Welcome to the CIHA Blog’s early 2017 roundup. Thus far in 2017, the Blog has highlighted religious and humanitarian issues from around the continent, especially where such issues have intersected with multiple types of activism.
The global politics of race in South Africa looms large as it does all over the continent and beyond. Some of the highlights in this theme included: “Unfit for the Monkey’s Cage” by CIHA Blog co-editor, Cilas Kemedjio; “What if it finally turns, South Africa versus Africa” by Chinedu Ekwealor; “Conspiracy theory and truth” by Christopher Merrett; “Where did we go wrong? A wake-up call to Christians in South Africa” by Rev Canon Janet Trisk; and “Is it Time? The San Ethics Code for Scientific Research,” as well as an In the News post on the country’s State of the Nation address.
Taking off from our conference theme last fall on “Religion, Governance and Humanitarianism,” we posted additional work on issues that are both extremely sensitive and important for humanitarianism. In three parts, Dr. Diamini shared the outcome of a series of workshops: “Not in my Name! Contesting the Politics of Religion and Sexuality,” “A war for justice and truth,” and “Are same-sex relationships are found in the Bible?”. Particularly remarkable is how these three posts show South African religious groups themselves to be spearheading the debate about incorporating LGBTQ members as integral to the bible’s teachings.
Notable scholar on African Christianity, Paul Gifford, has argued that mainline Kenyan churches, both Catholic and Protestant, are marked less by political engagement than by their involvement in development. In his post, “The ‘Church’ as a ‘Sponsor’ of Education in Kenya,” Stephen Joshua Muoki has challenged this idea by arguing that a church-state partnership has in fact contributed to a crisis in Kenyan education.
Recent electoral events were highlighted in a post on Ghana’s re-election (“Wind of Change: Ghanaian Elections, A Thing or Two”), and given the upcoming presidential elections on the continent this year (Kenya, Rwanda and Angola in August 2017; Liberia in October 2017), we plan to follow these events closely in the coming months.
Senegal is not often seen as an area where conflict exists. Our CIHA Blog editorial team at l’Université Gaston Berger address this long-running conflict head on in their post “Casamance: Moving Beyond Prejudices.”
Historical events continue to hold important influence on today’s politics in Africa: “Secular and Religious Education: Perpetuated Hierarchies and Misunderstandings” and several In the News posts highlighted this, including “Atonement for German Genocide in Namibia?,” “Morocco’s Readmission to the African Union,” and “Discontent and Violent Extremism.”
Finally, as we seek to expand our coverage of representations of Africa in various forms of the arts, we published several posts that highlighted arts on the continent and expanded the understanding of what is included in “African arts.” Among these are: “What is Seen in African Photography,” “A New Generation of Scholarship and Literature,” “In Memoriam, Buchi Emecheta,” and “Friendship, Music, and Spirituality in Mali.”