Research Africa News: July 14th, 2020
The Congressional Black Caucus Statement on the Ethiopian Renaissance Dam
WASHINGTON, June 23, 2020
In recent months negotiations have stalled and there has been an escalation of tensions on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) that impacts, Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) encourages the continued cooperation and peaceful negotiations of all stakeholders in the construction of the GERD. These negotiations should be based on mutual benefit, good faith, and the principles of international law. The multi-billion-dollar GERD project was announced in 2011, and will have a positive impact in the region by providing Africa’s biggest hydropower dam that will generate approximately 6,000 megawatts of electricity, thus allowing Ethiopia to export power to neighboring countries.
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Conference: A turning point for Sudan?
Cameron Hudson , June 26, 2020
The world came to Berlin yesterday (at least virtually) as part of a United Nations, European Union, and German government-sponsored “Partners Forum for Sudan.” By all accounts, it was a triumph, and potentially a turning point, for the fragile transitional civilian government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, pulling in an announced $1.8 billion in assistance to Sudan. But the conference’s success was never going to be judged solely on financial pledges. Rather, it was the pledges of political capital that Hamdok needed to shore up his own position and keep at bay, for at least just a little longer, the still powerful and ascendant forces of Sudan’s military and Rapid Support Forces, who still wield executive authority.
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Senegal slave island, moved by George Floyd’s death, renames Europe Square
Aaron Ross, JULY 7, 2020
DAKAR (Reuters) – Senegal’s Goree Island, which for centuries served as a way station in the Transatlantic slave trade, has changed the name of its Europe Square in response to the death of George Floyd in the United States and the global movement it inspired.
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The Future of Work in Africa : Harnessing the Potential of Digital Technologies for All
By World Bank
The Future of Work in Africa focuses on the key themes of creating productive jobs and addressing the needs of those left behind. It highlights how global trends, especially the adoption of digital technologies, may change the nature of work in Sub-Saharan Africa by creating new opportunities and challenges. It argues that, contrary to global fears of worker displacement by new technologies, African countries can develop an inclusive future of work, with opportunities for lower-skilled workers. Harnessing these opportunities is, however, contingent on implementing policies and making productive investments in four main areas. These are enabling inclusive digital technologies; building human capital for a young, rapidly growing, and largely low-skilled labor force; increasing the productivity of informal workers and enterprises; and extending social protection coverage to mitigate the risks associated with disruptions to labor markets. This companion report to the World Bank’s World Development Report 2019 concludes with important policy questions that should guide future research, whose findings could lead to more inclusive growth for African nations.
Get the book here.
Drifting in West Africa: Chinese distant water fishing in Africa
Posted on Dec 6, 2019 by Admin
As I’m going to the Atlantic with the fishing boat, a moist and astringent sea breeze hit the tidal levee outside the pier, and then the slave island of Gorée was blown back. As a transit point for the black slave trade hundreds of years ago, slave islands transported a batch of black slaves from the African continent to Europe and North America, for them never to see this land again. I lowered my head against the fence on the deck, the dark green waves rolling over the boat, and the waves immediately ignited another wave; and Senegal, which entered the rainy season, was gradually buried in the sea floor.
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NEW BOOKS كتب جديدة
Exiles, Entrepreneurs, and Educators: African Americans in Ghana
[المنفيون ورجال الأعمال والمعلمون: تاريخ الافارقة الأمريكيين في غانا]
Author: Steven Taylor
African Americans have a long history of emigration. In Exiles, Entrepreneurs, and Educators: African Americans in Ghana, Steven J. L. Taylor explores the second wave of African American exiles or repatriates to Ghana in post-1980s. Unlike the first wave of emigrants during the Kwame Nkrumah years (1957-1966), Taylor argues that the second wave is far more diverse and have largely been attracted to entrepreneurial opportunities. More importantly, this book examines the political engagement of African Americans in Ghana’s two-party political system..
Publisher: SUNY Press , 2020.
Development as Rebellion: A Biography of Julius Nyerere
[التنمية كما التمرد: السيرة الذاتية ليوليوس نيريري]
Author: Issa G. Shivji, Saida Yahya-Othman, Ng’wanza Kamata
This is the first comprehensive biography of Julius Nyerere, a national liberation leader, the first president of Tanzania and an outstanding statesman of Africa and the global south. Written by three prominent Tanzanians, the work spans over 1200 pages in three volumes. It delves into Nyerere’s early days among his chiefly family, and the traditions, friends and education that moulded his philosophy and political thought. All these provide the backdrop for his entrance into nationalist politics, the founding of the independence movement and his original experiment with socialism. The book does not shy away from a critical assessment of Nyerere’s life and times. It reveals the philosopher ruler’s dilemmas and tensions between freedom and necessity, determinism and voluntarism and, above all, between territorial nationalism and continental Pan-Africanism.
Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, Tanzania, 2020.
Bats of Southern and Central Africa: A biogeographic and taxonomic synthesis
[الخفافيش في جنوب ووسط أفريقيا: تشريح جغرافي وتصنيفي]
Author/s: Ara Monadjem, Fenton (Woody) Cotterill, M. Corrie Schoeman, Peter John Taylor
This revised edition of a book first published in 2010 supplements the original account of the 116 bat species then known to be found in Southern and Central Africa with an additional eight newly described species. The chapters on evolution, biogeography, ecology and echolocation have been updated, citing dozens of recently published papers. The book covers the latest systematic and taxonomic studies, ensuring that the names and relationships of bats in this new edition reflect current scientific knowledge. The species accounts provide descriptions, measurements and diagnostic characters as well as detailed information about the distribution, habitat, roosting habits, foraging ecology and reproduction of each species. The updated species distribution maps are based on 6 100 recorded localities. A special feature of the 2010 publication was the mode of identification of families, genera and species by way of character matrices rather than the more generally used dichotomous keys. Since then these matrices have been tested in the field and, where necessary, slightly altered for this edition. New photographs fill in gaps and updated sonograms aid with bat identification in acoustic surveys. The bibliography, which now contains more than 700 entries, will be an invaluable aid to students and scientists wishing to track down original research..
Publisher: Wits University Press, 2020.
The History of Kiziba and Its Kings: A Translation of Amakuru Ga Kiziba na Abamkama Bamu
[تاريخ كيزيبا وملوكها في شرق أفريقيا]
Author (Editor): Galasius B. Kamanzi, Peter R. Schmidt
This book is a major contribution to the indigenous historical literature of East Africa and Tanzania. Research by King Mutahangarwa (ruled 1903–1916) of Kiziba Kingdom in the early 20th century brought together oral tradition experts from both royal and non-royal clans, with their testimonies recorded by literate scribes, including F. X. Lwamgira. Four decades later the research was published in Kihaya as a 490 page volume that has remained obscure, despite its significance. This authoritative translation makes available for the first time an accessible account of northwestern Tanzanian and southwestern Ugandan history during the pre-colonial and early colonial periods.
Publisher: Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, Tanzania, 2020.
Kaboom! Of Stereotypes and Superheroes – African Comics and Comics on Africa
[كابوم: قراءات عن الصور النمطية والأبطال الخارقين – كاريكاتير أفريقيا وكاريكاتير عن أفريقيا]
Author (Editors): Corinne Lüthy, Reto Ulrich, Antonio Uribe.
We all know the colonial and stereotypical images of the African continent and of the people living there. Especially older comics such as The Adventures of Tintin or Mickey Mouse have taken up the image of the “untamed” continent with its “wild” inhabitants. Moreover, modern superhero comics mirror the western view of Africa. What about the African point of view, though? The true African comic? The editors of this catalogue present a wide range of African comics: superhero and underground comics as well as comics with propaganda content or an educational focus. Comics are more than just a manifestation of pop culture – during the course of the 20th century, they have developed into a socio-politically influential medium worldwide. Comics are now an object of historical research. They transport the history of their time and depict it. Comics are an integral part of our culture and, through the combination of images and words as an artistic expression, have a history of their own..
Publisher: Basler Afrika Bibliographien, 2020.
Jefferson’s Muslim Fugitives: The Lost Story of Enslaved Africans, their Arabic Letters, and an American President
[الهاربون المسلمون من الرئيس الأمريكي توماس جيفرسون: القصة المفقودة للأفارقة المسترقين ورسائلهم العربية مع رئيس أمريكي]
Author: Jeffrey Einboden
On October 3, 1807, Thomas Jefferson was contacted by an unknown traveler urgently pleading for a private “interview” with the President, promising to disclose “a matter of momentous importance”. By the next day, Jefferson held in his hands two astonishing manuscripts whose history has been lost for over two centuries. Authored by Muslims fleeing captivity in rural Kentucky, these documents delivered to the President in 1807 were penned by literate African slaves, and written entirely in Arabic. Jefferson’s Muslim Fugitives reveals the untold story of two escaped West Africans in the American heartland whose Arabic writings reached a sitting U.S. President, prompting him to intervene on their behalf. Recounting a quest for emancipation that crosses borders of race, region and religion, Jeffrey Einboden unearths Arabic manuscripts that circulated among Jefferson and his prominent peers, including a document from 1780s Georgia which Einboden identifies as the earliest surviving example of Muslim slave authorship in the newly-formed United States. Revealing Jefferson’s lifelong entanglements with slavery and Islam, Jefferson’s Muslim Fugitives tracks the ascent of Arabic slave writings to the highest halls of U.S. power, while questioning why such vital legacies from the American past have been entirely forgotten.
Publisher: Oxford 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.
