Baraza: Swahili Conference at SOAS
31 October 2015 | 9 am - 10 pm | Room 4429 & the Djam Lecture Theatre Call for papers: Abstracts are invited for short presentations at this one day conference addressing any aspect of the language, literature, translation, culture, philosophy or diaspora of the Swahili speaking peoples of the world. The aim of the meeting is to foster academic interaction and exchange about new or emerging research, developing ideas and interests for mutual benefit among Swahili scholars and students. **Please email your 250-300 word abstract and title of your presentation (in English or Swahili) to: cg17@soas.ac.uk or ih11@soas.ac.uk ** Free registration will take place on the day of the conference, but a preliminary programme will made available before the conference. Tea and coffee will be provided. This conference is organised by the Department of the Languages and Cultures of Africa in collaboration with the Centre of African Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies. To attend the conference please RSVP at cas@soas.ac.uk
Please visit the website for more info
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In Conversation with Kenyan singer-songwriter Maia Lekow
18 September 2015 | 6 pm - 8 pm | Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre
SOAS, University of London
Maia represents a new colour from Kenya's contemporary musical landscape. With a swathe of support slots for artists such as James Blunt (UK), Habib Koite (Mali), Thandiswe (South Africa), and Mafikizolo (South Africa), Maia has also graced major festival stages across Africa including HIFA (Zimbabwe), Visa For Music (Morocco), Sauti za Busara (Zanzibar) and Kigali UP (Rwanda). Her reputation as a highly-engaging live act has emerged from her shows both with a six-piece band, and as an intimate solo-acoustic performer. Maya will discuss her music career with SOAS Swahili expert Dr Chege Gihtiora as well as performing some of her beautiful acoustic songs.
Chair: Chege Githiora, SOAS
For more information and to purchase tickets please visit the Facebook event page
For more information contact: cas@soas.ac.uk ____________________________________________________ Book Talk: "The Politics of African Industrial Policy"
5 October | 5:15 pm - 7 pm | Room 4429
part of the Economic Transformation in Africa Working Group
SOAS University of London
 Lindsay Whitfield will discuss her new book published by Cambridge University Press. This book engages in the debate on growth versus economic transformation and the importance of industrial policy, presenting a comprehensive framework for explaining the politics of industrial policy. Using comparative research to theorize about the politics of industrial policy in countries in the early stages of capitalist transformation that also experience the pressures of elections due to democratization, this book provides four in-depth African country studies that illustrate the challenges to economic transformation and the politics of implementing industrial policies. For more information and to register contact: cas@soas.ac.uk ____________________________________________________ Timbuktu Seminar - An Illustrated talk by Alexander Huddleston
15 October 2015 | 1 pm - 3 pm | Room 116
SOAS, University of London
Timbuktu, at the edge of the vast Sahara Desert, was little known in the West—except as a byword for the remote and exotic—until militant Islamist groups destroyed many of its religious shrines and ancient manuscripts in 2012. The project 333 Saints: A Life of scholarship in Timbuktu (333 Saints : l'esprit du savoir à Tombouctou) captures a way of life and learning as it was shortly before the militants overran the city. The photographs depict a moment in time now almost gone, fading into history. They show a culture of moderate Islam that is under threat—a deeply rooted, ancient Islamic tradition of tolerance, erudition, and faith—and a city that has built its very identity around scholarship and a love of books and learning.
The photographs tell a story of discovery: exploring a rich and beautiful African intellectual culture, that of the ancient manuscript libraries of Timbuktu and the culture of scholarship that created them.
