Linking the Malawian Diaspora to the Development of Malawi”
Malawi
Malawi (/məˈlɔːwi,məˈlɑːwi/; Chichewa pronunciation:[maláβi]; Tumbuka: Malaŵi), officially the Republic of Malawi and formerly known as Nyasaland, is a landlocked country in Southeastern Africa. It is bordered by Zambia to the west, Tanzania to the north and northeast, and Mozambique to the east, south and southwest. Malawi spans over 118,484 km2 (45,747 sq mi) and has an estimated population of 19,431,566 (as of January 2021). Malawi’s capital and largest city is Lilongwe. Its second-largest is Blantyre, its third-largest is Mzuzu and its fourth-largest is its former capital, Zomba.
Our progress roundup highlights American endeavors to address past injustices, by harnessing the power of both local voices and highly visible institutions.
1. United States
Efforts to preserve African American burial sites are gaining momentum across the country. Missing deeds, weak preservation laws, and general lack of awareness have made lost African American cemeteries uniquely vulnerable. More and more, communities are leading efforts to memorialize developed burial grounds, as well as identify and preserve these sites before they are slated for development.
Why We Wrote This
Increasingly, societies are trying to address wrongs by stopping bad practices and giving back what was taken. In the U.S., more communities are memorializing Black burial sites. And two museum collections have returned artifacts to Iraq.
Virginia’s Prince William County recently voted to fund archaeological surveys to improve cemetery mapping. Officials are also considering additional oversight for development projects in the community of Thoroughfare, where a new activist group has formed in response to the erasure of historic Black and Native American gravesites.
In Florida, where legislators estimate there may be as many as 3,000 developed or abandoned burial grounds, the governor signed off on a six-month task force dedicated to studying this issue. Nationally, historical preservation advocates have been pushing congressional bills that would establish a database of African American cemeteries throughout the United States, and to support educational programs. “People are absolutely starting to realize that these kinds of historical injustices need to be addressed now,” said Kelley Fanto Deetz, co-CEO of the History, Arts, and Science Action Network. “So there is a change coming.” Thomson Reuters Foundation, Black Cemetery Network
2. Colombia
“Green corridors” offer residents of Medellín, Colombia, refuge from rising temperatures. Since 2017, the city has installed tens of thousands of native trees, palms, and other plants to create 30 interconnected corridors through many of Medellín’s “heat islands.” These urban areas have high concentrations of heat-absorbing paved roads and concrete, making the neighborhoods hotter in the day and slower to cool down at night. With more than 12 shaded miles, the green corridors offer residents routes to travel, work, and rest, and have decreased the heat island effect by 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, according to city officials. The added vegetation also helps combat air pollution and absorb carbon emissions.
Despite initial concerns over the cost of creating and maintaining the corridors, city gardeners say community members have come to appreciate the green spaces. Their work has also received international praise. The initiative won a 2019 Cooling by Nature Award from Ashden, a United Kingdom-based charity supporting climate change solutions around the world, and the head of the United Nations Environment Program in Colombia, Juan Bello, said, “The Green Corridor project is an excellent example of how city planners and governments can use nature for smart urban design.” Thomson Reuters Foundation, U.N. Environment Program
Khalid Mohammed/AP
Crates of recovered artifacts sit temporarily at the Foreign Ministry before heading to the Iraq Museum on Aug. 3, 2021.
3. Iraq
The Iraqi Ministry of Culture reclaimed 17,000 looted artifacts in the country’s largest repatriation. Decades of unrest, especially during the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, have allowed for extensive looting of Iraqi antiquities, which often appear on the black market with vague or falsified letters of provenance. The recent return results from years of effort and includes thousands of cuneiform tablets, ancient seals, and other items. Around 12,000 artifacts come from the Museum of the Bible, founded and chaired by Hobby Lobby President Steve Green. The company launched an internal review of museum collections after the U.S. Department of Justice levied $3 million in fines in 2017 for dubious acquisitions. Another 5,000 were donations to Cornell University’s collection.
“This is not just about thousands of tablets coming back to Iraq again – it is about the Iraqi people,” said Hassan Nadhem, the minister of culture, tourism, and antiquities, about the historic shipment. “It restores not just the tablets, but the confidence of the Iraqi people by enhancing and supporting the Iraqi identity in these difficult times.” The New York Times, Al Jazeera
4. Malawi
Malawian teens are tackling sensitive subjects on air. A survey showed that 54% of young people in Africa rely on radio as their primary news source, and according to the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, 81% find local programming more trustworthy than international programs. The U.S.-based nonprofit Developing Radio Partners is helping local radio stations build on that trust by mentoring young people to be role models for their community, and address critical social issues. So far, DRP has worked with nine stations to train about 400 youth reporters in Malawi. The teens go on to host and research radio shows covering cultural taboos, such as gender violence and HIV.
One program, called “Let’s Shine,” is estimated to have reached 3 million youths since hitting airwaves in 2017. One listener, Doreen Sakala, is a young mother who says the show’s candid conversations about teen pregnancy inspired her to return to school. Organizers say child marriage – which is illegal but remains common in Malawi – has declined in areas where radio stations have partnered with DRP. Near the Zambian border, Nzenje village chief Lawrence Lungu says the youth-led radio shows have helped dissolve at least six child marriages by “[bringing] light to us when we were in the dark.” Thomson Reuters Foundation
In this article, we will be looking at 25 of the poorest countries in the world. You can skip our detailed breakdown of these countries by heading straight to the 5 poorest countries of the world.
The pre-pandemic world had made significant progress to reduce global poverty to almost half by the year 2000. Today however, according to United Nations projections of multidimensional poverty index, the ongoing pandemic has pushed poor nations to a new brink of income inequality and enshrouded almost 8% of the total human population in complete despair.
Poverty by definition is a depravation in income and access to resources to maintain a healthy life. According to the World Bank, poor or low-income countries are nations that have a per capita gross national income (GNI) of less than $1026.
Many of the poorer countries in the world are a cauldron of political instability with years of internal conflict leaving them vulnerable to financial insecurity. Additionally, natural disasters brought on by the global climate emergency have led to entire nations being entrapped in cycles of poverty and disease. Such fragile infrastructures cannot withstand the onslaught of adversities such as Ebola and AIDS outbreaks and nations lose, whatever productive ground they have gained, very quickly.
It is perhaps not surprising that top ten of the poorest countries exist in Africa, and that it is in both Africa and in the continent of Asia that we expect to witness the largest increase in extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic. All of these countries are deeply susceptible to environmental and economic risks and the ripples of the COVID 19 pandemic have contributed immensely to long-term persistent challenges to their economies.
