Research Africa News: March 5th, 2020
US ambassador blasts Trump, Mnuchin on Ethiopia-Egypt dispute
Teshome Borago
March 1, 2020
Former United States Ambassador David H. Shinn accused the Trump administration of “putting its thumb on the scale in favor of Egypt,” in the dispute with Ethiopia and Sudan over a new hydro-dam.
The latest crisis began after the U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin sent a letter warning Ethiopia not to operate its hydropower dam, using inflammatory rhetoric similar to the former Egyptian government of Morsi that threatened military action.
You can read the rest of the story here.
The battle of Adwa: an Ethiopian victory that ran against the current of colonialism February 29, 2020 2.28am EST
On the first day of March 124 years ago, traditional warriors, farmers and pastoralists as well as women defeated a well-armed Italian army in the northern town of Adwa in Ethiopia. The outcome of this battle ensured Ethiopia’s independence, making it the only African country never to be colonised. Adwa turned Ethiopia into a symbol of freedom for black people globally. It also led to a change of government in Italy.
Read the details of the scholarship in this link
Indigenous languages matter – but all is not lost when they change or even disappear
January 27, 2020 1.53pm EST
UNESCO’s International Year of Indigenous Languages recently came to an end after a year of celebration of linguistic diversity. And with a “decade of Indigenous languages” now under consideration, it’s a good time to review what these celebrations mean.
Read the rest of the story in this link.
Meet the Iowa Architect Documenting Every Slave House Still Standing
BY SABRINA IMBLER FEBRUARY 26, 2020
Jobie Hill has visited 700 former residences. Many have been abandoned. Some have become storage space. Others are B&Bs.
THE CURRENT RESIDENTS OF THE historic Mount Zion home in Warren County, Virginia, were rifling through the attic of their garage when they found a yellowed fragment of paper. It was the corner of a larger document, soiled by mold, water, and time. But the snaking cursive writing on it was still legible. It was the bill of sale for an enslaved girl named Chalotte (more likely Charlotte, with the letter “r” long faded away).
Read the details in this link.
NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
White Ferocity: From Non-Whites to Non-Aryans Concealed Genocides from 1492 to Date [همجية العلوج ضد غيرهم: خفايا الإبادة الجماعية من 1492 إلى اليوم]
Author: Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe
Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe’s book La Férocité blanche: Des non-blancs aux non-aryens, génocides occultés de 1492 à nos jours was first published in March 2001. A German translation was published soon after. CODESRIA is honoured to release the first publication of the book in English, which includes a detailed preface and recommendation from the late Samir Amin, CODESRIA’s first Executive Secretary. This book deserves attention today, perhaps more than two decades ago when it was first published. We are witnessing a reincarnation in the shameless celebration of ‘empire’ in all its manifestations and the resurgence of academics regurgitating already discredited notions of a “balance sheet” approach to imperialism; the reawakening of fascist tendencies and the minimization of fascism to one “exceptional” case of Nazi German and limited to the time of Hitler. There is revisionism in the air and a reading of Rosa Amelia Plumelle-Uribe’s book draws us to the reality of how perverse Nazism and Fascism have been as part of a Western project to dominate the rest of the world. The book reminds us that these tendencies have a long history and the task ahead is how to handle the question of memory and how the production of knowledge will help set records straight and frame the right questions for a proper understanding of the biggest calamities ever to confront humanity. The publication of the original edition in French was momentous; this English edition coming from an African knowledge producing institution is more momentous and relevant. The 135th anniversary of the Berlin conference that prefaced Africa’s colonial conquest was marked in November 2019. On the other hand, the year 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the ending of the Second World War, and the ending of the Holocaust. The silences which mark the genocide resulting from colonial conquest and the ‘ noisy’ proclamations of Auschwitz and the holocaust as an exceptional case of genocide in human history, are the contradictions that Rosa Amelia examines in this publication.
Publisher: Dakar: CODESRIA, 2020.
Africa and the World: Navigating Shifting Geopolitics
[أفريقيا والعالم: تأملات في المتغيرات الجيوبوليتيكية]
Author (editor): Francis A. Kornegay
Africa and the World: Navigating Shifting Geopolitics is one of the first books to analyse the global geopolitical landscape from an African perspective, with a view to the opportunities and challenges facing the African continent. Authors in this edited volume argue for the need to re-imagine Africa’s role in the world. As a cradle of humanity, a historical fountain of profound scientific knowledge, an object of colonial conquest and, today, a collective of countries seeking to pool their sovereignties in order to improve the human condition, Africa has a unique opportunity to advance its own interests. Authors reflect on all these issues; they outline how developments in the global political economy impact on the continent and, inversely, how Africa can develop a strategic perspective that takes into account the dynamics playing out in a fraught global terrain.
