Process In Africa Research Articles

Ancient oncogenesis, infection and human evolution.

The recent discovery that malignant neoplastic lesions date back nearly 2 million years ago not only highlights the antiquity of cancer in the human lineage, but also provides remarkable insight into ancestral hominin disease pathology. Using these Early Pleistocene examples as a point of departure, we emphasize the prominent role of viral and bacterial pathogens in oncogenesis and evaluate the impact of pathogens on human evolutionary processes in Africa. In the Shakespearean vernacular “what's past is prologue,” we highlight the significance of novel information derived from ancient pathogenic DNA. In particular, and given the temporal depth of human occupation in sub‐Saharan Africa, it is emphasized that the region is ideally positioned to play a strategic role in the discovery of ancient pathogenic drivers of not only human mortality, but also human evolution. Ancient African pathogen genome data can provide novel revelations concerning human‐pathogen coevolutionary processes, and such knowledge is essential for forecasting the ways in which emerging zoonotic and increasingly transmissible diseases might influence human demography and longevity in the future.

Lessons for Sub-Saharan Africa from Kenya on Electoral Reforms: The Role and Limitations of the Law

Abstract This article evaluates the significance of law reform as an instrument of securing electoral processes in Africa against pathological influences. It demonstrates that through change of law, most ruling regimes in post-colonial Africa frustrated electoral processes, and hence that law reform has the potential of creating an environment for reversing the effects of autocratic regimes on electoral practices. It does, however, also demonstrate that despite a robust law reform agenda in most African countries, electoral processes are still controlled by ruling regimes because there are numerous factors that influence the working of institutions entrusted with democratic processes. Its empirical focus is Kenya. Like many other countries in Africa, Kenya amended its constitution in the early 1990s and has since been engaged in numerous constitutional reform exercises—including the 2010 constitutional substitution—aimed at creating an independent institution and empowering courts as arbiters of electoral...

Frantz Fanon: Anti-colonial and Pan-African Revolutionary

Frantz Fanon could be rightly considered as one of the major anti-colonial voices of Africathat sprang into vocal and physical action after the devastations of World War II. Fanon was a personage of formidable intellect mixed with a passion for political action on behalf of the decolonisation process in Africa. In this regard, Fanon stands on the same podium with the chief architects of anti-colonial action and discourse. That anti-colonial podium would include Cheikh Anta Diop, Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, Patrice Lumumba and others. But Fanon would have a special place on that podium for his incisive and sharp analysis of the African colonial situation as opposition mounted against Europe’s colonial presence on the continent.

Towards Transformative Regional Integration and Measuring Integration Progress

The state-driven and trade-centred regional integration approach needs to be replaced by a participatory, transformative and inclusive regional integration approach. In this contribution arguments about the dynamics and the performance of regional integration processes in Africa are presented, and some policy considerations follow. It is intended to look at the limits of the “linear regional integration model” and then to present as an alternative the “transformative regional integration mode...

RESEARCH ETHICS CAPACITY BUILDING FOR THE NEXT DECADE – ‘BEYOND TRAINING’ – RHINNO ETHICS AS MODEL TO IMPROVE AND ACCELERATE ETHICS REVIEW OF HEALTH RESEARCH

BackgroundWide social disparities and weak health care systems in Africa make timely development of essential medicines, vaccines, medical technologies in and for Africa a desperate need, given the burden of...

A POLÍTICA AFRICANA DE CUBA: IDEALISMO OU PRAGMATISMO?

As relações cubano-africanas são marcadas por traços de excepcionalidade. A Revolução Cubana coincide, temporalmente, com o aprofundamento do processo descolonizatório na África. Desde os primeiros anos da Revolução, Cuba definiu sua linha de atuação no continente africano, marcada pela cooperação militar e civil. A política africana de Cuba, foi, assim, definida pela autopreservação e zelo revolucionário.

African Judicial Review, the Use of Comparative African Jurisprudence, and the Judicialization of Politics

African Judicial Review, the Use of Comparative African Jurisprudence, and the Judicialization of Politics focuses primarily on judicial review in Africa. This topic is important because many African countries have been experimenting with judicial review in the spirt of Marbury v. Madison since the 1990s with limited success. Most African countries are countries with constitutions but without constitutionalism. The article grapples with the problem of how to make judicial review and constitutionalism more effective in impacting the political process in Africa. In order to have a more effective judicialization process in Africa, this article proposes that one step in that direction is for African courts of judicial review to engage more in what this article calls trans-African jurisprudential comparative judicial review. To this end, the article presents the arguments for giving emphasis to trans-African comparative judicial review and examines best practices in African judicial review as well as cases where there is need for improvement.

