In His Own Words: Reflections on a Scholarly Career with Rene Lemarchand

by Ashley E. Leinweber Abstract What is the role of scholars in envisioning the continent and bearing witness to historic events? This paper is based on an interview with Professor Rene Lemarchand, renowned scholar of the former Belgian colonies of the African Great Lakes. His earliest book Political Awakening in the Belgian Congo is based […]

On the Waters: Economic and Political Drivers of Maritime Conflicts between Uganda and its Neighbors

by Robert Ojambo Abstract The Great Lakes region has, in the recent past, been awash with numerous border conflicts/or threats to conflict among the member states. Whereas various studies have endeavored to explain the emergence of such conflicts, many of them lay the blame on colonial cartographical errors and territorial hegemony that developed after independence. […]

Patterns of State Collapse and Reconstruction in Central Africa: Relfections on the Crisis in the Great Lakes

by René Lemarchand Introduction In a matter of days last October, a large swathe of eastern Zaire erupted into an orgy of violence, sending tremors through the Great Lakes region and beyond. What brought Armageddon to the shores of Lake Kivu were the search and destroy operations launched by units of Rwanda’s Armée Patriotique Rwandaise (APR) […]

The Great Lakes Crisis

Introduction by Michael Chege In the third week of October this year, the “Cobra” militia, commanded by the former president of Congo-Brazzaville, Dennis Sessou-Ngueso, took control of the national airport and the presidential palace in Brazzaville thus bringing to an end the two-way civil war that pitted him against the forces of the democratically-elected president […]

African Studies Quarterly

Tag: Great Lakes