Important Innovations at The CIHA Blog!

We at The CIHA Blog are extremely pleased to announce three new blog Editors:  Professor Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Director of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana, Legon; Professor R. Simangaliso Kumalo, Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies, School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics at the University of KwaZulu-Natal; and Professor Cilas Kemedjio, Director of the Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African-American Studies at the University of Rochester. Drs. Adomako Ampofo, Kumalo and Kemedjio join Dr. Cecelia Lynch, Director of International Studies at the University of California, Irvine, in running the blog, making it a genuinely transcontinental contribution to debates about aid to Africa.  We are also pleased to announce Albert Bangirana, Ph.D. student at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, and Carrie Reiling, Ph.D. student at the University of California, Irvine, as new Editorial Assistants.

You will see more posts on the connections between religion, humanitarianism, and aid, including the ethical and theological resources brought by religious perspectives, conceptions of charity, mercy, and aid, perspectives on gender and sexuality, reactions to foreign interventions and land grabs, and critiques of faith-based as well as secular forms of paternalism and representation of Africa and Africans.

You will also see more perspectives directly from different parts of the Continent.  We hope that these innovations will help the blog grow as a site for constructive debate about the ethics (religious and secular) of aid, and we intend it to be useful for NGOs and donors as well as scholars, students, and members of the concerned public.

Our December conference, “UCI and Africa: Expanding Engagements, Ongoing Dialogue,” was very stimulating and successful, and kicked off new topics for our ongoing discussion.

For those who were unable to attend the conference in person, videos of the talks and panels are now available on YouTube. The first day featured an opening address, by UCI’s Chancellor Michael Drake, followed by a panel, “Honoring the Work of Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o”. Dr. Thomas Parham, UCI’s Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, spoke on the subject of cross-cultural dialogue. The second panel of the day – “Charity and/or Justice? The CIHA Blog takes the Great Humanitarian Debate to the Next Level” featured several members of the blog’s editorial team and focused on ways to include debates about the role of religion in humanitarianism on The CIHA Blog. The final panel of the day was co-sponsored by UCI’s International Studies program, and was titled, “Fighting Words!: Protest and Popular Culture in Africa.”

The second day of the conference opened with a bang, with two panels focusing on the role of NGOs in Africa – “NGOs and/or Development” and “NGOs, Consortia, and Sharing Virtual and Practical Knowledge.” These panels featured both aid practitioners and critics, and stimulated considerable debate.  The third panel, “Collaborative Conversations: Exploring Artistic Connections between Ghana and Africa-America,” focused on stories from participants in the UCI Ghana Project – a project that brought together UCI and Ghanaian dancers in mutual artistic exchange. The final panel, co-sponsored by UCI’s Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion, featured speakers from Africa and the U.S., and provided the findings of new research on “Mobile Money Transformations in Africa.”

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