Hasil untuk "History of Africa"

Sjoerd Zanen

In the contemporary socio-economic and political order of Moose society in Burkina Faso and elsewhere in Africa so-called “traditional” witchcraft still plays an important role. But how, in modern Moose society, must the occult, the flipside of things, be understood? In what cultural scheme or discourse does it fit and operate? How do the “real” and the “supernatural,” the visible and the invisible, the “dayside” and the “nightside” of things, relate to each other in notions of political power, “development,” law, economy? In other words, what is the ambiguous, cross-fertilizing relation between what is often called “tradition” and “modernity” in modern rural and urban Burkina Faso?

András Málnássy

As a result of the Arab Spring and the return to building the sphere of interest of the Ottoman past, Turkey’s relations with the countries of the North African region are increasingly appreciating, and they seem to be a longer-term vision in Turkish geopolitical thinking. Libya has historically been a part of the Ottoman Empire, a traditionally Turkish sphere of interest in this sense. The study seeks to present the drivers and goals of Turkish foreign policy in relation to a North African state, Libya. In the analysis, examining Turkey’s expansive foreign policy, we can also get an idea of how Ankara intends to increase its sphere of interest in the wider region, namely in the Eastern Mediterranean, through its military support.

Allahsera Auguste Tapo, Ali Traore, Sidy Danioko et al.

In the last 5 years, the availability of large audio datasets in African countries has opened unlimited opportunities to build machine intelligence (MI) technologies that are closer to the people and speak, learn, understand, and do businesses in local languages, including for those who cannot read and write. Unfortunately, these audio datasets are not fully exploited by current MI tools, leaving several Africans out of MI business opportunities. Additionally, many state-of-the-art MI models are not culture-aware, and the ethics of their adoption indexes are questionable. The lack thereof is a major drawback in many applications in Africa. This paper summarizes recent developments in machine intelligence in Africa from a multi-layer multiscale and culture-aware ethics perspective, showcasing MI use cases in 54 African countries through 400 articles on MI research, industry, government actions, as well as uses in art, music, the informal economy, and small businesses in Africa. The survey also opens discussions on the reliability of MI rankings and indexes in the African continent as well as algorithmic definitions of unclear terms used in MI.

Victor Adewopo, Sylvia Worlali Azumah, Mustapha Awinsongya Yakubu et al.

Cybercrime is a growing concern in West Africa due to the increasing use of technology and internet penetration in the region. Legal frameworks are essential for guiding the control of cybercrime. However, the implementation proves challenging for law enforcement agencies due to the absence of a dedicated and effective regional institutional follow-up mechanism. This study conducted a systematic literature review focusing on West Africa's prevalence of cybercrime, governing policies, regulations, and methodologies for combating cybercrime. West-Africa countries face significant cybercrime challenges, exacerbated by inadequate resources and a dearth of security experts. This study pinpoints potential cybercrime prevention strategies, such as leveraging the Triage framework and broadening research to cover pivotal areas like cyber aggression and cyberbullying. Our research findings highlight the urgency for policymakers and law enforcement agencies to devise more efficient prevention strategies and policies. Overall, this study provides invaluable insights into the state of cybercrime in West Africa to guide the formulation of potent prevention and intervention strategies.

Abdul-Hakeem Omotayo, Ashery Mbilinyi, Lukman Ismaila et al.

Despite significant efforts to democratize artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision which is a sub-field of AI, still lags in Africa. A significant factor to this, is the limited access to computing resources, datasets, and collaborations. As a result, Africa's contribution to top-tier publications in this field has only been 0.06% over the past decade. Towards improving the computer vision field and making it more accessible and inclusive, this study analyzes 63,000 Scopus-indexed computer vision publications from Africa. We utilize large language models to automatically parse their abstracts, to identify and categorize topics and datasets. This resulted in listing more than 100 African datasets. Our objective is to provide a comprehensive taxonomy of dataset categories to facilitate better understanding and utilization of these resources. We also analyze collaboration trends of researchers within and outside the continent. Additionally, we conduct a large-scale questionnaire among African computer vision researchers to identify the structural barriers they believe require urgent attention. In conclusion, our study offers a comprehensive overview of the current state of computer vision research in Africa, to empower marginalized communities to participate in the design and development of computer vision systems.

Abdijabar Yussuf Mohamed, Samuel Kang'ara Kamau

As the internet penetration rate in Africa increases, so does the proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Along with this growth in internet access is the risk of cyberattacks to vulnerable IoT devices mushrooming in the African cyberspace. One way to determine IoT vulnerabilities is to find open ports within Africa s cyberspace. Our research leverages Shodan search engine, a powerful tool for discovering IoT devices facing the public internet, to find open ports across Africa. We conduct an analysis of our findings, ranking countries from most to least vulnerable to cyberattack. We find that South Africa,Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and Nigeria are the five countries most susceptible to cyberattack on the continent. Further, 69.8% of devices having one of the five most commonly open internet ports have had past documented vulnerabilities. Following our analysis, we conclude with policy recommendations for both the public and private sector.

