Constructing Health Regions in Late Colonial French Africa

Are most journals published in Africa too weak to be useful to local practitioners, researchers, and policy makers? Might a new method for scholarly communication on the African continent improve the utility of these journals? According to a provocative article published in Learned Publishing (Smart 2007), the answer to both questions is yes. Smart argued that the African research and education communities need to rethink their tendency to “slavishly . . . follow the Western model of academic promotion based on publishing in journals.” In an earlier article, Horton (2000a) voiced concerns that researchers, policy makers, and philanthropic organizations in developed countries believe simply providing access to Western information will solve many of the problems of developing nations. On the contrary, he wrote, in Africa “there is already a well-developed local information culture that needs support, not swamping,” noting, moreover, the lack of African journals in MEDLINE (Horton 2000a).

Is Africa prepared for tackling the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) epidemic. Lessons from past outbreaks, ongoing pan-African public health efforts, and implications for the future

Postscript: A pandemic read on African health and environmental histories

The Ebola virus disease crisis in West Africa revealed critical weaknesses in health policy and systems in the region, including the poor development and retention of policy leaders able to set sound policy to improve health. Innovative models for enhancing the capabilities of emerging leaders while retaining their talent in their countries are vital. Chatham House (London, United Kingdom) established the West African Global Health Leaders Fellowship to help develop the next generation of West African public health leaders. The innovative program took a unique approach: Six weeks of intensive practical leadership and policy training in London and Geneva bookended a 10-month policy project conceived and carried out by each fellow in their home country. The program emphasized practice, site visits and observation of U.K. public health organizations, identifying resources, and networking. Strong mentorship throughout the fieldwork was a central focus. Work on the pilot phase began in June 2016; the fellows completed their program in September 2017. The pilot phase of the fellowship was successful, demonstrating that this "sandwich" model for fellowships-whereby participants receive focused leadership training at the start and end of the program, minimally disrupting their lives in-country-offers exciting possibilities for enhancing leadership skills while retaining talent within Africa. On the basis of this successful pilot, a second cohort of eight fellows began the program in October 2018. The expanded African Public Health Leaders Fellowship has become a central activity of Chatham House's Centre on Global Health Security.

Machine learning (ML) presents a transformative opportunity to strengthen African health systems through predictive healthcare. This paper explores the applications, benefits, and implementation challenges of ML in African health contexts, where resource limitations and infrastructure gaps often impede efficient healthcare delivery. By leveraging supervised and unsupervised ML models-such as decision trees, neural networks, and support vector machines-predictive healthcare can aid in early disease detection, improve patient outcomes, and optimize resource allocation. Real-world case studies across the continent, including malaria forecasting and telemedicine applications, illustrate the potential of ML to mitigate the burdens of delayed diagnosis, an underutilized workforce, and a fragmented health infrastructure. However, barriers such as limited access to high-quality, structured health data, privacy concerns, algorithmic bias, and ethical dilemmas related to fairness and transparency must be addressed. The manuscript critically examines data preprocessing techniques, data source diversity, and the necessity of ethical frameworks for AI integration. Future directions include leveraging wearable technologies, integrating interdisciplinary research, and contextualizing ML models within Africa’s unique socio-political and epidemiological realities. The study argues for developing equitable, data-driven, and scalable ML solutions tailored to Africa’s public health priorities, shifting from reactive to predictive health systems.

Almost anyone who reads ferdinand oyono'sune vie de boy(1956) in any language will conclude that the novel focuses on French colonialism. But is it only about colonialism by the French? An analysis of the many German resonances throughout the text—as well as an engagement with the German translation ofUne vie de boy—suggests that it is about much more. Oyono'sUne vie de boyenables the reader to reflect on Europan colonialism more broadly beyond the role of France. The novel offers a lens onto Germany's colonial history because Cameroon was a former colonial “protectorate” of the German empire. This historical context, therefore, placesUne vie de boyin both national and transnational contexts. While my reading addresses possible connections or similarities between French and German colonialism, the publication in German itself adds an important layer to the understanding ofUne vie de boyin Germany. In consideration of the political activism of the novel's German publisher, Johann (Hans) Fladung (1898-1982), the publication of Oyono's novel can be read as a criticism of German historiography in the 1950s, which frequently avoided Germany's colonial history, a history that has been linked with the crimes of the Holocaust (Zimmerer).