All is not lost and there are many strides that have been made due to narrowing of the digital divide in these nations. Internet accessibility has helped to introduce the services of companies like Alphabet Inc. Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER) and open new windows of opportunity and information to these hitherto isolated peoples.
Over the past 25 years, the World Bank has used gross national income (GNI) per capita – valued annually in US dollars – to classify countries into an economic prosperity scale. The GNI of a country is calculated by taking into account its national output within borders and also its investments from abroad.
The formula for Gross National Income (GNI) is: GNI=C +I+G+X +NFFI. Where the ‘C’ represents consumption, the ‘I’ investments, ‘G‘ is consumptions and investments made by the government, ‘X’ represents net exports and ‘NFFI’ is the net foreign factor income. This defined and preferred benchmark, over the previously used gross domestic product (GDP), has proved useful to analyze progress and development trends since the beginning of the 3rd millennium.
With this context in mind, we will now deep dive into our list of the 25 poorest countries in the world. We will start with the 25th poorest country, according to the World Bank GNI per capita rankings as well as the 2021 World Population Data Sheet.
25 Poorest Countries in the World
25. Lesotho
GNI: $2740
Population: 2.2 million
A constitutional monarchy, Lesotho is a landlocked country with a mountainous terrain almost entirely surrounded by South Africa. The mountains have been largely responsible for their protection from outside encroachment. The country is home to 2.2 million people and its GNI per capita rests at $2740. Lesotho has been prone to periodic droughts. It has also survived a military takeover which was reverted after seven years of martial rule.
24. Solomon Islands
GNI: $2680
Population: 0.7 million
An archipelagic state of 992 islands and atolls scattered around Melanesia in the Pacific Ocean, its 0.7 million residents are vulnerable to natural disasters such as tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Its GNI per capita is the $2680 and 12.7 percent of its population lives below the poverty line.
Despite these odds, 11.9% of Solomon Islanders have access to the internet and are bridging the digital divide with companies like Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER).
23. Guinea
GNI: $2580
Population: 13.5 million
Guinea is a majority Muslim country with ties to France. It has established trade with UAE and China. Its GNI per capita is at $2580. The 13.5 million people of Guinea have survived the Ebola virus, but the underlying fear of a new outbreak continues to permeate. Guinea continues to look to IMF to establish new programs for better infrastructure.
22. Ethiopia
GNI: $2410
Population: 117.8 million
This unique country in Africa evaded Colonial rule for all of its history, except a brief period of four years. Its war with neighboring Eritrea ended in 2018. Its population of 117.8 million makes it the second most populous country in Africa. Ethiopia has battled a 30-year drought and a population boom leaving its GNI per capita at $2410.
The country ranks 22nd in our list of the 25 poorest countries in the world.
21. Uganda
GNI: $2260
Population: 27.1 million
Uganda has one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Its population as of mid-2021 was 27.1 million people. It is perhaps tragically balanced by the AIDS epidemic, which keeps mortality rates high. Uganda’s government spending has grown as has its national debt resulting in its GNI per capita at $2260.
20. Mali
GNI: $2250
Population: 20.9 million
Mali, landlocked in western Africa, depends on its gold mining and agriculture exports as a source of wealth. Its people have seen much economic and social unrest and suffered through over 31 years of dictatorship rule. The current population of Mali is 20.9 million.
19. Gambia
GNI: $2230
Population: 2.5 million
The Gambia is one of the smallest countries on the African mainland and is home to 2.5 million people, 95 per cent of whom are Muslim. The Gambia, largely an agricultural economy, relies heavily on overseas remittances and tourism. GNI per capita is $2230. Any future economic progress will depend on substantial bilateral aid. The Gambia has not been successful in eliminating its human trafficking problem; women, girls and young boys continue to be in danger of becoming victims.
18. Togo
GNI: $2230
Population: 8.3 million
The Togolese people have lived under a 50 year rule, with one family at the helm. The political and civil unrest and frustration in the form of riots experienced by the country is mainly due to this. Togo enjoyed a period of economic stability till the political situation erupted into its current state. At the moment its GNI per capita is at $2230. Although this figure is similar to The Gambia, other factors of the Human Development Index have been taken into account to place it below that country.
However, as youth in poor countries like Togo gets access to the internet and begin to use services of companies like Alphabet Inc. Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER), many believe this would increase awareness and create new economic opportunities in the region.
17. Burkina Faso
GNI: $2190
Population: 21.5 million
Burkina Faso is a country with very limited natural resources. Its 21.5 million inhabitants have had a history littered with human and natural disasters from drought to terrorist attacks and then to internally displaced peoples from these attacks. The current GNI per capita for Burkina Faso is $2190. Like The Gambia it struggles with issues resulting from human trafficking of women and children.
16. Rwanda
GNI: $2160
Population: 13.3 million
Rwanda has had a past littered with unrest culminating in the genocide of 800,000 people in 1994 including a large proportion of its Tutsi population. Its current population stands at 13.3 million people. Tourism, tea and coffee are some of the major sources of foreign exchange. Present day government has made pathways to leading the way to progress in the communications and technology sector. Rwanda’s GNI per capita is $2160.
However, as youth in poor countries like Rwanda gets access to the internet and begin to use services of companies like Alphabet Inc. Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER), many believe this would increase awareness and create new economic opportunities in the region.
15. Afghanistan
GNI: $2110
Population: 39.8 million
Afghanistan, one of the two countries on our list that is not located in Africa, houses a population of 39.8 million people. The geopolitical situation of the country has made it helpless against interference from its neighbors. Over 72,000 Afghans have received refuge in neighboring Pakistan. It is unfortunate that Afghanistan continues to be the world’s largest producer of opium. Since the US invasion in 2001, economic activity has increased slightly and currently the GNI per capita is at $2110.
14. Guinea-Bissau
GNI: $1980
Population: 2 million
A small country of 2 million people located on the western coast of Africa, bordering the Atlantic Ocean, Guinea-Bissau is home to a diverse plethora of ethnicities. The country has experienced its fair share of political upheavals in the form of coups and civil war. All this has contributed to its fragile economy where the GNI per capita is $1980 and two out of three Bissau-Guineans remain below the poverty line.
13. Sierra Leone
GNI: $1670
Population: 8.1 million
Home to 8.1 million people, Sierra Leone is located on the Western edge of the continent of Africa. Subsistence agriculture is the main source of wealth for its people.
12. Eritrea
GNI: $1610
Population: 3.6 million
Eritrea was involved in a 30-year struggle for independence from Ethiopia till 1991. Like many African countries the Eritrean population of 3.6 million people engages in subsistence agriculture for most of its economic output with a small percentage involved in mining of gold and other minerals. Its GNI per capita is currently at $1,610.
