Today I talk with Professor Nisrin Elamin about the situation in Sudan, where we find both a war between rival factions and these same factions continuing counter-revolutionary campaign against pro-democracy forces. We discuss how regional actors such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have contributed to the repression of democracy, and not only the ineffectiveness of NGOs and the United Nations in quelling the violence, but their roles in exacerbating it.  In the midst of forced famine and war, we find the remarkable and heroic efforts of mutual aid groups and resistance organizations in civil society that have made life possible. Elamin explains how this ethos of obligation reaches far back in Sudanese history and culture. We end by talking about the Sudanese Solidarity Collective, a group that Nisrin helped found, which provides a vital conduit of aid to Sudan from its diasporic communities and others. For resources on Sudan, please see our blog for this episode.

Nisrin Elamin is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Toronto. She is currently writing a book tentatively titled: Stratified Enclosures: Land, Capital and Empire-making in Central Sudan which focuses on Saudi and Emirati investments in land and community resistance to land dispossession in the agricultural Gezira region. In addition to scholarly articles, Nisrin has published and co-written several op-eds for Al Jazeera, The Washington Post, Okay Africa, Hammer and Hope and The Egypt Independent. Before pursuing her Ph.D., Nisrin spent over a decade working as an educator, organizer and researcher in the US and Tanzania. She is also a co-founding member of the Sudan Solidarity Collective which formed in the aftermath of the current war to support local emergency response rooms (ERRs) and other mutual aid networks and unions leading relief efforts in the face of a largely absent international aid community and civilian state.

How have young people in rural areas of the Democratic Republic of Congo invented new forms of radicalism in response to the impact of new flows of foreign investment and the inability of normal national and international politics to serve their needs and interests? Zachariah Mampilly explains how rural and urban spaces have seen a complex transit of peoples and funds that complicate politics, and emergent forms of radical activism have taken root and spread in many African countries. These forms display important re-imaginings of power sharing and revolutionary praxis.

Zachariah Mampilly is the Marxe Endowed Chair of International Affairs at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, CUNY and a member of the doctoral faculty in the Department of Political Science at the Graduate Center, CUNY. He is the Co-Founder of the Program on African Social Research. Previously, he was Professor of Political Science and Director of the Africana Studies Program at Vassar College. In 2012/2013, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He is the author of Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War  (Cornell U. Press 2011) and with Adam Branch, Africa Uprising: Popular Protest and Political Change (African Arguments, Zed Press 2015).  He is the co-editor of Rebel Governance in Civil Wars  (Cambridge U. Press 2015) with Ana Arjona and Nelson Kasfir; and Peacemaking: From Practice to Theory (Praeger 2011) with Andrea Bartoli and Susan Allen Nan. His writing has also appeared in Foreign Affairs, Jacobin, The Hindu, Africa’s a Country, N+1, Dissent, Al Jazeera, Noema, The Washington Post and elsewhere. 

Today we talk with Samar Al-Bulushi about her rich and complex work on Kenya, which, across multiple scales of time and place, discovers how the War on Terror both tapped into colonial ideologies of the past and present-day political calculations at the intersection of the local and global. We find out how the War has taken many different forms that often escape the eye—embedded as they are in structures of feelings and new practices that were instilled as Kenya maneuvers its different roles as war-maker and pacifier, independent state and partner with the US. We end with an important update on Kenya since the book’s publication, which has seen a popular uprising and state repression. We speak about the roles of civil society and international organizations in this new historical moment.

Samar Al-Bulushi is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at UC Irvine. Her book, War-Making as Worldmaking: Kenya, the United States, and the War on Terror, was published by Stanford University Press in November 2024. She is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft and previously served as contributing editor for Africa is a Country. She has published in a variety of public outlets on topics ranging from the International Criminal Court to the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa.

Far too few people know about the terrible war and the massive famine taking place in Sudan.  Today learn about the long history behind these events, the people and groups involved, and the roles that foreign governments and international organizations like the IMF have played. Importantly, we learn how civil society groups are bringing a form of mutual aid and support to the people of Sudan where the national government, warring factions, and international humanitarian organizations have utterly failed.

Dr. Osman Hamdan is a graduate of the University of Khartoum, Sudan, and holds a PhD in forestry economics from the Dresden University of Technology.  He is a longtime pro-democracy fighter and activist.

Umniya Najaer is a doctoral candidate in the Program in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University where she studies Black Feminist Thought and the Black Radical Tradition.  Her poetry chapbook Armeika (2018, Akashic Press) explores experiences of the Sudanese-American diaspora and the unofficial government torture sites known as Biyout al-Ashbah, or ghost houses.