Paper short abstract:

My paper will focus on two faith-based Universities in East African, established at their beginning by funding from Gulf countries, but which, over time,became almost national.

Paper long abstract:

My paper will focus on two faith-based Universities in East African, established at their beginning by funding from Gulf countries, but which, over time, became almost national. These are the Islamic University in Uganda and the African International University in Khartoum (Sudan).

What role each group involved in this process did play (Gulf countries, African states, Islamic and non-Islamic communities of Uganda and Sudan)? What is the relationship between these African countries and the Gulf countries? These are the kinds of questions that my paper will seek to elucidate.

Paper short abstract:

This paper shows how the urban-based madrassas in Senegal pose both a threat to traditional values and a career possibility to people living in a rural village. This educational alternative is appropriated, and used to challenge and reproduce old forms of privilege in a changing social landscape.

Paper long abstract:

Literature on madrassas in Senegal tends to focus on their reformist ideologies and influence in urban centres where they are based. By contrast this paper examines their subtle influence on a rural village among the haalpulaar ethnic group. Despite being geographically removed, the madrassas' presence is apparent in local people's everyday lives. The madrassa presents an educational alternative linked to increased livelihood opportunities for example in national state structures and Arabic speaking world. However, it constitutes an ideological and practical challenge to the traditional Sufi Quranic schools of the village. Its universalist Islamic ideologies also challenge traditional haalpulaar social divisions linked to gender and 'caste'. Its existence therefore provides an attractive option for those historically excluded from local forms of religious education. This paper explores how depending on individuals' positionality in the mesh of social relationships, they appropriate, contest and reject the madrassa in complex ways. For some, it poses both an opportunity and a threat, like parents who applaud the career options it presents but are wary of its ideologies. For others, madrassas open the possibility to subvert caste hierarchies, yet counter to this runs the reality that only the richest can afford this option. Thus old and new sources of privilege and capital collide to create a new elite class. This paper argues for fine-grained ethnography that captures strategies different actors employ within this multipolar educational landscape; they take which elements they want, and leave those they do not, to reconcile their aspirations with their social positionality.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims at assessing the overall situation of Turkey's relations with African countries, focusing in particular on the spreading of Turkish private schools in the continent as a catalyst for strengthening political and economical connections and gaining space in the new scramble for Africa.

Paper long abstract:

Within the framework of its foreign policy's post-bipolar evolution, Turkey has shown in the last twenty years a rising interest in developing strong relations with African countries, putting an end to several decades of neglect. This opening strategy has envisioned a synergy of multiple public and private actors, making Turkish approach to the continent unique in its style, yet predictable in its goals. In order to mitigate the crude reality of an expansion meant to maximize profits and prestige, Ankara is indeed resorting to a vast arsenal of soft power instruments. Development aid, humanitarian assistance and Islamic solidarity, essential elements of its cooptative pick-lock, are entwined nowadays in a thick texture with the conventional spheres of diplomacy and trade. In this context, Turkish private schools play a crucial role. Mostly established by members of Fethullah Gülen's movement, they represent the sharpest tool of cultural diplomacy Turkey can make use of to consolidate economical interdependence with African continent. This paper will try to shed light on strengths and liabilities of these educational institutions, whose brokering function has been too often underestimated.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the problem of “deskilling” in Ethiopia: how young people learn skills from schools that are inappropriate for non-formal employment; and how they start to engage in informal livelihood strategies that require network and capital which are scarce in today’s political economy.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on fieldwork in Ethiopia, this paper explores the hopes and aspirations of young people and the possibilities that formal education holds for improving their life chances. It highlights how academic knowledge is being privileged over local knowledge, and the implications of eroding ecologies of "local ways of doing things" for earning sustainable livelihoods. In Ethiopia, the hope that education is the pathway to success is constrained not only by lack of access to quality education but also by the social and moral economy that accentuates young people's interdependent livelihoods with family collectives. Many young people in Ethiopia cannot find jobs due to the growth in absolute number of high school graduates, but largely as a result of shrinking formal job market. The paper reveals the phenomenon of deskilling, that is, the disjunctions between what young people learn and what they are likely to need for their world of adulthood (Katz, 2004). Deskilling is the byproduct of, and manifested in, political economic strictures that alter trajectories in traditional pathways en route to adulthood. Young Ethiopians acquire agricultural skills but have no land to farm; they attend formal schools only long enough to learn skills that are inappropriate for non-formal employment; or they may start to engage in informal livelihood strategies that require skills, network and capital which are scarce in today's economic landscape.

Paper short abstract:

The article describes the coastal societies’ struggle and ambivalence over the relative value of schooling vs. village-based knowledge and skill acquisition necessary for the community members to live within their structural constraints.

Paper long abstract:

Coastal communities in northern Mozambique tend to stand out from the rest of civil society. This is most evident in relation to lack of the access and ownership of natural resources, social opportunities such as education, access to information and decision making means and the influence of cultural-hereditary characteristics of coastal society. Social and physical marginality, child labour and migratory lifestyles are a main part of discourse on marginalization of fishing communities. They demonstrate reluctance and self-censorship in freedom of expression, which according to researchers are deeply rooted in the particular political history of Mozambique.

This article discusses these perceptions and related educational practices as culturally mediated responses to the collective uncertainty and marginalization of the coastal livelihoods. It describes the community's struggle over the relative value of schooling versus village-based knowledge and skill acquisition necessary for the community members to live within their structural constraints. Furthermore, it points towards the political power questions, suggesting that coastal society's ambivalence about the utility of schooling may be seen as one of the dilemmas of citizenship in contemporary Mozambique. It demonstrates that meanings they construct about schooling are shaped by their cultural history and their attempts to maintain their livelihoods in the context of political power.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper we focus on processes related to the establishment of the Centre for Migration Studies in Ghana, notably in understanding this as the explicit outcome of a larger aim to provide a counterweight from the global south, and sub-Saharan Africa in particular, in global debates on migration.

Paper long abstract:

International migration is undoubtedly a domain that epitomizes the political discourse between the so-called global south and global north. This relates to the dominant actors involved, notably states and supra-states, but also others such as commercial actors and of course the migrants themselves. The study of migration from the Global South, and particularly from sub-Saharan Africa was noted as fragmented, hinging on the contributions of single scholars of various disciplines, usually in collaboration with scholars from the Global North.

The Centre for Migration Studies is meant to offset this status quo by providing an integrated and explicitly south based capacity building effort in the field of migration studies, and was supported in its endeavours by NUFFIC, the Netherlands organisation for international cooperation in higher education through its NPT capacity building programme.

In this paper we focus on the significance of the emergence of the CMS in terms of the stated intention of its sponsors to achieve capacity building in order to provide a Global South perspective on international migration, as a counterweight to a dominance of academics, policymakers and others from the Global North in shaping the international migration agenda.