International medical NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) handed over its final sleeping sickness project in Angola to the Health Ministry last week, having successfully contained and stabilised the disease. But medical staff from both MSF and the national Institute to Combat and Control Trypanosomiasis (ICCT), which will assume responsibility for the sleeping sickness project in Caxito, in the northern province of Bengo, fear the illness could again spiral out of control if the Angolan authorities fail to manage it tightly.

The fight against the HIV/Aids epidemic in Africa goes well beyond lab rooms and hospital wards and involves social and political issues at all levels of society, particularly male-female gender relations, said a recent United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report on the role of men and HIV/Aids. Though women in areas of southern Africa are three to six times more likely to become HIV-infected than men, gender-related anti-HIV/Aids efforts need to avoid focusing solely on women, the UNDP report said.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has strongly criticised 21 pharmaceutical companies for marketing and selling "single drug" malaria pills that have the potential to develop resistance against one of the most common and serious tropical diseases. "The use of single-drug artemisinin treatment - or monotherapy - hastens development of resistance by weakening but not killing the parasite," the WHO said Thursday. The problem has assumed such seriousness that WHO has decided to name names, providing a list of the pharmaceutical companies marketing and selling these malaria pills.

Burkina Faso health workers are out in force nationwide to distribute medicine and information in a bid to combat elephantiasis, an often debilitating disorder the health ministry says strikes about one million people in the West African country. Health Minister Alain Bedouma Yoda said in launching the campaign that the country must wipe out the disease “to shield future generations from the socio-economic impact of this scourge.”

Zimbabwe's two largest infectious diseases referral hospitals are being inundated by new cases of cholera, despite government claims that the situation is under control. A team of government and municipal health workers visited both the Wilkins and Beatrice Infectious Disease Hospitals in the capital, Harare, this week in a bid to ascertain the extent of the outbreak. Patients in three wards at Beatrice hospital have had to be evacuated to make room for those suffering from cholera.

"User fees are once again a topic of hot policy debate in Africa," write the authors of this article from the British Medical Journal. "They were introduced relatively recently in many countries, but the current call is for their removal, particularly at primary care level. As analysts who have consistently argued against user fees, we broadly support this call. However, we recognise that this action cannot be introduced overnight and, if weakly implemented, may exacerbate the problems facing African health systems."

A massive reduction in the price of antiretroviral drugs now makes it possible for South Africa to turn HIV/AIDS from a killer into a chronic, manageable disease. Over the past five years, the cost of a year’s supply of antiretroviral (ARV) drugs in South Africa has plummeted from over R95 000 to around R1 200 for the standard “first-line” package of three drugs a day – largely because generic ARV drugs are now available.

As the hunger season progresses in Southern Africa, food security in the region continues to deteriorate, especially in those countries where food crop production was insufficient to meet domestic requirements. In more severe cases (as in some parts of Zimbabwe and Malawi), supplies of staple cereals are increasingly unavailable, causing retail food prices to rise steeply and exacerbating food access problems for the most vulnerable households, reports Relief Web.

Almost a month after the deadline, the World Health Organisation's (WHO) campaign to put three million people in the developing world on anti-AIDS drugs by the end of 2005 has failed to meet its target. When WHO launched the '3 by 5' initiative it was widely acknowledged that the 'aspirational' target represented a significant hurdle, given the state of global funding for AIDS, doubtful political will, drug availability and technical capacity.

This position will deepen the capacity of the Humanitarian Response Team to understand, react to, and support any humanitarian response where public health expertise is needed. The Public Health Specialist will lead Oxfam America's public health response in regions where Oxfam America has leadership or is active and will support Oxfam International emergencies where there is a need for affiliate support. This position will lead assessments and coordination of deployable and regional staff related to public health. In addition, this position will serve as the primary link between Oxfam America and public health technical resources and staff at the Harvard Humanitarian Institute and other strategic allies of Oxfam America in the public health field.

