Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Impacts Of Commercialization On Depth, Breadth, Scope, And Quality Of Outreach In Mozambique: A Case-Study, Courtney Johnson

Stevenson Center for Community and Economic Development—Student Research

In today’s microfinance, scholars and policy-makers across the world have emphasized the importance of financial sustainability, or the ability of a microfinance institution (MFI) to finance its operations. In order to reach financial sustainability, MFIs embrace commercialization, a process where an MFI undergoes restructuring in order to open up avenues to capital. Yet, scholars are concerned that this emphasizes on financial sustainability will cause the social good objective to suffer, a phenomenon known as “trade-off.” Indeed, studies have found that commercialization impacts MFI outreach in various ways. To my knowledge, no research has attempted to understand the impacts of commercialization …

Seeing Witchcraft, Bernhard Udelhoven

Journal of Global Catholicism

When Christians in Zambia struggle with witchcraft, they also struggle with African cultural and religious concepts that deal with life’s ambiguities and that require discernment. It is not by working against the cultural and religious heritage, but by working with it, as far as possible, that the pastor can identify the broken relationships towards which many witchcraft discourses point. However, before we place the concepts of witchcraft into the realm of superstition (as are the trends of mission Christianity) or the demonic (as are the trends of charismatic Christianity), the Church has the duty to look at the concepts, stay …

Allocutio: Articulating The Task For The Future Of African Catholicism, Mary Sylvia Nwachukwu

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay charts how Catholicism can become more indigenously African and respond better to African needs and concerns.

The Devil Of The Missionary Church: The White Fathers And Catholic Evangelization In Zambia, Bernhard Udelhoven

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines how Western Catholic missionaries in Zambia dealt with claims of witchcraft and Satanism. Within an analytic frame that draws upon cultural history, theology, and anthropology the article also considers how African Christians appropriated missionary notions of the devil.

Learning Religion In The Presence Of The Other: Mission And Dialogue In World Catholicism, Matthias Scharer

Journal of Global Catholicism

Based on selected texts of the Second Vatican Council and related to the process of the Council and Church experiences thereafter, this article offers a brief insight into the theological method known as communicative theology (CT). One of the factors most challenging to mission and dialogue in world Catholicism is the perpetual presence of the “other” as a stranger. This learning religion in the presence of the “other” is not the exception; this article argues that it is, in fact, very typical of mission and dialogue in Africa as well as in Europe

Relationships Between Religious Denomination, Quality Of Life, Motivation And Meaning In Abeokuta, Nigeria, Mary Gloria Njoku, Babajide Gideon Adeyinka

Journal of Global Catholicism

Inter-disciplinary research that combines methods in psychology of the impact of religious change in Africa and theological approaches has been very scant in Nigeria. This study examines the relationship among religious denominations, quality of life, motivation and meaning in life in Abeokuta metropolis in Ogun State, Nigeria using psychological and religious tools. The study hypothesizes that members of the Roman Catholic denomination would differ from members of the Redeemed Christian Church of God and the Living Faith Church in motivational factors and meaning making.

The Ecclesiology Of Pope Francis And The Future Of The Church In Africa, Bradford E. Hinze

Journal of Global Catholicism

A consideration of the future of African Catholicism in light of the ecclesiology of Pope Francis. The article explores how themes in Francis's ecclesiology work together to challenge centralization, clericalism, and triumphalism in the church by promoting practices of synodality and how these elements support the church’s mission to work against forms of colonialism, neo-colonialism, and the most fundamental matrix of colonial power by advancing radical democracy in society

Editor's Introduction, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

An overview of African Catholicism. Part Two: Retrospect and Prospect, third issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism. A summary of the work of Bradford Hinze, Mary Gloria Njoku, Matthias Scharer, Mary Sylvia Nwachukwu, and Bernhard Udelhoven. Among the topics considered: African ecclesiology, African wellness and quality of life in Africa, interreligious dialogue in Africa, African Biblical scholarship, witchcraft and the Catholic Church.

Small Arms: An Applied Approach To Children In Armed Conflict Prevention Initiatives In Africa, Tristan Burger

Master's Theses

For centuries, children have been used in times of war—serving as porters, cooks, spies, sex slaves, and soldiers. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is still pervasive today with an estimated 300,000 children involved in armed conflict as of 2015. This applied project examines a possible method for preventing the illegal practice of using children in combat by employing a new technology centered on community-based early warning theories. I seek to understand if implementing a text-based, mobile crowdsourcing platform in remote communities in Sub-Saharan Africa will be successful in predicting Lord’s Resistance Army raids, thereby reducing the number of children abducted and/or forcibly …

A Framework Towards Technology Creation In Africa: Focusing On Ghana, Martin Yao Donani, Hannatu Abue Kugblenu, Azindow Bawa Fuseini

International Journal of African Development

Underdevelopment in Africa has been historical and a global concern coupled with the quest for good governance. Several efforts have been made in academia, national governments, the international community, and other institutional arrangements to reverse the trend. These efforts however are yet to produce a lasting result as Africa is still characterized by low productivity output, poverty and a widening technology gap when compared to other developing regions of the world. Conventional approaches used to address the African problem have consistently been devoid of indigenous technology development. Technology is here seen as paramount to every form of production on which …