Monetary Integration in Africa: Is There a Business Cycles Synchronisation Between and Within Regional Economic Communities?

This paper focuses on business cycle synchronisation between Regional Economic Communities in Africa during the period 1980Q1-2016Q4. We consider a time series clustering analysis to evaluate whether the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) have similar patterns in business cycle comovements. The clustering analysis reveals five groups of countries that are relatively stable over time. Indeed, EAC is identified as a subgroup within SADC indicating that these two RECs could be merged to form a suitable monetary union in the foreseeable future. The dendogram indicates that more substantial discrepancies are observed in the clusters comparatively to the existing RECs. Finally, overlaps in membership of monetary integration may have an adverse impact on integration process in Africa. This results suggest that Africa is not ready for a common monetary union yet and it would be not surprising if the current time schedule envisaged for the launch of the single currency is postponed.

Rule of law or realpolitik? The role of the United Nations Security Council in the International Criminal Court processes in Africa

Rule of law or realpolitik? The role of the United Nations Security Council in the International Criminal Court processes in Africa

The Impact of Chinese Private odi in Africa

This paper measures the boom of Chinese private investments in Africa. In attempting to explain the engagement of Chinese odi in Africa, this study uses the Uppsala model to better understand the motives behind the shift to the African Market. The findings suggest that Chinese private companies are not guided by the Uppsala model in their internationalization process in Africa. The remarkable advantage of Chinese private companies compared to other companies when moving to Africa is explained by their strong entrepreneurial spirit, risk taking and price leadership strategy. We find that political instability in African countries is not a big concern for Chinese companies. From the Chinese point of view, psychic distance is no longer an issue to worry about, as globalization plays a significant role in market integration. Chinese knowledge and experience pertaining to the African market is achieved by their operations in Africa, allowing Chinese companies to design their own way of internationalization in the African market.

Великобритания, процессы деколонизации в Азии и План Коломбо (1945-1951 гг.)

After World War II, European metropolises were forced to go the way to decolonization. Processes of the collapses of European empires were caused by a surge of the national-liberation movement in the colonies during and after the war, an increase of the influence of the world's public opinion and the anti-colonial activities of the United Nations established in 1945. The Cabinet of Clement Attlee, which came to power in 1945, headed for a withdrawal from some territories of the British Empire. The article is devoted to a little-known episode in the Russian historiography connected with the establishment of the Organization of the Colombo Plan. The initiative to institute such a structure was initially sounded in India, and Britain supported and developed the Indian idea. The British governmental circles in the circumstances of decolonization processes in Asia after World War II sought to prevent the collapse of relations with the dominions and colonies that became independent. In 1947, the largest British colony in Asia, India, gained independence and two conflicting republics, India and Pakistan, appeared. In 1948, Burma and Ceylon became sovereign states. In 1947, the Attlee Cabinet handed the Palestinian question to the UN. In February 1950, a conference of foreign affairs ministers of the Commonwealth countries was held in Colombo, Ceylon. India made an initiative for such a meeting a year earlier, London willingly supported this initiative on its grounds. The Attlee Government hoped to strengthen relations with the recent colonies and dominions in the Commonwealth format by increasing spending on Asian territories under the Colonial Development and Welfare Act 1945. London also made a lot of diplomatic efforts to convince the United States in the necessity of their participation in the Colombo Plan. The White House expressed interest in the Plan after the start of the Korean War on 25 June 1950. US officially joined the Colombo Plan of the organization in 1951. The essence of the Colombo Plan included two related elements. The first was a course for the implementation of programs of technical and educational cooperation of the member states. The second element of the plan was a broad program of economic development, including the financing of infrastructure projects (roads, railways, irrigation and other activities). In 1951, Conservatives came to power and continued the Labor policy of strengthening ties with the Commonwealth through the Colombo Plan. However, on the one hand, the financial problems of the United Kingdom did not allow to significantly expand the amount of aid to Asian countries, on the other hand, the attention of the British Conservatives in the 1950s was switched to the unfolding decolonization processes in Africa, which became a field of rivalry, along with the Asian region, of two superpowers in the Cold War.

