Research Africa: January 14, 2019
Obituary Announcement
Remembering Professor Lamin Sanneh
By CT editors January 8, 2019
We remember the late Lamin Sanneh, the world’s leading expert on Christianity and Islam in Africa and explore how a Christian convert of The Gambia became a legend at Yale Divinity School for his curiosity, joy, and deep insights.
Lamin Sanneh, the Gambian scholar who shaped contemporary discourse around global Christianity and missions in Africa, died January 6th at the age of 76.
As Sanneh wrote in his autobiography, he was “summoned from the margins,” a convert from Islam to Christianity raised in the tiny West African nation.
Over his 30-year career at Yale Divinity School and during his time at the University of London and two Pontifical Commissions, he brought World Christianity to the forefront, creating a global network of scholars and friends around his scholarship in the fields of African history, abolitionism, and Christian-Muslim relations.
Read the story in this link:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2019/january/lamin-sanneh-died-world-christianity-islam-africa-yale.html
Remembering Lamin Sanneh, the World’s Leading Expert on Ch…… | News & Reporting | Christianity Today
www.christianitytoday.com
Scholars explain how a convert “summoned from the margins” of The Gambia became a legend at Yale Divinity School for his curiosity, joy, and deep insights.
Application Announcement
AIMS Cooperative Master’s Degree Application
The cooperative version of the AIMS Structured Master’s program, offered only at AIMS Senegal, AIMS Cameroon and AIMS Rwanda, builds on the core AIMS Master’s program and leads to the AIMS degree in mathematical sciences.
The 18-month program takes a work-integrated learning approach by combining coursework with practical industry experience. This allows students to apply their scientific knowledge to real world problems while gaining work experience in an industrial environment. The program enables students to develop the necessary professional skills to transition from academic studies to progressive careers in industry (defined as private or public businesses, government, non-governmental organizations, and civil society). The Cooperative Master’s program includes two work placements of three and four months throughout the regular coursework. Successful completion of all coursework and both work placements is required for graduation.
For more information on the program, view this link:
News and Issues
Digging into the Myth of Timbuktu
By Peter Coutros, October 31, 2017
Sometime around 1 o’clock in the afternoon on April 19, 1828, René Caillié emerged from the dark hull of the slave ship that he had boarded weeks before. Eager to disembark and escape the “prison” that he had uncomfortably shared with bundles of rice, millet, cotton, honey, vegetable butter, and fellow travelers, Caillié mounted the first available canoe and glided toward shore.
By the next afternoon, after making his way through the dusty Sahelian streets of the port city and traveling north, he became the first European to see West Africa’s Timbuktu and live to recount his tale.
Read the story in this link:
Get to Know Sarah Diouf, The Astute Creative Behind Tongoro Studio & Ifren Media Group
By Isoken Ogiemwonyi, December 28, 2017
Sarah Diouf is a fashion industry veteran, helming two publications and creative director of her own label Tongoro. Her point of view is one that very few on the continent, and indeed overseas, share; it’s easy to see her communications background in the clarity and strength of the branding of her label Tongoro. Her well thought-out, precise methods quickly strikes a chord within the woman Sarah is trying to dress.
Read the story in this link:
Get to Know Sarah Diouf, The Astute Creative Behind Tongoro Studio & Ifren Media Group
The Trouble With Ethiopia’s Ethnic Federalism
By Mahmood Mamdani , January 3, 2019
Abiy Ahmed, the 42-year-old prime minister of Ethiopia, has dazzled Africa with a volley of political reforms since his appointment in April. Mr. Abiy ended the 20-year border war with Eritrea, released political prisoners, removed bans on dissident groups and allowed their members to return from exile, declared press freedom and granted diverse political groups the freedom to mobilize and organize.
Mr. Abiy has been celebrated as a reformer, but his transformative politics have come up against ethnic federalism enshrined in Ethiopia’s Constitution. The resulting clash threatens to exacerbate competitive ethnic politics further and push the country toward an interethnic conflict.
Read the story in this link:
Skyscrapers, trains and roads: How Addis Ababa came to look like a Chinese city
By Jenni Marsh, September 3, 2018
When Wang Yijun put Ethiopia’s most expensive real estate project on the market, he experienced a strange phenomenon. People preferred the lowest floors over those with panoramic city views. “Power cuts mean elevators in this city often don’t work,” explains Wang, the site manager. “So the bottom-floor flats became the most valuable. You won’t see this pricing in any Chinese city.” Replicating China’s urban model in Africa has its challenges, but with limited developable space in Addis Ababa — the capital is surrounded by protected farmland — Wang believes high-rise living, such as Tsehay Real Estate’s $60 million Poli Lotus development, is inevitable.
Read the story in this link:
https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/addis-ababa-china-construction-style/index.html?utm_medium=social&utm_source=fbCNNi&utm_content=2019-01-05T23%3A01%3A01&utm_term=link
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
Pio Gama Pinto Kenya’s Unsung Martyr, 1927 – 1965
[بيو كاما بنتو: شهيد كينيا المجهول: 1927 – 1965]
Author (Editor): Shiraz Durrani
Pio Gama Pinto was born in Kenya on March 31, 1927 and was assassinated in Nairobi on February 24, 1965. In his short life, he became a symbol of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles in Kenya and India. He was actively involved in Goa’s struggle against Portuguese colonialism and in Mau Mau during Kenya’s war of independence. For this, he was detained by the British colonial authorities in Kenya from 1954-1959. His contribution to the struggle for liberation for working people spanned Africa and Asia and covered two phases of imperialism: colonialism in Kenya and Goa and neo-colonialism in Kenya after independence. His enemies saw no way of stopping the intense, lifelong struggle he waged except through assassination. His contribution, ideas, and ideals are remembered and upheld even today by those active in liberation struggles.
