Research Africa News: June 18th, 2020

Research Africa News: June 18th, 2020

 

American Spring: How Trump ‘Africanised’ the United States and Sparked an Anti-Racism Movement
Rasna Warah, June 6, 2020

For Africans watching the unfolding uprising in America, the scenes seem eerily familiar, but disconcerting. Suddenly the tables have turned: America is being described in the same way that many African countries are depicted by the Western media; the US is beginning to resemble a failed African state.

Read the rest of the story here.

 

Black Youth Can Now Take Free Trips To Africa
Janice GassamSenior Contributor Diversity & Inclusion

Being able to connect with one’s culture and background is a critical component in the development of an individual’s identity and self-esteem. For many Black Americans, they were not awarded that luxury. Being a descendant of American slaves has left an entire population of people far removed from their culture and history.

Read the rest of the story here.

 

Manufacturers pulling out of China should consider Africa to diversify their supply chain
Stewart Paterson, May 24, 2020

China’s manufacturing domination, with its share of global manufacturing at 28 per cent, has given it considerable economic power. Covid-19 has laid bare China’s willingness to use this power for geopolitical ends and brought home the very real risks of overreliance on any single source for critical supplies. There is a growing sense of urgency for supply chains to become more diversified, which begs the question: who can fill the void?

Read the rest of the story here.

 

Egypt’s attempt to ride on the shoulders of our government and the World Bank – Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. Thu, May 21, 2020.
Re: Request to Issue a CBC Resolution Against Egypt’s Letter To the UN Security Council About the Nile River.

I hope this letter finds you well and you are keeping safe. I see this as a historic document and find it important to bring to light that our government, the World Bank and the United Nations Security Council are being used as vehicles by the government of Egypt to impose a colonial-era treaty against 11 black African nations. I am writing about a deeply disturbing case, regarding a letter that the government of Egypt has submitted to the UN Security Council to pressure Ethiopia into signing a neo-colonial agreement that will make Egypt a hegemon over the Nile River. This is inexplicable because 85% of the waters of the Nile river originate from Ethiopia. The remaining 15% is contributed by 10 Sub Saharan Africa Nile basin nations. Egypt contributes 0% to the river flow. At the heart of the Ethio-Egypt problem is a colonial legacy that Egypt is trying to hang on to. Here is how the Brookings Institution presented Egypt’s intentions on April 28, 2015.

Read the rest of the story here.

 

NEW BOOKS          كتب جديدة

 

Crimes of Capitalism in Kenya: Press Cuttings on Moi-KANU’s Reign of Terror in Kenya, 1980s-1990s
[جرائم الرأسمالية في كينيا: حصاد الصحافة في عهد موي الدكتاتوري الارهابي في كينيا 1980-1990]
Author (Editor): Shiraz Durrani, Kimani Waweru

This book  covers a shameful period of Kenya’s past under the government of President Daniel arap Moi (1978-2002) who ruled Kenya with an iron fist and conducted his reign of terror on those opposed to his dictatorship. He stifled violently people’s desire for change, equality and justice. He sought to drown the call of the independence movement for land and freedom in blood, torture and loot of national resources. The wounds inflicted on people cannot even begin to be healed unless the full extent of the problem is first brought out in the public domain. But the same comprador regime that instigated these horrors then went on to suppress information about its terrorist rule over unarmed workers, peasants, students, professionals and other progressive people and their underground movements such as the December Twelve Movement and Mwakenya.

Publisher: Vita Books, Kenya, 2020.

 

Decolonising the Academy: A Case for Convivial Scholarship
[نحو تحرير الأكاديميا من الاستعمار: حالة دراسية للمنح الدراسية باسم الصداقة]
Author:  Francis B. Nyamnjoh

Recurrent clamours by students and academics for universities in Africa and elsewhere, to imbibe and exude a spirit of inclusion are a continual reminder that universities can and need to be much more convivial. Processes of knowledge production that champion delusions of superiority and zero-sum games of absolute winners and losers are elitist and un-convivial. Academic disciplines tend to encourage introversion and emphasise exclusionary fundamentalisms of heartlands rather than highlight inclusionary overtures of borderlands. Frequenting crossroads and engaging in frontier conversations are frowned upon, if not prohibited. The scarcity of conviviality in universities, within and between disciplines, and among scholars results in highly biased knowledge processes. The production and consumption of knowledge are socially and politically mediated by webs of humanity, hierarchies of power, and instances of human agency. Given the resilience of colonial education throughout Africa and among Africans, endogenous traditions of knowledge are barely recognised and grossly underrepresented. What does conviviality in knowledge production entail? It involves conversing and collaborating across disciplines and organisations and integrating epistemologies informed by popular universes and ideas of reality. Convivial scholarship is predicated upon recognising and providing for incompleteness – in persons, disciplines, and traditions of knowing and knowledge making.

Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Namibia, 2020.

Beyond Coloniality: Citizenship and Freedom in the Caribbean Intellectual Tradition
[تاملات ما بعد الاستعمارية: المواطنة والحرية في التقليد الفكري الكاريبي]
Author: Aaron Kamugisha

Against the lethargy and despair of the contemporary Anglophone Caribbean experience, Aaron Kamugisha gives a powerful argument for advancing Caribbean radical thought as an answer to the conundrums of the present. Beyond Coloniality is an extended meditation on Caribbean thought and freedom at the beginning of the 21st century and a profound rejection of the postindependence social and political organization of the Anglophone Caribbean and its contentment with neocolonial arrangements of power. Kamugisha provides a dazzling reading of two towering figures of the Caribbean intellectual tradition, C. L. R. James and Sylvia Wynter, and their quest for human freedom beyond coloniality. Ultimately, he urges the Caribbean to recall and reconsider the radicalism of its most distinguished 20th-century thinkers in order to imagine a future beyond neocolonialism.

Publisher: Indiana University Press, 2019.

 

Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health, HIV/AIDS and the Anglican Church in Southern Malawi
[الصحة الجنسية والانجابية  وفيروس نقص المناعة البشرية لدى المرأة و علاقتها بالكنيسة الانجليكانية في جنوب ملاوي]
Author:  Chimwemwe Kalalo

Although research shows that a great percentage of the Malawian population is quite knowledgeable about HIV/Aids transmission and prevention, the epidemic still continues to kill at a fast rate, and the government and other stakeholders including the faith communities are continuously meeting the challenges of HIV/Aids. Many women in Malawi have died, infected and affected by the HIV pandemic because of, among other factors, a negative approach to their own sexuality. Culture, economy, ethics and values do influence a woman’s sexual health, consequently affecting the whole family. In the mid 19th century when Christianity was introduced into Malawi, the missionaries took great concern at improving people’s health. One such mission was the Universities Mission to Central Africa as a pioneer of the Anglican Church in Malawi. Since then to the present, the Church has worked as a team with the government in the provision of medical services in Malawi and in its fight against HIV/Aids This book therefore looks at how adequately the Anglican Church in the Upper Shire Diocese responds to the issue of women’s sexual reproductive health in the context of HIV/Aids. Improving the status of women is not only a matter of theology but of ethics, health and survival. This challenges churches to change some of their attitudes and visions and to undertake new and creative initiatives in their pastoral ministry.

Publisher: Mzuni Press, Malawi, 2020.

 

Black Political Thought: From David Walker to the Present
[الفكر السياسي لدى السود: من ديفيد ووكر الى الوقت الحاضر]
Author:  Sherrow O Pinder.

In Black Political Thought: From David Walker to the Present, Sherrow O. Pinder has brought together the writings and discourses central to black political thought and African American politics, compiling a unique anthology of speeches and articles from over 150 years of African American history. Providing in-depth examinations and critical analyses of topics such as slavery, reconstruction, race and racism, black nationalism and black feminism – from a range of perspectives – students are equipped with a comprehensive and informative account of how these issues have fundamentally shaped and continue to shape black political thinking. Each of the six thematic parts is framed by an introduction written by black scholars working in the field, and a list of further readings. Individual chapters are then enhanced by end-of-chapter questions and author biographies. Written for the interdisciplinary field of black studies, and other social science and humanities disciplines, this textbook offers a unique resource for political scientists, sociologists, historians, feminists, and the general reader of black political thought.

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Dialogues in Climate and Environmental Research, Policy and Planning: A Special Focus on Zimbabwe
[حوارات في مجال البحوث المناخية والبيئية والسياسية والتخطيط مع التركيز على زيمبابوي]
Author: Innocent Chirisa

Climate change is the topic of the century. It is a subject of discussion by sceptics, heretics and those that have immersed in it as a serious debate for engagement. In this volume, the matter is localised to the plateau bordered by the great rivers of Limpopo to the south and Zambezi to the north. Evidence has it that climate change is inducing immense environmental change hitherto unknown including water stress and droughts, heat waves and flooding. The effects span across all sectors – agriculture, forestry, engineering, construction and other socio-economic dimensions of life. When an issue becomes such topical, it becomes political but also courts policy debate. The thrust of this volume is to explore into climate change as an environmental concern begging government attention and requiring prioritisation as a shaper of our future, whether we set to put mitigation or adaptation measures in place, or we choose to do nothing about it, as sceptics would perhaps suggest. The book explores climate change as a theoretical, policy, technical and practical debate as it affects sectors and rural and urban spatialities in Zimbabwe. Contributions explore such themes as regional research, gender, disaster preparedness, policymaking, resilience, governance, urban planning, risk management, environmental law, and the food-water-health-energy-climate change nexus.

Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2020.

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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.