Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Understanding Senegal Foreign Policy since the year 2000

This workshop, held jointly by WARC and the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA) took place at WARC on April 23, 2013. It followed up on the first one held at WARC in June 2011, and focused on three major papers presented in 2011 exploring the following issues:

Senegal foreign policy since 2000

• Senegal under President Wade and its relations with neighboring Guinea-Bissau
• France-Senegal relations since 2000

The cabinet director of the Senegalese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the SAIIA representative & the director of WARC fielding questions from reporters

The papers were discussed by prominent active or retired Senegalese diplomats, academics and other specialists of international relations. The workshop generated very instructive exchanges among participants. Among the recommendations made was the suggestion that a committee of eminent persons be established to examine the future creation of a West African institute for strategic and international relations studies.

During the opening ceremony participants were addressed by the Director of WARC, the SAIIA representative, and the representative of the Senegalese minister of foreign affairs.

The SAIIA representative announced an upcoming meeting in Addis Abeba during which proceedings from the WARC workshop will be used to further support work of the African Union on the foreign policies of African countries.

All 38 participants gathered together and engaged in informal discussions during the lunch in the gardens of the West African Research Center.

Professor Tracy Bach, Vermont Law School

On April 24, in collaboration with the US Embassy in Dakar, the West African Research Center (WARC) hosted a public lecture by Professor Tracy Bach of the Vermont Law School. Professor Bach, who was a Fulbright Scholar in Dakar in 2009-2010, presented on “Climate Change in

Professor Bach and panelists on climate change

the 21st Century: Challenges and Responses.”

Professor Bach primarily focused on the legal aspects of climate change throughout the world and insisted on the responsibilities of global industrial powers, which are the main polluters of planet earth.The lecture was moderated by the Director of Research in Biotechnology at the Senegalese Ministry of Higher Education and Research, Dr. Ismaïla Diallo, and included commentary from Dr. Assane Goudiaby of the UCAD Institute of Environmental Sciences. The audience of some 50 persons

The audience included many young people

included specialists from the various Dakar-based institutions specializing in environmental and climatic issues, as well as by a public essentially composed of young men and women. This massive presence of young people led the various speakers to emphasize the need to preserve the future of humankind through a responsible and highly committed management of current environment-related problems.

Dr. Diallo and Dr. Goudiaby stressed the need for developing countries to engage in collective efforts and initiatives to face the negative effects of climate change and to engage in innovative strategies to preserve their environmental resources as well as their populations.

The talk was followed by lively and insightful exchanges between the audience and the three panelists.

Site Visits in Senegal — “Panier Thermos” (Thermos Basket)

A good rice and fish lunch ready to serve after cooking in the Panier Thermos

On March 1, 2, and 3 the DAART project management at the West Africa Research Center (WARC) and two members of the project steering committee traveled to Saint Louis (in the north of Senegal) and to Ngaye-Mekhe (in central Senegal) to conduct field visits to DAART fellows as part of the field visits planned for each of the 11 west African fellows of the same project.

The fellow, Ms. Abibatou Banda Fall, a graduate of University Gaston Berger (UGB), has initiated a ground-breaking project with the Panier Thermos (Thermos Basket) as a tool for saving domestic energy. Ms. Fall is working through the Association pour la Recherche Action Developpement et Environnement au Sahel (ARADES), on the production and dissemination of the Panier Thermos.

The project consists in using a common basket—similar to the thousands woven daily by West African craftsmen—as a cooking and cooling device. This is achieved by the padding and isolation technology which helps maintain the temperature of the cooking pot or the cooled product in the basket for an extended period of time. With this technology, fuel wood, charcoal and cooking gas consumption in Senegal and other West African countries could be reduced at least by half. If properly and universally disseminated, the technology would result in extremely far-reaching developmental consequences:

• Reduction in energy consumption for cooking (charcoal, firewood, cooking gas), thus contributing to substantial savings for governments and households,
• Reduction in deforestation,
• Conservation of energy and protein contents of cooked foods, as the Thermos Basket cooks without evaporation—a  major contribution to the health and nutritional status of the populations, and

• Reduction in time consecrated to household chores, leaving women time to attend to other activities in their communities.

