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Africa Network Projects

EAST AFRICA

Mark Erbaugh (College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences) and a number of his colleagues are involved in a number of projects in East Africa, including:

• Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda: Developing a Regional Integrated Pest Management Program for East Africa (2005-2010). This program, supported by the USAID funded Integrated Pest Management Collaborative Research Support Project (IPM CRSP), will conduct collaborative and farmer participatory integrated pest management research and training programs on higher value horticultural crops in East Africa. Six OSU faculty including the PI and Site Chair, Dr. Mark Erbaugh, are collaborating with scientists and extension agents in East Africa to increase farm output and incomes by developing improved pest management practices.
• Tanzania and Zambia (2005-2010). Evaluation of Market Development and Marketing Strategies on Sorghum and Millet Farmers’ Income in Tanzania and Zambia. Supported through the International Sorghum and Millet Collaborative Research Support Program (INTSORMIL CRSP), this short-term study focuses on developing innovative marketing strategies for sorghum and millet with host country university cooperators at Sokoine University of Agriculture and the University of Zambia. Don Larson, Professor, Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics and Mark Erbaugh, Associate Director, International Programs in Agriculture, and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Human and Community Resource Development, are the key personnel from OSU who are leading this effort.
• Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda (2005-2007). Higher Education Partnerships for African Development (HEPAD): Strengthening the Capacity of East African Faculties of Agriculture to Improve Smallholder Productivity, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. OSU is serving as the lead institution in a partnership program with Michigan State University and three Faculties of Agriculture in the region including those at Makerere University, Egerton University and Sokoine University of Agriculture. The project seeks to build capacity at cooperating institutions through innovative degree and non-degree training programs. Six students from EA are completing their degree work this year.
• Deans’ of Faculties of Agriculture from Makerere University, Uganda; Egerton University, Kenya; and Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania are to come to OSU on August 5 and then travel to Washington, D.C. on August 7 to attend the annual Higher Education for Development (HED) Synergy in Development Conference, August 8-10.
• Dr. Erbaugh will be in Uganda, September 8-20, 2007 to chair evaluation and review of IPM CRSP activities in East Africa.
• Partnerships continue with the following African universities: Makerere University, Uganda; Egerton University, Kenya; and Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania and the University of Zambia.

Contact Information: Mark Erbaugh

Professors Philip Armstrong (Comparative Studies), Nina Berman (Comparative Studies), Brenda Brueggemann (English), Marian Lupo (English), and R. Brian Stone (Industrial, Interior and Visual Communication Design) are involved in "Disability Rights in Kenya: Networks, Practices, and Resources," a collaborative initiative between OSU and Kenyan researchers designed as a long-term project to study various aspects of disability-related issues in Kenya. This collaboration began in early 2005, and is entering its second phase. The long-term goals of this project are (1) a general assessment of the cultural, social, economic, and political aspects of disability in Kenya; (2) enabling the Kenyan collaborators to conduct research on US disability initiatives during a stay at OSU; and (3) developing collaborative research projects to study disability-related issues in Kenya.

The issue of disability rights in Kenya has received increasing attention in the last couple of years. Genetic, work-related, disease and poverty-related, and HIV-related disabilities are widespread throughout Kenya, causing considerable damage to the economic and social fabric both in the cities and in the countryside. Initial legislation in support of the rights of disabled persons (“The Persons with Disability Act, 2003”) was promulgated into law on 16 June 2004, but awareness regarding social attitudes and the needs of disabled persons is only beginning to emerge and actual implementation of the law is still largely lacking.

In response to the pressing situation and inspired by the passing of “The Persons with Disability Act, ” a group of Kenyan scholars and activists, among them Dr. Kimani Njogu and Dr. Mbugua wa-Mungai, approached faculty at OSU with their plan for a collaborative initiative. During the first phase, Dr. Berman met with Kenyan collaborators and visited sites in Nairobi and Naivasha in July 2005, followed by a week-long visit of Dr. Njogu and Dr. Wa-Mungai to OSU in November 2005. The second phase of the project culminated in a four-day interdisciplinary workshop in Nairobi in June 2007, attended by five OSU scholars (Dr. Armstrong, Dr. Berman, Dr. Brueggemann, Dr. Lupo, and Dr. Stone) and about forty Kenyan researchers and activists. A quarter-long visit of Dr. Wa-Mungai to OSU is scheduled for Autumn 2007. During this visit we plan to finalize and submit grant proposals for the third phase, a long-term study of various aspects of disability-related issues in Kenya, involving researchers and PhD students from OSU and Kenya.