Industrialising the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Economies: Prospects and Challenges

<p>This article examines the prospects and challenges of industrialisation as a tool for economic development in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The economic importance of industrialisation is enshrined in its capacity to create job opportunities and facilitate synergies between and among various sectors of the economy. The paper posits that industrialisation is an engine for economic development that can promote sustainable positive social change in any given society. While the perceived view is that, in general, the industrialisation process in Africa has been disappointing; the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has committed itself towards embracing the concept of industrialisation as a tool for economic growth and development. Thus, given the historical failure of this concept on the African continent, it is important to analyse the prospects and challenges likely to be faced by the SADC region in their bid to hasten the industrialisation of their countries. Substantively, the paper relied on documentary research.</p>

The Citizens’ Council and Africa: White Supremacy in Global Perspective

When the Citizens' Council's chief administrator, William J. Simmons, returned to Mississippi after several weeks of traveling through southern Africa in 1966, he confidently reported that he had found evidence of racial tension, despite widespread reports of armed whites and unsettled conditions in the region. During his remarks on the Citizens' Council weekly program, Forum, he explained that whites in southern Africa struck him as very much like ... white people in the South ... prior to ... the civil rights revolution. The relationship between white and black was of acceptance, with no hint of theoretical preconceptions about how things ought to be or how some sociologist thinks they ought to be. In a word, they're just natural. (1) Simmons's nostalgia notwithstanding, his appearance in southern Africa in 1966 signified more than a wistful glance. The eleven Forum programs that the Citizens' Council recorded in South Africa, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and South-West Africa (Namibia) were only one piece of a broad investment that the Council made in the post-civil rights movement years to preserve what was left of the system of segregation and state-sanctioned white supremacy recently lost in the American South. Close examination reveals that the decolonization process in Africa was a consistent concern for the Citizens' Council. That consistency and the partnerships between the organization and various benefactors suggest that scholars need to develop a deeper understanding of global networks of white supremacy and their reinvigoration in the midst of challenges and institutional defeats. Scholars of the civil rights movement have correctly situated the contours of the black freedom struggle in the United States within a global context of black liberation movements and decolonization abroad. In similar fashion, historians of American foreign policy have linked administrative priorities to both decolonization events and civil rights campaigns at home. (2) In each of these approaches, scholars have uncovered communities of activism and power, contextualizing local movements within broader and more complex environments of politics, economy, and national identity. This essay suggests a similar treatment of white supremacy within the segregationist movement. It does so through an examination of the Citizens' Council's engagement with decolonization processes in Africa. The Council's interest in Africa escalated dramatically after Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in November 1965, so much so that the Forum program organizers recorded interviews from various locations in southern Africa over the course of several weeks. A closer examination of the Citizens' Council's relationship to Africa from the organization's beginnings in 1954 to the Rhodesian independence crisis in 1965-1966 contextualizes American iterations of white resistance within a global ecosystem of white supremacy that sustained the Council after its campaign to preserve segregation in the United States failed. The relationship between the Citizens' Council and white minority regimes in southern Africa is not a new area of scholarly interest. The working framework among scholars who have written about these connections recognizes the Council's interest but lacks consensus about its motivation. Thomas Noer describes the Council's interest in global networks of white supremacy as mostly pragmatic, an investment that, he argues, increased after 1964 in an attempt to secure financial support from organizations with deeper pockets as support in Mississippi was disintegrating. (3) Zoe L. Hyman's work on the intersections of American segregationist ideology and movements to secure white power in South Africa challenges this perspective. Her research identifies a much earlier transatlantic exchange of literature, evidenced through the partnership of the Citizen, the monthly journal published by the Citizens' Council, and the South African Observer, a parallel publication from Cape Town committed to maintaining white supremacy in southern Africa. …

Notas sobre gênero e modernização em Moçambique

ResumoCom base em trabalho de campo realizado em Moçambique entre 1981 e 1984 e através da análise de extensivos dados sobre mulheres e relações de gênero, a autora discute os chamados processos de desenvolvimento na África, a partir do que pode observar do seu desdobramento em Moçambique e de seus efeitos sobre as mulheres. Do ponto de vista particular da vida das mulheres, as políticas de desenvolvimento, inicialmente socialistas e mais tarde, neoliberais, levadas a cabo pelo FRELIMO não fizerem muita diferença, o que a autora explora a partir de material etnográfico de diversas regiões do país

History and origin of the HIV-1 subtype C epidemic in South Africa and the greater southern African region.

HIV has spread at an alarming rate in South Africa, making it the country with the highest number of HIV infections. Several studies have investigated the histories of HIV-1 subtype C epidemics but none have done so in the context of social and political transformation in southern Africa. There is a need to understand how these processes affects epidemics, as socio-political transformation is a common and on-going process in Africa. Here, we genotyped strains from the start of the epidemic and applied phylodynamic techniques to determine the history of the southern Africa and South African epidemic from longitudinal sampled data. The southern African epidemic’s estimated dates of origin was placed around 1960 (95% HPD 1956–64), while dynamic reconstruction revealed strong growth during the 1970s and 80s. The South African epidemic has a similar origin, caused by multiple introductions from neighbouring countries, and grew exponentially during the 1980s and 90s, coinciding with socio-political changes in South Africa. These findings provide an indication as to when the epidemic started and how it has grown, while the inclusion of sequence data from the start of the epidemic provided better estimates. The epidemic have stabilized in recent years with the expansion of antiretroviral therapy.

