Hi all,
Thank you for subscribing to and participating in Research Africa. We are very happy to have nearly 600 subscribers; Research Africa is growing quickly! As a multi-disciplinary platform, we accept submissions in both Arabic and English to increase readership and promote inclusivity. We warmly welcome you to submit in your preferred language. To make a submission – or otherwise contact the editors/administrators – email research_africa-editor@duke.edu. Replies to our weekly communiques like this one, and replies to those replies, are sent to all of our readers as part of a mass email thread.
Thank you & Shukran,
Leah Rothfeld
Lead Editor
Events & Issues
– ‘Jihadists were going to burn it all’: the amazing story of Timbuktu’s book smugglers
Charlie English/ Sunday 30 April 2017
In 2012, tens of thousands of artifacts from the golden age of Timbuktu were at risk in Mali’s civil war. This exclusive extract describes the race to save them from the flames – and how lethal attacks could still threaten the town’s treasures.
One hazy morning in 2012 in Bamako, the capital of the west African state of Mali, an aging Toyota Land Cruiser picked its way to the end of a concrete driveway and pulled out into the busy morning traffic. In its front passenger seat sat a large man in billowing robes and a pillbox prayer cap. He was 47 years old, stood over 6ft tall, and weighed around 14st, and, although a small, French-style mustache balanced jauntily on his upper lip, there was something commanding about his appearance. In his brown eyes lurked a sharp, almost impish intelligence. He was Abdel Kader Haidara, librarian of Timbuktu, and his name would soon become famous around the world.
Read the story in this link:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/30/jihadists-were-going-to-burn-it-all-the-amazing-story-of-timbuktus-book-smugglers
– Pan African University: Call for Applications for the 2017/2018 Academic Year
April 26, 2017 to May 31, 2017
The Pan African University is an initiative of the Heads of State and Government of the African Union. It is a Premier continental university network whose mission is to provide quality postgraduate education geared towards the achievement of a prosperous, integrated and peaceful Africa.
Young, qualified, talented and enterprising applicants from African countries and the African Diaspora are invited to apply to join Masters or PhD degree programmes at any of the following four PAU institutes listed below. Candidates with potential, motivation and who desire to play transformative leadership roles as academics, professionals, industrialists, innovators and entrepreneurs are particularly encouraged to apply.
1. Pan African University Institute for Basic Sciences, Technology and Innovation (PAUSTI), at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT), Kenya.
2. Pan African University Institute for Life and Earth Sciences- including Health and Agriculture (PAULESI), at the University of Ibadan (UI), Nigeria.
3. Pan African University Institute for Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences (PAUGHSS), at the University of Yaounde IIand the University of Buea, Cameroon.
4. Pan African University Institute for Water and Energy Sciences -including climate change (PAUWES), at the University of Tlemcen, Algeria.
Read more in this link: https://www.au.int/web/en/announcements/20170426/pan-african-university-call-applications-20172018-academic-year
– Sembene Across Africa
By Samba Gadjigo and Jason Silverman
Join the largest community screening in history, featuring a film about “the father of African cinema,” shown in every African nation.
AFRICAN STORIES FOR AFRICA: Europeans dominated African culture until African independence in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They ran the schools, newspapers, TV and movie theaters. African language was outlawed in many places; in French West Africa, the birthplace of Ousmane Sembene, Africans were evenb forbidden to use cameras.
Many Africans lost their connection with their cultures but Sembene, an unlikely Senegalese hero, was determined to give African stories back to the African people. Sembene was kicked out of school at age 13 and worked for nearly 25 years as a manual laborer. He taught himself how to write at the age of 30, and soon was writing novels that inspired the battle for African independence.
Read more on the story in this link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1119748368/sembene-across-africa
– Conference:
Call for Papers: University of Bayreuth
Conference theme: The Future of Governance in Africa: Limits, Challenges and Opportunities for Participatory Citizenship organised by the BIGSAS Workgroup “Governance in Africa”
(GiA) 5 and 6 October 2017
Contemporary debates on governance have attracted tolerance to the different ways in which the term is applied. The wide-ranging problematics of governance is viewed from the perspective of power structures in society, the complex interactions between governors and the governed. Taken from whichever direction, the discourse of governance normally leads to a ground-zero; the mantra ‘good-governance’ or democratic governance, which carries certain connotations – i.e. certain kinds of practices, relations and interactions between the citizenry and the governors – the ideal make-up of government. Michel Foucault defines government as the ‘conduct of conduct’ which on the one hand implies the existence of power (to conduct/to guide) both with the citizens and those that govern; and on the other hand, reciprocation in the exercise of this power between the population and the constituent—the state. It is in such reciprocity that citizens demonstrate their pre-given powers to, among others, make choices on government; the choice, for instance, of who governs, for how long, and by what means. The recent political waves in Europe – Brexit, the Italian referendum and the subsequent resignation of former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi – and in America – the triumph of Donald Trump, and the demonstrations against his policies – are examples of the exercise of the power of the citizen to not only choose, but compel leaders to take certain directions – in other words, conduct the conduct of leaders in managing different affairs of society.