The paper explores and analyzes similarities and differences between French settler colonialism in Algeria and Jewish Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine. This study focuses on the history and historical development of French settler colonialism and Jewish Zionist settler colonialism by deploying the analytical framework of settler colonialism, and the comparative history of settler colonialism. Settler colonial studies and comparative settler colonialism allow for gaining insight into the genesis, and development of settler colonies. The intention behind the application of comparative settler colonialism, specifically in juxtaposing French settler colonialism in Algeria and Jewish Zionist settler colonialism in Palestine is to identify overlaps, similarities as well as differences between these settler polities. The results of this study have shown that French and Zionist settler colonialism share numerous similarities and features. The most important feature that these settler colonialisms adhere to is the logic of elimination, which is defined as policies and practices of settler colonial policies aimed at the dispossession, displacement, ethnic cleansing, genocide, as well as cultural assimilation of the indigenous populations. In this case, both French and Zionist settler colonialisms have subscribed and followed the logic of the elimination of the natives. Yet as opposed to French settler colonialism, Zionist settler colonialism has been less interested in cultural assimilation and integration of the indigenous people of Palestine into settler society. Another conspicuous difference between French and Zionist settler colonialism is that while French settler colonialism is already defunct, Zionist settler colonialism has managed to survive and persist. The current study contributes to settler colonial studies and the comparative history of settler colonialism. Moreover, our research can inform other studies in the field of settler colonialism, and we suggest that more research into comparative settler colonialism needs to be undertaken.

Young people’s sexual and reproductive health (SRH) continues to be a major challenge in low and middle-income countries, with implications for public health now and in the future. Fortunately there is a growing array of evidence-based interventions, and commitments from governments, development partners and donors, to support programmes that aim to improve young people’s SRH.However, in some situations, the technical assistance that governments feel that they need to strengthen and implement national policies and strategies, to move from words to action, is not available. The WHO Adolescent and Youth Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (AYSRHR) Technical Assistance (TA) Coordination Mechanism was initiated to help fill this technical assistance gap; to respond to TA requests from ministries of health in ways that are timely, efficient, effective and contribute to strengthening capacity.This paper describes the process of developing the Technical Assistance Coordination Mechanism (TA Mechanism) and the outcomes, experiences and lessons learned after three years of working. It triangulates the findings from a preliminary review of the literature and discussions with selected key informants; the outcomes from a series of structured review meetings; and the documented processes and results of the technical assistance provided to countries.The lessons learned focus on three aspects of the TA Mechanism. How it was conceptualized and designed: through listening to people who provide and receive AYSRHR TA and by reviewing and synthesizing past experiences of TA provision. What the TA Mechanism has achieved: a standardized process for TA provision, at different stages for a range of AYSRHR issues in ten countries in three geographic regions. And what worked well and what did not: which common challenges was the TA Mechanism able to address and which ones persisted despite efforts to avoid or resolve them. The paper ends with the implications of the lessons learned for future action.

Organizing Democracy: How International Organizations Assist New Democracies (by Paul Poast and Johannes Urpelainen)

The colonisation of Africa by the imperial powers of Europe has had serious adverse effect on the lives of the people. Over half a century of ceremonial disentangling from colonial clutches, the States of Africa finds it hard to solidly place their feet on global development ground. One of the critical fields Africa has been kowtowing to countries of Asia, Europe and Americas is medicines, which up to the moment, vaccines for treatment of the bulk of the populations are imported. The challenge is not about the incompetent of Africans; neither the ineffectiveness of home-made drugs. But, even if the drug works, the people lacked the psychological confidence in the therapeutic value of it due to colonial and imperial disarticulation and disorientation. It is against this background, the paper makes an interventionist study and argued for the decolonisation of the continent’s medicines and health system in the post Covid19 era. This becomes compelling, because like the World War I and II, the novel pandemic adds yet knowledge to the world, that the whites are not better than the blacks in the knowledge industry. Though not yet uhuru for Africa, the worst ravaged countries by the pandemic are not yet African states, but countries of Asia, Americas and Europe. Against the backdrop of the irrelevance of the white’s superiority myths in the face of the pandemic, the paper charges Africa to look inwardly, in the world system that is fundamentally skewed against her. It finally notes that the continent would be at a crossroads in the wake of global and western conspiracy to depopulate it through the weapons of drugs and vaccines, if it fails to develop and decolonised. It thus, concludes that African governments, policy makers, health experts and scholars should come together in the restless effort to rescue its medicines and health system from the elbow trap of the western society, thereby making Africa truly independent and great in the incoming post Covid19 years.
 Keywords: Africa; Decolonisation; Medicines; Health System; Covid19; Pandemic

Thevet Revisits Guanabara

African Independence is a dynamic discussion of how African history shapes world events today. Africa has played a major role in human history, and it is impossible to understand the present condition of humanity, or our future without a consideration of Africa. Although Africa is often portrayed as a remote and impoverished area, remembered for the suffering of its people, it has played an important role in world history that is critical for understanding global events today. Tukufu Zuberi walks readers through the years of African independence through the present. The documentary discusses colonialism, the impact of the world wars, independence movements, the Cold War, ethnic conflict, terrorism, the health crisis, and more. The documentary weaves personal interview excerpts with people ranging from World War Two veterans, freedom fighters, to Heads of State into the arc of African and world history. Providing context for understanding events such as civil war, terrorism, and development aid, African Independence argues that it is impossible to understand our current world situation, or our future, without considering Africa. The award-winning documentary accompanies the book African Independence: how Africa shapes the world.

