Source: Oct 20: Mark Sanders on his new book, Learning Zulu | African Studies News @ Wesleyan

From Aleta Brady (Wesleyan ’15):

“Midriver states have an important position and role to play in transboundary river basins as they intimately understand the needs and concerns of both their upriver and downriver neighbors. Midriver states also have a more complex perspective of their “rights” based on their combined upstream/downstream interests. This aspect is being ignored under contemporary analyses.”

Source: International Water Law Project Blog » Blog Archive » Midriver States: An Overlooked Perspective in the Nile River Basin

From the Government Department:

Prof. Jennifer Piscopo (Occidental College) to speak this Thursday, September 22, on “Legislative Gender Quotas and Feminist Policymaking in Argentina and Mexico.” The talk is in PAC 002 at 4:30 PM.

Please join us, and please announce the talk in your classes.

Talk description: Legislative Gender Quotas and Feminist Policymaking in Argentina and Mexico

Does women’s presence in elected office lead to policies that advance women’s equality? Women hold 40 percent of seats in the lower houses of Argentina and Mexico, but progress on feminist reforms has stalled. Paradoxically, the more female lawmakers collaborate, the less the resultant legislation transforms women’s traditional roles.

Speaker Bio:

Jennifer M. Piscopo, Assistant Professor of Politics at Occidental College, is the 2016-2017 Peggy Rockefeller Visiting Scholar at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University. Her research on representation, gender quotas and legislative institutions in Latin America has appeared in ten peer-reviewed journals and several edited volumes. With Susan Franceschet and Mona Lena Krook, she is editor of The Impact of Gender Quotas (Oxford University Press, 2012). Prof. Piscopo received her PhD in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego, and her M.Phil. in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge.

Source: Film Event: Dukale’s Dream, Sept 26 | African Studies News @ Wesleyan

South Africa had a nice start to the Olympics as their football squad forced host Brazil to a draw in their first game.

Meanwhile, Nigeria barely made it to its first football match, arriving in Rio just hours before playing Japan. It didn’t matter. Nigeria won 5-4.

While most African countries have relatively small delegations, we can expect some interesting performances during the games.

Here are some places to find news about Africa and the Olympics:

Olympics — Home – allAfrica.com

CNBCAfrica – Africa at the Olympics

Let me know in the comments if you find other sources and I will add them!

Two pillars underpin Africa’s approach to climate change negotiations: One is the “African Common Position,” and the other is the development of a negotiating coalition for presenting that position. This report explores the roles that Africa’s regional powers—Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa—play in supporting this African approach. These regional powers do not share the same interests as the rest of the continent. Not only do they differ based on energy production (Nigeria) and consumption (South Africa), but also in terms of their general vulnerabilities and readiness to face climate change. Even where they share interests, they often view these negotiation processes as serving goals other than solving the problems of climate change. Despite such issues, Africa still needs its regional powers to play a role in ongoing global negotiations, and the world will likely continue to focus on at least some of them as continental representatives.

May 2016, Vol. 16, No. 2, Pages 110-129

Source: MIT Press Journals – Global Environmental Politics – Abstract

This is definitely worth a look. Really demonstrates the scale of the crisis in an interactive way.

Source: This Map Shows How Large Europe’s Refugee Crisis Really Is | TakePart