This Week in African Studies November 28 - December 2, 2016
STUDY ABROAD
Opening of the application for Summer Study Abroad in Tanzania
The intersection of development studies, an immersive study of Kiswahili, and hands on application through local internship-- take advantage of this rare opportunity to learn on the continent. For more information about the program, click here or email africanstudies@georgetown.edu
Application Deadline: December 6th, 2016 Apply here
INTERNSHIPS AND OTHER OPPORTUNITIES
Harambe Entrepreneur Alliance
Entrepreneur of African descent? Interested in post-graduate opportunities at world-class professional schools such as the Yale School of Management, Oxford-Said School of Business, or Tufts' Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy? Apply here before the November 30th application deadline.
Global Africa: Dynamic and Connective Scholarship
Indiana University Graduate Students in African Studies (GSAS) invite proposals that explore the strategies and products of researching Africa within diverse global contexts. Given the scope of these potential inquiries and the conference theme, this symposium encourages paper proposals from a wide variety of methodological, theoretical, and disciplinary backgrounds. For more information, email iu.gsas.symposium@gmail.com.
Georgetown University's 2nd Annual Africa Business Conference
Follow #GTABC for more info.
Established in 1980, the African Studies Program's core strength is political life broadly conceived. Our constant aim is to maintain and expand our comparative advantage in research and teaching by fostering an understanding of politics and economic development, conflict management and resolution, and issues of governance and institutions.
Contact Us: African Studies Program | Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service | Georgetown University Intercultural Center (ICC) 400 | 37th & O Street NW | Washington, DC 20057 P: 202.687.5934 | F: 202.687.5528 | africanstudies@georgetown.edu
Early data indicate that 90 per
cent of the targeted population in 16 communes of the Grand’Anse and Sud
departments received cholera vaccination between 8 and 18 November.
The Early Recovery sector has
reported 6,500 people have benefited from the “cash-for-work” program
related to the cleaning of debris in Grand’Anse and Sud.
Landslides on 22 November in
Grand’Anse blocked road access to Les Irois, Anse d’Hainault and Dame
Marie, preventing medical mobile clinics to access the areas.
The challenges of localised aid in
conflict
Organisation:
Location:
Date: 29 November 2016
Time: 15:00 – 16:30 GMT
The idea that local actors should be at the forefront of humanitarian
response in their own country is increasingly widely accepted.
One message,
which resounded loud and clear at the first World Humanitarian Summit, was the
need for greater localisation of aid.
However, the current localisation agenda
gives little consideration to the different humanitarian contexts and their
different operational challenges. Can local actors deliver impartial emergency assistance on a meaningful
scale in armed conflicts, if they find themselves caught up in the political
and military game of the warring parties?
Our expert panel of observers and practitioners from international and local
organisations discuss and debate the nuances of the situation on the ground.
Cash in the City: Addressing food security
needs in urban crises
Organisation: ALNAP
Location:
Date: 08 December 2016
Time: 2 to 3:30pm (GMT)
The humanitarian world has made a significant shift towards using cash to
help vulnerable people meet their needs, including food security. Despite a
growing evidence base, much of our collective experience is in rural areas. How
can cash-based approaches meet food security needs in urban crises? Is cash
different in an urban context? What are the challenges and lessons learned?
The latest edition in ALNAP’s urban webinar series will explore the shift
towards humanitarian cash programming.
Presentations from CRS and NRC will
explore urban cash-based programming in Nigeria and Iran. The webinar is
co-presented by the Global Food Security Cluster’s Food Security and
Livelihoods in Urban Settings working group, and discussions will draw in
global perspectives from colleagues in WFP and the American Red Cross.
Speakers:
• Marianna Kuttothara, American Red Cross Society, will open the
webinar with reflections on years of cash programming in rural and urban
emergencies.
• Giulia Frontini, Catholic Relief Services Nigeria, will share
experiences of providing electronic food vouchers/cash in both rural and urban
areas of NorthEast Nigeria, to support displaced people fleeing Boko Haram
violence. Giulia will focus on targeting, selection of vendors/markets,
community participation and security.
