Monthly Archives: July 2009
Writing and Graphic Systems in African Art
I’m fascinated by scripts, how they look, how we create them, how we use them. The Inscribing meaning website is quite interesting to explore. At first glance it seems just like an artistic frontpage, but the wealth of the site is in the links at the bottom of the page.
Inscribing Meaning explores the relationships between African art and the communicative powers of language, graphic systems and the written word.
Inscribing Meaning was developed by the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, in association with the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
History of the Mandinka people in Gambia and West Africa
A good article on the history of the Mandinka people can be found on the Gambia Guide (information portal).
The ancestors of the Mandinkas (Mandingo) of today’s Gambia and Senegal region lived in Kangaba which was a part of the ancient Mali Empire. They became independent in AD 1235 and gradually some of them moved westwards.
Sierra Leone Slum Medic
BBC NEWS ran a good series about a medic working in a slum in Sierra Leone, in Profile: Sierra Leone’s slum medic
Adama Gondor will be keeping a regular diary for the BBC News website about running a clinic in a coastal slum of Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown. Here she discusses the challenges she faces in Kroo Bay, where shanty houses have been built on a rubbish dump on the banks of the Crocodile River.
Please don’t think that this situation is untypical and just exists in slum areas. I have seen clinics like this in several countries. The lack of even basic equipment, drugs and a continuous fight for cleanliness is common.
Save the Children has launched an interactive website where Kroo Bay residents answer questions about their lives and Chloe Kegg has a great set of photos of Kroo Bay, Free Town, Sierra Leone
mtDNA research on Pygmy hunter-gathers, Africa
Anthropology net has an interesting article, mtDNA shows Pygmy hunter-gathers have a deep ancestry with Bantu farmers, about pygmy hunter gatherers.
The Pygmy hunter–gatherers of central Africa are an amalgamation of various groups of people that are on average about 4 feet tall. Some genetic and linguistic evidence point to them being direct descendants of hunter-gatherers from the late Stone Age. But that’s about it, there’s not much archaeological evidence to corroborate with this observation.
Africa Development : Evaluating Accomplishments
Seven presumed success stories
Africa’s success: evaluating accomplishments, R.I. Rotberg, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2007
Evaluating the seven African success stories
Chinese influence is growing in the region, mainly in Mozambique and Ghana. Chinese investors are contributing significantly to the growth but colonial methods of Chinese operations characterised by extraction and exploitation have led to serious protests in some areas. Inexpensive Chinese imports are affecting the domestic market.
This paper evaluates the seven presumed African success stories: Botswana, South Africa, Zambia, Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique and Uganda. It gives a detailed analysis of the economic, political, governance and human development scenarios in each country, and identifies the emerging challenges. Although all the seven countries are growing rapidly, they face, among others, the following problems:
- job creation lags behind promises and expectations
- acute shortage of electricity hinders exploitation of newly found resources
- road and rail infrastructure remains inadequate in all expect South Africa and Botswana
- growing indigenous wealth is accompanied by severe income inequalities
- high incidence of tuberculosis, malaria and HIV/AIDS
- high levels of corruption
How to get a copy
Download pdf of full text of document
African Art Book : Drawings from Angola
Tales for children
Drawings from Angola by Paulus Gerdes
For children from age 8 to 14. “Drawings from Angola†present an introduction to an African story telling tradition. The tales are illustrated with marvelous drawings made in the sand. The book conveys the stories of the stork and the leopard, the hunter and the dog, the rooster and the fox, and others. It explains how to execute the drawings. The reader is invited to draw tortoises, antelopes, lions, and other animals. The activities proposed throughout the book invite the reader to experiment and to explore the ‘rhythm’ and symmetry of the illustrations. Surprising results will be playfully obtained, such as in arithmetic, a way to calculate quickly the sum of a sequence of odd numbers. Children will live the beautiful mathematics of the Angolan sanddrawings. Answers to the activities are provided. The book can be used both in classrooms and at home.
About the author
Dr. Paulus Gerdes has been a professor of mathematics at the Eduardo Mondlane University and at the Universidade Pedagogica in Mozambique for many years, serving as Rector of the latter from 1989-1996. He was a visiting professor at the University of Georgia from 1996 to 1998. He has served the African Mathematical Union as chair of AMUCHMA, the commission on the History of Mathematics in Africa, since 1996, and was the secretary of (SAMSA) the Southern African Mathematical Sciences Association (1991-1995).