For more information and to register contact: cas@soas.ac.uk ____________________________________________________ The Cinema and its Publics in Africa
19 October | 5:15 pm - 7 pm | Room 4429
in collaboration with the SOAS Centre for Film Studies
with Dr Litheko Modisane (University of Cape Town)
Litheko Modisane is a Senior Lecturer (Television Studies) in the Centre for Film and Media Studies, University of Cape Town. Modisane earned his PhD at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He was until recently, a lecturer in the Department of African Literature at the same university. Modisane's scope of interests includes repertoires of symbolic representations in the contemporary political public sphere in South Africa. He is currently writing a book on Nelson Mandela as a cinematic and televisual subject, particularly with regard to how meanings of liberation are constructed or deconstructed around his portrayals on film. Modisane is the author of South Africa's Renegade Reels: The Making and Public Lives of Black-Centred Films, (Palgrave Macmillan (New York) 2013). The book focuses on the public lives of iconic black-centred films in South Africa, from the colonial to the post-apartheid eras. Such films, Modisane's work demonstrates, are catalysts for public reflections on social and political issues germane to anti-apartheid politics and fledgling democracies. Modisane contributes to a wide range of topics within the fields of film and television.
Chair: Dr Lindiwe Dovey, SOAS
For more information and to register contact: cas@soas.ac.uk ____________________________________________________ Why so much interest in China-Africa Links?
23 October | 7 pm - 9 pm | Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS
in association with the SOAS China Institute and the Young China Watchers (YCW)
The interest in China's engagement with Africa has grown fast in the past 10 years. This reflects both real trends in trade, investment and labour flows, but also a clash of perceptions about their potential impact on the development prospects of African economies and societies. This seminar will tackle the basis for these different views and how empirically-grounded work often challenges well-established perceptions about China-Africa relations.
Speaker: Dr. Carlos Oya (SOAS)
Moderator: Raffaello Pantucci (RUSI and founder of YCW)
For more information and to register contact: cas@soas.ac.uk ____________________________________________________ Africa & Renewable Energy
21 October | 6:30 pm - 9:30 pm | Khalili Lecture Theatre, SOAS
in association with the Business Council for Africa
The Centre of African Studies will be holding a join event with the Business Council for Africa to highlight the issues facing the renewable energy sector in sub-Saharan Africa. Africa is consistently confronted with power shortages; more than 620 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live without electricity and it is estimated that nearly three-quarters of the electricity demand in sub-Saharan Africa will come from industrial and commercial users by 2040. Consequently, investors are examining renewable energy projects to provide a solution to the energy crisis. Africa's largest privately owned solar power plant is launching this year in Uganda, part of a plan to develop mostly renewable energy electrical power projects in 17 African countries, Reuters reports. The renewable energy sector is fast growing and has the potential to positively impact infrastructure development for the future.
Chair: Professor Rosaleen Duffy, SOAS
For more information contact cas@soas.ac.uk ____________________________________________________ Sudan & South Sudan Seminar Series
The series brings together academic and practitioner experts on contemporary Sudan and South Sudan to deliver a truly interdisciplinary series of seminars. Ranging from legal, economic, political and cultural issues the seminars will challenge current views to provide insight on the future of the Sudans.
All seminars will be in room 4429 from 5:15 pm - 7 pm.
16 November 2015 - Arms and the Men: Who sells weapons, who uses them, who is killed by them
Arms now flow unchecked around both Sudan and South Sudan and they kill thousands of civilians each year in both countries. Conflict has raged in South Sudan for over half a century, both before and after independence from Sudan in 2011, while since the Islamist regime seized power in Khartoum in 1989, it has been at war with its own citizens and has become one of Africa's biggest arms producers, partly thanks to its military pact with Iran. The panel will discuss who is circulating these weapons and why.
Chair: Gill Lusk
7 December 2015 - Agricultural Potential in the Sudans: past experience and future outlook
The prospects for Sudan and South Sudan to become major agricultural producers have been deliberated for over a century. Modern schemes began in the Anglo-Egyptian period. Most have failed or had limited success. Experts from the field will discuss the failures and successes of these projects and evaluate the pros and cons of the continued pursuit of modern intensive crop production. Both countries intend to build more dams along the Nile and to attract foreign producers through competitive land lease and tax breaks. The panellists will highlight the likely social, environmental and economic impacts of these policies.
