Cystic echinococcosis (CE) is endemic in humans and domestic animals in eastern Africa. All the species of the Echinococcus granulosus sensu lato complex have been reported in this region except for E. equinus, possibly due to the small number of studies involving equids. This study reports the frequency of different Echinococcus species in donkeys from eastern Africa. A total of 5961 donkeys were examined during meat inspection in 3 slaughterhouses in Kenya. Identification of Echinococcus spp. was achieved through polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment-length polymorphism and sequencing of the mitochondrial nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH) dehydrogenase subunit 1 gene. The prevalence of CE was 5.7% (337/5961). The 263 genotyped cysts belonged to E. equinus (n = 163), E. granulosus sensu stricto (n = 70), E. canadensis (G6/7) (n = 26) and E. ortleppi (n = 4). One donkey harboured a metacestode of Spirometra theileri. All E. equinus cases, except 2, originated from southern Ethiopia, whereas the other species were more evenly distributed across the study area. Most of the cysts belonging to E. equinus were fertile (111/163), while those of the other species were non-fertile. This is the first report of Echinococcus spp. in donkeys from sub-Saharan Africa and the first confirmation of E. equinus in East Africa. The frequent fertility of E. equinus cysts in donkeys affirms their suitability as intermediate hosts of this species, while low frequency and cyst fertility suggest a marginal role of donkeys in the transmission of E. granulosus s. s., E. canadensis (G6/7) and E. ortleppi.

The megalithic pillar sites found around Lake Turkana, Kenya, are monumental cemeteries built approximately 5000 years ago. Their construction coincides with the spread of pastoralism into the region during a period of profound climate change. Early work at the Jarigole pillar site suggested that these places were secondary burial grounds. Subsequent excavations at other pillar sites, however, have revealed planned mortuary cavities for predominantly primary burials, challenging the idea that all pillar sites belonged to a single ‘Jarigole mortuary tradition’. Here, the authors report new findings from the Jarigole site that resolve long-standing questions about eastern Africa's earliest monuments and provide insight into the social lives, and deaths, of the region's first pastoralists.

A multiproxy oxygen and carbon isotope (δ13C and δ18O), growth rate, and trace element stalagmite paleoenvironmental record is presented for the Early Holocene from Ethiopia. The annually laminated stalagmite grew from 10.6 to 10.4 ka and from 9.7 to 9.0 ka with a short hiatus at ~9.25 ka. Statistically significant and coherent spectral frequencies in δ13C and δ18O are observed at 15–25 and 19–23 years, respectively. The observed ~1‰ amplitude variability in stalagmite δ18O is likely forced by nonequilibrium deposition, due to kinetic effects during the progressive degassing of CO2 from the water film during stalagmite formation. These frequencies are similar to the periodicity reported for other Holocene stalagmite records from Ethiopia, suggesting that multidecadal variability in stalagmite δ18O is typical. Several processes can lead to this multidecadal variability and operate in different directions. A hydroclimate forcing is likely the primary control on the extent of the partial evaporation of soil and shallow epikarst water and associated isotopic fractionation. The resulting oxygen isotope composition of percolation water is subsequently modulated by karst hydrology. Further isotopic fractionation is possible in-cave during nonequilibrium stalagmite deposition. Combined with possible recharge biases in drip-water δ18O, these processes can generate multidecadal δ18O variability.

Beginning in 1856 and ending in 1876, Portuguese colonial authorities in Mozambique registered almost 55,000 enslaved and freed Africans (libertos). The sources for these twinned registration processes are located in the national archives of Portugal and Mozambique. Fragments of the originals survive for only six of the ten districts of the colony, but contemporary copies exist for nearly all districts. Combined, they provide a unique opportunity to understand both the extent of slavery — as opposed to the export slave trade — and the process of abolition in late-nineteenth-century Mozambique. In this article we first describe the registers themselves, then focus on the registration of enslaved and freed Africans, the resistance of slaveholders, and the kinds of information that we can glean from the registers. We also explore the ways in which freed Africans were employed after registration and the extent to which being a liberto implied ‘freedom’. Finally, we consider how the registration led to new laws and policies in Portuguese Africa, opening a new era of European colonialism and imperial expansion.

