Welcome to AfricArXiv

This initiative showcases UbuntuNet's commitment to fostering knowledge sharing, collaboration, and accessibility within the African research community. With AfricArxiv, researchers across the continent have a dedicated platform to disseminate their findings, making them accessible to a global audience. By facilitating open access to scholarly work, UbuntuNet Alliance plays a pivotal role in advancing the principles of open science, enhancing research visibility, and driving innovation across Africa.

 

Communities in AfricArXiv

Select a community to browse its collections.

Now showing 1 - 5 of 7

Recent Submissions

Thumbnail Image
Item
Physical Entities as Spatial Creations: A Theory of Spatial Evolution
(no, 2025-12-09) Hamidi, Nabil
Space is traditionally treated as a geometric background, yet all empirical observations from cosmology and physics indicate that space is a dynamic physical medium. This article argues, using evidence from observational cosmology, quantum field theory, chemistry, evolutionary biology, and systems science, that space evolves and transforms into all physical, biological, and social systems. Matter emerges through phase transitions in spatial fields (Guth, 1997; Kolb & Turner, 1990). Chemical structure is reducible to spatial electron distributions (Atkins & de Paula, 2017). Biological systems depend on spatial gradients and boundaries (Alberts et al., 2022). Communication processes require spatial separation (Shannon, 1948). Political and social systems arise from the spatial distribution of human populations (Wendt, 1999; Buzan & Little, 2000). No empirical evidence contradicts this continuity. The conclusion is that space is the original evolving substrate, and all systems are transformations of spatial structure.
Thumbnail Image
Item
Economies of Obedience II
(The Pan African Sovereign Network, 2025-12-06) Bubakar Sal; Malcolm Diarra
This article tests a psychopolitical model of imperial selection against the recent trajectory of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). A 2018 paper by Kusimbiko proposed the Imperial Selection Model (ISM) and a Trait-System Fit Index (TSFI), arguing that postcolonial decline is driven less by “culture” and more by the psychological structure of leadership and its fit with imperial interests. The original model forecast that, if a high-TSFI leadership were installed in Kinshasa, the DRC would experience rapid re-entry into IMF programmes, a three-fold currency collapse within five to six years, several million excess deaths from systemic neglect, and highly asymmetric, Western-aligned resource deals backed by diplomatic protection. Using macroeconomic series, excess-mortality estimates, official documents on the 2025 U.S.–DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement, and independent reporting on the Lobito Corridor, this article compares those predictions with the actual evolution of DRC governance between 2019 and 2025. The match is unusually strong for political science. The regime’s external alignment, debt trajectory, devaluation of the Congolese franc, and the structure of the new critical-minerals agreements all follow the pattern that ISM described as “puppet governance” and “economies of obedience.” The article refines the model in three ways. First, it states explicit falsification criteria: a regime that normalises carelessness toward its own population but does not produce elevated neglect-related excess mortality would falsify the current formulation. Second, it clarifies ethics and scope: the ISM pathologises policies and ruling styles, not the private moral worth of individuals. Third, it proposes upgrades to the Puppet Diagnostic Index (PDI), including a “carelessness test” based on basic public-goods indicators and a clearer coding of sovereignty-erosion events such as mining and corridor treaties. The article concludes that the DRC sequence of 2019–2025 offers a rare real-time validation of a psychopolitical model and underlines the need for preventive diagnostics before new high-TSFI leaders are selected.
Thumbnail Image
Item
Toothless Lions of Agenda 2063
(The Pan African Sovereignty Network, 2025-12-07) DIARRA, Mohamed
This article examines the African Union (AU) not as a neutral integration project, but as a functional component of the postcolonial control system. Building on earlier Pan-African critiques and recent psychopolitical models of “puppet governance,” it asks a precise question: does the AU ever act as an effective shield for African sovereignty when major external interests are at stake, or does it operate mainly as a continental alibi for neo-colonialism? Using cases from 2000 to 2025, the article maps AU reactions to four types of events: (1) asymmetric mining and corridor agreements; (2) foreign military bases and security deals; (3) externally backed coups and electoral fraud; and (4) structural debt arrangements that restrict policy space. It finds a consistent pattern. The AU rarely names or sanctions