Tuesday, April 30, 2019

Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ahmadu Bello University: Dress Code

Please don't get me wrong, Okey. I am more conservative than you think and I have lived in America for almost four decades. I once sent one of my language/education students home when I went to observe him and he was wearing a pair of jean-pants while student-teaching even though with a nice shirt and standard tie. My student teachers must be professional. Even as a professor, I always visited them in complete suits, even to my discomfort and irritation, and I also did so when teaching them. But all these are commonsensical, not necessarily based on the Mosaic model of the "Ten Commandments." I think a generic announcement of "We expect our students to be decent in their grooming and public appearances" would be sufficient; and individual programs like education, law, medicine, etc., could have more specific guidelines for how their students' carry themselves in public. ABU should transcend this level of rustic simplicity. It's okay for a high school to do so or even some private religious institutions, but let's be real: this is just not good for an institution of ABU status.
MOA 


On Tuesday, April 30, 2019, 4:15:53 PM GMT+1, Okechukwu Ukaga <ukaga001@umn.edu> wrote:


My esteemed broda, I obviously disagree. In your so called civilized society, naked people are found in strip clubs and brothels, not on university campuses. If folks are unwilling to self regulate to maintain a minimum level of decency in terms of dressing, university has both the right and the responsibility to take appropriate steps. After all, university degrees are awarded not just for academic achievement but also character, etc. Notably, dress code is not unusual in universities, even in the West. When I was in school of business in the late 80s for my MBA, business students were expected and required to dress in ways consistent with our profession. So it is not unusual to see business students and law students going to classes, etc in more formal attire than say soil science students. And in some cases there are strict guidelines like no jeans, no sleepers, no T-shirts, etc. Isn't that a kind of dress code?  So even within the same university there is not only an expected minimum standard for the whole, but component units can have their own additional guidelines, norms and expectations. Before zeroing in on the last part of my contribution that you quoted here, you will do well to read and consider the preceding parts that formed the foundation for that last part.
Regards,
Okey

On Apr 29, 2019 5:18 PM, "'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> wrote:
". . . and if this is not the right means to that end, then what better options or strategies are available?" (Okechukwu Ukaga) 

No options or strategies needed to be explored over a bad idea. The dress code at a first generation public university does not belong in a civil society. Pure and simple!

MOA



On Sunday, April 28, 2019, 1:48:51 PM GMT+1, Okechukwu Ukaga <ukaga001@umn.edu> wrote:


Perhaps there should be a balance between allowing folks to come to school "naked" and "policing" how they dress. How do we strike that balance? If students, staff, faculty and administrators fail to self regulate, how is a university supposed to assure that balance? Beyond automatic condemnation of dress code, it would be helpful to understand what made such a policy necessary, what it is designed to achieve; and if this is not the right means to that end, then what better options or strategies are available? 
OU

On Apr 27, 2019 1:19 PM, "'Michael Afolayan' via USA Africa Dialogue Series" <usaafricadialogue@ googlegroups.com> wrote:
So, what is left? Women to wear hijab and men to dress like the Taliban folks. Great progress for a premier Nigerian university. So grotesque, it's not even funny!
MOA  




On Saturday, April 27, 2019, 6:05:50 PM GMT+1, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu > wrote:




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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rhythms 2nd, Transformative Edition : El Anatsui and Richard Serra : A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra.

Thanks for the film. It is really great to have a look at the great El Anatsui, 
  but  I really don't see the connections with TF's writings.
 Please clarify how you relate  the two.





Professor Gloria Emeagwali
History Department, Central Connecticut State University
www.africahistory.net
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries
2014 Distinguished Research Excellence Award in African Studies
 University of Texas at Austin
2019   Distinguished Africanist Award                   
New York African Studies Association
 


From: usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com <usaafricadialogue@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju <toyin.adepoju@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2019 9:59 PM
To: usaafricadialogue
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rhythms 2nd, Transformative Edition : El Anatsui and Richard Serra : A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra.
 