• Anthony Dutemple, Norwegian Refugee Council Iran, will draw on
his experiences with cash responses across the MENA region, and speak in
particular about a new cash programme for Afghan refugees in Iran. His
presentation will look at distribution modalities and integrating protection
outcomes
• A fourth speaker, TBD, from World Food Programme will join the
discussion/Q&A, reflecting on WFP's global urban experiences with cash for
food security.
Audience members will have the opportunity to contribute to the discussion
before, during and after the webinar by posing questions for speakers, sharing
their own experiences, responding to polls and continuing the discussion in the
Urban Response Community of Practice.
An inclusive and cohesive city is
also a more resilient one. Around our global network, we are seeing cities
show us how.
This past weekend, Boston Mayor
Martin Walsh and Chief Resilience Officer Atyia Martin hosted the first of
a series of public, citywide conversations about racism, an issue that is
deeply intertwined with Boston's other major challenges.
At the same time, the city released The Blueprint, which
outlines Boston's plan to address racism and become a more reflective,
collaborative, equitable, and connected city in order to achieve true urban
resilience
Cities around the world must strive
to be places where community members trust and understand each other, where
all city residents can benefit from a city's success. This work is urgent –
and it could not be more timely.
To
address issues both here in the U.S., and in our international community within
the diaspora a clear understanding of how to address issues within our
communities must be understood by each of us as emergency management
professionals.
A systems approach focuses on the linkages,
interconnections and interrelationships between different parts of a
system. From simple system, to complex-complex
systems with built-in feedback and controls designed within the
system. The urban system includes
economics and livelihoods, politics and governance, society and culture,
infrastructure and services, and finally space and settlements. These aspects
of the urban context are all interconnected, dynamic and changing.
A new study suggests a number of minority American neighborhoods are at risk of having unhealthier water than their white counterparts.
By Francie Diep
(Photo: Cate Gillon/Getty Images)
Walk through an unincorporated stretch of Wake County outside Raleigh, North Carolina, and it might look just as dense and developed as the town proper. But there’s an important, invisible difference: Folks there may not have access to the city’s municipal water system. Instead, their homes draw from private wells and septic tanks.
While not all unincorporated Wake County communities lack piped water, those that have a larger black population are more likely to depend on wells and septic tanks, according to a 2014 study. “They were excluded probably for historical reasons, during the Jim Crow era,” says University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill environmental researcher Jackie MacDonald Gibson, the leader of the 2014 study.
Now, MacDonald Gibson has a new study that demonstrates the toll that history has had on residents’ health. The kitchen tap water in majority-black Wake County communities that depend on wells is more than 50 times more likely to contain coliform bacteria — and more than 700 times more likely to contain E. coli — than the municipal water that’s available to majority-white neighborhoods just next door.
The presence of coliform bacteria and E. coli indicates that the water has been contaminated with sewage, which can make people seriously ill. If these neighborhoods had municipal water, MacDonald Gibson and her colleague Frank Stillo estimate that the number of annual emergency room visits for gastrointestinal illnesses in these areas would drop by more than one-fifth.
But leaders both in the city and in unincorporated neighborhoods have been reluctant to extend water service, citing costs, according to a surveypublished last year. “I think there’s a lack of awareness of the water quality problem in these wells,” MacDonald Gibson says. The effective result is that Wake County’s black residents bear a disproportionate burden of gastrointestinal disease there.
This may not be a problem only in North Carolina. Studies have shown that other majority-white Southern towns have refused to annex surrounding, majority-black neighborhoods and to extend municipal services to them. The practice is so common that it has a name: underbounding. Researchers have also documented towns underbounding Hispanic neighborhoods in Texas’ Lower Rio Grande and California’s Central Valley.
Poor communities of color in the United States have often had to deal with more pollution than their richer, whiter counterparts. The water crisis in Flint, Michigan, taught us that one way such environmental injustice happens is when officials make poor decisions and ignore residents’ complaints. Wake County shows that underbounding, whether new or historical, might be another way.
Though it’s common knowledge among environmental researchers that well water is often riskier than municipal water, most politicians and community members are not familiar with the dangers. With this new data in hand, perhaps city officials will finally have the information they need to justify the expense of expanding their municipal water system.