Strategic Culture In Sub-Saharan Africa: The Divergent Paths Of Uganda And Tanzania, Kevin Frank

Dissertations

Strategic culture is a concept accepted by scholars and practitioners, but with problematic applicability to states newly independent or emerging from conflict. The elements that comprise strategic culture in the developed world are not always present in emerging states. This research addresses the pertinency of strategic culture in Uganda and Tanzania, and then tests the operationalization of the concept using the case of participation in the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). The African Union and the international community expected Uganda and Tanzania to contribute troops to AMISON in 2007. In the event, Uganda did and Tanzania chose another path. …

How To Read The Black Atlantic, Brian J. Klarman

CLAMANTIS: The MALS Journal

n/a

After Coup, Will Zimbabwe See Democracy Or Dictatorship?, Steven Feldstein

Public Policy and Administration Faculty Publications and Presentations

For decades, Robert Mugabe ruled Zimbabwe in a ruthless, even reckless manner. Over nearly 40 years, he turned the “jewel of Africa” into an economic basket case that’s seen inflation of up to 800 percent.

Negotiating Race, Work And Family: Cape Verdean Home Care Workers In Lisbon, Portugal, Celeste Vaughan Curington

Doctoral Dissertations

In Portugal, high levels of women’s labor force participation, rapidly aging populations, along with the retrenchment of welfare states, has led to the expansion of publicly subsidized private care work such as home care. Much of this caring work is carried out by low-paid citizen and migrant women from the former Portuguese colony of Cape Verde, an independent archipelago nation off the West African coast. At the same time, Portugal is a “post-colonial” setting, with comparatively progressive policies around family settlement for migrants, and where the language of “legal race” does not exist. Taking the lived experiences of Cape Verdean …

African Indigenous Knowledge: An Underutilised And Neglected Resource For Development, Njabulo Bruce Khumalo, Charity Baloyi

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Indigenous knowledge points to the fact that Africa has been able to generate, test and apply knowledge through its own methodologies and approaches. This knowledge sustained communities for years prior to colonialism which somehow downplayed the value of indigenous knowledge and promoted western knowledge systems. Colonialism created dependence on western knowledge systems and Africa has over the years neglected its own rich indigenous knowledge. This paper sought tohighlight challenges faced in the quest to incorporate IK into developmental goals and projects. Furthermore, the study also sought to recommend ways through which Africans can promote IK in its developmental projects. A …

Africa And An Economy Of Universal Human Solidarity: In The Footsteps Of Pope Francis’ Evangelii Gaudium, Laurenti Magesa

Journal of Vincentian Social Action

In his recent Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium or The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis indicated the shortcomings of capitalism, the economic order dominant in the world today. The inhuman social conditions Francis has attributed to global capitalism can be observed concretely in the lives of the peoples of the African continent. As a result, there exists within Africa itself, on the one hand, and between Africa and other regions of the world, on the other, a cavernous gap between the rich and the poor classes. The main problem is that poverty revolves around fundamental injustices in the creation, distribution, …

African Environmental Change From The Pleistocene To The Anthropocene, Colin Hoag, Jens-Christian Svenning

Anthropology: Faculty Publications

This review explores what past environmental change in Africa—and African people's response to it—can teach us about how to cope with life in the Anthropocene. Organized around four drivers of change—climate; agriculture and pastoralism; megafauna; and imperialism, colonialism, and capitalism (ICC)—our review zooms in on key regions and debates, including desertification; rangeland degradation; megafauna loss; and land grabbing. Multiscale climate change is a recurring theme in the continent's history, interacting with increasingly intense human activities from several million years onward, leading to oscillating, contingent environmental changes and societally adaptive responses. With high levels of poverty, fast population growth, and potentially …

Assessing The Factor Structure Of The Childhood Trauma Questionnaire, And Cumulative Effect Of Abuse And Neglect On Mental Health Among Adolescents In Conflict-Affected Burundi, Ruby Charak, Jtvm De Jong, Lidewyde H. Berckmoes, Herman Ndayisaba, Ria Reis

Psychological Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

The present study aimed to examine the factor structure of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ; Bernstein & Fink, 1998), highlight rates of abuse and neglect among Burundian adolescents, compare these rates with those found in high-income nations, and examine the cumulative effect of multiple types of abuse and neglect on depression and PTSD symptoms. Participants were 231 adolescents and youth (M = 14.9, SD = 1.99, 58.4% female) from five provinces of Burundi, a country in Central Africa affected by war and political violence. Translation and back-translation of the CTQ was carried out to obtain an adaptation of CTQ …

Examination Of Sentinel-2a Multi-Spectral Instrument (Msi) Reflectance Anisotropy And The Suitability Of A General Method To Normalize Msi Reflectance To Nadir Brdf Adjusted Reflectance, David P. Roy, Jian Li, Hankui Zhang, Lin Yan Dr., Haiyan Huang, Zhongbin Li

