WARA WARC FALL 2018
East Meets West
Table of Contents News from WARA and WARC From WARA President From WARC Director From Operations Manager
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Theme Articles Featured Article: East Meets West by Hilary Hungerford and Sarah Smiley Seraphin Kamdem Micheal Sheradin Eric Schmidt Amidu Sanni
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Fellows and Grantees Fellowships WARC Travel Grantees Ideas Matter 2017 Fellows
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From our Fellows- Grantee Reports Valerie Dejali Obden Mondésir Jason MsSparren Doug Peach Emily Riley
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Promotional Material Book Review: International Courts and the African Woman Judge: Unveiled Narratives Artist Spotlight: Yelimane Fall ACPR and South African Airways WARA Fellowship 2019 Institutional Members Board and Officers
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African Studies Center Boston University 232 Bay State Road Boston, MA 02215 Tel: 617-353-8902 Email: wara@bu.edu
WARC B.P. 5456 (Fann-Residence) Rue E x Le on G. Damas Dakar, Senegal Tel: (221)865-22-77 Email: warccroa@yahoo.fr This newsletter is published twice a year by the West African Research Association with the support of the African Studies Center and the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University. It is distributed to all members and associates of WARA. Material for publication in upcoming newsletters should be submitted to the editor at wara@bu.edu. Please send an electronic version of your submission. WARA has the right to reject items that do not comply with the goals and purposes of the organization and reserves the right to edit and/or modify any submissions for content, format or length. Opinions expressed in published articles, however, belong solely to the author(s).
Wendy Wilson-Fall, WARA Board President Hello, and greetings to our colleagues here in the U.S. and abroad. As we encounter students in our classes this new year, and reflect on our community of African Studies colleagues, all of us are reminded of how much we gain from social interaction as well as our research and writing. We can be thankful for the extraordinary work that has been going on at the West African Research Association headquarters in Boston as well as our vibrant, exciting center, WARC, in Dakar. WARA continued to successfully manage fellowship programs, researcher grants, lecture series, and outreach in spite of a change of personnel in 2017-18, when Director Jennifer Yanco stepped down. In addition, WARC is growing in stature throughout the region; center representation has been invited to several trans-regional workshops and think tanks. All of this reflects not only the dedication of our staff and the brilliant contributions of our associated scholars, but also the growth of West Africa’s university and scholarly communities. We’ve been fortunate to have Ms. Caroline Johnson as the WARA Operations Manager over the past year, and though she is stepping down from that post and going on to resume her studies, we already have plans on how she might still support WARA with her administrative skills, even if at a reduced level. Keep an eye on the WARA website for more information on this! West Africa is going through an exciting and challenging growth phase that holds many possibilities, even as it presents difficulties. As is the case with most of the continent, the large percentage of youth, the cosmopolitan experience of many of the region’s students abroad, and the serious intellectual production of the last decade are promising and encouraging. Pernicious problems remain in the Sahel region regarding forms of extremism and illicit trade, and in governance within various countries within the West Africa region as a whole. Nevertheless, events such as the 2018 Biennale d’Art in Dakar, and the exciting dialogue taking place between thinkers in West Africa and South Africa point to new trends and a critical mass of talent in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts. WARA is proud of our contributions to the current groundswell in intellectual and artistic production of scholars on the continent and here in the United States. Wishing everyone a productive and satisfying Spring, 2019!
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Ousmane Sene, WARC Director The second semester of 2018 has been very eventful at the West African Research Center (WARC) in Dakar with a number of international gatherings co-organized or hosted by the Center such as the Resolve Network's workshop for a research agenda on extremism in North Africa and the Sahel. The Director also attended other international gatherings on the continent and overseas to further establish the recognition of the West African Research Association (WARA) and its executive arm, the West African Research Center (WARC), on global agendas. Recently, WARC has been identified by the Association of African Universities (AAU) headquartered in Accra (Ghana) to be part of a consortium of research institutions specializing in Africa and likely to make major contributions for decision-making processes and a better understanding of developments on the continent in the area of the social sciences, among others. Meanwhile, the Center also played host to several study groups for faculty development and student immersion in West African realities. The Harvard Summer program was successfully implemented along with other study tours from Georgia, Wisconsin, Ohio, New York, to name but a few. Among all these developments, it should be noted that collaboration with Boston University, Michigan State University and a few others is fast developing and related research projects will soon be implemented. The project with the Library of Congress continues to be smoothly implemented and WARC also remains a prime partner of the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Amidst that constant flurry of international activities and events, WARC remains the chief destination for local scholars, students and the larger people eager to engage in discussions and debates over current affairs and to be informed on latest publications in Dakar and elsewhere in West Africa and the rest of the continent. Book launches and public lectures still hold pride of place on the Center's agenda. Developments and goings-on at WARC will certainly be discussed with the upcoming CAORC Directors' meeting ( Council of American Overseas Research Centers) to be held in Djerba (Tunisia) on September (September 30th- October 4th) while, at the same time, the Center is readying itself to host the Library of Congress workshop slated to take place in Dakar on October 15th17th, 2018.
Caroline Johnson, WARA Operations Manager It has been an exciting year at WARA. We are in the process of launching a new website, continuing the CAORC Faculty Development Seminar for Community College and Minority-Serving Institutions at WARC, and we are launching a new lecture series at Boston University with a more inter-disciplinary approach: “Current Research in West Africa.” We had our final lecture under the “Religion in West Africa” theme in Fall of 2018 by Dr. Aliou Niang, lifetime WARA member and professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary. His riveting talk discussing his paper, “Religious Messengers and Identity Construction in the Bible and Diola Faith Traditions,” sparked lively discussion about the connections between the Diola faith’s prophet Aline Sitoue Diatta, and the Christian faith’s Apostle Paul, comparing their messages of identity to help form community during struggles for freedom. I also had the pleasure of visiting the West African Research Center in Dakar for the first time this past April. It was great to finally meet all of my amazing coworkers across the ocean. While there, I enjoyed touring our state-of-the-art research center and had the opportunity to sit in on some presentations in the conference spaces. I strongly encourage anyone who is traveling to Dakar to stop by WARC, meet the staff, check out the library, sit in on a conference, and certainly try the food at the on-site café! I am happy to announce that we are continuing the Ideas Matter Fellowship for the third year in a row thanks to our partnership with the Mastercard Foundation. Stay tuned for the announcements for this year’s awardees! We are currently accepting applications for the WARA Postdoctoral, Predoctoral, and Residency Fellowships and the WARC Library Fellowship until February 1st, 2019. Please read further to find the application announcements. We look forward to another good year of scholarly progress!
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EAST MEETS WEST By Hilary Hungerford, Associate Professor of Geography, Utah Valley University And Sarah Smiley, Associate Professor of Geography, Kent State University at Salem
As part of WARA’s East meets West newsletter theme, we have been asked to think about divergences and connections between regions of the continent. We are both human geographers who focus on water and environmental issues in African cities, with Sarah focusing on East African cities, especially Dar es Salaam, and Hilary focusing on West African cities, particularly Niamey and Dakar. While we do have these clear regional specializations, which are in part due to our language proficiencies, our research touches on issues common in African cities. These commonalities have helped us think more about how East and West Africa are the same and also caused us to reflect on important differences.
