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This volume focuses on the translations of a single African language newspaper Abl¿¿e ('the Key to Freedom'). It follows the story of decolonisation and the history of the Ghana-Togo borderlands, demonstrating that engagement with specific African-language texts is indispensable to the study of Africa and Africans in global history.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Glossary
- The Eve Alphabet
- Map
- PART 1: EDITORS' INTRODUCTION
- I: Preamble
- II: An overview: Holiday Vincent Kwasi Komedja and his newspaper
- III: The Aguawo: Asante invasion and the mission encounter
- IV: A historiographical intervention: Aguawo and approaches to empire
- VI: Coercion and coercion: the colonisation of Agu
- VI: Petitioning against plantations: the particularities of protest in Agu
- VII: The Togolese press: political history and regional print culture
- VIII: Journalist-activists: newsprint and politics in the borderlands
- IX: Writing the new nation: Abl¿¿e Safui and the work of citizenship
- X: Abl¿¿e Safui is my name! Komedja as patriot and truth-teller
- XI: Translating Abl¿¿e Safui: culture, communication and context
- XII: Conclusion
- PART 2: ABL¿¿E SAFUI (THE KEY TO FREEDOM): 22 ISSUES, EACH WITH TRANSLATION AND COMMENTS
- A S6 of 31 March 1959
- AS 20 of 6 October 1959
- AS 21 of 27 October 1979
- AS 22 of 26 November 1959
- AS 23 of 26 February 1960
- AS 24 of 23 March 1960
- AS 25 of 13 April 1960
- AS 26 of 2 May 1960
- AS 27 of 20 May 1960
- AS 28 of 13 July 1960
- AS 29 of 11 November 1960
- AS 30 of 31 December 1960
- AS 31 of 28 January 1961
- AS 32 of 20 February 1961
- AS 34 of 20 April 1961
- AS 36 not dated
- AS 37 not dated
- AS 38 of 5 May 1962
- AS 39 of 11 July 1962
- AS 40 of 2 August 1962
- AS 49 of 2 May 1965
- AS 56 of 28 December 1965
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Kate Skinner has a longstanding interest in issues of decolonisation and new nationhood in Africa. Her first book, The Fruits of Freedom in British Togoland (Cambridge University Press, 2015) examined the connections between literacy, formal education and networks of political activism in the Ghana-Togo borderlands. This gave rise to a broader interest in African-authored and African-language texts such as Ablɔɖe, which engaged in the work of nation-building. Kate is now working on West Africa's first coup d'état (which occurred in Togo in 1963) and on gender activism and the reform of family law in post-colonial Ghana.
Wilson Yayoh is the Founding Director of the Centre for African and International Studies at the University of Cape Coast, Ghana. His research addresses colonial policy in Africa, ethnicity and national identities, historical perspectives on democratisation in Africa, and Africa in world affairs. Articles by Wilson have been published in the International Journal of Research in the Humanities, the Contemporary Journal of African Studies, the Ibadan Journal of Humanistic Studies, the Journal of History and Cultures, the Ghana Social Science Journal, the Journal of Contemporary African Studies, and the Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana. He is now working on a monograph entitled Contested Territory: Governing Colonial and Post-Colonial Ewedome (Ghana), c. 1922 to 1974.
Summary
This volume focuses on the translations of a single African language newspaper Abl??e ('the Key to Freedom'). It follows the story of decolonisation and the history of the Ghana-Togo borderlands, demonstrating that engagement with specific African-language texts is indispensable to the study of Africa and Africans in global history.
