Zubairu Wai
Biographic Data
| ID | 879212 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Zubairu Wai |
| GIVEN NAMES | Zubairu |
| FAMILY NAME | Wai |
| SIGNATURE | WAI Z |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lakehead University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 34 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 11 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Indigenous African Knowledge and the Challenge of Epistemic Translation
Keynote Address: African Fellowships for Research in Indigenous and Alternative Knowledges (AFRIAK), Conference organised by CODESRIA, King Fahd Palace Hotel – Dakar, Senegal, 25–27 November 2024 Prologue Allow me to start by recalling an encounter at another CODESRIA meeting in Dakar, in January 2013. In collaboration with Point Sud (Centre for Research on Local Knowledge), based in Bamako, Mali, CODESRIA had co-organised a conference, ‘Africa N…
Africa Beyond Inventions
Rethinking War and Violence in Sierra Leone
One of the most perplexing contradictions of the Sierra Leonean civil war was the disconnect between an insurgency movement that defined its project as an emancipatory program of national liberation and the large-scale violence, destructions, and brutalities it inflicted on the rural poor and other marginalized groups in the name of that project. A question that has thus continued to plague the war is why a movement that claimed to be fighting on…
Twenty Years Later
Twenty Years Later:Rethinking the Sierra Leonean Civil War and Beyond Ismail Rashid and Zubairu Wai In March 1991, war broke out in the West African state of Sierra Leone, and it quickly became one of the seemingly intractable African conflicts in the immediate post-Cold War era. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which initiated the war, claimed that it was a quest for national liberation, democratic empowerment, and the construction of an eg…
Resurrecting Mudimbe
Making neoliberal subjects
On the predicament of Africanist knowledge
One of the major conceptual apparatuses in Mudimbe’s critical repertoire is the concept of the ‘colonial library’, an abstraction that denotes the immense body of texts and systems of representation that for centuries has functioned to produce Africa as a paradigm of difference and alterity. A transdisciplinary space the huge knowledge capital of which constitutes and is constitutive of the epistemological locus of Africa’s invention, the colonia…
The empire's new clothes
This paper interrogates the current upsurge in humanitarian interventionism in Africa. Disagreeing with those who see it in altruistic terms, the paper argues that the increasing militarisation of world politics seen in the routinisation of interventions in Africa is a function of a neo-imperialist posture driven by a Western will to domination and desire to restructure the world in line with the ideological preferences of liberalism as the domin…
Epistemologies of African Conflicts
The Idea of Sierra Leone
In March 2008, the Racial Equality Council in Plymouth, England, slammed a couple (Leroy Lander and Laura Ashenford) for naming their pub “Hawkins Meeting House” ( The Daily Mail , March 28, 2008). Situated in an area close to the birthplace of John Hawkins (1532-95) the ruthless sixteenth-century English slaver who was knighted for his exploits against the Spanish Armada in 1588, Lander thought of honoring his hero by naming his pub after him. T…
Neo-patrimonialism and the discourse of state failure in Africa
This paper is a critical interrogation of the dominant Africanist discourse on African state forms and its relationship with what is seen as pervasive state failure on the continent. Through an examination of the neo-patrimonialist literature on African states, this paper argues that what informs such problematic scholarship, inscribed on the conceptual and analytical landscape of the Weberian ideal-typical conception of state rationality is a vu…
Whither African Development? A Preparatory for an African Alternative Reformulation of the Concept of Development
Intended as a preparatory for an African alternative reformulation of the con- cept of development, this paper problematises Africa’s development experi- ence in order to understand the impasse that has characterised it. Three major concerns are addressed: first, development is historically examined as a politi- cally violent and oppressive, culturally deterministic and economically exploita- tive paradigm operating on a flawed logic. Second, it …
Neo-patrimonialism and the discourse of state failure in Africa
This paper is a critical interrogation of the dominant Africanist discourse on African state forms and its relationship with what is seen as pervasive state failure on the continent. Through an examination of the neo-patrimonialist literature on African states, this paper argues that what informs such problematic scholarship, inscribed on the conceptual and analytical landscape of the Weberian ideal-typical conception of state rationality is a vu…
The empire's new clothes
This paper interrogates the current upsurge in humanitarian interventionism in Africa. Disagreeing with those who see it in altruistic terms, the paper argues that the increasing militarisation of world politics seen in the routinisation of interventions in Africa is a function of a neo-imperialist posture driven by a Western will to domination and desire to restructure the world in line with the ideological preferences of liberalism as the domin…
