Upcoming Events

Since the nineteenth century, the West has targeted the Senegal River Valley as an ideal location for environmental and agricultural improvement projects. In the early 1800s, French trading companies hoped to transform the Lower Senegal Valley into a massive plantation economy – one that would replace the devastating loss of Saint-Domingue to the Haitian Revolution. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, French colonizers shifted their focus from agricultural to energy, hoping that the establishment of a hydroelectric dam would stimulate the colonial economy and contribute to the growth of the extractive imperial economy. And, by the turn of the 21st century, international development institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, and USAID have once again turned to the Senegal River to construct a dam, though this time to alleviate famine in the region by providing farmlands with irrigation. In each case, these improvement projects not only failed to produce their intended results, but also helped to construct the stubborn and misguided narrative that the Sahel is in a continual state of environmental decline and crisis. In examining these wayward efforts to shape the riverain environment of the Senegal River Valley, this paper explores how Western science, technology, and innovation have ignored, and in some cases undermined, local systems of knowledge that have endured extended periods of ecological and climatic changes over time.

Join Dr. Marcia Chuva (Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro State), Dr. Leila Bianchi (UniRio), Dr. Aline Montenegro (Ipiranga Museum), and Dr. Vanicleia Ribeiro (UPenn) to discuss their research on slavery and memorialization in Brazil.

Through experiential learning, high school students engage directly with global issues by assuming the role of world leaders and negotiating responses to timely topics.

Join us for this FREE online K-12 educator workshop that will examine the history, current status, and future of Africa and China's relationship through a global lens and offer strategies and resources for classroom use. We will explore not only Chinese investments in infrastructure in Africa, but provide examples from other regions such as Europe, as well. This workshop will offer teaching strategies and resources for K-12 classroom use, and Act 48 hours and FREE classroom materials will be provided for all participants. This workshop is being conducted in conjunction with the day-long conference, "Africa-China Relationship and Its Global Impact," which will take place on Friday, November 10 from 9 am-4 pm ET via Zoom. Workshop participants are invited (but not required) to register for and attend parts, or all, of the November 10 conference, if interested. To register for this workshop, please click here.

It is 60 years since the signing of the Yaoundé Convention (1963). This was a moment in the history of decolonization when the Associated African States, 12 mainly young postcolonial Western African countries, signed a trade agreement with the also young European Economic Community. The Yaoundé Convention was part of the EEC’s Eurafrica initiative, an effort to maintain a presence in the former colonies. Yaoundé initiated a series of trade and aid agreements that replaced the colonial relation with a developmental model. An era of trade and infrastructural development followed. However, many critics have suggested that this strategy of aid set off a pattern of uneven and unequal development. This Conversation on Europe and Africa takes this event as an opportunity to consider development aid in Africa historically and in its contemporary form. Our panelists bring a mix of historical and regional knowledge to the conversation, including Mounir Saidani from CERES in Tunis. Although Tunisia was not part of the Yaoundé convention, it is at the center of controversial aid discussions: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen's recent visit to Tunis as part of a deal of aid for migration "control” left many critics concerned about this new turn in EU-Africa relations. Moderator:
Randall Halle, University of Pittsburgh Panelists:
Mounir Saidani, Centre des Etudes Economiques et Sociales (CERES)
Pernille Røge, University of Pittsburgh
Michael Odijie, Univeristy College London
Abdou Seck, Gaston Berger University, Groupe D’Action et D’Etude Critique Africa (GAEC)