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Open research questions in African studies and sociopolitical issues

45 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 2,411 African studies and sociopolitical issues papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.

What the literature leaves open

  • The gaps identified in this review point to several productive directions for future research. First, a mixed methods longitudinal study evaluating the effectiveness of the NDS1 (2021 to 2025) and the upcoming NDS2 (2026 to 2030) against their targets would significantly policy enhance implementation in Zimbabwe. Secondly a comparative study commodity-anchored currencies, informed by the experience of the ZiG and other emerging-market currency reforms would be an addition to the broader monetary economics literature. gold-backed foundation empirical and the on of Thirdly, it would be useful to test the servant leadership theory suggestion that participatory governance platforms can meaningfully change policy outcomes by conducting institutional research on dialogue ethnographic and platforms (POLAD, the Presidential Advisory Council, the Tripartite Negotiating Forum, and the Structured Dialogue Platform). Fourth, empirical research on the citizenship and political participation of young Zimbabweans, such as whether political science and Civic Education ought to be more prominent in university and school programs would enable us to tie the governance reform agenda to social change the regional integration performance in SADC and COMESA as well as how the African continental free trade area functions in relative to the export diversification of Zimbabwe would shed some light on the arena the Zimbabwe is Open for Business strategy is playing in. Lastly, descriptive studies on the Global Compensation Deed, arrears clearance, and the management of external debt would be of interest in solving sovereign debt in Africa. Together, these study areas would enhance the knowledge base on whether the post- 2017 trend in Zimbabwe is a permanent break of the cycle of crisis or just a period of stabilization through cyclicality in the face of structural necessities. to researchers and practitioners long run. Fifth, the in CONFLICT OF INTERESTS The author has not declared any conflict of interests. 92 J. Afr. Stud. Dev. REFERENCES African Development Bank Group (2024). Africa economic outlook 2024: Driving Africa’s transformation. The Reform of the Global Architecture.

    From crisis to recovery: Assessing Zimbabwes reform trajectory under the new dispensation · 2026 · DOI

  • Based on the empirical findings and theoretical insights of this study, the following targeted recommendations are proposed to guide policymakers, ecclesiastical authorities, and future researchers: Accelerate Digital Archival Interventions: In light of the ongoing vulnerability of local physical repositories in East Africa as evidenced by the abrupt closure of Atiman House in Dar es Salaam the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Sports, in collaboration with the Tanzania Episcopal Conference (TEC), should establish a formalized National Digital Heritage Framework. This initiative must prioritize the systematic regional digitization ecclesiastical diaries, correspondence, and colonial-era microfilms. Securing these records is essential to prevent permanent archival losses and to allow future historians to continue uncovering localized historical narratives. open-access indexing and of Institutionalize Non-State Civic Education: The Tanzania Civil Society Consortium (TACCEO), alongside religious educational directorates, should move away from ad-hoc, implement election-year voter education and sustained, curriculum-based civic training programs. Drawing on the success of the "Mwanza Model," these programs should integrate the principles of subsidiarity and fundamental human rights into secondary and tertiary curriculums, ensuring the continuous circulation of a democratically conscious youth elite capable of constructively engaging with the state. instead Strengthen Constitutional Safeguards for Subsidiarity: To permanently mitigate the structural excesses of the "Imperial Presidency" identified during the 2011–2014 constitutional debates, legal reform advocates and policymakers must 50 Figure 1. The “Lake Zone Model” of Institutional Influence. A conceptual framework illustrating how ecclesiastical authority was translated into institutional platforms that promoted civic engagement, pluralism, and democratic resilience in Tanzania (1961–2019). institutional density and moral agency of non-state actors. Guided by Classical Elite Theory, the study reveals that the Archdiocese of Mwanza functioned effectively as an "organized minority" or sub-elite capable of checking the totalizing ambitions of the ruling political class on behalf of the marginalized "ruled class". Throughout the challenges of the Ujamaa single-party era, the Church brilliantly navigated the socio-political terrain by alternating between the structural roles of the defensive "Democratic Surrogate" and the strategically maneuvering "Fox". While the state operated as the centralized, coercive "Lion" under the 1977 Constitution, the Archdiocese utilized its financial autonomy, international institutional network, and independent media platforms to preserve autonomous civic spaces. This "Fox-like" strategy of critical collaboration allowed the Church to survive state-enforced socialist totalization while systematically laying the groundwork for a future pluralistic society. The theological engine driving this structural agency was the paradigm shift of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which repositioned the Church from a detached frontier mission to an active prophetic voice dedicated to Promotio Humana (Human Promotion). With the formal re-introduction of multi-party politics in 1992, the Archdiocese transitioned into a proactive "Structural Architect" of democracy. The landmark establishment of St. Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT) in 1998 beautifully operationalized Pareto’s (1935) "Circulation of Elites," the state’s monopoly on higher successfully breaking education and generating a new generation of media professionals, jurists, and civic leaders equipped with the ethical imperatives of Catholic Social Teaching (CST). JSSHI | © The Author(s) 2026 | CC BY 4.0 Mulokozi, A.K. Journal of Social Sciences, Humanities and Innovation 1 (2026) 44–51 Responsible Office. (n.d.). New Department [Unpublished internal report]. Mwanza, Tanzania: Author.