When we learned of the newsletter’s theme, one of our first thoughts was about the larger portrayal of “The West,” i.e. Europe and the United States, meeting the “East”, i.e. the rest of the world. Most of us are familiar with the construct of “Western Culture” or “Western Ideals,” and their juxtaposition with what was historically conceived as the uncivilized African continent. These juxtapositions are an important part of our research, which situates the current urban waterscapes in colonial development policies that provided different levels of service to Africans and Europeans. This idea of the “West” is still important, as Africa is often contrasted with the West in terms of development, economics, culture, and urbanization. On the scale of the continent of Africa, grouping places together as regions can be a useful way of approaching and understanding such a massive and diverse area. We know these are not perfect divisions and acknowledge that regionalization itself is a process and that there are always outliers. Still we emphasize these regional differences in our teaching to reinforce the fact that Africa is not a homogenous space but rather a diverse and dynamic continent. Most, if not all of us, have had the experience of hearing Africa called a country or seeing a game show give away trips to China, India, and Africa. In this brief reflection, we think about this regionalization and how East and West Africa are brought together.
Differences and Divergence As geographers, we are trained to identify and explain spatial patterns and variations. When we look at maps of the African continent, it is easy to see regional differences. Historically, East Africa was linked with the Arab World through the Swahili Coast, while West Africa was brought together with North Africa and Europe through powerful Sahelian empires and the trans-Saharan trade.
Each of these trade regions exchanged important commodities, including metals, salt, and even people. From these historical trade groupings, East and West Africa were brought to the modern era of globalization through colonialism. It is easy to picture the maps that show French West Africa as one space and then also the British attempt to rule from Cairo to the Cape. One of the first lessons any African scholar learns is the difference between French assimilation and British indirect rule. On the surface, we learned that the French wanted to create Frenchmen in Africa while the British sought to limit their on-the-ground presence. To achieve these different goals, the French created one system of laws to apply to everyone while the British had different laws for Europeans and Africans (referred to as natives). For example, Africans in Dar es Salaam required permission to be in certain spaces at night while Europeans could move freely. Digging deeper, we see more complexity. Although the French system purported equality, it also assumed that any differences could be overcome by French education and assimilation into French civilization. Similarly, the 1923 Devonshire White Paper established the policy of African Paramountcy in British colonies which placed African interests above European interests even though the colonial government directed much more funding toward Europeans than to Africans. Our own research compared water provision in colonial East and West African cities. We found that the different political ideologies did not actually result in different spaces. Rather cities in both regions used water infrastructure to help create segregated landscapes. Yet other research examines the impact of colonial national identity on current levels of development in East and West Africa. Importantly, there is no consensus between these studies and some even suggest that the length of colonization is more important than the colonizing country. These colonial differences, even if they shared some attributes, did result in some interesting cultural landscapes. It is impossible to walk through Dakar without smelling freshly baked French bread. Senegal has a vibrant cinema scene that tackles social issues, and many of these films are in French. The colonial history leads to some linkages between Francophone West African countries including a shared currency and the possibility of a multi-country tourist visa. In East Africa, the most striking aspect of the cultural landscape is from the large Indian (and South Asian more broadly) resident population. Although they first arrived in the region before the formal beginning of colonialism, the Indian population increased under British rule as immigrants came to work on the railway or in the business sector. A stroll through Dar es Salaam’s commercial district provides the chance to eat curries from across India and to see Hindu and Sikh temples. Beyond these historical and cultural examples, we can highlight other ways East and West Africa differ. In environmental terms, we see more biome diversity in the West, with savannahs, rainforests, and the semi-desert Sahel. We see more variation in topography in the East, however, with Mount Kilimanjaro and the Rift Valley. In health, official statistics suggest HIV/AIDS infection rates are higher in the East, but the recent Ebola outbreak illustrates that West Africa has other health challenges. Although the entire Sub-Saharan Africa region struggles with the provision of safe and clean drinking water, West Africa has more internal freshwater resources than the East, largely because of the Niger River. Still regardless of these East / West Africa differences, there are important connections and bridges between these regions. 6
Bridges and Connections Cities in East and West Africa have emerged as dynamic, exciting, and creative points on their respective regional maps. Most major cities in Africa today were historic colonial cities—including Dakar, Bamako, Accra, Lagos, Nairobi, and Dar es Salaam—and important nodes of connection for European empires to their peripheral territories across the continent. Legacies of colonialism linger on in many of these cities, such as incomplete urban infrastructures of water and sanitation, spatial segregation and inequality, and languages used to mark urban space. More important than these shared colonial legacies, cities across the continent are centers of innovation, growth, and progress. Cities in East and West Africa are home to important global technology startups, such as Ushahidi, a crowdsourcing tool developed in Nairobi that is used by citizens and NGOs around the world, and Andela, a networking platform created in Lagos that links software developers in Africa to markets across the globe. Despite the incredible technology and economic ecosystems, cities in both West and East Africa face many similar challenges in the years ahead. Environmental challenges are amongst the most pressing, with many cities ill-equipped to deal with the uncertainties around climate change, inadequate water and sanitation networks, and inefficient solid waste disposal. Cities are brought together by these challenges, thinking through solutions and possible futures to make African cities more inclusive, accessible, and resilient. Organizations like Slumdwellers International, for example, connect people living in slums to share experiences and solutions. Studying urbanisms through their diverse manifestations across the continent also brings forth important possibilities for rethinking and retheorizing what cities do, what they mean, and how they function. In Tanzania, the NGO Ramani Huria coordinates community mapping of flood risk and resilience, which has produced some comprehensive maps of structures, drainage, water sources, and other features in the city’s informal areas. Comparative and Southern urbanisms have been fruitful avenues of scholarship particularly within Geography, and thinkers from the African Centre for Cities in Cape Town and the Situated Urban Political Ecology (SUPE) Collective have brought new ways of thinking through and about cities into dialogue with different realities and geographical contexts in East and West Africa. We see through this scholarship how thinking about nature, networks, and flow—common aspects of cities everywhere—in African examples can highlight important aspects of the workings of capital on the continent, the connections between the rural and the urban, the ways in which the environment is enacted and acted upon, and the political possibilities for different future. Similarities in urban processes at work across regions and challenges for the future can be fruitful avenues for research. In our research, for example, we have compared water access and flooding in cities and have seen many shared experiences, but also important differences that have led to yet-to-be explored questions: Why does Dakar, for example, have such better water access than many other cities? Why do some cities in East Africa have scheduled water service delivery times by district, whereas most cities in West Africa have unpredictable water cutoffs? How have residents adapted to water scarcity and flooding, and how have these issues played in local and national politics? How will Rwanda’s and Burkina Faso’s ban on plastic bags impact environmental quality, and can it succeed in other places? Art and culture is another important avenue through which East and West Africa connect. West Africa houses important festivals that showcase artists from around the continent. These include Burkina Faso’s FESPACO
(Festival panafricain du cinéma et de la télévision de Ouagadougou) which celebrates African film and television, FIMA (Festival international de la mode africaine), mostly housed in Niger, which brings together African fashion designers, and Senegal’s Dak’art (Biennale de l'Art Africain Contemporain) showcasing contemporary African artists. East Africa is best known for the Zanzibar International Film Festival, which will celebrate its 21st year in 2018 and celebrates cinema, art, and culture. East and West Africa also have shared experiences in contemporary globalization. Globalization processes play out in similar ways across the continent, connecting the regions through economic, political, and environmental systems. For example, both regions are facing an increasingly robust relationship with China that potentially has long-lasting and far-reaching consequences. Some examples include China’s investment in infrastructure and the built environment, like bridges in Niamey, national theatres in Dakar, luxury hotels in Abidjan, highways in Kampala, and railways in Kenya. In Dar es Salaam, the new bus rapid transit system exemplifies globalization: it uses Chinese-built buses on a network that was built by an Austrian company, initially planned by the Japanese, and funded by the African Development Bank and the World Bank. China is also bringing new financing to countries across the continent, often without strings that loans from the World Bank and IMF funds typically have. Globalization also brings challenges to political systems, and activists in both West and East Africa have used technology and social media to critique their own governments and political processes, as well as highlight Africa’s position in the wider world. Some of these blogs, like Okay Africa, bring together a number of African perspectives and other accessible platforms, like Twitter, often see hashtag campaigns successful in raising global awareness on important issues. One example is the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls launched in 2013 in response to the Boko Haram kidnapping of some 200 girls in Northeast Nigeria. The 2017 box office smash hit Black Panther also brought African cultures to the forefront of global audiences, with the fictional Wakanda empire blending West African Amazon Warriors with East African pastoralist cultures. A Facebook page frequented by Tanzanian expatriates has even posted queries from people looking to purchase East African kanga fabrics with Blank Panther imagery.