To this day, no systematic study addresses disability-related questions in Kenya. The collaborative project is unique also in that is brings together scholars from Kenya and the United States. It provides an opportunity to learn from each other, collaborate with each other, and produce the kind of interdisciplinary knowledge that is needed to address global questions related to disability­questions which involve cultural, social, political, and technological factors that are both vastly diverse and yet sometimes also remarkably common no matter where one goes on this planet.

Professor R. Brian Stone (Industrial, Interior and Visual Communication Design) recently presented research at the Disability, Culture and Human Rights Conference in Nairobi, Kenya (13-16 June 2007). The environment helped alleviate mis-conceptions, reduce anxieties, and provide awareness to the concerns of those with disabilities. By having an open dialogue with these colleagues, it has given impetus for deeper research from a universal and unique perspective. Collaboration will continue with a visiting scholar from Kenya expected in Autumn 2007. The project is in collaboration with OSU Professsors Philip Armstrong (Comparative Studies), Nina Berman (Comparative Studies and Germanic Languages), Brenda Brueggemann (Humanities and Disability Studies) and Marian Lupo (Humanities). Contact information: stone.158@osu.edu

Professor John Casterline (Sociology) has been involved in projects in the Egypt and Ghana. His collaboration in Ghana has been with the University of Cape Coast, from 1994 to the present. This was an investigation of reproductive attitudes and behaviors, and their inter-relations with social networks. Eight rounds of panel survey data were collected in three regions in southern Ghana. This research was funded by awards from NIH and the Rockefeller Foundation. His chief collaborator at the University of Cape Coast (Ghana), Dr. Peter Aglobitse, visited OSU in April 2007. This followed their attendance at a conference in New York City in late March, at which they presented a paper from their collaborative project. The same research was also presented at OSU. Professor Casterline will attend the African Population Conference in Arusha (Tanzania) in December 2007, an event that occurs once every four years. Contact information:casterline.10@osu.edu

WEST AFRICA

Cynthia B. Dillard (School of Teaching and Learning) funded out-of-pocket the building of a preschool and community center in Mpeasem in October 1999 and which opened in January 2001. The Mpeasem Village Project provides educational opportunities, health care, and economic development to the village of Mpeasem, located in the central region of Ghana, West Africa. The goals of the Cynthia B. Dillard Preschool are three-fold: 1) to provide access to education in Mpeasem, a community where young children had no previous access; 2) to provide an integrated creative and global educational program for the preschool children of Mpeasem, and; 3) to increase the opportunities for cross-cultural understandings of African people throughout the diaspora and world wide. In addition to the national curriculum of the Ghana Ministry of Education, children in the preschool experience dance, music, and other aesthetic curriculum, based in the rich aesthetic history and culture of Ghana and beyond. Other development activities have also been undertaken in the village of Mpeasem, including furnishing the preschool with desks/tables and other supplies, maintaining the school facilities, hiring additional teachers for the school, providing a fresh water tank for the school children to refresh themselves, and bringing electricity to the village of Mpeasem.
Contact information: Cynthia B. Dillard Foundation; For Full Circle Retreats; Cynthia B. Dillard.

In 2002, the State Department’s Africa Regional Service published a French translation of Darrell E. Ward’s AmFAR AIDS Handbook entitled Comprendre Le VIH/SIDA: Le guide de l’AmFAR (Nouveaux Horizons) to use in francophone African countries. This led to visits by Dr. Ward (OSU Medical Center) to Mali, Senegal, The Gambia and Liberia for talks about HIV and AIDS. Groups included reporters, NGOs, medical students, high school students, ministers and factory workers.
Contact Information: Darrell Ward, 614-293-4833

Professor Daniel Avorgbedor (Music, African American and African Studies) initiated and led a Ghana Study Abroad program , 2000-2003. Established partnership with the University of Ghana, Legon (with the support of OIE and Center for African Studies) where the study abroad was based.

