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Louisa Uchum Egbunike

Louisa Uchum Egbunike

Dr Louisa Uchum Egbunike is a lecturer in English at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research centres on African literature in which she specialises in Igbo fiction and culture.

CURRENT ISSUE

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Climate Change Culture & Society Economics Gender & Feminism History International Affairs Politics & Security Science & Technology

Latest

Reframing Population Other Perspectives on Africa’s Population Growth

August 17, 2022

Does ‘Creative Crowdsourcing’ Exploit Creatives? NDLEA Faces Backlash Over Logo Design Contest

August 16, 2022

The Umpire’s New Clothes What the New Electoral Act Means for INEC

August 15, 2022

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What we’re getting wrong about population in Afr

What we’re getting wrong about population in Africa. #OnSite⚡

Over history, there has been an unhelpful dose of toxicity, explicit or hidden, in the Western regard of non-Western population growth.

In 2017, when French president, Emmanuel Macron, hectoringly opined at a G20 summit on the futility of spending on aid as long as African women were having seven or eight children, he was following in the footsteps of a long line of blunt Malthusian theorists, as well as getting the data wrong.

African women in 2017 on average had 4.8 children, and in some countries, the rate was as low as 1.4 children.

Discussion on demography has often been handicapped by narrow and fragmented framing. In our latest online essay, policy researcher, Yarri Kamara, asks: what if we reframed population discourses, by widening and shifting the frame?

To widen the frame on African population growth is to consider how history and power relations have shaped Africa’s demography. To shift the frame is to ask: what lies on the other side? What potential civilizational problems await us when population control is achieved?

Read the full essay at the link in our bio.
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📝: Yarri Kamara

Today in 1916, Chief Moses Adekoyejo Majekodunmi w

Today in 1916, Chief Moses Adekoyejo Majekodunmi was born in Abeokuta. #RxHistory⏳

On 17 August 1916, Majekodunmi was born in Abeokuta, Ogun State. He attended Abeokuta Grammar School and Saint Gregory’s College, Lagos, before enrolling at the University of Dublin, where he graduated with a degree in anatomy and physiology. He later received a first class honours in bacteriology and clinical medicine. By 1942, Majekodunmi had completed his education, graduating as a medical doctor.

Majekodunmi returned to Nigeria in 1943 and took a job as a medical officer in the Nigerian Medical Service. From 1949 to 1960, he worked with the Nigerian and Federal Medical Services as a gynaecologist and obstetrician. Majekodunmi also worked as a consulting doctor with Massey Street Maternity Hospital, General Hospital, and Creek Hospital, all in Lagos. Majekodunmi founded St Nicholas hospital, which opened in 1968, and later became Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa’s personal physician.

Read more about Majekodunmi in our daily newsletter which goes out by 6 p.m. (WAT). Subscribe at the link in our bio.
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📝: Sinmi Sowande
📷: 1) Chief Moses Adekoyejo Majekodunmi. MAMF.

2) Ambassador Kennedy and his wife Janie with Nigerian Minister for Health Moses Adekoyejo Majekodunmi and his wife Nora at the St Patrick’s Day celebrations, Irish embassy, Lagos, 1962. National Archives of Ireland.

Why NDLEA is facing backlash over its logo design

Today in 2003, Idi Amin died aged 78. #RxHistory⏳

On 16 August 2003, Idi Amin, who had been on life support for a while, died in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, due to multiple organ failure. He was buried in Saudi Arabia although the Ugandan government permitted his body to be moved back into Uganda for burial despite his gross abuse of human rights as Ugandan president.

Born in Koboko, Uganda, around 1925, and abandoned by his father to be raised by his mother, an herbalist, Amin’s education was basic. In 1946, he became an assistant cook in the King's African Rifles.

Although Amin liked to lie about fighting in Burma during the Second World War, he fought for the British against the Mau Mau anti-colonial rebels in Kenya in the 1950s. Charismatic and dignified by his stature, he grew steadily in the military until he attained the rank of ‘effendi’, the highest rank attainable by an African in the British colonial army, in 1959.

At the time of Uganda’s independence in 1962, Amin occupied the highest rank for an African in the Ugandan military. Amin was close to the Ugandan prime minister, Milton Obote. In 1966, after the Ugandan parliament accused Amin of corruption, Amin helped Obote to seize power and become president. Obote then elevated Amin to the rank of major general in 1968 only for Amin to depose Obote and become the Ugandan president in 1971.

Read more about Amin in out newsletter which goes out at 6p.m. (WAT). Subscribe at the link in our bio.
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📝: Adams Adeosun and Ugonna Eronini
📷: 1) General Idi Amin, President of Uganda, waits to address the General Assembly at the United Nations headquarters in New York, on October 1, 1975. AP

2) Ugandan President Idi Amin appears at a rally in Koboko in 1978 to mark the seventh anniversary of his rule. AP

What does the new Electoral Act mean for INEC? #On

What does the new Electoral Act mean for INEC? #OnSite⚡

Earlier this year, President Buhari signed a new electoral act into law. Many political experts believe that the new electoral act will change the dynamics of Nigeria’s electoral process going forward. But is such hope unfounded?

Already, positive comments have trailed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s handling of the off-cycle governorship elections this year in Osun and Ekiti. These elections have led some to believe Nigeria’s electoral system has finally matured. However, little is known about what prompted the need for the new electoral act and what the new act means for INEC and the country as a whole.

In our latest online essay, researcher, Kunle Adewumi, explores how election management in Nigeria has evolved over time, and whether the 2022 Electoral Act is the critical piece that pushes INEC over the line in conducting credible elections.

Read the full essay by clicking the link in our bio.
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📝: Kunle Adewumi

Today in 1880, Sara Forbes Bonetta died aged 37. #

Today in 1880, Sara Forbes Bonetta died aged 37. #RxHistory ⏳

On 15 August 1880, Sara Forbes Bonetta died of tuberculosis in Funchal, Madeira Island, a Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean and was buried there.

Bonetta was originally called Princess Aina among the Egbado people of Oke-Odan, southwestern Nigeria, where she was born into a royal family in 1843. She became a slave in the court of Dahomey’s King Ghezo, at the age of five, when a Dahomeyan army invaded Oke-Odan in 1848, killing her parents.

King Ghezo kept Bonetta in his court as a potential human sacrifice until Frederick Forbes, a British Royal Navy commander, arrived Dahomey in the HMS Bonetta, in 1849, to convince King Ghezo to desist from the slave trade. Forbes met Bonetta and convinced King Ghezo to yield the girl to Britain’s Queen Victoria. It was Forbes who then renamed the little girl Sara Forbes Bonetta, after himself and his ship.

On 9 November 1850, Bonetta finally met Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle. The queen, taken by Bonetta’s intelligence, claimed her as a goddaughter and sponsored her education. When Forbes died the next year, in 1851, the queen put Bonetta in the custody of the Schoen family. The queen eventually moved Bonetta to Sierra Leone to escape the British climate.

Read more on Bonetta in our daily newsletter which goes out at 6p.m. (WAT). Subscribe at the link in our bio.
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📝: Adams Adeosun and Ugonna Eronini
📷: 1) Camille-Léon-Louis Silvy, albumen print, 15 September 1862. National Portrait Gallery London

2) Photo by Merrick Albumen Carte-de-Visite. Paul Frecker/The Nineteenth-Century Photography.

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