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"Es wäre zu wünschen, daß sich Herr Gottsched niemals mit dem Theater vermengt hätte […]. Er verstand ein wenig Französisch und fing an zu übersetzen; er ermunterte alles, was reimen und 'Oui Monsieur' verstehen konnte, gleichfalls zu übersetzen." Diese vernichtende Kritik Lessings von 1759 beeinflusst bis heute das Urteil über den einstigen "Literaturpapst" Gottsched in deutschen Literaturgeschichten. Das kann aber kein Hindernis sein, um für eine Geschichte des Übersetzens Gottscheds Verdienste als Verfasser, Herausgeber und Förderer von Übersetzungen (insbesondere aus der französischen Literatur der Aufklärung) genauer in den Blick zu nehmen.
Luise Gottscheds Übersetzungen können als wichtiger Beitrag zur Vermittlung zentraler Texte der Aufklärung und der französischen und englischen Literatur für ein deutsches Publikum betrachtet werden. Sie übersetzte literarische, philosophische, journalistische, geistes- und naturwissenschaftliche Texte aus dem Französischen und Englischen, u.a. Werke von Molière, Bayle, Voltaire, Destouches, Fénelon, Addison und Pope sowie von zahlreichen weniger bekannten Autoren und Autorinnen. Darüber hinaus verfasste sie eigene literarische Werke, insbesondere Dramen.
Horst Engert : Bibliographie
(2016)
Horst Engert, 1886–1949
(2016)
Der Literaturwissenschaftler Horst Engert, der 1927 an die Universität in Kaunas berufen wurde, hat sich neben seiner germanistischen Lehre und Forschung mit dem Übersetzen zeitgenössischer litauischer Literatur beschäftigt. Dies ist als Pionierleistung zu bewerten, da auf Deutsch bis dahin nur Übersetzungen der traditionellen litauischen Volkspoesie sowie der im 18. Jahrhundert entstandenen "Jahreszeiten" von Donelaitis/Donalitius vorlagen.
Gisela Drohla, 1924–1983
(2016)
Gisela Drohla gilt für die 1960er und 70er Jahre als eine der bedeutendsten westdeutschen Übersetzer und Vermittler russischer Literatur. Nach eigenen Angaben beherrschte sie Russisch, Georgisch, Griechisch, Englisch, Bulgarisch und Französisch. Trotz zahlreicher Publikationen in renommierten Verlagen wie Suhrkamp, Insel, Fischer, Kiepenheuer & Witsch oder Luchterhand blieben die biographischen Umstände der Übersetzerin in der Öffentlichkeit verschattet. Ihr übersetzerisches Handeln lässt sich jedoch ansatzweise aus in Verlagsarchiven aufbewahrten Dokumenten rekonstruieren.
Der vorliegende Report beschäftigte sich mit den Qualifikationsstrukturen hessischer Unternehmen. Es wurde dabei deutlich, dass sich die Beschäftigung geringqualifizierter Arbeitnehmer auf vergleichsweise wenige Betriebe in Hessen konzentriert. In 30% der hessischen Unternehmen sind fast 80% aller Geringqualifizierten beschäftigt. Um den möglichen Einfluss der Qualifikationsstruktur auf betriebliche Entwicklungen aufzuzeigen, wurden drei Betriebsgruppen gebildet. Unterscheidungsmerkmal bildete der jeweilige Anteil der Gering qualifizierten an den Gesamtbeschäftigten des Unternehmens. Es zeigte sich, dass Betriebe mit geringem Qualifikationsniveau in den Bereichen Ausbildung, betriebliche Weiterbildung und Innovationen vergleichsweise geringe Aktivitäten aufweisen. Auf der anderen Seite hatten sie zwischen 2000 und 2001 das stärkste Beschäftigungswachstum und zeichnen sich auch in Bezug auf Ertragslage und Geschäftsentwicklung durch für diese Gruppe unerwartet gute Ergebnisse und Prognosen aus. Hierin stellen diese Betriebe eine recht homogene Gruppe dar, es gibt kaum Unternehmen, die ihre wirtschaftliche Situation als „sehr gut“ oder als „mangelhaft“ bezeichnen. Des weiteren gibt es bei den Unternehmen mit geringem Qualifikationsniveau eine nicht unerhebliche Anzahl offener Stellen, auch für geringqualifizierte Arbeitskräfte. Auch dies ist angesichts der Tatsache, dass Stellenbesetzungsprobleme in erster Linie unter dem Stichwort „Fachkräftemangel“ diskutiert werden, ein überraschendes Ergebnis.
Beschäftigungsprognose 2017/2018 für die Region Rhein-Main : IWAK-Betriebsbefragung im Herbst 2016
(2016)
Folgende Beschäftigungstrends in der Region Rhein-Main sind für die Jahre 2017 und 2018 zu erwarten: Die Gesamtbeschäftigung in der Region Rhein-Main wird bis Ende 2017 voraussichtlich um 1,9 Prozent steigen, was einem Zuwachs von hochgerechnet 40.000 Beschäftigten entspricht. Die Zahl der sozialversicherungspflichtig Beschäftigten steigt mit 2,0 Prozent ähnlich stark an. Die künftige Beschäftigungsentwicklung verläuft in den Wirtschaftszweigen unterschiedlich. Mit weitgehender Stagnation rechnen bis Ende 2017 die Finanz- und Versicherungsdienstleistungen, die Energie- und Wasserversorgung sowie Erziehung und Unterricht. Insbesondere die Bereiche Verkehr und Lagerei, Handel, Baugewerbe sowie wirtschaftliche und wissenschaftliche Dienstleistungen rechnen mit überdurchschnittlichen Beschäftigungszuwächsen bis Ende 2017. Die Unterschiede zwischen der erwarteten Entwicklung der Gesamtbeschäftigung und der sozialversicherungspflichtigen Beschäftigung sind zwischen den Wirtschaftszweigen eher gering. Jobmotor der Region bleiben die kleineren Betriebe: Bis Ende 2017 erwarten Kleinstbetriebe einen Beschäftigungszuwachs von über vier Prozent. Kleine und mittelgroße Betriebe erwarten durchschnittliche Zuwächse von zwei Prozent. Großbetriebe erwarten eher unterdurchschnittliche Beschäftigungszuwächse. Auch mittelfristig erwarten die Betriebe in der Region Rhein-Main eher einen Anstieg der Beschäftigung; für Ende 2018 wird mit einem Zuwachs von rund drei Prozent im Vergleich zu Ende 2016 gerechnet. Hierbei ist aber zu berücksichtigen, dass Prognosen über einen längeren Zeitraum auch mit höheren Unsicherheiten verbunden sind. Auch in diesem Zeithorizont rechnen die kleinen Betriebe mit deutlich mehr Beschäftigten als die mittelgroßen Betriebe. Großbetriebe erwarten auch bis Ende 2018 eine unterdurchschnittliche Entwicklung der Beschäftigung.
Der dritte Report beschäftigte sich mit der Frage, wie sich die Weiterbildungsaktivitäten der hessischen Betriebe 2015 im Allgemeinen und in Bezug auf die Weiterbildung von einfach Beschäftigten im Speziellen darstellten und entwickelten. Insgesamt zeigte sich, dass die Weiterbildungsbereitschaft der hessischen Betriebe trotz leichter Veränderungen weiterhin auf einem vergleichsweise hohen Niveau lag. Die betriebliche Weiterbildung blieb in hessischen Betrieben ein zentrales Instrument in der Personalentwicklung. Besonders aktiv zeigten sich dabei die Betriebe aus den Dienstleistungssektoren und die Kleinbetriebe. Zudem scheinen Betriebe Anreizstrukturen für eine Teilnahme an Weiterbildungen zu schaffen. Sie übernahmen in den meisten Fällen die Kosten für eine Weiterbildung und Weiterbildungen fanden hauptsächlich während der Arbeitszeit statt, wodurch weniger Freizeit in Anspruch genommen werden musste. Dies deutet darauf hin, dass sich das Verständnis der Weiterbildung als betrieblich zu organisierende Aufgabe weiterhin verfestigte. Die Präferenzen für bestimmte Weiterbildungsmaßnahmen haben sich nach wie vor kaum verändert: Externe Kurse blieben die beliebteste Art der Weiterbildung, die 2015 sogar um wenige Prozentpunkte hinzugewann. Die eher flexible Form der Weiterbildung am Arbeitsplatz verlor jedoch etwas an Bedeutung. Ein weiterhin viel diskutiertes Thema bleibt die Nutzung von Nach- bzw. Weiterqualifizierung der einfach Beschäftigten, zu denen vor allem un- und angelerntes Personal zählt, als Potenzial der betrieblichen Fachkräftesicherung. Es hat sich herausgestellt, dass diese Tätigkeitsgruppe in Weiterbildungsmaßnahmen weiterhin stark unterrepräsentiert war. Dies könnte jedoch neben den bestehenden Unterschieden zwischen den Wirtschaftszweigen und den Betriebsgrößen, unter anderem mit der eingeschätzten Gefährdung des betrieblichen Fortbestehens bei hohem Wettbewerbsdruck und den unbesetzten Stellen für qualifiziertes Personal zusammenhängen. Das auf die Weiter- bzw. Nachqualifizierung abzielende Förderprogramm WeGebAU der Bundesagentur für Arbeit spielte in hessischen Betrieben kaum eine Rolle. Alles in allem besaßen Weiterbildungen in hessischen Betrieben einen hohen Stellenwert. Die betrieblichen Weiterbildungen in Hessen waren allerdings von Selektivität geprägt. Nicht alle Beschäftigungsgruppen waren gleichermaßen vertreten. Die bestehenden Potenziale in der unterrepräsentierten Tätigkeitsgruppe der einfach Beschäftigten sollten zukünftig im größeren Ausmaß aktiviert und genutzt werden, um flexibel und passgenau auf kommende Entwicklungen sowohl im technologischen Fortschritt als auch auf sich verändernde Strukturen am Arbeitsmarkt reagieren zu können.