GSCE Faculty Publications

The Sentinel-2A multi-spectral instrument (MSI) acquires multi-spectral reflective wavelength observations with directional effects due to surface reflectance anisotropy and changes in the solar and viewing geometry. Directional effects were examined by considering two ten day periods of Sentinel-2A data acquired close to the solar principal and orthogonal planes over approximately 20° × 10° of southern Africa. More than 6.6 million (January 2016) and 10.6 million (April 2016) pairs of reflectance observations sensed 3 or 7 days apart in the forward and backscatter directions in overlapping Sentinel-2A orbit swaths were considered. The Sentinel-2A data were projected into the MODIS sinusoidal projection …

Emerging Challenges To Long-Term Peace And Security In Mozambique, Ayokunu Adedokun

The Journal of Social Encounters

Mozambique’s transition from civil war to peace is often considered among the most successful implementations of a peace agreement in the post-Cold War era. Following the signing of the 1992 Rome General Peace Accords (GPA), the country has not experienced any large-scale recurrence of war. Instead, Mozambique has made impressive progress in economic growth, poverty reduction, improved security, regional cooperation and post-war democratisation. Mozambique has also made significant strides in the provision of primary healthcare, and steady progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Notwithstanding these stellar achievements, Mozambique still faces a large number of political, social and economic problems: …

Introducing The Journal Of Social Encounters, Joseph Okumu, Ronald Pagnucco

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

The Complexities Of Coexisting: Foreign Aid Organizations And East African Governments, Lynsey Cooper

Honors Capstone Projects - All

When initiating projects, foreign aid organizations cannot simply go into another territory and begin their work. On top of the normal procedures of nongovernmental sector organizations and insitutitons, those from outside the domestic borders face additional measures. These measures are typically put in place by governments, typically on a national level. This paper explores the types of tensions and/or partnerships that may exist between foreign aid organizations and governments when crossing paths in this manner.

To narrow the scope of this broad topic, this paper focuses on developmental aid enacted by foreign aid organizations in East Africa through a case …

Ecological Niche Modeling Of The Genus Papio, Amanda J. Fuchs

Theses and Dissertations

Ecological niche modeling investigates how climatic variables have influenced taxonomic diversity in Papio. Models performed well suggesting climatic variables influence the distribution of baboon species. Niche overlap among all possible pairs of taxa determined that species exhibited significantly different niches. The results of these models support a parapatric speciation scenario.

Exploring The Caregiver-Child Relationship In Institutional Care Facilities In South Sudan, Jennifer Joy Telfer

MSU Graduate Theses

Institutional care for children separated from parents is expanding in Africa, but little research exists on caregiving at these institutions. This study explores the caregiver-child relationship in two residential institutions in South Sudan by investigating how caregivers experience their role and how children experience their lives in the institution. Semi- structured interviews assessed 14 caregivers’ backgrounds, parenting experience, attitudes, education, and motivations. The Orphans and Vulnerable Children Wellbeing Tool (OWT) assessed 98 adolescent residents, who also gave feedback about their answers. Caregivers employ parenting styles used by their parents and report treating non-relative children the same as biological children. Children …

Communicating The Justice And Peace Of God In Africa Today, Walter Ihejirika

Journal of Global Catholicism

Engaging with the work and theories of Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, the article charts out a spirituality of communication within Nigerian Catholicism. Discussing the intersection between various forms of media and community, the article argues for the utilization of media in the pursuit of social justice and the dismantling of inequalities.

Editor's Introduction, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

Introduction to African Catholicism: Contemporary Issues: Volume: 1, Issue 2 of the Journal of Global Catholicism

Caring For Orphans And Vulnerable Children In Institutional Care Facilities In Sub-Saharan Africa: A Social Development Intervention., Reuben Addo Phd

School of Social Work

No abstract provided.

African Film Distribution In The United States: Assessment And Prospective Analysis, Boukary Sawadogo

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Swords Into Ploughshares: Agricultural Recovery And Postwar Institutional Development In Sub-Saharan Africa, Jinu R. Abraham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Civil wars have long been characterized in the comparative politics literature as having profoundly negative economic effects for both individual households and countries on a larger scale. However, variation in postwar economic outcomes indicates that conflict may indeed have some curative effects. I argue political settlements in the aftermath of civil wars can shape postwar economic outcomes by transforming institutions critical to agricultural productivity. The structure of the state postwar can shape land tenure security, local government participation, and the management of preexisting social divisions. I employ a case study method controlling for differences on the independent variable in order …

Villes Et Espaces Africains : Pour Une Géocritique En Contexte Postcolonial, Yves Clavaron

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

As for geocritics, postcolonial studies consider questions of representation according to a contextualizing approach, scrutinizing geogrophical and sociopolitical settings. This paper aims at studying methodological affinities between geocritics and postcolonialism in order to observe to what extent Bertrand Westphal’s approach could respond to a postcolonial context and allow for an interpretation of African space – mainly urban – in a few francophone novels by Mongo Beti, Bernard Dadié, Ahmadou Kourouma, Henri Lopes, Alain Mabanckou, Patrice Nganang and Tierno Monénembo.