In both Saint Louis and Mekhe, the women’s organizations with whom ARADES  is currently

A full house in Saint Louis for a Panier Thermos demonstration

working on promoting the Panier Thermos unanimously concurred that the technology is simply a revolution in their daily lives.

The DAART project is supporting a number of other youth-led projects in several West African countries, each of which is having far-reaching impact on peoples’ daily lives. The Panier Thermos is certainly a technological innovation which should catch the eye and the purse of donors and other promoters of development in Africa because of its positive effects in terms of energy savings, improved nutrition, and increased opportunities for women’s participation in their communities.

An art exhibit celebrating Black History Month
Brookline Senior Center

Due to the threat of inclement weather, The Opening Reception for the Windows to West Africa exhibit has been rescheduled for Friday, February 15—same time, same place.

Brookline Senior Center- 6:30pm 93 Winchester St Brookline, MA

On Friday, February 15, 2013 starting at 6:30 pm the West African Research Association (WARA) will open Windows to West Africa, an art exhibit celebrating Black History Month at the Brookline Senior Center located at 93 Winchester Street 2nd fl. Brookline, MAin collaboration with the City of Brookline and the Daughters of Yemaya Collective. The art exhibit will include works from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, & Senegal. The show is being curated by Helen Banach of Boston University.

The West African Research Association promotes research on West Africa and the diaspora, nurtures collaborative scholarly relationships among individual scholars and institutions on both sides of the Atlantic, provides resources to researchers, and organizes programs to educate the broader public on African issues. WARA is collaborating with the Daughters of Yemaya Collective, an organization of women artists and activists of African descent dedicated to resisting oppression by creating spaces of healing, empowerment, and transformation. This art exhibit is in honor of Black History Month, to include the narratives of Africans in Black History. This event will feature a speaker who will give an account of the Black experience on the other side of the Atlantic. The closing reception will take place on March 1, 6:30–8:30pm. These events are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served provided by Bytes @ University Park, a West African restaurant in Cambridge, MA.

Come look through the Windows to West Africa. For more information regarding this event and to RSVP, please contact Stephanie Guirand via email at west.african.research.association@gmail.com.

Confirm your attendance, click here to RSVP.

DIRECTIONS:

MBTA- Green Line C to Summit Street

Professor Penda Mbow

WARA is pleased to announce that our colleague and friend, Senegalese historian Penda Mbow, of Université Cheikh Anta Diop, has been awarded the Jean Paul II Peace Prize. This distinction has been conferred upon Professor Mbow in recognition of the impact of her teaching, research, and activism. In accepting the Prize, Professor Mbow noted how this reflects the importance the Church places on interreligious dialogue, and serves as an inspiration for her to continue in this work.In Professor is a valued member of the WARA community and is a frequent presence at WARC, where she can often be found working in a quiet corner or delivering a lecture. In December, Professor Mbow served as an academic director of the West African Peace Initiative’s conference on the role of religion in conflict, conflict resolution and peacebuilding. Professor Mbow is also the founder of Mouvement Citoyen, a civil society advocacy group.

In Memoriam

It is with great sadness that we note the passing of long-time WARA member, Katherine Payne Moseley (KP Moseley). Kay, who  was a dynamic member of the WARA team, passed away peacefully on October 4, 2012 at her Vermont home. She will be missed by the WARA community.