Folgende zentrale Erkenntnisse liefert die Befragung der Betriebe der Region Rhein-Main: Knapp jeder fünfte Betrieb der Region hat in den vergangenen zwei Jahren Zuwanderer neu eingestellt, im Produzierenden Gewerbe sogar rund jeder vierte.
Die Mehrheit der Betriebe stellte Zuwanderer überwiegend aus EU-Staaten ein, im Dienstleistungsbereich wurden in vielen Betrieben auch Personen aus Drittstaaten eingestellt. Die große Mehrheit der Betriebe stellte hierbei Personen ein, die schon in Deutschland lebten, nur zehn Prozent der einstellenden Betriebe warb gezielt im Ausland an. Etwa ein Viertel aller Betriebe plant, zukünftig Zuwanderer einzustellen; unter den Betrieben mit ungedeckten Arbeitskräftebedarfen sogar mehr als die Hälfte. Die Herkunft der Zuwanderer spielt dabei kaum eine Rolle: Für etwa 80 Prozent der Betriebe ist es egal, ob die Arbeitskräfte aus der EU oder aus Drittstaaten stammen.
Der fehlende Bedarf ist der Hauptgrund, keine Zuwanderer einstellen zu wollen. In Betrieben mit Bedarfen stehen vor allem mangelnde Sprach- und Fachkenntnisse einer Beschäftigung von Zuwanderern entgegen. Die Einstellungsvoraussetzungen, die Zuwanderer erfüllen müssen, sind breit gestreut: Die Betriebe erwarten mehrheitlich sowohl Sprachkenntnisse als auch fachliche und soziale Qualifikationen; ein anerkannter Abschluss ist weniger bedeutsam, finanzielle Aspekte spielen keine Rolle. Seitens der Betriebe werden unterschiedliche Unterstützungsangebote zur Integration in Betracht gezogen, die von alltagspraktischen Fragen bis zur gezielten Weiterbildung reichen. Nur ein Viertel der Betriebe sieht sich außerstande, Zuwanderern spezifische Unterstützung zuteilwerden zu lassen. Die Agenturen für Arbeit und die Job-Center sind die meist genannten Akteure, wenn es um die Gewinnung von Zuwanderer für die Betriebe geht. Das Anerkennungsgesetz als Instrument zur besseren Arbeitsmarktintegration von Personen mit ausländischem Berufsabschluss ist den Betrieben bislang nur wenig bekannt. Entsprechend gering ist die Bedeutung des Gesetzes für die Personalrekrutierung der Betriebe.
Betriebliche Ausbildung in Hessen 2015 : Stand und Entwicklung
IAB-Betriebspanel-Report Hessen
(2016)
Eingangs wurden die wachsenden Herausforderungen der betrieb-lichen Ausbildung beschrieben. Die Daten des IAB-Betriebspanels des Jahres 2015 zeigen, dass sich die Probleme nicht weiter verschärft haben. Insbesondere der Rückgang der Zahl der nicht besetzten Ausbildungsstellen ist hier zu nennen, auch wenn die Zahl nach wie vor hoch ist. Da parallel hierzu auch die Zahl der angebotenen Ausbildungsstellen zurückging, ist die Intensität der betrieblichen Ausbildung in Hessen deutlich niedriger als in der Vergangenheit. Da auch die generelle Ausbildungsbeteiligung leicht zurückging, kann von einer reduzierten Dynamik des Ausbildungsmarkts gesprochen werden. Inwieweit dies nur eine Momentaufnahme ist, lässt sich derzeit noch nicht absehen. Dass es strukturelle Faktoren sind, die hierbei eine Rolle spielen, ist in jedem Fall deutlich: Besonders große Schwierigkeiten, Ausbildungsstellen zu besetzen, haben wie in der Vergangenheit, die kleineren Betriebe sowie Betriebe des Baugewerbes. Dies sind zugleich Betriebe, die traditionell besonders viel ausbilden, um die eigenen Bedarfe zu decken. Folgerichtig ist in diesen Betrieben auch die Bereitschaft am höchsten, erfolgreiche Ausbildungsabsolventen weiter zu beschäftigten, um so die eigenen Potenziale zu binden und einen möglichen Attraktivitätsnachteil zu kompensieren. Generell zeigt die Übernahmequote, dass die Betriebe wohl die Zeichen der Zeit erkannt haben: Noch nie im Zeitraum der Panelbeobachtung wurden mehr Jugendliche in ihrem Ausbildungsbetrieb übernommen wie im Jahr 2015. Dies lässt sich als deutlicher Indikator werten, dass die ausbildenden hessischen Betriebe stärker als in der Vergangenheit die Notwendigkeit sehen, eigene Fachkräfte heranzuziehen und zu binden.
Abschließend lässt sich festhalten, dass die hier gewonnen Ergebnisse die der Vorgängerstudie „Kultur und regionale Wirtschaft“ bestätigen. Die Ausgangsthese eines positiven Einflusses der Kulturbranche auf die regionale Wirtschaft kann auch hier für die ergänzte Variable der SVB und GEB in der Kulturwirtschaft nicht erwiesen werden. Während sich für die Region FrankfurtRheinMain sogar ein signifikanter, leicht negativer Einfluss der Kultur auf das BIP pro Kopf ergibt, lässt sich für die Region Stuttgart und auch im Rahmen der Gesamtbetrachtung der beiden Regionen kein signifikanter Zusammenhang feststellen. Der Kreativwirtschaft kann dagegen ein positiver Einfluss auf die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung einer Region zugeschrieben werden. Sowohl für die Region Stuttgart als auch die Region FrankfurtRheinMain hat sich im Rahmen der ergänzenden Betrachtung ein signifikanter positiver Zusammenhang ergeben. Auch besteht in beiden Regionen ein positiver Zusammenhang zwischen der Entwicklung der SVB und GEB in der Kreativ- und Kulturwirtschaft (zusammen betrachtet) und dem BIP pro Kopf. Auch diese Ergebnisse können als Anreiz gesehen werden, bisherige Sichtweisen und verbreitete Annahmen über Kultur und deren Einfluss auf die regionale Wirtschaft zu diskutieren. Abschließend sei auch hier angemerkt, dass von diesen Ergebnissen natürlich nicht die gesellschaftliche, politische und individuelle Bedeutung von Kultur tangiert wird.
Mit dem vorliegenden Abschlussbericht zum IAB-Betriebspanel Hessen 2015 werden die Ergebnisse aus vier Reporten zusammengeführt sowie um ausgewählte Daten zur Betriebs- und Beschäftigtenstruktur ergänzt. Ziel des Berichtes ist es, aktuelle und repräsentative Daten zur Beschäftigungs- und Qualifikationsstruktur, zum betrieblichen Aus- und Weiterbildungsverhalten, der Beschäftigungsdynamik sowie zur Situation älterer und einfach beschäftigter Arbeitnehmer in Hessen bereitzustellen. Die demografische Entwicklung gilt als eine der zentralen Herausforderungen der Zukunft. Sie beeinflusst die Beschäftigungssituation in den Betrieben bereits heute nachhaltig. So ist der Anteil der Betriebe mit einem hohen Anteil älterer Beschäftigter an der Gesamtbeschäftigung seit 2002 kontinuierlich gestiegen. In immer mehr Betrieben machen Ältere mindestens die Hälfte der Belegschaft aus und auch ihr Anteil an der Gesamtbeschäftigung stieg seit 2011 deutlich an. In Anbetracht der demografischen Entwicklung und prognostizierten Fachkräfteengpässe wird erwartet, dass die Potenziale verschiedener Beschäftigtengruppen stärker genutzt werden. In Kapitel 2 werden neben den Beschäftigtenanteilen der Älteren sowie dem betrieblichen Weiterbildungsverhalten in Bezug auf diese Beschäftigtengruppe auch die Beschäftigungsverhältnisse von Frauen genauer betrachtet, denn Frauen sind nach wie vor in atypischen Beschäftigungsformen besonders stark vertreten. Die Ausweitung ihrer Beschäftigung bildet ein bislang nicht ausgeschöpftes Potenzial zur Fachkräftesicherung. Den Betrieben stehen mit der betrieblichen Aus- und Weiterbildung zwei Instrumente zur Verfügung, mit denen sie aktiv auf die Fachkräftesituation einwirken können. Die duale Berufsausbildung gilt dabei als zentrale Strategie zur Generierung qualifizierter Arbeitskräfte. In Kapitel 3 des vorliegenden Berichts werden aktuelle Entwicklungen der betrieblichen Ausbildungssituation in Hessen sowie Übernahmequoten erfolgreicher Ausbildungsabsolventen diskutiert. Die betriebliche Weiterbildung stellt eine Möglichkeit dar, Nach- oder Anpassungsqualifizierung von bereits beschäftigten, aber noch nicht ausreichend qualifizierten Arbeitskräften zu erreichen. In Kapitel 4 wird neben der betrieblichen Weiterbildung auch das Potenzial von Beschäftigten mit einfachen Tätigkeiten, die meist gering oder formal gar nicht qualifiziert sind, diskutiert. Mit Blick auf die prognostizierte geringere Nachfrage nach dieser Tätigkeitsgruppe und den höheren Bedarfen an Fachkräften liegt es nahe, die bestehenden Potenziale der einfach Beschäftigten stärker zu nutzen, um dem drohenden Fachkräftemangel innerbetrieblich entgegenzuwirken. Aus- und Weiterbildungsaktivitäten dienen neben der Bereitstellung benötigter Qualifikationen auch der Bindung von qualifizierten Beschäftigten. Besonders in Zeiten konjunktureller Konsolidierung und des demografischen Wandels in denen Fachkräfte verstärkt nachgefragt werden, verfügen diese über verbesserte Verhandlungspositionen und vermehrte Optionen. Folglich müssten Betriebe ihr Potenzial zur Bindung der Beschäftigten stärker nutzen. Das Kündigungsverhalten der Arbeitnehmer beeinflusst, neben der Personalsuche und dem Neueinstellungsverhalten der Betriebe, die personelle Dynamik in den Betrieben. Für 2015 wird erwartet, dass sich die Personalbewegungen in hessischen Betrieben dynamisch zeigen, d.h. es werden viele Neueinstellungen und mittlere Zahlen an Personalabgängen prognostiziert. In Kapitel 5 wird zudem diskutiert, ob sich die Möglichkeiten, qualifizierte Arbeitskräfte zu rekrutieren und zu halten zwischen Betrieben, die in der Aus- und Weiterbildung aktiv sind und denjenigen, die weniger aktiv sind, systematisch unterscheiden. Die Darstellungen zur Betriebs- und Beschäftigtensituation in Hessen für das Jahr 2015 basieren auf Daten, welche bei 1.046 Betrieben in Hessen erhoben wurden. Grundgesamtheit der Bruttostichprobe ist die Betriebsdatei der Bundesagentur für Arbeit, welche alle Betriebe mit mindestens einem sozialversicherungspflichtig Beschäftigten enthält. Damit Aussagen zu allen Betrieben in Hessen möglich sind, werden die Daten zu den Einzelbetrieben nach Betriebsgröße und Wirtschaftszweig gemäß der tatsächlichen Verteilung der Betriebe in Hessen gewichtet (ausführlich hierzu Kapitel Datengrundlage und Methodik). Die Angaben sind nach der Gewichtung repräsentativ für alle hessischen Betriebe und Dienststellen mit mindestens einem sozialversicherungspflichtig Beschäftigten. Sie erlauben nach Wirtschaftszweigen und Betriebsgrößen statistisch gesicherte Aussagen. Wo immer dies möglich ist, werden kurz- und mittelfristige Entwicklungen nachgezeichnet sowie Erwartungen für die Zukunft dargestellt. Eine differenzierte Darstellung der Ergebnisse nach Wirtschaftszweigen und Größenklassen der Betriebe findet sich immer an den Stellen, wo dies möglich und sinnvoll ist.