However, as youth in poor countries like Eritrea gets access to the internet and begin to use services of companies like Alphabet Inc. Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER), many believe this would increase awareness and create new economic opportunities in the region.
11. Chad
GNI: $1580
Population: 17.4 million
After Chad’s independence in 1960, the Chadian people saw over three decades of oppression and invasion from its neighbors. The country is home to 17.4 million, over 400,000 of whom are from Nigeria and Sudan. Chad mediates to resolve the Darfur conflict. Its GNI per capita is $1580 as low oil prices stress Chad’s fiscal position. Its 1 million internet users have been introduced to the services of companies like Alphabet Inc. Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER) opening avenues of free flow of information and technology.
10. Malawi
GNI: $1540
Population: 20.3 million
A country of 20.3 million people, Malawi is located in southern Africa. It is ranked among the world’s least developed countries with a GNI per capita of US $1540. The country is heavily dependent on IMF, World Bank and other donor nations for assistance. A large share of its economic down trend can be attributed to the El Nino triggered drought of 2015.
9. Madagascar
GNI: $1540
Population: 28.4 million
Once a pirate stronghold in the early 18th century, Madagascar with its mostly youthful population of 28.4 million people is a small island in the Indian Ocean. It has suffered its fair share of cyclones and locusts infestations over its history. The dependent population contributes to its low GNI per capita of $1540. It is perhaps not surprising that 9.8% of the internet users in Madagascar’s dependent population use the services of (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER).
8. Liberia
GNI: $1250
Population: 5.18 million
Liberia is a country on the western coast of Africa. Its name is derived from the Latin ‘liber’ meaning free and is home to 28 diverse ethnicities of 5.18 million people. The basis of its foundation was a home for liberated African American slaves. An Ebola outbreak in 2015 and over a decade of fighting have reduced its GNI per capita to $1250. Ivorian refugees in Liberia make up 95% of the refugee population.
7. Mozambique
GNI: $1250
Population: 32 million
Mozambique, on the eastern coast of South Africa, remained under the Portuguese till 1975. Its 32 million inhabitants have struggled with a severe drought and large scale emigration due to civil war for the better part of a century. The GNI per capita of Mozambique stands at $1250 as of 2020. Mozambique like most poor African countries is highly vulnerable to lower life expectancy due to AIDS.
6. Niger
GNI: $1210
Population: 25.1 million
Named after the Niger River, this landlocked African country is home to 25.1 million people. Niger’s geopolitical position and the rate of unrest and spillover effect from surrounding countries have contributed to its low GNI per capita at $1210. Niger lacks the funds to develop its mineral and oil resources and is ranked last in the UN Development Programme’s Human Development Index.
However, as youth in poor countries like Nigeria gets access to the internet and begin to use services of companies like Alphabet Inc. Class A (NASDAQ: GOOGL), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN), Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR) and Uber Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: UBER), many believe this would increase awareness and create new economic opportunities in the region.
The program is a collaboration between OU’s Voinovich School, Athens law enforcement and OU’s Scripps College of Communication, and is designed to reinvigorate the way police officers think about training through two immersive scenarios.
Those simulations, filmed with CineVR technology, teach officers how to deescalate a mental health crisis and reckon with the compound effects of racial profiling of the Black community.
“The impetus for this comes from the notion that even before some of the dramatic events that unfolded in the press and in the world around law enforcement, current police training is lacking in a number of ways,” David Malawista said.
Malawista, a reserve commander with Athens police and a clinical and forensic psychologist, hopes the VR training can reshape the way officers think about behaving within policy versus promoting the best outcome.
As a consultant on the project, he helped develop the scripts for the two scenarios featuring “Chet,” a veteran with PTSD, and “Dion,” an African American graduate student.
Malawista is confident this technology, which is being offered to local Athens County law enforcement through the end of the year before expanding to contiguous rural counties, will be the way of the future of police training.
Launching into (virtual) reality
A little over a year and a half ago OU Visiting Assistant Professor John Born turned the dream of virtual training into a reality when he secured $200,000 from the Voinovich School’s application grant program to invest in rural law enforcement.
“Appalachia is not normally at the forefront of these innovative tech programs, but that’s what the Voinovich School is all about,” said Born, an Athens native who served as director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety for six years.
The former colonel of the State Highway Patrol said he believes this initiative will provide police officers, particularly those in rural departments with scarce resources, a fresh perspective by reinforcing communication skills to deescalate high-pressure situations.
Born watched officers at the initiative’s informal launch last weekend express awe at each of the 20-minute scenarios, which also involve two props: a mangled lunchbox and backpack, that Born says will help officers establish a mnemonic connection when they pass by the props in the break room.
That’s because virtual reality is an incredibly powerful medium, Eric Williams explained.
Williams, a professor of New Media Storytelling at OU, also collaborated on the initiative and explained that this latest technology establishes a connection in your brain that sticks with you as if you have experienced the events you’ve witnessed in a headset.
“If you’re a police officer and you’re remembering your training like it’s a personal memory that’s much different than a two-dimensional video or lecture,” he said.
Steps for the future
On Tuesday, the initiative will roll out the technology to law enforcement agencies throughout Athens County, where officers will be able to use headsets during shift breaks on a volunteer basis, Malawista said.
Then, in January, the program will expand to nearby contiguous counties, with the hopes of eventually branching out across the state, he added.
“This really provides officers with the opportunity to have a positive impact in their community,” Malawista said. “How do you manage a crisis? Well, the training teaches you how to put one’s personal emotions aside and control the situation with minimal force.”
The program will formally survey officers who’ve done the training to analyze how many people the initiative reached, what they think about the technology and if it affects real-life policing over the course of the next year and a half, Born said.
“After 32 years in this field I’ve never seen anything impact people in such an immersive way,” he added.
Céilí Doyle is a Report for America corps member and covers rural issues in Ohio for The Dispatch. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation at https://bit.ly/3fNsGaZ.
Ray Rickman, longtime Civil Rights leader and child advocate has announced he will run for the District 3 Senate seat, being vacated as Sen. Gayle Goldin goes to Washington for a position with the federal government. In his announcement Friday afternoon, Rickman said he will focus on inequality in education as his primary issue.
Here is his announcement:
Ray Rickman, a longtime Civil Rights activist and nonprofit and cultural leader, announced his campaign for the District 3 State Senate seat being vacated by Gayle Goldin. He was inspired to run because of the continued inequity in the Providence Public School system, which the Rhode Island Supreme Court said can only be addressed by the state legislature.
“When I was arrested in 1966 marching for Civil Rights in Mississippi, it never occurred to me that in 2021, the largest school system in Rhode Island would be failing thousands of students of color,” said Rickman. “We need to fix this injustice before we lose an entire generation to failure. That will be my highest priority as an East Side State Senator.”
