Tag Archives: politics
Dialogue with Boko Haram: back on the agenda?
From the Institute for Security Studies 02 JUL 2019 BY AKINOLA OLOJO There is a hurting stalemate in the Lake Chad Basin. Countries under the mandate of the Multinational Joint Task Force (MNJTF) are locked in a protracted struggle against two factions of the terror group Boko Haram. Benin, Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria all have their military […]
Official documents online
New Web Repository for Endangered Official Documents: Africa and Middle East The Center for Research Libraries has launched an open web repository initially digitizing or web harvesting more than 40,000 issues of official gazettes from ten African and Persian Gulf nations where the integrity of the public record is known to be at risk. As […]
Map shows smuggling route for poached ivory
An interactive map illustrates how ivory poaching and smuggling (in this case) from the Central African Republic to Sudan supports the violent campaigns of terror groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army. “National Geographic commissioned the creation of artificial tusks with hidden GPS trackers that were planted in the smuggling supply chain.” Read more in the article […]
BBC: Reporting Burundi’s coup with the music-sharing site SoundCloud
From the BBC Trending blog on July 6, 2015. Independent radio journalists in Burundi are using social media to circulate news during the country’s political crisis. SOS Médias BURUNDI in Bujumbura is also making effective use of SoundCloud…”an app more often associated with indie bands, niche podcasts and DJ remixes.” State-run and pro-government media continues to operate, but independent journalists […]
South Africa’s post-Apartheid archives in danger
In an opinion piece for the Daily Maverick titled National Archives crisis: records of democratic South Africa could be lost – probably forever, Ismail Lagardien wrote on 15 June, 2015 that democratic South African archival records are in grave danger, despite model legislation in place to support their long-term preservation: One research project, by Mpho Ngoepe, cited in the […]
Toolkit for Identifying Best Practices on Human Rights Documentation
The Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) announces a Request for Proposals from individuals and organizations interested in designing and implementing a project that will define aspects of human rights documentation overseas, including the development of a toolkit to guide civil society organizations and other stakeholders working in this area. This project will […]
No such thing as an objective map
From Think Africa Press, “Terrabyte Incognita: Africa Might Not Look Like You Think It Does.” By James Wan, 28 March 2014. Much of this article reviews some well-known criticisms of 2 dimensional mapping of the 3 dimensional globe and the history of African map-making. However, the last section is fresh and I particularly like the way […]
Ethiopia: model of modern surveillance state?
From bOING bOING‘s Cory Doctorow: “They Know Everything We Do”, a new, exhaustive report from Human Rights Watch, details the way the young state of modern Ethiopia has become a kind of pilot program for the abuse of “off-the-shelf” surveillance, availing itself of commercial products from the US, the UK, France, Italy and China in […]
Map: What if Africa had not been colonized?
With thanks to Rachel Strohm and Savage Minds for bringing our attention to this (speculative, historical thought experiment) “map of African politico-tribal units circa 1844″ by Swedish artist Nikolaj Cyon. From the artist’s blog: the project is…about…historical precolonial African nations, and I have tried to form a map of the most prominent of those that existed between the 15th and […]
Peters projection map on West Wing
The Gall-Peters projection map is a common Introduction to African Studies (and world history) classroom discussion topic, but television makes it dramatic (this video clip from The West Wing television series is a brief and entertaining introduction if you aren’t already familiar with the map)! Wikipedia‘s wikimedia commons has a larger version of the image available. Related resources (a […]
African Studies library 