The Africa Initiatives Group
The Africa Initiatives Group possesses expertise in diverse and numerous fields of specialization. There is representation from six departments of the university as well as representation from the Patel Center for Global Solutions. Among the fields of expertise of our members include: anthropology, economics, environment, governance, and health.
More information about the expertise of the Africa Initiatives Group can be found on the following link
The Chronicle of Higher Education published a story this week describing the increased interests of American universities to seek partnerships with African universities.
After decades of neglect, African universities have become the focus of intense interest by U.S. universities, foundations, and donor agencies convinced that without stronger higher education, the continent's development prospects will remain bleak.
[...]
"It's an issue whose time has come," says M. Peter McPherson, president of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges. "We're not pushing against a wall — there's an open door of excitement."
The story goes on detail a long-term partnership between the University of Botswana and the University of Pennsylvania that began as a short-term training program for HIV/AIDS, but developed into a long-term relationship. Cooperation between the two schools eventually lead to the creation of a medical program at the University of Botswana.
In Botswana, the University of Pennsylvania turned a short-term commitment to train local medical professionals to treat HIV and AIDS into a long-term partnership that has helped build the country's first medical school.
Without a medical school of its own, Botswana was sending students abroad for training as doctors and nurses. But many never returned.
Working with Penn and other international partners, the University of Botswana continued to send its students abroad as the medical school was being built, then brought them back to its own hospitals where students and faculty members from Penn supervised internships and residencies.
Next year the medical school — whose internal-medicine curriculum was designed by Penn physicians — will be ready to accept the first class of students who will be able to complete their entire training in Botswana.
For its part, the Africa Initiatives Group has already laid the groundwork for a partnership between the University of South Florida and the University of Cape Coast in Ghana.
For the full story, click here.
Today the Africa Initiatives Group welcomes Getachew Dagne to the group.
Dr. Getachew A. Dagne, a native of Ethiopia, is an associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics, College of Public Health at the University of South Florida. Dr. Dagne received his Ph.D. in Applied Statistics from the University of California at Riverside.
Dagne's expertise is biostatistics and his main areas of research include: Areas of research: Multilevel modeling of behavioral social interaction data, Bayesian modeling of zero-inflated data, analysis of multiple birth data, spatial statistics, and Bayesian inference.
The 9th annual International Academy of African Business and Development
(IAABD) conference is being hosted by the University of Florida in
Gainesville at the UF Hilton Conference Center May 20-24. This year's
conference theme is "Global and Local Dynamics in African Business and
Development" is co-sponsored by several UF units including the Fisher
School of Accounting, the International Center, Office of Research,
Public Utility Research Center, IFAS, the Warrington College of Business
Administration, the Center for International Business Education and
Research, the Center for African Studies, IAADB Conference and the Public Policy Research
Center.
Please note that all panel sessions are free and open to the public;
events involving meals are limited to registrants only.
For more information including the program, please visit:
IAABD Conference
Dr. Stephen Aikins, an Africa Initiatives Group member, gives his final impressions on the newly established partnership between USF and the University of Cape Coast.
In terms of the potential benefits and how the two institutions proceed, I would like to make the following note based on my experience in this area. I spent almost two decades in various capacities in the private and public sectors, the last of which was an Assistant Vice President for audit in a multi-billion dollar, multi-national bank where I dealt with some audit issues pertaining strategic partnerships and mergers. What I learned from this experience is that sometimes partnerships of this nature are usually met with enthusiasm at the initial stages only to find such enthusiasm dwindle, as time progresses, into a state of inaction and sometimes suspicion. The reason for this is that too often such partnerships and alliances suffer from many drawbacks, including:
1) lack of identification of workable areas of strategic focus,
2) ineffective leadership,
3) lack of understanding of the required commitments,
4) failure to identify and leverage existing synergies,
5) unrealistic expectations,
6) ineffective communication,
7) inadequate attention to organizational or institutional cultural
differences,
8) lack of mutual respect
9) inadequate resources and lack of funding, and most importantly,
10) lack of risk management.
