Africa Initiative

With funding from the Office of the Provost, the Committee on African Studies has established a multi-disciplinary research project known as the Africa Initiative. This interfaculty project, chaired by Professor Jacob Olupona, is focused on issues of importance to contemporary Africa and scholarship on Africa. Most of the activities undertaken by the Africa Initiative originate within five Working Groups that hold workshops, conferences, lectures, and sponsor musical and literary performances. A number of book-length publications are currently in preparation from the research of the individual Working Groups. Their work has led to the development of new courses on Africa now being taught at Harvard. The Working Groups are organized around the following themes.

The African Expressive Culture Working Group, led by Ingrid Monson, has sponsored the creation of a successful student dance and drumming performance group known as the Harvard Pan-African Dance and Music Ensemble. The Working Group has also sponsored the residency of renowned West African musician Neba Sola, a symposium on Leopold Senghor, individual lectures, and film screenings. In 2007, the Working Group also sponsored a summer course on music and dance that was taught in Mali.

The Power, Authority and Governance Working Group, led by Lucie White, is conducting a multi-year project on the use of human rights advocacy to address challenges to Africa. It has sponsored conferences and presentations by individual scholars and is preparing a manuscript tentatively titled, Hewing Stones of Hope. In conjunction with the University Committee on Human Rights, this Working Group has also sponsored a series of public events on the current situation in Darfur.

The Realms of Knowledge, Memory and Contestation Working Group, led by Suzanne Blier, has focused on the intersection between African mnemonic and cultural landscapes. Through conferences, workshops, exhibitions, publications, and presentations by individual scholars, it examines the actual sites where the work of memory occurs. These sites include the everyday spaces of museums, sacred religious landmarks, collaborative artistic work, and even the politics of contemporary art practices and heritage policies. A collection of essays on one of its earlier conferences is being prepared for publication as Sites of Memory in Africa: Thinking Through Time and Space.

The Health, Healing and Ritual Practice Working Group, led by Allan Hill, focuses on the broad issues underlying health in Africa and pursues alternative pathways in examining the related cultural, historical, and political issues. Its most recent workshop on Psychiatry in Africa brought together psychiatrists with an interest in Africa, as well as social scientists and humanists whose work touches on mental illness and healing from their different disciplinary perspectives. Twenty-six original essays on this topic will be published by Indiana University Press.

The Human Capital and Economic Working Group, led by Matthew Jukes, brings together Harvard economists, political scientists and specialists on African education to examine the interrelationship between economic, educational and political development in post-independence Africa. Among its activities is an ongoing seminar co-sponsored with the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. The seminar invites prominent scholars to address issues of social change, development, democratization and conflict in Africa.