Submission guidelines: Abstracts not exceeding 300 words should be submitted by 2 June 2017, accompanied with a short CV of the potential speaker to gia.bigsas@gmail.com. Selected speakers at the conference will be notified by 30 June, and full papers (between 5,000 and 6,000 words) shall be received until 30 October. The conference will be in English. Please, indicate the following on your abstract: your institutional affiliation and contact details, and tentative or final title of your paper.
Conference details at this link: http://www.bigsas.uni-bayreuth.de/en/download_files/news_downloads/Call-for-Papers_Conference_The-Future-of-Governance-in-Africa.pdf
-2017 Call for Funding
Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund: 2017 Call
The Cambridge-Africa ALBORADA Research Fund was established in 2012, with generous support from The ALBORADA Trust. The Fund supports pairs of researchers (post-doctoral level and above) from the University of Cambridge (or an affiliated institution such as the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and NIAB) and sub-Saharan African institutions, across all disciplines, to initiate and/or strengthen research collaborations. To date, 116 awards have been made, to enable Cambridge researchers to engage with African researchers from 14 African countries. Some awardees have been able to use the preliminary results from their seed fund research/collaboration to apply for and win significant funding (e.g. Royal Society/Leverhulme Awards, Global Challenges Research Fund, etc.).
Read more on the story in this link: http://www.cambridge-africa.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/the-alborada-research-fund/alborada-applications-2/
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
The Labor of Faith: Gender and Power in Black Apostolic Pentecostalism
[ثمرة الايمان: نوعية الجنس والسلطة في الكنيسة الأبوستوليكية عند السود]
Author: Judith Casselberry
The Labor of Faith is a rich interdisciplinary and ethnographic study that integrates spiritual, material, social, and structural spheres of twenty first century metropolitan New York Black Apostolic women’s work. Casselberry highlights the role of Black women’s religious labor in defining and sustaining personal faith, building churches and faith communities, and navigating intraracial and intergender power relations.
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2017
Africa at the Crossroads: Theorizing Fundamentalisms in the 21st Century
[أفريقيا في مفترق الطرق: نحو نظرية للأصولية في القرن الواحد و العشرين ]
Author: Artwell Nhemachena, Munyaradzi Mawere
This book interrogates various forms of fundamentalism and fetishism that impinge on Africa and the African people. The book valiantly rethinks and unpacks these forms of fundamentalisms and fetishisms, offering in the process critical vistas for students, scholars and activists on matters of decoloniality and transformation. By meticulously and painstakingly unpacking pertinent issues, the book provides unparalleled intellectual milestones and platforms for the oncoming revolution and quest for justice in the form of decoloniality and transformation. Drawing from several disciplinary domains such as Development Studies, Security Studies, Political Anthropology and Sociology, Economic Anthropology and Social studies, English Studies, History, Philosophy and Religious Studies, and drawing from scholars from across different universities in the Southern African region, the book provides multiple lenses from which to understand the complex goings on in a continent that can no longer afford to simply fold hands and watch while its citizens suffer multiple forms of coloniality, fetishisms and fundamentalisms.
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2017
Website: http://www.langaa-rpcig.net/
A Man of Africa: The Political Thought of Harry Oppenheimer
[رجل أفريقيا: الفكر السياسي لهاري أوبنهايمر]
Author: Klim Rajab
Each topic is explored via extracts from Oppenheimer’s speeches, and is followed by an assessment by prominent South Africans such as Clem Sunter, Kgalema Motlanthe, Albie Sachs, Denis Beckett, Bobby Godsell, Jonathan Jansen and Xolela Mangcu. Kalim Rajab is a writer and corporate executive based in Johannesburg. Educated at the Universities of Cape Town and Oxford, he has worked at De Beers in London and as personal assistant to Nicky Oppenheimer, and is currently a director of strategy at the New National Assurance Company, South Africa’s largest empowered insurer.
Publisher: Penguin Random House, South Africa, 2017
http://www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za/
——– ———— ———–
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/
