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This article examines how national 'long-term strategies' (LTS) narrate energy transitions to low carbon futures. It focuses on the case studies of South Africa and Nigeria as two early LTS submissions to the UNFCCC by prominent fossil fuel producing emerging economies. Given the relative lack of research on both the LTS specifically and the role of narrative futures in the IPE of energy transitions more generally, the article develops an analytical framework based around four key features of LTS narratives: their plots, actors, discourses, and silences. The article argues that there are important similarities in the narratives, especially concerning the leading role of state institutions and national planners. However, there are key differences in terms of narratives of the just transition in South Africa compared to economic growth and innovation in Nigeria, as well as in the cases made for international investment. Finally, there are silences in both LTS narratives in relation to issues of politics, democracy, subjectivity and ecology. This suggests some important limitations on the potential of LTS to advance a just global transition to a decarbonised global economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa's place in international relations is a topic of increasing importance and academic interest. [21] This virtual collection provides a revealing overview of some of the best research on Africa's international relations in recent years, but it also reinforces a number of challenges for the linkages between International Relations and African studies. Yet they share a broad concern with Africa's international relations in one of two key ways, either focusing on the nature of Africa's relations with external actors, or turning to international relationships to explain particular issues or phenomena of significance in Africa. [Extracted from the article]

See also Sophie Harman, 'Research note: Film as research method in African politics and international relations: Reading and writing HIV/AIDS in Tanzania', I African Affairs i 115, 461 (2016), pp. 733-750. The research methods used to study Africa have changed radically over the last thirty years. Preliminary thoughts on scholarship and freedom', I African Studies Review i 50, 1 (2007), pp. 1-26. 12 See the debate on publication and citation rates for African-based researchers at http://blog.oup.com/2016/08/gender-location-african-scholarship/ (30 August 2016). [Extracted from the article]

The reasons for the neglect of the fifth anniversary of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in 2007 are analyzed. It is suggested that the shift in the focus of environmental policies to voluntary, private partnerships, and the lack of expected progress in sustainable development has ruled out the opportunity for acknowledgement or reflection.

This article explores how to understand stand-up comedy as a form of resistance in global politics, combining discussion of Homi Bhabha's concepts of ambivalence and mimicry with an examination of Trevor Noah's stand-up performances, in particular his material on race, disease and poverty. The article builds upon approaches which have interpreted comedy in terms of hidden transcripts, counter-discourses, and counter-conducts to argue that stand-up is serious politics. Notwithstanding his prominence and success, Noah's performances are an alternative to dominant, white, western and Eurocentric discourses of global politics, and can be understood as a form of 'ambivalent mockery' which both inhabit and subvert dominant power relations and discourses from within. In his routines race is reified and deconstructed; disease is tragic and laughable; poverty is lamentable, valorized, and misunderstood. Noah invokes, inhabits and challenges racist and racialized assumptions, performing a racial 'in-between-ness' ranging across black, mixed, coloured and white identities which subverts assumptions about stable categories of race and identity. Taking this comedy seriously enables important contradictions in assumptions about race, disease and poverty to be seen more vividly, and demonstrates how global politics is performed and resisted in diverse ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some problems involving the allocation of jobs to machines and the sequencing of jobs on machines are reviewed. Attention is drawn to their underlying relationships and in particular to their representation in terms of a process graph. A method of solution for a wide variety of such problems is proposed, which uses the branch and bound technique and the process graph representation. The solution of an assembly line balancing problem is illustrated and a limited comparison with other published methods is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]