    The Architect of Civic Space: The Catholic Archdiocese of Mwanza and Tanzania’s Democratization, 1961–2019 · 2026 · DOI

  • in this study, Based on the results and theoretical considerations highlighted following recommendations are made to the policy makers, environmental managers, municipal authorities, and community organisations in Mutare and similar cities around the globe. the • Settlement Upgrading in Lieu of Displacement. The evidence provided by the results of this study confirms that settlement upgrading should replace forced eviction as the main strategy of managing informal settlements in Gimboki. Settlement upgrading should include measures such as land tenure formalisation, infrastructure provision (water supply, waste management facilities, road construction), and integration into the formal urban planning system. In particular, tenure formalisation is seen as a key component of a sustainable environmental management strategy since it eliminates that prevents insecurity residents from undertaking environmentally responsible measures.

    Ecological Degradation and Urban Sprawl: Assessing the Environmental Footprint of Unplanned Settlements in the Mutare Municipal Area · 2026 · DOI

  • The net sample size of 40 participants (30 community residents and 10 institutional key informants) was determined using non-probability targets designed to balance demographic depth with logistical constraints in an unmapped urban setting. Data saturation was continually monitored during the fieldwork. By the 24th community interview and the 8th key informant interview, clear patterns emerged where no new operational 428 | This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License East African Journal of Environment and Natural Resources, Volume 9, Issue 2, 2026 Article DOI: https://doi.org/10.37284/eajenr.9.2.5172 codes, drivers, or institutional factors were being identified, indicating that true data saturation had been achieved.

    Ecological Degradation and Urban Sprawl: Assessing the Environmental Footprint of Unplanned Settlements in the Mutare Municipal Area · 2026 · DOI

  • We conclude by drawing attention to the implications of policy constraints for teachers’ wellbeing and for societal vulnerability to the abuse of history, and by calling for further investigation into the feasibility of implementing critical historical inquiry in classrooms where systemic barriers prevail.

    Teachers’ troubled interactions with prescribed school history and its national imaginaries: the case of post-Mugabe Zimbabwe · 2025 · DOI

  • Child marriage remains a pressing global concern, with over 640 million women and girls affected, yet little is known about how girls reconstruct their futures after exiting such unions.

    Hope or Continued Captivity: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of the Future Aspirations of Girls Who Returned to their Families after Forced Marriage · 2025 · DOI

  • While educational debates on the decolonisation of education have gained momentum in Sub-Saharan Africa, little is known about the success and progress made thus far, leaving a critical gap in our understanding of the accomplishment of the decolonisation agenda and whether what has been reformed is of use.

    Post-colonial educational reforms in Zimbabwe: A fake badge of decolonisation of the curriculum · 2024 · DOI

  • In the (under-researched) Angolan side, cross-border identity has progressively concentrated on the idea of a split between the two countries, as the Kwanhama king, Mandume, is believed to be buried on both sides of the border; and at the same time on the notion of a common belonging across the border.

    The Kwanhama partitioned by the border and the Angolan perspective of cross-border identity · 2017 · DOI

  • The case of Frelimo and ZANU underlines the point that hosts’ influence on liberation movements’ internal politics must be seen as limited by the interests and agency of liberation movements themselves.

    Nationalism and Exile in an Age of Solidarity: Frelimo–ZANU Relations in Mozambique (1975–1980) · 2017 · DOI

  • While there are references to the administration of punishment in specific circumstances or, more often, contemptuous remarks by Rhodesian soldiers regarding the unprofessional conduct of guerrillas in general, few studies have investigated the systematic deployment of disciplinary structures in Zimbabwe's guerrilla movements.

    Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA: 1964–1979 · 2011 · DOI

  • It argues that the prevailing explanations, such as HIV/AIDS-related stigma, poverty or anomie, are insufficient for understanding the isolation of the child-headed household and situations when children, in what should be a protective relationship, are exploited or abused.

    The children left to stand alone · 2005 · DOI

  • However, because the results of this research are inconclusive on the question of the effect of localization on art education, and because UCLES were accrediting procedures until 1999, the long-term implications of localization are not yet apparent.

    The Localization of ‘O’ Level Art Examinations in Zimbabwe · 2003 · DOI

  • Its economic importance even to South Africa must be limited by the stagnation identified Its strategic value is as a buffer protecting the by Arrighi and by SutcUffe.

    SETTLER COLONIALISM IN RHODESIA · 1974 · DOI

  • to Members for collective measures." The preamble of this resolution can be read as setting forth what is here believed to be the sound proposition that the Assembly has a residual power to apply collective measures when the Security Council is prevented by the veto from fulfilling its primary responsibility in particular cases.

    Some Legal Aspects of Sanctions in The Rhodesian Case · 1968 · DOI

  • It was suspected that a connexion existed between this 274 International Review of Missions uprising and the general world-wide Pan-African agitation, but such connexion has not been established and if it existed at all it was probably of a vague and uncertain character.

    THE ‘PROPHET MOVEMENT’ IN CONGO · 1922 · DOI

  • Drawing on the under-researched case of post-Mugabe Zimbabwe, this article explores the intricacies of teachers’ engagement with official curricula and their inherent national imaginaries within prescriptive and constrictive political environments.

    Teachers’ troubled interactions with prescribed school history and its national imaginaries: the case of post-Mugabe Zimbabwe · 2025 · DOI

  • While youth activism and electoral politics is a subject of rich scholarship, there is limited knowledge on the motivations and agency of the party youth of hegemonic ruling parties.

    Shades of party activism: understanding ZANU-PF youth activists · 2024 · DOI

  • One of these sites was Mbarika, where the experimental project ran for three years and had mixed results before being discontinued by the young Tanzanian government.

    Telling ruins: the afterlives of an early post-independence development intervention in Lake Victoria, Tanzania · 2022 · DOI

  • Drawing from nineteen months of ethnographic research in Domboshava communal lands, this article addresses this gap in knowledge by discussing the position of older women heading households in rural Zimbabwe and the impact of historical and current challenges on their subsistence activities.

    Making Ends Meet: Experiences of Older Women Heading Households in Rural Domboshava, Zimbabwe · 2022 · DOI

  • Rarely considered a serious discursive site from which to (re)know the intricacies inhabiting versions, configurations and symbolisms of the concept of home (especially in the context of crisis and mobility), the Zimbabwean short story has largely remained underexplored.

    ‘Such a Thing Does Not Have a Name in his Country’: Entanglements of Diaspora and ‘Home’ Homes in the Zimbabwean Short Story of Crisis · 2022 · DOI

  • These gendered insecurities, which are woven into the fabric of travel, work and accommodation for these migrant Zimbabwean women in northern South Africa, should be examined in struggles for social justice.

    Nervous Conditions on the Limpopo: Gendered Insecurities, Livelihoods, and Zimbabwean Migrants in Northern South Africa · 2020 · DOI

  • The author challenges the use of the term ‘extended family’ as unfitting and un-African and concludes that the important role played by the family in migration matters especially regarding childcare in the absence of migrant parents needs to be further explored through more empirical research.

    An ubuntu definition of the family in migration and childcare issues: the case of Zimbabwe · 2020

  • The article concludes with recommendations for designing a more socially inclusive urban management policy in the region, pointing to future research directions of this under-studied phenomenon in critical place-name studies.

    Gender-biased Street Naming in Urban Sub-Saharan Africa: Influential Factors, Features and Future Recommendations · 2020 · DOI

  • This approach not only bridges studies on African nationalism and the alcohol industry, but also allows us to examine one aspect of Zimbabwean nationalism that has not yet been examined: shebeens as hubs of African nationalism.

    African Nationalism, Municipal Beer Outlets and Shebeens in Salisbury, Rhodesia, 1960s–1980 · 2018 · DOI

  • Whilst ethnographies of statehood have multiplied in recent years, we focus on an underexplored avenue of inquiry: the role played by pieces of paper in constituting modern bureaucratic states.

    Government paper: the negotiated production and life of state documents · 2018 · DOI

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45 open questions have been extracted from the limitations and future-work passages of 2,411 African studies and sociopolitical issues papers in our library. Each one below links back to the study that raised it, so you can read the original claim in context.

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