Das vorliegende Papier stellt in Kurzform die wichtigsten Ergebnisse des Projektes „regio pro – Flächendeckende Einführung des Frühinformationssystems zur Qualifikations- und Beschäftigungsentwicklung in Hessen“ dar. Der gesamte Projektzeitraum erstreckte sich vom 01.06.2011 bis zum 31.12.2016. Gefördert wird das Projekt vom Hessischen Ministerium für Wirtschaft, Energie, Verkehr und Landesentwicklung aus dem Europäischen Sozialfonds und Landesmitteln.
Wohlfahrt, Wohlbefinden, Well-being oder Lebensqualität, es gibt eine Reihe von Begriffen, die als Maß für gesellschaftlichen Wohlstand diskutiert werden. Gemeinsam ist diesen Ansätzen der Versuch, von einer rein ökonomischen Messung der Wohlfahrt etc. - gemessen am Bruttoinlandsprodukt (BIP) – und hin zu einer ganzheitlichen oder zumindest breiteren Beschreibung des Wohlstands zu gelangen. In dieser Studie wird der Begriff Wellbeing dafür verwandt. Bisher erfolgt die Diskussion über dieses Thema überwiegend auf der Ebene von Nationalstaaten und mittels international vergleichender Untersuchungen. Auf regionaler oder lokaler Ebene sind breitere Ansätze zur Wohlstandsmessung bisher wenig(er) verbreitet, und das, obwohl die Bedeutung von Regionen in den vergangenen Jahren - trotz oder wegen Globalisierung und Internationalisierung - deutlich zugenommen hat. Aus regionalpolitischer Perspektive besteht hier eine "Wissenslücke", da viele Entscheidungen für das Wellbeing nicht auf nationaler, sondern auf regionaler Ebene getroffen werden. Hier knüpft die vorliegende Studie an. Ausgangspunkte sind zum einen die inzwischen verbreitete Kritik am Bruttoinlandsprodukt als zentralem Wohlstandsindikator und zum andern die, u.a. von der OECD vertretene Aussage, dass bei einem breiter definierten Wohlstandsbegriff auf regionaler/lokaler Ebene größere Unterschiede des Well-being bestehen als auf nationaler Ebene. Davon ausgehend richtet sich das Erkenntnisinteresse dieser Untersuchung darauf, das objektive Well-being kleinräumig zwischen und innerhalb von Regionen quantitativ zu messen und damit die Frage zu beantworten, welche inter- und intraregionalen Unterschiede dabei bestehen. Erfasst wird das objektive Well-being anhand von zehn Indikatoren für die Bereiche Wirtschaft, Gesellschaft, Umwelt, Region. Die Indikatoren und Bereiche basieren auf dem Konzept der Enquetekommission des Bundestages für „Wachstum, Wohlstand und Lebensqualität“. Deren Indikatoren wurden für die regionale Ebene teilweise modifiziert und ergänzt. Der Untersuchungszeitraum umfasst die Jahre 2000 bis 2011. Die Untersuchung erfolgte zum einen deskriptiv. Die Indikatoren wurden regionsvergleichend sowie für ausgewählte Regionstypen in dem betrachteten Zeitraum beschrieben. Damit lassen sich erste Erkenntnisse über regionale Unterschiede im Well-being gewinnen. Verglichen wurden exemplarisch die beiden Metropolregionen FrankfurtRheinMain und Stuttgart sowie intraregional die Städte und Kreise in diesen beiden Regionen. Zum andern wurde das inter- und intraregionale objektive Well-being anhand eines ganzheitlichen Index gemessen. Methodisch basiert diese Messung auf einem statistisch-ökonometrischen Verfahren (Structural Equation Modelling (SEM)). Mittels dieser Methode können die einzelnen Indikatoren hinsichtlich ihrer Bedeutung für das Well-being (ungleich) gewichtet und in einem einzigen Well-being-Index für die unterschiedlichen Regionsabgrenzungen erfasst werden. Bereits die deskriptiven Untersuchungsergebnisse bestätigen die Ausgangshypothese, wonach Unterschiede im regionalen Well-being zwischen und innerhalb der beiden Metropolregionen bestehen. Beim interregionalen Vergleich der Indikatoren bestehen bei den Einzelindikatoren teilweise deutliche Differenzen zwischen den Regionen. Gemessen an der Bewertung der einzelnen Indikatoren hat mal die Region Stuttgart, mal die Region FrankfurtRheinMain „die Nase vorn“. Der Verlauf der Indikatoren zeigt in beiden Regionen einen ähnlichen Entwicklungstrend.
The papers here were selected from presentations made at the 24th Annual Conference of the Linguistic Association of Nigeria (LAN) which held at Bayero University Kano. The book contains seventy-seven (77) papers addressing various issues in linguistics, literature and cultures in Nigeria. The book is organized into four sections, as follows: Section One - Language and Society; Section Two - Applied Linguistics; Section Three - Literature, Culture, Stylistics and Gender Studies and Section Four - Formal Linguistics.
Kinsmen of the President
(2016)
Being a journalist in Nigeria is very risky business especially when you decide to go against the grain and print the truth. Jerry comes to see just how risky his job is when he is whisked away to jail after publishing a particularly scathing article. While in custody we see the prison system through his eyes and he takes us back as he feeds us with anecdotes of his former life.
Insights into Uganda
(2016)
Insights into Uganda' is a selection of newspaper articles written by columnist Kevin O'Connor for the Sunday Monitor, drawn almost entirely from 2007 to 2015. Divided into 13 chapters ranging from sex to religion and from inequality to the environment, the 193 articles are always thoughtful, often provocative and sometimes humorous. The text is further enlivened by Moses Balagadde's cartoons. Kevin provides a multitude of insights into Ugandan society, which amply reflect both the title of his column, Roving Eye, and his catchphrase, 'For the observer of human behaviour every scene has its interest'.
Combined together in three volumes are the author's writings on labour and employments relations in Nigeria spanning over three and a half decades. Volume three covers the dynamics of public sector employment relations and starts with a general review and critique of organised labour's perceptions of and contributions to the development crisis in Nigeria.
Critical Issues in Nigerian Property Law, a collection of writings in honour of Professor Jelili Adebisi Omotola, SAN, a former Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, who died on the 29th of March 2006, has ten chapters that closely examine not only the current state of Property Law in Nigeria, but also recent developments and other challenges that have surfaced since the infamous Land Use Act of 1999. The book is clearly a useful contribution to a growing body of knowledge on property law and practice in Nigeria.
Urgency of a New Dawn is the cry of most Southern Cameroonians against those who they experience to be an oppressive, Machiavellian, hostile, parasitising, captor-like, secessionist, assimilationist, discriminatory, and dehumanising la République du Cameroun, to which they were annexed through misleading UN and UK politics and Politics as a condition toward their independence from the UK in 1961. Extrapolating only on these two territories, Urgency of a New Dawn is no less the sweeping story of one too many other peoples across Africa, tormented by the heedless partitioning of the continent by colonisers and the consequential neo-patrimonial and ethnic African Politics and politics of belonging. Forced either into spaces that were never theirs, or pushed out of spaces that they struggle to claim and/or prove theirs, many African peoples today find themselves engaging in endless battles, not against colonisers but against fellow black Africans, for the survival of their essence, their culture, languages, traditions, dignity, modes of being and identification, right to equality, and freedom.
Pearls of Awareness
(2016)
Pearls of Awareness, contains poems of lyrical pleasure and spiritual upliftment. Its themes of ego-less awareness and awakening wisdom borrows from Buddhist mythical and mysterious teachings, African traditions and Christian Biblical teachings about the interconnectedness of all life, transcending boundaries of self and other, human, tree or animal, the living, the (un)placeable, the dead. The speaker's lyrical insights are comforting, even when mysterious, and because of their tone of tranquility and faith, eventually the listener will reach full understanding. Its strengths are its assured pacing of the poems, luminous imagery and wise insights, which brings clarity without explaining, making it work both as a spiritual message and enjoyable lyric.
In Compagnon ! Journal d'un noussi en guerre: 2002-2011 Garvey tells the story of intimate and professional life in Côte dIvoire during a decade of civil war. During that period Garvey played an important role in the paramilitary group FLGO-Abidjan, part of the militarised wing of the so-called patriotic movement who supported President Laurent Gbagbo. Compagnon! is the outcome of the collaboration of Marcus Mausiah Garvey and the anthropologist Karel Arnaut which began in 2009 when Garvey showed Karel his autobiography-in-progress. Since that day both became companions in a long, challenging but often intensely creative and reflective literary project which led, among other things, to this book.