Chair: Mawan Muortat
25 January 2016 - Telling the Story Their Way: The Arts & Social Action in the Sudans
Culture in the Sudans has for some time been relegated to the scholarly margins, yet the expressive arts play an important role in inspiring reflection, challenging power, promoting identities and restoring individual and community morale. This panel will address the arts in their capacity as critical acts in the forging of citizenly imaginaries and will explore a range of ways that they are used to allegorize personal aspirations, strengthen communities and cultivate political engagement.
Chairs: Angela Impey (SOAS) and Mariya Hassan (SOAS)
15 February 2016 - The Use of Law as an Instrument of Power in Sudan and South Sudan
Multiple regimes, harking back to colonial times, have used law as an instrument of power in Sudan and this tendency has continued. The present regime in Sudan has from the very outset used decrees and legislation to entrench and broaden the power of the state and its agents. It has also employed the law as a means to pursue its project of building an Islamic state by adopting Shari'a law. Gendered personal status and public order laws are an integral part of this project. This seminar examines the extent to which the regime in Sudan has employed the law since 1989, and the underlying rationale and effectiveness of initiatives, including with reference to the role of the judiciary and other actors. It considers emerging parallels in South Sudan, such as the broad National Security Services Law adopted in 2015. The seminar will also reflect on resistance to the use of law as an instrument of power in Sudan and South Sudan, and the challenges faced by those advocating legal reforms and greater rights protection.
Chair: Dr Lutz Oette (SOAS)
For more information and to register contact: cas@soas.ac.uk ____________________________________________________ Book Discussion: "Administration and Taxation in Former Portuguese Africa, 1900-1945"
9 November 2015 | 5:15 pm - 7 pm
edited by P J Havik, A Keese, and M Santos | published by Cambridge Scholars
Speaker: Philip J Havik
This book addresses a notable gap in the knowledge of Portuguese colonial administration and the policies implemented in the main territories of its "third" African empire: Angola, Mozambique and Guinea. In recent years, the question of colonial taxation has become a topic in the academic debate on colonial empires and has led to a comparative, long-term focus on its impact in African societies. Given that former Portuguese colonies in Africa have been largely absent from this debate, this book offers new perspectives on taxation and colonial rule, and the first detailed and comprehensive study of fiscal administration. Besides dealing with the economic and financial aspects of empire, the book interprets the social experience of African populations through their interaction with colonial institutions. Based on a thorough and probing qualitative and quantitative analysis of published and unpublished data, it places taxation in a broad social context for the period between the full military control of the territories and the end of WW II. Thus, whilst engaging with ongoing debates on comparative African economic and political history, the book provides a key contribution to research on African social change.
Published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Chair: Professor William Clarence-Smith, SOAS
For more information and to register contact: cas@soas.ac.uk ____________________________________________________ The English-Everywhere Agenda in Education in a Highly Multilingual Cameroon: towards a recipe for disaster? by Dr Seraphin Kamdem (SOAS)
23 November 2015 | 5:15 pm - 7 pm | Room 4429
SOAS University of London
Dr Seraphin Kamdem holds a PhD from SOAS. His doctoral thesis focused on African languages and education, investigating multilingual adult literacy in the rural areas of Cameroon, in Africa. His initial research into adult literacy as a psycholinguistic skill and an educational activity expanded into investigating issues of social status and identities of adult learners, grassroots agency and institutional development, local ownership and community response, all mediated through literacy as an endogenous and community-based enterprise. Details regarding this event will be provided shortly.
For more information and to register contact: cas@soas.ac.uk ____________________________________________________ China in Africa Workshop
12 - 13 November 2015 | 9 am- 5 pm | Room T101/T102
in association with the SOAS China Institute
SOAS, University of London
The Centre of African studies and the SOAS China Institute will present a high level workshop on the broad theme 'China in Africa'. The two day workshop, by invitation only, will bring together senior scholars from the UK, China, Africa and the US to discuss issues around investments and economic opportunity by Chinese companies in Africa.
The Workshop will be closed by an evening public Keynote lecture, on Wednesday 13 November 2015 given by leading expert on this topic, Dr Deborah Brautigam.
Chair: Carlos Oya, Julia Strauss, & Tim Pringle
For more information and to register contact: cas@soas.ac.uk
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