Future Opportunities As Africanists and as Geographers, we feel that it is important to counter the false narratives that see the continent as a homogenous space. The widely watched Ted Talk given by Chimamanda Adichie describes the danger of a single story – a video that we regularly show to our students. Yet there is a danger in too many stories as well in that we can get lost in difference without recognizing the bridges between regions. Our own work compares water in East and West Africa, and while we highlight difference we are also careful to acknowledge similarities. We see this as a starting point for future opportunities. For example, we both are working on flood-related projects in Dakar and Dar es Salaam that we hope will show the universality of urban challenges but also the successes of local knowledge. We are excited to be part of this East meets West theme and hope that it is a starting point for more conversations about the bridges between regions.
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East Africa Will Meet West Africa through New Linguistic Highways: From Krio in Sierra Leone to Sheng in Zanzibar Seraphin Kamdem, SOAS, University of London As Africa embarks deeper into an ever-complex 21st Century and has to contend with globalisation, the current dynamics of languages in Africa are also ever changing and adapting. But a key aspect that sometimes evades the perception of many, including some scholars, is that the majority of Africans are fluent multilinguals daily navigating many complementary and intertwined sociolinguistic realms, passing from one language to another, and from one sociolinguistic tier of interaction into another, effortlessly. But the linguistic picture of Africa is also adapting and taking on an unprecedented turn with the emergence of Swahili as a growing regional lingua franca in East Africa. Swahili is now established as one of the working languages of the African Union in a historic decision marking the recognition of the irreversible importance of African languages in African international affairs at the highest continental level. In West Africa, with the emergence of Nollywood as one the big transnational film industries, there is also the emergence of another lingua franca which is far more entrenched in linguistic practices across many countries in West Africa: West African Pidgin English, a creole that is now the most widely spoken language on the entire Atlantic African Coast, in more than 8 countries: from Gambia, Sierra Leone , through Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, CongoBrazzaville, all the way to Angola – with fluent speakers now reaching beyond 200 million. Yet the picture in an ever urbanising Africa is far more complex and richer, with the emergence of transnational urban sociolects, such as Sheng from Kenya spreading in East Africa, Camfranglais from Cameroon spreading in the Central African sub-region, and Nouchi from Cote-d’Ivoire in West Africa.
This adds to the dynamics of 21st-C. Africans establishing their communication practices outside of the entrenched and simplistic colonial dichotomy of European languages vs African languages. The picture is one of creativity and pro-active hope, empowerment and positive change. And these rich sociolinguistic practices, still in need of a larger and deeper academic scrutiny – one interesting recent academic conceptual re-appropriation being that of ‘translanguaging’ – are all auguring a new dawn for intra-continental African communications in this 21st Century. From West Africa to East Africa, one common area where Africans are clearly taking their destinies in their own hands is with regard to these new sociolinguistic identities and practices. And even some areas of academia and scholarship are still coming to terms with these new cultural and linguistic developments: the dynamic tongues of youths in cities, the complex paths through which audiences are voraciously absorbing Nollywood films, the packed stadiums and sold-out hip-hops concerts of young African rising stars pouring in new tongues their music across Sub-Saharan African countries. The African youths all together are the creators, the consumers, and the actors of breathtaking sociolinguistic changes, and of a new dawn to Africa rising and emerging with her own yet new voices.
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African "boundary plants” and regional trajectories Michael Sheridan, Middlebury College
My recent work on plants and people has led me far from my primary research site in East Africa. I specialize in rural African social-ecological systems and landscapes, and much of my work describes the messy interaction of socially embedded land use practices with outsiders’ more bureaucratic ways of managing the same resources. In 2004, I started work on an edited volume surveying the intersections of religion, social organization, and ecology in sub-Saharan Africa (African Sacred Groves, Sheridan and Nyamweru, eds., 2008). I was amazed to find striking, highly specific continuities across tropical Africa in the social life of a common houseplant, Dracaena. In both Tanzania and Cameroon, this plant marks property boundaries and symbolizes peace. Is this evidence of the long-term shared cultural heritage of the so-called ‘Bantu expansion’ of ironworking farmers from Central-West Africa thousands of years ago? Along with hoe-based agriculture, patrilineal kinship systems, and reverence for ancestors, is this “boundary plant” one of the key building blocks of tropical African societies? These questions led me to Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, and Oku, Cameroon to compare the social histories of this landscape-producing plant. What I found is that although there is a strong ‘family resemblance’ between the two case studies (such as the general way that the plant plays economic, social, and symbolic roles, and the highly specific way that the plant connotes the cultural significance of life and vitality in both areas), the key difference is how the organization of society has shaped the social life of this plant. On Kilimanjaro, the Chagga people are organized largely by kinship and gender; in Oku, an elaborately ranked monarchy shapes most social action. In both areas, Dracaena appears on the corners of farm plots and house yards and repels witchcraft. But on Kilimanjaro, the plant expresses the authority of male ancestors, while in Oku it expresses the ability of secret societies, masquerade groups, and the king to ensure prosperity. The history and significance of Dracaena in these areas follows these general contours.
The point of this comparison is that the cultural building blocks that appear to be much the same in East, Central, and West Africa can lead to different social forms. Instead of pan-African cultural continuity, these case studies of boundary plants in agrarian societies show that economic institutions and social organization interact with symbolic systems to produce particular landscapes. Together, this constellation of factors constitutes a sort of region-specific ‘trajectory’ through larger historical changes such as colonialism, neo-liberalism, and even climate change. Royalty and rank shape institutions in the Cameroon Grassfields in a way that they do not in Tanzania. Instead of treating East and West Africa as cultural/geographic areas, approaching them (and the societies that constitute them) as ‘historical trajectories’ allows a more finegrained analysis of continuity and change across the continent. Because boundary plants such as Dracaena shape both landscapes and societies in Africa, they are uniquely suited to telling the stories of these historical trajectories. My current book project compares these social histories with those of boundary plants in Oceania and the African diaspora in the Caribbean. 12
Accounts of Tuareg music often discuss how it draws on traditions from both sub-Saharan Africa and the Maghreb. This north-south geography is crucial to Sahel-Saharan cultural history, but it equally important to highlight alternative patterns of cultural circulation. Of particular significance in contemporary Tuareg popular music is the west-to-east route followed by jagwa, a Mauritanian dance that is becoming ever more popular in Niger. Jagwa emerged in Mauritania in 1976, allegedly named for the French Jaguar fighter jets used in the Western Sahara War. Accompanied by pounding t’bel kettle drums and featuring frenzied guitar riffs, it is an instrumental dance music often played with a flanger sound effects pedal, giving the guitar a swooshing quality reminiscent of the sound of a jet passing overhead. In Tuareg settings, jagwa is driven by repetitive riffs that build intensity until the entire band executes a coordinated, sudden pause. After playing a few singlenote hits, the group resumes at the same rollicking tempo. Jagwa is unusual within Tuareg guitar repertoire for being specifically identified with a non-Tuareg community. At Tuareg and Arab weddings in Agadez and Niamey, women often request jagwa. Sometimes a separate Mauritanian band performs jagwa after a Tuareg guitar group, incorporating their pedals and keyboards as in Mauritania. In most cases, however, Tuareg bands perform jagwa themselves, particularly the younger generation of artists like Bibi Ahmed, Bombino, and Mdou Moctar.