T. Kuzmina, Yu. Kuzmin, O. Salganskiy et al.

Helminth community of the Antarctic black rockcod, Notothenia coriiceps, was examined using the fish samples collected in 2014—2015 (106 specimens) and 2020—2021 (78 specimens) in the water area of the Argentine Islands, West Antarctica. In total, 30,951 helminth specimens were collected and identified. We analyse the helminth infra- and component communities and investigate possible changes in the main parameters of helminth communities of N. coriiceps during the six-year period. Thirty species of helminths from five taxonomic groups were recorded: one species of Monogenea, 5 of Nematoda, 4 of Cestoda, 9 of Trematoda, and 11 of Acanthocephala. Notothenia coriiceps was found to be the definitive host of 18 helminth species; 12 species parasitize it in the larval stage using N. coriiceps as the second intermediate or paratenic host. The proportion of larval helminths in the samples was lower in 2014—2015 (73.4%) than in 2020—2021 (81.4%). The number of dominant helminth species (infection prevalence >50%) increased from seven in 2014—2015 to nine in 2020—2021. In helminth infracommunities, the species richness was similar in two samples. On the other hand, we found significantly higher helminth abundance in the infracommunities from the sample collected in 2020—2021. In the helminth component community, the diversity indices (Shannon, Simpson, Pielou, Berger-Parker) evidenced higher evenness and lower domination in the sample collected in 2014—2015 compared to the sample collected in 2020—2021. Lower evenness in 2020—2021 was due to the larger relative abundance of larval Pseudoterranova sp. and Corynosoma spp. We suggest a deeper investigation of the role of separate helminth species in the component community changes, as well as further monitoring of component community parameters as prospective directions for future studies of helminth communities of N. coriiceps in West Antarctica.

Fatma Ben Slimane

Paterne Gahungu, Jean Remy Kubwimana, Lionel Jean Marie Benjamin Muhimpundu et al.

Atmospheric pollution remains one of the major public health threat worldwide with an estimated 7 millions deaths annually. In Africa, rapid urbanization and poor transport infrastructure are worsening the problem. In this paper, we have analysed spatio-temporal variations of PM2.5 across different geographical regions in Africa. The West African region remains the most affected by the high levels of pollution with a daily average of 40.856 $μg/m^3$ in some cities like Lagos, Abuja and Bamako. In East Africa, Uganda is reporting the highest pollution level with a daily average concentration of 56.14 $μg/m^3$ and 38.65 $μg/m^3$ for Kigali. In countries located in the central region of Africa, the highest daily average concentration of PM2.5 of 90.075 $μg/m^3$ was recorded in N'Djamena. We compare three data driven models in predicting future trends of pollution levels. Neural network is outperforming Gaussian processes and ARIMA models.

S. Ramaila

This contribution highlights challenges afflicting physics education in Africa and provides a reflection on key areas for intervention to strengthen capacity building.

Mirjana Pović

Africa has amazing potential due to natural (such as dark sky) and human resources for scientific research in astronomy and space science. At the same time, the continent is still facing many difficulties, and its countries are now recognising the importance of astronomy, space science and satellite technologies for improving some of their principal socio-economic challenges. The development of astronomy in Africa (including Ethiopia) has grown significantly over the past few years, and never before it was more possible to use astronomy for education, outreach, and development as it is now. However, much still remains to be done. This paper will summarise the recent developments in astronomy research and education in Africa and Ethiopia and will focus on how working together on the development of science and education can we fight poverty in the long term and increase our possibilities of attaining the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in future for benefit of all.

Samuel Asante Gyamerah, Dennis Ikpe

Currently, agriculture in Africa contributes only a tenth to global Green House Gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture. Despite its relatively low contribution to GHG, a conundrum of "climate justice", adverse impacts of climate change disproportionately threaten Africa's agriculture, the Continent's main economic sector. Consequently, we seek to review the effects of climate change on Agriculture.

Michael A. Garrett

The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) is a research activity that started in the late 1950s, predating the arrival of "Big History" and "Astrobiology" by several decades. Many elements first developed as part of the original SETI narrative are now incorporated in both of these emergent fields. However, SETI still offers the widest possible perspective, since the topic naturally leads us to consider not only the future development of our own society but also the forward trajectories (and past histories) of many other intelligent extraterrestrial forms. In this paper, I present a provocative view of Big History, its rapid convergent focus on our own planet and society, its oversimplified and incomplete view of events in cosmic history, and its limited appreciation of how poorly we understand some aspects of the physical world. Astrophysicists are also not spared - in particular those who wish to understand the nature of the universe in "splendid isolation", only looking outwards and upwards. SETI can help re-expand all of our horizons but the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence may also require its own practitioners to abandon preconceptions of what constitutes intelligent, sentient, thinking minds.

Séverine Gabry-Thienpont

Ingo Henneberg, Sören Stapel

In January 2020, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia proposed to form a new regional bloc, occasionally referred to as the Horn of Africa Cooperation (HoAC). This article assesses which factors have contributed to making this proposal and contemplates potential effects for the complex security challenges, political tensions among the neighbours, and existing institutional environment in the region. Drawing on the scholarship on comparative regionalism and overlapping regionalism, we show that a genuine interest to independently address security challenges in the Horn of Africa, as well as domestic concerns, are core motivations for the leaders in all three states. However, the HoAC proposal bears the risk of further alienating partners in the region and undermning security efforts of other regional organisations, most importantly the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the African Union, and the Eastern Africa Standby Force. Thus, the promises and pitfalls of this new bloc could shape the regional architecture and cause new political challenges in the region.

