Research Africa: January 11, 2018

Research Africa: January 11, 2018
Events
1. Conference: Constructing Africa’s Future: The Environmental and Social Implications of Chinese-Financed Infrastructure in Africa (Duke University, the Duke Africa Initiative, and the Nicholas Institute // Jan. 18-19, 2018)
Hear leading academics, journalists, policymakers, and NGO experts discuss the environmental and social implications of Chinese-financed infrastructure in Africa. The ultimate goal of the workshop is to assess how Duke/DKU and partner institutions can contribute to developing infrastructure in Africa in order to optimize its impact on the environment and global health.
Link:http://calendar.duke.edu/show?fq=id%3ACAL-2c918082-60b02640-0160-c7355fd2-000024b5demobedework%40mysite.edu

2. Workshop: Ethnographies of Interconnection in Contemporary Africa: A Writing Workshop for Graduate Students
(Cornell University // April 19-21, 2018)
We invite mid- and late-stage graduate students conducting ethnographic research on African contexts (broadly defined) to submit abstracts for a paper workshop focused on ethnographies of interconnection at Cornell University. This is a wonderful opportunity to discuss key theoretical and methodological issues with students and faculty and to receive feedback on working-draft papers. Funds are available to cover participants’ travel and lodging expenses. Apologies for cross-posting. For more details use this link:
https://sites.duke.edu/researchafrica/files/2018/01/FINAL-CFP.pdf

News and Issues
Ethiopia: Deracializing (Not Decolonizing) Ethiopian Studies
By: Berihun Adugna Gebeye, Addis Abeba, (November 30, 2017)
I am writing this contribution to further engage and provoke discussion on ‘decolonizing’ Ethiopian studies initiated by Hewan Semon. While I agree with some of Hewan’s concerns, I dissent on the use of decolonization as a theoretical framework for Ethiopian studies. De-racialization seems to be a more fitting theoretical framework to view and reflect upon the phenomenon in Ethiopian studies.
Indeed, my argument here is not original. Messay Kebede makes a compelling case for the deconstruction of Eurocentric views on Ethiopia and on the possibilities of advancing Ethiopian studies within the contours of its own epistemology, methodology, and phenomenology. My aim here is to bring a historiography of Ethiopian studies to the attention of Hewan and her critics (see Here, Here, Here, and Here) and consequently posit why Ethiopian studies need de-racialization.
Read the story in this link:
http://allafrica.com/stories/201712280319.html?utm_campaign=allafrica%3Aeditor&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=promote%3Aaans%3Aabljpw

Connectivity at the Bottom of the Pyramid: A white paper
By: Laura Elizabeth Mann
Last year, my colleague Kate Meagher and I organized a conference at the Rockefeller Conference Centre to explore the opportunities and challenges presented by digital technology and projects for informal workers at the Bottom of the Pyramid. We focused on four sectors central to ICT engagement in African informal economies: agriculture, business process outsourcing (BPO), mobile money and transport.
Read the story in this link:
Connectivity at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Liberia’s Big School Experiment
By: David Laws
Liberia, which elected a new president last week, has among the highest percentage of out-of-school primary children in the world. In an effort to improve the availability and quality of schools, the West African country has been carrying out a controversial experiment. It has asked a range of non-government organizations to run some of the country’s state schools, and now the government is assessing and comparing student performance. Supporters defend this as bold innovation which will raise standards. Opponents say it is a pathway to privatizing the state school system. David Laws, a former education minister in England and executive chairman of the Education Partnerships Group, has been advising Liberia’s government on the project. He gives his views on the findings so far.
Read the story in this link:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42413639?ct=t%28January_5_20181_5_2018%29&mc_cid=2144f3d507&mc_eid=13bab8c27c&mc_cid=2cd42a8fca&mc_eid=fab0566d63

How Morocco has weakened its press, pushing readers to social media for news
January 2, 2018
For David Alvarado, a Spanish journalist who has been covering North Africa for more than a decade, the real indication of how free journalists are to report in Morocco depends on which government ministry is watching most closely. Officially, it’s the Ministry of Communications that issues press cards and can expel journalists or ban them from working here, says Mr. Alvarado.
But in the past several years, the powerful Interior Ministry, responsible for national security, has been keeping tabs on him and has let him know that their agents saw him talking to people they didn’t like.
Read the story in this link:
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2018/0102/How-Morocco-has-weakened-its-press-pushing-readers-to-social-media-for-news?mc_cid=2cd42a8fca&mc_eid=fab0566d63

NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
We Do Not Have Borders: Greater Somalia and the Predicaments of Belonging in Kenya
[لا حدود عندنا: الصومال الكبرى ومآزق الانتماء الوطني في دولة كينيا]
Author: Keren Weitzberg
Publisher: Ohio University Press, 2017
Though often associated with foreigners and refugees, many Somalis have lived in Kenya for generations, and in many cases, long before the founding of the country. Despite their ancient residency, foreign and state officials along with Kenyan citizens often perceive the Somali population to be a dangerous, alien presence in the country. In fact, charges of civil and human rights abuses have mounted against them in recent years. In We Do Not Have Borders, Keren Weitzberg examines the historical factors that led to this state of affairs. In the process, she challenges many of the most fundamental analytical categories, such as “tribe,” “race,” and “nation,” that have traditionally shaped African historiography. Her interest in the ways in which Somali representations of the past and the present inform one another places her research at the intersection of historical, political, and anthropological disciplines.

The January Children
[أطفال يناير]
Author: Safia Elhillo
Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2017
In her dedication Safia Elhillo writes, “The January Children are the generation born in Sudan under British occupation, where children were assigned birth years by height, all given the birth date January 1.” What follows is a deeply personal collection of poems that describe the experience of navigating the postcolonial world as a stranger in one’s own land. The January Children depicts displacement and longing while also questioning accepted truths about geography, history, nationhood, and home. The mythological poems of family histories stretch until they break open and are used to explore aspects of Sudan’s history of colonial occupation, dictatorship, and diaspora. Several of the poems speak to the late Egyptian singer Abdelhalim Hafez, who addressed many of his songs to the asmarani—an Arabic term of endearment for a brown-skinned or dark-skinned person. Elhillo explores Arabness and Africanness and the tensions generated by a hyphenated identity in those two worlds.

African Muckraking
[التنبش الصحفي في أفريقيا]
Author: Anya Schiffrin ,‎
Editor: George Lugalambi
Publisher: Jacana Media, 2017
This edited collection includes the legends of African journalism and writings of daring African authors. Like their counterparts all over the world, African muckrakers have been imprisoned and even killed for their work. Featured in this book are stories on corruption and brutality by Mozambique journalist Carlos Cardoso and Angolan writer Rafael Marques, a loving profile of the legendary cameraman Mo Amin and his writing on the Ethiopian famine, and Drum’s investigative reporter Henry Nxumalo who went undercover in South Africa to write about labor conditions on the notorious potato farms of Bethal. Additionally, this text includes Nigerian novelist Okey Ndibe’s description of Chinua Achebe’s passionate writing on the war with Biafra, Kenyan novelist Peter Kimani’s account of the Hola Massacre, and Ken Saro-Wiwa warning of the coming war in the Niger Delta.

Monrovia Modern: Urban Form and Political Imagination in Liberia
[مونروفيا الحديثة: المظهر الحضري والخيال السياسي في ليبيريا]
Author: Danny Hoffman
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2017
In Monrovia Modern, Danny Hoffman uses the ruins of four iconic modernist buildings in Monrovia, Liberia, as a way to explore the relationship between the built environment and political imagination. Hoffman shows how the E. J. Roye tower, the Hotel Africa luxury resort, the unfinished Ministry of Defense, and Liberia Broadcasting System buildings transformed during the urban warfare of the 1990s from symbols of the modernist project of nation-building to reminders of the challenges Monrovia’s residents face. The transient lives of these buildings’ inhabitants, many of whom are ex-combatants, prevent them from making place-based claims to a right to the city and hinder their ability to think of ways to rebuild and repurpose their constructed environment. Featuring nearly 100 of Hoffman’s color photographs, Monrovia Modern is situated at the intersection of photography, architecture, and anthropology. This book outlines the possibilities and limits for imagining an urban future in Monrovia and beyond.
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