Kay was involved in many WARA initiatives, most recently, the Saharan Crossroads conferences. Her oft-quoted study with Immanuel Wallerstein on precapitalist social structures initiated a long list of publications on the Trans-Saharan trade, the political economy of West Africa including Sierra Leone and Nigeria, and most recently the economic and social history of the larger oases band of the northern Sahara edge that includes Morocco and Mauritania. Kay also actively promoted water and other environmental issues as represented by her paper “Development or Ecological Suicide? Dilemmas of Water Exploitation in the Sahara.” A Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University, she did her fieldwork in Dahomey, and taught at Fourah Bay College (Sierra Leone), the University of Port Harcourt (Nigeria), as well as Vanderbilt, Brooklyn College and several other US universities. From 2000-2006 Kay worked as a Foreign Service Officer and served in Chad, the Sudan and Mauritania. She was a Director on the board of a number of nongovernmental agencies including the Asian Scholar Fund.

She is remembered by family and friends for her warmth, sense of fun, wit, love of jazz, African rhythms and music in general. We remember her generosity, hospitality, openness and elegance. She lives vividly in our memory.

Saida Oumul Khairy Niasse: Her Father’s Daughter
Pearl T. Robinson, Tufts University

Rethinking Islam in West Africa, a lecture series jointly sponsored by Boston University African Studies Center and the West African Research Association was pleased to feature Professor Pearl Robinson as the first speaker of the 2012-2013 year. Professor Robinson spoke about her forthcoming documentary on female empowerment among the Tidjaniyya Sufi order in Niger. The film, Mama Kiota, examines the life and work of Saida Oumul Khairy Niasse, whose promotion of education, financial autonomy, civic engagement, and a strong sense of identity as an African Muslim woman, bridges the gap between the global feminist movement and Islamic feminists. Professor Robinson’s remarks about the process of making this film included glimpses into the personal and family life of this remarkable woman who is the founding president of the Jamiyat Nassirat Dine, a Muslim women’s association with nearly 100 chapters in Niger and branches in eight West African countries. Mama Kiota is narrated in Hausa and will be distributed through markets for Sufi religious goods, video entertainment markets, mobile movies, online sites and academic markets.
Pearl Robinson is Associate Professor of Political Science and a former Director of the Program in International Relations at Tufts University.  She has authored more than forty articles and book chapters, has been a Ford Foundation Visiting Professor at Makerere University, a Visiting Professor at the University of Dar es Salaam, and a Research Affiliate of the Université Abdou Moumouni in Niamey. Robinson is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a past President of the African Studies Association, and a former chair of the SSRC/ACLS Joint Committee on African Studies.  She has served on the national boards of Oxfam-America, TransAfrica, the National Council of Negro Women’s International Division, and is presently a member of the WARA board of directors.

WARC Book Presentation and Dedication Ceremony
By General Mamadou Niang
(L’Harmattan-Senegal, 2012)

Distinguished members of the audience

Never before, since the time WARC started the exercise, has a book launch drawn such a huge and distinguished audience.  Indeed, WARC was so packed with academics, political leaders, military top brass, writers, former and active senior government officials, retired and active diplomats (both national and foreign), executives from the private sector, journalists and other members of the larger public that WARC was literally blocked with the incredible number of cars parked in the neighborhood. The career and personality of the author are certainly the major reasons accounting for this great turn-out.

General Niang, who grew up as a young Fulani on the banks of the Senegal River (the Old Man River of all Senegalese Fulani living in the River region up North, according to Cheikh Hamidou Kane the celebrated author of the novel Ambiguous Adventure), is a household name and a highly respected public figure in Senegal, all over West Africa, in South Lebanon and even at Buckingham Palace, among other places in the world.

During his military career, General Niang played a key role in the UN peacekeeping missions involving the Senegalese armed forces, primarily in South Lebanon where, because of his action and stance, all Lebanese leaders held him in high respect.

For the civilian part of his career, General Niang successfully led the Senegalese Observatoire National des Elections (Onel), where he closely

Book signing by General Mamadou Niang

collaborated with a particularly brilliant, professional and honest Senegalese academic, Babacar Kante (law Professor at University Gaston Berger of Saint Louis, Senegal). Subsequently, he was appointed Minister of the Interior in the Senegalese government, before wrapping up his public life with an ambassadorial post and presenting his letters of accreditation to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.