While both sides undoubtedly would like to see the potential partnership with UCC succeed, we should be mindful of the fact that there are likely to be peaks and valleys in the relationship and there are various risk issues that could pose threat to the successful accomplishment of whatever goals that are set forth in the memorandum of understanding or partnership agreement. Many of these risks include the issues identified above. Therefore, the ability of both institutions to identify, evaluate, assess and manage these risks will make a difference in terms of success and failure. I have no doubt that our success in obtaining competitive grants to collaborate in areas of mutual interest and expertise will be dependent on our ability to demonstrate to the funders that we have a proven record of and/or are capable of maintaining sustainable collaboration with whatever African institutions we partner with. That is why I believe we do not have the luxury of not making any potential partnership with UCC succeed. If and when the two institutions forge ahead with a partnership, all of us will like to look back a couple of years from now and be able to say indeed, USF has helped to further the goals and ideals of NASULGC by contributing its share toward improving higher education in Africa. This could happen only if there are realistic expectations as well as assessment and management of the potential risks.
Stephen Aikins, PhD
Assistant Professor, Public Administration
Department of Government and International Affairs
University of South Florida
4202 E Fowler Avenue
Tampa, FL 33620
813/974-0114
University of South Florida President, Judy Genshaft, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Vice Chancellor Emmanuel Addow-Obeng of the University of Cape Coast. The agreement represents a commitment of USF and UCC to seek and develop new avenues of collaborations and partnerships between the two universities
The Africa Initiatives Group hosted a roundtable discussion in cooperation with the College of Public Health to discuss avenues of future partnerships with the University of Cape Coast. The following are images from the discussion. The Vice-Chancellor is featured in the first photo from the left (click the thumbnail to view a larger image).
Dr. Peter L. French, a retired USF professor and friend of African Initiatives Group member, Betty Castor, recently gave a presentation to the United Nations Association of Sarasota, FL about civic culture in Kenya. The following is an excerpt from his presentation.
AVOIDING PRESUMPTIVE ARROGANCE:
We begin with an analogy. Four months ago, Kenya's parliamentary/presidential elections erupted in violence that seemed out of character with the country's past. Only in recent days has the settlement of issues reached a point of accommodation on all sides which gives hope for meaningful political order, and even that is still fragile.
To provide some perspective, it should be understood that Mr. Mwai Kibaki, last serving member of the 1963 Independence Parliament, was seeking one last hurrah for the old order and his re-election as president. His forty-five years of uninterrupted legislative service ties him with Senator Kennedy in the US Senate.
Kibaki's effort to preserve the old order is analogous to another democracy and the presidential elections in its 45th year. There too a long dominant regime confronted a populist insurgency. With the connivance of Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams prevailed, the Federalist turned back the populists, and the Era of Jacksonian Democracy was deferred for four years. As to violence, America waited another third of a century before the "Brother's War" and Matthew Brady's images of Antietam, Wilderness and first and second Manassas was a match for human slaughter anywhere on the globe.
Democracies are fragile, especially young democracies, and they must be constantly sustained and nurtured.
THE LINK BETWEEN CIVILITY & CIVIC CULTURE:
The reaction to seemingly irrational violence that can consume communities in perilously short order is shocking. The Kenya case etches in the mind because the violence is in such sharp contrast to the previous levels of social order. To interpret this condition required revisiting some elegant theory on political behavior that can provide an explanatory base. The literature of particular relevance is contained in a volume by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, "The Civic Culture."
By definition, the civic culture is characterized by openness where there is allegiance to the regime and broad public participation. It also acknowledges that this participant orientation is combined with subject and parochial orientations to authority. It accepts that people demonstrate a willingness to participate, BUT they do so without abandoning subject and parochial orientations.
America is a model of such a civic culture. We participate and get involved as the current presidential election cycle shows. But we do so within the rule of law (subject orientation) and preserve our private parochial interests (the NFL, American Idol, and March Madness).
Indeed, Alomnd and Verba note it is important to preserve a balance between the three. We cannot conduct our lives as if the entire country is New Hampshire in the last forty-eight hours before the primary; we would exhaust ourselves. Actually, the congruence between these three orientations makes participation "milder" and helps us manage the level of our participation in political life to produce a "balanced" political culture. It is also the foundation for functioning democracies.