East-West Musical Exchanges in the Sahel-Sahara: Mauritanian Dances on Tuareg Guitars Eric Schmidt, Associate Director, Boston University
Tuareg women sometimes imitate Mauritanian style when dancing by completely covering their heads, faces, and upper bodies with a shawl, a Mauritanian Melhafa, which obscures the wearer’s figure and face. The dance movement itself centers on the provocative swaying of the hips, particularly in consort with the band’s hits during the breaks. Many male musicians I have spoken with about jagwa attribute its appeal to the fact that it is usually danced only by women, whose sensuous movements entice onlookers to spray them and the band with money. Despite its growing popularity, not all Tuareg guitarists support this new dance. Some artists see it as encouraging the abandonment of deep Tuareg social values of dignified and reserved conduct. For them, it does not exemplify takoult, the agreeable correspondence of dance steps, clothing, and music. But adapting “Arab” cultural forms in Tuareg music is not new—not even for guitarists, who have drawn on Algerian raï (among other sources) since the 1970s. Like the early guitarists who drew on Tuareg poetic traditions and global popular musics to compose songs speaking to their own lives, so too are contemporary musicians making jagwa into something Nigérien. The flanger effect is left out. It is no longer played just for Mauritanian and Arab weddings, but for Tuareg ones, too. Perhaps the most telling example of how jagwa is being made Nigérien is the case of Iboune Imane, a young Wodaabe musician who sings Tuareg-style songs in Fulfulde and incorporates jagwa into his compositions. Driven by adaptation and imitation, then, jagwa allows us to listen to a vibrant east-west route in the circulation of Sahel-Saharan culture. 14
The balkanization of Africa into the Maghreb (the North often grouped along with the Arab/Middle East) and the Sudan (the wide expanse south of the Sahara) has had a negative effect on African historiography and cultural indices. East and West Africa and indeed the whole of Black Africa have suffered from the Western “ideology of contempt and denial”; Sub-Saharan Africa is the synecdoche for the “Dark Continent”, the one lacking in history, literacy, and cultural expressionism. Hegel (1831), TrevorRoper (1969), Olson and Torrance (2001), and very recently, Jack Goody (2010) are the most outstanding proponents of this inaccurate thesis. Non-Latin based “literacy traditions” in Africa and elsewhere were hardly recognized if not dismissed altogether in the Western discursive tradition. Text artefacts, for instance, epigraphs from East Africa; sacred inscriptions, for example, the Egyptian hieroglyphs, the Ethiopian Ge’ez, Tifinag (Touareg), and Nsibidi (SE Nigeria), are some of the writing scripts from Africa’s antiquity that were not considered as a form of literacy. This negative Western stereotype notwithstanding, East and West Africa are nonetheless unified by other traditions, namely, the tradition of Ajami, “Chronicle” writing, techniques of power accession, scholarship, manuscriptology, and very recently, religious extremism.
Ajami The advent of Islam in the 7th century established an enduring system of literacy in Africa through Arabic, the language of the Qur’ān. African societies which adopted Islam used Arabic and also appropriated its script for their native languages, which writing tradition came to be known as Ajami. There are well over 80 African languages with an attested use of Ajami. For West Africa, we may mention Kanuri, Fulfulde, Hausa, Yoruba, and Wolof. For East Africa, Swahili stands out, but Oromo, Chimini, Malagasy, and Afrikaans are equally remarkable. Leo Africanus (c. 1494 - c.1554) writing in the middle of the 16th century, submits that ‘it has been 900 years since Africans use Arabic characters’. So across Africa, Ajami remains a lingua franca of documentation.
Chronicles
John Hunwick (2005 “Arabic sources”) gives a comprehensive fasti of North African chronicling and history works from the earliest times until the end of the 16th century. There are of course updated online resources on this (www.islamclass.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/major-arabicsources-for-the-study-of-history-and-biograpy).East and West Africa have an exceedingly deep root in chronicle writing from Islamic antiquity. The Kilwa Chronicle (Kitāb sulwa fi akhbār Kilwa) is doubtless the oldest exemplar of the genre from East Africa, and indeed from Sudanic Africa. In its trail may be mentioned the Funj Chronicle (1504–1871) on Nilotic Sudan. From West Africa we have the Jawāhir al-ḥisān by a little known
“East meets West: The Ajami and Manuscript Traditions between East and West Africa” Amidu Sanni, Vice Chancellor, Fountain University, Osogbo, Nigeria amsanni@yahoo.co.uk 16th century Baba Guru; the 17th century Tārīkh al-Fattāsh and Tārīkh Sudan by al-Ka‘ti and al-Sa‘dī respectively. Equally remarkable are the two-part account of the history of Bornu by Ibn Furtuwa (written after 1576); and the Kano Chronicle, the 11th–19th-century account of Kano (Nigeria). Some recent and on-going studies on the East African Islamic heritage, for example, pre-Colonial Congo, EIC, the Portuguese East Africa, and indeed the Swahili world, point in the direction of the strong probability of works in the genre of chronicle waiting to be unearthed in the Swahili commonwealth.
Power-accession /scholarship /manuscriptology Amulet-writing and talismanship, petitionary and imprecationary prayers, among other means of control, the culture of authorship in Arabic or local tongues, and manuscript or book archaeology became a common heritage to both East and West Africa in the context of the Islamic dispensation in Sudanic Africa and indeed in the African diaspora in the Americas and the slavery world.
Islamic Extremism
The Boko Haram, though not the only strand of militant and millenarian Islamism in West Africa (Sanni 2016), it has become the most pervasive and violent in the region. East Africa, specifically Kenya, is also experiencing its own dose of religious extremism at the moment. In all, a remarkable point of convergence and intersection between East and West Africa continues to develop in both the positive and negative orientations.
JSanni, Amidu 2018, “Islamic Historical Sources: Arabic Manuscripts and Online”http://africanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734. 001.0001/acrefore-9780190277734-e-124 Ngom, Fallou 2018 West African Manuscripts in Arabic and African Languages and Digital Preservation http://africanhistory.oxfordre.com/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190277734.001.00 01/acrefore-9780190277734-e-123 Hunwick, John, 2005, “Arabic Sources for African History,” in Writing African History. Rochester Studies in African History and the Diaspora, ed. John Edward Philips (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 216–253. Luffin, Xavier 2017 “Arabic and Swahili Documents from the Pre-Colonial Congo and the EIC (Congo Free State, 1885–1908): Who were the Scribes?, 279-96 in The Arts and Crafts of Literacy Islamic Manuscript Cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. A. Brigaglia & M. Nobili, Berlin, De Grueyter. Mwakimako, Hassan et al 2018 (forthcoming), -“Kenya’s Jihadi Clerics: Formulation of a Liberation Theology to Muslims’ Socio-Political Grievances and the Challenge to Secular Power”, in Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs.
Post-Doctoral Fellowship CONNOR RYAN (University of the West Indies) AMINA ADJEPONG (Simmons College)
“L̀agos Never Spoils’: Nollywood and Nigerian Media Urbanism.”
