UC Davis experts: African politics, health and culture
The following UC Davis faculty members are available to speak on topics related to African issues. If you need information on a topic not listed, please contact Claudia Morain, News Service, (530) 752-9841, cmmorain@ucdavis.edu.
Poverty and health
Politics and history
Culture
POVERTY AND HEALTH
Africa's roots in poverty, HIV/AIDS
Unlike the rest of the world, the economic situation in Africa has grown worse over the past two decades. Despite the economic advances immediately after independence, the collapse in world commodity prices in the 1970s severely damaged emerging independent democratic regimes, says UC Davis historian Benjamin Lawrance. "Most development theorists contend that almost half of the continent's population lives in extreme poverty," he says. Lawrance can talk about poverty's roots in the pre-colonial period, the significance of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the underdevelopment caused by colonialism. A specialist in West Africa, Lawrance can also discuss the impact of HIV/AIDS, colonial agricultural schemes, international debt and famine relief. Contact: Benjamin Lawrance, History, (530) 752-8207, bnlawrance@ucdavis.edu.
Poverty, health and the environment
UC Davis anthropologist Monique Borgerhoff Mulder has worked in rural African contexts since the early 1980s, focusing initially on demographic and family questions, and now increasingly on health, poverty and the environment. She has extensive experience working with development and conservation nongovernmental organizations, as well as with coordinating and designing development interventions. Borgerhoff Mulder is author of the 2005 book "Conservation: Linking Ecology, Economics, and Culture." Contact: Monique Borgerhoff-Mulder, Anthropology, (530) 752-0659, mborgerhoffmulder@ucdavis.edu.
POLITICS AND HISTORY
Power and the poor
UC Davis cultural anthropologist Donald L. Donham studies how systems of power affect the poor in Africa, looking at the ways that class, race, gender and sexuality interact in transnational settings. He has written extensively about economic and political systems in rural southern Ethiopia. Currently, he is completing a book about black migrant laborers who work in the gold mines of South Africa -- specifically about a violent conflict among black workers that took place in 1994, just at the time of the elections that ended apartheid. Contact: Donald Donham, Anthropology, (530) 754 4390, dldonham@ucdavis.edu.
Ethnic property rights in Africa
Bettina Ng'weno, assistant professor of African American and African studies, can talk about ethnic claims to property rights in Africa, specifically Kenya. She can also discuss multicultural national identities, ancestral claims to land and changing laws in Latin America. An anthropologist, Ng'weno is writing a book on the relationship between citizenship and claims to territory by people of African descent in Colombia. Contact: Bettina Ng'weno (fluent Spanish speaker), African American and African Studies, (530) 752-0877, bngweno@ucdavis.edu.
CULTURE
African language, literature and identity
Moradewun Adejunmobi, associate professor and director of African American and African studies, can discuss urban African culture and African language, literature and identity in contemporary Africa. She focuses on the English-speaking and French-speaking African countries of West Africa. She also is a scholar of Madagascar and Malagasy literature and culture. Contact: Moradewun Adejunmobi, African American and African Studies, (530) 752-5136, madejunmobi@ucdavis.edu.
Media contacts:
- Jim Sweeney (530) 752-6101, jpsweeney@ucdavis.edu
Last updated Feb. 9, 2007