At least 11 people in northeastern Uganda have died from suspected meningitis after a specimen taken from one patient tested positive for the disease, health officials have said. "A single positive result indicates that there is a meningitis outbreak in the area and we have sent a team to help in the control," health ministry spokesman Paul Kaggwa said.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office renewed its January 20 appeal for action to stem the flow of those falling prey to smugglers in their flight from Somalia and Ethiopia. The appeal followed the January 16 appearance of a boat on Yemeni shores carrying 65 people and six dead bodies, UNHCR staff in Sana’a said. Another 14 people reportedly died during the voyage – six who threw themselves into the sea because they could not bear the thirst and another eight who died on board of thirst and hunger and whose bodies were thrown overboard.

In a bid to ensure the sustainability of its antiretroviral (ARV) treatment programme in Mozambique, the international NGO, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has focused on skills transfer with the aim of handing over the running of its sites to the government. This would see the government and local community taking over the responsibility for running MSF's Lichinga site in the northern Niassa province, which treats 370 patients, by the end of 2008.

Peter Busse, one of the first South Africans to openly declare his HIV status, died on Friday. Health-e News Service spoke to a few people whose lives Busse touched in many different ways. When 34-year-old mother of three Vicki Bam stood up at an International Women’s Day meeting in 2004, she had been living with the disease for two years. Her speech was testimony to the lives Peter Busse had touched and in the case of Bam – saved. “The first three months after I was diagnosed was a living hell. I even thought of committing suicide. But at that time I met someone who made a positive impact on my life. His name is Peter Busse who had been living with HIV/Aids positively for the past 17 years and he made me realize that being HIV positive is not a death sentence,” Bam told the gathering.

This publication focusing on the key lessons from the Support to the International Partnership against AIDS in Africa (SIPAA) programme implemented between 2001 and 2005 in nine African countries, could not have come out at a better time. Though it is not an evaluation report, it tells the story of good practice from which readers will learn much about the programme. On the African continent there are numerous interventions and innovative methods being applied. Unfortunately many of these activities are barely documented, giving the impression that nothing significant is taking place.

A pledge by the Nigerian government to provide all anti-Aids drugs for free has not been met as some hospitals impose service charges, activists say. The government vowed in December to provide anti-retroviral drugs, needed to combat HIV-Aids, free of charge. The drugs have always been free, but many hospitals run by individual states still demand service charges for treating patients.

According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, with Ethiopia's major October to December rains having failed, an additional 1.75 million people will require food aid up to June, bringing the number of people receiving food assistance in the Horn of Africa country to 7.25 million. Drought has devastated the economies of many pastoralist groups in East African countries this year, especially Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya, leaving 11 million people at risk of food shortages.

A major study based on evidence gathered from the Tanzanian island of Pemba has concluded that giving generalised iron and folic acid supplements to young children in malarial areas increases the likelihood of those children dying.The London-based medical journal "The Lancet" has published details of the trial which points out that the World Health Organisation still recommends routine supplementation with iron and folic acid in countries where anaemia is widespread - despite growing scientific opinion that anaemia could be a natural defence against the malarial parasite.

The Tanzanian government has pardoned and rehired 224 medical personnel it had sacked in November 2005 after they went on strike for better pay and working conditions, according to Health Minister David Mwakyusa. However, he said Tuesday's pardon did not extend to 29 others believed to have been the ringleaders of the strike. The doctors' action lasted several weeks, paralysing operations at the Muhimbili National Hospital, the country's largest health facility.

Henning Melber, Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden, raises questions about the area of “African Studies”, reviewing some of the key debates currently taking place over its motivation, form and content. What motivates scholars to embark on African Studies? Is there a more or less direct political agenda attached to African Studies? To what extent do African scholars have options to define, pursue, and realise their own socio-political ideals and convictions?

A debate on what is supposedly understood as African Studies tends to be dependant on the individual positioning of the respective author(s). There is an obvious historical (in the sense of imperialist) dimension to the matter: African Studies emerged mainly due to a colonial legacy or direct involvement of states and their agents (missionaries, ‘explorers’, traders, officials) in either the colonisation or decolonisation of African regions or people – with the latter as the passive objects rather than the architects of the study areas and subject matters defined as being of interest (of interest to others, of course).

