Paper short abstract:

Malawi is an aid-dependent country that is heavily impacted by climate change and climate change-induced disasters. In this paper I argue that preparing for the next emergency should start by critically examining the power relations that shape disaster relief interventions and anticipatory action.

Paper long abstract:

Malawi is a country that is heavily impacted by climate change. Considered one of the poorest countries in the world, the large majority of its rapidly growing population relies on subsistence agriculture to survive. Significant changes in weather patterns combined with the increased occurrence of climate change-induced disasters, however, has made this extremely difficult. Visible in yearly food insecurity issues, both the aid-dependent Malawi state and its donors are acutely aware of the need to address the impacts of climate change in a sustainable manner. The Malawi Department for Disaster Management Affairs (DODMA), however, relies on donors and the wider international and humanitarian community for funding for most of its activities. Collaborations between the Malawi state and donors thus take place in a context of profound dependency, which shapes disaster relief interventions in different ways at different governance levels. Based on one year of ethnographic fieldwork with DODMA civil servants in a disaster-prone district in southern Malawi, I argue that preparing for the next emergency should start by critically examining the power relations that shape collaborations, anticipation and thus preparedness. Anticipating potential differences in priorities and a willingness to collaborate across difference, form a crucial part of both mitigation and prevention efforts for the next emergency.

Paper long abstract:

The creation of universities in Africa started prior to and/or within the decade after political independence. Since then, the number of institutions has expanded rapidly and continuously but in innadequation to the high rates of demographic growth and the needs of knowledge society. The economic crisis faced by most countries in the 1990s after the introduction of structural adjustment measures requested by the IMF among them, the reduction of the budget of public administration and services, exacerbate the existing challenges faced by many universities such as overcrowding, infrastructure deficiencies, lack of human resources with the immigration of highly qualified staff and aging faculty, etc. The COVID-19 pandemic has not only exposed these challenges but at the same time provided opportunities to overcome them and leapfrog the development paths of classical universities using ICT through digital technologies in line with the requirements of the 21 th century knowledge societies. Virtual Education with respect to Educational technologies among others make it possible for African universities to deliver content in any location at any time and implement practical labs using simulation and virtual experiment; remote laboratories leading to cost saving in terms of infrastructure; as well as connect to experts independent of their geographical location to address the challenges of lack of qualified staff. The development of information and communication technologies has also considerably influenced the way how science, especially research, is performed nowadays in African Universities and in global and transnational context. Scientists more than ever are working together across spatial and technical limitations (i.e. in virtual organizations, in different location or on the basis of globally distributed resources). Concepts such as “Science 2.0”, “Virtual Research Environment (VRE)” are providing appropriate environment for researchers to access scientific content, work collaboratively independent of their location, support processes and interactions of the “research life cycle” from the collection, processing of data and discussion right through to the publication of results have emerged. Thus, it provides African Universities and scientists new possibilities to address challenges related to research infrastructure, strengthen research capacity in countries and support North–South knowledge and technology transfer. The high rate of unemployment, coupled with the development of Information and communication technologies in Africa (mobile communication, networked digital device), decreased costs of microcontrollers, and the evolution of internet from the producer to consumer (WEB 1.0) to a participative model (WEB 2.0), has unveiled the creativity and innovative potential of youths leading to the development of many innovations and start-up in different sectors such as mobile banking, EAgriculture, E-Health, etc. This development supported by private sectors and international actors such as (Nokia, Microsoft, World Bank/IFC, etc.) has led to the multiplication of Technology and Innovation Hubs (Tech-Hubs) as informal spaces for innovation and Entrepreneurship across the continent. Universities in the continent acknowledge and recognize the dynamics and contribution of these actors in the global innovation landscape in the continent and have started to collaborate or initiate/integrate similar structures with related process in their premises. The COVID-19 pandemic with its challenges such as confinement and social distancing measures has laid the pathway for the acceptance and penetration of digital technologies in many daily processes. Universities having been forced to adopt digital technologies to support teaching, learning, collaboration, and research processes, have realized the potential and benefit of these technologies and will build on positive experiences. With fears and obstacles of adoption of technologies being overcome, frontiers technologies such as virtual and augmented realities, mobile technologies, big data and artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, 3D scanning and printing, etc. will significantly influence the future of education, research and innovation at local, global and trans-national level. Technologies such as virtual and augmented realities will enhance teaching and learning with more realistic and immersive experiences. Big data and artificial intelligence will improve profiling and prediction (drop-out rate and retention, student model and academic achievement), intelligent tutoring, assessment and evaluation systems, adaptive and personalized leaning paths and experience, connection of researcher across disciplines, identify new insights in publications, aggregate, curate, and help student and researchers to conduct their analyses in a more efficient and focussed ways. Mobile technologies will increase learning access. IoT technologies will contribute to safe, interconnected, immersive infrastructure and educational facilities, personalized learning solutions with sensors and smart devices able to collect information about students such as attention and concentration level and adapt by supporting learning path. Together with AR and VR educational spaces with multiples learning scenarios that are realistic, responsive and immersive. 3D scanning and printing will enable experiential teaching and learning in many disciplines by developing system thinking, spatial and 3D visualization skills, modelling the real world by recreating objects and space, as well as creating virtual spaces combined with VR and AR that will enable the manipulation of objects in ways beyond what is currently possible in the real world. African Universities will have to embrace these opportunities and address the new challenges related to them in line with the digital divide such as accessibility of the technologies (costs, devices, quality, etc.) and content, in addition to contextualizing the technologies to African social, economic and infrastructural environment. Pioneers and future oriented universities in the continent will take advantages of these technologies to design and setup innovative premises and facilities, propose advanced curriculum integrating all actors and stakeholders, and specificities of informal innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems in the continent (Tech-Hubs, Fab-Labs/Maker space, Mentoring and Business Angels, Pitch, Competition, etc.) with strengths of higher education systems. The dynamic and creative young population, together with the lack of public funding, high unemployment rates and social pressures, as well as the connection and “accessibility” of digital technologies, and the successful experiences and references in mobile sector are among other factors suggesting an optimistic and glorious future for African universities building on the potential of digital technologies to leapfrog the classical development paths at universities and countries level.

