Who Owns the Problem?

PIUS ADESANMI (1972–2019) was a scholar, writer, literary critic, satirist, and columnist.

• Contents More Than Just a Name, by Toyin Falola Foreword, by Kenneth W. Harrow Preface. Form as Resistance: The Story of This Book Part One. Crossfire #WhoOwnsTheProblem? Culture, Development, and Other Annoyances For Whom Is Africa Rising? Africa Is People, Nigeria Is Nigerians: Provocations on Post-mendicant Economies The Disappeared African Roots of Emma Watson's UN Feminism The Africa Just Outside of Your Hilton Hotel Window Part Two. Imagining Culture, Figuring Change Capitalism and Memory: Of Golf Courses and Massage Parlors in Badagry, Nigeria Ode to the Bottle - For Ken Harrow, Who Laughed Aso Ebi on My Mind Ara Eko, Ara Oke: Lagos, Culture, and the Rest of Us A Race through Race in Missouri Part Three. Variations on Love and Self Dowry: Managing Africa's Many Lovers Caribbean Self, African Selfie Face Me, I Book You: Writing Africa's Agency in the Age of the Netizen What Does (Nigerian) Literature Secure? Post-centenary Nigeria: New Literatures, New Leaders, New Nation Bibliography Index

Before his untimely death, Pius Adesanmi had emerged as one of Africa’s leading public intellectuals and as an astute interpreter of the African imagination. In this collection he speaks to us from the land of the ancestors with a voice that is both cautionary and prophetic, providing one of the best diagnoses of the African problematic that I have read in many years. Combining sharp analysis with humor, this book is an invitation to all of us to rededicate our commitment to Africa’s continuing struggle for agency in the twenty-first century. — Simon Gikandi, Robert Schirmer Professor of English, Princeton University Long after you have read them, the insights of these essays stay with you, almost in the same manner in which the memory of his life and work, now that he is gone, remain indelible. No other person writes of Africa in the world and the world in Africa like Pius Adesanmi. Consistently passionate, witty, humorous, and yet rigorously researched and thought through, the essays collected in this book are sure to create a new benchmark for activist intellectualism in public discourse in the social media. — Biodun Jeyifo, former Professor in African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature, Harvard University, and author of Against the Predators’ Republic: Political and Cultural Journalism, 2007–2013