“From `little Lagos’ to Accra’s Artist Scene.”
Pre-doctoral Fellowship ALFREDO ROJAS (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)
“Moral Agriculture: Environmental Change, Society and Local Food Production in Niamasso Ivory Coast.”
RYAN CARTY (Michigan State University)
“Trading Technologies: Hausa Communities in a Borderland, 1850-1914.”
JANICE LEVI (Simmons College)
“Whispers in the West: The Emergence of a Jewish Community in 20th century Ghana.”
TYLER HOOK (University of Wisconsin, Madison) ANDREA WALTHER-PURI (Tufts Fletcher School)
“The Corporation and the Community: Local Stakeholders Engagement with International Corporate School Management Chains in Liberia.” “Measuring the Impact of U.S. Military CounterTerrorism Assistance in West Africa.”
Residency Fellowship NONSO OBIKIKI (American University) to conduct a largescale study of taxation in Lagos at American University.
WARC Library Fellow JUSTIN MILLER (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) for summer fellowship at the WARC Library in Dakar.
After the publication of this newsletter, we will begin to publish Grantee reports exclusively on our new website in an effort to streamline our publication efforts. We believe this will be helpful for those seeking solely to read about the work of our fellows as it will be in a centralized place. Please stay tuned for announcements of the launch of the new website in weeks to come.
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WARC Travel Grantees Fall 2018 Agblegoe Benigan (Université de Lomé, Togo), “Essai sur le régime juridique de la lutte contre le terrorisme en droit international: Cas de L’UNION AFRICAINE” Are Elisha Bayode (University of ILorin, Nigeria), “Modelling the impact of counterfiet drugs on the control of MALARIA-TYPHOID co-infection in Nigeria” Elh Moudi Moustapha (University of INRAN, Niger), “Amélioration de la productivité agricole en zone sahélo saharienne comme alternative à la crise alimentaire, par la redynamisation du recyclage des nutriments des sols dégradé ; cas des sols sableux de la région Sud-Est du Niger” Oboh Mary (Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal), “Immunologic and Genetic correlates of protective immunity of SERA-5, PfRH5, and MSP-3 vaccine candidate antigens among infectious populations of Nigeria and its implication for malaria vaccine development”
Spring 2018 Hougnigbo Bertrand Akokponhoue (Université d’Abomey Calavi, Bénin), “ Utilisation de la Télédétection, des SIG et des méthodes géophysiques pour la recherche de l’eau dans les aquifères discontinus du socle cristallin du Bénin : cas du Département de la Donga (Nord-ouest du Bénin) ” Ivo Kashimana (University of Lagos, Nigeria), “Impacts of Land Use Changes in Lower Black Volta (Ghana) and Lower Benue (Nigeria) River Basins: a climate change mitigation approach for food security” Dambre Koungbanane (Université Félix Houphouet-Boigny, Côte d’Ivoire), “ Etude du risque d’inondation dans le contexte de changement climatique dans le bassin de l’Oti dans la Région des Savanes au Togo ” Marguerite Nikiema (Université Ouaga I Professeur Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Burkina Faso), “Caractérisations phénotypique et génotypique des souches de Salmonella non-Typhiques (SNT) d’origines alimentaire et humaine au Burkina Faso: Contribution au développement de nouveaux vaccins.” We would like to acknowledge the Educational and Cultural Affairs Bureau of the US State Department for the generous funding that supports WARA’s fellowship programs.
Ideas Matter 2017 Fellows In this second competition, we received 65 eligible applications from graduate students representing ten West African countries and fields as diverse as biology, agronomy, political science, medicine, public health, chemistry, and pharmacy. Their research seeks to solve many of the most trenchant health and economic challenges facing Africa today. Last year, we received a larger number of Anglophone to francophone applicants. Nearly half of the applicants this time around were young women, a 16% increase from last year, attesting to the growing role of women in science and technology. The three candidates selected from this rich trove of applications were:
Mrs. Isata Kamanda (Sierra Leone, Agricultural Research Institute) Crop Improvement Involving women in participatory selection of biofortified cassava germplasm in Sierra Leone According to the W.H.O., more than 40% of pregnant women, lactating mothers and preschool children have moderate to severe Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD), despite efforts the government has made to import other vitamin sources, which have proven ineffective and unsustainable. Cassava (also known as manioc), is a popular food staple in Sierra Leone, and biofortified germplasm offer a potential solution to VAD. Mrs. Kamanda’s research will investigate a means to popularize biofortified cassava by involving rural women in the selection process of favorable biofortified cassava germplasm.
Ms. Amoin Gervaise Kouame (Côte d’Ivoire, University Nangui Abrogoua) Natural Sciences Menopause in Côte d’Ivoire: knowledge of traditional methods of treatment and evaluation of their efficiency Over 22% of women over 40 years of age experience problems from menopause, including cardiovascular disease and osteoporosis. Current hormonal treatments are expensive and cause negative side effects. Ms. Kouame’s research will determine and test local Ivorian plants rich in phytoestrogen, which is an effective treatment against the health complications of menopause.
Mr. Yao Manu Seshie (Burkina Faso, Fondation 2iE) Electric, Energy, and Industrial Engineering Experimental studies of the solar concentration plant CSP4Africa The ORC turbine machine is utilized in solar plants to transform heat to electricity. Currently, it is only available through a specialized enterprise. It is essential to allowing the utilization of solar energy. Mr, Seshie’s research aims to test different the ORC machine in different dimensions with the goal of creating a smaller, more efficient, and more affordable model that will allow solar energy to be more accessible to lower income populations throughout West Africa.
The Ideas Matter Doctoral Fellowship competition is made possible through our partnership with the Mastercard Foundation. 18
Grantee Reports:
VALERIE DELALI ADJOH-DAVOH WARA Residency Fellow
My name is Valerie Delali Adjoh-Davoh. I am a Doctoral candidate at the Department of History, University of Cape Coast. The title of my research is “Pawnship in the Gold Coast Colony: Pawn Child Labour in the Period of the Cash Crop Revolution 1874-1940”. The thrust of the research is that market forces after abolition of domestic slavery in 1874 coupled with the introduction of cocoa in the 1890s intensified the use of pawn children in production and export of cocoa until the establishment of Ghana’s Cocoa Marketing Board in 1938. In addition, the work gives understanding to the present use of children in cocoa production in order to curtail it due to the International Labour Organisation’s laws to eliminate the worst forms of child labour in developing countries by 2016. My fellowship abroad was to conduct research at Harvard University libraries which included: the Houghton library and the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library. Also, the fellowship was intended to collaborate with Professor Emmanuel Akyeampong and other scholars interested in forms of unfree labour which included pawnship. I arrived to Boston on July2, 2017 where I was warmly received by the fellows and events officer, Rosaline Salifu, of the Harvard Center for African Studies. Since I arrived on a Sunday and July4, 2017 was a public holiday I had to settle in and formally report to Harvard Center for African Studies on July5, 2017. I met with my faculty sponsor, Professor Emmanuel Akyeampong, on July6, 2017. We discussed issues regarding publication of my work when completed, introduction of researchers or scholars in the area of unfree labour, requirements for international publication of both books and articles, and my use of the Harvard University libraries. Also, Professor Akyeampong made useful contributions to my work since he is an expert on forms of unfree labour.
