Afrika Haus Berlin - Bochumer Str. 25 - 10555 Berlin (Moabit) - U-Bahn Turmstraße afrikahaus@t-online.de

Life without Authority: Generational Politics in West Africa

31.10.2016 19:30 Uhr - 21:00 Uhr

The American Academy in Berlin GmbH, Am Sandwerder 17-19, 14109 Berlin


today-nigeria-140512-video2[1]Siemens Lecture by Michael Watts in der American Academy

Nigeria is a towering presence in Africa: one in every five Africans is a Nigerian; its economy is the largest on the continent. Nigeria is also one of the world’s major oil producers and is usually identified as a middle-income country. Yet the majority of Nigerians have benefitted little from the country’s vast oil wealth and the country is sometimes seen as a „failing state.“

Michael Watts‚ lecture focuses on two home-grown insurgencies: Boko Haram, a radical Islamist movement located in the dry and arid northern Muslim heartlands, and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND), arising from the largely Christian oil-fields of the southeastern rainforests. Each insurgency, Watts argues, arose from common failures of state, civic, customary and religious authority, and from the material, political, and economic insecurities produced by the failure of national secular development.