       
                                                                                                    
                                                          

                                                                                 Rhythms 

                                                                     2nd Transformative Edition

                                                                 El Anatsui and Richard Serra 

                                     A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra

                                                                           Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
                                                                                        Compcros
                                                             Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
                                         "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                                                                                                  
                                                                 



              Click on this link to see the film:   Rhythms : El Anatsui and Richard Serra 2nd Edition


A visual and verbal exploration of life's twists and transformations through the visual art of El Anatsui and Richard Serra as responded to by art critic Rikki Wemega-Kwawu and complemented by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju on the writings of Toyin Falola.

 

This second edition has a new musical score, more images and more text, facilitating better understanding of the film's theme.

 

 The film is inspired by art critic Wemega-Kwawu's Facebook post of 11th March 2019 on El Anatsui's installation "Lorgorligi Logarithms", I adapt that interpretation to Richard Serra's "The Matter of Time" and other works of Serra's and Anatsui's , Serra having been introduced to me by the discussion thread generated by Rikki's post.

 

The simplicity and profundity of the ideas expressed by Wemega-Kwawu's post are used in unifying images of the art of Anatsui and Serra, ideas I see as resonant across the various works in those images from various online sources.

 

These verbal and visual expressions are complemented by my distillations of biographical progression in relation to ideals of scholarly activity from the work of Toyin Falola in "Toyin Falola's In Praise of Greatness and its Intercultural Resonance in the Context of Classical Yoruba Hermeneutics", an essay under consideration for publication in the Yoruba Studies Review.

 

My reflections on Falola's work expand upon the impulse generated by Wemega-Kwawu, carrying forward their ideational possibilities as the images unfold.

 

This is an expanded second edition of the film benefiting from Wemega-Kwawu's critique of the first edition .

 

This edition has a new musical score, more images and more text, facilitating better understanding of the film's theme.  

 

Comments on the film are visible on its Facebook post.

 

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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Raising the Visibility of African Research and Innovation


On Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 7:00 PM Okey Iheduru <okeyiheduru@gmail.com> wrote:

Raising the visibility of African research and innovation

Tawana Kupe  27 April 2019
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20190408135104594  
In 2018 the bottom rung of the Global Innovation Index rankings published by the World Intellectual Property Organization prominently featured countries from the Global South. This bottom rung was further dominated by African nations, with the rankings suggesting that the innovation leaders for low income (of under US$1,005) countries are Tanzania, Rwanda and Senegal. 

The Global Innovation Index report explains that there are 20 countries that outperform on innovation relative to their levels of development and, of these, six are Sub-Saharan African countries, including South Africa for the first time in 2018. Notably, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar have all been on the list three times in eight years. 

This article is part of a series on Transformative Leadership published by University World News in partnership with Mastercard Foundation. University World News is solely responsible for the editorial content.

The rankings measure countries by looking at all aspects of innovation such as research and business strengths, innovation activities and output and human capital. As is expected, countries which perform very well on the index are in the West and Global North (with Singapore being the only exception) and include Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These are all countries whose governments invest heavily in research and development and have prioritised this at a policy level. 

Barriers to visibility

When one looks at the list of academic journals that form part of the high-level and highly-cited scientific indices and databases which guarantee that peer-reviewed research is internationally visible, there is a distinct bias towards English-written-and-spoken journals. 

This might seem like a petty point to highlight in a world that is increasingly dominated by English, but it prevents many other forms of published research – Spanish and Portuguese, for example, are lingua francas of Latin America – from ever being considered as highly viable. 

In addition to the problem of language, publishing in journals on high impact and visible databases carry relatively exorbitant fees (pitched in US dollars) for developing nation economies. This is the reality of many developing nations whose highly successful academics are not considered 'world class' because world class is by definition the Western norm. 

If a local journal in the Global South cannot afford to pay the fees to be considered on a high impact database, it is simply excluded and research published in local journals does not get to compete on an international level. These economic, social and cultural prejudices which researchers from developing nations in the Global South face, hinder the reach and impact of local journals and databases by rendering them invisible to mainstream (Western) science. 

