present(African Finance and Economic Association, 2010) Akyeampong, EmmanuelWest Africa’s historic ties of trade and Islam with the Arabian Peninsula date back to the 7th and 8th Centuries CE. On independence from colonial rule several African countries turned to the Arab world for official development assistance (ODA). The period from the 1990s has seen Gulf businesses making important financial investments in West African real estate and telecommunications. The Gulf has become an important source of consumer and capital goods for West Africa, as well as a buyer of African exports like coffee, cocoa, and timber. African professionals work in the Gulf, though Asians remain dominant in the Gulf labor force.Publication Africa, the Arabian Gulf and Asia: Changing Dynamics in Contemporary West Africa's Political Economy(African Finance and Economic Association, 2011) Akyeampong, EmmanuelThe last two to three decades have witnessed significant transformation in West Africa’s relations to the Arabian Gulf and Asia. While ties to countries such as Saudi Arabia are historic, economic liberalization since the 1980s has introduced new trading partners and some unexpected developments. The outcome of these recent developments can be startling: so in Ghana, for example, India and China have overtaken the United Kingdom, the former colonial power, in investments and the number of operating companies. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) ranks third in the cumulative value of foreign direct investments in Ghana since 1994. This paper is an historian’s attempt to provide context, some perspective and to probe the implications of these emerging patterns for the political economy of West Africa. It uses Ghana under the Kufuor regime (2000-2008) as a case study of how one West African government engaged the new economic opportunities and the growing importance of Arab and Asian trading partners and investors in the climate of South-South cooperation.Publication "Diasporas,” Mobility and the Social Imaginary: Getting Ahead in West Africa(Association of Third World Studies, 2010) Akyeampong, EmmanuelThe article presents the lecture "'Diasporas,' Mobility and the Social Imaginary: Getting Ahead in West Africa," by Emmanuel Akyeampong, that was delivered as the keynote lecture at the 27th Annual Conference of the Third World Studies in Elmina, Ghana in November 2009. It explores the impact of the African Diaspora and the slave trade and examines how Africans are establishing transnational connections in contemporary society.Publication The Contribution of African Women to Economic Growth and Development: Historical Perspectives and Policy Implications Part I: The Pre-Colonial and Colonial Periods(The World Bank, 2012) Akyeampong, Emmanuel; Fofack, HippolyteBringing together history and economics, this paper presents a historical and processual understanding of women’s economic marginalization in Sub-Saharan Africa from the pre-colonial period to the end of colonial rule. It is not that women have not been economically active or productive; it is rather that they have often not been able to claim the proceeds of their labor or have it formally accounted for. The paper focuses on the pre-colonial and colonial periods and outlines three major arguments. First, it discusses the historical processes through which the labor of women was increasingly appropriated even in kinship structures in pre-colonial Africa, utilizing the concepts of “rights in persons” and “wealth in people.” Reviewing the processes of production and reproduction, it explains why most slaves in pre-colonial Africa were women and discusses how slavery and slave trade intensified the exploitation of women. Second, it analyzes how the cultivation of cash crops and European missionary constructions of the individual, marriage, and family from the early decades of the 19th century sequestered female labor and made it invisible in the realm of domestic production. Third, it discusses how colonial policies from the late 19th century reinforced the “capture” of female labor and the codification of patriarchy through the nature and operation of the colonial economy and the instrumentality of customary law.Publication “Diasporas,” mobility and the social imaginary: Getting ahead in West Africa(Association of Third World Studies, 2010) Akyeampong, EmmanuelPublication Rum, Gin and Maize: Deities and Ritual Change in the Gold Coast during the Atlantic Era (16th century to 1850)(OpenEdition, 2015) Akyeampong, Emmanuel; Ntewusu, Samuel A.This paper examines the incorporation of rum and gin as powerful spiritual drinks in pre-colonial Gold Coast, particularly in the context of state formation and warfare, and the growing importance of maize, side by side with the indigenous yam, as the food of gods. Through food and drink, we analyze changing notions of spiritual efficacy, the ascendancy of war deities, and interrogate how shifts in socio-political contexts aligned with those in the spiritual realm. Why were European liquors like gin, rum, and schnapps incorporated into ritual on the Gold Coast and not others? We juxtapose geographically dispersed ritual landscapes, contrasting the Atlantic coast and its immediate hinterland with a case study from the northern Guan in our endeavor to understand how far-reaching were Atlantic processes, as well as the “logic” of ritual transformation.