Events & Issues
The war you’ve never heard of:
The U.S. is waging a massive shadow war in Africa, exclusive documents reveal
By Nick Turse on May 18, 2017
Six years ago, a deputy commanding general for U.S. Army Special Operations Command gave a conservative estimate of 116 missions being carried out at any one time by Navy SEALs, Army Green Berets, and other special operations forces across the globe. Today, according to U.S. military documents obtained by VICE News, special operators are carrying out nearly 100 missions at any given time — in Africa alone. It’s the latest sign of the military’s quiet but ever-expanding presence on the continent, one that represents the most dramatic growth in the deployment of America’s elite troops to any region of the globe.
Read the story in this link: https://news.vice.com/story/the-u-s-is-waging-a-massive-shadow-war-in-africa-exclusive-documents-reveal
African universities must take a critical view of knowledge and how its made
By Alex Broadbent
May 17, 2017
Most universities boast “centres” or “institutes” designed to announce their strengths in a certain field. But there’s more to it than that: when a university establishes a new centre, it is making a statement of intent. It’s saying that it perceives a need for more work in that area, and that it intends to drive that work. The University of Johannesburg’s African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, which has just opened, is an example of this. Why is such a centre necessary? Why now? And why in South Africa?
Read the story in this link: http://theconversation.com/african-universities-must-take-a-critical-view-of-knowledge-and-how-its-made-77878
Africa is not poor, we are stealing its wealth
By Nick Dearden
Al-Jazeera – May 25, 2017
It’s a simple statement, repeated through a thousand images, newspaper stories and charity appeals each year, so that it takes on the weight of truth. When we read it, we reinforce assumptions and stories about Africa that we’ve heard throughout our lives. We reconfirm our image of Africa.
Try something different. Africa is rich, but we steal its wealth.
That’s the essence of a report from several campaign groups released today. Based on a set of new figures, it finds that sub-Saharan Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world to the tune of more than $41bn. Sure, there’s money going in: around $161bn a year in the form of loans, remittances (those working outside Africa and sending money back home), and aid. But there’s also $203bn leaving the continent. Some of this is direct, such as $68bn in mainly dodged taxes. Essentially multinational corporations “steal” much of this – legally – by pretending they are really generating their wealth in tax havens. These so-called “illicit financial flows” amount to around 6.1 per cent of the continent’s entire gross domestic product (GDP) – or three times what Africa receives in aid.
Read more in this link: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/05/africa-poor-stealing-wealth-170524063731884.html
Pan-African Enterprise Research Council
2017 PAERC – Call for PAPERS, PANELS, PRESENTATIONS
2017 Presentations – Call for Papers – paerc.org
www.paerc.org
2017 PAERC – Call for PAPERS, PANELS, PRESENTATIONS. Due date for Submissions: May 15, 2017. Abstracts, Manuscripts and/or Panel Presentation Proposals
Abstracts, Manuscripts and/or Panel Presentation Proposals. Opportunities for Manuscript Publications
All submissions should be sent to Call4Papers@paerc.org
Place: Join us at the University of the Virgin Islands. St. Thomas, USVI
October 4-6, 2017
Time: December 01, 2017 to December 12, 2017
Deadline: Due date for Submissions: July 10, 2017
African Union: Sixth Forum on International Law and African Union Law
Theme: The theme of the 6th Forum shall be “Legal & Socio economic consequences of immigration, refugees and internally displaced persons in Africa”. The Forum will be from 1 and 12 December 2017.
Form of Submissions: The AUCIL is now inviting submissions on the theme of the Forum.
For consideration for inclusion in the invitation of Speakers list, authors should submit on or before August 31, 2017. Selected speakers at this edition of the AUCIL Forum will be entitled to air transportation ticket, the daily subsistence allowance (DSA) at the UN rate and provision of local transportation. Please communicate your articles to Mr. Mourad Ben Dhiab (Secretary to AUCIL) at dhiabB@africa-union.org; and Ms. Bethlehem Arega Asmamaw (Legal Consultant) at betelhema@africa-union.org.
AUCIL accepts submissions in the form of articles, commentaries, case notes and book reviews. The paper shall not exceed 3500 words. All submission should be in Word document. AUCIL Forums are held annually following the inaugural forum in December 2012, as a platform for discussing and interacting on matters of interest for Africa through the prism of international law and the African Union Law with the view of raising awareness on the necessity of accelerating regional integration, enlightening African decision makers on legal implications of regional integration, presenting the steps already achieved towards the African integration, and identifying ways to accelerate regional integration throughout the continent.