If research is not visible, it is not used or cited. If it is not cited, it never makes the cut in the high impact index list which is largely based on citations. This is a vicious cycle which forever holds African (and Global South) researchers and universities to ransom. 

Therefore, based on what we know of how these indices work, we can be assured that the vast majority of the world's research output and scientific endeavour could be excluded by the very prejudices that declare our research output miniscule. 

Rise of open access 

Africa is believed to contribute only 1% of the world's innovation, research and development. It does not mean that this is all our research output or innovative ideas amount to globally; neither does it mean that we are not as intelligent as Western academics and researchers, nor that we lack quality institutions. 

What it does mean is that our visibility through what is regarded as high impact journals is reduced to only 1%. This is slowly changing through the rise in popularity of open access journals, most notably led by Brazil's Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) network which allows whole articles to be accessed instead of just an abstract, and South Africa is part of this network. 

Western media continues to brandish the image of a poor, starving, politically unstable and economically depressed continent marred by violence, corruption, disease and natural disasters. While these images may hold some truth to the general continental condition, there are numerous developments and achievements by researchers in developing nations across Africa who are actively working to mitigate these conditions. 

The transdisciplinary research expected to happen at Future Africa at the University of Pretoria in South Africa is key to making this a reality and will be a means by which Africans can take control of their own research output and innovations to find solutions to local problems which have a global impact. 

There is a ripple effect with problems faced in Africa that are exacerbated by poverty and the extractive economies that our continent is built upon. Extractive economies mean our raw materials are taken at a low cost and goods produced elsewhere are sold back to Africans at a higher rate. In order for us to achieve a measure of economic independence, self-sufficiency and sustainability, African countries and corporations working in Africa need to invest more in the research and development capacity of our young continent. 

The future belongs to Africa

With the average age on the continent being just under 20 years old, and representing around 20% of the world's population, it stands to reason that the future belongs to Africa. Issues like water and food security, poverty, primary health care and disease control, education, infrastructure development and ethical corporate and political governance issues have an impact throughout the world because what is often brandished in the mainstream media as Africa's problems, are not Africa's problems exclusively. 

How do we imagine and reimagine Africa's future if we do not call upon government, funders and the research sector as a whole to invest in finding solutions to pan-African concerns? We need to make an impact today to ensure that Africa has the research and development capacity it needs to ensure that everyday challenges faced by Africans have innovative solutions. 

As Africans and the Global South in general, we face seemingly insurmountable odds to develop at a faster rate and leapfrog technologies. 

Centuries of oppression and colonialism have impacted on our ability to practically overcome a system which seeks to re-enslave us through debt, prejudiced foreign policy, exploitation of our environment and an unwillingness on the part of mainstream science and the media to acknowledge our role in redesigning our collective futures with research and innovation that matters to us, and makes a difference. 

We may never win the war against a system that renders our achievements invisible to Western science, but we can make a difference by making use of the technologies, resources and avenues open to us. Knowledge is not what is stored behind a paywall of a publication; it is the wisdom to apply what we know in a practical context and to share our findings for the benefit of society as a whole. 

Professor Tawana Kupe is vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Future Africa is a trans- and multi-disciplinary research initiative at the University of Pretoria which is committed to finding sustainable solutions to some of the world's most pressing concerns.   




--
Okey C. Iheduru


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Posted by at No comments:

USA Africa Dialogue Series - Rhythms 2nd, Transformative Edition : El Anatsui and Richard Serra : A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra.







       
                                                                                                    
                                                          

                                                                                 Rhythms 

                                                                     2nd Transformative Edition

                                                                 El Anatsui and Richard Serra 

                                     A Film on the Journey of Life as Visualized by Artists El Anatsui and Richard Serra

                                                                           Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
                                                                                        Compcros
                                                             Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
                                         "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"

                                                                                                  
                                                                 



              Click on this link to see the film:   Rhythms : El Anatsui and Richard Serra 2nd Edition


A visual and verbal exploration of life's twists and transformations through the visual art of El Anatsui and Richard Serra as responded to by art critic Rikki Wemega-Kwawu and complemented by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju on the writings of Toyin Falola.

