Gone – maybe forever – are the days when thirst for knowledge to improve oneself and to contribute to a better society drove young people to seek higher education. These days university students and products of related institutions would only be able to perfectly reel off the names of rappers, footballers and DJs as well as post countless meaningless material on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and the like – with little understanding or interest in the realities of their society.

Makerere Institute of Social Research in Uganda is in turmoil following a confrontation that saw one lecturer, Stella Nyanzi, stage a nude protest against the institute’s director, renowned scholar Mahmood Mamdani. The conflict has exposed serious administrative problems at the institute. A group of international scholars have waded into the controversy by addressing a petition to the Vice Chancellor of Makerere University.

Abstracts are invited for contributions to a forthcoming edited volume that aims to bring forward the different ways in which activists, theorists and writers in and beyond Africa have engaged with Sankara’s political philosophies and praxis since his assassination in 1987.

“To us this mine is a Golden Shame because after many years of operations all that we have managed to leap is environmental destruction, diseases and intensified poverty. We are left with young men who are impotent, women who are frustrated and an influx of criminals who come outside of Nzega.”