East African Coast Research Articles

β-Thalassemia pathogenic variants in a cohort of children from the East African coast.

Backgroundβ‐Thalassemia is rare in sub‐Saharan Africa. Previous studies have suggested that it is limited to specific parts of West Africa. Based on hemoglobin A2 (HbA2) concentrations measured by HPLC, we recently speculated that β‐thalassemia might also be present on the East African coast of Kenya. Here, we follow this up using molecular methods.MethodsWe used raised hemoglobin A2 (HbA2) values (> 4.0% of total Hb) to target all HbAA members of a cohort study in Kilifi, Kenya, for HBB sequencing for β‐thalassemia (n = 99) together with a sample of HbAA subjects with lower HbA2 levels. Because HbA2 values are artifactually raised in subjects carrying sickle hemoglobin (HbS) we sequenced all participants with an HPLC pattern showing HbS without HbA (n = 116) and a sample with a pattern showing both HbA and HbS.ResultsOverall, we identified 83 carriers of four separate β‐thalassemia pathogenic variants: three β0‐thalassemia [CD22 (GAA→TAA), initiation codon (ATG→ACG), and IVS1‐3ʹ end del 25bp] and one β+‐thalassemia pathogenic variants (IVS‐I‐110 (G→A)). We estimated the minimum allele frequency of all variants combined within the study population at 0.3%.Conclusionsβ‐Thalassemia is present in Kilifi, Kenya, an observation that has implications for the diagnosis and clinical care of children from the East Africa region.

Interannual variability of East African rainfall: role of seasonal transitions of the low-level cross-equatorial flow

During boreal spring and fall, the low-level cross-equatorial flow along the East African coast weakens and reverses. These transition periods are embedded within the East African rainy seasons—the spring long rains and the fall short rains. ERAI, ERA5, JRA-55, and MERRA2 atmospheric reanalyses and CHIRPS2 and ARC2 rainfall observations are examined to improve our understanding of how the transition periods vary on interannual timescales, and how these variations are related to regional rainfall. Transition period length is positively correlated with spring and fall East African rainfall regionally. Variations in transition period length are associated with the seasonal development and variability of three low-level circulation features, namely, the South Indian Convergence Zone, the Mascarene High over the South Indian Ocean, and the Arabian High over the Arabian Sea. In addition to affecting the low-level moisture transport and convergence over East Africa, these circulation features interact to influence the start and end dates that define the transition period. Composites are constructed and analyzed for different transition period types based on length, start date, and end date to distinguish differences among event types as well as seasonal differences. Air–sea coupling over the western Indian Ocean is stronger for the spring transition than for the fall, modifying precipitation through variations in specific humidity. In the fall transition period, rainfall variations are primarily controlled by circulation variations. These results have implications for climate change prediction over East Africa, for example, as the Indian Ocean warms.

Census and distribution of large carnivores in the Tsavo national parks, a critical east African wildlife corridor

AbstractKenya's Tsavo National Parks are a critical conservation area and the only wilderness corridor through densely populated human‐dominated landscapes stretching from the East African coast to Lake Victoria, separating extensive undeveloped grasslands south of the equator from the undeveloped semiarid bushlands to the north. At nearly 21,000 km2, Tsavo is one of four lion strongholds in East Africa and part of Africa's most important populations of all other large African carnivores. To provide baseline data on the status of large carnivores, a track survey was undertaken in 2013. Lions and both hyaena species were widely distributed across both parks, while cheetahs and wild dogs were more patchily distributed. Spotted hyaenas were the most abundant, with an estimated population of 3,903 ± 514 (95% CI), followed by lion (706 ± 201), striped hyaena (679 ± 144), leopard (452 ± 98), cheetah (154 ± 74) and wild dog (111 ± 92). Tsavo's carnivores suffer from bushmeat poaching, illegal grazing and retaliatory killing, and increasing human numbers on its periphery. Given Tsavo's importance as a stronghold for lions and an ecological corridor, increased investment in effective protection is strongly recommended. Evaluating trends will require complementary techniques in light of intensive monitoring requirements.