During Zimbabwe's struggle for national liberation, thousands of black African students fled Rhodesia to universities across the world on refugee scholarship schemes. To these young people, university student activism had historically provided a stable route into political relevance and nationalist leadership. But at foreign universities, many of which were vibrant centres for student mobilisations in the 1960s and 1970s and located far from Zimbabwean liberation movements’ organising structures, student refugees were confronted with the dilemma of what their role and future in the liberation struggle was. Through the concept of the ‘frontier’, this article compares the experiences of student activists at universities in Uganda, West Africa, and the UK as they figured out who they were as political agents. For these refugees, I show how political geography mattered. Campus frontiers could lead young people both to the military fronts of Mozambique and Zambia as well as to the highest circles of government in independent Zimbabwe. As such, campus frontiers were central to the history of Zimbabwe's liberation movements and the development of the postcolonial state.

The spread and persistence of early forms of mobile food production throughout Africa depended on the ability of herding communities to adapt to novel social and environmental challenges. This article presents the first quantitative technological analysis of lithic assemblages from the earliest eastern African pastoralist sites, located in the Lake Turkana Basin of northern Kenya. In this region, transitions to pastoralism involved the adoption of a new, regionally homogeneous technological strategy, which emphasised utility and flexibility. This research provides new insights into how early herders were able to spread through sub-Saharan Africa during a period of extreme climate change.

Most scholarship on the military history of precolonial Africa focuses on state-level conflict, drawing on examples such as the Asante, Buganda, Zulu, and Kongo kingdoms. The current article instead examines connections between warfare and political history in the politically fragmented setting of nineteenth-century Busoga, Uganda, where a small geographical region hosted more than fifty micro-kingdoms competing as peer polities. Using sources that include a rich corpus of oral traditions and early archival documents, this article offers a reconstruction of military practices and ideologies alongside political histories of important Busoga kingdoms during the long nineteenth century. The article argues that routine political destabilization caused by competition between royal leaders, combined with shifting interests of commoner soldiers, continuously reconstituted a multi-polar power structure throughout the region. This approach moves beyond assessing the role of warfare in state formation to ask how military conflict could be a creative force in small-scale politics as well.

This article explores colonial development policy on the margins of British East Africa. It argues that much like current development practice in the region, increased colonial interventionism in the years after 1940 was motivated by security interests as well as environmental and economic considerations. Rural interventions were used as a mechanism to ‘rein in’ what were perceived to be subversive populations, as well as contain potential security threats. The article therefore throws new light on the nature of colonial rural development, as well as the connections between past and present development practice.

This contribution seeks to explore the potential for historical archaeology in Uganda. By reflecting on where the potential strengths of such an approach may lie it is suggested that the most effective contributions will be made where there is a significant breadth and depth of historical sources. However, in Uganda the emphasis has tended to be on archaeological sites with distant or even dubious historical associations. The situation is further complicated by the very active processes of history making that are currently taking place, particularly in association with ‘traditional’ spirit worship. Nevertheless there are a range of themes and contexts which could be explored through historical archaeology and there are also plentiful archaeological resources from the twentieth century. It is concluded that there is great potential for historical archaeology but that there needs to be a readjustment of the contexts and situations that are explored.

Recent years have seen growth in the number of historical archaeology studies in Eastern Africa. Combining critical analysis of material remains alongside the available documentary and oral sources, these offer new insights into the precolonial and colonial pasts of the region. However, the field is less well established than in either West or Southern Africa and the full potential of the subdiscipline has yet to be realised. This contribution reviews the main analytical and theoretical trends, drawing on a selection of examples. Several other research themes that might warrant investigation are also identified, and the general lack of engagement with material culture and the archaeology of the last few hundred years on the part of historians, is lamented.

The Indian Ocean is frequently depicted as a sphere of seamless connectivity, characterized by fluid and wide-ranging exchanges between traders, sea-farers, clerics, intellectuals, and authors. We seek to nuance this depiction by highlighting the importance of specific, place-bound social concerns that tempered these cosmopolitan performances of citizenship with more exclusionary dynamics. Our goal is to emphasize the importance of context, contingency, and circumstance in shaping and breaking new forms and practices of citizenship and its twin – exclusionary politics – on Africa's Indian Ocean littoral.

Considering the scale of violence that has accompanied the crisis in eastern Congo, the avalanche of academic writings on the subject is hardly surprising. Whether it helps us better understand the region's tortured history is a matter of opinion. This critical article grapples with the contributions of the recent literature on what has been described as the deadliest conflict since the Second World War. The aim, in brief, is to reflect on the historical context of the crisis, examine its relation to the politics of neighboring states, identify and assess the theoretical vantage points from which it has been approached, and, in conclusion, sketch out promising new directions for further research by social scientists. A unifying question that runs throughout the recent literature on the eastern Congo is how might a functioning state be restored or how might civil society organizations serve as alternatives to such a state – but there is little unanimity in the answers.