Rickman has had a long and impressive career as a public servant, an indefatigable activist and inventive nonprofit leader. As a teenager, he marched against segregation with James Meredith in the Jim Crow South. In his hometown of Detroit, he led multiple walkouts at Southeastern High School to force the city to address its segregated, unequal educational system. After working in Washington D.C. and Detroit, he moved to Providence where he served three terms as a State Representative for College Hill and two years as Deputy Secretary of State. He co-founded Shape Up RI, the nation’s first statewide wellness initiative, serving 100,000 Rhode Islanders. He is the co-founder of Stages of Freedom, an award-winning BIPOC nonprofit that provides free swimming lessons to low income youth and presents African American programming to the entire community.
“This is a critical moment for the future of our youth,” said Rickman. “My work in the Rhode Island Senate will be laser focused on our educational problems, and the inequality that persists in our schools, businesses and government. As a child and health advocate, and champion of Civil Rights, I believe I have the most experience to address these issues in the state legislature during these turbulent times.”
Ray Rickman is co-founder and executive director of the award-winning BIPOC non-profit, Stages of Freedom. The organization is dedicated to teaching Black Rhode Island youth how to swim and building bridges of racial understanding by promoting and celebrating Rhode Island African American life and culture through high-profile events for thousands of Rhode Islanders each year.
As president of his own consulting firm, Rickman Group, he raised funds and conducted management and diversity training for non-profits, colleges and businesses. He is a former State Representative from the Brown University area of Providence and served as Rhode Island Deputy Secretary of State from 2000 to 2002, the highest office held by an African American in the state’s history. Among his many pieces of successful legislation was a bill to create the position of Rhode Island State Poet Laureate, and to name a bridge at the foot of the Capitol Building in honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He co-chaired the commission to place sculptures of Black philanthropist Christiana Carteux Bannister and White abolitionist Elizabeth Buffum Chace in the RI State House. As chair of the Dexter Commission, he oversaw the disbursement of $3,000,000 to low-come Rhode Island groups which had never received funding.
For the past forty years he has advocated for civil rights in Rhode Island, helping hundreds on a voluntary-basis or through his various positions, to achieve simple justice.
Rickman has served as both Equal Opportunity Officer and Executive Director of the Human Relations Commission for the City of Providence. In the 1980s, he was the Associate Director of the Compliance Office for the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency. From 2004-2006, Rickman was the Assistant Director of the Diversity Office for Lifespan, Rhode Island’s largest employer.
Rickman was Senior Policy Advisor for Shape Up RI, the largest state-wide wellness program in the nation. He was also strategic advisor to Shape Up the Nation, the for-profit arm of Shape Up RI. He was the lead consultant to the Gloria Gemma Breast Cancer Resource Foundation, Opera Providence, and The Rhode Island Black Heritage Society. He was appointed to the board of the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts by Gov. Chafee, and was a member of the Rhode Island Parole Board.
Rickman hosted a minority affairs and cultural program on Rhode Island Public Television for twenty- one years. In the 1980s, Rickman was president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island.
Rickman is past President of The Rhode Island Black Heritage Society and was the Secretary of the Rhode Island Historical Society for seven years. He was also the first Treasurer of the Heritage Harbor Museum, a Smithsonian affiliate. In 2003, he founded Adopt A Doctor, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides financial assistance to 18 medical doctors in four of the world’s poorest nations: Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, and Malawi.
A rare book dealer, Rickman is the foremost authority on Rhode Island African American history, having edited seven publications on the topic. He lectures widely on African American history and American literature at such venues as Tulane, Harvard, Yale, Morehouse, Morgan State, Emory, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, Brandeis, and University of Florida. He conducts architectural and Black history tours of the Brown University area. He is a graduate of Wayne State University.
He led a successful ten-year campaign to prevent Brown University from demolishing the Edward Bannister (the nation’s foremost 19th century Black artist) house. During this same period, Rickman placed half a dozen plaques on historic Black sites, including those for Sissieretta Jones, America’s first Black opera diva, and Celebrity Club, New England’s first integrated jazz club.
Rickman is the recipient of many awards, including the 2018 Rhode Island Philanthropist of the Year Award; the Frederick Douglass Award from the National Park Service; the 2018 Innovation Award from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities for his work at Stages of Freedom building bridges across cultural divides; the 2018 State of Rhode Island Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Award; and the 2017 National Community Service Award from the National Association of Black Law Enforcement.
Ray Rickman, left, marching with James Meredith in Sunflower County, MS, June, 25, 1966 – March against Fear
In 1964, in his hometown of Detroit, Ray lead the celebrated massive student walk-out at Foch Junior High School protesting overcrowding and poor learning conditions, resulting in the building of new school which he dedicated.
In 1965 Ray co-lead student walk-outs protesting racial segregation at Detroit’s Southeastern High School, leading to systemic improvements.
As a teen in 1966, while walking with Civil Rights giant, James Meredith, (above) in The March Against Fear in Sunflower County, MS, Ray was brutally beaten by the sheriff and his deputies and became known as “The Civil Rights Kid” back in Detroit.
Ray was US Representative John Conyers’ chief of staff, working with secretary Rosa Parks in the Detroit headquarters.
As the Director of the Human Relations Commission for the City of Providence from 1979-1981, Ray was deeply involved in police reform. He also served as president of the ACLU.
Ray was Acting Director at the Boston Women’s Center in 1982.
In the late 1980s and early 90s, as a three-term State Representative for College Hill, Ray was a leading reformer and fought agaist mass incarceration.
As Deputy Secretary of State from 2000-2002, Ray championed the placement of two sculptures of leading RI female activists in the State House; chaired the committee to purchase the State’s first new voting machines in forty years; streamlined the State Archives, and oversaw the effort to display the Declaration of Independence at the Providence Mall for thousands to see.
Ray was appointed to the 2000 and 2010 statewide Redistricting Commission.
Appointed by Gov. Chafee, Ray served on the Rhode Island State Parole Board for two years.
Ray sat on the Providence Historic District Commission for five years, and on the Rhode Island Historical Society board of directors for seven years.
Ray devoted seven years of his life to financially supporting underpaid African doctors in west African nations with his landmark Adopt-a-Doctor program.
As co-founder and executive director of Shape Up RI, the nation’s first statewide wellness program, Ray enrolled over 100,000 participants.
Concerned with the high number of drownings of African American youth, Ray created Swim Empowerment to pay for hundreds free swimming lessons at nin partnering YMCAs.
In 2016, Ray co-founded the award-winning BIPOC non-profit, Stages of Freedom, which presents and celebrates the State’s rich African American heritage through high-profile events for the entire community.