This book explores the symbiotic relationship between philosophy and culture. Every philosophy emerges as a reaction to, or as justification for a particular culture and it is for this reason that philosophy may differ from one culture to another. It argues that philosophy is an essential part of every culture. Philosophy is the means by which every culture provides itself with justification for its values, beliefs and worldview and also serves as a catalyst for progress. Philosophy critically questions and confronts established beliefs, customs, practices, and institutions of a society. As reflective critical thinking, philosophy is linked to a way of life; a form of enquiry intended to guide behaviour; a form of thinking that sharpens and broadens our intellectual horizon, scrutinizes our assumptions, and clarifies the beliefs and values by which we live. Philosophy helps to liberate the individual from the imprisonment of ignorance, prejudice, superstition, narrow-mindedness, and the despotism of custom. Culture constitutes the raw data, the laboratory from which philosophers do their analytic experimentation. Culture is considered as philosophy of the first order activity. The book maintains that any genuine global philosophy must include philosophical traditions from all cultures and regions of the world, as it is by seeking alternative philosophical answers to some of the thorniest problems facing humanity that we are most likely to find more lasting solutions to some global problems. In this commitment to a universal humanity, we cannot afford to depend on solutions from a single culture or from the most influential cultures.
Myths of Peace and Democracy? : Towards Building Pillars of Hope, Unity and Transformation in Africa
(2016)
The myths of peace and democracy in Africa are at the heart of this volume. Democracy and peace have become buzz words across postcolonial Africa. The gospel of democracy and peace is preached by national governments and by civil society and international organisations alike. But to what extent are the ongoing sideshows and charades of quasi-oligarchies in Africa really democracy? What do ordinary Africans mean when they hunger and thirst for democracy and peace? Positive and noble as the loud sounding rhetoric about democracy and peace in Africa might seem, the reality of propaganda and dissemblance and of multi-dimensional violence are simply too overwhelming not to be disillusioning. This book interrogates the rampant violence, enduring conflicts, autocratic governance, and facades of democracy amidst claims and calls for enduring peace on the continent. This is a monumental resource book for human rights activists, conflict management practitioners, civil society activists, political scientists, statesmen and development practitioners. It poses a challenge to those African governments who claim to embrace principles of democracy and respect for human rights to rethink and reconsider their role as ambassadors of peace, hope, transformation, and good governance.
Most African national economies depend on the exploitation of both renewable and non-renewable natural resources for development. Conventional and unconventional exploitation of natural resources has left negative carbon footprints. This has also degraded hotspots across the African continent, impacting negatively on people and the environment. A Green Economy offers the continent the opportunity to achieve sustained economic development devoid of environmental degradation and inefficient utilisation of natural resources. This book, Promoting Green Economy, explores issues affecting the socio-economic development of the continent and focuses on Africa's need for a green economy. With chapters written by seasoned authors from academia and industry across the continent, the book examines the challenges of sustainable management of Africa's natural resources and recommends the need for the continent to transit towards green economy as this can provide opportunities for minimising environmental footprints of all economic activities. The book calls on the commitment of the public and private sectors to the development of appropriate green economy policies and regulatory frameworks to promote inclusive growth.
This book on rights, entitlements and citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa shows how the playing field has not been as levelled as presumed by some and how racism and its benefits persist. Through everyday interactions and experiences of university students and professors, it explores the question of race in a context still plagued by remnants of apartheid, inequality and perceptions of inferiority and inadequacy among the majority black population. In education, black voices and concerns go largely unheard, as circles of privilege are continually regenerated and added onto a layered and deep history of cultivation of black pain. These issues are examined against the backdrop of organised student protests sweeping through the country's universities with a renewed clamour for transformation around a rallying cry of 'Black Lives Matter'. The nuanced complexity of this insightful analysis of the Rhodes Must Fall movement elicits compelling questions about the attractions and dangers of exclusionary articulations of belonging. What could a grand imperialist like the stripling Uitlander or foreigner of yesteryear, Sir Cecil John Rhodes, possibly have in common with the present-day nimble-footed makwerekwere from Africa north of the Limpopo? The answer, Nyamnjoh suggests, is to be found in how human mobility relentlessly tests the boundaries of citizenship.
The Mbos are a large ethnic group in present day Cameroon and an important and powerful group until the Anglo-French partition. Following the defeat of the colonial power, Germany, in the First World War (WWI), the League of Nations in a March 1916 Mandate, partitioned the territory into two unequal halves among the victorious imperial powers of England and France, to be governed in trust as from 1922. As a result of the partition, the Mbos, who happened to find themselves right along the lines of division, were thrust under French and English administration, respectively. Roughly two thirds of the Mbos found themselves in what had then become French (East) Cameroon, while the remaining one third was thrust under British (West) Cameroon rule. Today the Mbos, as a whole, occupy parts of the Littoral and Western (Francophone) and Southwest (Anglophone) regions of Cameroon. While the Francophone Mbos have, over the decades, benefited from all aspects of economic, social, political, and agricultural development, the Anglophone Mbos have been isolated and deprived of all the outward and physical (tangible) aspects of socio-economic and political progress. The persistence of such colonial divisions makes for inequality among the Mbos, despite their common ancestry, ethnicity and cultural heritage. This book seeks to update on diverse aspects of the study conducted on the British Mbos by J.W.C. Rutherfoord and others as a first step toward a comprehensive publication on the Anglophone Mbos.
Asomne amwue nda (Sorrow in the House) is an exposition of brutality, suffering, and sadness associated with destruction; citizens running scared, living in fear and don't know what to do. The poems illustrate how Africans find themselves lost in the midst of destruction. The collection exposes the emotions and sad feelings of soldiers and civilians; their experiences as a result of instability and suicide attacks. The poems are an expression of sorrow for a society that was once hailed for its communality but now is in ruins with conflicts and misunderstanding tearing society apart.
As Julius Nyerere once noted, Africa has largely been the continent of peace, though this fact has not been widely publicised. In reality, Africa possesses dynamic potentials for resolving contradictions and violent ruptures that colonial authorities, post-colonial states and global actors have failed to capture and capitalise upon. Drawing on the everyday experience of rural and urban people in Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia and Zambia, this book brings into conversation leading Japanese scholars of Southern Africa with their African colleagues. The result is an exploration in comparative perspective of the fascinating richness of bottom-up 'African potentials' for conflict resolution in Southern Africa, a region burdened with the legacy of settler capitalism and contemporary neoliberalism. The book is a pacesetter on how to think and research Africa in fruitful collaboration and with an ear to the nuances and complexities of the dynamic and lived realities of Africans.
This book questions the politicization/depoliticization of women's and feminists' organizations in the context of globalization. It explores some African pathways, in particular those of South Africa and Senegal. Extending beyond the notions of neoliberalism and 'gender digital divide', the author is searching, through the ICT use of those organizations, the inhibiting factors or the genesis of political action, and particularly the mechanisms of institutionalization. Palmieri shows that the impact of ICT and gender inequality combine to worsen and accelerate social hierarchies and may paradoxically create spaces where non-dominated gendered knowledge emerge. She dissociates domination and power. This book introduces new directions for feminist epistemology. Contemporary societies, strongly foot-printed by digital connection, are mixing the coloniality of power and patriarchy, and this dual system of domination can produce epistemic creation.
If You Must Fall Bush
(2016)
If You Must Fall Bush brings the wide-ranging poetic voice of Nsah Mala to readers one more time as he explores themes ranging from the wanderlust syndrome of the twenty-first century to issues of corruption and the emasculation of African traditional values. Reading the collection is like delving into a treasure trough since each page brings to the limelight a new poem with a refreshing idea and manner of articulation that makes the collection even more thrilling. The collection is a critique of the ill-informed opinion of youths who feel that far-off lands are greener pastures.
Zimbabwean history is rooted in ethnic and cultural identities, inequalities, and injustices which the post-colonial government has sought to address since national independence in 1980. Marginalisation of some ethnic groups has been one of the persistent problems in contemporary Zimbabwe. Of particular significance to this book is the marginalisation of the BaTonga people of north-western Zimbabwe - a marginalisation whose roots are right back to the colonial era. Post-colonial Zimbabwe's emphasis on cultural identity and confirmation has, however, prompted the establishment of community museums such as the BaTonga Community Museum (BCM), to promote cultures of the ethnic minorities. This book critically examines the effects and socio-economic contribution of the BCM to the local communities and other sectors of the economy. It draws extensively on and problematizes prevalent debates on the biography of things to surface out the primacy of agency in heritage and sustainability.
Pride Aside and Other Poems
(2016)
Pride Aside and Other Poems rattles the brain as it blurs thematic boundaries. Even though Bill F. Ndi's poems seem to clearly draw inspiration from everyday life, almost all the poems are structured as sonnets. Through the lines of the various poems in this collection, influences of poets from different schools of poetic creativity and streams of inspiration resonate. They bring to mind the metaphysical poets, the Romantics, the Symbolists, the Confessionalists, poets of the Beat Generation, Committed poetry, etc. As such reading the collection places the reader before a multifaceted and intriguing cultural document imbued with literary influences from Chaucer to W.B Yeats and beyond. However, their insight and the richness of their humanity transform the poems essentially into meditations on the soul of our civilization. This poetic work is vibrant and thought provoking.
Annette Schemmel provides a highly illuminating case study of the major actors, discourses and paradigm that shaped the history of visual arts in Cameroon during the second part of the 20th century. Her book meticulously reconstructs the multiple ways of artistic knowledge acquisition - from the consolidation of the 'Système de Grands Frères' in the 1970s to the emergence of more discursively oriented small artists' initiatives which responded to the growing NGO market of social practice art opportunities in the 2000s. Based on archival research, participant observation and in depth interviews with art practitioners in Douala and Yaoundé, this study is a must read for everyone who wants to better understand the vibrant artistic scenes in countries like Cameroon, which until today lack a proper state-funded infrastructure in the arts.
