ACHIEVING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA
The African Studies Program, in collaboration with the Schools of Education, Public Health and the Ford Institute for Human Security at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) will be hosting an international conference on “Achieving Sustainable Development in Africa.” This conference has been organized with collaboration from partners from African institutions namely: the Forum for African Women’s Educationalists (FAWE); the University of Ghana, School of Public Health (SPH); and the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The aim is to bring together partners with a major focus on sustainable development in research, policy and practice from universities, research centers and community based organizations to share their mutual experiences and research regarding the constraints and opportunities for sustainable development in the areas of:
Health and Environmental Sustainability
Educational sustainability
Gender equity
Governance, Conflict Mitigation and Development
Each of the four identified areas will be discussed by a panel of invited presenters from both the U.S. and visiting partners from Africa—academics, policy makers and practitioners. Papers will be prepared in advance during the year before the conference, with close collaboration between individuals from partnering institutions (Pitt, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Uganda). Key people in all the institutions will facilitate discussions as we examine critical components of sustainable development and advocate for the necessary resources and policy changes required to improve existing approaches to make them more sustainable. They will assess past strategies and why they have failed to address the deep economic, social and institutional changes needed for sustainable development and propose a way forward to achieving better outcomes

Sociology Colloquium, "The Hidden Qualifiers of Globalization," presented by Dr. Leslie Sklair, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics.