Events & Issues
-Good News from Iraq:
The first edition of Ruya Ifriqiyyah [African Vision] was launched early this month of January 2017. The scholarly Arabic journal focuses exclusively on Africa affairs. Professor Ibrahim Ahmad Nasru-Din, the editor-in-chief and founder, hopes to bring Africa back to the Iraqi academy after a long rupture caused by regional wars and internal conflicts. The editorial board includes scholars from many Arab and African countries. This first edition has five lengthily and well-developed articles; they are:
– [African] Refugees in the Republic of Yemen
– Textbooks during Colonial Rule
– The [Missing] Right Agenda in Africa
– Legally Localizing International Conventions
– A Brief Summary of the History of Ethiopian Cinema
You can access the outline of Ruya Ifriqiyyah in the following link
http://ciaes.net/uploads/pdf/13/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%AF%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D9%88%D9%84.pdf.
-ATISCA Call For Papers
Compliments of the season from the ATISCA Secretariat, Gaborone, Botswana. This is a gentle reminder regarding the forthcoming Joint Conference which shall be held at the University of Zimbabwe, Harare, from 18th to 22nd July 2017. The conference is jointly organised by the Association of Theological Institutions in Southern and Central Africa (ATISCA), All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), Bread for the World and Zimbabwe Council of Churches. Please, find attached a Call for Papers with a very interesting and very relevant theme to our situation in Southern and Central Africa. We are looking forward to receiving your abstracts and active participation at the conference as has been our tradition since the formation of ATISCA in 1986. We are looking forward to hearing from you soon.
With best wishes,
Professor James N. Amanze
SECRETARY/TREASURER
Details on the conference and papers are in the following RA link:
https://researchafrica.duke.edu/files/2017/01/CALL-FOR-PAPERS-JOINT-CONFERENCE-OF-ATISCA-BREAD-FOR-THE-WORLD-AND-ZIMBABWE-COUNCIL-OF-CHURCHES.pdf
-Trump Team’s Queries About Africa Point to Skepticism About Aid
By HELENE COOPERJAN. 13, 2017 /WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s views of Africa have, until now, been a mystery. But a series of questions from the Trump transition team to the State Department indicate an overall skepticism about the value of foreign aid, and even about American security interests, on the world’s second-largest continent. A four-page list of Africa-related questions from the transition staff has been making the rounds at the State Department and Pentagon, alarming longtime Africa specialists who say the framing and the tone of the questions suggest an American retreat from development and humanitarian goals, while at the same time trying to push forward business opportunities across the continent. “How does U.S. business compete with other nations in Africa? Are we losing out to the Chinese?” asks one of the first questions in the unclassified document provided to The New York Times. That is quickly followed with queries about humanitarian assistance money. “With so much corruption in Africa, how much of our funding is stolen? Why should we spend these funds on Africa when we are suffering here in the U.S.?”
Read more on the story in this link:
/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/13/world/africa/africa-donald-trump.html?_r=1
-Disunited Nations
Not everyone shares the African Union’s dream of a borderless Africa
If Africa’s 1.26 billion people share a dream, beyond peace and progress on the continent, it would be the ability to move freely across its borders. The one thing a refugee traveling by foot might share with rich businessman flying first class is that both are likely to come up against, in some form or another, the incredible difficulties and frustrations of trying to move from one country to another on the continent.
Read more on the story in this link
Not everyone shares the African Union’s dream of a borderless Africa
——
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
القصة الإفريقية المعاصرة بين الموروثين الإسلامي واالشعبي للكاتب آدم يوسف موسى
[The Contemporary African Story: Between the Two Legacies of Islam and Popular Culture].
Author: The Chadian writer Adam Yousef Mousa
Language: Arabic
This is book is the first in-depth study of the work of the Chadian writer Joseph Brahim Seid (1927 – 1980), who was also the country’s justice minister (1966-1975). His two books Au Tchad sous les étoiles [In Chad under the Stars] (1962) and Un Enfant du Tchad [A Child of Chad] (1967) representer the centeral theme of Mr. Mousa’s book.
Mr. Moussa’s book tries to examine three main objectives in Mr. Seid’s work: 1) how Joseph Seid argues through the power of narrative text that Africa’s heritage is rich and diverse and can provide a clear orientation for future generations; 2) Joseph Seid, who is a Catholic in a Muslim majority country, was at easy in using a mostly Muslim culture to construct his personalities and themes; 3) how Joseph Seid uses literature and the novel in particular to enhance societal values for the public good.
This is a timely work that provides Arabic readers with much-needed first-hand account on African literature and culture. Mr. Mousa’a mastery of Arabic while writing about his home country of Chad, makes his book a must read for any Arabic reader who is interested in African culture.
Publisher: Al-Dar al’Alamiyyah Lil-Nashr wa Taqzi’i, Cairo, Egypt, 2017
http://www.140online.com/company/C33164/%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B1%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8A%D9%87%20%D9%84%D9%84%D9%86%D8%B4%D8%B1%20%D9%88%20%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D9%88%D8%B2%D9%8A%D8%B9
نهر النيل في العلاقات المصرية الأوغندية 1929 – 1991
[The River Nile in the Egyptian-Ugandan relations 1929-1991]
Author: Mohamed Ragab Tammam
Language: Arabic
Professor Tamam who teaches Modern history at Alexandria University in Egypt, is one of the foremost Egyptian scholars of the Nile Basin. This book is his 2014 doctoral dissertation on the same subject. The book traces the history of the ’Egyptian’ Nile going back to pre-modern history; it also revises how Egyptian scholars in the 18th and 19th centuries contributed in exploring and studying the basin of the Nile. The book examines colonial and post colonial treaties that govern the ten countries who share the Nile Basin. The author then offers his insight on water politics in the Nile Basin that challenge both Egypt and its neighbors in the South.
Publisher: Dar al-Kutub wa al-Wathaiq al-Qawmiyyah, Cairo, Egypt, 2016
http://www.darelkotob.gov.eg/index.html
Religion and the Making of Nigeria
[دور الأديار في انشاء دولة نيجريا]
Author: Olufemi Vaughan
In Religion and the Making of Nigeria, Olufemi Vaughan examines how Christian, Muslim, and indigenous religious structures have provided the essential social and ideological frameworks for the construction of contemporary Nigeria. Using a wealth of archival sources and extensive Africanist scholarship, Vaughan traces Nigeria’s social, religious, and political history from the early nineteenth century to the present. During the nineteenth century, the historic Sokoto Jihad in today’s northern Nigeria and the Christian missionary movement in what is now southwestern Nigeria provided the frameworks for ethno-religious divisions in colonial society. Following Nigeria’s independence from Britain in 1960, Christian-Muslim tensions became manifest in regional and religious conflicts over the expansion of sharia, in fierce competition among political elites for state power, and in the rise of Boko Haram. These tensions are not simply conflicts over religious beliefs, ethnicity, and regionalism; they represent structural imbalances founded on the religious divisions forged under colonial rule.
Publisher, Duke University Press, USA, 2016
——– ———— ———–
Research Africa welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in next week’s edition.
To subscribe or unsubscribe email: research_africa-editor@duke.edu
Website: https://researchafrica.duke.edu/
