As we gear up for our conference in South Africa next week, we do not want to lose sight of some of the great things that happened on the Blog over the last few months. We especially want to draw attention to our new website, and we are fortunate to have had experts from Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Morocco help our team work out the new logo and content. We also previewed some of the activities of our newest partner, the University of Gaston Berger in Senegal.
The CIHA Blog continues to engage in critical and productive discussions regarding religion and its importance in humanitarianism broadly-conceived. Over the summer, a number of articles specifically contributed to these discussions. For example, Professor Jacob U. Gordon, in an interview posted in the piece, “‘Revisiting Kwame Nkrumah: Pathways for the Future’ – A Q&A with Prof. Jacob U. Gordon,” called attention to the significance of religion and spirituality in pan-African as well as Ghanaian conceptions of the family, economy, education, and politics. In “John William Colenso: A Victorian Activist in South African Humanitarianism,” Christopher Merrett related the story of a colonial activist, bishop, theologian, mathematician, imperialist and humanitarian that challenged readers to understand how imperialist ideologies can be complicated and cracked open in their confrontation with injustices. More recently, Merrett further pushed readers to consider the importance of understanding the religious convictions of powerful resisters in South African history in his article, “Albert Luthuli: Conviction, Principle and the Long View.” Recently, in the post, “Towards Intersectional Social Justice: Confronting Homophobia in Our Communities,” Imam Dr. A. Rashied Omar, following the shootings in Orlando, Florida, called on the faith community to create spaces free of hatred and discrimination. While these articles directly focused on religion, religion also filters into many of the other areas we posted.
Over the last few months, we also engaged in a variety of discussions related to issues of race, sexuality, gender and youth. These discussions bring to the forefront current issues, calling for a critically understanding of history and highlighting efforts to strive for equality, justice, and respect. Most recently, we publicized and continue to follow the “Petition: Gandhi’s Statue at the University of Ghana Must Come Down.” This historical effort, now successful, to remove a statue of Gandhi at the University demonstrates the continued efforts of groups on the continent to raise awareness of racism historically and in the present, and calls on those in power to honor the many African thinkers and leaders who have led struggles for independence, equality and peace. This follows a previous post in which Dr. Akosua Adomako Ampofo discussed the movements #BlackLivesMatter and #RhodesMustFall and the historical connection to colonialism, slavery, and racism that continues to impact Black lives today. More recently, Abena Kyere and Edwin Adjei reviewed two films in “Race and Violence: The Past and the Present” that expose the issue of race and racism in humanitarian aid. Like Kyere and Adjei, Christopher Merrett also discusses the importance of raising consciousness in the article “Steve Biko, Black Consciousness and Individual Empowerment” while highlighting the life of Steve Biko and his emphasis on empowerment. In other posts, we critically engaged discussions of girls, marriage, and education. In the post “Track Changes: What daughters are worth”, we challenged the over-simplification of child marriage in South Sudan by posting a letter addressed to the LA Times by professor Andrew Apter in one of our “Track Changes” pieces. Also, after reviewing two documentaries, Abena Kyere and Edwin Adjei emphasized the importance of education for girls in Africa in their review, “A Girl’s Voice Doesn’t Break, It Gets Firmer”: Girl-Child Education in Film / «La voix d’une fille ne rompt, il se raffermit» : l’éducation des filles en film.” More recently, we engaged in a critical discussion of class and gender by posting several perspectives on the new Ghanaian web and television series, “An African City.” Covering trends in entertainment provides a broader understanding of societies and how they view contemporary issues, as Tina Adomako, Abena Kyere, and Brigid Warnke clearly demonstrate in their critical reviews of gender and elite expectations about poverty in Ghana versus the U.S.
When we rolled out our new website, we also included our logo, the The Adinkra symbol. Our logo represents inclusion and debate on issues of humanitarianism in Africa, particularly emphasizing the importance of critique. A number of additional posts incorporated critique into analyses of major problems in the practice of humanitarianism. Cilas Kemedjio spoke directly to some of these problems in his post, “From Manufactured Debts to Chronic Humanitarianism: Lessons from Haiti and the Democratic Republic of Congo.” Diving into histories of the slave trade and colonial exploitation in connection to the current humanitarian efforts in Haiti and the DRC, Kemedjio discussed a lack of progress in humanitarian aid as it continues to mask these histories, failing to remedy their legacies of theft and exploitation. Continuing on the theme of effectiveness of aid, Israel Laizer discusses how foreign aid has impeded Tanzania’s ability to develop independently. In two other posts, “Thoughts on Angelina Jolie and WPS” by Carried Reiling and “On Angelina Jolie Pitt and William Hague Appointments at LSE” by Njoki Wamai, the authors discuss the impact of Jolie’s appointment at the London School of Economics, and its negative implications for a more critical and egalitarian humanitarianism.
Finally, we covered additional issues of politics and health. Over the last month, we presented two pieces on global interventions and interference in both domains. In the first piece, “The Situation in Gabon: Interference that Knows no End”, Cilas Kemedjio warned of the negative impact of western interventions and the importance for humanitarians to understand the potential risks and harm. Similarly, Deborah Mindy and Kara Miller critically examined the history of western aid and medical interventions and the detrimental consequences traditional medicine, families, and individual lives as a result in the article, “Interrogating Global Health Interventions in Africa.”
As always, we appreciate your reflections, comments, and ideas on other critical investigations to post!