Development Perspectives from the South : Troubling the Metrics of [Under-]development in Africa
(2016)
Not so long ago, The Economist described Africa as a hopeless continent. This damning description specifically referred to the development status of Africa. While the debate on the political and socio-economic [under-]development of Africa had been raging on prior to the Economists daring but controversial pronouncements, it intensified from thereon. Many concerned people from within the continent and elsewhere have reproved the proclamation but mainly in newspapers and the broadcast media. Not enough has been done by development scholars to critically reflect on the description and status of Africas development condition in a nuanced and systematic fashion. Yet, it is through incisive reflections and systematic engagements with Africas situations and circumstances that directions and solutions to the African development predicament could be forged. The present volume is an attempt to open up a constructive dialogue between the Global North and the Global South on the African [under-]development conundrum. The book is an eye opener to African governments, social scientists, policy makers and development scholars concerned with the urgent need to rethink, reimagine and retheorise Africas development gridlock.
Diary of a Dismissed Delegate : Public Good at the Mercy of Bureaucracy and Sycophancy in Cameroon
(2016)
Diary of a Dismissed Delegate is the personal story of the trials and travails of George Ngwane as a civil servant in Cameroon. With documented evidence in support, the book delves into the destructive machinations of the bureaucracy and sycophancy at the heart of the Cameroonian public service, and its detrimental effects on meritocracy and the public good. It is a system where the personalisation of power devalues virtue, devotion and dedication to truth and the call of justice. For a country that has the ambition to recapture her lost middle income status, one that boasts of a huge critical mass of human capital, and that has all the potentials of a double digit economic development, political patronage and intolerance to creative freedom must be anathema.
Africa's Best and Worst Presidents seeks to deconstruct the current superstructure that colonialism created and maintains. It chastises and challenges Africans, academics in the main, to revisit and write a true history of Africa. Written by Africans themselves, such rewritten histories should aim to counter the counterfeit narratives which have proliferated, poisoned and diminished African sense of self and self-confidence. The history centred on African perspectives and experiences should go a long way in our quest to truly unfetter Africa from dependency, desolations and mismanagement. This book calls upon all Africans to stand up fearlessly and tirelessly to take on decadent and despotic regimes that have always held Africa at ransom as they get lessons from the best managers of state affairs on whose feats they must expand. The option to critique, cross-examine and dissect past African presidents and their excesses is aimed at giving the young and frustrated generations of Africans the intellectual resources they need to arm themselves in resolve and pursuit of Africa's emancipation.
There is no denying the havoc HIV/AIDS has wrecked around the globe. The worst impact is seen in the developing world and in impoverished communities in the developed world. However, being HIV positive is not a death sentence. Why then do many still die from it? Denial is the Killer is a fictionalisation of the reality on why and how the persisting vestiges of HIV/AIDS devastation can be stopped.
Decentralisation and Community Participation : Local Development and Municipal Politics in Cameroon
(2016)
This book explores how policies of decentralisation and community participation adopted in Cameroon in 1996 have played out on the ground since 2004. These reforms were carried out amid economic crisis, structural adjustment and political upheaval. At the time, popular sentiment was that change on the economic and political fronts was imperative. However, the ruling elite, some of whom had been shuttling around the state apparatus since independence, feared that succumbing to popular demands for change was tantamount to political suicide, as was the case elsewhere on the continent. These elites thwarted opposition demands for a sovereign national conference to discuss constitutional reform. The Francophone-dominated elite fiercely objected to Anglophone demands for the restoration of the Federal state that was dissolved in 1972. Instead, decentralisation was presented as an authentic forum for grassroots autonomy and municipal councils as credible arenas for community participation in local development. This study adopts an interdisciplinary approach to unearth the permutations of decentralisation and community participation in Cameroon. It explores how local actors have responded to the implementation of state policy of decentralisation. Further, it documents how local issues observed in Bali in the North West Region and Mbankomo in the Central Region of Cameroon impact and are impacted by national policies and processes.
When an Anglophone takes up the challenge to write in French and for those who think they have the monopoly of the French language, the result is exhilarating for the reader. This is regarding poetry born of the plume of Bill F. Ndi. Though this is not his first collection in the French language, The Crossroads: Black or Blackened smacks with the poets lexical usage and the imagery the words evoke to awaken the readers conscience of the misdeeds plaguing the society. The word choices are just and à propos. Esthetically and rhythmically, the poems in this volume jolt the readers senses.
Verses From My Roost
(2016)
'...this collection is both poetry and a reflection on poetry, on the creative process. In deceptively minimalist style characteristic of seasoned bards and a diction charged with intricate conceits, John Ngong Kum Ngong launches a scathing onslaught on the ruling barons of post-colonial nations who have privatised the nations' wealth and power.' Dr. Gilbert Ndi Shang, Bayreuth University, Germany
Pastoralism and Climate Change in East Africa provides systematic and robust empirical investigations on the impact of climate change on pastoral production systems, as well as participating in the ongoing debate over the efficacy of traditional pastoralism. This book is an initial product of the Project Building Knowledge to Support Climate Change Adaptation for Pastoralist Communities in East Africa implemented by the Centre for Climate Change Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam with support from the Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa. Traditional pastoralism has proved to be a resilient and unique system of adaptations in a dynamic process of unpredictable climatic variability and continuous human interactions with the natural environment in dryland ecosystems. Pastoral adaptations and climate-induced innovative coping mechanisms have strategically been embedded in the indigenous social structures and resource management value systems. Pastoral livelihoods have, nevertheless, become increasingly vulnerable to climate change impacts as a result of prolonged marginalization and harmful external interventions. The negative effect of global climate change has been an added dimension to the already prevailing crisis in the pastoral livelihood system, which is substantially driven by non-climatic factors of internal and external pressures of change such as population growth, bad governance and shrinking rangelands lost to competing activities.
Abdilatif Abdalla: Poet in Politics celebrates the work of Abdilatif Abdalla, one of Kenya's most well-known poets and a committed political activist. It includes commentary essays on aspects of Abdilatif Abdalla's work and life, through inter-weaving perspectives on poetry and politics, language and history; with contributions by East African writers and scholars of Swahili literature, including Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Said Khamis, Ken Walibora, Ahmed Rajab, Mohamed Bakari, and Sheikh Abdilahi Nassir, among others. Abdalla became famous in 1973, with the publication of Sauti ya Dhiki (Voice of Agony), a collection of poems written secretly in prison during three years of solitary confinement (1969-72). He was convicted of circulating pamphlets against Jomo Kenyatta's KANU government, criticizing it as 'dictatorial' and calling for political resistance in the pamphlet, 'Kenya: Twendapi?' (Kenya: where are we heading?). His poetry epitomizes the ongoing currency of classic Swahili form and language, while his work overall, including translations and editorships, exemplifies a two-way mediation between 'traditional' and 'modern' perspectives. It makes old and new voices of Swahili poetry and African literature accessible to a wider readership in East Africa, and beyond. Abdalla has lived in exile since 1973, in Tanzania, London, and subsequently, until now, in Germany. Nevertheless, Swahili literature and Kenyan politics have remained central to his life.
Marja-Liisa Swantz has spent a lifetime conducting participatory action research in Tanzania, and In Search of Living Knowledge encapsulates her reactions. She started her career in 1952 in Tanganyika as an instructor to the first generation of women teachers at Ashira Teacher's Training College, situated on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. In the first years of Tanzania's independence from Britain, she devoted five years (1965-1970) to participant research in a coastal Zaramo village near the capital city of Dar es Salaam. The research culminated in her book, Ritual and Symbol in Transitional Tanzanian Society, and a doctorate in Anthropology of Religion, which she received from the Swedish University of Uppsala in 1970. The author further developed the Participatory Approach to research while serving as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Dar es Salaam from 1972 to 1975. After becoming a lecturer at the University of Helsinki she continued to develop Participatory Action Research with Tanzanian and Finnish doctoral candidates in a project in Bagamoyo, Tanzania, known as Jipemoyo. She continued to apply the participatory approach in research projects as Director of the Institute of Development Research at the University of Helsinki, where she taught anthropology, and as a Senior Researcher at the World Institute for Development Economics Research Institute in Helsinki in the 1980s. Since retirement, the author has continued her research, writing, and participation in development projects in Tanzania, including projects in Mtwara and Lindi from 1992 to 1998, and for 12 years while involved in a Local Government Cooperation project between Hartola in Finland and Iramba in Tanzania.
Customary Law Ascertained Volume 3 is the third of a three-volume series in which traditional authorities in Namibia present the customary laws of their communities. It contains the laws of the Nama, Ovaherero, Ovambanderu, and San communities. Volume 2 contained the customary laws of the Bakgalagari, the Batswana ba Namibia and the Damara communities. Recognised traditional authorities in Namibia are expected to ascertain the customary law applicable in their respective communities after consultation with the members of that community, and to note the most important aspect of such law in written form. This series is the result of that process, It has been facilitated but the Human Rights and Documentation Centre of the University of Namibia, through the former Dean of the Law Faculty, Professor Manfred Hinz.
Proceedings of the 7th World Congress of African Linguistics, Buea, 17-21 August 2012 : Volume One
(2016)
Proceedings of the 7th World Congress of African Linguistics, Buea, 17-21 August 2012 : Volume 2
(2016)
Despite all the talk about African Renaissance, much of the continent is plagued by poverty and instability. To break out of that cycle, the guardians of African heritage (the old independence freedom fighters turned political leaders and their successors) and much of Afrocentric literature rightly promotes African ideas and solutions for African problems. While the idea in itself is noble, the danger is for Africa to close itself off and ignore 'outside' technical and intellectual innovations that it desperately needs to advance further. Africa through Structuration Theory - ntu-joins the discourse by attempting to restore intellectual freedom and convincingly defends structuration theory not only as the way forward for Africa but also as a legitimately African concept. It is innovative, refreshing and deserves to be heard across the world and appreciated especially by African graduates,'current and future'leaders of various African institutions or businesses, non-Africans who might hesitate to refer to such a theory when trying to understand and deal with African problems and the wider public who constitute the audience for this book. New in this edition: All chapters have been tightened up to make a clearer and more robust case. Chapter three, in particular, has been developed further in an attempt to demonstrate how Ubuntu is an African version of structuration theory. Overall, having both approached the subject from a rational perspective and presented Ubuntu in its preferred version, it became imperative to discuss the status/role of the African body in the expression of human agency and characterise different leadership practices in Africa that do not necessarily reflect the ideals of Ubuntu. Hence, Chapter 6: Body sociology and Africa and Chapter 7: The FS (fear and self-scrutiny) methodology of Ubuntu: a mapping of the field.