Ghana welcomed survivors of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre Viola Ford Fletcher who is 107 years old and her brother Hughes Van Ellis, 100 years old.
The two are the last known living survivors of the 1921 racist massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
This is the first time they step on African soil for a tour in Ghana. The visit is part of a “homecoming” campaign organized by the social media platform Our Black Truth.
“I think this one of the biggest historic African diasporas that has come back to us. When the president made the announcement on Beyond the Return, 2018 in DC and celebrating the Beyond the Return in 2019, we never thought that one of our siblings who was taken away generation from that, 107 years old and have the passion and interest to visit Ghana. Not only by herself but also bringing along the younger brother along who is 100 years old,” Nadia Adongo Musah, deputy director of Diaspora Office, Office of the President said.
On May 31, 1921, a group of Black men went to the Tulsa courthouse to defend a young African American man accused of assaulting a white woman. They found themselves facing a mob of hundreds of furious white people.
Tensions spiked and shots were fired, and the African Americans retreated to their neighborhood, Greenwood.
The next day, at dawn, white men looted and burned the neighborhood, at the time so prosperous it was called Black Wall Street.
In 2001, a commission created to study the tragedy concluded that Tulsa authorities themselves had armed some of the white rioters.
Historians say that as many as 300 African American residents lost their lives, and nearly 10,000 people were left homeless in the 1921 incident that drew the white against the black.
This final piece marks Zeleza’s end of term as Vice Chancellor of United States International University in Kenya.
PART A
THE INTERVIEW
(Unedited Transcript)
What other roles have you played in promoting African higher education that you’re proud of?
I am most proud of four things. First, my scholarship on higher education, which I believe has had some influence. My interest in higher education started when I was at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, as part of my burgeoning interest in intellectual history—the history of ideas and of knowledge producing institutions. This interest was sparked and sharpened by my efforts to understand the epistemic dynamics and discourses of African studies when I became center director.
The first part of my foray into intellectual history culminated in my participation in a huge project, as Associate Editor of the six-volume encyclopedia, New Dictionary of the History of Ideas published in New York in 2005, in which we looked at the evolution of major ideas and intellectual trends and their different iterations around the world. The institutional dimension received considerable boost from a conference the center organized jointly with CODESRIA in April, 2002 on “African Universities in the Twenty-First Century.” The conference was held simultaneously at UIUC and in Dakar, and the two sites were connected by video for about three hours a day, which was quite a novelty in those pre-Zoom days.
The result was a two volume collection that Adebayo Olukoshi, CODESRIA’s Executive Secretary, and I co-edited, African Universities in the 21st Century. Volume 1: Liberalization and Internationalization, and Volume 2: Knowledge and Society. In 2015, I had the privilege of being contracted to produce the framing paper for the 1st African Higher Education Summit held in Dakar, March 10-12, as well as the draft of the Summit Declaration and Action Plan. My knowledge of the state of African higher education was an asset when I became Vice Chancellor.
Second, I’m proud of the Carnegie African Diaspora Program. It has been gratifying to see one of my research projects turn into a transformative program. To date, CADFP has funded 465 fellowships hosted by more than 150 universities in nine African countries. Altogether, the program has received 1,100 project requests from 206 accredited African universities. Data shows that the program has helped to build the capacities of African higher education institutions by increasing curriculum offerings, graduate programming, and research production. Surveys completed show that the average fellowship contributed two to three courses to host institutions. After participating in the CADFP, alumni continued to co-develop curricula with African institutions, collaborate in research and joint applications for funding. Many inter-institutional partnerships have also been set up between the home and host institutions of the fellows.
Third, I am proud of my membership of various higher education boards, on which I try to make contributions. Besides CADFP whose Advisory Council I chair, I currently serve on the Administrative Board of the International Association of Universities (IAU) as one of two representatives for Africa; the Advisory Board of the Alliance for African Partnership (AAP); I chair the Board of Trustees of the Kenya Education Network (KENET); and I am a member of the University of Ghana Council.
The IAU represents and serves the full spectrum of higher education institutions and their associations and works to enhance the higher education community’s role and actions in advancing societies worldwide. Its hub of resources include the World Higher Education Database, the most comprehensive database on higher education, reference publications including a journal, an international handbook of universities, a global survey of Internationalization, a magazine, and specialized reports.
The AAP was launched in 2016 as a consortium of Michigan State University and nine African universities in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, South Africa, Botswana, Nigeria, and Senegal. It provides funding for research some of which targets women and early career scholars, as well as strategic funding for institutional transformation.
KENET promotes the use of ICT in teaching, learning and research in higher education institutions in Kenya and interconnects universities, tertiary and research institutions, facilitates electronic communication in member institutions, and promotes the sharing of learning and teaching resources. The University of Ghana, one of Africa’s premier universities, allows for one Vice Chancellor from an African university to sit on its Council.
Finally, I’m proud of my fundraising efforts especially for student scholarships. Most recently, in July 2020, USIU-Africa signed a $63.2 million partnership with the Mastercard Foundation for 1,000 talented, yet economically disadvantaged young people at our university to receive quality education and leadership development over the next 10 years. It targets 70 percent young women, 25 percent displaced youth, and 10 percent young people living with disabilities. When I imagine the transformative future that awaits these young people, for themselves, their families and communities, and for the continent, I am filled with a deep sense of gratitude that I made a small contribution to that future.
You have published extensively, how would you characterize the scope of your work?
As evident from what we have discussed thus far my scholarship, like anyone’s scholarship, has been framed by the itineraries of my historical geography, that is, the changing locations in time and space for me as a person and a professional. Clearly, the places and institutions and temporal contexts of each have framed the broad contours and shifts in my academic work. As I know from my studies in intellectual history, there are four crucial dynamics of knowledge production: first, intellectual, which refers to the prevailing paradigms in one’s field, space and time; second, ideological, in terms of the dominant ideologies; third, institutional, as far as the nature of institutions one is affiliated with is concerned; and finally, individual, one’s social biography with reference to gender, race, nationality, class, religion, etc.
Looking back, I think there are four key academic and social contexts that have shaped my scholarly work. First, is the fact that I was educated in three countries on three continents in different fields—Malawi where I received my undergraduate education majoring in English and history; the United Kingdom where I studied for my masters degree in history and international relations; and Canada where I concentrated on economic history. I have worked in five countries: two in Africa—Malawi and Kenya; two in North America—Canada and the United States; and one in the Caribbean—Jamaica.
Second, I’ve worked in a diversity of institutions in terms of their relative size, research intensity, in both public and private, secular and religious affiliated. Also important is the fact that I’ve had appointments in disciplinary and interdisciplinary units. When I started my academic career at the University of the West Indies I was simply a historian with an appointment in the history department. It was the same at Kenyatta University. It was at Trent that I began to straddle more than one unit. While my appointment remained in the history department, I also taught in the department of development studies, an interdisciplinary unit. When I relocated to the United States all my appointments were joint.