The Shirazi Civilisation and its Impact on the East African Coast

Abstract The relations between Iran and East Africa are captured well by depicting the impact of the Shirazi (Persian) civilisation on the East African coast. But some influential scholars claim that historians tend to dismiss or trivialise the role played by the Shirazis in East Africa. The demonstrable impact of Shirazi civilisation in East Africa is evident in the expansion of trade between the East African coast and the Persian Gulf region with the expansion of Islam. The Persian language has bequeathed to the Kiswahili language many lexicons that are presently still accessible in the region. Persian poets influenced Kiswahili literature through their classic works. The influence of Persian architecture is seen in Shirazi building styles throughout cities including Zanzibar, Kilwa and Manda. Thus Shirazis brought Persian traditions and customs to East Africa, and some Shirazis intermarried with the Arabs and local communities. As compiled here from other sources, there is enough enduring historical evidence to demonstrate incontrovertibly the impact of the Shirazis in social, economic and political aspects of East African life. This legacy arguably justifies greater contemporary cooperation between East African nation states and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Coral community life histories and population dynamics driven by seascape bathymetry and temperature variability.

Temperature variability, habitat, coral communities, and fishing intensity are important factors influencing coral responses to climate change. Consequently, chronic and acute sea-surface temperatures (SSTs) and their interactions with habitat and fishing were studied along the East African coast (~400km) by evaluating changes over a ~25-year period in two major reef habitats-island and fringing reefs. These habitats had similar mean and standard deviation temperature measurements but differed in that islands had lower ocean heights and flatter and less right-skewed temperature distributions than fringing reefs. These patterns arise because islands are exposed to deep offshore water passing through deep channels while being protected from the open ocean storms and the strong inter-annual current temperature variability. Within these two seascapes, coral communities are shaped by population responses to the variable temperature distributions as determined by the taxa's associations with the competitive-stress-ruderal (CSR) life history groups. For example, competitive taxa were more abundant where temperature distributions were flat and lacked frequent warm water anomalies. In contrast, ruderal, weedy, and generalist taxa were more common where temperature distributions were centralized, standard deviations high, and warm water anomalies more frequent. Finally, stress-resistant taxa were more common in reefs with high temperature skew but flatter temperature distributions. The rare 1998 thermal anomaly impacted and disturbed the ruderal and stressed reef more than the competitive communities. Ruderal became more similar to stressed communities while the stressed community moved further from the mean before recovering towards the competitive community. Competitive taxa were more common on islands and the deeper fringing reef sites while ruderal were dominant in shallow fringing reef lagoons. Over time, islands were less disturbed than fringing reefs and maintained the highest coral cover, numbers of taxa, and most competitive or space-occupying taxa. However, some island reefs with a history of dynamite fishing aligned with the stress-resistant communities over the full study period. Compared to the in situ SST gauges at the study site, temperature proxies with global coverage were often good at estimating mean and standard deviations of the SSTs but much poorer at estimating the shape of the temperature distributions that reflect chronic and acute stress, as reflected by kurtosis and skewness metrics. Given that these stress variables were critical for understanding the impacts of rare climate disturbances, global climate models that use mean conditions are likely to be poor predictors of future impacts on corals, particularly their species and life history composition. Better predictions should be possible if appropriate chronic and acute stress metrics and their proxies are identified and used.

Book Review: Thomas F. McDow. Buying Time: Debt and Mobility in the Western Indian Ocean.

The study of the connection of East African coast, the Middle East and India through the Indian Ocean has been attracting great interests from scholars for centuries. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea writings in the 1st century A.D documented the connection so did Ibn Batuta and Portuguese voyage writings in the 14th, and 15th to 17th centuries respectively. Thomas McDow`s book, Buying Time: Debt and Mobility in the Western Indian Ocean (henceforth Buying Time), fits in this Indian Ocean scholarship.

Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Matthew Ingleby and Matthew P. M. Kerr

Reviewed by: Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century ed. by Matthew Ingleby, Matthew P. M. Kerr Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton (bio) Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Matthew Ingleby and Matthew P. M. Kerr; pp. xii + 276. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018, £75.00, $110.00. Matthew Ingleby and Matthew P. M. Kerr’s edited collection, Coastal Cultures of the Long Nineteenth Century, is a beautifully illustrated volume. As its title suggests, it is concerned as much with the societies and cultural meanings invested in coastlines as it is with modern beaches and seascapes. Composed of thirteen essays, its scope moves variously toward, over, below, and sometimes away from the sea itself. Interdisciplinary in focus, the volume draws on literature, art history, photography, and museum studies to create new perspectives on modernity, war, imperialism, technology, aesthetics, and the seaside holiday. As such, it makes an important contribution to the burgeoning field of seaside and marine studies. The editors’ introduction achieves that most difficult of tasks, weaving a coherent argument through the essays that follow to show the ways in which each topic contributes to an integrated whole. Its strong awareness of the nineteenth-century coast as “a meeting place where modernity and antiquity could be experienced at once” paves the way for a number of the discussions that follow (21). Provocatively, the book also moves the sea inland, outlining some of the ways in which eighteenth-century panoramas and ephemera “rendered the experience of the coast portable, transportable and available” (7). The sea would be interpreted in new ways as technology advanced; as Kerr shows in his chapter “Developing Fluid: Precision, Vagueness, and Gustave Le Gray’s Photographic Beachscapes,” the controversial method of combination printing in photography blurred the lines still further between creative art and the supposedly objective transmission of authentic views. Moving from entertainment to health, Christiana Payne similarly points out in “A Breath of Fresh Air: Constable and the Coast” that while seascapes function as a reminder of eternity, they can be domesticated for the wellbeing of invalids who are thought to benefit from looking at pictures of the sea. For Sarah Longair in “Seats and Sites of Authority: British Colonial Collecting on the East African Coast,” however, such acts of translation are potentially less benign. Focusing on two chairs now held by the British Museum, she considers what is at stake in acts of appropriation and reinterpretation in the context of imperial power. Notwithstanding its emphasis on the reduction of battle scenes to panoramas, and the [End Page 672] natural life of coastlines to the amateur aquarium, the volume’s introduction registers the complex and contradictory modes in which the coast is purveyed. This sense of multiplicity permeates the collection in different ways. Taken together, the essays are notable not least for the disparate ways in which they figure the sea as ambiguous while contesting or complicating received assumptions about the liminal status of the shore. In “‘Unconscious of her own double appearance’: Fanny Burney’s Brighton,” Leya Landau argues that Burney’s response to Brighton reverses the wider trend whereby the resort’s status as a health resort was overtaken by its fashionable reputation. Burney’s intermittent gaze toward the sea, however, gives “a rare glimpse of the oceanic sublime” that is at odds with her equivocal identification of sea bathing with the sexualized materiality of the body (38). A later essay, Nick Freeman’s “Symons at the Seaside,” examines Symons’s construction of an aesthetic sea through his debt to the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler. If the voyage to Dieppe figured the sea as “an unfortunate, if occasionally beautiful, obstacle that separated perfidious Albion from an altogether more significant artistic culture” (247), then Symons’s writing shows an increasing tendency “to use the environment as a means of talking about himself” (251). The often uneasy relations in coastal environments are explored from the local to the international level. For James Kneale in “The Battle of Torquay: The Late Victorian Resort as Social Experiment,” “local scandals might become a test of national legislation in even the most decorous coastal sites” (83). The ambiguous application of bylaws in the...

Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience, Kai Kresse

Reviewed by: Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience by Kai Kresse Nathaniel Mathews BOOK REVIEW of Kresse, Kai. 2018. Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 237 pp. Philosopher Kai Kresse has long established himself as a skillful interpreter of Swahili intellectual discourse on the East African coast. With his latest book, he draws on and expands his earlier work to take us inside the discursive worlds of Swahiliphone Muslim intellectuals in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Kenya. He shows Swahili-speaking Kenyan Muslims wrestling with colonial and postcolonial political dynamics within multiple overlapping frameworks: a localized Swahili discursive tradition of Islamic reform with a genealogy going back to Sheikh Al-Amin Mazrui, a transregional Islamic discourse of enjoining right and forbidding wrong, and the widespread political marginalization of coastal Muslims in postcolonial Kenya. He reads and analyzes a variety of texts, including transcripts of radio broadcasts, to show how their authors tried to carve out a pious, modern public space for Muslims in Kenya, and how their sharing of Islamic knowledge aimed to shape a moral community in a context of political marginalization. This analysis highlights the division between various Muslim groups about the proper boundaries of ritual interpretation. The book is divided into two parts: "Conceptualizations" and "Readings." The latter encompasses the three-chapter heart of the book's close readings and translations and will be the focus of the remainder of this review. On the whole, Kresse is successful at showing discursive continuities in Muslim reformist discourse between the colonial and postcolonial eras. Chapter three is about the intellectual production of Sheikh Al-Amin Mazrui in 1930s Mombasa. Through a close reading of Mazrui's Sahifa newspaper, Kresse argues for understanding Al-Amin as a "colonial thinker," ambivalently placed as kadhi of Mombasa and later the whole Kenya coastal strip (a position appointed by the British) and preoccupied with internal critique of the community. Mazrui's writings in Sahifa and later al-Islah emphasize the decadence, ignorance, and complacency of coastal Muslims, ominously warning of the long-term consequences of neglect of education and the acquisition of knowledge in general. [End Page 149] Chapter four skips ahead to 1972 and examines the decade-long publication run of Sauti ya Haki, a newspaper published and edited by two of Al-Amin's students: Sheikh Muhammad Kasim Mazrui and Sheikh Abdullah Saleh Farsy. The newspaper was an intellectual heir to Al-Amin's reformist and purist ideas. The virtue of Kresse's analysis is that it reveals how the editors of Sauti ya Haki, even though writing from a postcolonial location, were still deeply implicated in the double bind of colonial modernity: on the one hand, they were at pains to show that the Quran was compatible with modern Western science (113); on the other hand, they critiqued a variety of popular healing and worship practices associated with Islam (126). Yet like Al-Amin, the editors of Sauti ya Haki saw such practices, which included amulet making and spirit possession, not as locally rooted expressions of a powerful Islamicate culture that crossed religious lines, but as a mortal threat to the integrity of Islam itself. Earlier chapters deal with print media, but chapter five analyzes Sauti ya Ruhuma, a Muslim radio program that ran from 2005 to 2007, facilitated by two figures who integrated the intellectual legacy of Islamic reform and purism with the new medium of radio: Abubakar and Stambuli openly and frankly discussed topics like terrorism and coastal political history and the marginalization of Muslims in Kenya, yet they were criticized as Salafis or Wahhabis for their reformist intellectual lineage (154). It is clear from Kresse's analysis that Muslim purist reformism continues to have significant effects locally, though it has failed to bring about the desired unity of East African Muslims. It is also clear that in the context of a global war on terror that demonizes Muslims, the intellectual lineage of purist thought is increasingly linked by others to the tacit acceptance, or even encouragement, of violence. Kresse is aware of this, and I applaud his decision to frame Stambuli's discussion of terrorism as taking seriously "the difficulty … of the internal...

Non-European Shipwrecks of the Western Indian Ocean

The western Indian Ocean (WIO) along the East African coast, popularly known as the Swahili coast, stretches between lat 15°48′0″N and 14°53′5″N and long 74°20′1″E and 73°40′3″E. The Swahili coast extends 3000 km from Somalia to the north through Kenya and Tanzania to Mozambique in the south. It also includes island states of Comoro, Seychelles, Madagascar, Reunion and Mauritius. The characteristics of the coastal areas of continental countries and Madagascar are similar: alternating beaches, rocky outcrops, coral reefs, large estuarine areas, wetlands, lagoons and inter-tidal fiats. The coastline consists of reefs, lagoons, beaches, rivers, creeks and low-lying coastal plains. For hundreds of years, by using different types of water crafts, maritime traders have sailed the Indian Ocean, governed by adequate knowledge of regular and predictable monsoon winds blowing between the Indian subcontinent and Africa. The east African coast occupies a significant place in the maritime activity and trade contacts with the external world in the Indian Ocean.

