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This article discusses the innovative ways in which African filmmakers Ousmane Sembène, Paulin S. Vieyra, Djibril Diop Mambéty Eddie Ogbomah and Ola Balogun offer sociological insights into, and cultural representations of, African contemporary postcolonial societies. These filmmakers are able to highlight the breadth and depth of the undercurrents of hopes and impediments in Africa. Their themes include social justice, slavery, alienation, the advent of Islam and Christianity (upsetting the traditional beliefs and cosmogony in the process), military rule, tradition and modernity, Pan- Africanist ideals, the importation and imposition of the Western political system into Africa, and loaded concepts such as democracy, just to name a few. Ogbomah underscores the many travails that obtain in postcolonial Nigeria, the most salient being the ruthless corruption in the natural resources sector, primarily crude oil. These filmmakers try to offer a solid foundation on which modern Africa can, firstly, midwife the revival of a genuine indigenous model of economic development. Secondly, these filmmakers, each in his own peculiar style, provide artistic tools which can continue to support the development of a socially conscious and intellectually robust cinematic tradition in Africa.






Samba Diop, Ph.D., Research Scholar, Department of Linguistics & Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo, Norway. Email: sbkdiop@yahoo.co.uk

Nigeria, the Giant of Africa, has three big tribes: Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa. It was a British colony which was amalgamated in 1914. The country became independent in 1962 and was right away bedeviled by military coups d'états and a bloody civil war (1967-1970). In 1999, the country experienced democratic dispensation. In the 1990s, the Nollywood nascent movie industry—following in the footpath of Hollywood and Bollywood—flourished. The movie industry grew thanks to four factors: Rapid urbanization; the hand-held video camera; the advent of satellite TV; and, the overseas migrations of Nigerians. Local languages are used in these films; however, English is the most prominent, along with Nigerian pidgin broken English. Many themes are treated in these films: tradition and customs, religion, witchcraft and sorcery, satire, urban and rural lives, wealth acquisition, consumerism, etc. I discuss the ways in which American popular culture is adopted in Nigeria and recreated on screen. Nigeria and USA share Federalism, the superlative mode, and gigantism (houses, cars, people, etc.), and many Nigerians attend American universities. In the final analysis, the arguments exposed in this paper highlight the multitude of ways in which Nigerians navigate the treacherous waters of modernity and globalization.

Beginning in the mid-'80s, well after he brought his famous financial instability hypothesis to maturity, Hyman P. Minsky analyzed the evolution of capitalism. This paper proposes a critical reading of this analysis, focusing on the institutional dimension of Minsky's research. From my point of view, if Minsky's analysis constitutes more a history of capitalism than a theory of capitalism, this is because of the weak conceptualization of institutions and the absence of a genuine analysis of institutional change. From this perspective, I believe it necessary to clarify and complete Minsky's institutional analysis. Only by doing so can we take full measure of Minsky's research on the evolution of capitalism and identify all the repercussions for an analysis of the instability and resilience of the current stage of capitalism.

Several previous studies have explored the relationship between trust and socio-economic conditions but do not attempt to examine channels through which the relation operates. In this paper, we examine how political fractionalization mitigates the positive relationship between trust institutions and national economic performance in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using Round 7 data of Afrobarometer in over 1000 districts in 34 countries, we find that trust institutions positively and significantly affect economic performance. Nevertheless, the positive effect is attenuated in districts with a high level of political diversity. More specifically, a higher level of trust is associated with lower economic performance at a higher level of political fractionalization and vice versa, with a steady linear decrease of the estimated coefficients. Policy implications are discussed.