Research Africa: June 30th, 2019
Research Africa Survey Update
The preliminary Research Africa Demographic Survey Results can be found here. The survey will be run again with hopes of reaching a greater percentage of our 1,400 subscribers. We’d appreciate your future participation in our study.
News and Issues
1. Quand le rap français était Noir
18 janvier 2018
Quand le rap français était Noir revient sur l’épopée des groupes de rap français des années 1990 et 2000. Ou quand les rappeurs noirs étaient les maîtres de ce style musical, qu’ils faisaient à eux seuls tourner cette industrie et tentèrent même de la conquérir.
Read the story in this link.
Quand le rap français était Noir: I/ L’art de la revendication
www.nofi.media
Quand le rap français était Noir revient sur l’épopée des groupes de rap français des années 1990 et 2000. Ou quand les rappeurs noirs étaient les maîtres de ce style musical, qu’ils faisaient à eux seuls tourner cette industrie et tentèrent même de la conquérir. Entre passion et professionnalisme; talent et désillusions, ce dossier est l’occasion
2. Dark is Divine: A Photographer Uses his Camera to Challenge India’s Obsession with Fairness
By Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri, January 18, 2018
The unrelenting obsession with fair skin in India has been a subject of discussion for years. It has inspired campaigns, such Dark is Beautiful and #BinTheTube, which encouraged women to discard their fairness creams. And yet, the tendency to see fair people on television, in films and to uphold them as the standard for beauty remains strong. Apart from popular culture, there is also a bias over skin colour in religious iconography. The myriad of Hindu gods and goddesses – Lakshmi, Ganesh and Shiva – are often fair-skinned in their visual representation.
Read the story in this link.
Dark is Divine: A photographer uses his camera to challenge India’s obsession with fairness – Scroll.in – Latest News, In depth news, India news, Politics news, Indian Cinema, Indian sports, Culture, Video News
scroll.in
Photography Dark is Divine: A photographer uses his camera to challenge India’s obsession with fairness Chennai-based Naresh Nil’s images depict gods and goddesses as dark-skinned.
3. Africa Helping to Shape the World
By: Kingsley Ighobor, June 4, 2019
Tijjani Muhammad-Bande, Nigeria’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, was on 4 June elected President of the 74th session of the UN General Assembly. His tenure will begin in September 2019. In this interview with Africa Renewal’s Kingsley Ighobor, Prof. Bande talks about his vision, Africa’s socioeconomic challenges including eliminating poverty, addressing climate change, promoting gender equality, and deploying multilateralism to achieving global agenda. These are excerpts.
Read the story in this link.
4. “I am Omar ibn Said”
By David Cecelski, June 27, 2019
In 1903, British colonial administrator Sir Charles Norton Edgecumbe Eliot made a bold statement: “It is not uncommon for a country to create a railway, but it is uncommon for a railway to create a country.” The country was Kenya. The railway became known as the Lunatic Express. Now 116 years later, another railway line has been built almost parallel to those same tracks in a bid to transform this part of Africa, but this time by a different world power: China.
Read the story in this link.
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
The Doctrine of Atonement for Building Human Rights in Malawi
(نحو اطار فقهي لحقوق الإنسان في ملاوي)
Author: Joseph Andrew Thipa
This study is a critical investigation of a theological basis for believers and the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian in Malawi to support a culture of human dignity and human rights, and specifically in line with the classic Reformed doctrine of atonement, as reflected in the works of Calvin and Barth and also the Westminster Confession. It is argued in this study that the very essence of public recognition and consistent implementation of human rights is far reaching when understood in light of the Reformed view of the atonement.
Publisher: Kachere Series, Malawi, 2019
Entre Nous: Between the World Cup and Me
(عهد بيننا: قصتي مع كأس العالم في كرة القدم)
Author: Grant Farred
In Entre Nous, Grant Farred examines the careers of international football stars Lionel Messi and Luis Suarez to theorize the relationship between sports and the intertwined experiences of relation, separation, and belonging. Additionally, he includes his own experience playing for an amateur township team in apartheid South Africa. Drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s concept of relation and Heideggerian ontology, Farred outlines how various relationships—the significantly distinct relationships Messi has with his club team FC Barcelona and the Argentine national team; Farred’s shifting modes of relation as he moved between his South African team and his Princeton graduate student team; and Suarez’s deep bond with Uruguay’s national team coach Oscar Tabarez—demonstrate the ways the politics of relation both exist within and transcend sports. Farred demonstrates that approaching sports philosophically offers particularly insightful means of understanding the nature of being in the world, thereby opening new paths for exploring how the self is constituted in its relation to the other.