Tropical cyclone landfalls south of the Tropic of Capricorn, southwest Indian Ocean

CR Climate Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials CR 79:23-37 (2019) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01575 Tropical cyclone landfalls south of the Tropic of Capricorn, southwest Indian Ocean Micheal T. Pillay, Jennifer M. Fitchett* School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 2050, South Africa *Corresponding author: jennifer.fitchett@wits.ac.za ABSTRACT: Common perception holds that tropical cyclones occur exclusively within the latitudinal range of 5° to 20°S. However, a few storms have been recorded poleward of this range each decade over the past half century. This study explores tropical cyclone occurrence south of the Tropic of Capricorn in the southwest Indian Ocean (SWIO; defined as 0°-30°S; African East coast up to 110°E). Using observational tropical cyclone and climate data, the small subset of storms making landfall in the region were examined in detail. The records indicate a decrease in storm frequency, while intensity has increased over the study period (1950-2015). Sea surface temperature (SST) reveals the interaction and influence of surface thermodynamics on tropical cyclone trajectory. Zonal wind at the 500 mb level indicates a modulation on track morphology following genesis, and may be responsible for recurving tracks. A decadal variability is observed for landfall location, which is currently in a low-amplitude southward component. SST is significantly related to storm intensity, while the Dipole Mean Index (DMI) and Southern Annular Mode (SAM) are related to and coincide with the highest landfall years. The Multivariate El Niño Southern Oscillation Index (MEI) is related to recurving track trajectories, while DMI and SAM may influence latitudinal and longitudinal track trajectories. These findings are important in understanding recent changes in tropical cyclone dynamics in the southwest Indian Ocean, particularly as the range of storm occurrence has expanded under climate warming. KEY WORDS: Tropical cyclone · Southwest Indian Ocean · Tropic of Capricorn · Climatology · Climate Variability Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Pillay MT, Fitchett JM (2019) Tropical cyclone landfalls south of the Tropic of Capricorn, southwest Indian Ocean. Clim Res 79:23-37. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr01575 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in CR Vol. 79, No. 1. Online publication date: October 17, 2019 Print ISSN: 0936-577X; Online ISSN: 1616-1572 Copyright © 2019 Inter-Research.

Estimating Connectivity Through Larval Dispersal in the Western Indian Ocean

AbstractThe health and functioning of coral reef ecosystems in the Western Indian Ocean are in decline due to anthropogenic stress, and the rate of decline is set to accelerate. Marine reserves have become important tools in mitigating these pressures, and one of the most critical factors in determining their spatial design is the degree of connectivity among populations. However, the spatial scale and strength at which populations are potentially connected by dispersal remain uncertain. In this paper, the potential connectivity of corals was assessed through a Lagrangian particle‐tracking algorithm coupled offline with an ocean circulation numerical model. Connectivity metrics and graph theory were used to analyze the networks and highlight those reefs that are critical for maintaining the connectivity of corals across the region. Western Indian Ocean coral reefs formed about 13 clusters for larvae with short pelagic larval duration (PLD; 5 days) but grouped into stable larger clusters at 15, 30, and 60 days PLDs, with strong westward dispersal from the northern tip of Madagascar and Comoro Islands toward the East African coast. Reefs at Mafia‐Latham Island (Tanzania), Angoche‐Nacala and Pemba‐Mucufi (Mozambique), Anjouan and Ngazidja (Comoros), and Glorieuses (France) were the most significant for multigenerational connectivity, as measured by betweenness centrality. The small islands Agalega and Tromelin were completely disconnected from other sites at all PLDs. These findings identify priority conservation areas and actions to help support coral reef resilience through a connected network of marine protected areas.

Comparison of climate and environment on the edge of the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain to the Little Karoo (South Africa) in Marine Isotope Stages 5–3 as indicated by speleothems

Given the steep present-day climatic gradients in southern South Africa, comparative studies of its coastal and inland paleoclimate provide important insight into the region's spatial climate dynamics. We present a comparative study of new speleothem stable oxygen (δ18O) and carbon (δ13C) isotopic composition from Efflux Cave (EC; 113–19 ka, hiatus between 105 and 94 ka) in the Little Karoo inland basin and Herolds Bay Cave (HBC; 93–62 ka) at the boundary between the Cape coastal lowlands and the Palaeo-Agulhas Plain. Gaussian kernel based cross-correlation analyses against palaeoclimate proxy records show that rainfall seasonality at EC is related to rainfall amount in the South African interior, whereas HBC is similar to the South African east coast. Our new proxy records, corroborated by archaeological evidence from the Cape coastal lowlands and the Little Karoo, suggest that in both regions, surface water was readily available and grassland ecosystems with variable amounts of C4 and C3 grasses as well as fynbos communities could be found nearby. Cross-correlation analyses of the new records from EC and HBC compared to previously published speleothem records from southern South Africa show only limited statistical correlation. However, there are some similarities in overall trends of palaeoclimate change in the Cape coastal lowlands and the Little Karoo whereby Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5b (mainly Greenland Interstadial 22) and 4 generally have more summer rainfall and higher abundances of C4 vegetation than MIS 5a and MIS 3.