Paper long abstract:

The seeds of global environmental awareness and practice were planted at the United Nations General Assembly in December 1968 when the Swedish delegation successfully proposed that a conference on environment be held in Stockholm in 1972. As agenda for the conference unfolded the Group of 77, which includes African countries, faulted it arguing that it was not inclusive enough. The Conference Secretary General constituted the so-called Founex experts whose recommendations rectified the anomalies.

The caution by Group of 77 was misunderstood in certain quarters leading A.K. Kasdan to write that there was a "Third World War-Environment versus Development" published in Record of the Bar Association of the City of New York Vol. 26 (1971) pp. 454-464. Little did such commentators, and their lot, know that the Group of 77 were so committed and effective that they ensured that the United Nations agency created as a result of the Conference was located in Africa in 1974 and is still there.

When a new area, such as environment emerges, misunderstandings abound. That is why participants in a mega-conference in Washington DC in early 1980's were amazed to learn that one of the participants, as African, was teaching environmental law in a Kenyan University. They had been under the impression that African countries objected to anything to do with environmental protection. Little did they know that the first environmental law course at University of Nairobi was offered in 1979. At the level of practice, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) adopted the well-conceived African Convention for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1968, and has undergone a comprehensive amendment completed in 2003. The 1968 convention actually replaced a 1933 convention once signed by colonial powers.

With the foregoing perspectives in mind this paper will discuss modern day developments such as: scholarship in African universities as shown by Association of Environmental Law Lecturers in African Universities (ASSELLAU); targeted initiatives such as Project on Environmental Law and Institutions in Africa (PADELIA); Regional and sub-regional environmental treaties; and leadership in scholarship and practice in environmental law.

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Paper short abstract:

Public universities are no longer sole champions of knowing. The paper examines other key players and what makes them succeed in the policy-making process. The paper makes a number of suggestions to improve the standing of public universities as one site of public sources of knowing.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing from our knowledge on higher education in Africa, knowledge sites have changed significantly over the last few decades. In particular, public universities are no longer the sole drivers of the what and how is to be known in development policy, even though they alone have a unique claim in the knowing process, by virtue of their public funding and their original development mandates. The outcome of this site and knowledge reconfiguration is that public universities are no longer driving the development policy agenda, as they should be doing. What, then, is the future of public universities-based development policy knowing? Public universities can reclaim the initiative by addressing a number of external tensions. Tensions do exist between and among different players in knowledge production on the one hand, and between knowledge producers and the state, on the other. The tension between the state and public universities is well known. Not so well known are the tensions between Africa-based private and public research think tanks and universities. To resolve these tensions, public universities must address the concerns of the state by relearning and internalizing their development mandates as opposed to paying lip service to them. Furthermore, public universities must learn how to learn from the new knowledge sites as opposed to treating them as interlopers in the chain of development policy knowing. Second, public universities must address internal institutional tensions. These tensions include: the institutional tension between establishing the traditional disciplinary departments/institutes and departments/institutes with multidisciplinary mandates; the institutional mandate tension between " for development" and "of development"; the epistemological tension between multidisciplinary knowing and interdisciplinary knowing; the historical tension between the disciplinary knowing and the traditional transdisciplinary nature of policymaking; the career mobility tension between the journal article and the urgent policy brief by the policy makers: the allegiance tension between the institutional academic and the public intellectual; the career tension between the academic need for knowledge attribution and the anonymity of policy inputs; the loyalty but false tension between consulting and academic work which often fails to recognize that a good consultant is often a good academic. To address these tensions public universities must engineer new institutional norms and practices. We recommend that they do this in order to aggressively work their way back into the policy research limelight. The norms include the norm of partnering with and borrowing from other sites in public policy knowing.

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