At UIUC, I was Professor of History and African Studies; at Penn State Professor of African and African American Studies and History; at UIC Professor of African American Studies and History; at LMU Professor of African American Studies and History; at Quinnipiac University I returned to being Professor of History; and at USIU-Africa I was appointed Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences, perhaps because there’s no department of history or African studies! My transnational appointments have similarly been interdisciplinary. I was appointed Honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town in 2006 and affiliated with the department of history, the African Gender Institute, and the Center for African Studies. In 2019 I was appointed Honorary Professor, Chair for Critical Studies Higher Education Transformation at Nelson Mandela University.
Third, my career has spanned the immediate post-colonial era, the Cold War era, and the first two decades of the 21st century. Each of these periods had its dominant political economies, ecologies and discourses; they were conjunctures that conditioned the parameters of research and the rhythms of my intellectual life. Finally, it is clear my academic trajectories emerged out of the changing intellectual influences, ideological proclivities, institutional locations, and individual circumstances including aging! There were of course some enduring key drivers throughout, most critically an abiding curiosity and a deep sense of ignorance that generated lasting voracious reading habits. My scholarship has also been propelled by enduring passion for social justice and transformation.
These, I believe, are contexts that explain my main intellectual preoccupations since the 1970s. If I were to summarize them, eight thematic areas would stand out. Altogether, I have published more than 300 journal articles, book chapters, reviews, short stories and online essays, and authored or edited 28 books, several of which have won international awards. I have presented nearly 250 keynote addresses, papers, and public lectures at leading universities and international conferences in 32 countries. I have also served on the editorial boards of more than two dozen journals and book series, and currently serve as Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Bibliographies Online in African Studies.
The first thematic area is literature. As noted earlier, I started creative writing as an undergraduate student. I have published two collections of short stories and a novel. Several of my short stories have appeared in literary magazines and collections of African and African Canadian short stories. My interest in literature later extended to literary criticism in which I have published several essays including some on the works of specific writers such as Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Nurrudin Farah, Ben Okri, Buchi Emecheta, Mariama Ba, and Yvonne Vera, to mention a few, as well literary critics such as Edward Said. My interest in literature later morphed into cultural studies. An example includes a co-edited book, Leisure in Urban Africa, in addition to several articles.
The second area for which I became known is economic history, especially for the book A Modern Economic History of Africa, Vol. I: The Nineteenth Century that in 1994 won the Noma Award.. I am still working on Volume II on the twentieth century! Out of this grew my work in development studies in which I have published numerous essays and three books, Sacred Spaces and Public Quarrels: African Cultural and Economic Landscapes; Rethinking Africa’s Globalization, Volume1: The Intellectual Challenges, and Africa’s Resurgence: Domestic, Global and Diaspora Transformations.
The third area is gender studies, which was inspired by my fascination with the matrilineal cultural underpinnings of the communities my parents hailed from and the patriarchal realities of the colonial and postcolonial society I grew up in. In fact, my first published academic book was on Women in the Kenyan Economy and Labor Movement, and later I co-wrote a book on Women in African Studies Scholarly Publishing. In addition, I wrote a series of essays on gender. Perhaps one of the most well is “Gender Biases in African Historiography,” in a landmark volume published by CODESRIA, Engendering the Social Sciences in Africa. In all my scholarly work I try to integrate a gendered analysis. Perhaps because of this work in 2003 I was invited to join a nine-member Gender Advisory Group, as one of two men, formed by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development, to produce a report on the implementation of gender reforms and mainstreaming agreed at the 1995 UN Women’s Conference held in Beijing. Out of the project came Gender Equality: Striving for Justice in an Unequal World, which was launched at the UN headquarters in 2005.
Fourth, I became quite prolific in publications on intellectual history. Besides numerous essays, I have published six books dealing with various aspects of the history of ideas, universities, and the development of the disciplines and interdisciplinary fields and the construction of knowledges on Africa. My first book in this endeavor was Manufacturing African Studies and Crises which received the Special Commendation of the Noma Award in 1998. This was followed by 2 volumes of African Universities in the 21st Century. In 2016, I published The Transformation of Global Higher Education, 1945-2015, the first book I’m aware of by a single scholar looking at the development of higher education on every continent over 70 years after World War II. On a more global level, I mentioned earlier that I served as one of the associate editors of the six-volume New Dictionary of the History of Ideas.
The fifth area of my scholarship informed by my political activism is human rights studies. Again, in addition to several essays, I’ve published several books dealing with human rights directly and related issues of conflicts. This includes the co-edited collection, Human Rights, the Rule of Law and Development in Africa, and two connected volumes, The Roots of African Conflicts and The Resolution of African Conflicts.
The sixth area that has fascinated me focuses on trying to understand African modernities and transformation due to globalization, and most recently the rise of the Fourth Industrial Revolution as well as the unfolding impact of COVID-19 on the digitilization of various spheres of economic and social life. My first book length publication in this field was, In Search of Modernity: Science and Technology in Africa. Two years ago I made a plenary presentation at the inaugural conference of Universities South Africa on African Universities and the Fourth Industrial Revolution which is included in my recently published and wide ranging essay collection, Africa and the Disruptions of the Twenty-First Century. Last December, 2020 I co-authored a paper that I mentioned earlier on “Enhancing the Digital Transformation of African Universities: COVID-19 as Accelerator” that will be published in the Journal of African Higher Education.
The seventh area that I’ve focused my scholarly work on is diaspora studies. I discussed earlier the personal, family, and social contexts that drove me to this exciting field. In preparation for and during my global diaspora project I wrote a series of theoretical essays on the diaspora paradigm, such as “Rewriting the African Diaspora: Beyond the Black Atlantic,” “Africa and Its Diasporas: Remembering South America,” “Reconceptualizing African Diasporas: Notes from an Historian,” “Dancing to the Beat of the Diaspora: Musical Exchanges between Africa and its Diasporas,” and “African Diasporas: Towards a Global History,” which I gave as my presidential address at the ASA Annual Meeting in 2010. As noted earlier, my research travels resulted in the book, In Search of African Diasporas: Testimonies and Encounters. Prior to that I had published a book, Barack Obama and African Diasporas: Dialogues and Dissensions, which examined the meaning of the Obama candidacy and presidential victory for the Pan-African world. The comprehensive study from the research project is yet to be written.