Central Malagasy

Malagasy is the westernmost Austronesian language and belongs to the South East Barito subgroup of the Western Malayo-Polynesian subfamily (Dahl 1988, Rasoloson & Rubino 2005). Dahl (1951) presents widely-accepted evidence that Malagasy is most closely related to the Indonesian language Ma’anyan of Kalimantan (South Borneo). The term Malagasy refers to a macrolanguage (Lewis, Simons & Fennig 2014), with many regional dialects distributed throughout the island of Madagascar, which lies off the east African coast across from Mozambique (see Figure 1) and has a population of over 22 million (INSTAT 2018). The central area of the country, or the ‘Central Highlands’, is a plateau of up to 5000 feet and includes the capital city of Antananarivo, with a metropolitan population of about four million. The dialect historically spoken in and around Antananarivo is called Merina, and it served as the primary basis for development of the standardized, institutional language referred to as Malagasy Ofisialy ‘Official Malagasy’ (OM).

Cowries in the archaeology of West Africa: the present picture

ABSTRACTDespite the perceived importance of cowrie shells as indicators of long-distance connections in the West African past, their distribution and consumption patterns in archaeological contexts remain surprisingly underexplored, a gap that is only partly explicable by the sparse distribution of archaeological sites within the sub-continent. General writings on the timeline of importation of cowries into West Africa often fail to take into account the latest archaeological evidence and rely instead on accounts drawn from historical or ethnographic documents. This paper is based on a first-hand assessment of over 4500 shells from 78 sites across West Africa, examining chronology, shell species and processes of modification to assess what distribution patterns can tell us about the history of importation and usage of cowries. These first-hand analyses are paralleled by a consideration of published materials. We re-examine the default assumption that two distinct routes of entry existed — one overland from North Africa before the fifteenth century, another coming into use from the time sea links were established with the East African coast and becoming predominant by the middle of the nineteenth century. We focus on the eastern part of West Africa, where the importance of imported cowries to local communities in relatively recent periods is well known and from where we have a good archaeological sample. The conclusion is that on suitably large assemblages shell size can be an indication of provenance and that, while the present archaeological picture seems largely to confirm historical sources, much of this may be due to the discrepancy in archaeological data available from the Sahara/Sahel zone compared to the more forested regions of the sub-continent. Future archaeological work will clarify this matter.

The shadow of Pelindaba: Chagos and the African nuclear-weapon-free zone

ABSTRACTThe Chagos Archipelago off the East African coast has been the subject of a territorial and humanitarian dispute ever since it was ‘excised’ from the former British colony of Mauritius and forcibly depopulated, 50 years ago, to make place for an American military base on the principal island of Diego Garcia. Starting from a historic advisory opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) on 25 February 2019 and an implementing resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 22 May 2019, this article aims at broadening the debate so as to take into account (i) the general context of relevant treaty instruments potentially affecting the Chagos and the Chagossians (primarily in the fields of human rights and environment); and (ii) the specific concerns of denuclearisation and disarmament raised by the Treaty on the African Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone, in particular.

The Peculiarities of Capitalism: Frederick Cooper on Africa and the World Economy

Abstract:This essay explores Frederick Cooper’s work on the history of capitalism, bringing together his histories of class struggles on the East African coast and his conceptual interventions into debates on Africa and the world economy. It argues that Cooper’s notion of the “peculiarities of capitalism” illuminates how conflicts over work, rights, and the labor process have shaped where capital went and what it did in Africa. The essay also considers how Cooper’s work might inform the emerging literature on race and capitalism in Africa, exploring in particular the history of tobacco capitalism in postcolonial Malawi.

Marine collections and global digital repositories as source data to assess the effects of habitat condition and biodiversity loss on African Coastal ecosystem functioning and services

Natural history collections (NHC) worldwide contain vast amount of valuable data that can be used to answer a wide range of questions by exploring biodiversity and natural resources records, having an immense potential to contribute to science, policy making and legislating, and to public scientific awareness. Likewise, the development and increase of global and regional biodiversity digital databases (e.g., Global Biodiversity Information Facility - GBIF; Fauna Europaea; Naturdata, etc.), scientific literature and all digital information regarding biodiversity, ecological areas and climate records comprise a huge amount of primary and processed digital ecological data (DED) accessible globally that can be readily used, at no cost, and integrated to further study e.g. biodiversity changes, ecological processes, natural habitat distribution, prioritizing ecosystem management and conservation actions, etc. Marine invertebrate biodiversity contributes to the structure and stability of ecosystem processes such as productivity, ecological networks, as well as nutrient and biogeochemical cycling having also an economic importance as a food source for local populations. Mangroves and seagrasses encompass ecological and socio-economic relevance as they have a preponderant role in marine and coastal ecosystem biodiversity and functioning providing a vast number of goods and services to local populations. Although generally pristine, mangroves and seagrasses in Africa are extremely vulnerable to the increased migration of rural populations to urban coastal areas and to extreme climate events. As a result, human activities such as construction, agriculture and food harvesting, provoke habitat degradation and biodiversity loss which will have further devastating consequences. The degradation and unsustainable use of these ecosystems have major drawbacks to the elimination of extreme poverty because this is one of the key factors that drive environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. The main goal of this work is to use NHC and digital repositories data (including scientific literature) to assess how biodiversity loss and habitat degradation affect ecosystem functioning and services provided by marine invertebrate communities of mangroves and seagrass meadows in the West and East African coast, using the case study of Mozambique and Príncipe’s Island. These will lead to the construction of a comprehensive dataset, an ecological model and a framework adapted to marine invertebrate biodiversity from Mozambique’s (MZ) and São Tomé and Príncipe’s (STP) mangroves and seagrasses as tools:1) integrate and disseminate marine invertebrate biodiversity data gathered along a spatio-temporal scale; 2) compare marine invertebrate assemblies from pristine and impacted habitats in African countries and predict the progress of these communities to habitat degradation and biodiversity loss; and 3) manage ecosystem functioning and services delivered by marine invertebrate assemblages under anthropogenic and environmental pressure scenarios. Specifically this project intends to: compile and integrate the available information contained in NHC and DED to develop a comprehensive spatio-temporal dataset on marine invertebrate biodiversity (e.g. species, number of individuals, local of occurrence and georeferencing, date of collection/observation), as well as mangroves and seagrasses distribution along the Mozambique’s and Príncipe’s coasts; assess different indexes of invertebrate marine biodiversity, biodiversity and habitat spatio-temporal distribution; develop an ecological network approach to assess the functional links of marine invertebrate communities within the studied habitats, and to refine their role in ecosystem functioning, as well as ecosystem services (ES) provided by marine invertebrates in mangroves and seagrasses from MZ and STP; construct a model to evaluate the ecological responses of mangrove and seagrass invertebrate communities to habitat degradation and biodiversity loss and to predict multi-dimensional (spatial, temporal, and social) trade-offs in local/regional ecosystem services along a spatio-temporal gradient; develop a practical framework to manage and preserve ecosystem functioning and services delivered by mangrove and seagrass marine invertebrates under a global change scenario. compile and integrate the available information contained in NHC and DED to develop a comprehensive spatio-temporal dataset on marine invertebrate biodiversity (e.g. species, number of individuals, local of occurrence and georeferencing, date of collection/observation), as well as mangroves and seagrasses distribution along the Mozambique’s and Príncipe’s coasts; assess different indexes of invertebrate marine biodiversity, biodiversity and habitat spatio-temporal distribution; develop an ecological network approach to assess the functional links of marine invertebrate communities within the studied habitats, and to refine their role in ecosystem functioning, as well as ecosystem services (ES) provided by marine invertebrates in mangroves and seagrasses from MZ and STP; construct a model to evaluate the ecological responses of mangrove and seagrass invertebrate communities to habitat degradation and biodiversity loss and to predict multi-dimensional (spatial, temporal, and social) trade-offs in local/regional ecosystem services along a spatio-temporal gradient; develop a practical framework to manage and preserve ecosystem functioning and services delivered by mangrove and seagrass marine invertebrates under a global change scenario.

