While the flows of goods and people between African and Asian cities have been increasing in the last decades, many people in Africa feel excluded from the possibilities that these connections bring about. In Nairobi, however, some new Chinese, Malaysian and Philippine companies offer everyone the chance to partake in new forms of wealth creation, and hundreds of thousands of Kenyans have joined them. While new members enthusiastically believe these promises, other Kenyans see such multi-level marketing schemes (MLMs) as borderline fraudulent.

After retelling the history of American and Asian MLMs in Kenya, the paper focuses on two successful members of a MLM. Due to their lack of education and other opportunities, MLMs offered a viable way to secure a middle-class lifestyle. To achieve this, both embrace the morals of late-capitalism that the MLM teaches; they have become - and fashion themselves as - hard-working entrepreneurs. However, both actors are also very much aware that they make their money by selling empty promises to new members. Their different ways to morally justify this come to the fore in their different understandings of business and religion, as both are also pentecostalist preachers. Additionally, their self-perception as entrepreneurs is threatened by the way they are treated by the Chinese owners of the company. While MLMs are very particular forms of the economic connections between African and Asian cities, they shed a light on the imaginary quality, the ongoing exclusion and the shifting moral landscape that these connections bring about.

"Johannesburg is hectic, bru. Even the hobos in the streets are hectic". This is what Samir answered, when I asked why he moved to the platteland. Samir, dressed in a qamis and wearing a beard like all devoted Muslims, was readily identifiable as Jo'burger. The whole conversation took place in his supermarket in a rural town. He was one of John's customers, a reserved Korean, who worked as freelancing trade agent, distributing artificial hair supplied by a Chinese importer based

Samir's characterization of Johannesburg en passant summarized a vivid scholarly debate, which goes on among urbanists, human-geographers, people from the arts, urban planners, and anthropologist for quite same time. Attempts to "read" Johannesburg seem almost to fail due to its "edginess" (Loren Kruger), "elusiveness" and "fluidity" (Achille Mbembe and Sarah Nuttal). Indeed, Johannesburg is hectic when John, like many others drive from their homes in the suburban sprawl to inner-city warehouses, to the visible imprints of the Chinese presence, China Malls and the "new" Chinatown in Cyrildene. Based on fieldwork with migrant traders in the sphere of Chinese Johannesburg, the paper explores the ways of everyday mobility. In order to understand "How to read Africa's changing global connections in the African cityscape", driving and co-driving became lessons in deducing the fabric of social and cultural interactions.

En 2010, nous avons conduit une enquête qui a interrogé, dans la ville de Dakar, 180 jeunes, autour de la façon dont ils se définissent et « vivent » en tant que musulmans. Dans la suite, nous avons mené plusieurs autres enquêtes portant sur le langage socioreligieux des jeunes urbains et des sociabilités religieuses qu'ils partagent, avec un point culminant par un sondage qui a mobilisé 1200 jeunes, en 2016. Un grand nombre de matériaux a ainsi été mis en place durant ces 7 années d'observation des manières dont on se définit comme urbain, mondialisé, jeune et musulman, au Sénégal. Ces observations et collectes se sont déroulées dans le contexte d'un agenda sécuritaire international suspicieux à l'égard de l'islam.

Cette présentation nous donne l'occasion de partager quelques premiers résultats qui insisteront sur la manière dont les jeunes urbains reconduisent et éconduisent tout à la fois, aussi bien les catégories de la mise sous surveillance internationale de l'islam, que les velléités d'encadrements sociaux dont ils sont l'objet au nom de celui-ci.

En effet, si ces jeunes sont certes sensibles à ces velléités d'encadrement moral qu'ils ne manquent pas de défendre comme des marques de leurs attaches socioreligieux, ils ne cessent cependant de s'inscrire dans des performances individuelles, collectives, culturelles diverses et surtout inscrites entre permanence et changement, local et global.