On the predicament of Africanist knowledge
One of the major conceptual apparatuses in Mudimbe’s critical repertoire is the concept of the ‘colonial library’, an abstraction that denotes the immense body of texts and systems of representation that for centuries has functioned to produce Africa as a paradigm of difference and alterity. A transdisciplinary space the huge knowledge capital of which constitutes and is constitutive of the epistemological locus of Africa’s invention, the colonia…
Whither African Development? A Preparatory for an African Alternative Reformulation of the Concept of Development
Intended as a preparatory for an African alternative reformulation of the con- cept of development, this paper problematises Africa’s development experi- ence in order to understand the impasse that has characterised it. Three major concerns are addressed: first, development is historically examined as a politi- cally violent and oppressive, culturally deterministic and economically exploita- tive paradigm operating on a flawed logic. Second, it …
Whither African Development? A Preparatory for an African Alternative Reformulation of the Concept of Development
Intended as a preparatory for an African alternative reformulation of the con- cept of development, this paper problematises Africa’s development experi- ence in order to understand the impasse that has characterised it. Three major concerns are addressed: first, development is historically examined as a politi- cally violent and oppressive, culturally deterministic and economically exploita- tive paradigm operating on a flawed logic. Second, it …
Epistemologies of African Conflicts
The Idea of Sierra Leone
In March 2008, the Racial Equality Council in Plymouth, England, slammed a couple (Leroy Lander and Laura Ashenford) for naming their pub “Hawkins Meeting House” ( The Daily Mail , March 28, 2008). Situated in an area close to the birthplace of John Hawkins (1532-95) the ruthless sixteenth-century English slaver who was knighted for his exploits against the Spanish Armada in 1588, Lander thought of honoring his hero by naming his pub after him. T…
Neo-patrimonialism and the discourse of state failure in Africa
This paper is a critical interrogation of the dominant Africanist discourse on African state forms and its relationship with what is seen as pervasive state failure on the continent. Through an examination of the neo-patrimonialist literature on African states, this paper argues that what informs such problematic scholarship, inscribed on the conceptual and analytical landscape of the Weberian ideal-typical conception of state rationality is a vu…
The empire's new clothes
This paper interrogates the current upsurge in humanitarian interventionism in Africa. Disagreeing with those who see it in altruistic terms, the paper argues that the increasing militarisation of world politics seen in the routinisation of interventions in Africa is a function of a neo-imperialist posture driven by a Western will to domination and desire to restructure the world in line with the ideological preferences of liberalism as the domin…
On the predicament of Africanist knowledge
One of the major conceptual apparatuses in Mudimbe’s critical repertoire is the concept of the ‘colonial library’, an abstraction that denotes the immense body of texts and systems of representation that for centuries has functioned to produce Africa as a paradigm of difference and alterity. A transdisciplinary space the huge knowledge capital of which constitutes and is constitutive of the epistemological locus of Africa’s invention, the colonia…
Resurrecting Mudimbe
Making neoliberal subjects
Rethinking War and Violence in Sierra Leone
One of the most perplexing contradictions of the Sierra Leonean civil war was the disconnect between an insurgency movement that defined its project as an emancipatory program of national liberation and the large-scale violence, destructions, and brutalities it inflicted on the rural poor and other marginalized groups in the name of that project. A question that has thus continued to plague the war is why a movement that claimed to be fighting on…
Twenty Years Later
Twenty Years Later:Rethinking the Sierra Leonean Civil War and Beyond Ismail Rashid and Zubairu Wai In March 1991, war broke out in the West African state of Sierra Leone, and it quickly became one of the seemingly intractable African conflicts in the immediate post-Cold War era. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), which initiated the war, claimed that it was a quest for national liberation, democratic empowerment, and the construction of an eg…
Africa Beyond Inventions
Indigenous African Knowledge and the Challenge of Epistemic Translation
Keynote Address: African Fellowships for Research in Indigenous and Alternative Knowledges (AFRIAK), Conference organised by CODESRIA, King Fahd Palace Hotel – Dakar, Senegal, 25–27 November 2024 Prologue Allow me to start by recalling an encounter at another CODESRIA meeting in Dakar, in January 2013. In collaboration with Point Sud (Centre for Research on Local Knowledge), based in Bamako, Mali, CODESRIA had co-organised a conference, ‘Africa N…
Political science (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Law (8 works) · African cultural and philosophical studies (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Philosophy (5 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (5 works) · Power (physics (5 works) · Epistemology (4 works)