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An Africa Notebook

— By Sonja Darlington

Interest in Africa is rapidly growing on campus, as faculty members’ teaching expands to include new disciplines, and students’ involvement follows. This is the first in an occasional series that explores current scholarship and teaching at Beloit.

If one were to describe the links, interests and associations that Beloit College faculty and students have forged within the African continent, "pervasive" might be the operative word. Or perhaps a single word is insufficient to describe the remarkable cross-cultural exchange of ideas and discourse that flourishes among scholars at Beloit—and that continues to grow, given Beloit’s international student population and its visiting scholars bringing new of areas of research from across the globe. Sadique Isahaku and Ruth Meena are the scholars most recently arrived on campus from Africa. Other faculty with research and teaching interests associated with that continent are in the departments of anthropology, biology, economics, education, political science, and women’s studies.

Prof. Isahaku, a member of the Hausa people from Northern Nigeria, combines work in economics and education. He focuses his research on the impact of the World Bank’s Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) on education in Africa. SAP is designed to promote economic development and requires that the recipient country meet certain conditions. Prof. Isahaku argues that emphasis on "social capital" and indigenous knowledge may be more important in Africa’s development than economic capital.

"Social capital is knowledge derived with emphasis on the unique resources and challenges available in local entities," Prof. Isahaku explains. "It comprises the norms and social relations embedded in the social structures of societies that enable people to coordinate action to achieve desired goals."

"We (in Africa) have been living on borrowed capital for a long time. After colonial rule, the political climate in Africa was a borrowed one. There was a paradigm shift to introduce a liberal democracy. A ‘liberal democracy’ is very loaded. Because the ‘liberalness’ of a liberal democracy is about opening up the market. And at the same time, about making people choose leaders in a multiparty democracy. This is a borrowed concept. While markets were being forcefully opened in Africa, walls were being built around markets in Europe, America, and Asia. Africans were confronted with this situation: our markets were wide open and vulnerable to everyone to come in and trade, but our goods were not allowed in everywhere . . . or were not competitive where allowed, because the type of goods that we produced locally were not necessarily competitive in the world market. That made African economies extremely vulnerable and unstable. I believe economic capital is not necessarily what is going to promote development in Africa, but social capital."

Prof. Meena, a Fulbright scholar from the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, approaches economics from a different direction. She argues that malfunctioning and poor performance of African economies can be, in part, attributed to existing structural gender inequalities which position women in low social status, with fewer rights and privileges, but with more responsibilities in production and reproductive activities. Her question is: "Does the status of women in Africa affect the development process generally?" At present, she says, they carry a disproportionate share of poverty.

Prof. Meena points out that constitutional developments in Africa have excluded women from positions of power and from the decision-making process—including government and even scholarship. Moreover, she argues, the evolving power structures have legitimized the discriminating practices. In a recent publication, she wrote, "The power to know and the power to have one’s knowledge influence the mainstream knowledge should be considered a part of human rights."

Prof. Meena notes that, "In what the west could call a transition process to democracy, if the people of Africa are to be agents of development, then both men and women must be engaged in conceiving new development models."

Catherine Orr, assistant professor of women’s studies, launched the Fulbright proposal which ultimately brought Prof. Meena to Beloit and their interests are similar. In Prof. Orr’s women’s studies course, "International Perspectives on Women," she covers western colonialism, economic development, war, violence against women, and the challenges inherent in representing "third world" women. For one project, her students read Zimbabwean writer Tsiti Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions, a coming of age story about a girl caught between native tradition and western modernity in colonial Rhodesia. For the final project, she asked students to pick a gendered issue in a particular region.

They researched the history of the region as well as the issue, she says. "The students wrote some really great papers from this assignment."

A Wider Range of Involvement

Other faculty who discuss the changing perspectives on Africa include Sonja Darlington, chair of the education department; Tom Warren, professor of education; Beth Dougherty, assistant professor of political science; Marion Fass, associate professor of biology; Emily Chamlee-Wright, associate professor of economics and management; and Mustafa Mirzeler, visiting assistant professor of anthropology. They comprise a core faculty who include Africa issues in their courses (based on their own research) and who assembled a program of Africa-focussed activities including lectures, films, and other events for the College community. One of the first functions was an address by Ambassador Robert Houdek’61, the National Intelligence Officer for Africa at the U.S. Department of State. He delivered the Beloit College Ivan Stone lecture, "Africa: Challenges and Prospects," a talk that generated campus-wide debate.