First day at Harvard University
Through the fellowship I was able to obtain over fifty books and articles from the use of the Harvard University libraries. These included literature on antislavery movement, abolition and the end of slavery, pawning among the Fante of the Gold Coast, and child labour. Harvard University also has a franchise which allows its researchers to access dissertations world Wide via ProQuest dissertation in my area of study which hitherto were unavailable to me. These materials will go a long way to enrich my dissertation, later research and teaching generally. The Harvard University online Archive was useful in gathering pictorial representations of some events in the Gold Coast. These pictures reflected events such as the 1874 Anglo-Asante War, colonialism, Market setting in Cape Coast in the colonial period, female fashion, and Fetishism during wars.
Meetring Prof Akyeampong on July 6th
Also, I had access to primary materials from the African Studies library within the Mugar Memorial Library, Boston University particularly on Ghana which is useful for my present research as well as later research and study. The primary materials ranged from topics on Ghana’s Cocoa Marketing Board and cocoa in general, Cocoa hold up in the Gold Coast, cocoa co-operatives, child rights in Ghana, agriculture in Ghana, land tenure and Gold Coast annual reports from 1918 to 1954. Besides, these primary materials could be used for many other researches on Ghana. As a result of the fellowship, I was introduced to a number of scholars in my field of research by Professor Emmanuel Akyeampong. These scholars are Professor Sandra Elaine Greene who is an expert on Ghana, Professor Gareth Austin who has researched extensively on Ghana and forms of unfree labour, and Professor Trevor Getz who has researched extensively on unfree labour after abolition in the Gold Coast. These professors provided useful suggestions to my research which I believe will go a long way to enrich my dissertation and later research.
On July 11, 2017 I visited the West African Research Association’s office at Boston University. I met Professor Jennifer Yanco (the immediate past Director of WARA) and Caroline Johnson (the Operations Manager of the West African Research Association). An interview was then conducted on my research and we deliberated generally on child labour. The interview conducted has given me some exposure and recognition regarding my research which I believe will open other opportunities in the future. Many thanks to Professor Emmanuel Acheampong (Oppenheimer Chair of the Harvard Center for African Studies) for inviting me. I greatly appreciate his mentorship and suggestions to see my work progress. Also, I greatly appreciate the support of the staff of the Harvard Center for African Studies in their professionalism in handling my Harvard Id issues and having a fruitful research visit. Finally, I am very grateful to the West African Research Association for the fellowship to conduct research at Harvard and Boston University libraries as well as collaborate with experts in my field of research. I believe the fellowship is a stepping stone to greater heights in my career as a lecturer and researcher. Therefore I am eternally grateful for the opportunity.
Further, I was introduced to new primary research sources by my Faculty sponsor such as the Basel Mission Archives online that he compiled in the past to supplement the primary sources which were already available to me on pawnship. The Basel Archives online are especially useful since there are limited sources on pawnship and other forms of unfree labour in the Gold Coast in particular. In addition, I received a compiled course pack as a gift from my research which to me was his demonstration of his commitment to see others excel and a mark of a good mentor which everyone would want to have in the early stages of their career.
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Accomplishments: The focus of the internship was updating the online library catalog with new acquisitions donated to the library. The responsibilities that I decided to take upon my self was to redress the metadata of the current offline database which included spelling, capitalization and other solecisms. I also thought it was important to introduce cloud computing to better collaborate with Badou and Adama on the spread sheet I was updating. This entailed creating a PowerPoint presentation that instructed them how to use google drive and a step by step set of written instructions so that collaborations can continue through google drive. This development was helpful in cataloging as the responsibilities were divided between myself and Badou. I entered metadata to the cataloging system while Badou assigned local call numbers based on the Dewey Decimal System with Adama correcting any errors that she discovered during the process. Over three hundred new acquisitions were added to the catalog which included titles pertaining to Africana Collection and the Diaspora collection.
Grantee Reports:
General overview: Over the course of six weeks, I Obden Mondésir conducted an internship during the dates of July 9th, 2017-August 17th for 32.5 hours/week (from 9:00 am to 5:00, Monday to Friday) at WARC’s library. I worked primarily on correcting metadata in the offline database, cataloging new acquisitions, developing offline solutions to the internet, and to enhance user experience capabilities of the library. Other internships activities included cloud computing, assistance in grant applications for capacity building of the library staff, visits to the UCAD’s Library, National Archives, assisting anglophone students in find relevant sources, and attending WARC events. Overall, I learned a great deal from his experience. I became more aware of the relevant African and Senegalese scholars and scholarly works. I also became aware of the current challenges to research on Senegal and Africa. I look forward to maintaining a relationship with an institution that I’ve grown a great amount of respect for and believe can collaborate with in the future.
OBDEN MONDÉSIR WARC Library Fellow Other focuses were attempts increasing the offline capabilities of the library as the internet wi-fi connection was very unreliable and temperamental for most of the fellowship. The internet is very integral to research and needs to be stronger for the sake of patrons and library Staff. I order to address the lack of internet I tried to create an Local Area Network that would allow for the transfer of files available to staff to the local pcs in the library. This task proved to be incredibly complicated so the alternative solution was to create a drop box account that was available on all the pcs in the library. Strengths: One of the better part of the experience of the fellowship was getting to work with Adama and Badou. Adama was an invaluable aid while living in Dakar and was like a sister providing professional advice and a level of hospitality that I have never seen before. Badou was incredibly helpful in teaching Wolof froThey were both incredibly helpful and respectful for my entire stay. Getting to eat at WARC free of charge was AMAZING. I enjoyed every meal and thought this was incredibly helpful while staying in Dakar. The homestay accommodations were more than adequate. The family I stayed with for the most part was respectful of my needs and were helpful in showing me around the neighborhood. While they were good hosts I would suggest that all monetary transactions with host families be accompanied with receipts as there were complications with rent payment. My situation was unique in that I was staying for a truncated amount of time expected from a library fellow but an agreement of a daily housing rate would avert any complications.
Grantee Reports:
JASON J. MCSPARREN WARC Pre-Doctoral Fellow
My sincerest thanks to WARA for funding my third field trip to Mali and WARC for welcoming me in Dakar. I am Jason J. McSparren, a PhD. Candidate in Global Governance and Human Security at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. My dissertation project is titled, Seeking a Nexus between Transparency, Accountability and Sustainable Development in the Extractive Industries: Evaluating capacity of civil society organizations in Mali.
 Transparency produces information that is made public through a dissemination program. The public is expected to use this information to hold government actors accountable. Citizens are empowered to debate the best ways to allocate the revenue and through public discourse influence government spending. An accountable government will reinvest this capital into society in ways that support sustainable development. Â
This is a case study centered on the implementation of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) in a developing, resource-rich state. It contributes to the Global Governance literature by analyzing the implementation, progress and effectiveness of a global governance initiative, the EITI. Global governance is a unique form of governing because it is not statecentric, but rather administered by a coalition of stakeholders, including the government, extractive corporations and civil society organizations. The EITI is one example of a broader wave of information-based governance schemes designed to address negative externalities related to the extractive sector. Other examples include the Publish What You Pay coalition and the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. The objective of the EITI is to reduce corruption and fiscal mismanagement in the extractive sectors by making revenue transfers between the corporations and the state transparent. State and the corporations are required to produce periodic reports detailing the revenue flows - taxes, fees, and royalties - from extractive corporations to the government. The data is audited by representatives of civil society and then disseminated to the public. The underlying logic of a transparency-based initiative is couched in liberal democratic values.
