Current History

In our May issue, Jody Benjamin reviews “The Heretic of Cacheu: Crispina Peres and the Struggle over Life in Seventeenth-Century West Africa” by Toby Green. The book draws on documents related to Inquisition case of a local female merchant that “reveal how the imposition of linear time, the commodification of human value, and the marginalization of various African ways of knowing were integral to the rise of the European empires,” writes Benjamin, an associate professor of history at Howard University. West Africans displayed agency in their responses to colonialism, often blending new influences with longstanding practices. When Peres’s family members faced debility and illness, “She followed both the advice of Portuguese priests and that of Muslim Jakhanke clerics.” Cacheu was a slave-trading hub, and the book shows “how the cruelty and violence of human trafficking could unfold amidst the ordinariness of daily life.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/202/217946/The-Early-Modern-World-of-a-West-African-Woman

Benjamin’s review, “The Early Modern World of a West African Woman,” is available along with the rest of our annual Africa issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

The Early Modern World of a West African Woman A new history uses records of a local businesswoman’s brush with the Inquisition as a window into everyday life in an Atlantic port town and slave-trading hub under Portuguese colonial rule.

In our annual Africa issue, John J. Chin explains an apparent contagion of military coups that has spread across a wide swath of the continent, from Guinea-Bissau to Sudan. The Sahel coup belt, writes Chin, an assistant teaching professor of political science at Carnegie Mellon University, “accounts for only 10 percent of Africa’s population, but more than 75 percent of coup attempts on the continent since 2020.” Though there is little evidence of direct connections among these events, there are several common causes. These factors include increasing poverty and discontent, ineffective predecessor governments, and a more permissive international environment. Sahelian states appear to be “stuck in a ‘coup trap,’ whereby coups and poverty become mutually reinforcing, making it difficult to escape a cycle of political and economic instability.”
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/193/217945/The-Expanding-Sahel-Coup-Belt

Chin’s essay, “The Expanding Sahel Coup Belt,” is available along with the rest of our May issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

The Expanding Sahel Coup Belt Since 2020, the Sahel region has emerged as the global epicenter of coups d’état and terrorism. This article surveys why coups in recent years have been concentrated in a narrow belt running from Guinea-Bissau on West Africa’s Atlantic coast all the way to Sudan on the continent’s Red Sea coa...

In our May issue, Justin Pearce explores the postcolonial trajectories of Angola and Mozambique. Pearce, a senior lecturer in history at Stellenbosch University, argues that “the past fifty years in Angola and Mozambique cannot be understood without attention to divisions that were nurtured by the particular experience of a Portuguese style of colonialism.” In both countries, leftist factions and rivals backed (often covertly) by the United States, Rhodesia, and South Africa vied for control of independence forces. After ensuing periods of civil war, the victorious factions remain the dominant players in national politics. The former liberation movements long since entrenched in power “have surrendered their claims to popular accountability and their ambitions to create more egalitarian societies,” while their rivals struggle to draw widespread support and fend off upstart alternatives.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/186/217948/Half-a-Century-of-Post-Independence-Strife-in

Pearce’s essay, “Half a Century of Post-Independence Strife in Angola and Mozambique,” is available along with the rest of our annual Africa issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

Half a Century of Post-Independence Strife in Angola and Mozambique Angola and Mozambique both celebrated fifty years of independence in 2025. The politics of each country have been marked by a fractious past. Both endured internal conflict until the 1990s, as social divisions that were a legacy of Portuguese colonial rule became politicized amid Cold War rivalries....

In our annual Africa issue, Basile Ndjio examines the pervasive structures of legal and medical discrimination against LGBTIQ people in Cameroon. “The prevailing medical order approaches suspected or identified homosexual patients with moral preconceptions that adversely impact their lives,” often denying them care, writes Ndjio, a professor of anthropology at the University of Douala. Anti-LGBTIQ bias in Cameroon (and elsewhere) stems from the colonial-era imposition of European moral frameworks, criminalization by the postcolonial state, and contemporary conspiracy theories and moral panics. In the face of violence and marginalization, “LGBTIQ Cameroonians have devised varied tactics to cope with stigma and institutional neglect,” including underground clinics, digital networks, and partnerships with international NGOs.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/180/217947/Medical-Discrimination-Moral-Panic-and-the

Ndjio’s essay, “Medical Discrimination, Moral Panic, and the Politics of Sexuality in Cameroon,” is available along with the rest of our May issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

Medical Discrimination, Moral Panic, and the Politics of Sexuality in Cameroon This article examines the complex dynamics of medical discrimination and anti-LGBTIQ exclusion in Cameroon. It uses Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics and Achille Mbembe’s idea of necropolitics to demonstrate how same-sex sexuality has been framed as a moral, medical, and political issue f...