This is a comprehensive text on the function of thought in the history and political sociology of Cameroon. The book brings out how the 'hidden hand of history' fashions a political thought which, in turn, creates its own history. Instead of Cameroonians making history, history makes Cameroonians. The book shows how political ideas are fashioned in a post-colonial context in which Europeans impose a superordinate arrangement on a people together with its philosophers. 'Thinking the nation' in Cameroon on behalf of Europeans, especially after the leaders of the national liberation struggle were all eliminated, European philosophers put in place a 'repressive machine' under which Cameroonians were subjected between 1958 and 1990. Repression gave way to a refined form of enslavement - a modernised version of slavery. Cameroonians joined the bandwagon and have been producing and reproducing Western industrial economies while day-dreaming of what they will never become. The whole idea of nation-building in post-colonial Africa is put in question. This book offers students of political studies, sociology, anthropology and history compelling evidence to grapple with questions as to whether Cameroon is a state or a nation and questions of sovereignty and citizenship.
Gravitas: Poetic Consciencism for Cameroon is the poets requiem for the geographical expression code-named Cameroon. Vakunta speaks with the audacity of a daredevil and the certitude of a seer. This long poem has the twin virtues of gravity and clarity of purpose. The poet eschews the banality and sophistry characteristic of poetry for poetrys sake. Passion, sarcasm, and incisive irony are the hallmarks of this long didactic poem. The poet subscribes to Salman Rushdies pronouncement that a poets duty is to say the unutterable, name the unnamable, unmask masquerading miscreants and shame the scum of society. In this poem, music serves as a clarion call for examination of conscience, and alcohol ceases to serve as opium of the people. A bittersweet potion, this book echoes the defiant voice of a son-of-the-soil at odds with his native land gone topsy-turvy.
Shadows of Footsteps
(2016)
As memorable for the beauty of his descriptions as for his poetic vision, in these poems Mwangwegho captures the tenderness of Malawi and the fragility of it, as well as exploring the depths of our universal lives. In three sections, Shadows of Footsteps, takes us to corners of the past, to a view of shared African experience and to a space where internal freedoms speak. The journey is wild in parts, but graceful in completion.
Using expibasketical theory and findings, this book attempts to understand and explain some of the wonders of love and the impacts these have on the other human institutions (such as marriage and family) that are supposed to be erected on love and understanding. Love is a phenomenon that is hard to correctly master, most probably because it is loaded with a lot of uncertainties. This simple fact must be the reason behind the commonplace saying that love is blind; a statement that can have several interpretations, one of which being that it is hard to read or know exactly what is on the other party's mind. Love thus becomes not only an intriguing feeling but also potentially full of intrigues. Can love be so blind to realities and still be love? The book answers many of such queries by expanding and delineating the frontiers of love, and thence marriage and family.
Dangerous Pastime
(2016)
West African teachers and professors who are appropriating information and communication technologies (ICT) are making it part and parcel of education and everyday life. In Mali and beyond, they adapt ICT to their milieus and work as cultural agents, mediating between technology and society. They yearn to use ICT to make education more relevant to life, facilitate and enhance African participation in global debates and scholarly production, and evolve how Africa and Africans are projected and perceived. In sum, educators are harnessing ICT for its transformative possibilities. The changes apparent in student-teacher relations (more interactive) and classrooms (more dialogical) suggest that ICT can be a catalyst for pedagogical change, including in document-poor contexts and ones weighed down by legacies of colonialism. Learning from the perspectives and experiences of educators pioneering the use of ICT in education in Africa can inform educational theory, practice and policy and deepen understandings of the concept of appropriation as a process of cultural change.
The once acrimonious debate on the existence of African philosophy has come of age, yet the need to cultivate a culture of belonging is more demanding now than ever before in many African societies. The gargantuan indelible energised chicanery waves of neo-colonialism and globalisation and their sweeping effect on Africa demand more concerted action and solutions than cul-de-sac discourses and magical realism. It is in view of this realisation that this book was born. This is a vital text for understanding contextual historical trends in the development of African philosophic ideas on the continent and how Africans could possibly navigate the turbulent catadromous waters, tangled webs and chasms of destruction, and chagrin of struggles that have engrossed Africa since the dawn of slavery and colonial projects on the continent. The book aims to generate more insights and influence national, continental, and global debates in the field of philosophy. It is accessible and handy to a wider range of readers, ranging from educators and students of African philosophy, anthropology, African studies, cultural studies, and all those concerned with the further development of African philosophy and thought systems on the African continent.
#RhodesMustFall. Nibbling at Resilient Colonialism in South Africa by Francis Nyamnjoh was awarded the 2018 Fage & Oliver Prize. This book on rights, entitlements and citizenship in post-apartheid South Africa shows how the playing field has not been as levelled as presumed by some and how racism and its benefits persist. Through everyday interactions and experiences of university students and professors, it explores the question of race in a context still plagued by remnants of apartheid, inequality and perceptions of inferiority and inadequacy among the majority black population. In education, black voices and concerns go largely unheard, as circles of privilege are continually regenerated and added onto a layered and deep history of cultivation of black pain. These issues are examined against the backdrop of organised student protests sweeping through the country's universities with a renewed clamour for transformation around a rallying cry of 'Black Lives Matter'. The nuanced complexity of this insightful analysis of the Rhodes Must Fall movement elicits compelling questions about the attractions and dangers of exclusionary articulations of belonging. What could a grand imperialist like the stripling Uitlander or foreigner of yesteryear, Sir Cecil John Rhodes, possibly have in common with the present-day nimble-footed makwerekwere from Africa north of the Limpopo? The answer, Nyamnjoh suggests, is to be found in how human mobility relentlessly tests the boundaries of citizenship.
The major objective of the research is to produce evidence-based knowledge on the social and economic impacts of labour migration by looking at the challenges and opportunities of Ethiopian labour migration to the Gulf and South Africa. On the one hand, international migration from Ethiopia could be considered as an aspect of development problem. The major push factors that forces Ethiopian migrants to the Gulf and South Africa are economic/developmental problems ranging from lack of employment opportunities to wage differentials. On the other hand, international migration could be considered as an important resource that could be tapped for accelerating socio-economic development. At the general level, this research aims to examine the successes and failures of policies and institutions in realising the potentials of international migration for socio-economic development of the country and minimizing its adverse impacts. At the same time, the growing problem of illegal migration will be examined.
Dictated by overall (economic, social, political, technological, etc) realities that unfold at different times, the growth and development dictums have been reshaped and reframed continually, in an effort to accommodate and respond to emerging issues. Within the overarching theme of sustainable development, human development and inclusive growth and development are, for example, among the recent focuses of the global and national development agenda. The backdrop to this is that as individuals, communities, and societies get richer, the worrying levels of inequalities, exclusion and disparities are becoming an area of concern, drawing the attention of governments, planners, civil societies, researchers and academia. An overarching current issue has been an appreciation of high economic growth in the last 10 years, but which is marred by pervasive levels of poverty and inequality. Indeed, Africa, through Agenda 2063, has acknowledged the need for inclusive and sustainable development, as is also the commitment of the Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030) of the United Nations.Edited by Prof. Herman Musahara, this anthology entitled Inclusive Growth and Development Issues in Eastern and Southern Africa presents issues, challenges and progress in Rwanda, Mauritius, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Uganda. The issues covered include: trade; rural-urban linkages; the dynamics of poverty, vulnerability, and welfare; social policies for inclusive and sustainable development; productivity and informality; and financial direct support systems to the poor. The chapters are based on first-hand data, secondary data from different databases and systematic reviews of academic literature. Drawing on the findings and conclusions of the individual chapters, the book distills together the key lessons and also puts forth recommendations for policy and practice. As such, it is a good reading for researchers, policy and decision makers, academia and graduate students.
The early missionaries brought Christianity from the monogamous West to the polygamous societies of Africa. Were the missionaries right in demanding that converts dismiss all but one wife? Was this the demand of the Christian faith or of Western civilization? And were the converts right to dismiss their wives though they had married them according to the laws of the land? And who asked the children if they wanted their mothers to be dismissed and may or may not be married to another man? The book argues that while polygamy is an African reality, it is below Christian moral standards. However is stopping converted polygamous men and women from baptism best practice if we believe that sin can be forgiven for the one who repents? Can the shedding of responsibility for wives and children be made a precondition for such forgiveness?
Over a century much of Africa south of the Sahara embraced the Christian religion. Malawi, where 80% of the population identify as Christian is no exception, nor are the Ngonde at its northern border with Tanzania. While it is difficult to find someone who does not claim to be a Christian, African traditional religion is by no means dead and often practiced by many. While the two religions are not 'mixed', but they are both realities in many a Christians life, though realities of a different kind. The author explores the intricate and often varied relationship between the two and considers factors which increase or decrease dual religiosity.
This book presents an African Christian movement full of vitality and creativity. The reader will meet believers who drink milk so that they may dream about angels, reports about funerals where the mourners dance with the coffin on their shoulders and church members who are ritually not allowed to fertilize their fields or wear neck ties. The author?s unique insight into Malawi?s Christian community addresses important issues in society. Why have ?Spirit Churches,? including Pentecostalism, been so successful in Malawi? Why do some religious groups still refuse medical help, up to the point that children die of cholera? How did the independent churches deal with the colonial trauma? In this masterful portrait, Strohbehn takes the reader from industrial mine compounds to rural colonies, where churches have set up their own spiritual and political rule. He carefully dissects the fine lines between traditional notions and Christianity?s influence. We find a spiritual portrait of the Ngoni people, a fascinating cultural analysis of dancing and an encounter with a unique style of preaching.
