BY VANESSA NOËL BROWN Located at the intersection of Africa and Europe, the kingdom of Morocco has long been a melting pot and a colorful example of globalization. Since the 9th century AD Berbers, Muslims and Jews lived, worked and studied together in this region. Today’s youth bulge in North Africa can be viewed as [...]
BY JEFFREY W. MANTZ Nobody likes to hear about blood diamonds, that something venerated as our culture’s highest token of commitment and affection comes to us haunted by specters of oppression, cruelty and murder. It took a 2006 film with Leonardo DiCaprio playing the role of a diamond-embezzling South African mercenary and a $100 million [...]
BY REUBEN E. BRIGETY, II It isn’t every day that I find myself in northern Kenya visiting a camp with 150,000 Somali refugees, or hearing an American soldier talk about the strategic importance of vaccinating sheep in Djibouti as part of the Global War on Terror. But neither is it every day that, as a [...]
BY DAWN C. PARKER WITH MACTION KOMWA Although HIV/AIDS has no boundaries, the most affected region is sub-Saharan Africa, where 25 of the 40 million people globally living with the virus live. The epidemic has eroded the ability of rural African households to produce food and other agricultural products, generate income, and care for and [...]
BY AGNIESZKA PACZYNSKA As the victorious great powers surveyed the devastation brought on by World War II and faced the crumbling of old colonial empires two issues came to dominate the international agenda: the reconstruction of countries devastated by the war and the economic and political development of the newly independent states of Africa and Asia. [...]
BY TONY ROSHAN SAMARA In June 2004 the Federation Internationale de Football Association(Fifa) announced that the 2010 World Cup would for the first time be hosted by an African nation, South Africa. This news was greeted with jubilation across the country. The sounds of cheering, car horns and the vuvuzela, the suddenly ubiquitous plastic South [...]
BY D.F. DAVIS In 2006, Mason’s Peace Operations Policy Program developed a simulation data base on conflict prevention and peace building in Nigeria. This effort was sponsored by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Consultation, Command and Control Agency (NC3A) using funds from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. The source of funding, in itself, made [...]
BY VANDY KANYAKO JR. The Africa Working Group (AWG) at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution (ICAR) is an association of academic practitioners, activists, and students interested in fostering an in-depth understanding of contemporary Africa’s position in the global community. The working group was founded in the early 1990s by ICAR students and faculty as [...]
BY LEHN BENJAMIN In January 2006 a group of nonprofit directors in Cape Town wrapped up a two year commitment to a peer learning cooperative. This initiative was intended to strengthen the capacity of black women leaders and improve the sustainability and effectiveness of the nonprofits they directed. These women all had significant organizational experience [...]
BY BENEDICT CARTON Why are South Africa historians studying an unfolding pandemic? Many historians of Africa might consider it unorthodox to study the present, but the devastating reach of AIDS, particularly in South Africa, is altering the compass of their disciplinary approach. With one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world, South [...]