How to get a copy
Buy from Amazon Drawings from Angola: Living Mathematics
Suggested Book
Mathematics in African History and Cultures
Annotated bibliography of Mathematics in African History
Mathematics in African History and Cultures: An Annotated Bibliography by Paulus Gerdes, Ahmed Djebbar
This volume constitutes an updated version of the bibliography published in 2004 by the African Mathematical Union. The African Studies Association attributed the original edition a ‘special mention’ in the 2006 Conover-Porter Award competition. The book contains over 1600 bibliographic entries. The appendices contain additional bibliographic information on (1) mathematicians of the Diaspora, (2) publications by Africans on the history of mathematics outside Africa, (3) time-reckoning and astronomy in African history and cultures, (4) string figures in Africa, (5) examples of books published by African mathematicians, (6) board games in Africa, (7) research inspired by geometric aspects of the ‘sona’ tradition. The book concludes with several indices (subject, country, region, author, ethnographic and linguistic, journal, mathematicians). Professor Jan Persens of the University of the Western Cape (South Africa) and president of the African Mathematical Union (2000-2004) wrote the preface.(430 pages)
About the author
Dr. Paulus Gerdes has been a professor of mathematics at the Eduardo Mondlane University and at the Universidade Pedagogica in Mozambique for many years, serving as Rector of the latter from 1989-1996. He was a visiting professor at the University of Georgia from 1996 to 1998. He has served the African Mathematical Union as chair of AMUCHMA, the commission on the History of Mathematics in Africa, since 1996, and was the secretary of (SAMSA) the Southern African Mathematical Sciences Association (1991-1995).
How to get a copy
Mathematics in African History and Cultures: An Annotated Bibliography
California Africa Newsreel films now on Amazon
In what California Newsreel is describing as an effort to take African cinema beyond the non-profit and educational circuit, it is making 70 titles from its Library of African cinema list available directly to consumers through vendors like Amazon for $24.95 each. This makes them much more affordable to teachers.
You can find the complete list at  www.newsreel.org, but it includes such titles as
- Ousmane Sembene’s Faat Kine (2001),
- Djibril Diop Mambety’s La Petite Vendeuse de Soleil, also known as Little Girl Who Sold the Sun (1999)
- Zézé Gamboa’s The Hero (2004), Newton
- Aduaka’s Ezra (2007)
- Moussa Sene Absa’s Ça Twiste à Poponguine (1993)
- Joseph Gai Ramaka’s Karmen Gei(2001)
- Mohamed Camara’s Dakan (1997)
as well as such documentary films as
- All About Darfur (2005), a study of the humanitarian crisis in Sudan
- Woubi Chéri (1998),  about gender and sexual identity in Africa.
The Milayi Curse by Joseph R. Alila
THE MILAYI CURSE
JOSEPH R. ALILA
When a poor orphan, Charles Milayi, excels in his placement examinations out of middle school, Father James O’Kilghor (a White Priest) finds himself as the keeper of a secret involving members of two African sub-clans (Jamokos and Milayis) locked in a century-old, spiritual cold war in which bigotry and pride are served cold in every verbal discourse. In “The Milayi Curse,” Joseph Alila (the Author of “Sunset on Polygamy,” and “Thirteen Curses on Mother Africa”) poses a fundamental spiritual and moral question: Should Father O’Kilghor have revealed the secret to demonstrate to his bigoted Parishioners the good-heartedness of David Jamoko, the man who crossed the clan-divide to secretly sponsor a Milayi boy (Charles) at a time when his own son (Thomas) could not manage to graduate out of middle school?
Available through LULU:Â http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/the-milayi-curse/4943933
Burundi Higher Education
The INHEA has a good overview of higher education in Burundi.
Introduction
Burundi is a small country located in Central Africa. In 1995, the population of Burundi was estimated at 6.06 million and the gross national product GNP per capita at $160. During the period 1985-95, the average annual growth rates of the population and the GNP per capita were 2.5% and –1.3%.History of Higher Education
At the beginning of the 1960s, higher education in Burundi was composed of three institutions: the Institute of Agriculture of Ruanda-Urundi, the institut facultaire of Usumbura (University institute of Usumbura), and the Faculty of Science of Usumbura. In 1964, these three institutions merged to create the official University of Bujumbura, known as the Université officielle de Bujumbura (UOB).
Ancient African Maps Posted Online
The Northwestern University Library has posted its collection of rare maps of Africa online. The 113 maps, date from 1530 to 1915.
You can access the maps here
Sunset on Polygamy by Joseph Alila
A novel by Kenyan writer Joseph Alila
Sunset on Polygamy (Paperback), Joseph Alila, List price: $19.95 ISBN-10: 1424166845 ISBN-13: 978-1424166848
It is Sunset on Polygamy in Luoland. A near-fatal crisis pits polygamous Jim and younger wives against the hyperjealous first wife, Felicia the Nyadendi, a master of intrigues, who engineers a home-wide mutiny against him. Mutiny ends, and a surge of babies for all but the in-menopause Felicia. Tormented by her condition, she is unable to withstand a childless period in her journey, Felicia suffers a mental breakdown. But she would have the last laugh, thanks to a fatal disease epidemic. Meanwhile, the New Disease ensnares her people as Gina, virus-infected and very beautiful, unwillingly remarries because of spiritual demands placed upon her by the customs of her people. Deceivingly healthy, she kills suitor-after-suitor, shutting down home-after-home, as the society sleeps and nurses a tragic spiritual (Luo: Chira) explanation for a medically well-understood viral-killer. Gina’s long life is a tragedy, and so are polygamy, wife-inheritance, and a communal psyche moored on a myriad of taboos.
Buy the book
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