Innovations in Achieving Sustainable Food Security in Eastern and Southern Africa addresses roles and issues related to social and institutional innovations and approaches in food security in Southern and Eastern Africa. They include implementation of food security policy, rural livelihood and agricultural innovation, land consolidation for food security, interdisciplinary school-based health for food security, harnessing indigenous and modern knowledge for food security, household food resource handling for food security, institutions for technological innovation, role of land tax in food security, trade protectionism and food security, and gender-power relations in food security.
Science and Spirituality
(2016)
Science and Spirituality is an attempt to highlight the spiritual potential within the recent and on-going discoveries in both the science of the quantum world and the science of the larger cosmos. Science is now confirming what the mystics of former ages taught us. Somehow, these mystics, through silence and meditation, were able to discern and touch deep truths about what existence means. Abstract Algebra, which was once perceived as purely abstract with no practical application, is now at the heart of explaining existence within the quantum world. Thus mathematics, science and spirituality are just different faces of the same reality. This small booklet 'Science and Spirituality' merely introduces different aspects of this one reality which the author hopes to develop in more detail in further booklets.
In this book Klaus Fiedler offers a candid critique of religious faith healing claims - a critique that extents to the Voluntary Male Medical Circumcision Campaign (VMMCC). The book reveals the lack of substantive evidence to back such healing claims and the contradiction between the VMMCC claims and the consequences of those claims in sexual health and practice.
Taming My Elephant
(2016)
In Oshiwambo, the elephant is likened to the most challenging situation that people can face. If an elephant appears in the morning, all planned activities are put on hold and the villagers join forces to deal with it. For Tshiwa Trudie Amulungu, the elephant showed up on many mornings and she had no choice but to tame it. Growing up in a traditional household in northern Namibia, and moving to a Catholic school, Amulungus life started within a very ordered framework. Then one night in 1977 she crossed the border into Angola with her schoolmates and joined the liberation movement. Four months later she was studying at the UN Institute for Namibia in Lusaka Zambia, later going on to study in France. Amulungu recounts the cultural shocks and huge discoveries she made along her journey with honesty, emotion and humour. She draws the reader into her experiences through a close portrayal of life, friends and community in the different places where she lived and studied in exile. This is a compelling story of survival, longing for home, fear of the return, and overcoming adversity in strange environments. It is also a love story that brought two families and cultures together.
Malawi Assemblies of God church embarked on a feasible journey of Vision 2020 that included every established church to plant one church and send one student to Bible school each year. From the time this vision was adopted, some churches have responded positively and some are still struggling on where and how to get involved. This booklet is a church planting and growth manual that will assist those that feel it is too difficult to plant and raise a church and those who would like to add knowledge in their task.
It is common knowledge that HIV is widespread in Malawi as it is in many other countries of Southern Africa. It is also a well-known fact that women suffer most and frequently are blamed the most. Many attempts are being made to address the pandemic and reduce the suffering, and often women are the focus. This book differs in that it looks at the other side, men. It contends that men have to play a major role in the fight, not only by changing behaviour but also by understanding concepts of masculinity and that women may also profit from that.
Soyinka's Language
(2016)
Combined together in three volumes are the author's writings on labour and employments relations in Nigeria spanning over three and a half decades. Volume one covers the Nigerian industrial relations industrial relations institutional and legal framework, trade unions and trade unionism, wage bargains and conflict relations.
As there are different races and people in the world, so there are different cultures - meaning that cultural diversity is inevitable. Through human contact and association cultures meet. In such meetings every individual and culture projects itself as worthy, and should be held in high esteem. In today's world it is not encouraging to be ethnocentric - always taking action or inactions that crystallize and project a feeling of one's own culture or racial superiority. Such attitude obstructs meaningful interaction, human relations, tolerance and co-operation. Conversely, the skill and ability to tolerate and communicate effectively with people from diverse cultures is a social activity which begins from thought to behaviour, in both spoken and non-spoken versions. The book contains 19 essays, structured into five parts.
The legal protection of intellectual property in Nigeria is the focus of this book. Its nine chapters dwell on copyright trademarks, patents, industrial designs and the legal protection of intellectual property in Nigeria. An overview is given of the law relating to the subject in order to facilitate a solid grounding in the law as a starting point from which various political, theoretical or other perspectives can be developed. There is substantial reliance on the relevant Nigerian statutes on copyright, trademarks, patents and industrial designs as contained in the Laws of the Federation 2004, and also on the reported cases decided in this area by Nigerian courts over the years. References are also given to the case and statutory laws in some other jurisdictions, especially where Nigerian legislative enactments need a reform. It is straightforward and comprehensive, intended as a basis both for undergraduates and for postgraduate courses, in addition to being useful to teachers, lawyers, judges, magistrates and accessible for general readership.
This is a book of reading on religion and culture in Africa comprising ten papers by experts in religion and cultural matters and an introductory note by the editor himself. Covered in the volume are papers covering: the impact of secularisation and urbanisation on a most cherished socio-cultural practice of the extended family system of the Isoko people in Nigeria; the traditional medical practices in Urhobo with particular focus on the use of local herbs to treat ailments; the socioreligious as well as the political significance of Obiri (family hall) in Ikwerreland; the rationale behind the use of the concept 'Dunamis' in the Gospel According to Staint Mark. Although his paper does not focus on African (traditional) religion, its inclusion here is based purely on the theological significance of the concept of 'Dunamis'; the extent to which evil spirits and mysterious forces have influenced the religion and culture of the Urhobo people of Nigeria; the significance of festivals in the traditional African society; John Wesley's innovations in Christendom and their implications for Africa; the recent unprecedented upsurge in the assumed use of religious powers to cast out evil spirits as well as for prayer healing among Muslims in Nigeria; the culture of alienation, anxiety and violence, drawing inspiration from the Fall Story of Genesis 3; and the widowhood practices of some areas in Nigeria.
This book contains papers which focus on the twin subjects of globalisation and information/communication technologies (ICTs). They express either fear or optimism regarding their effects on the survival of indigenous cultures, languages and literature. This book is a must read for anyone who is interested to learn more about the role of globalisation in the erosion of cultural as well as linguistic diversity, and the impact of ICTs in the development of indigenous languages in Africa.
A Grammar of Igala
(2016)
The book establishes 28 phonemic consonants and 7 vowels, as well as lexical and grammatical tones in Igala. It shows the canonical syllable types as V and CV with no complexity, and relates resyllabification to the retiming of segments as tone bearing units and the duration of their mora. The work discusses nine word classes, as well as ideophones and clitics in Igala. There are splitting verbs of various structures and fully-fledged pronouns with morphologically toneless clitic counterparts that are toned in their syntactic context, among other elements of the Igala morphology. The work establishes clitics as generally bearing the grammatical tones of various categories as a result of their morphological tonelessness and their availability for post-lexical tone assignment. It also accounts for the generally complex interaction of clitics and tones in the organisation of the morphosyntax and the tone-syntax interface. Igala has both verbal and nominal extensional affixes with various semantic features. Some interesting discussions in the Igala syntax include the structural and functional types of serial verb constructions, the detransitivizing process of verb movement in object demoting structures, coreferentiality in relativised constituents and the future/non-future temporal distinction. Complementary binominals are conjoined with a specified binominal morpheme, and their rigidly irreversible structures have implications in the Igala semantics. The binominals demonstrate a grammatically specified pattern defined over a conceptual space, showing the network among conceptual categories, such as kinship, marital, social, hunter-hunted, more-less and cause-effect relationships as reflected in the Igala grammar.
The book is an introduction to the study of culture, with emphasis on the dynamism factor intrinsic and susceptible to generating growth, development initiatives and change, especially in religion and other aspects of Nigerian society. The collection of 19 papers is organised into five parts: Concepts and Theoretical Alignments, Social Institutions in Culture Change and Development, Religious Traditions and Change Experience, Votaries and Sectarian Reaction to Culture and Religious Change, and Pastoral Objective and the Management of Cultural Diversity and Change in Christianity.
The papers in this volume were selected from the Silver Jubilee edition of the Annual Conference of the Linguistic Association of Nigerian (LAN) which was held at the Nigerian Educational Research and Development Council (NERDC), Abuja, Nigeria. The Silver Jubilee edition is dedicated to the father of Nigerian Linguistics, Professor Emeritus Ayo Bamgbose. Professor Emeritus Bamgbose was the first indigenous Professor of Linguistics in Nigeria, and the first black African to teach linguistics in any known university south of the Sahara. He was there from the very beginning, and together with co-operation of people such as the late Professor Kay Williamson, he nurtured Nigerian linguistics. He is not just a foremost Nigerian linguist, but also a most famous, respected, celebrated, distinguished, and cherished African linguist of all times. To be candid, Nigerian linguistics is synonymous with Professor Emeritus Bamgbose. In 58 well-written chapters by experts in their fields, the book covers aspects of Nigerian languages, linguistics, literatures and culture. The papers have not been categorized into sections; rather they flow, hence there is some overlapping in the arrangement. The book is an essential resource for all who are interested to learn about current trends in the study of languages, linguistics and related subject-matters in Nigeria.
The present volume, which is the 5th in the Nigerian Linguists Festschrift Series, is devoted to Professor Munzali A. Jibril, a celebrated icon in university administration, and an erudite Professor of English Linguistics. The title of this special edition was specifically chosen to crown Professor Jibril?s academic prowess in both English and indigenous Nigerian languages, and to mark and laud his official departure from active university lectureship. 72 assessed papers are included from the many submitted. Papers cover the main theme of the volume, i.e. the interaction between English and indigenous Nigerian languages, and there are a number of papers on other secular areas of linguistics such as: language and history, language planning and policy, language documentation, language engineering, lexicography, translation, gender studies, language acquisition, language teaching and learning, pragmatics, discourse and conversational analysis, and literature in English and African languages. There is also a rich section devoted to the majwor ?traditional? fields of linguistics - phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics.