Malte Schröder, Andreas Bossert, Moritz Kersting et al.

Few African countries have reported COVID-19 case numbers above $1\,000$ as of April 18, 2020, with South Africa reporting $3\,034$ cases being hit hardest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Several African countries, especially South Africa, have already taken strong non-pharmaceutical interventions that include physical distancing, restricted economic, educational and leisure activities and reduced human mobility options. The required strengths and overall effectiveness of such interventions, however, are debated because of simultaneous but opposing interests in most African countries: strongly limited health care capacities and testing capabilities largely conflict with pressured national economies and socio-economic hardships on the individual level, limiting compliance to intervention targets. Here we investigate implications of interventions on the COVID-19 outbreak dynamics, focusing on South Africa before and after the national lockdown enacted on March 27, 2020. Our analysis shows that initial exponential growth of existing case numbers is consistent with doubling times of about $2.5$ days. After lockdown, the growth remains exponential, now with doubling times of 18 days, but still in contrast to subexponential growth reported for Hubei/China after lockdown. Moreover, a scenario analysis of a computational data-driven agent based mobility model for the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (with $1.14$ million inhabitants) hints that keeping current levels of intervention measures and compliance until the end of April is of insufficient length and still too weak, too unspecific or too inconsistently complied with to not overload local intensive care capacity. Yet, enduring, slightly stronger, more specific interventions combined with sufficient compliance may constitute a viable option for interventions for regions in South Africa and potentially for large parts of the African continent.

Mark Malisa, Thelma Quardey Missedja

Our paper examines the education of African children in countries that were colonized by Britain, including Ghana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. We show how education plays an important role in shaping and transforming cultures and societies. Although the colonies received education, schools were segregated according to race and ethnicity, and were designed to produce racially stratified societies, while loyalty and allegiance to Britain were encouraged so that all felt they belonged to the British Empire or the Commonwealth. In writing about the education of African children in British colonies, the intention is not to convey the impression that education in Africa began with the arrival of the colonizers. Africans had their own system and history of education, but this changed with the incursion by missionaries, educators as well as conquest and colonialism.

Sakina Mehboob Rashid, Shahrzad Seyedeh Deliran, Marieke Cornelia Johanna Dekker et al.

Abstract Background Chronic subdural hematomas (CSDH) initially present as focal neurological deficits with or without signs of increased intracranial pressure, for which admission to the general medical ward may occur if they present with poorly understood neurological deficits and no evident history of trauma. The symptoms may be long standing and mimic stroke upon presentation. Their distribution and specific clinical features in sub-Saharan Africa are largely unknown. Methods We describe a series of subdural hematoma (SDH) inpatients from the medical ward of a tertiary referral center in Northern Tanzania, describing clinical and radiological characteristics and providing clinical outcome where possible. Results Our study population numbered 30, with a male majority (n = 19, 63.3%) and a mean age of 66.8 ± 14.5 years. Mean duration from symptom onset to admission in the medical ward was 20.0 ± 30.8 days. History of head injury was reported in only 43.3% of patients. Improvement in the neurological examination was noted in 68.1% of the 22 patients who underwent surgery. The mortality rate was 20.0%. Conclusion A majority of the patients were elderly males and presented late to the hospital. Delayed presentation and diagnosis due to, amongst other reasons, postponed imaging resulted in a prolonged time to definitive treatment and a high mortality rate compared to other regions of the world.

Catherine Goldstein

Mathematical concepts and results have often been given a long history, stretching far back in time. Yet recent work in the history of mathematics has tended to focus on local topics, over a short term-scale, and on the study of ephemeral configurations of mathematicians, theorems or practices. The first part of the paper explains why this change has taken place: a renewed interest in the connections between mathematics and society, an increased attention to the variety of components and aspects of mathematical work, and a critical outlook on historiography itself. The problems of a long-term history are illustrated and tested using a number of episodes in the nineteenth-century history of Hermitian forms, and finally, some open questions are proposed.

Samuel T. Ogunjo, Ibiyinka A. Fuwape, Christiana F. Olusegun

Drought poses a significant threat to the delicate economies in subsaharan Africa. This study investigates the influence of large scale ocean oscillation on drought in West Africa. Standardized Precipitation Index for the region was computed using monthly precipitation data from the Climate Research Unit during the period 1961 -1990. The impact of three ocean oscillation indices - Southern Ocean Index (SOI), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) on drought over West Africa was investigated using linear correlation, co-integration test, mutual information and nonlinear synchronization methods. SOI showed predominantly positive correlation with drought over the region while PDO and NAO showed negative correlation. This was confirmed by the co-integration tests. The nonlinear test revealed more complex relationship between the indices and drought. PDO has lesser influence or contribute less to the drought in the coastal region compared to the Sahel region of West Africa.