SOUTHERN AFRICA

Professor Franco Barchiesi (African American and African Studies) recently published three major peer-reviewed articles: "Wage Labor and Social Citizenship in the Making of Post-Apartheid South Africa", in "Journal of Asian and Asian and African Studies", 42 (1); "Privatization and the Historical Trajectory of Social Movement Unionism: A Case Study of Municipal Workers in Johannesburg", in "International Labor and Working Class History" No. 71, Spring 2007 (in print); and "South African Debates on the Basic Income Grant: Decommodification and the Post-Apartheid Social Policy", in "Journal of Southern African Studies", 33 (3), in print. He also was an invited "lead speaker" on "Wages and Poverty" at the international conference on "The Poverty Challenge: Poverty Reduction in (South) Africa, India and Brazil", to be held in Durban (South Africa) on June 26-29 2007. He currently is working on a book manuscript that will revise and update his doctoral dissertation on "Social Citizenship and the Transformations of Waged Labor in the Making of Post-Apartheid South Africa, 1994-2001."
Contact Information: Franco Barchiesi

Professor Jeffrey K. McKee (Anthropology) has led an excavation at Makapansgat, the oldest hominin-bearing fossil site in South Africa, and continued excavating there over the past 4 years. Recently Professor McKee was part of a team that successfully bid for Taung and Makapansgat to become World Heritage Sites.
Contact Information: Jeffrey K. McKee, 614-292-2745

Allan Munro, who earned his PhD at Ohio State in 1997 and is now a professor at Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in Pretoria, spent autumn 2006 as a guest scholar in residence in the Department of Theatre. His visit marked the next phase in the department's ongoing partnership with TUT, following up on Dan Gray’s design residency there during the summer of 2005. While in Columbus Allan sought out opportunities for additional faculty and programmatic exchanges between the College of the Arts and TUT’s Faculty of the Arts. He taught a graduate seminar in South African Theatre, and an undergraduate honors course using the South African paradigm as the basis for the examples used in Introduction to Theatre. He also took advantage of his time here to work to further develop his own research, including work on his book manuscript Introduction to Research in the Arts. Professor Lesley Ferris (Theatre) was the third OSU faculty member to share in the TUT experience when she directed Miller’s The Crucible with students from the Department of Drama at TUT. Her residency was in July and August 2006; the production opened on August 24 and ran in the Breytenbach Theatre in Pretoria until September 2, 2006. The opening night was attended by numerous guests including the Executive Dean of the Faculty of the Arts, Dr. H. M. Siryai, the head of the university, and representative from the United States Embassy. In addition to directing, Lesley also gave two lectures, one on Adrienne Kennedy and one on Notting Hill Carnival to the Arts Research Seminar Series at TUT. Gibson Cima (MA 2007), who took Allan Munro’s class on South African theatre at OSU, traveled to South Africa for research on Athol Fugard and during his residency was able to interview the majority of key players in contemporary South African theatre.

Professor Alan Woods (Theatre) was instrumental in arranging an exchange agreement between the Tshwani University of Technology in Pretoria and OSU’s Department of Theatre. Professor Woods has visited South Africa in recent years to participate in meetings of the Shakespeare Society of South Africa, attend the Grahamstown Festival, and to negotiate the beginnings of the exchange program. "The Safari," a short play by Woods, will be performed during the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown in late June 2007, as part of “Bedtime Stories for Big Boys and Girls,” a late night fringe performance by Blameless Productions. The performance will be repeated in Cape Town at the end of July.
Contact Information: Alan Woods, 614-292-6614

