Gill Wells is the Head of Research Services European and International Team and Strategic Lead on GCRF at the University of Oxford. Gill talks about the meaning of development research and funds available in the UK to form international research collaborations.

Africa Oxford Initiative

The Future of UK-Africa Research Partnerships Development Research and Beyond

Professor Alan Stein, Head of Section, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Oxford delivered this talk at an AfOx insaka. Alan talks about the importance of using appropriate guidelines while talking to children about the diagnosis of life threatening diseases.

Communicating the Diagnosis of Life Threatening Conditions to Children

Jake McKnight talks about the failures and successes of projects he’s studied or been involved in, reflecting on the idea that ‘Africa Works’, and as researchers and implementors, it’s up to us to fit local cultures rather to try to ‘fix’ them. Jake McKnight is a Health Systems Researcher at the Oxford Health Systems Collaboration (OHSCAR). He was originally a logistician for MSF in Angola and Somalia, before conducting his PhD research in Ethiopia. He then read for the MSc. in African Studies at Oxford, before completing his PhD at Said Business School, where he concentrated on healthcare reform in Ethiopia.

Africa Works: Reflections on Failures and Successes in Healthcare Innovation

Corruption is often bandied about in adult circles as the misuse of public influence for private gain. But, what if children could articulate how corruption is enmeshed in everyday human interactions? In this AfOx insaka presentation, Robtel Neajai Pailey uses her anti-corruption children’s books to argue that equipping children with verbal tools to question the confusing ethical codes of adults can revolutionise how we talk and theorise about corruption.

Gbagba and Jaadeh! as Anti-Corruption Revolutions from 'Below'

AfOx Visiting Fellow, Dr Aymar Bisoka from the Catholic University of Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo delivered this seminar co-hosted by AfOx and the African House at Christ Church College. During his fellowship at Oxford, he was based at the African Studies Centre. His research interests include the Great Lakes Africa in terms of post-conflict development and political ecology, peasantry, armed groups and politics, as well as rural public policy guidelines in Africa more generally. He is also interested in power relations, resistance and emancipation.

Fighting against Poverty in the African Great Lakes Region: a question of Power and Resistance

AfOx Visiting Fellow, Dr Rebecca Asare from the Nature Conservation Research Centre delivered this seminar co-hosted by AfOx and the African House at Christ Church College. During her stay at Oxford, she was based at the School of Geography and the Environment. Her research is focused on understanding the relationships between social and ecological systems, and exploring the question—why do people do the things they do? By understanding what drives peoples', communities’, and governments' decision making regarding natural resource management, and assessing the impacts, we are better placed to pursue ecological and social outcomes that are sustainable and equitable.

Social ecology of cocoa farming in Ghana

AfOx Visiting Fellow Professor Salome Bukachi, University of Nairobi delivered this seminar co-hosted by AfOx and the African House at Christ Church College. During her stay at Oxford, she worked with the REACH programme on water security at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment. Generally, her research interests include understanding local contexts and social and behavioural aspects of development. Specifically, her research has been focused on infectious diseases, gender issues and community engagement.

Gender and water access- leveraging on social capital for inclusive access

AfOx Visiting Fellow, Dr Eniola Boluwaduro delivered this talk at All Souls College. Using the methodology of conservation analysis, Eniola examined the way in which doctors negotiate medical authority with patients during HIV consultations in Nigeria. Eniola also examines how this impacts the consultative procedure and a patients adherence to the treatment.

Medical advice and negotiations of medical authority in Nigerian HIV consultations

The discussion after the lecture, with an international guest panel on decolonising education and reimagining the higher education space in Africa and the Diaspora. The panel includes environmental justice activist, Running Grass, higher education specialist, Sizwe Mkwanazi and the women behind South Africa’s largest protest since the fall of apartheid, Shaeera Kalla and Nompendulo Mkatshwa.

Is Africa a Dissimilar System? Oxford Africa Society 2019 Annual Lecture Discussion

The Oxford Africa Society will host an annual lecture delivered by the Director of the University of Oxford’s African Studies Centre and Rhodes Professor of Race Relations, Wale Adebanwi.

Is Africa a Dissimilar System? Oxford Africa Society 2019 Annual Lecture

Writer and political activist Nanjala Nyabola delivers our first insaka of 2019. In this podcast, Nanjala explores shifts in power, popular action and social capacity in the digital age. Kenya is the most digitally advanced country in sub-Saharan Africa, where Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, and other online platforms are part of everyday life. And, as in Western nations, the digital age has had dramatic effects on society and politics. Yet, while we hear about the #MeToo movement and the Russian bot scandal, there is little appreciation for the feminist movement #MyDressMyChoice and the subversion of state-run political propaganda by social media. Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics aims to change this by presenting a unique contribution to the debate on digital democracy. For traditionally marginalized groups, particularly women and the disabled, digital spaces have provided vital platforms that allow Kenyans to build new communities that transcend old ethnic and gender divisions. Covering attempts by political elites to prevent social movements from translating online visibility into meaningful offline gains, Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics explores the drastic efforts to contain online activism and new methods of feminist mobilization, as well as how 'fake news,' Cambridge Analytica, and allegations of hacking contributed to tensions around the 2017 elections. Reframing digital democracy for the first time from the African perspective, Nanjala Nyabola’s groundbreaking work opens up new ways of understanding our current global online era.

Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the digital era is transforming Kenya

The Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx) is a cross-university platform for all things Africa in Oxford. The overarching vision of AfOx is to make Africa a strategic priority for the University of Oxford, while also building equitable research collaborations between researchers and academics from African institutions and the University of Oxford. Throughout the year AfOx hosts several events and workshops about Africa-focussed research with speakers from diverse and varied academic disciplines. The AfOx podcast series has been introduced for the global AfOx community to be able to tune into our events.

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Africa Oxford Initiative

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