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The rainbow makes for strong imagery: throughout world history, the rainbow has functioned in many ways as a tool to think with. This is no different in African contexts. Our aim in this paper is to explore the changing meanings given to relations between rainbows and snakes in narratives from the Gikuyu language in Central Kenya. We thereby remain open to the wider East African context, indicating the multiple meaning-making of rainbows in ecological terms. This diachronic approach to narratives allows us to show how rainbow imagery formed a model that interpreted human/nonhuman relations long before the current global ecological crisis was recognised in developmental circles. In our narrative analysis, we argue that connections were drawn between rainbows and snakes, and in turn between humans and entities like rainbows and snakes. The moral evaluation of rainbow-snakes was ambivalent: they could be dangerous, and they could be good; they could be destructive, and they could be enabling. Analysing the narratives left us with a new perspective on the evaluation of human characters and the rainbow-snake: it could treat humans badly, but humans could also treat the rainbow-snake badly. We furthermore show that in the course of the colonial era, this symbolism changed, and the rainbow-snake as an ecocritical model disappeared in the process: the connection between snake and rainbow disappeared, and the ambivalence of the imagery got lost. Good and bad became clearly distinguishable and inherent: it no longer depended on the way of interacting with the entity. Our diachronic interpretation does not form a call to do away with current images and go back to an assumed romantic, pristine African past. Yet it may be wise to reflect on what imaginative history can teach us, and to learn from narratives in history as a way to overcome the exclusive focus on logical-scientific thinking, arriving at a less anthropocentric interpretative model through narrative thinking. Our analysis points out that these East African oral narratives may be instructive in the context of the current global ecological crisis.  L’arc-en-ciel est une image forte : tout au long de l’histoire mondiale, il a servi à bien des égards d’outil de réflexion. Il en va de même dans le contexte africain. Notre objectif dans cet article est d’examiner l’évolution des significations attribuées aux relations entre les arcs-en-ciel et les serpents dans les récits en langue gikuyu du centre du Kenya. Nous restons ainsi ouverts au contexte plus large de l’Afrique de l’Est, en indiquant les multiples significations des arcs-en-ciel en termes écologiques. Cette approche diachronique des récits nous permet de montrer comment l’imagerie de l’arc-en-ciel a formé un modèle qui interprétait les relations entre les humains et les non-humains bien avant que la crise écologique mondiale actuelle ne soit reconnue dans les cercles du développement. Dans notre analyse narrative, nous soutenons que des liens ont été établis entre les arcs-en-ciel et les serpents, et par conséquent entre les humains et des entités telles que les arcs-en-ciel et les serpents. L’évaluation morale des serpents arc-en-ciel était ambivalente : ils pouvaient être dangereux, mais aussi bénéfiques ; ils pouvaient être destructeurs, mais aussi facilitateurs. L’analyse des récits nous a permis d’acquérir une nouvelle perspective sur l’évaluation des personnages humains et du serpent arc-en-ciel : celui-ci pouvait maltraiter les humains, mais les humains pouvaient également maltraiter le serpent arc-en-ciel. Nous montrons en outre qu’au cours de l’ère coloniale, ce symbolisme a changé et que le serpent arc-en-ciel en tant que modèle écocritique a disparu dans le processus : le lien entre le serpent et l’arc-en-ciel a disparu, et l’ambivalence de l’imagerie s’est perdue. Le bien et le mal sont devenus clairement distincts et inhérents : ils ne dépendaient plus de la manière d’interagir avec l’entité. Notre interprétation diachronique ne constitue pas un appel à abandonner les images actuelles et à revenir à un passé africain supposé romantique et immaculé. Il peut toutefois être judicieux de réfléchir à ce que l’histoire imaginative peut nous enseigner et de tirer les leçons des récits historiques afin de dépasser l’approche exclusivement logique et scientifique et d’aboutir à un modèle d’interprétation moins anthropocentrique grâce à la pensée narrative. Notre analyse souligne que ces récits oraux d’Afrique de l’Est peuvent être instructifs dans le contexte de la crise écologique mondiale actuelle. 

\"The Kongo kingdom, which arose in the Atlantic Coast region of West-Central Africa, is a famous emblem of Africa's past yet little is still known of its origins and early history. This book sheds new light on that all important period and goes on to explain the significance of its cosmopolitan culture in the wider world. Bringing together different new strands of historical evidence as well as scholars from disciplines as diverse as anthropology, archaeology, art history, history and linguistics, it is the first book to approach the history of this famous Central African kingdom from a cross-disciplinary perspective. All chapters are written by distinguished and/or upcoming experts of Kongo history with a focus on political space, taking us through processes of centralisation and decentralisation, the historical politics of extraversion and internal dynamics, and the geographical distribution of aspects of material and immaterial Kongo culture\"-- Provided by publisher.