 

This second edition has a new musical score, more images and more text, facilitating better understanding of the film's theme.

 

 The film is inspired by art critic Wemega-Kwawu's Facebook post of 11th March 2019 on El Anatsui's installation "Lorgorligi Logarithms", I adapt that interpretation to Richard Serra's "The Matter of Time" and other works of Serra's and Anatsui's , Serra having been introduced to me by the discussion thread generated by Rikki's post.

 

The simplicity and profundity of the ideas expressed by Wemega-Kwawu's post are used in unifying images of the art of Anatsui and Serra, ideas I see as resonant across the various works in those images from various online sources.

 

These verbal and visual expressions are complemented by my distillations of biographical progression in relation to ideals of scholarly activity from the work of Toyin Falola in "Toyin Falola's In Praise of Greatness and its Intercultural Resonance in the Context of Classical Yoruba Hermeneutics", an essay under consideration for publication in the Yoruba Studies Review.

 

My reflections on Falola's work expand upon the impulse generated by Wemega-Kwawu, carrying forward their ideational possibilities as the images unfold.

 

This is an expanded second edition of the film benefiting from Wemega-Kwawu's critique of the first edition .

 

This edition has a new musical score, more images and more text, facilitating better understanding of the film's theme.  

 

Comments on the film are visible on its Facebook post.

 

--
Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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USA Africa Dialogue Series - Ugonnaya

On that day(May 1st), at Seifa Clinic in Borokiri, Port Harcourt, the nurses wheeled from the labour room, a little angel whose eyes were closed and a tired sleeping mother to the ward, the little angel was sucking her index finger. The little angel was my daughter, the tired sleeping mother, my wife.

I took a closer look at the little angel and saw the resemblance of my mother and my mother in-law(my mother and my mother in-law look alike). 

I named her Ugonnaya(father's crown, pride), she opened her eyes, looked at me and smiled!

Happy birthday Ugonnaya!



--
Chidi Anthony Opara is a "Life Time Achievement" Awardee, Registered Freight Forwarder, Professional Fellow Of Institute Of Information Managerment, Africa, Poet and Publisher of PublicInformationProjects



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Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Raising the Visibility of African Research and Innovation

May we get there

On Mon, 29 Apr 2019 at 00:00, Okey Iheduru <okeyiheduru@gmail.com> wrote:

Raising the visibility of African research and innovation

Tawana Kupe  27 April 2019
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20190408135104594  
In 2018 the bottom rung of the Global Innovation Index rankings published by the World Intellectual Property Organization prominently featured countries from the Global South. This bottom rung was further dominated by African nations, with the rankings suggesting that the innovation leaders for low income (of under US$1,005) countries are Tanzania, Rwanda and Senegal. 

The Global Innovation Index report explains that there are 20 countries that outperform on innovation relative to their levels of development and, of these, six are Sub-Saharan African countries, including South Africa for the first time in 2018. Notably, Kenya, Rwanda, Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar have all been on the list three times in eight years. 

This article is part of a series on Transformative Leadership published by University World News in partnership with Mastercard Foundation. University World News is solely responsible for the editorial content.

The rankings measure countries by looking at all aspects of innovation such as research and business strengths, innovation activities and output and human capital. As is expected, countries which perform very well on the index are in the West and Global North (with Singapore being the only exception) and include Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. These are all countries whose governments invest heavily in research and development and have prioritised this at a policy level. 

Barriers to visibility

When one looks at the list of academic journals that form part of the high-level and highly-cited scientific indices and databases which guarantee that peer-reviewed research is internationally visible, there is a distinct bias towards English-written-and-spoken journals. 