Contribution of Madrasah System to the Development of Human Resource in Uganda and its Neighbouring Countries

Generally speaking, Muslims of Eastern Africa in general, and of Uganda in particular, lagged behind in education for a long period of time. This fact goes back to the time when Islam penetrated the East African coast. The interest of Arabs who introduced and taught Islam to the people of the coast was trade and many of them were neither trained nor did they possess any professional skills to propagate Islam. They did this job on a voluntary basis in anticipation of God’s reward. On the contrary, the Christian missionaries who came to the region were skilled, equipped and had been officially sent by various authorities to do the job of spreading Christianity. Therefore, when they arrived in the region, they embarked on building well equipped schools and all their activities were geared towards promoting Christianity among the whole population which scared Muslim parents from taking their children to these schools. Consequently, Muslim schools – mainly madrasah pl. madaris, were built to counter the force of missionary schools. These madaris, however, were not by any standards, comparable with the missionary schools. Unfortunately, this situation has continued to this day in some of the madaris due to numerous reasons, some of which are of the Muslims’ own making and which I believe could be avoided provided that the Muslims put their heads together. In spite of this fact, these schools have contributed highly to the development of human resource in Uganda and elsewhere, as highlighted in this paper. May Allah help me. Amiin.

Assessing the importance of cultural diffusion in the Bantu spread into southeastern Africa.

The subsistence of Neolithic populations is based on agriculture, whereas that of previous populations was based on hunting and gathering. Neolithic spreads due to dispersal of populations are called demic, and those due to the incorporation of hunter-gatherers are called cultural. It is well-known that, after agriculture appeared in West Africa, it spread across most of subequatorial Africa. It has been proposed that this spread took place alongside with that of Bantu languages. In eastern and southeastern Africa, it is also linked to the Early Iron Age. From the beginning of the last millennium BC, cereal agriculture spread rapidly from the Great Lakes area eastwards to the East African coast, and southwards to northeastern South Africa. Here we show that the southwards spread took place substantially more rapidly (1.50–2.27 km/y) than the eastwards spread (0.59–1.27 km/y). Such a faster southwards spread could be the result of a stronger cultural effect. To assess this possibility, we compare these observed ranges to those obtained from a demic-cultural wave-of-advance model. We find that both spreads were driven by demic diffusion, in agreement with most archaeological, linguistic and genetic results. Nonetheless, the southwards spread seems to have indeed a stronger cultural component, which could lead support to the hypothesis that, at the southern areas, the interaction with pastoralist people may have played a significant role.

Observed relationship between the Turkana low-level jet and boreal summer convection

The Turkana low-level jet is a circulation feature over northern Kenya that is not spatially well-resolved in many observational datasets. Here, high-resolution TRMM, IMERG, and CMORPH precipitation estimates, along with the ERA5 and MERRA2 reanalyses are analyzed to better understand the controls on jet strength and the relationship between the jet and boreal summer rainfall variability in the jet exit region over South Sudan. The height of the South Sudan wet season, August, is analyzed for 2000–2017. Climatologically, rainfall peaks over the jet exit region during the early morning hours, coinciding with the jet maximum. The strong jet enhances low-level wind convergence and briefly shifts the low-level zonal moisture gradient westward. Over the western South Sudan, rainfall peaks in the late afternoon/evening in association with daytime heating. The correlation between the daily Turkana Jet strength and precipitation indicates a significant negative relationship over eastern South Sudan, and over the Ethiopian and East African Highlands. Composite analysis of strong and weak jet periods reveal that the atmospheric conditions associated with a strong jet include enhanced low-level ridging along the East African coast south of the equator resulting in a stronger height gradient in the Turkana Channel, as well drier conditions over the channel and adjacent highlands. These conditions support a stronger jet that is further enhanced by katabatic flow due to the stronger nighttime cooling over the highlands, as well as enhanced dry air advection over the jet exit region. Thus, while low-level convergence may increase, convection weakens over eastern South Sudan due to the reduced atmospheric moisture content and weaker instability. The opposite occurs for the weak jet case.