In our May issue, Moses Khisa examines how Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s authoritarian rule has become more deeply entrenched despite the country having many features of formal democracy. “Uganda has experienced autocratization by elections,” writes Khisa, an associate professor of political science and Africana studies at North Carolina State University. Uganda has seen the emergence of spirited opposition figures in recent years, most recently entertainer Robert Kyagulanyi (also known as Bobi Wine). But a variety of measures maintain the status quo, including patronage, co-optation, and coercion through threats of violence or imprisonment. Now a president who once lamented that African leaders cling to power too long has been in office for four decades and may be preparing to hand the reins to his son.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/174/217949/The-Making-of-Uganda-s-Deepening-Autocracy

Khisa’s essay, “The Making of Uganda’s Deepening Autocracy,” is available along with the rest of our annual Africa issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

The Making of Uganda’s Deepening Autocracy President Yoweri Museveni, in power for four decades, has overseen a steady drift toward autocracy in Uganda. Elections have been held regularly since 1996, yet they have led not to democratization but its opposite. The ruling party uses state coercion and patronage to maintain its political dominan...

In our annual Africa issue, Patrick Desplat contextualizes the Generation Z revolt that toppled the government of Madagascar in 2025. “What initially sparked the protests in Madagascar was neither an abstract political program nor global symbolism,” writes Desplat, a scientific coordinator at the Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology. Rather, “everyday concerns” sparked mass discontent, as unreliable infrastructure made Internet-reliant (and mostly informal) livelihoods nearly impossible to maintain. The protest movement’s detachment from institutional politics distinguished it from previous political upheavals in Madagascar. “Without durable pathways into formal decision-making,” though, it risks following the pattern of failing to create a responsive government and democratize opportunity.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/167/217950/Gen-Z-Aspiration-Hybrid-Agency-and-the-Madagascar

Desplat’s essay, “Gen Z Aspiration, Hybrid Agency, and the Madagascar Uprising,” is available along with the rest of our May issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

Gen Z Aspiration, Hybrid Agency, and the Madagascar Uprising The 2025 youth uprising in Madagascar was a Gen Z–led movement sparked by chronic infrastructure failures and deepening economic precarity. Young Malagasy mobilized digital culture and global symbols to articulate local grievances and coordinate a generational protest. This mobilization represente...

In our annual Africa issue, enjoy free access (for a limited time) to an essay by Ebenezer Obadare on contradictory trends involving democracy in Africa. Increasingly regular elections across the continent may be “proof of growing support for the core tenets of liberal democracy across Africa,” writes Obadare, senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a Current History contributing editor. Yet the public reaction to a series of recent coups suggests that “many Africans would sooner settle for a despot in a hurry than an elected representative who, in their minds, only offers more of the same.” Critics argue that liberal democracy is a Western imposition unsuited to African contexts, but it is doubtful that the continent’s problems would be cured by abandoning liberalism.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/article/125/871/199/217944/Conflicting-Signals-on-Africa-s-Democratic

Obadare’s essay, “Conflicting Signals on Africa’s Democratic Predicament,” is available along with the rest of our May issue in print and on our website.
https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

Conflicting Signals on Africa’s Democratic Predicament Despite elections being held across the continent, coup leaders and other foes of liberal democracy have seized on disenchantment with poor governance and economic frustrations to renew old debates about whether Africa needs a different kind of political system suited to its supposed cultural differ...

Current History’s May 2026 issue, the annual Africa issue, is now available in print and on our website at https://online.ucpress.edu/currenthistory/issue/125/871

The issue features the following essays:

Gen Z Aspiration, Hybrid Agency, and the Madagascar Uprising
Patrick Desplat (Max Planck Institute of Social Anthropology)
Provoked by failing infrastructure and economic despair, youth-led protests helped to topple Madagascar’s president in 2025, yet the movement was excluded from power.

The Making of Uganda’s Deepening Autocracy
Moses Khisa (North Carolina State University)
Elections and high-profile opposition create an illusion of democracy in Uganda, as President Yoweri Museveni has only become more intolerant of challengers over four decades.

Medical Discrimination, Moral Panic, and the Politics of Sexuality in Cameroon
Basile Ndjio (University of Douala)
Since the colonial era, Cameroon’s sexual minorities have been treated as deviant subjects. Under the postcolonial state, criminalization is reinforced by broader forms of exclusion.

Half a Century of Post-Independence Strife in Angola and Mozambique
Justin Pearce (Stellenbosch University)
Through long civil wars, insurgencies, and recent protests, the main ruling and opposition parties have remained the same since both Angola and Mozambique won their freedom from Portugal.

The Expanding Sahel Coup Belt
John J. Chin (Carnegie Mellon University)
A band of countries stretching from the Atlantic to the Red Sea have experienced military takeovers in the past several years. Common causes include poverty, terrorism, and shifting alliances.

PERSPECTIVE
Conflicting Signals on Africa’s Democratic Predicament
Ebenezer Obadare (Council on Foreign Relations)
Although elections are regularly held across the region, popular discontent over inequality and impunity has fueled an African backlash against liberal democracy.

BOOKS
The Early Modern World of a West African Woman
Jody Benjamin (Howard University)
The life of a local merchant who fell afoul of the Inquisition shows how colonialism and the slave trade altered everyday lives in a cosmopolitan port town on the Atlantic coast.

Volume 125 Issue 871 | Current History | University of California Press Current History | 125 | 871 | May 2026