There were strong geopolitical and strategic dimensions, which have motivated to some extent the focus on area studies (including African Studies). Hence one of the questions we are confronted with is that of the social and political interest: what motivates scholars not only to embark on African Studies, but beyond this what allows for employment and support by state institutions in this academic field? Is there a more or less direct political agenda attached to African Studies by those who support its institutionalised pursuance? And if so, which agenda and to what extent do we as individual scholars agree or differ on the underlying motives? Last but not least: how do we contribute by what we are doing and how we are doing it (as institutions and as individual researchers) to such an agenda and its execution? To what extent do we have options to define, pursue, and realise our own socio-political ideals and convictions through and by means of the academic role we play within such institutionalised framework of interaction?

The challenge to position oneself starts with the efforts to define the subject and reach a common understanding. According to a survey among scholars in the United States of America, “mainstream Africanists across the spectrum of US higher education appear to be divided with respect to what constitutes ‘African Studies’” (Alpers/Roberts 2002: 13; see also Kassimir 1997: 161). The differing choices include:

- Study of sub-Saharan Africa (22%);
- Study of the entire continent of Africa (33%); and
- study of the people of Africa, both in Africa and the diaspora (41%).

Alpers and Roberts suggest that African Studies “should also include … the place of Africa in its global context, both historically and contemporaneously”. But they themselves seem not to honour this explicit understanding in its full consequence when summarising that African Studies “is about peoples, both on the continent of Africa and abroad, rather than about a continent called Africa.” Instead, African Studies should be even more than this: it should include foreign interests, policies and influences, as well as perceptions outside of Africa on Africa (whatever the definition of “Africa” then is). To that extent, “Africa” is also seen as a mirror image of international relations, images, projections and their results.

A decade ago Martin and West (1995: 24) warned in the US-context of the profession that the “spectre of irrelevance” is hanging over “African Studies”. What they possibly wanted to alert to is that the future of African Studies rests on shaky grounds in countries like the USA (but also the UK or Germany, for that matter), as long as those in social (political and economic) power have no direct interest in the matters analysed (like in, let’s say, Near or Middle East, East European or Chinese and East Asian Studies, which for obvious reasons serve a direct purpose within dominant interests).

That does of course not mean that African Studies are irrelevant, neither within nor outside academic discourses - even though if that might well have been the perception of those having to some extent the power of definition (if only through executing control over allocating the financial means to make things happen). There were, however, interests emerging once again within the new scramble for control over African resources, in particular oil, which after 11th September 2001 in the US-declared global war against terror contributed to a revitalisation of African Studies as strategic area studies (cf. Barnes 2004).

This is beyond doubt a double-edged sword, as it reduces the continent again to an object of super power rivalry. It is therefore essential to argue with Kassimir (1997:156) for the relevance of African Studies beyond the “utilitarianism” of economic, geopolitical and strategic interests: “Local knowledge and global knowledge are inseparable and mutually constitutive”. One might even go a step further and – for the sake of the argument – maintain that local knowledge is at the same time global knowledge. As Kassimir (ibid.) concludes: “Both global knowledge and local knowledge are necessary for contemporary scholarship; only together are they sufficient.”

For Achille Mbembe, as one of the more prominent (and controversial) African scholars - who by the way has so far not abandoned his roots in the sense of remaining attached to a working environment within the continent instead of moving to an African Studies centre in one of the metropolitan universities - in support of such an approach African societies (like all other societies) can be located “between generality and singularity”, with a “peculiar ‘historicity’ … rooted in a multiplicity of times, trajectories and rationalities that, although particular and sometimes local, cannot be conceptualised outside a world that is, so to speak, globalized.” (Mbembe 2001: 9)

The unanswered question remains, however: who creates which type of knowledge and for what purpose?