Prof. Darlington participated in the Global Partners Seminar this summer in Kenya—a project that seeks to create and strengthen connections between teachers and scholars in Eastern Africa—and teaches a First Year Initiative or FYI course on African literature. Her research interest in coming of age stories is the basis for the FYI course, and students are reading novels by Ngugi wa Thiong’O, Buchi Emecheta, Nawal El Saadawi, Calixthe Beyala, Chieke Hamedou Kane, Ken Saro Wiwa, and Tsitsi Dangarembga.

Ibrahama Doumbya, an exchange student from Senegal, is the teaching assistant for the class, and helps to facilitate their discussions on indigenous knowledge, independence movements, and the oral tradition in pre-and post-colonial African literature. In February, Prof. Darlington will travel to Kenya to present her second paper on African coming of age stories. "I’m in good company advocating for more Africa-related courses on campus," she says.

Prof. Fass, (who, with Prof. Darlington, participated in the Global Partners Seminar) credits two students who returned from Zimbabwe with motivating her to make her first visit to South Africa to study AIDS. In turn, her interest in emerging diseases and health care for women encouraged those same students and others to participate in AIDS education in Africa with the Peace Corps.

Prof. Fass points out that studying AIDS and other infectious diseases demands that students understand that the spread of the disease is affected by economic development, women’s roles, and political priorities as well as basic microbiology.

Using her recent research in Kenya, Prof. Fass presented a paper, "Out of Africa: What International Study Means for Biology Education," to the Assn. for College and University Biology Educators at their annual meeting this autumn. "International travel lets biology educators discuss issues of ecojustice as well as conservation biology, and to be better able to teach the ecology and epidemiology of disease as complex biological and social phenomena," she says.

Teaching in Southern Africa

Prof. Warren recently returned from Windhoek, Namibia, where he presented a paper at the International Council on Education for Teaching (ICET). "Along with South Africa," he says, "Namibia offers especially fascinating educational opportunities for Beloit students and faculty." Prof. Warren’s contributions to the campus on behalf of South Africa include organizing and directing student teaching placements in the Western Cape Province.

In 1999, he and Assistant Principal J.B. Elzy from Beloit Memorial High School visited South Africa together as part of a Goals 2000 Grant administered by the College’s department of education and the School District of Beloit. "It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life," said Dr. Elzy.

He described his impressions of the burgeoning changes in education in South Africa since independence as a beacon of light. His most heartening experiences: seeing the country’s diverse ethnic groups work together, and knowing that the old disparities would shrink, though this would take time. "We can set an example for them, and they can set an example for us."

Prof. Warren and Dr. Elzy—along with members of the College’s education department—initiated a series of Africa-related events in the Beloit public schools, including an email communications link, an on-going dialog on education, and they continue to create opportunities for Beloit College student teachers in South Africa.

"To date," said Prof. Warren, "the most successful effort to build relationships between Beloit and South Africa has come from sending Beloit College students to Western Cape township schools. Three Beloit College students taught at Glendale High School in Mitchell’s Plain and Luhlaza High School in Khayalitsha." One of them, Ben Graeber, now teaches at Beloit Memorial High School.

Rights and Entrepreneurship

Prof. Dougherty focuses on Africa in nearly all of her courses, though with specific interests in Eritrea. A case study on Eritrea’s winning independent statehood developed into her Ph.D. dissertation, and she met with Ambassador Houdek for part of her research. Prof. Dougherty’s ongoing interest in African politics, history, and culture frequently makes her the point person for impromptu campus discussions on the rapidly-changing political events in the Middle East and on the Horn of Africa.