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2019
Une Jeune Femme sur Un Bateau IVRE Agathe Uwilingiyimana du Rwanda
(قصة شابة على متن قارب: رواية من رواندا)
Author : Innocent Butare
Très peu de personnes auront eu à traverser des temps aussi troublés que ceux que vécut Agathe Uwilingiyimana comme Premier ministre du Rwanda avant le génocide. Au sujet de cette femme de tête, ses idées et son action, bien des questions demeurent sans réponse. Qui l’a assassinée et pourquoi ? Aurait-elle tenté un putsch contre le Président Habyarimana ? Aurait-elle trempé dans le complot visant à assassiner ce dernier ? Comment entendait-elle sauver le pays du chaos et de la descente aux enfers après la disparition inopinée du Président de la République qu’elle avait si âprement combattu ? Était-elle maîtresse de ses décisions ou était-elle désinformée ou manipulée ? Pourquoi et comment cette enseignante récemment embarquée en politique a-t-elle été la cible privilégiée de la presse de caniveau, entre 1992 et 1994 ? Quel comportement exceptionnel a-t-elle eu pour que la patrie reconnaissante l’élève au rang des héros dans l’ordre d’Imena ? Son royaume d’enfance, son adolescence et sa jeunesse préfiguraient-ils un destin si singulier ?
Publisher: Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon, 2019
West Germany and Namibia’s Path to Independence, 1969-1990 Foreign Policy and Rivalry with East Germany
(قصة ااستقلال ناميبيا من المانيا الغربية 1969-1990 : قراءات في السياسة الخارجية والتنافسية مع ألمانيا الشرقية)
Author: Thorsten Kern
Namibia’s main liberation movement, the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO), relied heavily on outside support for its armed struggle against South Africa’s occupation of what it called South West Africa. While East Germany’s solidarity with Namibia’s struggle for national self-determination has received attention, little research has been done on West Germany’s policy towards Namibia, which must be seen against the backdrop of inter-German rivalry. The impact of the wider realities of the Cold War on Namibia’s rocky path to independence leaves ample room for research and new interpretations. In West Germany and Namibia’s Path to Independence, 1969-1990: Foreign Policy and Rivalry with East Germany, Thorsten Kern shows that German division played a vital role in West Germany’s position towards Namibia during the Cold War. West German foreign policy towards Namibia at the height of the Namibian liberation struggle is investigated and discussed within its historical context. The two states’ deeply diverging policies, characterised by competition for infuence over SWAPO, were strongly affected by the Cold War rivalry between the capitalist West and the communist East. Yet ultimately the dynamics of rapprochement helped to bring about Namibia’s independence.
Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Namibia , 2019
White Masks
(أقنعة بيضاء)
Author: Ebi Yeibo
This collection of poetry both reflects and creates phenomena that we now regard as characteristic of our age – the crisis of nationhood and the burden of citizenship. Ebi Yeibo’s White Masks unambiguously exposes the dystopian nightmares of a nation and a people’s willing detachment from humanity. While some poets of his generation are content with dreaming of an ideal world, in White Masks, Yeibo, through the resources of memory, experiments with the idea of a better world.
Publisher: Malthouse Press, Nigeria, 2019
Wrapping Authority: Women Islamic Leaders in a Sufi Movement in Dakar, Senegal
(إيواء الايوان: القيادات الاسلامية النسائية في الحركات الصوفية في السنغال)
Author: Joseph Hill
Since 2000, a growing number of women in Dakar, Senegal have come to act openly as spiritual leaders for both men and women. As urban youth turn to the Fayḍa Tijāniyya Sufi Islamic movement in search of direction and community, these women provide guidance in practicing Islam and cultivating mystical knowledge of God. While female Islamic leaders may appear radical in a context where women have rarely exercised Islamic authority, they have provoked surprisingly little controversy. Wrapping Authority tells these women’s stories and explores how they have developed ways of leading that feel natural to themselves and those around them.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press, 2018
Gender Terrains in African Cinema
(قضايا الجنسين في السينما الإفريقية)
Author: Dominica Dipio
Gender Terrains in African Cinema reflects on a body of canonical African filmmakers who address a trajectory of pertinent social issues. Dipio analyzes gender relations around three categories of female characters – the girl child, the young woman and the elderly woman in comparison to their male counterparts. Although gender remains the focal point in this lucid and fascinating text, Dipio focuses her discussion on African feminism in relation to Western feminism. With its broad appeal to African humanities, Gender Terrains in African Cinema stands as a unique and radical contribution to the field of African film studies, which until now, has suffered from a paucity of scholarship.
Publisher: NISC (Pty) Ltd, South Africa, 2019.
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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.
