This collection explores the productive potential of uncertainty for people living in Africa as well as for scholars of Africa. Eight ethnographic case studies from across the continent examine how uncertainty is used to negotiate insecurity, create and conduct relationships, and act as a source for imagining the future.

1. Ethnographies of Uncertainty in Africa: An Introduction; Elizabeth Cooper and David Pratten PART I: SOCIAL CONTINGENCIES: BETWEEN SUSPICION AND THE SUBJUNCTIVE 2. Contingency: Interpersonal and Historical Dependencies in HIV Care; Susan Reynolds Whyte and Godfrey Etyang Siu 3. Charity and Chance: The Manufacture of Uncertainty and Mistrust Through Child Sponsorship in Kenya; Elizabeth Cooper 4. The Quest for Trust in the Face of Uncertainty. Managing Pregnancy Outcomes in Zanzibar; Nadine Beckmann 5. Food Security, Conjugal Conflict, and Uncertainty in 'Bangladesh', Mombasa, Kenya; Adam Gilbertson PART II: FUTURE VISIONS 6. Social Invisibility and Political Opacity. On Perceptiveness and Apprehension in Bissau; Henrik Vigh 7. Rhythms of Uncertainty and the Pleasures of Anticipation; Julie Soleil Archambault 8. Embracing Uncertainty. Young People on the Move in Addis Ababa's Inner City; Marco Di Nunzio 9. 'We Wait for Miracles.' Ideas of Hope and Future Among Clandestine Burundian Refugees in Nairobi; Simon Turner