Capping all this is, finally, the production of what I would call academic service work and public intellectual work. The first refers to such work as encyclopedias and school textbooks or adolescent texts, of which I’ve done about five. At the turn of the new century, I edited the Encyclopedia of Twentieth Century African History by Routledge. My public intellectual work consists of essays I write for public audiences and publish as blogs, newspaper articles, and essays in popular magazines. Some of my blogs have ended up being published in my essay collections. Since I returned to the continent in December 2015, Kenyan and Malawian newspapers have carried several of my commentaries and interviews on national and global events. Over the years University World News has published several of my essays on higher education. And more recently, I’ve discovered the world of podcasts!
I see these outlets as a critical part of my role as a public intellectual, to translate research and share ideas in the public realm; to participate in ongoing popular conversations outside the often convoluted and self-referential confines of the academy, with their incomprehensible and cultish discourses to disciplinary or theoretical outsiders.
PART B
INTERVIEW ANALYSIS AND REFLECTIONS BY TOYIN FALOLA
The Economy of Transnational Teaching and Publishing (9 & 10)
Teaching is a natural assignment where everyone is tasked with the responsibility of defeating their ignorance so that they could become valuable to themselves and their society. However, that is the concept of teaching in the most innocent and basic form. Teaching requires something more. It demands that teachers first be identified as incurably curious and must show insatiable interest in the things of the world to develop appropriate skills and methodologies to hand their knowledge to the succeeding generations. Nevertheless, the quality of teaching lies in the intellectual coverage of expansive educational fields that determine what one can give to people at a particular moment. Therefore, people who would be considered teachers must be versatile and programmatically eclectic as this would influence what and how they teach. In contemporary times, however, there is a need to understand the changing dynamics of knowledge production. Globalization has necessitated that people improve their understanding of the world around them, which continues to be expansive and complex because this is the prerequisite to expose learners to the diverse sociocultural identities of the world and, therefore, imbue them on ways to navigate the complex politics of the world.
Between Africa and the world is an umbilical cord facilitated by two different experiences– the phenomenon of slavery and enslavement and the expediency of migration. A careful observation of these two factors would reveal that they belong to the same origin. Irrespective of the flexibility of human relationships in recent times, it is not easy to talk about the history or prospect of transnational knowledge production and sharing without touching on the different histories that brought about the sociopolitical and sociocultural miscegenation of the current time. People are mixed despite their varying cultural and religious philosophies. The politics of association bring about the economy of teaching in a globalized world to reinforce the place of human identity and or complexity in sharing knowledge. In essence, human experiences are the accumulated materials that inform the nature of human knowledge. In it lies the information needed to structure their civilization that would protect their said identity and mark them as different from others, despite being in the galaxies of human identities. There are Africans in the Americas and European countries whose sociopolitical experiences have informed expanded sites or research, all of which become the background for improving one’s knowledge about self and the environment.
Undisputedly, Paul Zeleza is one of the most shining icons that transnational knowledge generation and production domain have produced recently. It is not principally ironic that his overseas and offshore experiences have increased his intellectual brilliance and enriched his knowledge about international politics. It is equally amazing that he has made extensive contributions in building a worthwhile image for the African diaspora in numerous ways. There is the paucity of information or knowledge of Africans by the external cultures and civilizations, and their knowledge gap about the said people have always been substituted with arrogant generalizations and many unfounded conclusions that have always demanded deconstruction from intelligent individuals who would come with a strong evidentiary foundation to counter different assumptions against Africans. We are aware that the West is steps ahead in their documentation of human experience, and they have always leveraged this to make newfangled projections about Africans.
Being well-bred in historical scholarship, Zeleza has been a committed member of the intellectual community who offer their knowledge to construct an encyclopedia of history for the people. This would serve different important purposes–the revaluation of African identity and the revitalization of their cultural traditions in contemporary times. Without knowing any more about a people, making unreal projections about them cannot be helped. Zeleza did not only teach in diaspora communities, his teaching also facilitated the rebirth of African identity. He has been an important voice in the topics of African identity in the diaspora, and this is observed in his participation and contribution to papers and writings that have anything to do with knowledge productions about Africa.
Precisely because there has been a misconception of the African people circulated unduly to external cultures and civilizations, there has been the desire for erudite scholars, who are familiar with the African epistemological terrain and who also consciously improve themselves as a commitment to advance human knowledge, to offer their perspective to the issues of identity and human relationships. While they uplift their continent of birth in the process of this self-discovery, they simultaneously improve their educational competence needed in different areas of human existence.
The age-long transnational teaching experience propelled Zeleza into writing a book that serves as the material for developing a course of study. For example, the Carnegie African Diaspora Program has appropriated one of his research projects as the bedrock of creating a transformative program. Due to the existence of this program, numerous scholars have been funded by the same group, each of them expected to expand the horizon of international knowledge productions. In this regard, Zeleza has comfortably added to the school of academics in the art of teaching and researching. He has been introduced to a mélange of opportunities to represent Africa by coordinating many of the joint knowledge generation and production.
Serving as an administrative board member in the International Association of Universities (IAU) means his services as an impressive academic have been noticed. He is equally serving on the Advisory Board of the Alliance for African Partnership (AAP) as a representative of the continent and as the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Kenya Education Network (KENET). These are the results of having transnational teaching experience because his expertise and informed knowledge won him the opportunity to represent at these levels. Meanwhile, the essence of being a member or representing in these capacities is to draw from their academic experience and the knowledge gathered in the process of teaching, as this is very valuable in enhancing the progress of the people and the society generally. Teaching in America, Canada, and also Africa has given him the necessary foundation for diagnosing the educational problems facing the people and the corresponding ways they can be surmounted. The fruit of this is very outstanding.
One of the innovations that the exposure to diaspora knowledge systems and its generation brings is the introduction of ICT as a medium of academic development in modern time, and Zeleza is exploring this in relation to growth in African knowledge production. The benefits of transnational teaching are immense because apart from animating the values of the teachers involved in the exercise, it also opens a door of opportunity to various individuals. His impact in the international space has given several students in Africa access to funds and collaboration that would improve their situations and make them valuable to their immediate society. One such occasion was the award of $63.2 million by USIU-Africa, in partnership with the MasterCard Foundation, that would benefit exactly 1000 students, most of whom are females and socially disadvantaged. This is one important significance of continued dedication to the academic struggles on the home front and the international environment.
A teacher of such status and caliber belongs to the research community, digging ferociously deeply into their sociopolitical and socioeconomic affairs to educate the world about areas that need utmost intellectual and political attention to enhance collective advancement. The world is educated daily on why there should be expediency to extend help and concerns to people collectively considered disadvantaged. This is because they are not only important in the process of securing an environment habitable for all, but their lack of access to economic and political opportunities is also a threat to the well-being of others who have it.