Publisher: Mapungubwe Institute (MISTRA), South Africa, 2020.
Seeking Urban Transformation: Alternative Urban Futures in Zimbabwe
[نحو التغيير الحضري: قراءات في مستقبل البديل الحضري في زمبابوي]
Author: Davison Muchadenyika
Seeking Urban Transformation. Alternative Urban Futures in Zimbabwe tells the stories of ordinary people’s struggles to remake urban centres. It interrogates and highlights the principle conditions in which urban transformation takes place. The main catalysts of the transformation are social movements and planning institutions. Social movements pool resources and skills, acquire land, install infrastructure and build houses. Planning institutions change policies, regulations and traditions to embrace and support a new form of urban development driven by grassroots movements. Besides providing a comprehensive analysis of planning and housing in Zimbabwe, there is a specific focus on three urban centres of Harare, Chitungwiza and Epworth. In metropolitan Harare, the books examines new housing and infrastructure series to the predominantly urban poor population; vital roles played by the urban poor in urban development and the adoption by planning institutions of grassroots-centered, urban-planning approaches.
Publisher: Weaver Press, Zimbabwe, 2020.
Age of Concrete: Housing and the Shape of Aspiration in the Capital of Mozambique
[عصر الخرسانة: البيوت وأشكال الطموحات السكنية في عاصمة موزمبيق]
Author: David Morton
Age of Concrete is a history of the making of houses and homes in the subúrbios of Maputo (Lourenço Marques), Mozambique, from the late 1940s to the present. Often dismissed as undifferentiated, ahistorical “slums,” these neighborhoods are in fact an open-air archive that reveals some of people’s highest aspirations. At first people built in reeds. Then they built in wood and zinc panels. And finally, even when it was illegal, they risked building in concrete block, making permanent homes in a place where their presence was often excruciatingly precarious. Unlike many histories of the built environment in African cities, Age of Concrete focuses on ordinary homebuilders and dwellers. David Morton thus models a different way of thinking about urban politics during the era of decolonization, when one of the central dramas was the construction of the urban stage itself. It shaped how people related not only to each other but also to the colonial state and later to the independent state as it stumbled into being. Publisher: Ohio University Press, 2019.
African Personhood and Applied Ethics
[انسانية الأفارقة وعلم الأخلاق التطبيقي]
Author: Motsamai Molefe
Recently, the salient idea of personhood in the tradition of African philosophy has been objected to on various grounds. Two such objections stand out – the book deals with a lot more. The first criticism is that the idea of personhood is patriarchal insofar as it elevates the status of men and marginalises women in society. The second criticism observes that the idea of personhood is characterised by speciesism. The essence of these concerns is that personhood fails to embody a robust moral-political view. African Personhood and Applied Ethics offers a philosophical explication of the ethics of personhood to give reasons why we should take it seriously as an African moral perspective that can contribute to global moral-political issues. The book points to the two facets that constitute the ethics of personhood – an account of (1) moral perfection and (2) dignity. It then draws on the under-explored view of dignity qua the capacity for sympathy inherent in the moral idea of personhood to offer a unified account of selected themes in applied ethics, specifically women, animal and development.
Publisher: NISC (Pty) Ltd, South Africa, 2020.
Are You Entertained? Black Popular Culture in the Twenty-First Century
[هل تسليت؟ الثقافة الشعبية لدى السود في القرن الحادي والعشرين]
Author: Simone C. Drake, Dwan K. Henderson
The advent of the internet and the availability of social media and digital downloads have expanded the creation, distribution, and consumption of Black cultural production as never before. At the same time, a new generation of Black public intellectuals who speak to the relationship between race, politics, and popular culture has come into national prominence. The contributors to Are You Entertained? address these trends to consider what culture and blackness mean in the twenty-first century’s digital consumer economy. In this collection of essays, interviews, visual art, and an artist statement the contributors examine a range of topics and issues, from music, white consumerism, cartoons, and the rise of Black Twitter to the NBA’s dress code, dance, and Moonlight.
Publisher: Duke University Press, 2020.
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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.