Jason with Nouhoum Diakite, Coordinateur, Publiez Ce Que Vous Payez Coalition Malienne (Publish What You Pay Coalition Mali)
The EITI is being implemented in almost 50 states globally (nearly half located in Sub-Saharan Africa), but progress is uneven across countries. A debate exists as to the effectiveness of the EITI to bring about the desired changes in governance structures, as well as, its ability to promote sustainable development. This study contributes to that debate by examining the formal and informal institutions of the EITI at the national and local levels of governance. 22
I take an institutional approach to analyze the theories of norm diffusion and adaptive capacity. Norm diffusion is dependent on the design of the policy initiative while adaptive capacity is dependent on the actors’ ability to implement change. I focus on civil society capacity development at the national and local levels because the agency displayed by civil society actors is a good indicator of the advancement of democratic norms. I first visited Bamako, Mali in November 2015 to attend the Mali Mining and Petroleum Days Conference. This conference is significant because it showcased the potential for expanding the gold mining industry, the country’s leading export. It also highlighted the potential for the exploitation of oil reserves known to exist under the Sahara desert. During my second trip in January and February 2017 I conducted semistructured interviews with current and former members of the EITI multi-stakeholder steering committee. The third trip funded by WARA allowed me to travel to the mining regions where I investigated the local political economy of the extractive industry. I visited five villages in the vicinity of two industrial mining operations. I conducted interviews with local stakeholders to determine what impact the EITI is having on local socio-economic development.
Artisan working in Bamako
Stakeholder interview: J.McSparren, Ossuby Keita (Translator) & Daouda Doumbia (Counseil Economique Social & Cultural du Mali)
Preliminary findings are encouraging, although more time and effort is necessary to accomplish the longterm objectives. I found that the EITI is supporting change and stakeholders are institutionalizing new governance practices such as, the modernization of data gathering processes, improvements in disseminating the data and broadening society’s awareness of mining operations and state capture of revenues. Informing the society about the economics and implications of the mining sector is important. However, democratic institutions are still maturing, meaning that while transparency is increasing after the publication of a second full EITI report, the public is in early stages of understanding their connection to the extractive sector. As a result, official accountability remains elusive. Furthermore, while EITI data shows that the state is losing less revenue to corruption, there is still no discernable sustainable development policy. Nonetheless, I remain optimistic because the EITI has broad stakeholder support and positive momentum.
Grantee Reports:
DOUG PEACH WARA Pre-Doctoral Fellow
Sierra Leone
In the summer of 2017, I conducted two months of predissertation research in Freetown, Sierra Leone. This work broadly explored the contemporary relationships between Sierra Leoneans and African Americans in the Southeast United States, known as Gullah Geechees. Over the past thirty years, Sierra Leone has been positioned as the diasporic “home” for Gullah Geechee people. This connection has been legitimized by numerous trans-Atlantic “homecomings” made by Gullah Geechees to Sierra Leone, and Sierra Leoneans visiting the South Carolina coast. Several of these encounters were documented in the films The Language You Cry In and Family Across the Sea. Today, scholars are calling for more attention to the ways that West Africans are active agents, rather than historicized vessels, in the cultural production of the African Diaspora. Following this body of scholarship, my research goal was to investigate, through ethnographic means, how Sierra Leoneans conceptualize their relationships to Gullah Geechees
and use this information in the West African nation. I learned that music was often used by Sierra Leoneans to educate their fellow citizens about their historical connections to Gullah Geechees. To further explore this phenomenon, I conducted ethnographic research with two musical groups who used narratives about Gullah Geechees in their performances. Several of these musicians had traveled to South Carolina as a part of the diasporic dialogues between the two localities. I also conducted research with the Sierra Leone Gullah Kinship Association, whose members are working to create various forms of exchange— cultural, economic, and/or political—with African Americans in the Southern United States. My research highlighted the importance of Bunce Island, a slave castle near Freetown, as a space for potential African Diasporic roots tourism and elucidated the politics of its heritage management. I also gained crucial information about a Sierra Leonean music scholar, Nicolas Ballanta, who conducted research in coastal South Carolina during the late 1920s.
Sierra Leone
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Over the course of this fieldwork, I interviewed more than twenty Sierra Leonean scholars, musicians, and cultural heritage professionals, recorded eight hours of video during performances and rehearsals, and took over 700 photographs. I learned to speak, understand, and write in Krio, the lingua franca of Sierra Leone, at an intermediate level. Through this pre-dissertation research, I gained a deeper understanding of the multiple meanings assigned to Gullah Geechees by contemporary Sierra Leoneans, and how these West Africans are leveraging these meanings for political, social, and economic amelioration. This work sets a foundation for my larger dissertation project. I will combine these findings with upcoming ethnographic research conducted with Gullah Geechees, to trace the circulation of Gullah Geechee heritage in the United States and transnationally in Sierra Leone. In doing so, I will create an ethnographic account of contemporary cultural production in the African Diaspora, with a particular focus on music, that incorporates the perspectives of Gullah Geechees, as well as Sierra Leoneans living in West Africa. Douglas D. Peach PhD Graduate Student Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology Indiana University dpeach@indiana.edu
Sierra Leone
From the beginning of May to the first week of August, 2017, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Dakar, Senegal. At the time, I was a fixed-term Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Michigan State University. However, since the end of the research project and beginning of Fall 2017 semester, I accepted a job as Assistant Director of the African Studies Center at the University of Kansas. During the project, I aimed to document the political activities of several women active in parliament as well as those who aspired to break into the growing ranks of women in the political scene. Politicians rely heavily on a team of people to help support and promote them, a role well played by the praise singers, or griots. As a component to understanding women's political performance, I also focused on how griots are important to these performances and how it has changed over time. The timing was perfect, as I arrived just as many political coalitions and movements were forming ahead of the expected July legislative elections. Enough time for me to make contacts, become known to the various politicians, and hope they would allow me to take part in their campaigns. At the same time, I set out to understand the role various individuals and organizations played in the gender equality movement (also known as parité) - seeking equal representation of women and men in elected positions - that had been instrumental in passing the parité law in 2010 and saw the numbers of women in parliament skyrocket in the following 2012 legislative session. I sought to answer questions such as 1) How do women translate their skills demonstrated among social networks of the mostly domestic sphere, to the traditionally patriarchal realm of state politics? 2) What role do griots/griottes hold for this process? 3) How are women historically marginalized from state processes and what strategies do they employ to mitigate and refute the gendered rhetoric of women as ill-suited and corrupt state actors?
Grantee Reports:
WARA Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship Final Report Researcher: Emily Riley Research Project: Performing Politics: Female Politicians, Griottes, and the Parité Movement. Dakar, Senegal
EMILY RILEY WARA Post-Doctoral Fellow
Throughout the summer I was able to conduct interviews with several female members of parliament and identify three among them to follow their campaigns. While candidates were busy putting together their party lists and making contact with them more complicated, I took advantage of this time by interviewing and shadowing griot women and various members of the Senegalese Women's Council COSEF (Conseil Sénégalais des Femmes). COSEF members had been active in the parité movement since the early 2000s, and were finalizing a pilot program to support women running for office in local districts. When the campaigns kicked off in early July, I accompanied three main candidates that I had made contact with over the summer, two of which broke off from their main party to create their own movements. The third woman was part of the president's coalition and therefore stayed close to her own district, while the other women scoured the countryside, campaigning as leaders for their movement. It was a wild ride, visiting villages, sitting down with local religious leaders, and witnessing the massive mobilization of supporters as they cheered along the route. 26
Gender was a central topic to campaign rhetoric for all parties. Male-led parties co-opted the discourse of being champions for women's causes, while the femaleled movements I knew more intimately, professed an authority for women's issues. Campaign sympathizers chanted and sang about the women as heroines following in the footsteps of previous royal queens of the Malian Empire. They were depicted as courageous and brave, yet in private many women felt sidelined within their own parties. Despite the successes of the parité law, women report being continually denied real access to leadership roles once voted into parliament or within the ranks of their party. With new female-led parties and movements, it will be interesting to see how they fare in future elections. In addition to my research, I gave a talk about my dissertation at the West African Research Center, fulfilling a promise I made to the center and to Fulbright, as both were instrumental in my doctoral research. I also partnered with a student in the Anthropology department of IFAN at the University Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar, and led a seminar with graduate students on ethnographic field methods. I believe the funding of WARA helped to create new partnerships with Senegalese institutions and will help promote further research in Senegal through publications that may come from this research.
