Difference between revisions of "Category:Africa"

News

Video overview 2009

News about Africa from Grist

Currently, there is a humanitarian emergency in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a failed state with a long-running civil war, fuelled by factions trying to control resources such as diamonds and the coltan in our cell phones, laptops and game consoles. Systematic rape is happnening on an enormous scale. The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo here is an audio interview with Robin Pennn Warren and others (1/09). Harden in the course reader provides background (updated info on Congo Gorillas here),background on current civil war in DR Congo. 12/09 Doctors Without Borders site. Video of Mountain Gorillas

Global 3000, a German program shown on PBS, has extensive coverage of green issues, especially with respect to Third World entrepreneurs. Examples: Coltan mining in Congo 7/10.

Maps (see also Maps Page

UN map of Africa showing effects of Global Warming.

UCSC Library Resources

African Studies Research Guide A good starting point

Database:

Africa-Wide: NiPAD Available online to UCSC students, faculty, and staff. UCSC access is limited to one concurrent user. Searachable database of information on all aspects of Africa. Topics covered include politics, history, economics, business, mining, natural sciences, environment, development, social issues, anthropology, literature, language, law, music, and tourism. Sources include books, journal and magazine articles, radio and television broadcasts, newspapers, pamphlets, maps, reports, theses and music recordings. Subject area(s): Humanities, Social Sciences.

General Websites

Africa Policy Information Center

Bibliography

Video

Raoul du Toit coordinated conservation initiatives that have helped to develop and maintain the largest remaining black rhino populations in Zimbabwe. Learn more at Goldman Prize.

60 MINUTES segment on gold, war and rape in DR of Congo. 11/09.

Conflict in Africa because of water scarcity.

2010 Goldman Prize (the green Nobel) for Africa: Thuli Makama see also video. all African winners

A Thousand Suns tells the story of the Gamo Highlands of the African Rift Valley, one of the most densely populated rural regions of Africa yet its people have been farming sustainably for 10,000 years. The film explores the modern world's untenable sense of separation from and superiority over nature and how the interconnected worldview of the Gamo people is fundamental in achieving long-term sustainability, both in the region and beyond.

Charlie Rose is an excellent PBS interview series. Here, for example, he discusses foreign aid and development with Peter Singer, author of "The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty" as well as social entrepreneur Jacqueline Novogratz and aid critic and Africa scholar Dambisa Moyo.

The Market maker setting up a commodity exchange in Ethiopia by an American student who was born there, inspired by the famine. Shown on PBS Wide Angle program.

Botanist Corneille Ewango talks about his work at the Okapi Faunal Reserve in the Congo Basin -- and his heroic work protecting it from poachers, miners and raging civil wars (TEDtalk).

In this five minute TEDTalk, William Kamkwamba, a 14 year old African discusses how he built windmill video Here's a later and longer Tedtalk

Other TEDtalks on Africa

UCR research on cow peas for use in Africa

Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala as the first female Finance Minister in Nigeria, attacked corruption to make the country more desirable for foreign investment and job creation. Now as a director of the World Bank and head of the Makeda Fund, she works for change in all of Africa. TEDtalk video

Afrigadget site

Global Health: HIV and the Epidemic in Africa UCTV 90 min. 2010

Fighting Malaria in Africa UCTV 90 min 2010. Also, UCSC alum Nina Grove, formerly of Genentech, works on malaria in Africa.

Audio

The winner of this year’s Buckminster Fuller Challenge is an initiative that helps transform packed dry grasslands and savannahs into water-rich pastures. Operation Hope promotes managed cattle grazing, a technique that contradicts conventional beliefs on the effects of animals and soil preservation. link

Books

Mike Davis Late Victorian Holocausts Davis, author of City of Quartz, traces the creation of what we now call "The Third World," through a complex series of seemingly disparate natural and market-related events beginning in the 1870s. Includes Ethiopia famine.

King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families by Philip Gourevitch interview. it's a powerful book about the Rwandan genocide (which may have had ecological roots? Here's a more recent example of fights over water) which inspired Rye Barcott, former Marine and co-founder of the global health and development non-profit, Carolina for Kibera. Barcott's eye-opening experience confronting poverty in Kenya started him along the tumultuous journey that led to his non-government organization and book, It Happened on the Way to War. a radio interview 2011. Google talk (video)

Articles

Soil loss through erosion was a significant factor in the Rwanda genocide. Diamond looks at this in Collapse, which is critiqued here

People

Wangari Mathai First environmentalist to win the Nobel Peace Prize. 11/06 Interview (audio). 2007 audio interview. A new documentary on her will be shown on PBS in mid-April Taking Root, trailer. Video of 2009 talk "Challenge for Africa."

UCSC alum Nina Grove, formerly of Genentech, works on malaria in Africa. UCSC GIIP students working in Africa 10/10.

Marc Ona Essangui winner 2009 Goldman Prize. In Gabon, a country without a culture of civic engagement, Marc Ona led efforts to publicly expose the unlawful agreements behind a huge mining project threatening the sensitive ecosystems of Gabon’s equatorial rainforests. Ona’s efforts led to an unprecedented victory for civil society in Gabon, with the government adopting new environmental oversight regulations and significantly reducing the size of the mining concession.

UCSC People

Martin Case (business management economics, '08) will soon join the Banana Slug tradition of service. Case departs June 1 to train for a two-year assignment in Cameroon. He will work in small business development. Case says he is drawn to the Peace Corps to for a "grasp of the bigger picture of world economics through hands-on experience." An active member of his community, Case sang opera at UCSC and volunteers at Santa Cruz's Homeless Garden Project and the Resource Center for Nonviolence. With 47 alumni in service, UC Santa Cruz ranks No. 21 on the annual list of "Peace Corps Top Colleges and Universities," released last week.

Nina Grove, formerly of Genentech, works on malaria in Africa.

Cheryl Scott runs the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) office in East Africa.

Brian M. Dowd-Uribe is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Studies at UCSC. His primary expertise is in agricultural development in sub-Saharan Africa, and he has been a lecturer in environmental science at Santa Clara University and in sustainable development and environmental interpretation at UCSC, as well as a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo. His research explores both the agro-ecological and social impacts of alternative agrifood movements, including organic and fair trade cotton production, and the social impacts of the introduction of genetically engineered crops.

Katie Roper has done internships in Kenya, and spent a year living in a "sustainable community" on campus. She she single-handedly produced a six-minute video documentary called Thirsty Trees: And the Search for Better Alternatives

Rhys Thom, also GIIP (more on GIIP in Ghana), served as the project director for Delta Info Initiative, a rural information technology project in Nigeria’s Niger Delta. He earlier interned at the Office of the Ombudsman of Namibia working on human rights and environmental projects. He is currently employed at the World Resources Institute (WRI). As the Program and Communications Coordinator for EMBARQ, he researches and implements environmentally and financially sustainable urban transport solutions.