When the academic interest in trust gained momentum in the 1990s through works like Fukuyama (1995), Misztal (1996), Giddens (1995) and Elster (1989), most theorizing focused on the (post) industrial world: economists and western sociologists observed that in the modern world, despite the globalization tendencies of capitalist development, more openness, communication and collaboration were not automatically developed between the people thus connected. Instead, it was found that processes of localization, social retreat, and economic stagnation frequently occurred. In this light, it was considered all the more interesting that some societies in south-east Asia appeared to be able to successfully couple aspects of globalization with their local cultures, leading to economic success stories. Trust was welcomed as a concept that eventually could shed light on all of these phenomena. (Kaag 1999)
At that time, Africa hardly emerged as a field of study among scholars of trust, neither was trust taken up as a theoretical notion by Africanists. While in the work of Bayart (1989), for instance, glimpses of trust can be detected, the issue was not explicitly elaborated upon. Scattered scholarship on the working of trust in Africa did however develop on the basis of empirical case studies, with an accent on trust in migrant and trade networks. Hart (1988), for instance, used trust as a core concept in his study of migrants in Accra. He concludes that ‘trust is central to social life when neither traditional certainties nor modern probabilities hold’ (Hart 1988: 191). Other examples include Von Oppen (1994), Levitt (1999), Zakaria (1999), Bellagamba (2004).
The past few years have seen a renewed interest in issues of trust in Africa, triggered, among other things, by observed changes in the character, shape, and reach of networks, the opening up of different terrains of encounter with the unfamiliar, the expansion of modern communication technologies, and shifting research and policy agendas.