email: emilyon@gmail.com
International Courts and the African Woman Judge: Unveiled Narratives by Dr. Josephine Dawuni of Howard University
Book Review
WARA Board Member
A sequel to the pioneering study on Gender and the Judiciary in Africa: From Obscurity to Parity?, this book examines the issue of gender diversity, representative benches and international courts by focusing on women from the continent of Africa who have served in international courts. This study challenges existing discourse on gender diversity in international courts by arguing the need to disaggregate gender diversity with a view to understanding intra-group differences, strengths, challenges and contributions. While feminist legal scholars have interrogated the questions of gender diversity on international courts, no study has focused exclusively on who the women judges are, how they get to the courts and what happens when they get there. This book provides the first detailed account of women on international courts with a focus on African women. It provides a fresh and focal examination on the question of gender diversity by detailing the experiences of nine women judges. Situated within different theoretical frameworks, but drawing largely from postcolonial feminism, feminist institutionalism, feminist legal theory and legal narratives, this book brings together established scholars, creating a multidisciplinary platform for investigating questions on judicial appointments, gender, geographic location, class and professional capital, among others, combine to shape the lives of the African women who sit on international courts. Using primary data collected through personal interviews, each chapter provides glimpses into the lives and professional trajectory of each judge, providing a rich and theoretically grounded narrative which, would otherwise not be heard in mainstream feminist legal scholarship. The book makes an important contribution to feminist legal scholarship by using legal narratives as a tool to unveil the silences on the lives of women from Africa who have made great gains in accessing international benches. Furthermore, this book is positioned as a leading exposition on the need for documenting the contributions women from Africa are making to both domestic and international courts. The book makes critical contributions to African feminism, feminist legal scholarship, international law, gender studies and gender and judging. In essence, this book opens the door for future research on African women at the nexus of gender, courts, judging and international law and organizations. This book will be of interest to a wide variety of audiences including governments, policy makers, civil society organizations and for courses on women and genders studies, women and politics and feminist activists interested in all questions on gender and judging. The foreword is provided by Hon. Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald, former judge and president of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and former arbitrator, Iran-US Claims Tribunal (IUSCT). 28
Artist Spotlight:Yelimane Fall Yelimane Fall is a Senegalese artist and community activist who has a unique calligraphic style that portrays a vibrant modern aesthetic. Fall’s work reflects Murid values of acceptance, selfreliance, and hard work. In his calligraphy, he uses both Arabic and Ajami—the Arabic alphabet adapted for writing certain African languages (his specifically is in the Wolof language)— thus reaching wide audiences. Fall encourages viewers to take their time so that the layers of meaning can slowly reveal themselves. He signs all of his work as "MF" or Messenger of Faith, because he believes in the importance of sharing faith, whichever form or religion it may take, in the path towards world peace, love, and acceptance. This exhibit provides a unique opportunity to access this visual world. The Paintings of Yelimane Fall is a joint project of the artist and the West African Research Association. The exhibition is divided into three sections: Community, Literacy, and Activism. Photographs taken by exhibition curator Cynthia Becker form an essential part of the visual experience, providing a context for Fall’s artistic practice. The exhibition is 56 running feet and consists of twelve framed pieces, four pieces on wood, nine mounted photographs, printable labels for all pieces, and a bibliography and list of suggested speakers. The rental fee for the exhibition is $1750 ($1500 for WARA member institutions), plus shipping and insurance. The West African Research Association wara@bu.edu 617-353-8902 www.bu.edu/wara
ACPR: African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review is an interdisciplinary forum for creative and rigorous studies of conflict and peace in Africa, and for discussions among scholars, practitioners, and public intellectuals in Africa, the United States, and other parts of the world. ACPR provides a wide range of theoretical, methodological, and empirical perspectives on the causes of conflicts and peace processes. These include cultural practices relating to conflict resolution and peacebuilding, legal and political preventative measures, and the intersection of international, regional, and local interests and conceptions with conflict and peace. ACPR: African Conflict & Peacebuilding Review is published in partnership with the West African Research Association. Read for Free Armed Rebellion, Violent Extremism and the Challenges of International Intervention in Mali bit.ly/jstor-acp-7-2-3 Women’s Agency and Violence against Women: The Case of the Coalition on Violence Against Women in Kenya bit.ly/jstor-acp-7-1-4 The Responsibility to Protect and the African Governance Architecture: Explaining the Nexus bit.ly/jstor-acp-6-2-5
With direct flights to and from Dakar, Senegal, SAA is the preferred airline for travel of the West African Research Association. WARA Members receive a 10% discount when flying South African Airways. Please email wara@bu.edu for information on how to use the discount.
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WARA 2019 FELLOWSHIPS
Applications for the 2019 WARA Fellowship competition ARE NOW OPEN! Apply online at: https://bit.ly/2BdELTk The application deadline is February 1st, 2019
The WARA Pre-Doctoral Fellowship is open to U.S. citizens who are currently enrolled in graduate programs at institutions of higher education in the United States to conduct research in West Africa during the summer of 2019. More information here: https://bit.ly/2pm15Yc The WARA Post-Doctoral Fellowship is open to U.S citizens already holding a Ph.D. who are currently affiliated with an academic institution or who work in another related domain and would like to conduct research in West Africa. More information here: https://bit.ly/2zjkZ9E The WARC Library Fellowship is designed to provide experience in West Africa for practicing librarians and for the next generation of Africana librarians. Open to U.S citizens, this fellowship provides round trip travel to Dakar and a stipend of $2,500 to cover the cost of living during the summer of 2019. More information here: https://bit.ly/2Ddy1pY The WARA Residency Fellowship offers residencies for WARA member institutions to host a West African Scholar on their campus. More information here: https://bit.ly/2TsUbMGÂ
WARA fellowships, funded by a grant from the Educational and Cultural Affairs bureau of the US Department of State through Council of American Overseas Research Centers, make it possible for a broad range of educators and students to experience professional exchanges and carry out research projects in West Africa.
WARA Institutional Members The Africa Network American Councils American University Boston University Bridgewater State University The College of Wooster Colorado College Columbia University The Dakar Institute Florida International University Garden City University College Harvard University Hobart and William Smith Colleges Howard University Indiana University Iowa State University Kalamazoo College Kent State University Lafayette College Michigan State University Northern Illinois University Northwestern University Ohio State University Ohio University Rutgers University Saginaw Valley State University Santa Clara University Smithsonian Institution South Dakota State University Union Theological Seminary University of California at Berkeley University of California at Los Angeles University of California at Santa Barbara University of Chicago University of Florida University of Georgia University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign University of Kansas University of Minnesota University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University of Wisconsin-Madison Willamette University Virginia State University Yale University The West African Research Association is a member of the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) based at the Smithsonian Institution. WARA is the only Sub-Saharan African member of CAORC. More information on CAORC is available at: www.caorc.org .
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West African Research Association Boston University African Studies Center 232 Bay State Road, Room 408 Boston, MA 02215