The crucible of Paul Zeleza’s academic adventure is the accumulation of socio-educational and trans-Atlantic experiences that are acquired in the continuously changing world. He is unfixed, and this progressive mobility has informed his knowledge generation and provided the materials around which his academic brilliance hovers. Whereas being in the state of flux can be generally seen as psychologically disturbing because it keeps moving and changing the perception of the individual and makes them entirely unfixed, for people who exude that great level of human sagacity such as Zeleza, they usually make the best use of the experience to build something impressive. This is what describes Zeleza as a scholar and a progressive individual. In tasting and testing different cultural traditions and being exposed to multivariate ideas, he built a knowledge identity and systems that are constantly sought out today in human academic endeavors. We are driven to the wide range of research engagements that scholars have undertaken about transnational studies, and we are, therefore, educated about how cross-country trade and trans-Atlantic experience has changed the course of different people, including Africans who were victims of enslavement and races like India with a similar fate.
To arrive at the respectful state of knowledge production that Zeleza is known for in contemporary times requires more than being an intellectually informed individual; it demands that one is conscious about self-growth. Zeleza’s growth has been such an amazing one because he determined that he would be exceptional in his endeavor. He chose eclecticism from time immemorial, and while striving to make himself relevant in academic matters, his social history keeps bringing complex experiences into his adventure, and fortunately, he has satisfactorily brought everything under his control. He got his academic dexterity from tasting different cultural traditions and varying fields, recording success in them beyond what could be attained by ordinary individuals.
As an undergraduate, he majored in English and History, and it was exceptional that he became one of the most credible candidates to have graduated from his alma mater. After this, he went to the United Kingdom for a different course of study, which complemented and sharpened his undergraduate and formative education a little more. The study of History and International Studies prepared him for a bigger academic responsibility in the diaspora as he served not only as an instrument to bring about or facilitate stronger relationships between African countries and the international world, but he is also a deciding force on the production of knowledge for the people within his academic space. His Ph.D. in Canada was in the area of economic history, which assisted him to better understand the sidelined history of African people, especially before and during colonization and the eventual consequences.
The promiscuity of his academic engagement has facilitated a constantly evolving teaching and researching career that he developed as an individual and a scholar. He has worked as a dignified researcher in three continents—Africa, Europe, and America. Functioning as professor of History and African Studies at UIUC, Professor of African and African American Studies and History at Penn State University, Professor of African American Studies and History at LMU, and a figure of coordinate significance in very many other important schools and academic societies indicate that Zeleza is a man of diverse identities. The attainment of these feats is ascribed to his insatiable quest for knowledge.
Zeleza is a man who is not tired of breaking boundaries, and irrespective of how demanding a new pursuit seems, he always gives his commitment to the extent that he achieved something invaluable from his embarkation. He is not a rigid human, and he has always opened his arms to knowledge, challenging himself whenever he realized that there are grounds to cover. He would always bring out fresh perspective to even over-flogged or over-researched academic fields. On a certain occasion, he was drawn to consider a field he has not covered because a curious student innocently asked about the economic history of Africa before the ascension of Europeans. While he gave an unsatisfactory response to the question, he took the challenge and delved into the virgin academic territory, producing something worthwhile years later.
As the African world continues to change because of the consequences of colonial structures imposed by Europeans that still linger on in postcolonial time, the academic engagement of intellectuals also changes to accommodate the rhythms. After the various agitations of various state nationalists that birthed African independence in the 1960s, African countries immediately entered into an economic surplus that came as a relief and gave the impression of a beautiful future. However, the relief was short-lived and was immediately replaced by a cloud of uncertainties after the euphoria of feigned economic buoyance died a natural death. Succeeding decades are unveiling in their exposure to the accumulated misfortunes waiting to greet the Africa future earlier believed to be well-secured. Therefore, the unfolding events suggest that the consequences would not only be felt on the people’s economy, but it would also indefinitely spread to their knowledge generation and production. This is where the academic community understand that they have an important role to play in examining and evaluating African sociopolitical ecologies, so that appropriate philosophy and ideology would be constructed for the enhancement of collective success. People like Zeleza have touched this aspect in their concentration on diagnosing African problems.
All of these have been the context of his preoccupation for approximately fifty years, and results show in the complexion of his academic engagement and knowledge productions altogether. Zeleza has authored books, published journal articles, and contributed to book chapters. He has delivered many keynote addresses and contributed immensely to online and offline academic engagements within this relatively short period of his involvement and engagements. Perhaps his academic dexterity and knowledge diversity are products of his constantly evolving teaching experience; nonetheless, it is outstanding that the man whose academic background was found on history would grow up to challenge himself in different fields and make impressive additions and contributions to these areas of intellectual engagements. Of course, he is successful in his forage into economic history, and he remains a renowned egghead in international history and politics, including but not limited to African-American sociocultural and sociopolitical conditions and experiences in the past and contemporary time. However, he added another feather to his cap by venturing into literary engagement, which eventually morphed into cultural studies.
It would be comforting to know that Paul Zeleza did not refuse to cover gender topics in discursive engagement to represent the experiences of women who are confronted with the challenges of marginalization and suppression of their identity in a world that is affected by the complex politics of neoliberal economy. Meanwhile, the African society from where he was raised is usually identified as being essentially patriarchal, but despite this, he was able to interrogate the matrilineal cultural underpinnings associated with the same society. It, therefore, makes enough sense to consider the said society as a good scope of research that would enrich the academic culture of the international community, especially in areas of social structuration along patriarchal and matriarchal lines. African societies that are expressly patriarchal have social configurations that ensure that women have a reasonable level of influence in their configuration. Family members relate with their matrilineal background than they do to the other end. All these are key issues that inform Paul Zeleza’s research and also his academic publications.
Despite all of these involvements, he remains a committed activist who dedicates himself to the course of justice. By constantly giving his voice to the rampaging topic of rights abuses that have almost become synonymous with the African political system, Zeleza has also singled himself out as an outstanding individual and an instrument of social renegotiation. Like most scholars of his time and age, he understands that conflicts are inevitable in a fledging continent like Africa, as they are incubated by the various actions and inactions of colonial structures and the ascension of the elite class who are more vindictive than productive. They have seized the opportunity to amass common wealth at their rise into power in post-independence and without making sufficient efforts on the ways to set the people free from the impending economic doom to greet the life after colonialism. As such, conflicts are not avertible but the most important thing to do in this situation is to ensure that efforts are made to facilitate resolution in the case of erupting controversies. Zeleza has done this by leveraging his academic engagement and teaching experience, as a teacher and an administrator, to offer informed solutions to the countless challenges facing people in the society. We cannot pretend that Paul Zeleza is immensely valuable to Africa’s academic and political stewardship, for he has offered contributions that continue to speak volumes of his intellectual brilliance.
