Ethnographies of Marginality

Africanist discourse today displays a strong, widespread and growing sense of optimism about Africa's economic future. After decades of decline and stagnation in which Africa found itself reduced to the margins of the global economic stage, upbeat Afro-optimism seems fully justified. One only needs to consider African economies' solid growth rates, the emergence of new export markets earning unprecedented quantities of foreign exchange, and the rise of novel groups such as innovative African entrepreneurs (Taylor 2012) and urban-based middle classes (Simone 2004). Ironically, Africa's bright future stands in strong contrast to the stagnancy of European and American economic powers, once seen as superior to their African relatives. Deeply held feelings of Afro-pessimism, affecting intellectuals as well as ordinary Africans, are thus giving way to almost millennial expectations of Africa's economic future: the continent's imminent catching up with a degree of private and public prosperity so commonly registered elsewhere on the globe. Some go as far as to declare the rise of a proper African renaissance wherein Africa can (finally!) claim its rightful position on the global stage.