sitting governments for signing sovereignty-eroding treaties. It does not convene serious action on the “grooming pipelines” that train high-risk leaders abroad. It is quick to provide electoral legitimacy and photo-op diplomacy, yet silent when member states modify laws to favour foreign capital at the expense of local populations. The article formulates simple falsification tests for its core claim: one clear example of the AU blocking or reversing a major neo-colonial resource or corridor deal would challenge the “continental alibi” hypothesis. In the absence of such counter-examples, the evidence supports a harder conclusion. In its current funding structure and mandate, the AU stabilises a system that keeps Africa governable from outside. The paper ends by outlining minimal conditions for a truly sovereign continental body and by situating recent Sahel realignments and the DRC critical-minerals accords within this wider institutional diagnosis. Keywords African Union; Agenda 2063; Pan-Africanism; neo-colonialism; political institutions; sovereignty; critical minerals; security cooperation; Sahel; Democratic Republic of Congo
Thumbnail Image
Item
The Puppet Corridor and the Sahel Fault Line: Diverging Paths of Sovereignty in Contemporary Africa
(The Pan African Strategic Observatory, 2025-12-07) Mohammed Sal
This paper argues that recent events in the Sahel and Central Africa confirm, with a disturbing level of precision, a psychopolitical model of neo-colonial control first articulated in Pan-Africanism Reimagined and later formalised as Puppet Syndrome, the Imperial Selection Model (ISM), and the Puppet Diagnostic Index (PDI). While mainstream analysis still explains African instability in terms of “weak institutions,” “jihadist threats,” or “corruption,” we show that a more accurate predictor of outcomes is the psychological and relational profile of leadership and the corridors through which empire moves: mineral, diplomatic, military, and epistemic. We contrast two concurrent trajectories. In the Sahel, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger have expelled French troops, terminated key defence agreements, created the Alliance of Sahel States (AES), and formally withdrawn from ECOWAS, explicitly naming sovereignty and anti-imperial realignment as their horizon. In Central Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) under a high-TSFI (Trait–System Fit Index) leadership has moved in the opposite direction: accelerated IMF re-embedding, a tripled currency devaluation, and, most recently, a U.S.–DRC Strategic Partnership Agreement that reorganises critical mineral governance, infrastructure, and even domestic law in ways that structurally privilege foreign interests, including through the Lobito Corridor. We argue that (1) these developments validate earlier predictions about puppet leadership and imperial corridors with unusual precision, and (2) the Sahel’s current rupture represents exactly the “early awakening” zone that Pan-Africanism Reimagined anticipated would move before Central and Southern Africa. On this basis we propose a liberation blueprint organised around five axes: psychopolitical screening of leaders (PDI), re-engineering of regional blocs, sovereign economic and infrastructure design, de-colonial security doctrine, and epistemic reconstruction. Crucially, we specify clear falsification criteria and safeguards against pathologising individuals. Our claim is not that specific persons are inherently disordered, but that certain policy profiles and alliance patterns match trait-clusters (Dark Tetrad–like) that systematically correlate with neglect, legislative self-sabotage, and sovereignty erosion. If regimes that institutionalise indifference to their populations do not produce higher neglect-related excess mortality and structural dispossession, then our framework is wrong. We therefore present this work not as prophecy, but as a testable, uncomfortable, and urgently needed diagnostic tool.
Thumbnail Image
Item
Exploring the implementation of the TIME Home Learning programme and learning trajectories of 5- to 7-year-olds: Assessment tools for literacy and numeracy
(Wordworks, Cape Town, 2025-11) von Blottnitz, Magali
This brief presents and discusses two assessment tools that were developed/adapted for, and used in, the TIME longitudinal study (2022-2023): the Wordworks Early Literacy Assessment (WELA) and the Mathematics Early Learning Assessment (MELA), within the broader landscape of assessment tools available in South Africa for 5-7 year olds. The brief starts by reviewing which other tools existed for that age band at the time of the field study and makes the case for the adaptation of the WELA literacy tool, and the development of the MELA mathematics tool. It then explains briefly how the MELA was developed and how the WELA was adapted for the purpose of the study, including rounds of piloting and adjusting. Finally, it unpacks lessons learned from using them, and room for further development of those tools.