The Landmarks Series is a research and publications outfit funded by the Landmarks Research Foundation to publish recent outstanding doctoral dissertations on any aspect of Nigerian linguistics, languages, literatures and cultures. This study is a departer from most previous work on Yoruba Grammar in the sense that rather than being purely a descriptive grammar; it attempts to provide a theoretical analysis of the internal and external syntax of Yoruba nominal expressions using the Chomskyan Principles and Parameters approach to syntax. This Generative theory attempts to characterize the grammar of all natural languages in terms of a set of universal principles that all languages share, and a set of parameters along which languages may vary. The book emphasizes the empirical motivation behind major theoretical proposals in that framework, and shows how views on the nature of universal grammar and cross-linguistic variation have developed over the years as a consequence of a massive increase in cross-linguistic syntactic research.
The papers in this collection present the numeral systems of more than twenty Nigerian languages. The papers mainly emanate from a workshop on the numeral systems of Nigerian languages organised by the Linguistic Association of Nigeria during its 23rd Annual Conference which was held at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The workshop arose from awareness created by Dr. Eugene S.L. Chan on the need for Nigerian linguists to document this severely endangered but very important aspect of natural languages. The quantum of mathematical computations - addition, multiplication, subtraction, or a combination of two or all of these - involved in the numeral systems of Nigerian languages is remarkable. The papers reveal that a variety of numeral systems do exist, such as: binary, decimal, incomplete decimal, duodecimal, quinary, quaternary, ternary, mixed, body-part tally systems, and much more. The book is a resource about how different languages manipulate their numeral systems.
This book describes the Nyae Nyae Village Schools, an innovative and unique mother-tongue education initiative set in north-eastern Namibia. Inspired by the optimism of Independence, the project was designed in close consultation with the Ju|?hoansi community in the early 1990s. Drawing upon their traditional knowledge transmission strategies, and initiated in a supportive political environment, the project exemplified ?best practice.? During the following two decades, the Village Schools have transitioned from a donor-supported ?project? to government schools, and have received much attention and support from donors, civil society organisations, researchers, and others. However, the students still do not seem to succeed in the mainstream schools. Why is this? Based on long-term field-work in the region, including interviews with Nyae Nyae residents over several years and work with involved organisations, the book addresses this question. Contextualising the Village Schools within post-Independence Namibia, southern African history and the global indigenous rights movement, it examines the enormous paradoxes that schooling presents for the Nyae Nyae community. ?Owners of Learning? is the English translation of the Ju|?hoansi word for ?teacher? and it serves to highlight a fundamental question ? to whom does education belong?
The most extensive urban demographic transitions ahead will take place in Africa and Asia. These transitions occur in regions where the majority of inhabitants remain trapped in vulnerable employment, which limits the capacities to plan, save, invest, and afford critical amenities, as well as limits the horizons of what is considered possible. Yet, the aspirations for mobility, security, consumption, and attainment are enormous. How can different rationalities and practices of everyday sociality be more effectively connected to the prevailing concepts informing formal political and policymaking projects? How can incommensurable facets of urban life be folded into each other as a matter of an enlarged political practice? There is no pre-existent map that tells us how to link these equally important dimensions of urban life. Thus, any effort to consider the relationship between them is by necessity an experiment.
This book brings together recent and ongoing empirical studies to examine two relational kinds of politics, namely, the politics of nature, i.e. how nature conservation projects are sites on which power relations play out, and the politics of the scientific study of nature. These are discussed in their historical and present contexts, and at specific sites on which particular human-environment relations are forged or contested. This spatio-temporal juxtaposition is lacking in current research on political ecology while the politics of science appears marginal to critical scholarship on social nature. Specifically, the book examines power relations in nature-related activities, demonstrates conditions under which nature and science are politicised, and also accounts for political interests and struggles over nature in its various forms. The ecological, socio-political and economic dimensions of nature cannot be ignored when dealing with present-day environmental issues. Nature conservation regulations are concerned with the management of flora and fauna as much as with humans. Various chapters in the book pay attention to the ways in which nature, science and politics are interrelated and also co-constitutive of each other. They highlight that power relations are naturalised through science and science-related institutions and projects such as museums, botanical gardens, wetlands, parks and nature reserves.
Achieving a new integration of Africa into the world economy in the neoliberal era prompts discussion of the success and failure of economic policies undertaken so far in African countries; And how to address the factors that currently hamper Africa's development in a globalized economy. What does globalization mean for Africa? What changes does it imply? Which models of development impose, and under what conditions? A comprehension essay is presented in this book.
What are the issues discussed today by African philosophers? Four important topics are identified here as important objects of philosophical reflection on the African continent. One is the question of ontology in relation to African religions and aesthetics. Another is the question of time and, in particular, of prospective thinking and development. A third issue is the task of reconstructing the intellectual history of the continent through the examination of the question of orality but also by taking into account the often neglected tradition of written erudition in Islamic centres of learning. Timbuktu is certainly the most important and most famous of such intellectual centres. The fourth question concerns political philosophy: the concept of 'African socialisms' is revisited and the march that led to the adoption of the 'African Charter of Human and Peoples' Rights' is examined. All these important issues are also fundamental to understanding the question of African languages and translation.
Scholars, especially those interested in understanding how leadership has inhibited academic freedom and hindered effectiveness of institutions of higher learning have for long been engaged by the very important manner in which governance and leadership of higher education institutions in Africa is constituted and managed. The fact that there has been a dearth of work based on the experiences of those who have served as university leaders has created a major gap. Questions remain on how leaders of higher education institutions are identified, how they are prepared, the personal predispositions that individuals bring to the exercise of such positions and their personal experiences regarding what energizes or inhibits the performance of their work. Until recently, presidents in most African countries served as chancellors of public universities, identification of those who served as university leaders was largely a political process. But much has changed, with most countries establishing oversight bodies and the overall governance of higher education institutions divorced from the day-to-day political processes. Trails in Academic and Administrative Leadership in Kenya provides a personal account of the experiences in higher education leadership from an individual whose tenure in leadership straddled the two eras. In this book, Prof. Michieka provides an account of how his early education prepared him for roles in academic and institutional leadership in Kenya. The author shares his experiences on the trails he had to navigate as an academic, a vice-chancellor and a chairperson of university council at a time when universities in Kenya were transiting from extreme government administrative control to a greater degree of operational autonomy. Readers will find in this work thought-provoking insights on how leaders of higher education institutions in Kenya have had to balance between demands of the political system and the need to safeguard academic traditions in the everyday management of the institutions.
Elections and Governance in Nigerias Fourth Republic is a book about Nigerian politics, governance and democracy. It at once encompasses Nigerias post-colonial character, its political economy, party formation since independence, the role of Electoral Commissions, as well as, indepth analyses of the 1999, 2003 and 2007 general elections that involved extensive fieldwork. It also presents aspects of the 2011 and 2015 general elections, while discussing the state of democratic consolidation, and lessons learned for achieving good governance in the country. It is indeed, a must read for students of politics, academics, politicians, statesmen and policy makers, and in fact, stakeholders in the Nigerian democracy project. The book stands out as a well-researched and rich documentary material about elections in Nigeria, and the efforts so far made in growing democracy.
This multidisciplinary work shows the movement today of academic research in social sciences in Senegal.
The National Council for Higher Education (NCHE) and the Growth of the University Sub-sector in Uganda, 2002-2012, narrates the experience of the Ugandan NCHE in the establishment, development and regulation of higher education institutions in Uganda from 2002 to 2012. In this period, student numbers in higher education institutions increased from about 65,000 to some 200,000 and university institutions from about ten to more than triple the number. The book discusses the role of a regulatory agency in the delivery of higher education, the relations of universities and colleges with such an agency, its impact on developing university capacities, and leadership in creating and refining higher education ideas. The experience of Ugandas regulatory agency, the NCHE, in those ten years should help both the Ugandan and other African countries higher education stakeholders in sharing lessons learned from this one case study. The author sees the roles of regulatory agencies as vital in the initial stages of building a higher education sub-sector and in periods of system transitions such as the current journey from elite to mass systems but is of the view that the university remains the home of knowledge creation, dissemination, and its application in society.
Ghana attained independence in 1957. From 1992, when a new constitution came into force and established a new democratic framework for governing the country, elections have been organized every four years to choose the governing elites. The essays in this volume are about those elections because elections give meaning to the role of citizens in democratic governance. The chapters depart from the study of formal structures by which the electorate choose their representatives. They evaluate the institutional forms that representation take in the Ghanaian context, and study elections outside the specific institutional forms that according to democratic theory are necessary for arriving at the nature of the relationships that are formed between the voters and their representatives and the nature and quality of their contribution to the democratic process.
This book presents a comparative history of slavery and the transition from slavery to free labour in Zanzibar and Mauritius, within the context of a wider comparative study of the subject in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. Both countries are islands, with roughly the same size of area and populations, a common colonial history, and both are multicultural societies. However, despite inhabiting and using the same oceanic space, there are differences in experiences and structures which deserve to be explored. In the nineteenth century, two types of slave systems developed on the islands while Zanzibar represented a variant of an Indian Ocean slave system, Mauritius represented a variant of the Atlantic system yet both flourished when the world was already under the hegemony of the global capitalist mode of production. This comparison, therefore, has to be seen in the context of their specific historical conjunctures and the types of slave systems in the overall theoretical conception of modes of production within which they manifested themselves, a concept that has become unfashionable but which is still essential. The starting point of many such efforts to compare slave systems has naturally been the much-studied slavery in the Atlantic region which has been used to provide a paradigm with which to study any type of slavery anywhere in the world. However, while Mauritian slavery was 100 per cent colonial slavery, slavery in Zanzibar has been described as Islamic slavery. Both established plantation economies, although with different products, Zanzibar with cloves and Mauritius with sugar, and in both cases, the slaves faced a potential conflictual situation between former masters and slaves in the post-emancipation period. Another interesting focus in this book is the largely un-researched subject of female slaves. In Zanzibar, the privileged role of the suria whose status was defined by Sharia law was explored; and in Mauritius, the manumission of female slaves was explored as they formed the majority among manumitted slaves. The book will certainly prove helpful to those involved in comparing the Atlantic slave system with that of the Indian Ocean for the better understanding of both.