The panel around General Mamadou Niang featured other distinguished Senegalese: Mr Augustin Tine, Senegalese Minister of the Armed Forces (who chaired the panel), General Abdoulaye Fall, Chief of General Staff (Senegalese armed forces), law professor Babacar Kante, retired General Ibrahima Gabar Diop (Senegalese army), Hamidou Dia, philosophy professor, writer and advisor to the Senegalese president of the republic.

General Niang’s biography also sheds light on many events and developments relating to security, politics, and peace keeping, as demonstrated by the range of issues discussed both by panelists and other speakers from the audience, which numbered 234 people.

Giving Common Challenge

WARA is excited to announce that we have become a member of the Boston Foundation’s Giving Common. The Boston Foundation is a community foundation that seeks to support critical non- profit organizations in securing the resources they need to grow. The giving common is an online resource for donors that provides them with the details about various non- profit organizations. The Giving Common allows nonprofit organizations like WARA to share detailed information about their mission, programs, and operations.

WARA is very excited to announce that we will be participating in the Giving Common Challenge. The Giving Common Challenge is a 36-hour event that will run during the 36 hour period from 8:00 am EDT on October 10, 2012 through 8:00 pm EDT on October 11, 2012. The Giving Common Challenge is an opportunity for WARA to win up to $25,000 in unrestricted funds. We need your help to make this happen. Please read more on the challenge at https://www.givingcommon.org/challengeprizes/.

These are difficult financial times for everyone, especially non- profits like WARA. We need your help to ensure that WARA and WARC will continue to be a resource for the next generation of scholars with a focus on West Africa. Instead of slowing down during these tough times, we would like to grow, but we need your help to do it.

How can you help?

• Renew your membership—at special ‘challenge rates’– during the challenge hours.[Challenge rates:  $50 for 2 year standard memberships, $25 for 2 year student memberships, $300 for lifetime memberships--Only during the challenge hours.] We will send detailed instructions closer to the time.

• Donate whatever you can to WARA, a minimum of $25.

• Spread the word to your co-workers and friends, about WARA, our programs, and the challenge.

• Read our giving common profile; learn about the programs new and old we are looking to fund.

• Go to our Facebook event and join, click here

• Visit our Giving Common Profile www.givingcommon.org/profile/1112793/

Contact us with any questions at west.african.research.association@gmail.com

On Friday June 15th, 2012, Stephanie Guirand, the Assistant to the US Director of WARA, was invited by the WARC Director, Prof. Ousmane Sene, to give a short presentation to his third year English Literature course at Universite Cheikh Anta Diop. In front of nearly one thousand students, she gave a short presentation on The Black Experience in the United States. Stephanie shared her story of migrating the United States from Haiti in the 1990s at the height of the AIDS and crack cocaine epidemics. As a Haitian, she spoke of being mistreated in the United States by black people, and of the challenges of being a person of African descent in the United States today.

After her talk, Dr. Sene broke down a lot of the themes that she introduced in her talk, including the American dream, black on black crime, violence, drug use, and sadness. Dr. Sene also shared his own experiences in the United States and stories of Senegalese friends there. He was surprised to find in the 1980s, for example, that so many people in the United States and abroad believe that African people live in trees and are chased by lions.  Prof. Sene encouraged his students to think critically about the texts they will be reading throughout the course in relation to these experiences. And their relationships to these myths about African people.

Later, the students asked questions on a range of topics related to the black experience—from the current elections to immigration. Students were interested in how African American people see President Obama and how his policies have affected black communities around the country.
The presentation and discussion were informative for both Stephanie and Dr. Sene’s class. Samantha Johnson, the WARC IT summer intern, has been invited by Prof. Sene to come speak on the same subject later this summer.