The history of development cooperation has attracted very little research to date. This volume offers an innovative interpretation by considering the history of SNV Netherlands Development Organisation, which has been in existence for over forty years now.

Chinese glass beads, copper coins, and green-glazed stoneware: archaeological finds on the East and South coast of Africa testify to the longstanding connections over the Indian Ocean. Zheng He's story inspired the novel The Dragonfly Sea by Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, that - as is shown by Mingqing Yuan in this journal - offers a nuanced, personal story of hope that challenges the dominant representation of the relations between China and Africa. The articles for the special issue are complemented by two additional articles, a research report and a review that cover HIV risk reduction, anti-grazing laws, milk systems, and racial relations: a plurality of interests that realises the multidisciplinary mission of Afrika Focus.

This contribution revolves around the complexities of national belonging among Angolan immigrants in Northern Namibia. In state bureaucracies, people are meant to have just one national identity and they are not encouraged to make any changes therein. For many south-east Angolan people currently resident in Rundu, Namibia, however, such simplicity denies their personal history. They have lived in south-east Angola, western Zambia and northern Namibia amongst people of their own kith and kin, and feel that they have rights and obligations in all three contexts. By taking a diachronic perspective with the case of Angolan immigrants in Rundu, Namibia (1960s-2012), this contribution traces the history of ideas about nationality and the conceptualization of war and peace. It proposes to view these as related to longstanding notions of real and imagined communities, but at the same time as changing in relation to the circumstances and varying according to personal history.

Colonial and anti-colonial discourses in many cases represented the early encounters between Africans and Europeans in terms of later hierarchical relations. The colonial discourse portrayed Europeans as brave explorers who discovered African lands inhabited by people who were less developed, and who therefore benefited from the Europeans' technologically and a morally advanced state. The anti-colonial discourse portrayed Africans as welcoming the new strangers, only to be betrayed and pushed back by Europeans whose only goal was to exploit them. Kongo history, where contact between the Kongo kingdom and the Portuguese was established by the end of the fifteenth century, is a case in point. Both colonial and anti-colonial discourses have interpreted the contacts between Kongo people and the Portuguese in the precolonial period as hierarchical in nature. Here, Brinkman discusses the early relations between Kongo people and Europeans.

In March 1961, war broke out in Northern Angola. The Portuguese authorities attributed the violence to the UPA – a nationalist movement led by Northern Angolan immigrants resident in Congo. The movement's leadership tried to keep in contact with its (potential) followers in Northern Angola by various means, pamphlets being one of the most important. Written for a local audience, these pamphlets provide an insight into the inner lines of communication – and internal hierarchies – of the nationalist movement. By using Darnton's 'communication circuit' model, this article investigates the processes of writing, distributing and reading the pamphlets and analyses their generic characteristics, and their position in a tradition of regional popular literacy. In so doing, an interpretation is offered of the social history of the pamphlets: they are treated as a historical subject in their own right. While they can be read as anti-colonial tracts, it is shown that the pamphlets' main concern is to establish the mandate of a leadership in exile over a constituency in Northern Angola. En mars 1961, la guerre éclata dans le Nord de l'Angola. Les autorités portugaises attribuèrent les violences à l'UPA, un mouvement nationaliste dirigé par des immigrés du Nord de l'Angola résidant au Congo. Désireux de rester en contact avec leurs sympathisants (potentiels) dans le Nord de l'Angola, les dirigeants du mouvement utilisèrent divers moyens pour ce faire, le plus important étant le pamphlet. Rédigés à l'intention d'un public local, ces pamphlets apportent un éclairage sur les voies de communication (et les hiérarchies) existant à l'intérieur du mouvement nationaliste. En utilisant le modèle du « circuit de communication » de Darnton, cet article examine les processus de rédaction, de distribution et de lecture des pamphlets, et analyse leurs caractéristiques génériques et leur place dans une tradition de littérature populaire régionale. Ce faisant, il offre une interprétation de l'histoire sociale des pamphlets : ils sont traités comme un objet historique en eux-mêmes. On peut certes les lire comme des tracts anticoloniaux, mais l'article montre que la principale préoccupation des pamphlets est d'établir le mandat de dirigeants en exil sur un groupe situé dans le Nord de l'Angola.