Indigenous Knowledge and Public Education in Sub-Saharan Africa

The discourse on indigenous knowledge has incited a debate of epic proportions across the world over the years. In Africa, especially in the sub-Saharan region, while the so-called indigenous communities have always found value in their own local forms of knowledge, the colonial administration and its associates viewed indigenous knowledge as unscientific, illogical, anti-development, and/or ungodly. The status and importance of indigenous knowledge has changed in the wake of the landmark 1997 Global Knowledge Conference in Toronto, which emphasised the urgent need to learn, preserve, and exchange indigenous knowledge. Yet, even with this burgeoning interest and surging call, little has been done, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, to guarantee the maximum exploitation of indigenous knowledge for the common good. In view of this realisation, this paper discusses how indigenous knowledge can and should both act as a tool for promoting the teaching/learning process in Africa's public education and address the inexorably enigmatic amalgam of complex problems and cataclysms haunting the world.

Social Media and Public Policy Process in Africa: Enhanced Policy Process in Digital Age

In recent times, civic engagement in policy process has been emphasized globally, but channels to facilitate public participation in the policy process in Africa remain unexplored. Given the conservative nature of policy process in most of Africa countries, the study examines levels of social media use for civic engagement among government/policymakers and proposs a model to enhance policy process in a digital community using Easton’s theory of political analysis. The study employs case studies, and descriptive and correlation analysis covering 53 African countries. Findings revealed that social media use has taken new shape with respect to citizens’ engagement in the electoral process, but its use for civic engagement in policy process is very low (and below the global average); increased investment in telecommunication infrastructures is yet to have a significant effect on human capital ICT literacy in Africa. Investment in ICTs should include the building of human capital ICT literacy, and the government/policymakers should explore online citizens’ engagement and adjust policies to incorporate technology in sub-regional and national development plans.

Africa or Morocco? A Historical Perspective on the Resolution of the Contrived Stalemate over the Western Sahara Decolonization Process

:The stalemated decolonization process in Africa’s last colony, Western Sahara, was investigated in its historical context. Deploying the critical-analytic methodology of contemporary history and examining available sources on the subject, the paper posits the Saharawi right to self-determination and independence, within the framework of the UN Charter as a non-self-governing territory which is not in dispute. It concludes that the stalemate is Morocco’s contrivance to further its dream of a “Greater Morocco”, and that the reactivation of Saharawi armed struggle, complemented with diplomatic efforts under the strategic leadership of the African Union, would present the United Nations with a choice between Africa and Morocco, and reinvest the world body with the political will for its early resolution.

Foreign Direct Investment Inflows and the Industrialization of African Countries

Summary This paper examines the relationship between inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and the industrialization process in Africa. It uses panel data from 49 countries over the period of 1980–2009. The results indicate that FDI did not have a significant impact on the industrialization of these countries, while other variables, such as the size of the market, the financial sector, and international trade were important. This study concludes that the role of FDI in the transformation agenda, which is currently being discussed in Africa, should be carefully analyzed to maximize the impact of these capital inflows.

Support Provided by the Accompanists of Patients Hospitalized in CHU in Burkina Faso - A Review

The shortage in health human resources is a universal phenomenon and Africa is no exception. Its scope involves circumstantial and in an uncontrollable way the accompanying of the patients in health care process in Africa. It is in this context that this study aims to investigate the type of support provided by the accompanists of patients hospitalized in (CHU) in Burkina Faso. Out of the 100 principal accompanists who were surveyed, the average age was 40.3 ± 8 years. The contribution to cares namely the monitoring of perfusions, medication administration, deposit and withdrawal of checkups, nursing were reported at respective rates of 100%, 78%, 89%, 79%. Logistical support, represented by the material support, drug supply, cleaning of premises, stretcher-bearing occupied respective rates of 100%, 91%, 42% and 73%. The financial stress and psychological support of the attendants were underscored respectively in 68% and 96% of cases. Hospitalized patients suffering from infectious diseases in half the cases, 11% from pulmonary TB smear positive and 72% of accompanists, in total ignorance attended on HIV positive patients. Patient accompanist’s sensitization of on infection prevention remains indispensable.