Research Africa is pleased to release its website: https://sites.duke.edu/researchafrica
Some of the contents in the site are still in progress. We look forward to adding a list of Institutional Partners. These are African Academic institutions interested in advancing education excellence, research, capacity building and partnership with RA. Through this partnership they will have access to some Duke faculty and assistance in addressing accreditation issues from a premier world-class education institution.
-In-Take Editor for RA Book Review: Research Africa is recruiting 3 In-Take Editors for RA Book Review. The task of the In-Take editors will be primarily to lead the process of editing reviews. Interested candidates should be scholars in their field or advanced graduate students whose primary areas of study is the humanities, social or natural sciences. Interested candidates are invited to volunteer by sending an email to (research_africa@duke.edu). Their names will be listed in the site.
FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES
– Higher Education and Research in Africa (HERA)
Opp ID: 60033 | Research Program or Curriculum Development or Provision | Last edited on 21 Nov 2016
Website: https://www.carnegie.org/programs/higher-education-and-research-in-africa/
Sponsor: Carnegie Corporation of New York
Amount: Upper $5,450,000USD; Lower $1,500USD
Africa’s institutions of higher learning and academic communities are key to reaching the continent’s potential. We aim to enhance training, research, and retention of academics in select countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The following are the Focus Areas for funding:
1. M.A. and Ph.D. programs; fostering the next generation of academics in Ghana, South Africa, and Uganda. Since 2009, the Corporation has worked to create and expand postgraduate training, research, and lecturer retention programs at four anchor universities in three countries. Targeting academics already in the higher education sector, but lacking advanced degrees, the programs have been designed to enable academics to complete their degrees, thereby helping meet the growing demand inAfrica for qualified and highly trained university faculty. The investments have made progress in the areas of recruitment, retention, and quality of academic output.
2. Academic Networks and Fellowships; connecting centers of higher education and academics across Africa and the diaspora. Recognizing that disciplinary networks and fellowships are important vehicles for advancing academic careers and creating intellectual communities, support for both has been part of HERA’s strategy. Three network initiatives, three fellowship programs, and two “hybrid” programs that combine networks and fellowships have given postgraduate training, research, and publication opportunities to hundreds of African academics.
3. Leadership, Policy, and Governance; supporting advancements in select countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This element of Corporation strategy aims to sustain and further advance higher education reforms, improve higher education leadership, and strengthen higher education policy research and practice in Africa. Our work on higher education policy is unfolding at the time of growing realization on the continent that universities are drivers for economic growth and development. Governments and other national leaders are speaking of the role of universities in the context of Africa’s global competitiveness. The policy component supports a key recommendation of the African Higher Education Summit to further improve the environment for African higher education by promoting the production of policy-relevant research on the higher education sector and evidence-based information to guide higher education policies on the continent.
4. Peacebuilding in Africa; supporting research, training, and networks leading to African solutions for Africa’s problems. Building on a decade of investments, the Corporation teamed up with multilateral donors to strengthen the field of peacebuilding in Africa through research, training, and networks. This effort responded to the expressed needs of African stakeholders to: improve their international capacity to deal with continental challenges pertaining to peace, security, and development; seek African solutions to Africa’s problems; and bring Africa’s voices to the international discourse concerning these challenges. In parallel and in collaboration with IPS efforts, the HERA subprogram developed a set of related grants aimed at capacity building on these issues within the African academic communities. The combination and complementarity of IPS and HERA approaches, and the growing attention in Africa on these issues, along with an expanded capacity for research and policy impact within Africa, have led to making Peacebuilding in Africa a special, cross IPS/HERA initiative of IP for the next three years with the overall goal of contributing to improving the practice and effectiveness of peacebuilding in Africa.
For more details, follow the following link
https://researchafrica.duke.edu/files/2016/12/Higher-Education-and-Research-in-Africa-1.pdf
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
– Claiming Agency: Reflecting on TrustAfrica’s First Decade
[مراجعات في أبعاد التفويض: حالة دراسية لمؤسسة تراسأفريكا]
Author: Halima Mahomed & Elizabeth Coleman (editors)
Language: English
This book is a case study of TrustAfrica’s first decade in the continent. It takes an in-depth look at an African-led foundation that set out to do things differently. Founded in 2006, when solutions to Africa’s challenges were often developed outside its borders, TrustAfrica sought to practice a kind of philanthropy that both benefits Africans and actively supports their agency. Now, at the ten-year mark, the book asks, how does this kind of philanthropy make a difference? If so, how? What are its unique ways of working?