Prof. Chamlee-Wright studies African activities further to the south. She recently returned from a six-month stay in Zimbabwe, where she served as the American director of the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) Zimbabwe Seminar. Twenty-five ACM students, including three from Beloit College, participated in the program. In Zimbabwe, Prof. Chamlee-Wright conducted an extensive survey on urban market women in the capital city, Harare. Specifically, she is querying whether non-government organizations can meet the needs of female entrepreneurs there.

She has presented her research at New York University and is scheduled to present at the Southern Economic Association meeting in Washington, D.C. In her course, "African Markets and Institutions," she draws on her West and Southern African research experiences and emphasizes the cultural and political forces that have shaped economic activity across sub-Saharan Africa.

Prof. Mirzeler brings an anthropological framework to his Africa studies. He lived two years with communities in Jie, Uganda, and in Turkana, Kenya. He worked with storytellers, studied historical narratives, and examined life histories. Prof. Mirzeler uses these materials to teach students about the sorghum and cattle motifs in Jie and Turkana folk theology and agro-pastoral rituals. His article on pastoral politics in the age of AK-47 was recently published in the Journal of Modern African Studies.

"One of my key research interests is the significance of the AK-47 in the transformation of violence and death in the Karamoja society (in Northeast Uganda)." Prof. Mirzeler says that the weapons, newly imported to the area, have transformed and disrupted certain tribal ceremonies. These previously involved hoes and spears, symbolizing cultivation and war. However, the new weaponry has overturned the old definitions.

Using the old weapons carried a specific (and approved) spiritual ceremony. He explains that the bullets from the AK-47 bring disorder and destroy hopes of justice from ancestral spirits. Prof. Mirzeler invited his former UW-Madison professor, Harold Scheub, a renowned scholar in African oral literature, for an evening of storytelling for the Africa Week activities in September.

In his Ivan Stone lecture, Ambassador Houdek said, "You cannot generalize" about Africa. The extent of Beloit’s focus on Africa underscores his comment. The Horn of Africa, Western Africa, Southern and South Africa are represented in a wide range of studies on the campus. A student exchange program with Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar, Senegal, flourishes. And as Prof. Fass discovered, not only do students learn about Africa from faculty, faculty learns about Africa from students. It’s an exchange that reflects the theme of this autumn’s First Year Initiatives program, "Global-Local,"—Africa is there, but it’s also here.


McIvor Scholarships Established
for South African Students

To honor Alan G. McIvor, Beloit’s former vice president for enrollment services, Trustee Andrew Davis’79 has made a $2 million gift to the College to provide an endowment fund to support South African students studying at Beloit. At a campus reception, South African Counsel General in Chicago, Dr. Kisten Rajoo, said, "This is the first program of its kind and size that we are aware of strictly for South African undergraduates in the U.S. This is ideally designed to bring young people to the U.S. to study and return to help further educate other South Africans. We are extremely appreciative of this tremendous gesture of goodwill by Mr. Davis and Beloit College."

Mr. Davis had announced his gift at a campus and community gathering honoring Mr. McIvor who, during his two decades with the College, helped to position the College’s major commitment to attracting students from around the world. A current U.S. News and World Report study ranks Beloit as the third most international college in the United States. More than 130 international students are in residence on the College campus, out of a student body of 1,200.

Mr. Davis, a 1979 graduate of Beloit with a degree in economics, has traveled frequently to South Africa on business and recently joined Illinois Gov. George Ryan on an economic and trade mission to that country. He is founder and CEO of the Rock Island Company of Chicago and vice-chair of the Chicago Stock Exchange.


Photos:

(right top) Alan and Marilyn McIvor, at a recent campus and community reception. Mr. McIvor, who accepted a post in London, had previously started a South African initiative for Beloit.

(right bottom) Dr. Kisten Rajoo, South African consul general in Chicago, with Andrew Davis’79, trustee chair, at a reception announcing the $2 million endowment to bring South African students to study at Beloit College.

Faculty email:

Emily Chamlee-Wright - associate professor of economics and management
Sonja Darlington - associate professor and chair, education
Beth Dougherty - Mouat Junior Professor of International Studies, assistant professor of political science
Marion Fass - associate professor of biology
Sadique Isahaku - director, Help Yourself
Catherine Orr - assistant professor of women's studies
Tom Warren - professor of education
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