This might seem like a petty point to highlight in a world that is increasingly dominated by English, but it prevents many other forms of published research – Spanish and Portuguese, for example, are lingua francas of Latin America – from ever being considered as highly viable. 

In addition to the problem of language, publishing in journals on high impact and visible databases carry relatively exorbitant fees (pitched in US dollars) for developing nation economies. This is the reality of many developing nations whose highly successful academics are not considered 'world class' because world class is by definition the Western norm. 

If a local journal in the Global South cannot afford to pay the fees to be considered on a high impact database, it is simply excluded and research published in local journals does not get to compete on an international level. These economic, social and cultural prejudices which researchers from developing nations in the Global South face, hinder the reach and impact of local journals and databases by rendering them invisible to mainstream (Western) science. 

If research is not visible, it is not used or cited. If it is not cited, it never makes the cut in the high impact index list which is largely based on citations. This is a vicious cycle which forever holds African (and Global South) researchers and universities to ransom. 

Therefore, based on what we know of how these indices work, we can be assured that the vast majority of the world's research output and scientific endeavour could be excluded by the very prejudices that declare our research output miniscule. 

Rise of open access 

Africa is believed to contribute only 1% of the world's innovation, research and development. It does not mean that this is all our research output or innovative ideas amount to globally; neither does it mean that we are not as intelligent as Western academics and researchers, nor that we lack quality institutions. 

What it does mean is that our visibility through what is regarded as high impact journals is reduced to only 1%. This is slowly changing through the rise in popularity of open access journals, most notably led by Brazil's Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) network which allows whole articles to be accessed instead of just an abstract, and South Africa is part of this network. 

Western media continues to brandish the image of a poor, starving, politically unstable and economically depressed continent marred by violence, corruption, disease and natural disasters. While these images may hold some truth to the general continental condition, there are numerous developments and achievements by researchers in developing nations across Africa who are actively working to mitigate these conditions. 

The transdisciplinary research expected to happen at Future Africa at the University of Pretoria in South Africa is key to making this a reality and will be a means by which Africans can take control of their own research output and innovations to find solutions to local problems which have a global impact. 

There is a ripple effect with problems faced in Africa that are exacerbated by poverty and the extractive economies that our continent is built upon. Extractive economies mean our raw materials are taken at a low cost and goods produced elsewhere are sold back to Africans at a higher rate. In order for us to achieve a measure of economic independence, self-sufficiency and sustainability, African countries and corporations working in Africa need to invest more in the research and development capacity of our young continent. 

The future belongs to Africa

With the average age on the continent being just under 20 years old, and representing around 20% of the world's population, it stands to reason that the future belongs to Africa. Issues like water and food security, poverty, primary health care and disease control, education, infrastructure development and ethical corporate and political governance issues have an impact throughout the world because what is often brandished in the mainstream media as Africa's problems, are not Africa's problems exclusively. 

How do we imagine and reimagine Africa's future if we do not call upon government, funders and the research sector as a whole to invest in finding solutions to pan-African concerns? We need to make an impact today to ensure that Africa has the research and development capacity it needs to ensure that everyday challenges faced by Africans have innovative solutions. 

As Africans and the Global South in general, we face seemingly insurmountable odds to develop at a faster rate and leapfrog technologies. 

Centuries of oppression and colonialism have impacted on our ability to practically overcome a system which seeks to re-enslave us through debt, prejudiced foreign policy, exploitation of our environment and an unwillingness on the part of mainstream science and the media to acknowledge our role in redesigning our collective futures with research and innovation that matters to us, and makes a difference. 

We may never win the war against a system that renders our achievements invisible to Western science, but we can make a difference by making use of the technologies, resources and avenues open to us. Knowledge is not what is stored behind a paywall of a publication; it is the wisdom to apply what we know in a practical context and to share our findings for the benefit of society as a whole. 

Professor Tawana Kupe is vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Future Africa is a trans- and multi-disciplinary research initiative at the University of Pretoria which is committed to finding sustainable solutions to some of the world's most pressing concerns.   




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Okey C. Iheduru


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