The answers are found in chapters that reflect on how TrustAfrica and its partners advanced a range of issues including women’s rights, small-holder agriculture, and democratic reform in Liberia and Zimbabwe to international criminal justice and illicit financial flows. In a clear-eyed look at money and power, the authors observe that donor funds all too often come with strings that constrict African agency – and recommend ways in which donors from Africa and the global north can foster independent action and strengthen movements for change.
Publisher: Weaver Press, Zimbabwe, 2016
http://weaverpresszimbabwe.com
– Democratic Governance and Political Participation in Nigeria
[الحكم الديموقراطي و المشاركة السياسية في نيجريا]
1999 – 2014
Author: Femi Omotoso & Michael Kehinde (editors)
Language: English
The last decade of 20th century was a golden age in Nigeria as it witnessed a democratic transfer of power from military rule to civilian governance. Given Nigeria’s tumultuous history of successive military interventions, this development was the first ‘genuine’ transition that saw the military elite transferring political power to civilians without itching to stage a comeback. This edited volume, composed of 22 chapters discusses the form, trajectory and substance of democratic governance in post-military Nigeria between 1999 and 2014. It is a compilation of well researched essays and narratives on Nigerian government and politics. The book is a multi-disciplinary assessment of Nigeria’s democratic strides, including contributions from scholars in a broad range of disciplines such as history, sociology and anthropology, political science, economics, international relations, among others.
The book examines the factors responsible for the resilience of the current democratic governance structures, in spite of centripetal and centrifugal forces frustrating democratic consolidation in the country. It equally interrogates these factors and makes appropriate recommendations for overcoming them. Key themes covered in the book in the Boko Haram insurgency, governance and corruption, militancy, sharia law, Islamic banking amongst others. It sheds light on contending issues affecting, afflicting and retarding the country’s progress. Issues like ethnicity, electoral corruption, human rights abuses, privatization of national assets, kidnapping and armed robbery, overbearing leadership personality and many more are critically discussed. Local government autonomy and the challenges of grassroots development and civil service administration are also thoroughly analysed.
Democratic Governance and Political Participation in Nigeria 1999-2014 is a detailed, exhaustive, deep, stimulating and captivating narrative of the Nigerian situation. It is enthusiastically recommended for those who wish to know more about contemporary Nigerian history. As a collection of contemporary issues on the Nigerian government and politics, the book is recommended for courses in politics and governance in Nigeria in particular and Africa in general. It is an invaluable companion for both graduate and undergraduate students as well as scholars of African politics.
Publisher: Spears Media Press, Cameroon2016
– حدود مصر الملتهبة: النزاعات الحدودية صناعة استعمارية
[Egypt’s Inflamed borders: Border Disputes as a colonial Creation]
Author: Muhammad Shalbi Amin
Language: Arabic
This book, written by one of Egypt’s most popular journalists, is a critical examination of the impact of colonial legacy on modern Egypt. The basic argument of the author is that Egypt is an island surrounded by a sea of border disputes, and that Egypt’s current problems with its neighbors whether Arabs, Africans or Israelis, are related to borderline. The author argues, using archival documents and historical analyses, that these issues were created systematically by French and British colonial authorities.
There is a border conflict with Sudan in the South over the ownership of Halayib triangle; there is a conflict over the two islands of Tiran and Sanafir with Saudi Arabia; there is Egypt’s Umm Al-Rashrash, which has become Israel’s Eilat, a southern most city port; there is a conflict over the village of Al Jaghbub Oasis in the eastern Libyan dessert. There is also Egypt’s Port of Aqaba, which was given to the kingdom of Jordan. The author argues that since the incursion of Napoleon Bonaparte in Egypt in 1798-1801, about 100 new countries were created by colonial powers in African and the Arabia. Egypt is older and its borders were the victims of these newly created territories. This is an exciting study, and provocative; it provides solid grounds for graduate students and researchers who are interested in border issues in Africa and the Middle East.
Publisher: Dar Sanabul, Cairo, 2016.
http://elaph.com/Web/Culture/2009/9/483382.htm
Research Africa welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in next week’s edition.