Darrell E. Ward (OSU Medical Center) wrote a book to help people understand the science of HIV disease and AIDS, with assistance from Mathilde Krim, PhD, co-founder of The American Foundation for AIDS Research (AmFAR). The book was published in late 1998 as The AmFAR AIDS Handbook: the complete guide to understanding HIV and AIDS (W.W. Norton). This work led to a Fulbright grant that allowed Dr. Ward to spend six months in Botswana, Swaziland and Zimbabwe working with Africans who were fighting the AIDS epidemic. In Zimbabwe, he spent several weeks at St. Albert’s Mission Hospital witnessing the work of its Zimbabwean director, Elizabeth Tarira, MD, MPH, and the two women doctors who assist her. He gives talks to university and civic groups about St. Albert’s Mission Hospital, and he and his wife maintain a web site about the hospital. He last visited Dr. Tarira in February 2006. He has returned to Africa several times to participate in HIV workshops for reporters and NGOs in Botswan,Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa.
Contact Information: Darrell Ward, 614-293-4833

Professor Daniel Avorgbedor (Music, African American and African Studies) was a member of a three-person research team that secured a major NEH funding for a multidisciplinary study of South African praise poetry, 2003-2005. Link/website: https://mediamanager.osu.edu/FLC. He is currently engaged in new international exchange with the University Pretoria (TUT) and serving as consultant for their Department of Performing Arts at Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria. This initiative continues an established framework linking OSU and selective institutions in South Africa. Link/website: http://www.tut.ac.za/default.aspx or: http://www.studysa.co.za/contentpage.aspx?pageid=3420.

Professor Barbara Lehman (College of Education and Human Ecology, Mansfield campus) leads a Study Abroad Program entitled "Cross-Cultural Experience Through Children's Literature and Study in South Africa," for preservice education students. The purpose of this program is to extend students' understanding of equity and diversity beyond our national borders, specifically in the South African context, and to draw comparisons with that of the United States. It will introduce students to the historical and cultural contexts of South African education through children's literature, films, and other texts; guest speakers; guided tours of important cultural and historical sites; school visits; scenic excursions; and immersion in the South African context. Contact information: lehman.1@osu.edu

The Association of College and University Housing Officers International, a non profit association that is hosted by The Ohio State University through the Student Affairs Division, has been working in Africa for just over a year and a half. We have attended a series of regional meetings, conducting train the trainer sessions in a number of locations that culminated in a conference of housing officers. The first conference occurred in March 2006 and the second in May 2007. We are int eh process of developing a chapter of our organization in Africa that should be signed August 1, 2007. In addition to the trainings, conference and chapter, we worked with three other international associations (NASPA, ACUI, ACPA) to take a delegation of graduate students and professionals involved in student affairs, to South Africa this year (May/June 2007). Contact information: Sallie Traxler, Executive Director, The Association of College and University Housing Officers - International, 614-292-0099, sallie@acuho-i.org or traxler.17@osu.edu.

GENERAL

Cathe Chapin Kobacker (community activist) made her first of several trips to sub-Saharan Africa in 2001 to meet with volunteers, nurses, doctors, and patients and exchange ideas on the best ways to support patients and families when facing end-of-life decisions. From these visits, Cathe gained a perspective on the global challenges of caring for millions people suffering from HIV and AIDS. To develop partnerships between hospices in sub-Saharan Africa and in the U.S., Cathe has worked with the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa. In 2005, Cathe led a team of six women to South Africa to study hospice care from a variety of perspectives. A film crew documented their experiences and a documentary film is being produced. a documentary film is being produced and directed by assistant professor Janet Parrott (Theatre). Parrott created a film piece that she and Kobacker took to California, and it was used as part of the opening for the Diana Legacy Fund/Foundation for Hospice in Sub-Saharan Africa partnership. The piece also was shown to Desmond Tutu, world-renowned leader of hospice and palliative care.