In the African setting, it is more likely that parochial orientations concentrated on tribal or ethnic groups orientations will dominate and subject orientations focused on adherence to traditional norms command greater allegiance than "participant" orientations in service to a national government or feelings of national identity.-Dr. Peter L French, retired Professor of Africana Studies
The full presentation can be downloaded: Peter French, Ph.D. - Lessons from 2007 Kenya Elections (doc)
The US Agency for International Development announced it will provide $1 million to fund 20 partnership-planning grants of $50,000 to establish long-term partnerships between US and African Institutions of Higher Learning.
Collaborating with the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), the USAID grant will help to build African university capacity for instruction and problem-solving through the Africa-U.S. Higher Education Initiative. The focus will be in areas such as agriculture, health care, science and technology, primary and secondary education, business, engineering, economics and other disciplines. The entire $1 million will be used for partnership grants because NASULGC and others will share the administrative costs.
The grant was announced during the two-day Higher Education Summit for Global Development held April 29 and 30 at the U.S. Department of State. The conference drew nearly 300 university presidents, government officials, and corporate and foundation leaders to Washington, from around the globe (PR Newswire).
Also, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will provide $100,000 to NASULGC to create the grant making framework for the new collaboration initiative.
hosted by Dr. Kwabena Gyimah-Brempong, Chair, Department of Economics, USF College of Business Administration
Sponsored by the University of South Florida
Africa Initiatives Group
Schedule |
Participants/ Meeting |
Location |
| Sunday, May 4 | Arrival | --- |
| Monday, May 5 | ||
| 9:00–10:45 am | Roundtable with Africa Initiatives Group | BSN 120 [New Wing] |
| 11:00-12:00 am | Dr. Patricia Burns, Dean of Nursing, Dr. Sandra Cadena, Dr. Afriye Johnson, Dr. Johnson-Mallard | Dean’s conference Room, College of Nursing, 3rd Floor |
| 12:00-1:30 pm | Lunch with Dr. Kofi Glover, Associate Provost, Office of The Provost & Sr. Vice President | tba |
| 2:00 pm- 3:00 pm | Dean Donna J. Petersen, College of Public Health | Dean’s Conference room, College of Public Health |
| 3:00 pm–3:55 pm | Dean Colleen Kennedy, College of Education | Dean’s Conference room, College of Public Health |
| 4:00 pm–5:30 pm | Health Roundtable~ on areas of interest, research and cooperation with Dr. Dawood Sultan, Dr. David Schenck and others | Room 2024, College of Public Health |
| Tuesday,May 6 | ||
| 10:00 am | Dean María Crummett, International Affairs | Dean’s Office, Cooper Hall |
| 11:00 am – 11:45 am | Dr. Julie Baldwin, Professor and Chair, Department of Community and Family Health & other faculty | Chiles Center, Gathering Room |
| 12:00-2:00 pm | Lunch with the Faculty Advisory Board, Patel Fellows and others | Patel Center for Global Solutions, Soc 366 |
| 2:30 pm | USF President Judy Genshaft | Pres. Genshaft’s office |
| 4:30 pm | Dr. Robert Forsythe, Dean of COBA | Dean’s office, COBA |
The Vice-Chancellor of University of Cape Coast, E. Addow-Obeng, will visit USF next week to seek collaborative projects between University of South Florida and University of Cape Coast. He will also meet with the Africa Initiatives Group to discuss partnerships in public health, nursing, medicine, and business.
The visit will be hosted by Africa Initiatives Group member Dr. Kwabena Gyimah-Brempong.
Rev. Professor Emmanuel A Obeng, Vice Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast, Ghana obtained his Bachelor of Arts (Honors) from the University of Cape Coast in 1974 and a Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland in 1981. A scholar of Religious Studies, he has published extensively in his field. The first alumni of the University of Cape Coast to assume the Vice Chancellorship of the university, Vice Chancellor Obeng has introduced many new programs-- especially in business and health. Furthermore, Vice Chancellor Obeng has improved old programs, almost doubled student population, improved the physical infrastructure of the university, and forged links with many universities outside Africa. Under his leadership, UCC has become the university of choice in Ghana. Prior to assuming the Vice Chancellorship in 1998, he taught in universities in Nigeria and Kenya, served as the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies, the Dean of the College of Arts, as well as the Pro Vice Chancellor of UCC.