We might agree that the health care systems prevalent in Africa today are a relic of the colonial past, primarily initiated during the nineteenth century. Following attainment of independence during the 1960s and 1970s, the new African sovereign states attempted to reverse the course of their histories by announcing that health and education would be free for all citizens—in line with their leaders’ common admiration for the socialist ideology and rhetoric of the Non-Aligned Movement states and the Soviet Union. The latter had provided much assistance to the bold liberation movements and the new independent states in Africa. However, many factors have harmed Africa’s fledgling health care systems: scarcity of resources, geographic location, lack of exposure to commercial activities with the outside world, especially for landlocked countries, improper allocation of funds, and corruption; also, simply the bad choices made in the face of competing priorities. As such, its leaders must be held responsible for the unacceptable health disparities that prevail on the continent today. The colonial legacy might explain partly the differences found in countries’ health care performance and this chapter argues that the colonial health model has left an indelible mark on the existing health care system(s) in Africa. To the informed observer, there is a noticeable difference between countries that were under colonial indirect rule, or faced assimilation, or a more paternalistic form of governance. However, whatever the nuances of their approach, all colonizing states were intent primarily on extracting from Africa what would be beneficial particularly to their citizens, economies and status. It made sense for Europe, a continent divided by long-standing political, religious, and economic rivalries, to use Africa to leverage the humiliations suffered following the concretization and stabilization of the concept of nation-state in Europe during the seventeenth century.

The chapter compares the historical pathways of taxation in Senegal and Uganda. It finds remarkable similarities despite differences in colonial history, contemporary politics, and geopolitical location. In both countries, the process of tax modernization went through three distinct stages. The first consisted of the mostly coercive integration of local populations into the global capitalist economy during early colonialism. The second stage was shaped by the spread of the developmental paradigm during late colonialism and early independence. The final stage is marked by the strong influence of international financial institutions. Domestic actors and interests played a subordinate role during all three stages. Yet they constrained the implementation of externally imposed tax policy choices in important ways. Highlighting the essential continuity of taxation under late colonialism and early independence, the chapter questions conventional periodization of African political history.

These two works make a carnival couple. Extremities is all about the unspeakable: violence and unacknowledged lust and ungovernable encounters; Parallel Lines traces the success of a specialised practice at the intersection of craft and intellectuation. It speaks of mastery, deliberation, method and understanding, discursive adequacy. The books share a theme, the relation between the social life of representations and the material life of art-objects, and a period, France between the invention of lithography and the invention of photo-mechanical printmaking; but in their radical differences they vividly illustrate the broadness of art history's discursive church. Extremities: Painting Empire in Post-Revolutionary France is an impressive book, deploying arguments sustained on the one hand by wide-ranging research in both the visual culture of the period and a range of relevant literary and archival sources, and on the other by close and energetic scrutiny of the works on which the book focuses: Girodet's Portrait of Citizen Belley, Gros's Bonaparte visiting the Plague victims of Jaffa, Girodet's Revolt of Cairo, G6ricault's Raft of the Medusa and two works by Delacroix, Massacres of Chios and Greece expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi, a set of post-Revolutionary paintings which 'vividly expressed the visceral, if hallucinated, experience of distant, often violent, colonial contact' (p. 4). The book is written in a tone of exalted engagement: this study, and the understanding that it produces, matter a great deal to the author. They matter to me too: Grimaldo Grigsby has rearranged my perceptions, particularly in relation to the works by Gros and by Delacroix, and has both refined and enriched my understanding of the nexus between painted representation and historical conjoncture in these extreme cases. At one point (p. 240) Grimaldo Grigsby describes the book's purpose thus: 'to clarify the extent to which pictorial processes and oil paint's materiality, its viscous substantiality, were implicated in the politics of French colonial history'. As a matter of fact, Grimaldo Grigsby pays relatively little attention to painterly effects and processes, to glazes, impasto, pentimenti, or wet-on-wet brush marks; she has written a book about iconography and composition. At no stage does one feel that the illustrations are inadequate to the demonstrations they support, for the study engages with pictures rather than actually with painting. The second half of her mission statement also caught my attention, its language being symptomatically unresolved. 'Implicated' has a forensic connotation; unless here it means no more than 'folded together with'. This brings us to the characterisation of the co-foldee: 'colonial history' rather than 'colonisation'. The implications are rather different, but I am still not sure whether Grimaldo Grigsby wishes to suggest that paintings actually do colonialism, or just 'express' its themes and impulsions. In any case, the heuristic procedures that drive this book explain much more about the processes of making pictures than they do about how paintings, as exhibited objects, as category-providers or subverters, as narrative-recapitulators, might be implicated in French colonisation, as causal or symptomatic or perhaps as cathartic representations. In the long struggle with Britain that culminated in the semi-global wars of Revolution and Empire, France lost a sea-borne Empire, principally in the Americas and the Indian sub-continent. Between 1792 and 1815 France also won, and then lost, a terrestrial Empire in Europe that at its height included French D6partements with coastlines on the Baltic sea and down the Adriatic coast from Trieste to Montenegro. In and after 1830 France was to build a second overseas