Strong arguments for a legitimate and necessary place of African Studies in the accumulation of knowledge offered Iris Berger (1997: 5): “to transcend parochial Western theories and data, participants with in-depth area-based knowledge will be as essential as ever to true global and comparative dialogue”. She also deconstructs and demystifies the highly sensitive inner-African discussions over what deserves to receive the blessing as “African Studies” in a politically correct Afro-centric view by pointing out: “’Orientalist’ criticisms inevitably lump together a rich and diverse tradition encompassing writings from many perspectives … written by scholars from all over Africa, Europe and North America as well as other parts of the world. By treating some of these areas of interest as critiques of a pristine, homogenous ‘African studies’ rather than integral parts of a diverse and continually changing field, some critics have manufactured a mythical construct that they have then proceeded to dismantle. Furthermore, alleging that there is an “African” interest that scholars have neglected also assumes an essentialist uniformity of perspective among Africans, rather than acknowledging that complex individual and collective identities based on gender, nationality, language, ideology and scholarly orientation mitigate against any single specifically ‘African’ perspective on African studies.” (Berger 1997: 9) As relevant as the identified substantive elements are, she unfortunately ignores the fundamental dimension of social class and corresponding interests.

Berger (1997: 11) also maintains that “more important than the topics of African studies research during the coming years … will be the revitalization of academic life and academic freedom in Africa”. It is particularly interesting to take note of the related concerns and views articulated by Thandika Mkandawire (2002) and Ebrima Sall (2002). At the same time, a raging controversy among African scholars highlighted in recent years the marked differences over what should be considered as “legitimate African Studies”. As one of the protagonists points out: “legitimate criticism of the damaging effects of occidental Africanism has been transformed into an extreme fetishizing of geographical identities” (Mbembe 1999). He identifies the following main obstacles to rigorous academic debate within the inter-disciplinary field of African Studies: nativism (“as if black Africa were all of Africa and all Africans were negroes”), a territorialization of the production of knowledge (“the false belief that only autochthonous people who are physically living in Africa can produce, within a closed circle limited to themselves alone, a legitimate scientific discourse on the realities of the Continent”) and a “lazy interpretation of globalisation” (Mbembe 1999; see also Mbembe 2000).

To discuss beyond the convenient pseudo-radical polemic the (real) danger of (continued) domination of African Studies by “non-African” scholars meeting other than “African” interests (whatever this means) requires firstly a strict definition with the aim to operationalise and translate the terms in practical and political ways. Any premature generalisation confirms the structural side of the (indeed existing) substance of the matter. At the same time, however, it runs the risk of brushing aside the existing individual choices and options of collaboration and interaction. As the “Mbembe-Zeleza” controversy (if not feud) documents (cf. Zeleza 2003, Robins 2004), there is also the danger of a similarly ignorant counter-position, which ultimately results in claiming genuine control over knowledge on the basis of particular dimensions rooted in claims of origin and subsequent entitlement. While aspects of socialisation and individual experiences (with the emphasis on individual) complement collective identities at all times and result in the uniqueness of the human experience in each and every person, we should be careful to use the argument of being “the same” or “the other” for academic controversies as a mono-causal reasoning.

African Studies and the relevant disciplines contributing to the scholarly debate should be considered from a point of view of assumed strength concerning the value of truly inter-disciplinary oriented methods and schools of thought. It demands a dialectical understanding of scholarly work: African Studies benefit from the strength of the various disciplines applied and in return strengthen the various disciplines beyond the immediate space of what is considered to be “African Studies”.

Interesting in this constellation is the positioning of oneself and of others as scholars, activists, and intellectuals. To what extent does it allow “global Africa” to establish common denominators irrespective of origins and identities of the actors involved in the processes (politically, analytically)? Is there a common ground to act, which is able to eliminate (or at least put aside) potentially divisive aspects of one’s personal making (in terms of socialisation impacts through shaping the individual perspectives by means of gender, social class and cultural roots - to mention just a few most significant factors)? Who plays which role in “Africanizing Knowledge” (Falola/Jennings 2002), and to what extent is this at the same time again an expression of “global Africa” – simply because Africa can only be global under the factual circumstances created and confronting us all as human beings at the beginning of this 21st century? Could it be that the challenges “global Africa” is confronted with are the challenges all human beings the world over are tasked to meet?

* Henning Melber has a PhD in Political Science and a venia legendi in Development Studies. He was Director of The Namibian Economic Policy Research Unit (NEPRU) in Windhoek between 1992 and 2000 and is Research Director of The Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala/Sweden since then. This article is a revised and shortened version of an editorial to a special issue on African Studies he guest edited for “Afrika Spectrum” (vol. 40, no. 3, 2005).

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Literature

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