Publisher: Vita Books, Kenya, 2018
Christianity and Catastrophe in South Sudan Civil War, Migration, and the Rise of Dinka Anglicanism
[المسيحية ونكبة الحرب الأهلية بجنوب السودان، الهجرة، وصعود الأنكليكانية بين قبائل الدينكا]
Author: Jesse A. Zink
Zink’s book is an outstanding account of the growth and evolution of Anglican Christianity among the Dinka people in what is now South Sudan. Zink traces the origins of the Anglican mission to the Dinka people, explains its early weakness, and documents its transformation after the expulsion of foreign missionaries in 1964 Sudan. As Dinka Christians took their faith back to their rural heartland and as the church’s leaders began to tolerate the informal authority of prophetic figures, Anglicanism itself began to change. Zink’s extraordinary account describes multiple conversions – the conversion of Dinka people to Anglican religion and their conversion of Anglican religion into the cultural forms that support the faith. This book surveys the practices of one of the fastest-growing churches in the region.
Publisher: Baylor University Press, 2018
Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba: A Peacemaker for Our Time
[الشيخ أحمدو بامبا: صانع السلام في عصرنا]
Author: Michelle R. Kimball
This book recounts the life and legacy of Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba (d. 1927). His adventures begin in the villages of Senegal in West Africa before he is thrust into the dense, treacherous, dark jungles of the French Congo and the pristine Sahara Desert in Mauritania. The French, who had control of much of West Africa, encountered Bamba in the summer of 1895. Bamba seemed to know what was going to happen to him; the night before his arrest, he gathered his disciples together. The majority fervently pronounced that they were willing to launch a violent resistance and die rather than allow the French to take Shaykh Ahmadou Bamba away. Bamba’s reacted by stating that in a war, there are never any victors. Thirty-three years of exile, imprisonment, and house arrest only fortified his spirit, as affirmed by his moving, ubiquitous poetic expressions. His writings are seen as living texts that make them forever relevant. Kimball’s presentation of colonial resistance and non-violent social change is compelling and timely. It is a book of universal import with a message of truth, peace, and the power of nonviolence.
Publisher: The Other Press Sdn. Bhd, 2018.
A Gender Perspective of Municipal Solid Waste Generation and Management in the City of Bamenda, Cameroon
[وجهة نظر الرجال و النساء لعملية توليد وإدارة النفايات الصلبة في بلدية مدينة باميندا في الكاميرون]
Author: Akum Hedwig Kien
The management of urban waste constitutes one of the major environmental challenges facing African cities in general and in particular, Cameroon. Unprecedented population growth and changes in consumption patterns and lifestyles have led to increased waste generation. Municipal solid waste management efforts lag behind the growing rate of waste generation with attendant environmental and public health risks. The gender dynamics and politics at the pools of waste generation largely influence the outcome of waste management strategies and policies. This book highlights the gender dimension of municipal solid waste generation and management in the city of Bamenda. The findings revealed and proposals made from the study will hopefully be employed by municipal authorities in Cameroon and beyond to enhance waste management efforts.
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2018.
Kingdom, State and Civil Society in Africa: Conceptual and Political Collisions
[المماليك والدول والمجتمع المدني في أفريقيا: مراجعات سياسية ونظرية]
Author: Nelson Kasfir
Civil society is one of several Western political and social concepts that has not flourished in Africa. Revived in response to the search for democracy in Eastern Europe during the late Soviet era, Western donors promoted and funded new civil society organizations in sub-Saharan Africa, viewing them as an essential grounding for African democratization. Most of these new civil society organizations had little in common with African associational activity. Focusing on the characteristics and behavior of longstanding African organizations appears a better starting point for developing a useful concept of an African civil society. One candidate worth serious investigation is the Buganda Kingdom Government; this organization violates most distinctions central to Western notions of civil society, yet it continues to behave like a civil society organization. Its political and conceptual collisions offer guidance toward a useful notion of African civil society and understanding Ugandan politics.
Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Switzerland, 2017
Plantation Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate: A Historical and Comparative Study
[مزارع الاسترقاق في سوكوتو الخلافة: دراسة تاريخية مقارنة]
Author: Mohammed Bashir Salau
A large-scale study of plantation slavery in West Africa with a focus on the nineteenth-century Sokoto caliphate, this book draws on diverse sources including oral testimony, Arabic material, and extant scholarly works about the caliphal state. Plantation Slavery in the Sokoto Caliphate offers new views on various fundamental issues including the definition of blackness in the Sokoto caliphate, the meaning of the term “plantation,” the significance of plantation slavery in the caliphal state, and the role of slavery in the context of African states.
Publication: University of Rochester Press, 2018
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Research Africa (research_africa-editor@duke.edu) welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in the next edition.
