Papers by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza
Africa Development, Aug 24, 2021
Choice Reviews Online, Nov 1, 1999
... diaspora. The concepts of both gender and diaspora are interrogated, and a compelling argumen... more ... diaspora. The concepts of both gender and diaspora are interrogated, and a compelling argument is made for engendering diaspora studies and inserting diasporic dimensions in African and Africanist gender studies. This is ...
Over the past two decades African higher education has undergone profound changes. In the 1960s a... more Over the past two decades African higher education has undergone profound changes. In the 1960s and 1970s, universities on the continent were few in number, small in scale, and elitist institutions with the limited mandate of producing cadres for the Africanization or indigenization of the newly independent state apparatuses. In the 1980s and 1990s, during the heyday of structural adjustment programs, they were regarded as costly irrelevances at best, or bastions of political unrest at worst. Now, they are seen as essential for the creation of knowledge economies and societies, indispensable for human capital development, and turning Africa's unprecedented youth bulge into a demographic dividend rather than a Malthusian nightmare. Yet, the continent's higher education sector is plagued by huge capacity deficits and challenges that threaten its survival, sustainability and contribution to the continent's historic and humanistic project for democratic and development transformation. Since the late 1990s I've been immersed in research on African universities and knowledge production on Africa. I've published several books and numerous articles and given dozens of conference presentations on these subjects. The books include two edited volumes on African Universities in the Twenty-First Century (2004) and another two volumes on The Study of Africa (2008). Among the presentations, the most significant might be the Framing Paper I was commissioned to write for the 1st African Higher Education Summit held in Dakar, Senegal in March 2015.
This article seeks to place discourses about higher education and development in a comparative gl... more This article seeks to place discourses about higher education and development in a comparative global context. It begins with brief reflections on development, by revisiting age-old debates about why some nations develop faster than others. This is an important backdrop to any meaningful discussion about the role of universities as engines of innovation for sustainable development and transformation. The article will focus mainly on the value proposition of university education and the ways in which this is reflected in its products, principally the quality of research and graduates. It will argue that, for universities to realize and sustain their institutional value, they need enabling resources, capacities and support from all key internal and external stakeholders.
The New York Times reports that since 1990 more Africans have voluntarily relocated to the United... more The New York Times reports that since 1990 more Africans have voluntarily relocated to the United States and Canada than had been forcibly brought here before the slave trade ended in 1807. The key reason for these migrations has been the collapse of social, political, economic, and educational structures in their home countries, which has driven Africans to seek security and self-realization in the West. This lively and timely collection of essays takes a look at the new immigrant experience. It traces the immigrants' progress from expatriation to arrival and covers the successes as well as problems they have encountered as they establish their lives in a new country. The contributors, most immigrants themselves, use their firsthand experiences to add clarity, honesty, and sensitivity to their discussions of the new African diaspor
This is the second of a two-volume work taking stock of the study of Africa in the twenty-first c... more This is the second of a two-volume work taking stock of the study of Africa in the twenty-first century: its status, research agenda and approaches, and place. It is divided into two parts, the first entitled Globalisation Studies and African Studies, and the second, African Studies in Regional Contexts. Part two considers: African and area studies in France, the US, the UK, Australia, Germany and Sweden; anti-colonialism and Russian/soviet African studies; African studies in the Caribbean in historical perspective; the teaching of African history and the history of Africa in Brazil; African studies in India; African studies and historiography in China in the twenty-first century; and African studies and contemporary scholarship in Japan. The other contributors include: Anshan Li, Professor at the Institute of Afro-Asian Studies, Peking University; Alan Cobley, Professor of South African and Comparative History at the University of West Indies; Aparajita Biswas, Professor at the Centre for African Studies, University of Mumbai; Bogumil Jewiewicki, Canada research chair in comparative history, Université Laval in Quebec; John McCracken; Monica Lima from the Cap/Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; James Mittelman; Peter Probst; Ann Schlyter; Jomo Kwame Sundaram, a prominent Malaysian economist, currently with the UN; and Mashao Yoshida, Professor Emeritus and former Director, the Research Institute of International Studies, Chuba University, Japan
Every so often African leaders and thinkers rediscover and reaffirm a future invoked by all sorts... more Every so often African leaders and thinkers rediscover and reaffirm a future invoked by all sorts of names of hope and redemption: the African revolution, reawakening, reconstruction, rebirth, regeneration, renewal, resurrection, revival, and renaissance. These proclamations are part political propaganda, part cultural puffery, part collective prayer for new beginnings, for Africa's cruel history to pause and change course. They express a long, recurrent yearning for a usable future. This ache lies deep in the consciousness of a people with painful memories of suffering, struggle and survival. It is simultaneously a cry of anguish and a call to arms, a declaration of both panic and purpose, a desperate and determined battle to reclaim Africa's history and humanity, a desire for an Africanized modernity. Each generation articulates this poignant, perpetual dream in its way, reflecting no doubt the weight of the historical moment as manifested in the identification and location of the dominant challenges and possibilities
The paper seeks to examine the relations between the Kenyan and Western labour movements, particu... more The paper seeks to examine the relations between the Kenyan and Western labour movements, particularly with the AFL-CIO and the ICFTU. It is shown that apart from the mere offer of financial inducements by these Western labour movements, on which many writers tend to dwell, the collaborative relationship between them and the Kenyan labour movement, which emerged from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, was made possible by the remarkable ideological compatibility between these movements. This arose out of the conjuncture of internal contradictions of both movements and the process of decolonisation. It will be argued that while the Kenyan labour movement was not simply being 'manipulated', as is so often asserted by some dependency writers, its relations with the Western labour movements rein forced internal' trends towards deradicalisation.
Graduate Institute Publications eBooks, 2010
Historiographies africaines et histoire des femmes Le sous-développement relatif de l’histoire de... more Historiographies africaines et histoire des femmes Le sous-développement relatif de l’histoire des femmes africaines peut être partiellement attribué au fait que, comme le soutient Bolanle Awe, « comparée à l’histoire de nombreuses autres parties du monde, l’histoire de l’Afrique n’a commencé à être écrite qu’assez récemment » (Awe 1991, 211). […] Dans leur reconstruction de l’histoire africaine, les historiens nationalistes ou africanistes se sont souciés d’éradiquer les mythes impérialistes..
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Papers by Paul Tiyambe Zeleza