Read more on the story in this link: https://au.int/web/en/newsevents/20171201/sixth-forum-international-law-and-african-union-law
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
Conversations avec Cheikh Anta Diop: La lecon du lotus Broché [حوارات مع شيخ أنتا ديوب: دروس مستنبطة قيمة]
Author: Khadim Ndiaye ; Language: French
Khadim Ndiaye attempts to share with us his own “reading” of the work of professor Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986). He develops, above all, a theory of history through which the author of Civilization or Barbarism tells the Africans that: the pyramids of Egypt, it is indeed, the ones who built them, you then regressed by losing your sovereignty, and the mastery of your educational system. However, this is not irreversible, you can do it by going back to the norms of historical development.
If, moreover, in this book it is so often referred to in the very first “conversation” of the notion of “cultural personality”, it is because it conditions, according to Khadim Ndiaye, the capacity of a people to resume historic initiative/ their destiny. That is why he places it at the crossroads of Diop’s major Theses. Is it Khadim Ndiaye who went to visit his master in the afterlife or is it the latter who came to find him on the land of men?
The voice seems so close to us … Anyway, the conversations of the author of Conversations with Cheikh Anta Diop remain ours, those of the common mortal, and he knows how to restore his harvest in a luminous language and honesty, away from the appalling pathos of fashion. The exercise is certainly not within the reach of everyone: only a real mastery of the subject makes it possible to imagine the right questions and to know precisely where in its abundant scientific production finds the appropriate answers from Cheikh Anta Diop.
Publisher: ACADEMICA, 2017
Rwandan Women Rising
[نهضة المرأة الرواندية]
Author: Swanee Hunt
In the spring of 1994, the tiny African nation of Rwanda was ripped apart by a genocide that left nearly a million dead. Neighbors attacked neighbors. Family members turned against their own. After the violence subsided, Rwanda’s women—drawn by the necessity of protecting their families—carved out unlikely new roles for themselves as visionary pioneers creating stability and reconciliation in genocide’s wake. Today, 64 percent of the seats in Rwanda’s elected house of Parliament are held by women, a number unrivaled by any other nation.
While news of the Rwandan genocide reached all corners of the globe, the nation’s recovery and the key role of women are less well known. In Rwandan Women Rising, Swanee Hunt shares the stories of some seventy women—heralded activists and unsung heroes alike—who overcame unfathomable brutality, unrecoverable loss, and unending challenges to rebuild Rwandan society. Hunt, who has worked with women leaders in sixty countries for over two decades, points out that Rwandan women did not seek the limelight or set out to build a movement; rather, they organized around common problems such as health care, housing, and poverty to serve the greater good. Their victories were usually in groups and wide ranging, addressing issues such as rape, equality in marriage, female entrepreneurship, reproductive rights, education for girls, and mental health.
These women’s accomplishments provide important lessons for policy makers and activists who are working toward equality not only in Africa and other postconflict societies, but around the globe. Their stories, told in their own words via interviews woven throughout the book, demonstrate that the best way to reduce suffering and to prevent and end conflicts is to elevate the status of women throughout the world.
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2017
Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival
[في حب أفريقيا: مذكرات الرومانسية والحرب والنضال]
Author: Jeffrey Gettleman
A seasoned war correspondent, Jeffrey Gettleman has covered every major conflict over the past twenty years, from Afghanistan to Iraq to the Congo. For the past decade, he has served as the East Africa bureau chief for the New York Times, fulfilling a teenage dream.
At nineteen, Gettleman fell in love, twice. On a do-it-yourself community service trip in college, he went to East Africa—a terrifying, exciting, dreamlike part of the world in the throes of change that imprinted itself on his imagination and on his heart.
But around that same time he also fell in love with a fellow Cornell student—the brightest, classiest, most principled woman he’d ever met. To say they were opposites was an understatement. She became a criminal lawyer in America; he hungered to return to Africa. For the next decade he would be torn between these two abiding passions.
A sensually rendered coming-of-age story in the tradition of Barbarian Days, Love, Africa is a tale of passion, violence, far-flung adventure, tortuous long-distance relationships, screwing up, forgiveness, parenthood, and happiness that explores the power of finding yourself in the most unexpected of places.
Publisher: Harper , 2017
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Research Africa welcomes submissions of books, events, funding opportunities, and more to be included in next week’s edition.
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