Professor Trevon Logan (Economics) recently started a project that is looking at the impact of HIV/AIDS on fertility timing in Sub-Saharan Africa. Using Demographic and Health Surveys for Sub-Saharan countries and estimates of HIV prevalence by year, he hopes to estimate the effects of length and intensity of HIV exposure (which varies by period and by cohort) on fertility patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since numerous scholars have asserted that Africa's demographic transition is stalling, he plans to estimate the effect that HIV has had on fertility to see if some of the stalling of the fertility transition is due to quantum and/or tempo effects that can be attributed to HIV exposure.
Contact Information: Trevon Logan

Graduate student Jeffery Morawetz (Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology) began his work in Africa as a field assistant for four months in Tanzania and Gabon. He has been back to Africa seven times for research, having worked in Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, South Africa, Swaziland and Zambia, and also attended a conference in Cameroon. He is studying the evolutionary history of a group of parasitic plants in Africa related to the snapdragons. These plants connect directly to the roots of their host plants to rob them of nutrients. Generally parasitic plants are innocuous, but some are notoriously noxious because they parasitize important crop plants causing yield losses or complete crop failure. The group Jeffery studies, called Alectra, contains one such noxious species that is responsible for attacking ground-nut and cowpea crops throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Jeffery is interested in the evolutionary history of Alectra species particularly because both types of parasitism are known within this group. Acquiring a better understanding of the evolutionary history of parasitic plants, such as Alectra, will hopefully shed light on the mechanisms involved in changing an innocuous parasitic plant into a noxious crop pest.
Links: AETFAT.The Parasitic Plant Connection (an excellent resource if you want to learn more about parasitic plants).
Contact Information: Jeffery Morawetz, 614-292-0501

Professor Richard Sayre (Plant Cellular and Molecular Biology) is the Director of the BioCassava Plus Program. BioCassava Plus is a multi-national development project involving ten institutions. It is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The objectives of BioCassava Plus are to engineer nutritionally enhanced cassava for sub-Saharan Africans. The targeted traits include increased iron, zinc, protein, vitamin A, and vitamin E. In addition, the team is developing plants with enhanced virus resistance, reduced cyanogen levels, and increased shelf life. The Phase I (2005-2010) target countries are Nigeria and Kenya. It is anticipated that improved varieties of cassava will be field tested beginning in 2008. These studies will be carried out by African scientists at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture and the National Root Crops Research Institute in Nigeria, and the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute in Nairobi. Dr. Sayre’s research specifically focuses on reducing cyanogen levels, increasing iron and protein content, and extending shelf life. Currently, scientists from Zimbabwe and Nigeria are working on the BioCassava Plus project in Dr. Sayre’s lab. The Sayre lab is also conducting research on increasing starch production in cassava roots.
Links: Sayre LabBioCassava Plus
Contact Information: Richard Sayre, 614-292-9030

Darrell E. Ward (OSU Medical Center) is writing a book to help Africans better understand HIV disease, also in conjunction with Dr. Mathilde Krim. A Practical Guide to HIV/AIDS in Africa: the Disease, Its Prevention, and Basic Home Care is to be published by Ohio University Press in late 2008. It is intended for medical students, nurses, social and health workers, journalists, secondary-school teachers, NGO workers, as well as people living with HIV and their caregivers.
Contact Information: Darrell Ward, 614-293-4833

The Global Health Initiative (GHI) at Ohio State is a student-led group dedicated to increasing awareness and providing educational opportunities related to global health issues. Some of the issues that the group focuses on include: the impact of infectious and non-communicable diseases in the developing world including Africa; international public health issues; economic development and global health policy; and health care for under-served populations in the Columbus area. This past May, the GHI hosted a two-day forum "Translating Knowledge into Action: Contemporary Issues in African Health." It featured Dr. Michele Shipp, Assistant Professor at the College of Public Health; Dr. Seleshi Asfaw, President of Columbus Refugee Immigrant Chamber of Commerce; and Dr. Walter Hull, Assistant Professor at the College of Medicine. Topics included health and food security issues facing sub-Saharan Africa as well as challenges in health care in the Columbus East African immigrant community. The group is supported by the Council on Student Affairs, the College of the Arts and Sciences, and the Center for African Studies. They also work with other global issue student groups at Ohio State.

For more information:
http://osuglobalhealth.googlepages.com/
http://groups.google.com/group/OSUglobalhealth
or email at globalhealth@osu.edu